Skip to main content

Full text of "The Popular science monthly"

See other formats 


% 


naan Foe) 


% ~ : 
al , THE 


POPULAR SCIENCE 


; 769 / 
Fah ONTHLY. 


CONDUCTED BY E. L. AND W. J. YOUMANS. 


VOL, XXV. 


MAY TO OCTOBER, 1884. 


NEW YORK: 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
- 1, 8, any 5 BOND STREET. 
1884, 


Copyrieut, 1884, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. . 


MARY SOMERVILLE. 


THE 


POPULAR SCIENCSL 
MeO N PTT EY. 


MAY, 1884, 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 
By HERBERT SPENCER. 


E it or be it not true that man is “shapen in iniquity” and 
conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is 
begotten of aggression and by aggression. In small, undeveloped 
societies where for ages complete peace has continued, there exists 
nothing like what we call Government : no coercive agency, but mere 
honorary headship, if any headship at all. In these exceptional com- 
munities, unaggressive and from special causes unaggressed upon, 
there is so little deviation from the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, 
justice, and generosity, that nothing beyond an occasional expression 
of public opinion by informally-assembled elders is needful.* Con- 
versely, we find proofs that, at first recognized but temporarily during 
leadership in war, the authority of a chief is permanently established 
by continuity of war; and grows strong where successful aggression 
ends in subjection of neighboring tribes. And thence onward, ex- 
amples furnished by all races put beyond doubt the truth that the 
coercive power of the chief, developing into king, and king of kings 
(a frequent title in the ancient East), becomes great in proportion as 
conquest becomes habitual and the union of subdued societies exten- 
sive.+ Comparisons disclose a further truth which should be ever 
present to us—the truth that the aggressiveness of the ruling power 
inside a society increases with its aggressiveness outside the society. 
As, to make an efficient army, the soldiers in their several grades must 
be subordinate to the commander ; so, to make an efficient fighting 
society, must the citizens be subordinate. They must furnish recruits 
to the extent demanded, and yield up whatever property is required. 


* “ Political Institutions,” $§ 437, 573. + Ibid., §§ 471-478. 
VOL, xxv.—1 


2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


An obvious implication is that the ethics of Government, originally 
identical with the ethics of war, must long remain akin to them ; and 
can diverge from them only as warlike activities and preparations 
become less. Current evidence shows this. At present on the Con- 
tinent, the citizen is free only when his services as a soldier are not 
demanded ; and during the rest of his life he is largely enslaved in 
supporting the military organization. Even among ourselves, a seri- 
ous war would, by the necessitated conscription, suspend the liberties 
of large numbers and trench on the liberties of the rest by taking 
from them through taxes whatever supplies were needed—that is, 
forcing them to labor so many days more for the state. Inevitably 
the established code of conduct in the dealings of Governments with 
citizens must be allied to their code of conduct in their dealings with 
one another, 

I am not, under the title of this article, about to treat of the tres- 
passes and the revenges for trespasses, accounts of which constitute 
the great mass of history ; nor to trace the internal inequities which 
have ever accompanied the external inequities. I do not propose here 
to catalogue the crimes of irresponsible legislators, beginning with 
that of King Khufu, the stones of whose vast tomb were laid in the 
bloody sweat of tens of thousands of slaves toiling through long years 
under the lash ; going on to those committed by conquerors, Egyptian, 
Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and the rest; and ending 
with those of Napoleon, whose ambition to set his foot on the neck of 
the civilized world cost not less than two million lives.* Nor do I 
propose here to enumerate those sins of responsible legislators seen in 
the long list of laws made in the interests of dominant classes—a list 
coming down in our own country to those under which there were 
long maintained slavery and the slave-trade, inflicting on immense 
numbers of negroes the horrors of “the middle passage” and killing 
thirty per cent of them, and ending with that of the corn laws, by 
which, says Sir Erskine May, “to insure high rents, it had been decreed 
that multitudes should hunger.” + 

Not, indeed, that a presentation of the conspicuous misdeeds of 
legislators, responsible and irresponsible, would be useless. It would 
have several uses—one of them relevant to the truth above pointed 
out. Such a presentation would make clear how that identity of gov- 
ernmental ethics with military ethics which necessarily exists during 
primitive times, when the army is simply the mobilized society and 
the society is the quiescent army, continues through long stages, and 
even now affects in great degrees our law-proceedings and our daily 
lives. Having, for instance, shown that in numerous savage tribes the 
judicial function of the chief does not exist, or is nominal, and that 
very generally in early stages of the civilized races each man had to 
defend himself, and rectify his private wrongs as best he might—hay- 


* “Study of Sociology,” p. 42. + “ Constitutional History of England,” ii, p. 617. 


THH SINS OF LEGISLATORS. z 


ing shown that in medizwval Europe the right of private war among 
members of the military order was brought to an end, not because the 
head ruler thought-it his duty to arbitrate, but because private wars. 
interfered with the efficiency of his army in public wars—having 
shown that the administration of justice long continued to display in 
large measure its primitive nature in trial by battle, carried on before 
the king or his deputy as umpire, and which among ourselves con- 
tinued nominally to be an alternative form of trial down to 1819, it. 
might then be pointed out that even now there survives trial by battle 
under another form: counsel being the champions and purses the 
weapons. In civil cases the ruling agency cares scarcely more than of 
old about rectifying the wrongs of the injured ; but, practically, its 
deputy does little more than to enforce the rules of the fight: the 
result being less a question of equity than a question of pecuniary 
ability and forensic skill. Nay, so little concern for the administra- 
tion of justice is shown by the ruling agency, that when, by legal con- 
flict carried on in presence of its deputy, the combatants have been 
pecuniarily bled even to the extent of producing prostration, and 
when, an appeal being made by one of them, the decision is reversed, 
the beaten combatant is made to pay for the blunders of the deputy 
or a preceding deputy ; and not unfrequently the wronged man, who 
sought protection or restitution, is taken out of court pecuniarily 
dead. 

Adequately done, such a portrayal of governmental misdeeds of 
commission and omission, proving that the partially surviving code of 
ethics arising in and proper to a state of war still vitiates govern- 
mental action, might greatly moderate the hopes of those who are 
anxious to extend governmental control. 

But leaving out the greater part of the large topic comprehended 
under the title of this article, I propose here to deal only with a com- 
paratively small remaining part—those sins of legislators which are 
not generated by personal ambitions or class interests, but result from 
a lack of the study by which legislators are morally bound to prepare 
themselves. 


A druggist’s assistant who, after listening to the description of 
pains which he mistakes for those of colic, but which are really caused 
by inflammation of the cecum, prescribes a sharp purgative and kills: 
the patient, is found guilty of manslaughter. He is not allowed to | 
excuse himself on the ground that he did not intend harm, but hoped 
for good. ‘The plea that he simply made a mistake in his diagnosis is: 
not entertained. He is told that he had no right to risk disastrous: 
consequences by meddling in a matter concerning which his knowledge 
was so inadequate. The fact that he was ignorant how great was his 
ignorance is not accepted in bar of judgment. It is tacitly assumed 
that the experience common to all should have taught him that even 


4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the skilled, and much more the unskilled, are liable to mistakes in the 
identification of disorders and in the appropriate treatment ; and that, 
having disregarded the warning derivable from common experience, 
he was answerable for the consequences. 

We measure the responsibilities of legislators for mischiefs they 
may do, in a much more lenient fashion. In most cases, so far from 
thinking of them as deserving any kind of punishment for causing dis- 
asters by laws ignorantly enacted, we scarcely think of them as de- 
serving reprobation. It is held that common experience should have 
taught the druggist’s assistant, untrained as he is, not to interfere ; 
but it is not held that common experience should have taught the 
legislator not to interfere till he has trained himself. Though multi- 
tudinous facts are before him in the recorded legislation of our own 
country and of other countries, which should impress on him the im- 
mense evils caused by wrong treatment, he is not condemned for dis- 
regarding these warnings against rash meddling. Contrariwise, it is 
thought meritorious in him when—perhaps lately from college, per- 
haps fresh from keeping a pack of hounds which made him popular 
in his county, perhaps emerging from a provincial town where he 
acquired a fortune, perhaps rising from the bar at which he has gained 
a name as an advocate—he enters Parliament, and forthwith, in quite 
a light-hearted way, begins to aid or hinder this or that means of 
operating on the body politic. In this case, there is no occasion even 
to make for him the excuse that he does not know how little he knows ; 
for the public at large agrees with him in thinking it needless that he 
should know anything more than what the debates on the proposed 
measures tell him. 

And yet the mischiefs wrought by uninstructed law-making, vast 
in their amount as compared with those caused by uninstructed medi- 
cal treatment, are conspicuous to all who do but glance over its his- 
tory. The reader must pardon me while I recall a few familiar in- 
stances. Century after century statesmen went on enacting usury 
laws which made worse the condition of the debtor—raising the rate 
of interest “from five to six when intending to reduce it to four,” * 
‘as under Louis XV ; and producing undreamed-of evils of an indirect 
kind, such as preventing the reproductive use of spare capital, and 
“burdening the small proprietors with a multitude of perpetual ser- 
vices.” | So, too, the endeavors which in England continued through 
five hundred years to stop forestalling, and which in France, as Arthur 
Young witnessed, prevented any one from buying “more than two 
bushels of wheat at market,” { went on generation after generation, 
increasing the miseries and mortality due to dearth ; for, as everybody 
now knows, the wholesale dealer, who was in the statute “ De Pistori- 

* Lecky, “ Rationalism,” ii, pp. 298, 294. 


+ De Tocqueville, “ The State of Society in France before the Revolution,” p. 421, 
¢ Young’s “ Travels,” i, pp. 128, 129. 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 5 


bus” vituperated as ‘an open oppressor of poor people,” * is simply 
one whose function it is to equalize the supply of a commodity by 
checking unduly rapid consumption. Of kindred nature was the meas- 
ure which, in 1315, to diminish the pressure of famine, prescribed the 
prices of foods, but which was hastily repealed after it had caused 
entire disappearance of various foods from the markets ; and also such 
measures, more continuously operating, as those which settled by mag- 
isterial order “the reasonable gains” of victualers.¢ Of like spirit 
and followed by allied mischiefs have been the many endeavors to fix 
wages, which began with the statute of laborers under Edward III, 
and ceased only sixty years ago; when, having long galvanized in 
Spitalfields a decaying industry, and fostered there a miserable popu- 
lation, Lords and Commons finally gave up fixing silk-weavers’ earn- 
ings by magisterial order. 

Here I imagine an impatient interruption: “We know all that ; 
the story is stale. The mischiefs of interfering with trade have been 
dinned in our ears till we are weary ; and no one needs to be taught 
the lesson afresh.” My first reply is, that by the great majority the 
lesson was never properly learned at all, and that very many of those 
who did learn it have forgotten it. For just the same pleas which of 
old were put in for these dictations are again put in. In the statute 
35 of Edward III, which aimed to keep down the price of herrings 
(but was soon repealed because it raised the price), it was complained 
that people “coming to the fair... do bargain for herring, and 
every of them, by malice and envy, increase upon other, and, if one 
proffer forty shillings, another will proffer ten shillings more, and the 
third sixty shillings, and so every one surmounteth other in the bar- 
gain.” { And now the “higgling of the market,” here condemned 
and ascribed to “malice and envy,” is being again condemned. The 
evils of competition have all along been the stock cry of the socialists ; 
and the council of the Democratic Federation denounced the carrying 
on of exchange under “the control of individual greed and profit.” 
My second reply is, that interferences with the law of supply and de- 
mand, which a generation ago were admitted to be habitually mis- 
chievous, are now being daily made by acts of Parliament in other 
fields ; and that, as I shall presently show, they are in these fields 
increasing the evils to be cured and producing new ones, as much as 
of old they did in fields no longer intruded upon. 

Returning from this parenthesis, I go on to explain that the above 
acts are named to remind the reader that uninstructed legislators have 
in past times continually increased human suffering in their endeavors 
to mitigate it ; and I have now to add that if these evils, shown to be 
legislatively intensified or produced, be multiplied by ten or more, a 


* Craik’s “‘ History of British Commerce,” i, p. 134. + Ibid., i, pp. 136, 137. 
t Craik, loc. cit., i, p. 137. 


6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


conception will be formed of the aggregate evils caused by law-making 
unguided by study of social science. In a paper read to the Statistical 
Society in May, 1873, by Mr. Janson, Vice-President of the Law So- 
ciety, it was stated that from the statute of Merton (20 Henry III) to 
the end of 1872, there had been passed 18,110 public acts, of which 
he estimated that four fifths had been wholly or partially repealed. 
He also stated that the number of public acts repealed wholly or 
partly, or amended, during the three years 1870-72 had been 3,532, 
of which 2,759 had been totally repealed. ‘To see whether this rate 
.of repeal has continued, I have referred to the annually-issued volumes 
of “The Public General Statutes” for the last three sessions. Leaving 
out amended acts and enumerating only acts entirely repealed, the 
result is that in the last three sessions there have been repealed sepa- 
rately, or in groups, 650 acts belonging to the present reign. ‘This, of 
course, is greatly above the average rate; for there has of late been 
an active clearance of the statute-book going on. But, making every 
allowance, we must infer that within our own times repeals have 
mounted some distance into the thousands. Doubtless a number of 
them have ‘been of laws that were obsolete; others have been de- 
manded by changes of circumstances (though seeing how many of 
them are of quite recent acts this has not been a large cause) ; others 
simply because they were inoperative ; and others have been conse- 
quent on the consolidations of numerous acts into single acts. But 
unquestionably, in mu!titudinous cases, repeals came because the acts 
had proved injurious. We talk glibly of such changes—we think of 
canceled legislation with indifference. We forget that before laws 
are abolished they have generally been inflicting evils more or less 
serious, some for a few years, some for tens of years, some for centu- 
ries. Change your vague idea of a bad law into a definite idea of 
it as an agency operating on people’s lives, and you see that it means 
so much of pain, so much of illness, so much of mortality. A vicious 
form of legal procedure, for example, either enacted or tolerated, en- 
tails on suitors costs, or delay, or defeat. What do these imply? Loss 
of money, often ill-spared’; great and prolonged anxiety ; frequently 
consequent illness; unhappiness of family and dependents; children 
stinted in food and clothing—all of them miseries which bring after 
them multitudinous remoter miseries. Add to which there are the far 
more numerous cases of those who, lacking the means or the courage 
to enter on lawsuits, and submitting to frauds, are impoverished, and 
have similarly to bear the pains of body and mind which ensue. See- 
ing, then, that bad legislation means injury to men’s lives, judge what 
must be the total amount of mental distress, physical pain, and raised 
mortality which these thousands of repealed acts of Parliament repre- 
sent! Fully to bring home the truth that law-making unguided by 
adequate knowledge brings immense evils, let me take a special case 
which a question of the day brings before us. 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. \y 


Already I have hinted that interferences with the connection be- 


mischiefs had been done during many centuries, are now taking place 
in other fields. This connection is supposed to hold only where it has 
been proved to hold by the evils of disregarding it : so feeble is men’s 
belief in it. There seems no suspicion that, in cases where it seems to 
fail, it is because it has been traversed by artificial hindrances. And 
yet in the case to which I now refer—that of the supply of houses for 
the poor—it needs but to ask what laws have been doing for a long 
time past, to see that the terrible evils complained of are mostly law- 
made. 4 

A generation ago discussion was taking place concerning the inade- 
quacy and badness of industrial dwellings, and I had occasion to deal 
with the question. Here is a passage then written : 


An architect and surveyor describes it [the Building Act] as having worked 
after the following manner: In those districts of London consisting of inferior 
houses, built in that unsubstantial fashion which the New Building Act was to 
mend, there obtains an average rent, sufficiently remunerative to landlords whose 
houses were run up economically before the New Building Act passed. This 
existing average rent fixes the rent that must be charged in these districts for 
new houses of the same accommodation—that is, the same number of rooms, for 
the people they are built for do not appreciate the extra safety of living within 
walls strengthened with hoop-iron bond. Now, it turns out upon trial, that 
houses built in accordance with the present regulations, and let at this estab- 
lished rate, bring in nothing like a reasonable return. Builders have conse- 
quently confined themselves to erecting houses in better districts (where the pos- 
sibility of a profitable competition with pre-existing houses shows that those pre- 
existing houses were tolerably substantial), and have ceased to erect dwellings 
for the masses, except in the suburbs where no pressing sanitary evils exist. 
Meanwhile, in the inferior districts above described, has resulted an increase of 
overcrowding—half a dozen families in a house, ascore lodgers to aroom. Nay, 
more than this has resulted. That state of miserable dilapidation into which 
these abodes of the poor are allowed to fall is due to the absence of competition 
from new houses. Landlords do not find their tenants tempted away by the 
offer of better accommodation. Repairs, being unnecessary for securing the 
largest amount of profit, are not made. .. . In fact, for a large percentage of 
the very horrors which our sanitary agitators are now trying to cure by law, we 
have to thank previous agitators of the same school !—‘* Social Statics,” p. 384 
(first edition). 


These were not the only law-made causes of such evils. As shown in 
the following further passage, sundry others were recognized : 


Writing before the repeal of the brick-duty, ‘The Builder” says: ‘It is 
supposed that one fourth of the cost of a dwelling which lets for 2s. 6d. or 3s. a 
week is cansed by the expense of the title-deeds and the tax on wood and bricks 
used in its construction. Of course, the owner of such property must be remu- 
nerated, and he therefore charges 74d. or 9d. a week to cover these burdens.” 
M. C. Gatliff, secretary to the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the Work- 
ing-Classes, describing the effect of the window-tax, says: ‘“‘ They are now pay- 


8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ing upon their institution in St. Pancras the sum of £162 16s. in window-duties, 
or one per cent per annum upon the original outlay. The average rental paid by 
the society’s tenants is 5s. 6d. per week, and the window-duty deducts from this 
"id. per week.”—“ Times,” January 31, 1850. ‘‘ Social Statics,” p. 886 (origi- 
nal edition). 


Neither is this all the evidence which the press of those days 
afforded. There was published in the “Times” of December 7, 1850 
(too late to be used in the above-named work, which I issued in the 
last week of that year), a letter dated from the Reform Club, and 
signed “ Architect,” which contained the following passages : 


Lord Kinnaird recommends in your paper of yesterday the construction of 
model lodging-houses by throwing two or three houses into one. 

Allow me to suggest to his lordship, and his friend Lord Ashley to whom 
he refers, that if— 

1. The window-tax were repealed ; 

2. The Building Act repealed (excepting the clauses enacting that party and 
external walls shall be fire-proof) ; ‘ 

8. The timber duties either equalized or repealed; and 

4, An act passed to facilitate the transfer of property — 

There would be no more necessity for model lodging-houses than there is for 
model ships, model cotton-mills, or model steam-engines. 

The first limits the poor man’s house to seven windows. 

The second limits the size of the poor man’s house to twenty-five feet by 
eighteen (about the size of a gentleman’s dining-room), into which space the 
builder has to cram a staircase, an entrance-passage, a parlor, and a kitchen 
(walls and partitions included). 

The third induces the builder to erect the poor man’s house of timber unfit 
for building purposes, the duty on the good material (Baltic) being fifteen times 
more than the duty on the bad or injurious article (Canadian). The Govern- 
ment, even, exclude the latter from all their contracts. 

The fourth would have considerable influence upon the present miserable 
state of the dwellings of the poor. Small freeholds might then be transferred as 
easily as leaseholds. The effect of building-leases has been a direct inducement 
to bad building. 


To guard against misstatement or overstatement, I have taken 
the precaution to consult a large East-End builder and contractor of 
fifty-five years’ experience, Mr. C. Forrest, Museum Works, 17 Victoria 
Park Square, Bethnal Green, who, being church-warden, member of 
the vestry, and of the board of guardians, adds extensive knowledge 
of local public affairs to his extensive knowledge of the building 
business. Mr, Forrest, who authorizes me to give his name, verifies 
the foregoing statements with the exception of one, which he strength- 
ens. He says that “Architect” understates the evil entailed by the 
definition of “a fourth-rate house”; since the dimensions are less 
than those he gives (perhaps in conformity with the provisions of a 
more recent Building Act). Mr. Forrest has done more than this. 
Besides illustrating the bad effects of great increase in ground-rents 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. | 9 


(in sixty years, from £1 to £8 10s. for a fourth-rate house), which, 
joined with other causes, had obliged him to abandon plans for indus- 
trial dwellings he had intended to build—besides agreeing with 
“ Architect” that this evil has been greatly increased by the difficul- 
ties of land-transfer due to the law-established system of trusts and 
entails, he pointed out that a further penalty on the building of small 
houses is inflicted by additions to local burdens (“prohibitory im- 
posts” he called them): one of the instances he named being, that to 
the cost of each new house has to be added the cost of pavement, 
roadway, and sewerage, which is charged according to length of front- 
age, and which, consequently, bears a far larger ratio to the value of 
a small house than to the value of a large one. 

From these law-produced mischiefs, which were great a generation 
ago and have since been increasing, let us pass to more recent law- 
produced mischiefs. The misery, the disease, the mortality in “rook- 
eries,” made continually worse by artificial impediments to the increase 
of fourth-rate houses, and by the necessitated greater crowding of 
those which existed, having become a scandal, Government was in- 
voked to remove the evil. It responded by Artisans’ Dwellings Acts ; 
giving to local authorities powers to pull down bad houses and pro- 
vide for the building of good ones. What have been the results? A 
summary of the operations of the Metropolitan Board of Works, dated 
December 21, 1883, shows that up to last September it had, at a cost 
of a million and a quarter to rate-payers, unhoused 21,000 persons and 
provided houses for 12,000—the remaining 9,000 to be hereafter pro- 
vided for being, meanwhile, left houseless. This is not all. Another 
local lieutenant of the Government, the Corporation of London, work- 
ing on the same lines, has cleared four spaces amounting to several 
acres ; but has unhappily failed to get them covered with the substi- 
tuted houses needed, and has thus added a further thousand or two 
to those who have to seek homes in miserable places that are already 
overflowing ! 

See, then, what legislation has done. By ill-imposed taxation, 
raising the prices of bricks and timber, it added to the cost of houses, 
and prompted, for economy’s sake, the use of bad materials in scanty 
quantities. ‘To check the consequent production of wretched dwell- 
ings, it established regulations which, in medieval fashion, dictated the 
quality of the commodity produced : there being no perception that, 
by insisting on a higher quality and therefore higher price, it would 
limit the demand and eventually diminish the supply. By additional 
local burdens, legislation has of late still further hindered the building 
of small houses. Finally, having, by successive measures, produced 
first bad houses and then a deficiency of better ones, it has at length 
provided for the increasing overflow of poor people by diminishing 
the house capacity which already could not contain them ! 

Where, then, lies the blame for the crying evils of the East- 


10 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


End? Against whom should be raised “the bitter cry of outcast 
London” ? | 

The German anthropologist, Bastian, tells us that a sick native of 
Guinea who causes the fetich to lie by not recovering is strangled ;* 
and we may reasonably suppose that among the Guinea people any 
one audacious enough to call in question the power of the fetich would 
be promptly sacrificed. In days when governmental authority was 
enforced by strong measures, there was a kindred danger in saying 
anything disrespectful of the political fetich. Nowadays, however, 
the worst punishment to be looked for by one who questions its om- 
nipotence is that he will be reviled as a reactionary who talks laissez- 
faire. That any facts he may bring forward will appreciably de- 
crease the established faith is not to be expected ; for we are daily 
shown that this faith is proof against all adverse evidence. Let us 
contemplate a small part of that vast mass of it which passes un- 
heeded. f 

“ A Government office is like an inverted filter ; you send in ac- 
counts clear and they come out muddy.” Such was the comparison I 
heard made many years ago by the late Sir Charles Fox, who, in the 
conduct of his business, had considerable experience of public depart- 
ments. That his opinion was not a singular one, though his compari- 
son was, all men know. Exposures by the press and criticisms in Par- 
liament leave no one in ignorance of the vices of red-tape routine. 
Its delays, perpetually complained of, and which in the time of Mr. 
Fox Maule went to the extent that “the commissions of officers in the 
army ” were generally “about two years in arrear,” is afresh illustrated 
by the issue of the first volume of the detailed census of 1881, more 
than two years after the information was collected. If we seek explana- 
tions of such delays, we find one origin to be a scarcely credible con- 
fusion. In the case of the delayed census returns, the registrar-general 
tells us that “the difficulty consists not merely in the vast multitude 
of different areas that have to be taken into account, but still more in 
the bewildering complexity of their boundaries” : there being thirty- 
nine thotsand administrative areas of twenty-two different kinds which 
overlap one another—hundreds, petty sessional divisions, lieutenancy 
divisions, urban and rural Sanitary districts, unions, school-board. 
districts, school-attendance districts, etc. And then, as Mr. W. Rath- 
bone points out,t these many superposed sets of areas, with inter- 
secting boundaries, have their respective governing bodies with au- 
thorities running into one another’s districts. Does any one ask why 
for each additional administration Parliament has established a fresh 
set of divisions? The reply which suggests itself is, To preserve con- 
sistency of method. For this organized confusion harmonizes com- 
pletely with that organized confusion which Parliament each year in- 
creases by throwing on to the heap of its old acts a hundred new acts, 


* “ Mensch,” iii, p. 225. + ‘‘ The Nineteenth Century,” February, 1883. 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS, 11 


the provisions of which traverse and qualify in all kinds of ways the 
provisions of multitudinous acts on to which they are thrown: the 
onus of settling what is the law being left to private persons, who lose 
their property in getting judges’ interpretations. And again this sys- 
tem of putting networks of districts over other networks, with their 
conflicting authorities, is quite consistent with the method under which 
the reader of the Public Health Act of 1872, who wishes to know 
what are the powers exercised over him, is referred to twenty-six pre- 
ceding acts of several classes and numerous dates.* So, too, with ad- 
ministrative inertia. Continually there occur cases showing the resist- 
ance of officialism to improvements : as by the Admiralty when use of 
the electric telegraph was proposed, and the reply was, “ We have a 
very good semaphore system”; or as by the Post-Office, which the 
late Sir William Siemens years ago said had obstructed the employ- 
ment of improved methods of telegraphing, and since then has im- 
peded the general use of the telephone. Other cases, akin to that above 
set forth in detail, row and then show how the state with one hand 
increases evils which with the other hand it tries to diminish: as when 
it puts a duty on fire-insurances and then makes regulations for the 
better putting out of fires ; dictating, too, certain modes of construc- 
tion, which, as Captain Shaw shows, entail additional dangers. + Again, 
the absurdities of official routine, rigid where it need not be and lax 
where it should be rigid, occasionally become glaring enough to cause 
scandals : as when a secret state document of importance put into the 
hands of an ill-paid copying-clerk, who is not even in permanent Gov- 
ernment employ, is made public by him ; or as when the mode of mak- 
ing the Moorsom fuse, which was kept secret even from our highest 
artillery-officers, was taught to them by the Russians, who had been 
allowed to learn it ; or as when a diagram showing the “ distances at 
which British and foreign ironclads could be perforated by our large 
guns,” communicated by an enterprising attaché to his own Government, 
then became known “ to all the Governments of Europe,” while English 
officers remained ignorant of the facts.t So, too, with state-supervision. 
From time to time it is pointed out that coal-mine explosions continue 
notwithstanding coal-mine inspection: the only effect being that more 
inspection and more stringent regulations are demanded. Even where 
the failure of inspection is most glaring, no notice is taken of it ; as 
instance the terrible catastrophe by which a train full of people was 
destroyed along with the Tay Bridge. Countless denunciations, loud 
and unsparing, were vented against engineer and contractor ; but lit- 
tle, if anything, was said about the government officer from whom the 


* “ The Statistics of Legislation.” By F. H. Janson, Esq., F. L.S., Vice-President of 
the Incorporated Law Society. (Read before the Statistical Society, May, 1873.) 

+ “Fire Surveys ; or, a Summary of the Principles to be observed in estimating the 
Risk of Buildings.” 

t See “‘ Times,” October 6, 1874, where other instances are given. 


12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


bridge received state-approval. So too with prevention of disease. It 
matters not that under the management or dictation of state-agents 
some of the worst evils occur: as when the lives of eighty-seven wives 
and children of soldiers are sacrificed in the ship Accrington ;* or 
as when typhoid fever and diphtheria are diffused by a state-ordered 
drainage system, as in Edinburgh ;+ or as when officially-enforced 
sanitary appliances, ever getting out of order, increase the evils they 
were to decrease.{ These and multitudinous such facts leave un- 
abated the confidence with which sanitary inspection is invoked—in- 
voked, indeed, more than ever, as is shown in the recent suggestion 
that all public schools should be under the supervision of health-ofi- 
cers. Nay, even when the state has manifestly caused the mischief 
complained of, faith in its beneficent agency is not at all diminished ; 
as we see in the fact that, having a generation ago authorized, or 
rather required, towns to establish drainage systems which delivered 
sewage into the rivers, and having thus polluted the sources of water- 
supply, the water-companies have come to be daily denounced for the 
impurities of their water; and, as the only remedy, there follows the 
demand that the state by its local proxies shall undertake the whole 
business. The state’s misdoings become, as in the case of industrial 
dwellings, reasons for praying it to do more. 

This work of the Legislature is, in one respect, indeed, less excus- 
able than the fetich-worship to which I have tactily compared it. The 
savage has the defense that his fetich is silent—does not confess its in- 
ability. But the civilized man persists in ascribing to this idol, made 
with his own hands, powers which in one way or other it confesses it 
has not got. Ido not mean merely that the debates daily tell us of. 
legislative measures which have done evil instead of good ; nor do I 
mean merely that the thousands of acts of Parliament which repeal 
preceding acts are so many tacit admissions of failure. Neither do I 
refer only to such guasi-governmental confessions as that contained in 
the report of the Poor-Law Commissioners, who said that “ we find, 
on the one hand, that there is scarcely one statute connected with the 
administration of public relief which has produced the effect designed 
by the Legislature, and that the majority of them have created new 
evils, and aggravated those which they were intended to prevent.” 
I refer rather to those made by statesmen, and by state-departments. 
Here, for example, in a memorial addressed to Mr. Gladstone, and 

* Hansard, vol. clvi, p. 718, and vol. clvii, p. 4464. 

+ Letter of an Edinburgh M. D. in the “ Times” of January 17, 1876, verifying other 
testimonies: one of which I have previously cited concerning Windsor, where, as in 
Edinburgh, there was absolutely no typhoid itt the undrained parts, while it was very 
fatal in the drained parts.— Study of Sociology,” chap. i, notes. 

¢ I say this partly from personal knowledge; having now before me memoranda made 
twenty-five years ago concerniug such results produced under my own observation. Veri- 


fying facts have recently been given by Sir Richard Cross in the “ Nineteenth Century ” 
for January, 1884, p. 155. 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 13 


adopted by a highly influential meeting held under the chairmanship 
of the late Lord Lyttelton, I read : 


We, the undersigned, peers, members of the House of Commons, rate-pay- 
ers, and inhabitants of the metropolis, feeling strongly the truth and force of 
your statement made in the House of Commons, in 1866, that ‘there is still 
a lamentable and deplorable state of our whole arrangements, with regard to 
public works—vacillation, uncertainty, costliness, extravagance, meanness, and 
all the conflicting vices that could be enumerated, are united in our present 
system,” etc., etc.* 


And here again is an example furnished by a recent minute of the 
Board of Trade (November, 1883), in which it is said that since “ the 
Shipwreck Committee of 1836 scarcely a session has passed without 
some act being passed or some step being taken by the Legislature or 
the Government with this object” (prevention of shipwreck) ; and 
that “the multiplicity of statutes, which were all consolidated into 
one act in 1854, has again become a scandal and a reproach ”—each 
measure being passed because previous ones had failed. And then 
comes presently the confession that “the loss of life and of ships has 
been greater since 1876 than it ever was before.” Meanwhile, the 
cost of administration has been raised from £17,000 a year to £73,000 
a year.t : 

It is surprising how, spite of better knowledge, the imagination is 
affected by artificial appliances used in particular ways. We see it 
all through human history, from the war-paint with which the savage 
frightens his adversary, down through religious ceremonies and regal 
processions, to the robes of a Speaker and the wand of an officially- 
dressed usher. I remember a child who, able to look with tolerable 
composure on a horrible cadaverous mask while it was held in the 
hand, ran away shrieking when his father put it on. Akindred change 
of feeling comes over constituencies when, from boroughs and coun- 
ties, their members pass to the legislative chamber. While before 
them as candidates, they are, by one or other party, jeered at, lam- 
pooned, “heckled,” and in all ways treated with utter disrespect. 
But, as soon as they assemble at Westminster, those against whom 
taunt and invective, charges of incompetence and folly, had been show- 
ered from press and platform, excite unlimited faith. Judging from 
the prayers made to them, there is nothing which their wisdom and 
their power can not compass. 


* The “Times,” March 31, 1878. 

+ These are just a few additional examples. Masses of those which I have on earlier 
occasions given will be found in “Social Statics ” (1851); “ Over-Legislation ” (1853) ; 
“ Representative Government ” (1857); “Specialized Administration ’’ (1871); “ Study 
of Sociology ” (1873), and Postscript to ditto (1880); besides some cases in smaller es- 
says. 

[Z'o be continued, ] 


14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


THE BEAVER AND HIS WORKS. 
By Dr. @. ARCHIE STOCKWELL. 


HANKS to the decrease of castor in value, owing to the substi- 
tutes which have been found in the skins of seal, nutria—the im- 
proved preparation of other peltry of little value, such as the hare and 
rabbit—and more than all in the use of silk in the manufacture of hats, 
a little breathing-time has been allowed the beaver, which a few years 
since bade fair to speedily become extinct. 

Formerly inhabiting every part of North America possessed of 
forest-growth, at present it is found only in the wilder and least ac- 
cessible regions of the continent. At the time the reindeer, musk-ox, 
mammoth, and rhinoceros roamed the temperate zone, beaver were 
abundant, and filled the country on every hand, from the Mexican 
Gulf to the Barren Grounds, with their works—wondrous monuments 
of patience and industry. Perhaps their fur helped to clothe the 
ignorant savage that eked out a precarious existence by means of 
game killed with flint-tipped arrows and javelins, and dismembered 
and divided by hatchets and knives of stone. Doubtless the broad 
tails were then, as now, esteemed delicate tidbits. And the wondrous 
instinct displayed may possibly have taught the primeval dweller the 
rudiments of architecture now exemplified in beautiful structures of 
wood and stone; for to this day we find some tribes, low in the scale of 
humanity and civilization, such as the Fischer Lapps and natives of 
Terra del Fuego, living in huts that, save in point of size, are exact 
counterparts of the dwellings of the beaver. 

Of all quadrupeds, the beaver is one of the most peculiar and inter- 
esting. He is the only one that possesses membranes between the toes 
of the hind-feet, at the same time none on the fore ones—in fact, re- 
sembling a terrestrial mammal in front, and an aquatic one behind. 
When full grown, he exhibits a thick, heavy body over two feet in 
length, and from thirty to fifty pounds’ weight, terminating in a full, 
compact, cat-like head, with heavy jaws provided with wondrous mus- 
cular development. The tail is oval, resembling closely the blade of 
a paddle, twelve or fourteen inches in length, and four or five in 
breadth, flattened both above and below, and covered with a thick 
dusky skin that at first glance appears to be protected by scales. The 
old writers were accustomed to tell us that this peculiar appendage 
was used as a trowel for plastering his dwelling or repairing his dam, 
as a maul for driving stakes, and as a vehicle for transporting loads. 
But modern science has proved the fallacy of such statements, and we 
now know that it serves but as a prop or fifth leg when sitting at 
work, or as scull and rudder while navigating the waters. 

Generally, beaver are nocturnal in habits, mild and tranquil in dis- 


THE BEAVER AND HIS WORKS. 15 


position, but not inclined to be social except among immediate rela- 
tives. They are also the perfection of neatness and cleanliness, pos- 
sessed of very acute sight, hearing, and smell ; and, when domesticated, — 
very interesting and even affectionate pets. 


—— 


Fig. 1.—THE BEAVER. 


During the summer they are more inclined to solitary habits, ex- 
cept where a new settlement demands their energies ; but in autumn 
they appear in families, which remain unbroken until the following 
spring. About the middle of August the busy season begins, and 
each and every one, both great and small, assist in repairing the dam 
and dwellings, which for some months have been allowed to fall into 
neglect and unrepair. ‘Trees are felled and cut into suitable lengths, 
and, along with stones and clods, dragged laboriously to the scene of 
labor until all is made again secure against ice and cold. Other trees, 
such as larch, willow, birch, and aspens, are cut up into billets and 
twigs, and stored for the food their bark affords, against possible want. 
Their perseverance in this work, the labor expended, and the strength 
of teeth and jaws, may be fairly estimated by the stumps that remain, 
as they are found of all diameters, from the smallest brush-wood to 
growths a foot or more in diameter. I have seen stumps that meas- 
ured but a fraction less than sixteen inches. 

It is with the front or incisor teeth that the cutting is done, and 
they are eminently adapted to the work, being long, square-crowned, 
and with edges beveled in the same way as is the carpenter’s chisel 
known as a “firmer”; and the rapidity with which the work is per- 
formed may well astonish one who is fortunate enough to witness their 
proceedings. 

Commencing at a height of twelve or fourteen inches from the 


16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ground, a distance easily reached while sitting upon the tail and 
haunches, the tree is gouged around in a complete circle, equally on 
all sides, but gradually growing deeper and deeper with each circuit, 
forming, as it were, two cones whose points meet at a common center. 
When the space chipped out proves too narrow to admit the head, the 
teeth are applied above and below, as the woodman plies his axe, 
until the desired result is obtained. Steadily and faithfully he labors, 
rarely resting, and then but to take a refreshing bath in the nearest 
pool. At the last he frequently pauses, and, erecting himself upon his 
hind-legs, feels the trunk with his paws, as if to determine which way 
it shall fall, or whether it shows any signs of yielding ; finally, when 
perhaps but an inch or two of the heart remain uncut, he gnaws vigor- 
ously upon the side toward which he desires it to fall, and, as the warn- 
ing crack is heard, whips himself with great celerity and adroitness to 
the opposite side to avoid being crushed in its descent. Next the 
trunk is divided into lengths, and dragged by aid of teeth, paws, and 
chin to the water, where it is floated to the dam or storehouse. When 
large trees are chosen, they almost invariably stand upon the margin 
of the water, into which they are made to fall; but small growths are 
frequently sought at considerable distances, and regular paths or “run- 
ways” are beaten in the tall grass and ferns where such have been 
transported. ‘The number of trees felled by one small colony is sur- 
prising, and the regularity of the stumps left might lead one unac- 
quainted with the cause to believe them the result of human industry. 

When the beaver selects a home on the bank of lake, pond, or 
stream whose waters are both deep and abundant, dams are rendered 
unnecessary, and even houses are not always constructed, but instead 
dwellings are hollowed out from the banks. But on shallow, narrow 
waters, dams are indispensable in order to secure sufficient depth to 
allow of concealment and free movement beneath the surface, as well 
as to prevent obstruction by ice : the entrance to the dwelling or store- 
house is always beneath the water, which acts not only as a doorway, 
but as a safeguard from predatory enemies. 

In the building of a dam considerable engineering qualities are de- 
veloped. It is seldom seen as a mere straight embankment, but goes 
winding across the stream in graceful curves, bending hither and 
thither to present its convexity toward the swifter flowing current or 
deeper waters, taking advantage at the same time of all natural in- 
equalities, now a rock, here an islet, and there a hillock. Trunks of 
trees are carefully intermingled with clods of earth, stones, and twigs, 
and every crevice is carefully stopped with mud or clay for greater se- 
curity ; and, when all is finished, the whole presents a structure of al- 
most incredible solidity and compactness, frequently increased by the 
roots of willow and larch which spring up with all the regularity of 
a hedge. In the neighborhood of Washington Mine, Lake Superior, 
may be seen a dam with a total length of fifteen hundred and thirty 


THE BEAVER AND HIS WORKS. 17 


feet, but the two ends, more than two thirds of the whole, are but 
natural embankments artfully rendered subservient to the purpose of 
the beaver by filling in between. 


Fie. 2.—BEAVER DAM. 


It is these dams that produce those fine tracts of wild grass known 
as beaver-meadows, upon which cattle and deer so love to feed, and 
which so frequently furnish the pioneer with the means of subsistence 
for his stock until he can prepare meadows of his own. Wherever a 
brook trickled through a wooded valley, there the beaver made his 
home. Large areas became inundated, the drowned trees fell and de- 
cayed, and the freshets brought down new soil from the surrounding 
hills and ridges. At length the pond filled up and forced the beaver 
to migrate; the dam unrepaired gradually became shaky and the 
waters drained off, exposing a rich alluvial soil upon which sprang up 
waving fields of wild grass. In due time a second growth of timber 
appeared, and what was once a pond and valley became only a forest 
bordered by low ridges. In the suburbs of the city of Port Huron, 
Michigan, may be traced the remains of such 2 dam, of unknown age 
and stupendous length. Serpentine in windings, its face may be fol- 

VOL. xxv.— 2 


18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


lowed for more than twelve hundred yards ere it becomes indistinct ; 
and doubtless it was originally much longer, as its eastern end has 
been encroached upon by streets and dwellings. What its height may 
originally have been can be only a matter of conjecture, as time and 
the elements have combined to reduce it nearly to a level with the 
surrounding soil; and its top has given birth and nourishment to 
mighty trees, long since yielded up to the rapacity of the lumberman, 
many of whose stumps, half decayed, yet exhibit more than four hun- 
dred rings of annular growth. This, too, is but one of a series of five 
dams upon the same stream grouped in a space of little more than two 
miles. The Indians have no knowledge or tradition regarding it, 
though they frequently discovered “stone-wood ” (fossil-wood) bear- 
ing the marks of beaver-teeth, at the points where the streams forced 
the barrier. 

Of more recent beaver-dams, the writer has examined a few that 
may be held remarkable. Besides the one near Washington Mine, be- 
fore mentioned, one on the Ely Branch of the Jsh-ko-naw-ba (on the 
maps misspelled Hscanaba), in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, giv- 
ing origin to a pond, with an-area of nearly one hundred acres, known 
as “Grass Lake”; its length is two hundred and sixty feet. A third 
in the same peninsula, four hundred and eighty feet long, is on Carp 
River. But the largest is to be found on Sable River, in New Bruns- 
wick, and floods upward of one thousand acres of land at an average 
depth of two feet. Mr. Thompson, whose writings are deemed most 
authentic, speaking of a dam visited by him in New Brunswick, in 
1794, says : 

“My guide informed me we should have to pass over a long beaver- 
dam. I naturally expected to lead our horses carefully over, but on 
coming to it found a strip of apparently old and solid ground, covered 
with short grass, and wide enough for two horses to easily walk 
abreast. The lower side showed a descent of seven feet, and steep, 
with a rill of water beneath. The side of the dam next the pond was 
a gentle slope, and the pond itself a sheet of water a mile and a half 
square, surrounded by low, grassy banks. The trees about were mostly 
poplars and aspens, with numerous stumps, whose trunks had been cut 
down and carried away by the beavers.” In two places in this pond 
were observed clusters of houses “like miniature villages.” 

One is usually disappointed with the first view of a beaver’s house. 
Instead of the symmetrical, round, plastered dome we are led to expect 
from most popular accounts, there is seen instead an irregular pile of 
sticks, mingled with rushes, grass, and stones, broad at the base as 
compared with the height, and of the same general order of architect- 
ure as the dam. ois fac devoid of system, it resembles nothing 
so much as a gigantic crow’s nest turned upside down by the border 
of a pond or stream. And yet, though they are not plastered smooth- 
ly, and the interior exhibits but rough walls merely evened by cutting 


THE BEAVER AND HIS WORKS. 19 


close the twigs that project through in building (the whole affair ap- 
parently conceived and put together in a helter-skelter fashion), they 
are very compact, exhibiting both solidity and firmness, and are well 
adapted to warmth and protection. Each dwelling consists of but one 
apartment, and this opens by a short incline beneath the surface of 
the water into a channel dredged to sufficient depth to avoid being 
blocked by ice in winter. It is easy to determine whether a dwelling 
is in present occupation by the appearance of the trails over which the 
’ beaver drags his supplies from the wood ; by the freshly-peeled sticks 
the bark of which has served for food, and which are invariably 
heaped up upon the house itself; and in winter by the melting snow 
on the roof caused by the exhalations from the occupants. 

One dwelling harbors from four to twelve individuals, rarely more, 
though eighteen or twenty have been noted, all of the same family, 
but of two generations, representing litters of kittens of two successive 
years. The young make their appearance usually in May, and are from 
four to eight in number, five being the average. Queer-looking little 
fellows they are too, with their heavy heads, big cutting teeth, flat tails, 
and fine, mouse-like fur, not yet disfigured by the long, coarse hair so 
noticeable with adults. When taken at an early age they are easily 
domesticated, and are so esteemed as pets in the far West and fur 
countries that almost every trading-post or camp can exhibit three or 
four. It is no uncommon occurrence to see one running about an 
Indian lodge, submitting patiently to the wiles and caprices of the little 
savages, or joining in their sports, and frequently receiving with the 
papoose the nourishment from the maternal breast. The cry of the 
“kitten,” too, is so exactly like that of an unweaned child that one is 
readily mistaken for the other by even the initiated. On one occasion I 
visited a wigwam at Little Traverse, Michigan, for the purpose of view- 
ing a “real, live, baby beaver.” ‘ He cry all same as papoose,” remarked 
the squaw, as she brought the little fellow forward, at the same time 
giving him an unmerciful pinch that caused him to set up a doleful little 
wail that, had I not been forewarned, I should certainly have believed 
to proceed from a minute, black-eyed specimen of an aboriginal infant 
that, swathed in cloth, beads, and bark, and bound fast, mummy-like, 
to a board, stood leaned up against the wall. By-the-way, do Indian 
babies ever cry or laugh? I suppose they do, occasionally, though 
I do not remember ever hearing one. I think it is Mr. Lewis Mor- 
gan, in his excellent work on “The American Beaver,” that tells of a 
trapper on the upper Yellowstone who, while making his rounds, heard, 
as he supposed, the wail of an infant. Fearing the vicinity of hos- 
tiles, he approached with great caution, only to find that the cry pro- 
ceeded from two beaver kittens sitting upon a low bank by the stream, 
and mourning for the nourishment only a mother could give ; while 
she, poor thing, was fast in the merciless jaws of his trap. 

When the youngsters have completed their second year, they are 


20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


unceremoniously turned adrift by the parents to shift for themselves. 
If possible, they locate farther up the stream, but, if this is imprac- 
ticable, select the nearest situation possessing the necessary require- 
ments. It sometimes happens that there are so many dams on the 
same stream that the back-water from one sets into the next, and that 
in turn into the one preceding, and so on through the series. It is 
usually the case that a large colony in any one locality is derived 
from a single pair of beavers. 

Occasionally solitary or “lone beavers” are met with by trappers ; 
animals that do not erect dams or houses, but reside in holes and clefts 
in the banks which they have excavated, or which are the product of 
nature or of some of the burrowing tribes, as the otter. The cause of 
their abandoning the society of their kind is unknown. It may be an 
excess of that melancholic temperament that is assigned to the spe- 
cies ; possibly, the hermit is the sole representative of an extirpated 
colony ; perhaps a bachelor unfortunate in being unable to procure 
a helpmate ; the Indian tribes represent them as pariahs or outcasts, 
doomed by their kind to solitude on account of shiftlessness or idleness, 
Certain it is, they are seldom in good condition, and their very mode 
of living precludes industry. 

The trapping of beaver may be considered as an art in itself, as it 
demands no small expenditure of patience and perseverance to acquire 
the experience necessary to make it a lucrative calling. Once on the 
ground selected as the scene of his labors, the trapper follows the creeks 
and streams, keeping a sharp lookout for “ sign.” Every prostrate tree 
is examined to see if it be the work of the beaver; tracks are sought 
for in the mud and sand ; and trails through grass and ferns submitted 
to careful inspection. The lay of the land having been thoroughly 
studied, and the presence, movements, haunts, and habits of the ani- 
mal determined, traps are set at frequent intervals in those localities 
most likely to produce satisfactory results, and duly baited with “ medi- 
cine.” ‘They are placed both on land and in the water ; in the run- 
ways, at the landing-places, about the dwellings, and before the store- 
houses, and are visited daily. On land the old-fashioned “ dead-fall” 
has the preference, as it breaks the animal’s back without damaging 
the skin, while the steel trap in such locality only too frequently re- 
sults in the escape of the quarry, though at the expense of some one 
of its members ; for the beaver does not hesitate to exercise its sharp 
teeth in the performance of amputation in order to secure safety. 
That judgment is demanded in preparing a dead-fall is evident from 
the fact that it must be adjusted with such nicety that no animal 
larger than a beaver can pass beneath it, and yet be incapable of being 
disengaged by anything smaller, such as a mink or musk-rat ; the drop- 
log, too, must be of dried peeled wood, lest it be pulled down by the 
very animals it is intended to capture, and carried off to their store- 
house. The “medicine” used as bait, sometimes denominated “ bark- 


THE BEAVER AND HIS WORKS. 21 


stone,” is the product of a gland of the beaver, of peculiar, disagree- 
able odor and bitter taste, known in medicine as castoreum, which 
has earned for itself considerable reputation as an antispasmodic and 
nervine, though-of late years it has largely been superseded by reme- 
dies of more agreeable flavor ; for some reason it proves very attrac- 
tive to beaver, alluring alike both old and young of both sexes. A 
bit of peeled apple, or the bulb of the water-lily, is also used as 
“medicine,” but is not considered as “ taking.” 

: Where the water is constantly ebbing and flowing, steel traps are 
frequently of little value, though under ordinary circumstances to be 
preferred. A trap requires some six inches of water over it, with still 
deeper water beyond, for the moment the beaver feels its jaws, which 
invariably grasp a foot or toe, he turns a somersault into the deeper 
pool in the vain hope to shake it off, and there drowns. But, should 
the water be deeper, he swims over the trap unharmed; if lower, he 
releases himself by amputation; and a beaver who once tastes the 
perils of a trap is not only ever careful of assuming a second risk of 
the kind, but seems to possess the faculty of warning his companions. 
When a trap is set before the dwelling, the channel leading to the 
door is found by sounding, and it is placed therein, guarded on each 
side by two stakes that preclude passing except by the dangerous path. 
It is placed a little nearer one stake, in order that any attempt to cut 
it will insure a fore-foot touching the pan; if the other stake is at- 
tacked, then a hind-foot is caught. 

Sometimes, especially in winter, stakes are driven through the ice 
so as effectually to block up the entrance to the house, whose roof is 
then broken open, and the inmates dispatched. Again, the dam is cut 
in numerous places and traps are set in the openings, that the beaver 
may be caught while attempting to repair the breaches. But neither 
of these processes is in vogue with the true trapper, unless the colony 
be a very small one, as the animals are likely to have burrows in the 
banks that serve as store-houses into which they retire at the first 
alarm ; and the loss of two or three of their number while repairing 
the dam will render the survivors extremely cautious and wary, per- 
haps cause them to migrate in a body. 

The quickness with which a colony discovers a wholesale attempt 
against their peace is astonishing ; yet if their numbers are undis- 
turbed, or diminished but gradually, even the presence of civilization 
will not drive them from their haunts. To-day beaver are returning 
to streams in Michigan, long ago abandoned by their race, simply be- 
cause they find themselves unmolested, the demand for beaver-peltry 
being slight, and the prices paid out of all proportion to the labor 
entailed in trapping. It has been said that, if a dam or house be once 
- injured by the hand of man, the colony at once disappears. But 
that this is fallacious is proved by the following: Twenty-two miles 
from Marquette, Michigan, on the Carp River, a beaver colony began 


22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the erection of anew dam. ‘Though the embankment of a railway ran 
nearly parallel with the stream, and trains passed backward and for- 
ward daily, they seemed in no way disturbed, and worked steadily on 
until the water had risen a foot or more. The track-master, observing 
that this endangered the line—for the embankment had been utilized 
as a wing of the dam—ordered the water drawn off. But the follow- 
ing day the beavers had repaired the damage done them, and the water 
was at its former height. Again and again and again was the dam 
cut through, and as often would it be repaired. All in all, it was cut 
and repaired some fifteen or twenty times ere the beavers were sufli- 
ciently discouraged to abandon their attempts. 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES IN THE 
LAST HALF-CENTURY.* 


By ROBERT GIFFEN, LL. D., 
PRESIDENT OF THE STATISTICAL SOCIETY. 


E are carried back on this occasion very naturally to the origin 

of the society, by an impending event which now casts its 
shadow before—our approaching jubilee, which we may hope will be 
worthily celebrated. On such an occasion, I believe the subject on 
which I propose to address you to-night will be not unsuitable—a 
review of the official statistics bearing on the progress of the working- 
classes—the masses of the nation—in the last half-century. If you 
go back to the early records of the society, you will find that one of 
the leading objects of its founders was to obtain means by which to 
study the very question I have selected. Happily we have still with 
us one or two honored members associated with the early history of 
the society—I may mention Dr. Guy and Sir Rawson Rawson—who 
will bear me out in what I have'stated. I may remind you, moreover, 
that one of the founders of the society was Mr. Porter, of the Board 
of Trade, whose special study for years was much the same, as his 
well-known book, “The Progress of the Nation,” bears witness ; and 
that in one of the earliest publications of the society, a volume pre- 
ceding the regular issue of the “ Journal,” he has left a most interest- 
ing account of what he hoped might be effected by means of statistics 
in studying the subject I have put before you, or the more general 
subject of the “ Progress of the Nation.” In asking you, therefore, 
to look for a little at what statistics tell us of the progress of the great 
masses of the nation, I feel that I am selecting a subject which is con- 
* Inaugural address before the London Statistical Society, read November 20, 1883. 


Mr. Gladstone writes to Mr. Giffen December 28, 1883: “I have read with great pleasure 
your masterly paper. It is probably, in form and in substance, the best reply to George.” 


c 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 23 


nected with the special history of the society. That it happens for 
the moment to be attracting a considerable amount of popular atten- 
tion in connection with sensational politics and sociology, with agita- 
tions for land nationalization and collectivism among pretended repre- 
sentatives of the working-classes, is an additional reason for our not 
neglecting this question ; but it is a question to which the society has a 
primary claim, and which the authors of the agitations I have referred 
to would have done well to study from the statistical point of view. 


There are two or three ways in which statistics may throw light 
on such a question as I have put forward. The first and most direct 
is to see what records there are of the money earnings of the masses 
now and fifty years ago, ascertain whether they have increased or 
diminished, and then compare them with the rise or fall in the prices 
of the chief articles which the masses consume. Even such records 
would not give a complete answer. It is conceivable, for instance, 
that, while earning more money, and being able to spend it to more 
advantage, the working-classes might be no better off than formerly. 
There may be masses, as there are individuals, who do not know how 
to spend. The question of means, however, will carry us some dis- 
tance on the road to our object. We shall know that the masses must 
be better off, unless they have deteriorated in the art of spending, a 
subject of separate inquiry. 

In investigating such records, however, we have to recognize that 
the ideal mode of answering the question is not yet possible. That 
mode would be to draw up an account of the aggregate annual earn- 
ings of the working-classes for a period about fifty years ago, and a 
similar account of the aggregate annual earnings of the same classes 
at the present time, and then compare the average per head and per 
family at the different dates. Having thus ascertained the increase or 
diminution in the amount per head at the different dates, it would be 
comparatively easy, though not in itself quite so easy a matter as it 
seems, to ascertain how much less or how much more the increased or 
diminished sum would buy of the chief articles of the workman’s con- 
sumption. But no such account that I know of has been drawn up, 
except for a date about fifteen or sixteen years ago, when Mr. Dudley 
Baxter and Professor Leone Levi both drew up statements of enor- 
mous value as to aggregate earnings, statements which it would now 
be most desirable to compare with similar statements for the present 
time, if we could have them, and which will be simply invaluable to 
future generations. In the absence of such statements, all that can 
be done is to compare what appear to be the average wages of large 
groups of the working-classes. If it is found that the changes in the 
money wages of such groups are in the same direction, or almost all in 
the same direction, then there would be sufficient reason for believing 
that similar changes had occurred throughout the entire mass. It 


24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


would be in the highest degree improbable that precisely those changes 
which could not be traced were in the opposite direction. The diffi- 
culty in the way is that, in a period of fifty years in a country like 
England, the character of the work itself changes. ‘The people who 
have the same names at different times are not necessarily doing the 
same work. Some forms of work pass wholly away, and wholly new 
forms come into existence. Making all allowances, however, and 
selecting the best comparative cases possible, some useful conclusion 
seems obtainable. 

What I propose to do first and mainly, as regards this point, is to 
make use of an independent official record which we have to thank 
Mr. Porter for commencing. I mean the record of wages, which has 
been maintained for many years in the “ Miscellaneous Statistics of 
the United Kingdom,” and which was previously commenced and 
carried on in the volumes of “ Revenue and Population Tables” which 
Mr. Porter introduced at the Board of Trade about fifty years ago. 
It is curious on looking back through these volumes to find how diffi- 
cult it is to get a continuous record. The wages in one volume are 
for certain districts and trades ; in a subsequent volume, for different 
districts and trades ; the descriptive classifications of the workers are 
also constantly changing. Picking my way through the figures, how- 
ever, I have to submit the following particulars of changes in money 
wages between a period forty to fifty years ago—it is not possible to 
get the same year in all cases to start from—and a period about two 
years ago, which may be taken as the present time. This comparison 
leaves out of account the length of hours of work, which is a material 
point I shall notice presently. 


Comparison of Wages Fifty Years ago and at Present Time. 


[From ‘‘ Miscellaneous Statistics of the United Kingdom,’’ and Porter’s ‘‘ Progress of the 


Nation.’’] 
Wages fifty | Wages pres- Increase 
OCCUPATION. Place. years ago, ent time, or decrease, 
per week. | per week. amount per cent. 
. s. d. 8. 

OMPDONGOIE. tds eae Manchester....| 24 00 34 00 10 00 (+) 42 
MUNae ss kas sale « Glasgow......./ 14 00 26 00 12 00(+) 85 
PICMAAOTS. sas kag wes Manchester*...; 24 00 36 00 12 00(+) 50 
nye re ie Spay yA Glasgow. ...... 15 00 27 00 12 00(+) 8 
Err eee Manchester *...| 24 00 29 10 5 10(+) 24 
Bee ea ces woe wise vale Glasgow....... 14 00 23 8 9 8(+) 69 
LT ae eae eee seep Staffordshire...| 2 8+ 4 00+ 1 4(-+) 50 
Pattern-weavers....... 2... Huddersfield...| 16 00 25 00 9 00(+) 55 
Wool-scourers............ a seet 3700 22 00 5 00(+) 30 
Mule-spinners ............ s i oS 30 00 4 6(+) 20 
TOMES oa axa ed ce MS eS - .-s| 12 00 26 V0 14 00 (+) 115 
Warpers and beamers...... . eeegooke: OO 27 00 10 00(+) 58 
Winders and reelers....... 5 wat 6 00 11 00 5 00(+) 88 
Weavers (men)........... Bradford...... 8 3 20 6 12 3(+) 150 
Reeling and warping...... Oe where | 9 15 6 7 9(+) 100 
Spinning (children)........ oa ae 4 5 1l 6 7 1(+) 160 


* 1825. + Wages per day. 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 25 


Thus, in all cases where I have found it possible from the apparent 
similarity of the work to make a comparison, there is an enormous 
apparent rise in money wages, ranging from 20, and in most cases 
from 50-to 100 per cent, and in one or two instances more than 100 
per cent.* This understates, I believe, the real extent of the change. 
Thus, builders’ wages are given at the earlier date as so much weekly, 
whereas in the later returns a distinction is made between summer and 
winter wages, the hours of labor being less in winter, and as the wages 
are so much per hour, the week’s wages being also less, so that it has 
been possible to strike a mean for the later period, while it does not 
appear that anything more is meant at the early period than the usual 
weekly wage, which would be the summer wage. Without making this 
point, however, it is obvious that in all cases there is a very great rise. 

Before passing from this point, there is another and continuous 
official record I would refer to. Unfortunately, it does not go back 
for much more than thirty years. Still, as far as it goes, the evidence 
is in the same direction. I refer to the return of merchant-seamen’s 
wages annually issued by the Board of Trade, in what is known as 
the “ Progress of Merchant Shipping Return.” From this return may 
be derived the following comparison of seamen’s wages : 


Comparison of Seamen’s Money Wages per Month at 1850 and the 
Present Time. 
[From the ‘* Progress of Merchant Shipping Return.’’] 


1850, Present time, ‘ Tncrease. 
sailing. steam. Amount. Per cent. 
s.  d. St sd. 
SEE ae 45 00 75 00 30 00 66 
NM oS ig oss 285% 45 00 70 00 25 00 55 
Liverpool 7 ey eae 50 00 67.4 16 6 33 
SE ee 50 00 85 Ov 35 00 70 
ag, ee eae 45 00 60 00 15 00 33 
Pe Rid aa ead 40 00 50 00 10 00 25 
Le eS 42 6 60 00 17 6 40 
pe C4) Sa ee 45 00 75 00 30 00 66 
Me Moors case tetel 2 00 "7 6 27 «6 55 
Kae CIS 45 00 65 00 20 00 45 
i MER Pek saw veeer. BO OO 70. 00 25 00 55 
Mi Ac ieadhas 40. 00 67 6 27 6 69 
eA WO eiia aks. sob awed 40 00 67 6 27 «6 69 


Here, again, there is an enormous rise in money wages. This 
return is specially subject to the observation that money wages are 
only part of the wages of seamen, but I assume it is not open to dis- 
pute that, with the improvement in our shipping, there has been an 
improvement in the food and lodging of the esllor quite equal to the 
improvement in his money age: 

This question of seamen’s wages, however, ea illustrates the diffi- 
culty of the whole subject. Ships are not now navigated by able sea- 


* The mean of the percentages of increase is over 70, 


26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


men so much as by engineers and stokers. It would seem that, as a 
class, the new men all round are paid better than the able seamen, but 
I should not press this point ; it might well be the case that steam- 
ships as a whole could be worked by an inferior class of laborers as 
compared with sailing-ships, and yet the fact that inferior labor is 
sufficient for this special trade would be quite consistent with the fact 
that the whole conditions of modern labor require more skill than the 
conditions fifty years ago, so that there is more labor relatively at the 
higher rates than used to be the case. 

_ The comparison, except for seamen’s wages, where it has only been 
possible to go back for about thirty years, is made between a period 
about fifty years ago and the present time only. It would have com- 
plicated the figures too much to introduce intermediate dates. I may 
state, however, that I have not been inattentive to this point, and 
that, if we had commenced about twenty to twenty-five years ago, we 
should also have been able to show a very great improvement since 
that time, while at that date also, as compared with an earlier period, a 
great improvement would have been apparent. A careful and exhaustive 
investigation of the records of wages I have referred to, in comparison 
with the numbers employed in different occupations, as shown by the 
census reports, would in fact repay the student who has time to make 
it; and I trust the investigation will yet be made. 

The records do not include anything relating to the agricultural 
laborer, but from independent sources—I would refer especially to the 
reports of the recent Royal Agricultural Commission—we may per- 
ceive how universal the rise in the wages of agricultural laborers has 
been, and how universal at any rate is the complaint that more money 
is paid for less work. Sir James Caird, in his ‘“ Landed Interest” 
(page 65), puts the rise at 60 per cent as compared with the period 
just before the repeal of the corn-laws, and there is much other evi- 
dence to the same effect. The rise in the remuneration of labor in 
Ireland in the last forty years is also one of the facts which has been 
conspicuously brought before the public of late. In no other way is 
it possible to account for the stationariness of rents in Ireland for a 
long period, notwithstanding the great rise in the prices of the cattle 
and dairy products which Ireland produces, and which, it has been 
contended, would have justified a rise of rents. The farmer and the 
laborer together have in fact had all the benefit of the rise in agricult- 
ural prices. - 7 

The next point to which attention must be drawn is the shortening 
of the hours of labor which has taken place. While the money wages 
have increased as we have seen, the hours of labor have diminished. 
It is difficult to estimate what the extent of this diminution has been, 
but, collecting one or two scattered notices, I should be inclined to 
say very nearly 20 per cent. There has been at least this reduction 
in the textile, engineering, and house-building trades. The workman 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 27 


gets from 50 to 100 per cent more money for 20 per cent less work ; 
in round figures, he has gained from 70 to 120 per cent in fifty years 
in money return. It is just possible of course that the workman may 
do as much or nearly as much in the shorter period as he did in his 
longer hours. Still, there is the positive gain in his being less time at 
his task, which many of the classes still tugging lengthily day by day 
at the oar would appreciate. The workman may have been wise or 
» unwise in setting much store by shorter hours in bettering himself, 
but the shortening of the hours of labor is undoubtedly to be counted 
to the good as well as the larger money return he obtains. 


We come then to the question of what the changes have been in 
the prices of the chief articles of the workman’s consumption. It is 
important, to begin with, that, as regards prices of commodities gen- 
erally, there seems to be little doubt things are much the same as 
they were forty or fifty years ago. This is the general effect of the 
inquiries which have been made first as to the depreciation of gold 
consequent on the Australian and Californian gold discoveries, and 
next as to the appreciation of gold which has taken place within the 
last twenty years consequent on the new demands for gold which have 
arisen, and the falling off in the supply as compared with the period 
' between 1850 and 1860. It would burden us too much to go into 
these inquiries on an occasion like the present, and therefore I only 
take the broad result. This is that, while there was a moderate rise 
of prices all round between the years 1847-50, just before the new 
gold came on the market, and the year 1862, when Mr. Jevons pub- 
lished his celebrated essay, a rise not exceeding about 20 per cent, yet 
within the last twenty years this rise has disappeared, and prices are 
back to the level, or nearly to the level, of 1847~50. The conclusion 
is that, taking things in the mass, the sovereign goes as far as it did 
forty or fifty years ago, while there are many new things in existence 
at a low price which could not then have been bought at all. If in 
the interval the average money earnings of the working-classes have 
risen between 50 and 100 per cent, there must have been an enormous 
change for the better.in the means of the working-man, unless by 
some wonderful accident it has happened that his special articles have 
changed in a different way from the general run of prices. 

But looking to special articles, we find that on balance prices are 
lower and not higher. Take wheat. It is notorious that wheat, the 
staff of life, has been lower on the average of late years than it was 
before the free-trade era. Even our fair-trade friends, who find it so 
difficult to see very plain things, were forced to allow, in that wonder- 
ful manifesto which was published in the “Times” some weeks back, 
that wheat is about 5s. a quarter cheaper on the average than it was. 
The facts, however, deserve still more careful statement to enable us 
to realize the state of things fifty years ago and at the present time. 


28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. 


The fair-trade statement, if I remember rightly, showed an average 
fall of 5s. in the price of wheat, comparing the whole period since the 
repeal of the corn-laws with a long period before. This may have 
been right or wrong for the purpose in hand, but for our present pur- 
pose, which is to compare the present period with that of half a cen- 
tury ago, it is important to note that it is mainly within the last ten 
‘years the steadily low price of wheat has been established. Compar- 
ing the ten years before 1846 with the last ten years, what we find is 
that, while the average price of wheat in 1837-46 was 58s. 7d., it was 
48s. 9d. only in the last ten years—a reduction not of 5s. merely, but 
10s. The truth is, the repeal of the corn-laws was not followed by 
an tmmediate decline of wheat on the average. The failure of the 
potato-crop, the Crimean War, and the depreciation of gold, all con- 
tributed to maintain the price, notwithstanding free trade, down to 
1862. Since then steadily lower prices have ruled; and when we 
compare the present time with half a century ago, or any earlier part 
of the century, these facts should be remembered. 

There is a still more important consideration. Averages are very 
good for certain purposes, but we all know in this place that a good 
deal sometimes turns upon the composition of the average—upon 
whether it is made up of great extremes, or whether the individual 
elements depart very little from the average. This is specially an 
important matter in a question of the price of food. The average of 
a necessary of life over a long period of years may be moderate, but 
if in some years the actual price is double what it is in other years, 
the fact of the average will in no way save from starvation at certain 
periods the workman who may have a difficulty in making both ends 
meet in the best of times. What we find, then, is that, fifty years 
ago, the extremes were disastrous compared with what they are at the 
present time. In 1836 we find wheat touching 36s.; in 1838, 1839, 
1840, and 1841, we find it touching 78s. 4d., 81s. 6d., 72s. 10d., and 
76s. 1d.,; in all cases double the price of the. lowest year, and nearly 
double the “average” of the decade ; and in 1847: the price of 102s, 5d., 
or three times the price of the lowest: ‘period, is touched. If we go 
back earlier we find still more startling exttemes. We have such 
figures as 106s. 5d. in 1810; 126s. 6d. in: 1812 ; 109s. 9d. in 1813, and 
96s. 11d. in 1817 ; these ficares being not metely the extremes touched, 
but the actual averages for the whole year. No doubt in the early 
part of the century the over-issue of inconvertible paper accounts for 
part of the nominal prices, but it accounts for a very small part. 
What we have to consider, then, is, that fifty years ago the working- 
man with wages, on the average, about half, or not much more than 
half, what they are now, had at times to contend with a fluctuation in 
the price of bread which implied sheer starvation. Periodic starva- 
tion was, in fact, the condition of the masses of working-men through- 
out the kingdom fifty years ago, and the references to the subject in 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 29 


the economic literature of the time are most instructive. M. Quetelet, 
in his well-known great book, points to the obvious connection between 
the high price of bread following the bad harvest of 1816 and the 
excessive rate of mortality which followed. To this day you will find 
tables in the registrar-general’s returns which descend from a time 
when a distinct connection between these high prices of bread and 
excessive rates of mortality was traced. But within the last twenty 
years what do we find? Wheat has not been, on the average, for a 
whole year so high as 70s., the highest averages for any year being 
64s. 5d. in 1867, and 63s. 9d. in 1868; while the highest average of 
the last ten years alone is 58s. 8d. in 1873 ; that is only about 10s. 
above the average of the whole period. In the twenty years, more- 
over, the highest price touched at any period was just over 70s., viz., 
70s. 5d. in 1867, and 74s. Td. in 1868 ; while in the last ten years the 
figure of 70s. was not even touched, the nearest approach to it being 
68s. 9d. in 1877. Thus of late years there has been a steadily low 
price, which must have been an immense boon to the masses, and 
especially to the poorest. ‘The rise of money wages has been such, I 
believe, that working-men, for the most part, could have contended 
with extreme fluctuations in the price of bread better than they did 
fifty years ago. But they have not had the fluctuations to contend 
with. 

It would be useless to go through other articles with the same 
detail. Wheat had quite a special importance fifty years ago, and the 
fact that it no longer has the same importance—that we have ceased 
to think of it as people did fifty years ago—is itself significant. Still, 
taking one or two other articles, we find on the whole a decline : 


Prices of Various Articles about Fifty Years ago and at Present 


Time. 

1839-40. | Present time. 

a. al. Be 
ig ais so oo 55 48% -Ror-- ++ -Per cwt. 68 8* 21 OF 
Cotton cloth vine tg a hah $6 2-+-per yard C S40" heey 
Inferior beasts....... sth, -PeD 8 pounds ee 3% 
Second class....... . i ge tae Fe 3 «66 4 9% 
Tred ee: oA! ae / on 3 118 Ss 

oe a? went = fie % ; oa : S 

Second class. . ; : 
Ree ONE... save ceree eee eect "9 9 4 3} a8 


I should have liked a longer list of articles, but the difficulty of 
comparison is very serious. It may be stated broadly, however, that 
while sugar and such articles have declined largely in price, and while 


* Porter’s “ Progress of the Nation,” p. 548. In the paper as read to the society, I 
gave the price without the duty, but including the duty the price was what is now given 
here. The average price, with the duty of the ten years ending 1840, was 58s. 4d. 

+ Average price of raw sugar imported. 


30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHALY. 


clothing is also cheaper, the only article interesting the workman 
much which has increased in price is meat, the increase here being 
considerable. The “only,” it may be supposed, covers a great deal. 
The truth is, however, that meat fifty years ago was not an article of 
the workman’s diet as it has since become. He had little more concern 
with its price than with the price of diamonds. The kind of meat 
which was mainly accessible to the workman fifty years ago, viz., 
bacon, has not, it will be seen, increased sensibly in price. 

Only one question remains. Various commodities, it may be ad- 
mitted, have fallen in price, but house-rent, it is said, has gone up. 
We have heard a good deal lately of the high prices of rooms in the 
slums. When we take things in the mass, however, we find that, how- 
ever much some workmen may suffer, house-rent in the aggregate can 
not have gone up in a way to neutralize, to any serious extent, the 
great rise in the money wages of the workman. It appears that, in 
1834, when the house duty, which had existed up to that date, was 
abolished, the annual value of dwelling-houses charged to duty was 
£12,603,000, the duty being levied on all houses above £10 rental 
in Great Britain. In 1881-’82 the annual value of dwelling-houses 
charged to duty, the duty being levied on houses above £20 only, was 
£39,845,000, while the value of the houses between £10 and £20 was 
£17,040,000, making a total of £56,885,000, or between four and five 
times the total of fifty years ago. Population, however, in Great 
Britain has increased from about 16,500,000 in 1831 to nearly 30,000,- 
000 in 1881, or nearly 100 per cent. Allowing for this, the increase 
in value would be about £32,000,000 on a total of about £25,000,000, 
which may be considered the increased rent which householders above 
£10 have to pay—the increase being about 130 per cent. Assuming 
that houses under £10 have increased in proportion, it may be con- 
sidered that house-rents are now one and a half times more than they 
were fifty years ago. In other words, a workman who paid £3 a year 
fifty years ago, would now pay £7 10s. Even, however, if rent were 
a fourth part of the workman’s earnings fifty years ago, he would still 
be much better off at the present time than he was. His whole wages 
have doubled, while the prices of no part of his necessary consump- 
tion, except rent, as we have seen, have increased—on the contrary, 
they have rather diminished. Say, then, that the rent, which was a 
fourth part of his expenditure, has increased one and a half times, 
while his whole wage has doubled, the account, on a wage of 20s. 
fifty years ago, and 40s. now, would stand— 


Fifty years ago. Present time. 


8.58: ie 
PMNS ACAI dibs.» 9:4 dine’ p- son'k bilo deka a Gs MIA LAS CO 20 00 40 00 
OT UE iva a dh’ bona) OE ee oe 5 00 12. 38 


Balance for other purposes...............0020-- 15 00 YH 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 31 


—showing still an enormous improvement in the workman’s con- 
dition. 

It may be pointed out, however, that houses are undoubtedly of 
better value all-round than they were fifty years ago. More rent is 
paid because more capital is in the houses, and they are better houses. 
It appears, also, that fifty years ago there were far more exemptions 
than there are now, rural dwellings particularly being favored as 
regards exemption. The increase of rent for the same accommodation, 
there is consequently reason to believe, has not been nearly so great as 
these figures would appear to show. It has further to be considered 
that the whole annual value of the dwelling-houses under £10 even 
now is £17,885,000 only, the number of houses being 3,124,000. This 
must be a very small proportion of the aggregate earnings of those 
portions of the working-classes who live in houses under £10 rent, and 
even adding to it the value of all the houses up to £20, which would 
bring up the total to £34,925,000, the proportion would still be very 
small. On the 5,000,000 families at least of the working-classes in 
Great Britain, the sum would come to about £7 per family, which is 
not the main portion of an average working-man’s expenditure.* 

We return, then, to the conclusion that the increase of the money 
wages of the working-man in the last fifty years corresponds to a 
real gain. While his wages have advanced, most articles he consumes 
have rather diminished in price, the change in wheat being especially 
remarkable, and significant of a complete revolution in the condition 
of the masses. The increased price in the case of one or two articles— 
particularly meat and house-rent—is insufficient to neutralize the gen- 
eral advantages which the workman has gained. Meat formerly was 
avery small part of his consumption, and allowing to house-rent a 
much larger share of his expenditure than it actually bore, the increase 
in amount would still leave the workman out of his increased wage 
a larger margin than he had before for miscellaneous expenditure. 
There is reason to believe, also, that the houses are better, and that 
the increased house-rent is merely the higher price for a superior 
article which the workman can afford. 

It has to be added to all this, that, while the cost of government 
has been greatly diminished to the working-man, he gets more from 
the government expenditure than he formerly did. It would not do 
to count things twice over, and as the benefit to the working-man of 
diminished taxes has already been allowed for in the lower prices of 

* It may be convenient to note here that the figures as to dwelling-houses which 
I have made use of are those relating to the inhabited house duty. The figures as to 
houses in the income-tax returns include shops and factories as well as dwelling-houses, 
and are not available in a question of house-rent. I have also omitted the question of 
rates. The rates per pound, however, have not increased as compared with what they 
were formerly, and it would make no material difference if they were to be included. 


The workman’s payment for rates and rent together can not have increased more than is 
here stated for rent. 


32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


wheat and sugar, we need say nothing more on this head. But few 
people seem to be aware how, simultaneously with this reduction of 
the cost of government, there has been an increase of the expenditure 
of the government for miscellaneous civil purposes, of all of which 
the workman gets the benefit. It may be stated broadly that nearly 
£15,000,000 of the expenditure of the central government for educa- 
tion, for the post-office, for inspection of factories, and for the miscel- 
laneous purposes of civil government, is entirely new as compared with 
fifty years ago. So far as the expenditure is beneficial, the masses get 
something they did not get before at all. It is the same, even more 
markedly, with local government. In Great Britain, the annual out- 
lay is now about £60,000,000, as compared with £20,000,000 fifty 
years ago. This £20,000,000 was mainly for poor-relief and other old 
burdens. Now the poor-relief and other old burdens are much the 
same, but the total is swollen by a vast expenditure for sanitary, edu- 
cational, and similar purposes, of all of which the masses of the popu- 
lation get the benefit. Toa great deal of this expenditure we may 
attach the highest value. It does not give bread or clothing to the 
working-man, but it all helps to make life sweeter and better, and to 
open out careers even to the poorest. The value of the free library, 
for instance, in a large city, is simply incalculable. All this outlay 
the workman has now the benefit of, as he had not fifty years ago. 
To repeat the words I have already used, he pays less taxes, and he 
gets more—much more—from the government.* 

* With regard to this question of prices, I have been favored since the delivery of 
this address with the copy of a letter, dated June 11, 1881, addressed by Mr. Charles 
Ilawkins, of 27 Savile Row, to the editor of the ‘‘ Daily News,” on the cost per patient 
of the expenditure of St. George’s Hospital in 1830 and 1880. The facts stated confirm 
in an interesting way what. is here said- as to the cost of articles of the workman’s con- 
sumption fifty years ago and at the present time. Mr. Hawkins, who was at one time 
one of the treasurers of the hospital, and therefore speaks with authority, gives the fol- 
lowing table and notes: 


“ Although each patient costs now ls. 1d. less than in 1830, there have been great 
alterations in the different items of expenditure, viz. : 


Cost per Patient. 
1880. 1880. 

eae 8 ee 
PN is 50 5 Ck Ses < pe ees Ce ee 18 4 22° 2 
PeECe BNA NOUR. 5 oe Seca woabia ec ang ie cat BO 404 
Wine MiG ODI, 5 ca cov dee dan bwee b muastitc lk es 00 10 er 
WIRE ANON, issn os eek bic econ wwe Re hae oe Bos aR 
Pah bo vee aaie t ehine Ohh ee Ek a ee ee a 6 11 
WOM MMA PTOCETY oo. betes Eee eek Rie e ee 38 10 eee ° 4 
RMR Sa Cee ec ew Rae VRE eee ek ea 162.8 TR 
Cagis Gd WOOK. 66). sas cence es ae Cee Re ees 1.6 3 10 
RUMOR sy 6 Bice gavin on nee cree ie Se ee 2 10 4 19 
Instruments and surgical appliances................. 1 9 Sa 
Staff—officers, servants, nurses............-.ee-e00- 20 8 34.08 


“* Had wheat cost in 1880 what it did in 1830, £1,884 must have been spent in bread 
and flour instead of £738. The cost of port wine in 1830 was £72 per pipe; in 1880, 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 33 


As already anticipated, however, the conclusion thus arrived at 
only carries us part of the way. Assuming it to have been shown 
that the masses have more money than they had fifty years ago, and 
that the-prices of the chief articles they consume are cheaper rather 
than dearer, the question remains whether the condition of the masses 
has in fact been improved. ‘This can only be shown indirectly by 
statistics of different kinds, which justify conclusions as to the con- 
‘dition of the people to whom they apply. To such statistics I propose 
now to draw your attention for a moment. I need hardly say that 
any evidence they contain as to the condition of the people having 
actually improved corroborates what has been already said as to 
their having had the means of improvement in their hands. The 
evidence is cumulative, a point of material importance in all such 
inquiries. 

The first and the most important statistics on this head are those 
relating to the length of life among the masses of the nation. Do the 
people live longer than they did? Here I need not detain you. A 
very effective answer was supplied last session by Mr. Humphreys, in 
his able paper on “ ‘The Recent Decline in the English Death-Rate.” * 
Mr. Humphreys there showed conclusively that the decline in the 
death-rate in the last five years, 1876-80, as compared with the rates 
on which Dr. Farr’s English “ Life Table” was based—rates obtained 
in the years 1838-’54—amounted to from 28 to 32 per cent in males 
at each quinquenniad of the twenty years from five to twenty-five, 
and in females at each quinquenniad from five to thirty-five to between 
24 and 35 per cent ; and that the effect of this decline in the death- 
rate is to raise the mean duration of life among males from 39°9 to 
41°9 years, a gain of two years in the average duration of life, and 
among females from 41°9 to 45°3 years, a gain of nearly three and 
a half years in the average duration of life. Mr. Humphreys also 
showed that by far the larger proportion of the increased duration 
of human life in England is lived at useful ages, and not at the de- 
pendent ages of either childhood or old age. ‘This little statement is 
absolutely conclusive on the subject ; but we are apt to overlook how 
‘much the figures mean. No such change could take place without 
a great increase in the vitality of the people. Not only have fewer 
died, but the masses who have lived must have been healthier, and 


£45. In 1830 many of the patients provided themselves with tea and sugar. Under the 
head ‘ Drugs’ is included the cost of leeches; in 1846 14,800 leeches were used, at a cost 
of £143; in 1880 only 425, costing £1 16s. In 1833 another hospital, treating double 
the number of patients, used 48,900 leeches, but in 1880 only 250, 

“ These items show the great advantage of the reduction of price in some articles of 
diet, and the great extra expenditure now necessary for the treatment of hospital patients, 
depending on the greater call for additional ‘staff,’ more especially for nursing, and an 
altered mode of treatment of accidents and  coeaeenen, as also the greater amount of 
stimulants now exhibited, etc.” 

* See Statistical Society’s “ Journal,” vol. xlvi, p. 195, ete. 

VOL, xxv.—3 


34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


have suffered less from sickness than they did. Though no statistics 
are available on this point, we must assume that like causes produce 
like effects ; and if the weaker, who would otherwise have died, have 
been able to survive, the strong must also have been better than they 
would otherwise have been. From the nature of the figures, also, the 
improvement must have been among the masses, and not among a 
select class whose figures throw up the average. The figures to be 
affected relate to such large masses of population, that so great a 
change in the average could not have occurred if only a small per- 
centage of the population had improved in health. 

I should like, also, to point out that the improvement : in health 
actually recorded obviously relates to a transition stage. Many of 
the improvements in the condition of the working-classes have only 
taken place quite recently. They have not, therefore, affected all 
through their existence any but the youngest lives. When the im- 
provements have been in existence for a longer period, so that the 
lives of all who are living must have been affected from birth by the 
changed conditions, we may infer that even a greater gain in the 
mean duration of life will be shown. As it is, the gain is enormous. 
Whether it is due to better and more abundant food and clothing, to 
better sanitation, to better knowledge of medicine, or to these and 
other causes combined, the improvement has beyond all question taken 
place. : 
The next figures I shall refer to are those well-known ones relating 
to the consumption of the articles which the masses consume. I copy 
merely the figures in the “Statistical Abstract” for the years 1840 | 
and 1881 : 


Quantities of the Principal Imported and Excisable Articles retained 
Jor Home Consumption, per Head of the Total Population of the 
United Kingdom. 


1840. 1881. 
POOR BUG RAMS, 6 oc dain ioe hea mead onl pounds 0°01 13°93 
NEE ic aca ce eS ak ome Ree eae eT's 6s si 1:05 6°36 
Cheese... ... Na eecaele PS Sah p ud atiwe Dee beet 6's “a 0°92 5°77 
Cprrente and raising. cies cacka bares 0d ae ee a 1°45 4°34 
PEs Ss ee Wace. ghee Ma ek 6 ee aoa aes No. 3°63 21°65 
POON ee esc Pa eee ee ORR Oe UROL Sey pounds 0°01 12°85 
Rice. ...+.. EEE e mre CEP Tes EY eh PEO - 0°90 16°3: 
COCO Ss sccn bs OREGON ECO EERE ake 5 0:08 0°31 
OTE i es PERCE SS re ee ae * 1:08 0°89 
Corn, wheat, and wheat-flour.............08. = 42°47 216°92 
SeOW CULO 6. bo ake 6 Re dig Rane c i 15°20 58°92 
HABBO SURRY. oc, is eka pace pee an eee ees sy nil 8:44 
BOs sn bia vb Or oe Fs 0 Pee he ewe oe eae ae - 1°22 4°58 
BOUMOOO: 5, vad caso Such veek Sue os Sone pues - 0°86 1°41 
Mids LEI APN ee eae WE se er ey a gallons 0°25 0°45 
PN Ss Sd ing Wid hada Blea een ea . 0°97 1:08 
MAREE e's bs ei roel ees ios coir ae emheaw ken Maes bushels 1°59 1°91* 


* Year 1878. 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES, 35 


This wonderful table may speak for itself. It is an obvious criti- 
cism that many of the articles are also articles of home production, so 
that the increase does not_show the real increase of the consumption 
of the whole population per head. Assuming a stationary production 
at home, the increased consumption per head can not be so much as is 
here stated for the imported article only. ‘There are other articles, 
however, such as rice, tea, sugar, coffee, tobacco, spirits, wine, and 
malt, which are either wholly imported, or where we have the excis- 
able figures as well, and they all—with the one exception of ‘coffee— 
tell a clear tale. The increase in tea and sugar appears especially 
significant, the consumption per head now being four times in round 
figures what it was forty years ago. There could be no better evi- 
dence of diffused material well-being among the masses. The articles 
are not such that the increased consumption by the rich could have 
made much difference. It is the consumption emphatically of the 
mass which is here in question. 

As regards the articles imported, which are also articles of home 
production, it has, moreover, to be noted that in several of them, 
bacon and hams, cheese and butter, the increase is practically from 
nothing to a very respectable figure. The import of bacon and hams 
alone is itself nearly equal to the estimated consumption among the 
working-classes fifty years ago, who consumed no other meat. 

The only other figures I shall mention are those relating to edu- 
cation, pauperism, crime, and savings-banks. But I need not detain 
you here. The figures are so well known that I must almost apologize 
for repeating them. I only insert them to round off the statement. 

As to education, we have practically only figures going back thirty 
years. In 1851, in England, the children in average attendance at 
schools aided by parliamentary grants numbered 239,000, and in Scot- 
land 32,000; in 1881 the figures were 2,863,000 and 410,000. If any- 
thing is to be allowed at all in favor of parliamentary grants as raising 
the character of education, such a change of numbers is most signifi- 
cant. The children of the masses are, in fact, now obtaining a good 
education all round, while fifty years ago the masses had either no 
education at all or a comparatively poor one. Dropping statistics for 
the moment, I should like to give my own testimony to an observed 
fact of social life—that there is nothing so striking or so satisfactory 
to those who can carry their memories back nearly forty years, as to 
observe the superiority of the education of the masses at the present 
time to what it was then. I suppose the most advanced common 
education forty or fifty years ago was in Scotland, but the superiority 
of the common-school system there at the present day to what it was 
forty years ago is immense. If Scotland has gained so much, what 
must it have been in England where there was no national system 
fifty years ago at all? Thus at the present day not only do we get all 
children into schools, or nearly all, but the education for the increased 


36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


numbers is better than that which the fortunate few alone obtained 
before. : 

Next as to crime: the facts to note are that rather more than forty 
years ago, with a population little more than half what it is now, the 
number of criminal offenders committed for trial (1839) was 54,000 ; 
in England alone, 24,000. Now the corresponding figures are, United 
Kingdom, 22,000, and England, 15,000; fewer criminals by a great 
deal in a much larger population. Of course the figures are open to 
the observation that changes in legislation providing for the summary 
trial of offenses that formerly went to the assizes may have had some 
effect. But the figures show so great and gradual a change that there 
is ample margin for the results of legislative changes, without altering 
the inference that there is less serious crime now in the population 
than there was fifty years ago. Thus an improvement as regards 
crime corresponds to the better education and well-being of the masses. 

Next as regards pauperism : here, again, the figures are so imper- 
fect that we can not go back quite fifty years. It is matter of his- 
tory, however, that pauperism was nearly breaking down the country 
half a century ago. The expenditure on poor-relief early in the cent- 
ury and down to 1830-31 was nearly as great at times as it is now. 
With half the population in the country that there now is, the burden 
of the poor was the same. Since 1849, however, we have continuous 
figures, and from these we know that, with a constantly increasing 
population, there is an absolute decline in the amount of pauperism. 
The earliest and latest figures are : 


Paupers in Receipt of Relief in the under-mentioned Years at given 


Dates. 
1849. 1881. ee 
DUE ss 5F 54-00 bs os ohn Ries Ok es ee 934,000 803,000 
IIIS sh iuso Sigs os No 44 60 00s Soe eke FRO 122,000* 102,000 
jin Een oe Wer rer Tra ure a 620,000 109,000 
United anrdom. : 2 ves s csccetss0 esses 1,676,000 1,014,000 


Thus in each of the three divisions of the United Kingdom there 
is a material decline, and most of all in Ireland, the magnitude of the 
decline there being no doubt due to the fact that the figures are for a 
period just after the great famine. But how remote we seem to be 
from those days of famine! 

Last of all we come to the figures of savings-banks. <A fifty years’ 
comparison gives the following results for the whole kingdom : 


18381. 1881. 
Number of depositors. ......0.0,0cceceees 429,000 4,140,000 
Aencent of denosits: .:... 6. oss vv nce teens £15,719,000 £80,334,000 
Bi weet GODOBILOR: ss. oni <add eeee £32 £19 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 37. 


An increase of tenfold in the number of depositors, and of fivefold 
and more in the amount of deposits! It seems obvious from these 
figures that the habit-and means of saving have become widely dif- | 
fused in these fifty years. The change is, of course, in part due to a 
mere change in the facilities offered for obtaining deposits; but allow- 
ing ample margin for the effect of increased facilities, we have still 
before us evidence of more saving among the masses. 

There is yet one other set of statistics I should like to notice in 
this connection, those relating to the progress of industrial and provi- 
dent co-operative societies in England and Wales. These I extract 
from the special appendix to the “Co-operative Wholesale Society’s 
Annual Almanac and Diary” for the present year (pages 81 and 82). 
Unfortunately, the figures only go back to 1862, but the growth up 
to 1862 appears to have been very small. Now, however, most mate- 
rial advance is shown : 


1862. 1§81. 
Pemree Ol MOOMDOTS.. Fe. oe kes cee cess 90,000 525,000 
Celeb Share.. ooo. 65 code oo veo. £428,000 £5,881,000 
DM ha as Gs e cke able wave bs 55,000 1,267,000 
eo i Uk orks coker oss 2,333,000 20,901,000 
MPM Cee aas, 5 cS fave cas ek oo's 0 165,000 1,617,000 


Such figures are still small compared with what we should like 
to see them, but they at least indicate progress among the working- 
classes, and not retrogression or standing still. 

To conclude this part of the evidence, we find undoubtedly that in 
longer life, in increased consumption of the chief commodities they 
use, in better education, in greater freedom from crime and pauper- 
ism, and in increased savings, the masses of the people are better, im- 
mensely better, than they were fifty years ago, This is quite consist- 
ent with the fact, which we all lament, that there is a residuum still 
unimproved, but apparently a smaller residuum, both in proportion to 
the population and absolutely, than was the case fifty years ago; and 
with the fact that the improvement, measured even by a low ideal, is 
far too small. No one can contemplate the condition of the masses of 
the people without desiring something like a revolution for the better. 
Still, the fact of progress in the last fifty years—progress which is 
really enormous when a comparison is made with the former state of 
things—must be recognized. Discontent with the present must not 
make us forget that things have been so much worse. 


But the question is raised, Have the working-classes gained in pro- 
portion with others by the development of material wealth during the 
last fifty years? The question is not one which would naturally excite 
much interest among those who would answer the primary question as 
to whether the working-classes have gained or not, as I have done, in 


38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the affirmative. Where all are getting on, it does not seem very prac- 
tical in those who are getting on slowly to grudge the quicker advance 
of others. Usually those who put the question have some vague idea 
that the capitalist classes, as they are called, secure for themselves all 
the benefits of the modern advance in wealth ; the rich, it is said, are 
becoming richer, and the poor are becoming poorer. It will be con- 
venient, then, to examine the additional question specifically. If the 
answer agrees with what has already been advanced, then, as nobody 
doubts that material wealth has increased, all will be forced to admit 
that the working-classes have had a fair share. 

At first sight it would appear that the enormous figures of the in- 
crease of capital, which belong, it is assumed, to the capitalist classes, 
are inconsistent with the notion of the non-capitalist classes having 
had a fair share. In the paper which I read to the Society four years 
ago, on “The Recent Accumulations of Capital in the United King- 
dom,” the conclusion at which I arrived was that in the ten years 
(1865-75) there had been an increase of 40 per cent in the capital of 
the nation, and 27 per cent in the amount of capital per head, that is, 
allowing for the increase of population. Going back to 1843, which 
is as far as we can go back with the income-tax returns, we also find 
that since then the gross assessment, allowing for the income from Ire- 
land not then included in the returns, has increased from £280,000,000 
to £577,000,000, or more than 100 per cent, in less than fifty years. 
Assuming capital to have increased in proportion, it is not to be won- 
dered at that the impression of a group of people called the capitalist 
classes getting richer and richer while the mass remain poor or become 
poorer should be entertained. Allowing for the increase of popula- 
tion, the growth of capital and income-tax income are really much 
smaller than the growth of the money income of the working-classes, 
which we have found to be something like 50 to 100 per cent and 
more per head in fifty years, but the impression to the contrary un- 
_doubtedly exists, and is very natural. 

The error is partly in supposing that the capitalist classes remain 
the same in number. This is not the case; and I have two pieces of 
statistics to refer to which seem to show that the capitalist classes are 
far from stationary, and that they receive recruits from period to 
period—in other words, that wealth, in certain directions, is becoming 
more diffused, although it may not be diffusing itself as we should 
wish. 

The first evidence I refer to is that of the probate-duty returns. 
Through the kindness of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, I am 
able to put before you a statement of the number of probates granted 
in 1881, and of the amounts of property “proved,” with which we 
may compare similar figures published by Mr. Porter in his “‘ Progress 
of the Nation” for 1838. I am sorry to say Mr. Porter’s figures for 
1838 are far more detailed than those I am able to give; a more mi- 


j 


THE PROGRESS OF THH WORKING-CLASSES. 39 


nute comparison would be most instructive ; but I was unfortunately 
too late in applying to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for the 
details which I found they were most willing to give. However, the 
statement they supplied to me and the comparison which can thus be 
made seem most instructive. They are as follow: 


Statement of Number of Probates granted in 1882, with Amounts of 
' Property proved, and Average per Probate [ from Jigures supplied 
by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue|; and Comparison with 
a Similar Statement for 1838. 


[From Porter’s ‘‘ Progress of the Nation,’’ p. 600, et seg.] 


Number of A 
probates, Amount of property. sao 04 ahd 
1882. 1838. 1882. -1838, 182. 1838, 
England........... 45,555 | 21,900 | £118,120,961 | £47,604,755 | £2,600 | £2,170 
Scotland........... 5,221} 1,272] 18,695,814] 2,817,260] 2,600} 2,200 
| RT Sn Oe 4,588 | 2,196 8,544,579 | 4,465,240] 1,900| 2,000 
United Kingdom. .| 55,359 | 25,868 | £140,360,854 | £64,887,255 | £2,500 | £2,160 


Thus, in spite of the enormous increase of property passing at 
death, amounting to over 150 per cent, which is more than the in- 
crease in the income-tax income, the amount of property per estate 
has not sensibly increased. The increase of the number of estates is 
more than double, and greater therefore than the increase of popula- 
tion ; but the increase of capital per head of the capitalist classes is in 
Hngiand only 19 per cent, and in the United Kingdom only 15 per 
cent. Curiously enough, I may state, it is hardly correct to speak of 
the capitalist classes as holding this property, as the figures include a 
small percentage of insolvent estates ; but allowing all the property 
to belong to the capitalist classes, still we have the fact that those 
classes are themselves increasing. They may be only a minority of 
the nation, though I think a considerable minority, as 55,000 estates 
passing in a year represent from 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 persons as 
possessing property subject to probate duty; and these figures, it 
must be remembered, do not include real property at all. Still, small 
or large as the minority may be, the fact we have before us is that in 
the last fifty years it has been an increasing minority, and a minority 
increasing at a greater rate than the increase of general population. 
Wealth to a certain extent is more diffused than it was. 

If I had been able to obtain more details, it would have been pos- 
sible to specify the different sizes of estates and the different percent- 
ages of increase, from which it would not only have appeared whether 
the owners of personal property were increasing in number, but whether 
the very rich were adding to their wealth more than the moderately 
rich, or vice versa. But it is something to know at least that there 
are more owners. I trust the Commissioners of Inland Revenue will 


40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


see their way in their next report to give more details on this very 
interesting point. . 

Before passing on I should like to add a caution which may not 
be necessary in this room, but which may be needed outside. All — 
such figures must be taken with a good deal of qualification, owing 
to variations of detail in the method of levying the duty at different 
times, variations in the character of the administration, and the like 
causes. I notice, for instance, an unusually remarkable increase both 
in the number of owners and amount of property passing in Scotland ; 
this last fact, I believe, having already given rise to the statement 
that there has been something unexampled in the increase of personal 
property in Scotland. The explanation appears to be, however, that 
the increase of property in Scotland is, to some extent, only apparent, 
being due partly, for instance, to the fact that by Scotch law mort- 
gages are real property, whereas in England they are personal prop- 
erty, so that it was necessary, in the course of administering the tax, 
to pass a special law enabling the Commissioners of Inland Revenue 
to bring Scotch mortgages into the category of personal property.t 
This is only one illustration of the caution with which such figures 
must be used. ‘Taking them in the lump, and not pressing compari- 
sons between the three divisions of the United Kingdom, or any other 
points of detail which might be dangerous, we appear to be safe in 
the main conclusion that the number of owners of personal property 
liable to probate duty has increased in the last fifty years more than 
the increase of population, and that on the average these owners 
are only about 15 per cent richer than they were, while the indi- 
vidual.income of the working-classes has increased syheaeg 50 to 100 
per cent. 

The next piece of statistics I have to refer to is the number of 
separate assessments in that part of Schedule D known as Part I, viz., 
trades and professions, which excludes public companies and their 
sources of income, where there is no reason to believe that the number 
of separate assessments corresponds in any way to the number of in- 
dividual incomes. Even in Part I there can be no exact correspond- 
ence, as partnerships make only one return, but in comparing distant 
periods it seems not unfair to assume that the increase or decrease of 
assessments would correspond to the increase or decrease of individual 
incomes. This must be the case, unless we assume that in the interval 
material differences were likely to arise from the changes in the num- 


* It appears that the increase in the number of probates for less than £1,000 is from 
18,490 to 41,278, or about 120 per cent, the average value per probate being much the 
same; while the increase of the number of probates for more than £1,000 is from 6,878 
to 12,629, or over 80 per cent, and the average value per probate has increased from 
£7,150 to £9,200. 

+ See “Special Report of Commissioners of Inland Revenue,” 1870, vol. i, p. 99. 
The law on this and other points was altered by 23 and 24 Vict., cap. lxxx. 


J 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 41 


ber of partnerships to which individuals belonged, or from partner- 
ships as a rule comprising a greater or less number of individuals. 
Using the figures with all these qualifications, we get the following 
comparison : 


Number of Fersons at Different Amounts of Income charged under 
Schedule D in 1843 and 1879-80 compared [in England |.* 


1843. 1879-80. 
£150 and under £200............... 39,366 130,101 
200 «“ WOU eae isk 28,870 88,445 
300 «“ SOO iar ite vcasies 13,429 39,896 
400 “ Th: ae RE ea Ong tite 6,781 16,501 
500 “ Wee 4,789 11,317 
600 s“ BOGUS be a ict. 2.672 6,894 
700 “ Oo SSE aS a Mirada 1,874 4,054 
800 «“ WO ee eet s ok 1,442 3,595 
900 “ TOO Oe oat 894 1,896 
1,000 “ OF FER: gM nae 4,228 10,352 
2,000 “ Be ky cae ccc: ¢ 1,235 3,131 
8,000 “ BOG Be: eC e: 526 1,430 
4,000 4“ COOK a a eens 339 758 
5,000 és PE oe el ges 493 1,439 
10,000 “ hia Lf pe eg ppae a cae ae 200 485 
Pee ORE BOMOIG sai ined ieee’ 8 68 
cece then scdateccuwsc 106,637 320,162 


Here the increase in all classes, from the lowest to the highest, is 
between two and three times, or rather more than three times, with 
the exception of the highest class of all, where the numbers, however, 
are quite inconsiderable. Again a proof, I think, of the greater dif- 
fusion of wealth so far as the assessment of income to income-tax 
under Schedule D may be taken as a sign of the person assessed hay- 
ing wealth of some kind, which I fear is not always the case. If the 
owners of this income, at least of the smaller incomes, are to be con- 
sidered as not among the capitalists, but among the working-classes— 
a very arguablé proposition—then the increase of the number of in- 
comes from £150 up to say £1,000 a year is a sign of the increased 
earnings of working-classes, which are not usually thought of by that 
name. The increase in this instance is out of all proportion to the 
increase of population. 

In giving these figures I have omitted the incomes under £150. 
There is quite a want of satisfactory data for any comparison, I think, 
except as regards incomes actually subject to assessment, and the data 
at the beginning of the period are specially incomplete. 

Whichever way we look at the figures, therefore, we have this re- 
sult, that while the increase of personal property per head of the capi- 
talist class, according to the probate returns, is comparatively small, 
being only about 15 per cent, yet there is an increase of the number 


* The figures for 18438 can not be given for either Scotland or Ireland. 


42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of people receiving good incomes from trades and professions out of 
all proportion to the increase of population. We can not but infer 
from this that the number of the moderately rich is increasing, and 
that there is little foundation for the assertion that the rich are be- 
coming richer. All the facts agree. The working-classes have had 
large additions to their means; capital has increased in about equal 
ratio ; but the increase of capital per head of the capitalist classes is 
by no means so great as the increase of working-class incomes. 

I should wish further to point out, however, that it is a mistake to 
speak of the income in the various schedules to the income-tax as the 
income of a few, or exclusively of classes which can be called capital- 
ist, or rich, A suspicion of this has already been raised by the facts 
as to trades and professions. Let me just mention this one little fact 
in addition. Out of £190,000,000 assessed under Schedule A in 1881- 

’82, the sum of £11,359,000 was exempted from duty as being the in- 
come of people whose whole income from all sources was under £150 
a year. If we could get at the facts as to how the shares of public 
companies are held, and as to the immense variety of interests in lands 
and houses, we should have ample confirmation of what has already 
appeared from tbe probate-duty figures, that there is a huge minority 
interested in property in the United Kingdom, great numbers of whom 
would not be spoken of as the capitalist classes. 

To test the question as to whether there has been any dispropor- 
tionate increase of capital, and of the income from it, in yet another 
way, I have endeavored to make an analysis of the income-tax returns 
themselves, distinguishing in them what appears to be the income of 
idle capital from income which is derived not so much from the capi- 
tal itself as from the labor bestowed in using the capital. Only the 
roughest estimate can be made, and the data, when we go back to 
1843, are even more incomplete than they are now; but I have en- 
deavored as far as possible to give everything to capital that ought 
to be given, and not to err on the side of assigning it too small a share. 
The whole of Schedule A is thus assigned to capital, although it is 
well known that not even in Schedule A is the income obtained with- 
out exertion and care and some risk of loss, which are entitled to re- 
muneration. In Schedule D also I have allowed that all the income 
from public companies and foreign investments is from idle capital, 
although here the vigilance necessary and the risks attendant on the 
business are really most serious, and part of the so-called profit is not 
really interest on idle capital at all, but strictly the remuneration of 
labor. I have also rather exaggerated than depreciated the estimate 
for capital employed in trades and professions, my estimate being 
rather more than that of Mr. Dudley Baxter in his famous paper on 
the “ National Income.” With these explanations I submit the follow- 
ing estimate of the share of capital in the income-tax income at differ- 
ent dates : 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 43 


Analysis of the Income-Tax Returns for the under-mentioned Years, 
showing the Estimated Income from Capital on the one side, and 
the Estimated Income from Wages of Superintendence and Sala- 
ries-on the other side. ) 

[In millions of pounds.] 


1881. 1862. 1843, 
From ; From From 
F “ F : 
capital, | “Maries, | capital. | swlmles | capral, | sslarie, 
Schedule A— 
Lands, tithes, etc., exclu- 
sive of houses....... 70 nil 60 nil 57 nil 
Messuages, etc......... 117 nil 62 nil 41 nil 
Schedule B— 
Occupation of land..... 25* 44 224 884 20 36 
Schedule C—........... 40 nil 29 nil 29 nil 
“ PD (Part I)...... 64+ | 1004 32 49 294 46} 
PA ES MD che Xe 91 nil 47 nil 12 nil 
wy A ES CR ae nil 33 nil 20 nil 11 
407 177 2524 1074 1884 934 


Nore.—In the estimate for 1843, the figures assigned to Schedule A are only those of 
lands and tithes and houses to correspond with the existing Schedule A; and the figures 
of Schedule D include mines, quarries, railways, etc., now in Schedule D. An estimate is 
also made of the totals for Ireland, based on the returns of 1854, the total gross income 
under all the schedules thus estimated being about £30,000,000. 


This estimate may be summarized as follows : 


Summary of Analysis of Income-Tax Income in under-mentioned 


Years. 
YEAR. | From capital. From salaries, etc. Total. 
MRM Oras talks clk ee cn cosa £188,500,000 £93,500,000 £282,000,000 
Oe ey eae 252,500,000 107,500,000 860,000,000 
Waa soa pen nesta secvcr 601,000,000 177,000,000 584,000,000 


Thus a very large part of the increase of the income-tax income in 
the last forty years is not an increase of the income from capital at all 
in any proper sense of the word. On the contrary, the increase in the 
income from capital is only about two thirds of the total increase. 
This increase is, moreover, at a less rate than the increase of the 
capital itself, as appearing from the probate-duty returns,{ a point 
which deserves special notice. The conclusion, therefore, is, that the 
working-classes have not been losing in the last fifty years through 


* Interest on £500,000,000 of canital in 1881 at 5 percent. In my paper on accu- 
mulations of capital, I estimated agricultural capital at a larger sum than this, but since 
then there has been some loss of agricultural capital, and, if a larger sum were taken, 
the rate of interest used in the calculation for the present purpose should be less. 

+ Estimating that the income here is worth four years’ purchase, and that it may be 
capitalized at that rate; and then allowing that this capital earns 10 per cent, the rest 
being wages of superintendence or salarics. 

+ These returns, however, it should always be remenibered, do not include real prop- 
erty. 


44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the fruits of their labor being increasingly appropriated to capital. 
On the contrary, the income from capital has at least no more than 
kept pace with the increase of capital itself, while the increase of capi- 
tal per head, as we have seen, is very little; so that it may be doubted 
whether the income of the individual capitalist from capital has on the 
average increased at all. If the return to capital had doubled, as the 
wages of the working-classes appear to have doubled, the aggregate in- 
come of the capitalist classes returned to the income-tax would now be 
£800,000,000 instead of £400,000,000. In other words, it would not be 
far short of the mark to say that almost the whole of the great mate- 
rial improvement of the last fifty years has gone to the masses. The 
share of capital is a very small one. And what has not gone to the 
workman, so called, has gone to remunerate people.who are really 
workmen also, the persons whose incomes are returned under Schedule 
D as from “trades and professions.” The capitalist as such gets a 
low interest for his money, and the aggregate return to capital is not 
a third part of the aggregate income of the country, which may be 
put at not less than £1,200,000,000, and is, I should estimate, not much 
more than a fourth part. 

It will be interesting, I think, to present these conclusions in the 
form of an account. We have not, as I have already said, an exact 
statement of aggregate earnings, either at the beginning or at the end 
of the period ; but assuming the aggregate income of the people as 
about £1,200,000,000 now, and that the wages of working-men are per 
head twice what they were, the aggregates in 1843 and at the present 
time would compare as follow : : 


Progress of National Income. 


Increase, 
Income Income at 


in 1843, present time. 


Amount. Per cent- 


Capitalist classes from capital .| £190,000,000 | £400,000,000 | £210,000,000 | 110 
Working income in income-tax 


CS, g PE RESIN BESS 90,000,000 180,000,000 90,000,000 | 100 
Working income not in income- 
ROX. POUUIOA, 5 oj.0 eo. d edie k Oe 235,000,000 620,000,C00 | 385,000,000 | 160 


£515,000,000 | £1,200,000,000 | £685,000;000 | 180 


Progress of National Capital paying Probate Duty. 


Increase. 
1888. Present time. 
Amount, Per cent. 
Amount BORD cas cc penn £55,000,000 | £140.000,000 | £85,000,000 | 155 
Ber GBM oo. eS ee ae 2,200,000 2,500,000 300,000 14 


Notr.—Increase of working income per head, 100 per cent. 


From this it appears that the increase of what is known as work- 
Ing-class income in the aggregate is greater than that of any other 
class, being 160 per cent, while the return to capital and the return to 


THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 45 


what are called the capitalist classes, whether it is from capital proper 
or, as I maintain, a return only in the nature of wages, has only in- 
creased about 100 per cent, although capital itself has increased over 
150 per cent. At the same time the capitalist classes themselves have 
greatly increased in number, so that the amount of capital possessed 
among them per head has only increased 15 per cent, notwithstand- 
ing the great increase in capital itself, and the average income per 
head can have hardly increased at all. On the other hand, as the 
masses of the nation, taking the United Kingdom altogether, have 
only increased about 30 per cent since 1843, when these income-tax 
figures begin, while their aggregate incomes have increased 160 per 
cent, it is explained how these incomes have gained, individually, 
about 100 per cent as against hardly any increase at all in the incomes 
of what are called the capitalist classes, on the average. Thus the 
rich have become more numerous, but not richer individually ; the 
“poor” are, to some smaller extent, fewer; and those who remain 
“poor” are, individually, twice as well off on the average as they 
were fifty years ago. The “poor” have thus had almost all the bene- 
fit of the great material advance of the last fifty years. 


We may now conclude this long inquiry. It has been shown 
directly, I believe, that, while the individual incomes of the working- 
classes have largely increased, the prices of the main articles of their 
consumption have rather declined ; and the inference as to their being 
much better off, which would be drawn from these facts, is fully sup- 
ported by statistics showing a decline in the rate of mortality, an in- 
crease of the consumption of articles in general use, an improvement 
in general education, a diminution of crime and pauperism, a vast in- 
crease of the number of depositors in savings-banks, and other evi- 
dences of general well-being. Finally, the increase of the return to 
capital has not been in any way in proportion, the yield on the same 
amount of capital being less than it was, and the capital itself being 
more diffused, while the remuneration of labor has enormously in- 
creased. The facts are what we should have expected from the con- 
ditions of production in recent years. Inventions having been multi- 
plied, and production having been increasingly efficient, while capital 
has been accumulated rapidly, it is the wages-receivers who must 
have the benefit. The competition of capital keeps profits down to 
the lowest point, and workmen consequently get for themselves nearly 
the whole product of the aggregate industry of the country. It is 
interesting, nevertheless, to find that the facts correspond with what 
theory should lead us to anticipate. 

The moral is a very obvious one. Whatever may be said as to 
the ideal perfection or imperfection of the present economic régime, 
the fact of so great an advance having been possible for the masses of 
the people in the last half-century is encouraging. It is something to 


46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


know that whether a better régime is conceivable or not, human nature 
being what it is now (and I am one of those who think that the régime 
is the best, the general result of a vast community living as the British 
nation does, with all the means of healthy life and civilization at com- 
mand, being little short of a marvel if we only consider for a moment 
what vices of anarchy and misrule in society have had to be rooted 
out to make this marvel) ; still, whether best or not, it is something 
to know that vast improvement has been possible with this régime. 
Surely the lesson is that the nation ought to go on improving on the 
same lines, relaxing none of the efforts which have been so successful. 
Steady progress in the direction maintained for the last fifty years 
must soon make the English people vastly superior to what they are 
now. | 

I should like to add just one or two remarks bearing on questions 
of the moment, and as to the desirability or possibility of a change of 
régime now so much discussed, which the figures I have brought be- 
fore you suggest. One is, that, apart from all objections of principle 
to schemes of confiscating capital—land nationalization, or collectiv- 
ism, or whatever they may be called—the masses could not hope to 
have much to divide by any such schemes. Taking the income from 
capital at £400,000,000, we must not suppose that the whole of that 
would be divisible among the masses if capital were confiscated. What 
the capitalist classes spend is a very different thing from what they 
make. The annual savings of the country now exceed £200,000,000, 
being made as a rule, though not exclusively, by the capitalist classes. 
If, then, the £400,000,000 were to be confiscated, one of two things 
would happen—either the savings would not be made, in which 
case the condition of the working-classes would soon deteriorate, for 
everything depends upon the steady increase of capital ; or the savings 
would be made, in which case the spending power of the masses would 
not be so very much increased. The difference would be that they 
would be owners of the capital, but the income would itself remain 
untouched. ‘The system under which large capitals are in a few hands 
may, in fact, have its good side in this, that the Jay Goulds, Vander- 
bilts, and Rothschilds can not spend their income. The consequent 
accumulation of capital is, in fact, one of the reasons why the reward 
for labor is so high, and the masses get nearly all the benefit of the 
great increase of production. The other remark I have to make is 
that, if the object really aimed at by those who talk of land national- 
ization and the like is carried out, the people who will suffer are those 
who receive large wages. To effect what they intend, the agitators 
must not merely seize on the property of a few, they must confiscate 
what are as much earnings as those of a mechanic or a laborer, and 
the wages of the most skilled mechanics and artisans themselves. 
The agitation is, in fact, to level down, to diminish the reward of 
laborers who receive a large wage because they can do the work the 


AN EXPERIMENT IN PROHIBITION. 47 


community requires, the proof being that in a market without favor 
they get the wage, and to increase the reward of other laborers be- 
yond what in the same free market the community would freely give 
them.-Whether the production would be continued at all if there 
’ were any success in these attempts, common-sense will tell us. Those 
who have done some hard work in the world will, I am sure, agree 
with me that it is only done by virtue of the most powerful stimu- 
lants. Take away the rewards, and even the best would probably not 
give themselves up to doing what the community wants and now pays 
them for doing, but they would give themselves up either to idleness 
or to doing something else. The war of the land-nationalizer and 
socialist is then not so much with the capitalist as with the workman, 
and the importance of this fact should not be lost sight of. 


<> om 
Se ah cain 


AN EXPERIMENT IN PROHIBITION. 
By EDWARD JOHNSON. 


HE liquor question, like the poor, we have always with us; and 
at present, as at almost any time for many years past, the best 
method of dealing with it is being actively discussed in many parts of 
the country. Public opinicn seems to be divided between repressive 
and restrictive legislation ; and, in view of this fact and of the efforts 
of those who favor the prohibitory system to introduce it in localities 
where other methods have hitherto prevailed, the experience of Ver- 
mont, which has had a prohibitory liquor law for more than thirty 
years, furnishes an instructive lesson. 

The Vermont law was passed by the Legislature of 1852. In the 
Legislature, as among the people, there was a close division of senti- 
ment, the law finally passing by a vote of 91 to 90, and being ratified 
by the people of the State by a vote of 22,215 to 21,044—a popular 
majority of only 1,171 for the law. According to its terms, the law 
went into effect in March, 1853, and has ever remained the settled 
policy ‘of the State. As originally enacted, it merely forebade the 
selling, furnishing, or giving away of intoxicating liquor, under mdo- 
erate penalties, and provided for the appointment of an agent in each 
town, who should be authorized to sell liquor for medicinal and me-— 
chanical purposes, the profits of the sale accruing to the town. But, 
from the moment of its adoption until the present time, the advocates 
of the law have been continually engaged in enlarging its scope and 
strengthening its provisions. Each Legislatnre since 1853 has modi- 
fied and amended the law in the direction of increased thoroughness, © 
severity, and efficiency. Its supporters have indeed taken “Thorough” 
for their motto. Everything they have asked has been granted by 


48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


successive Legislatures, and all possible measures have been taken to 
render the law perfect. As it now stands, it constitutes an entire 
chapter of the Revised Statutes, and embraces more than fourscore 
sections. A glance at its provisions will show that it is stringent 
enough to satisfy the most thorough-going believer in repressive leg- 
islation. It absolutely forbids the manufacture, sale, furnishing, or 
giving away of intoxicating liquors, among which malt-liquors and 
lager-beer are specifically included. Cider must not be sold at any 
place of public resort, nor may a man in his own house furnish any 
liquors to minors. The penalties in all these cases are a fine of ten 
dollars for the first offense, twenty dollars for the second, and three 
months in the House of Correction for the third. A ‘common seller” 
is to be fined one hundred dollars for the first offense, and two hun- 
dred dollars for the second, and for the third is to be committed to 
the House of Correction for four months. He may also be prosecuted 
for maintaining a nuisance, and in case of conviction he is to be fined 
from twenty dollars to two hundred dollars, and imprisoned from one 
month to three months ; and his place of business is to be summarily 
closed, nor may he reopen it before furnishing a heavy bond to aban- 
don the liquor-traffic. A person bringing, or assisting in bringing, 
liquor into the State, is to be fined twenty dollars for the first offense, 
and fifty for the second, and for the third is to be imprisoned for three 
months. A traveling liquor agent is to be fined one hundred dollars 
for the first offense of selling, and three hundred dollars for the second, 
and for the third is to be fined five hundred dollars and imprisoned 
for six months. All liquors kept, or supposed to be kept, for purposes 
forbidden by the statute, are to be seized by the police, who may for 
this purpose enter and search, without a warrant, any premises, public 
or private. A percentage of all fines imposed and collected is awarded 
the informer and the prosecuting officer. The statute furthermore con- 
tains provisions for the recovery of civil damages from liquor-dealers, 
for imposing a heavy fine upon one who rents premises to be used in 
the liquor-traffic, and for carrying out the design of the law in a thor- 
ough and efficient manner. 

But the practical operation of this severe and sweeping law—there 
is the rub! It is a fact, which can not be controverted or denied, that 
for all practical purposes the law is an absolute dead letter. Accord- 
ing to the returns of the United States revenue officers, the Govern- 
ment tax on the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in the 
State amounted last year to fourteen thousand dollars in round num- 
bers. On the same authority, there are in the State at the present 
time four hundred and forty-six places where intoxicating liquors are 
sold ; and, though the population is well-nigh plahonary, there is a 
sarki increase in.the number of these places, last year’s returns show- 
ing only four: hundred . ‘and twenty-six, and those for the preceding 
year four hundred’ ‘and nine. In the city of Burlington there are about 


™“ 


AN EXPERIMENT IN PROHIBITION. 49 


threescore places where liquor is sold, and in Rutland, St. Albans, and 
all the larger towns, a proportional number ; and in every village in 
the State, with the exception of a few inconsiderable hamlets, there 
is at least-one such place. A large proportion of the dram-shops are 
located upon the principal streets, and there is no concealmert or at- 
tempted concealment of the illegal traffic conducted within them. As 
these facts and figures sufficiently indicate, the law, broadly speaking, 
is not at all enforced. The sale of liquor, it is hardly too much to 
say, is almost as free and open as though there were no such thing as 
a prohibitory law. ‘The principal exception to the general rule con- 
sists of an occasional spasmodic attempt to enforce the law in the 
larger places, and the fining of liquor-dealers on what are termed 
“disclosures.” In the latter case, a person arrested for intoxication 
is compelled to “disclose” the person of whom he procured liquor, 
and that person is then tried for the offense. Such cases are very 
common, but as only the lowest class of liquor-dealers is concerned in 
them, generally speaking, and as the prosecution is invariably for a 
“first offense,” no effective purpose is served in repressing the liquor- 
traffic. In the larger towns, an effort to enforce the law is occasion- 
ally made, but such efforts have invariably proved short-lived, and 
in almost every instance the people have, at the earliest opportunity, 
rejected at the polls the officers who have attempted to enforce the 
law. These are the principal exceptions to the general rule of non- 
enforcement. Of enforcing the law as the laws against burglary and 
larceny are enforced, no one dreams fora moment. Such is the un- 
satisfactory result of Vermont’s thirty years’ experience of the pro- 
hibitory liquor law. One might go still further, and speak of the 
perjury and subornation of perjury, for which the law is in a sense 
responsible ; of the disregard and contempt for all law which the 
operation of this law tends to foster and encourage, and of cognate 
matters which will occur to the reflective reader ; but, perhaps, enough 
has been said in showing the failure of the law to accomplish the ob- 
ject for which it was enacted. 

The cause of the failure of the law is not far to seek. It is ob- 
viously that the law is not sustained by public sentiment. It is that 
the world can not be dragooned into virtue. The supporters of the 
prohibitory law are well-meaning men and women, who are sincerely 
desirous of benefiting their fellow-human beings and advancing God’s 
kingdom upon earth: but not even by these will humanity suffer 
itself to be driven to loftier heights of thought and action. The peo- 
ple of Vermont are not singular in this matter; and there would seem 
to be no reason why the prohibitory system, a failure in a moral, God- 
fearing community, should be successful anywhere in the United States. 


you, xxv.—4 


50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NOUT. 


By GRANT ALLEN, 


nH many centuries the occult problem how to account for the 
milk in the cocoa-nut has awakened the profoundest interest 
alike of ingenious infancy and of maturer scientific age. Though it 
can not be truthfully affirmed of it, as of the cosmogony or creation 
of the world, in “The Vicar of Wakefield,” that it “has puzzled the 
philosophers of all ages” (for Sanchoniathon was certainly ignorant 
of the very existence of that delicious juice, and Manetho doubtless 
went to his grave without ever having tasted it fresh from the nut 
under a tropical veranda), yet it may be safely asserted that for the 
last three hundred years the philosopher who has not at some time or 
other of his life meditated upon that abstruse question, is unworthy of 
such an exalted name. The cosmogony and the milk in the cocoa- 
nut are, however, a great deal closer together in thought than Sancho- 
niathon or Manetho, or the rogue who quoted them so glibly, is ever 
at all likely, in his wildest moments, to have imagined. 

The cocoa-nut, in fact, is a subject well deserving of the most 
sympathetic treatment at the gentle hands of grateful humanity. No 
other plant is useful to us in so many diverse and remarkable manners. 
It has been truly said of that friend of man, the domestic pig, that he 
is all good, from the end of his snout to the tip of his tail; but even 
the pig, though he furnishes us with so many necessaries or luxuries— 
from tooth-brushes to sausages, from ham to lard, from pepsine-wine 
to pork pies—does not nearly approach, in the multiplicity and vari- 
ety of his virtues, the all-sufficing and world-supplying cocoa-nut. <A 
Chinese proverb says that there are as many useful properties in the 
cocoa-nut palm as there are days in the year ; and a Polynesian saying 
tells us that the man who plants a cocoa-nut plants meat and drink, 
hearth and home, vessels and clothing, for himself and his children 
after him. Like the great Mr. Whiteley, the invaluable palm-tree 
might modestly advertise itself as a universal provider. The solid 
part of the nut supplies food almost alone to thousands of peo- 
ple daily, and the milk serves them for drink, thus acting as an effi- 
cient filter to the water absorbed by the roots in the most polluted or 
malarious regions. If you tap the flower-stalk you get a sweet juice, 
which can be boiled down into the peculiar sugar called (in the charm- 
ing dialect of commerce) jaggery ; or it can be fermented into a very 
nasty spirit known as palm-wine, toddy, or arrack ; or it can be mixed 
with bitter herbs and roots to make that delectable compound “ na- » 
tive beer.” If you squeeze the dry nut you get cocoa-nut oil, which 
is as good as lard for frying when fresh, and is “an excellent substi- 
tute for butter at breakfast,” on tropical tables. Under the mysteri- 


THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT. 51 


ous name of copra (which most of us have seen with awe described in 
the market reports as “firm” or “weak,” “receding” or “ steady ”) 
it forms the main-or only export of many oceanic islands, and is 
largely imported into this realm of England, where the thicker por- 
tion is called stearine, and used for making sundry candles with fanci- 
ful names, while the clear oil is employed for burning in ordinary 
lamps. In the process of purification, it yields glycerine ; and it en- 
ters largely into the manufacture of most better-class soaps. The 
fiber that surrounds the nut makes up the other mysterious article of 
commerce known as coir, which is twisted into stout ropes, or woven 
into cocoa-nut matting and ordinary door-mats. Brushes and brooms 
are also made of it, and it is used, not always in the most honest fash- 
ion, in place of real horse-hair, in stuffing cushions. The shell, cut in 
half, supplies good cups, and is artistically carved by the Polynesians, 
Japanese, Hindoos, and other benighted heathen, who have not yet 
learned the true methods of civilized machine-made shoddy manufact- 
ure. The leaves serve as excellent thatch ; on the flat blades, pre- 
pared like papyrus, the most famous Buddhist manuscripts are writ- 
ten ; the long mid-ribs or branches (strictly speaking, the leaf-stalks) 
answer admirably for rafters, posts, or fencing; the fibrous sheath 
at the base is a remarkable natural imitation of cloth, employed: for 
strainers, wrappers, and native hats ; while the trunk, or stem, passes 
in carpentry under the name of porcupine-wood, and produces beauti- 
ful effects as a wonderfully-colored cabinet-maker’s material. These 
are only a few selected instances out of the innumerable uses of the 
cocoa-nut palm. 

Apart even from the manifold merits of the tree that bears it, the 
milk itself has many and great claims to our respect and esteem, as 
everybody who has ever drunk it in its native surroundings will enthu- 
siastically admit. In England, to be sure, the white milk in the dry nuts 
is a very poor stuff, sickly, and strong-flavored and rather indigestible. 
But in the tropics, cocoa-nut milk, or, as we oftener call it there, cocoa- 
nut water, is a very different and vastly superior sort of beverage. 
At eleven o’clock every morning, when you are hot and tired with the 
day’s work, your black servant, clad from head to foot in his cool 
clean white linen suit, brings you in a tall soda-glass full of a clear, 
light, crystal liquid, temptingly displayed against the yellow back- 
ground of a chased Benares brass-work tray. The lump of ice bobs 
enticingly up and down in the center of the tumbler, or clinks musi- 
cally against the edge of the glass as he carries it along. You take 
the cool cup thankfully and swallow it down at one long draught ; 
fresh as a May morning, pure as an English hill-side spring, delicate — 
as—well, as cocoa-nut water. None but itself can be its parallel. It 
is certainly the most delicious, dainty, transparent, crystal drink ever 
invented. How did it get there, and what is it for? 

In the early green stage at which cocoa-nuts are generally picked 


52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


for household use in the tropics, the shell hasn’t yet solidified into a 
hard, stony coat, but still remains quite soft enough to be readily cut 
through with a sharp table-knife—just like young walnuts picked for 
pickling. If you cut one across while it’s in this unsophisticated 
state, it is easy enough to see the arrangement of the interior, and 
the part borne by the milk in the development and growth of the ma- 
ture nut. The ordinary tropical way of opening cocoa-nuts for table, 
indeed, is by cutting off the top of the shell and rind in successive 
slices, at the end where the three pores are situated, until you reach 
the level of the water, which fills up the whole interior. The nutty 
part around the inside of the shell is then extremely soft and jelly- 
like, so that it can be readily eaten with a spoon: but as a matter of 
fact very few people ever do eat. the flesh at all. After their first few 
months in the tropics, they lose the taste for this comparatively indi- 
gestible part, and confine themselves entirely (like patients at a Ger- 
man spa) to drinking the water, A young cocoa-nut is thus seen to 
consist, first of a green outer skin, then of a fibrous coat, which after- 
ward becomes the hair, and next of a harder shell which finally gets 
quite woody ; while inside all comes the actual seed or unripe nut it- 
self. The office of the cocoa-nut water is the deposition of the nutty 
part around the side of the shell ; it is, so to speak, the mother-liquid, 
from which the harder eatable portion is afterward derived. This 
state is not uncommon in embryo seeds. In a very young pea, for ex- 
ample, the inside is quite watery, and only the outer skin is at all 
solid, as we have all observed when green peas first come into season. 
But the special peculiarity of the cocoa-nut consists in the fact that 
this liquid condition of the interior continues even after the nut is 
ripe, and that is the really curious point about the milk in the cocoa- 
nut which does actually need accounting for. 

In order to understand it one ought to examine a cocoa-nut in the 
act of budding, and to do this it is by no means necessary to visit the 
West Indies or the Pacific Islands ; all you need to do isto ask a Co- 
vent Garden fruit-salesman to get you a few “ growers.” On the voy- 
age to England, a certain number of precocious cocoa-nuts, stimulated 
by the congenial warmth and damp of most ship-holds, usually begin 
to sprout before their time ; and these waste nuts are sold by the 
dealers at a low rate to East End children and inquiring botanists 
An examination of a “ grower” very soon convinces one what is the 
use of the milk in the cocoa-nut. 

It must be duly borne in mind, to begin with, that the prime end 
and object of the nut is not to be eaten raw by the ingenious monkey, 
or to be converted by lordly man into cocoa-nut biscuits, or cocoa-nut 
pudding, but simply and solely to reproduce the cocoa-nut palm in 
sufficient numbers to future generations. For this purpose the nut 
has slowly acquired by natural selection a number of protective de- 
fenses against its numerous enemies, which serve to guard it admira- 


THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT. 53 


bly in the native state from almost all possible animal depredators. 
First of all, the actual nut or seed itself consists of a tiny embryo plant, 
placed just inside the softest of the three pores or pits at the end of the 
shell, and surrounded by a vast quantity of nutritious pulp, destined to 
feed and support it during its earliest unprotected days, if not other- 
wise diverted by man or monkey. But, as whatever feeds a young 
plant will also feed an animal, and as many animals betray a felonious 
desire to appropriate to their own wicked ends the food-stuffs laid up 
by the palm for the use of its own seedling, the cocoa-nut has been 
compelled to inclose this particularly large and rich kernel in a very 
solid and defensive shell. And, once more, since the palm grows at 
a very great height from the ground—I have seen them up to ninety 
feet in favorable circumstances—this shell stands a very good chance 
of getting broken in tumbling to the earth, so that it has been neces- 
sary to surround it with a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, 
which breaks its fall, and acts as a buffer to it when it comes in con- 
tact with the soil beneath. So many protections has the cocoa-nut 
gradually devised for itself by the continuous survival of the best 
adapted among numberless and endless spontaneous variations of all 
its kind in past time. . 

Now, when the cocoa-nut has actually reached the ground at last, 
and proceeds to sprout in the spot where chance (perhaps in the bodily 
shape of a disappointed monkey) has chosen to cast it, these numer- 
ous safeguards and solid envelopes naturally begin to prove decided 
nuisances to the embryo within. It starts under the great disadvan- 
tage of being hermetically sealed within a solid wooden shell, so that 
no water can possibly get at it to aid it as most other seeds are aided 
in the process of germination. Fancy yourself a seed-pea, anxious to 
sprout, but coated all round with a hard covering of impermeable 
sealing-wax, and you will be in a position faintly to appreciate the un- 
fortunate predicament of a grower cocoa-nut. Natural selection, how- 
ever—that deus ex machina of modern science, which can perform 
such endless wonders, if only you give it time enough to work in and 
variations enough to work upon—natural selection has come to the 
rescue of the unhappy plant by leaving it a little hole at the top of 
the shell, out of which it can push its feathery green head without 
difficulty. Everybody knows that if you look at the sharp end of a 
cocoa-nut you will see three little brown pits or depressions on its sur- 
face. Most people also know that two of these are firmly stopped up 
(for a reason to which I shall presently recur), but that the third one 
is only closed by a slight film or very thin shell, which can be easily 
bored through with a pocket-knife, so as to let the milk run off before 
eracking the shell. So much we have all learned during our ardent 
pursuit of natural knowledge on half-holidays in early life. But we 
probably then failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a 
small, roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable portion, which 


*, 


54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


knob is in fact the embryo palm or seedling, for whose ultimate bene- 
fit the whole arrangement (in brown and green) has been invented. 
That is very much the way with man: he notices what concerns his 
own appetite, and omits all the really important parts of the whole 
subject. We think the use of the hole is to let out the milk ; but the 
nut knows that its real object is to let out the seedling. The knob 
grows out at last into the young plantlet, and it is by means of the 
soft hole that it makes its escape through the shell to the air and the 
sunshine which it seeks without. 

This brings us really down at last to the true raison détre for the 
milk in the cocoa-nut. As the seed or kernel can not easily get at 
much water from outside, it has a good supply of water laid up for it 
ready beforehand within its own encircling shell. The mother-liquid 
from which the pulp or nutty part has been deposited remains in the 
center, as the milk, till the tiny embryo begins to sprout. As soon as 
it does so, the little knob which was at first so very small enlarges 
rapidly and absorbs the water, till it grows out into a big, spongy cel- 
lular mass, which at last almost fills up the entire shell. At the same 
time, its other end pushes its way out through the soft hole, and then 
gives birth to a growing bud at the top—the future stem and leaves— 
and to a number of long threads beneath—the future roots, Mean- 
while, the spongy mass inside begins gradually to absorb all the nutty 
part, using up its oils and starches for the purpose of feeding the 
young plant above, until it is of an age to expand its leaves to the open 
tropical sunlight and shift for itself in the struggle for life. It seems 
at first sight very hard to understand how any tissue so solid as the 
pulp of cocoa-nut can be thus softened and absorbed without any visi- 
ble cause ; but in the subtile chemistry of living vegetation such a 
transformation is comparatively simple and easy to perform. Nature 
sometimes works much greater miracles than this in the same way : 
for example, what is called vegetable ivory, a substance so solid that 
it can be carved or turned only with great difficulty, is really the ker- 
nel of another palm-nut, allied to the cocoa-palm, and its very stony 
particles are all similarly absorbed during germination by the dissolv- 
ing power of the young seedling. | 

Why, however, has the cocoa-nut three pores at the top instead of 
one, and why. are two out of the three so carefully and firmly sealed 
up? The explanation of this strange peculiarity is only to be found 
in the ancestral history of the cocoa-nut kind. Most nuts, indeed, 
start in their earlier stage as if they meant to produce two or more 
seeds each ; but, as they ripen, all the seeds except one become abor- 
tive. The almond, for example, has in the flower two seeds or ker- 
nels to each nut ; but in the ripe state there is generally only one, 
though occasionally we find an almond with two—a philopena, as we 
commonly call it—just to keep in memory the original arrangement 
of its earlier ancestors. The reason for this is that plants whose fruits 


THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT. 55 


have no special protection for their seeds are obliged to produce a 
great many of them at once, in order that one seed in a thousand may 
finally survive the onslaughts of their Argus-eyed enemies ; but, when 
they learn to protect themselves by hard coverings from birds and 
beasts, they can dispense with some of these supernumerary seeds, 
and put more nutriment into each one of those that they still retain. 
Compare, for example, the innumerable small round seedlets of the 
poppy-head with the solitary large and richly-stored seed of the wal- 
nut, or the tiny black specks of mustard and cress with the single 
compact and well-filled seed of the filbert and the acorn. To the 
very end, however, most nuts begin in the flower as if they meant to 
produce a whole capsuleful of small unstored and unprotected seeds, 
like their original ancestors ; it is only at the last moment that they 
recollect themselves, suppress all their ovules except one, and store 
that one with all the best and oiliest food-stuffs at their disposal. 
The nuts, in fact, have learned by long experience that it is better to 
be the only son and heir of a wealthy house, set up in life with a good 
capital to begin upon, than to be one of a poor family of thirteen 
needy and unprovided children. 

Now, the cocoa-nuts are descended from a great tribe—the palms _ 
and lilies—which have as their main distinguishing peculiarity the 
arrangement of parts in their flowers and fruits by threes each. For 
example, in the most typical flowers of this great group, there are 
three green outer calyx-pieces, three bright-colored petals, three long 
outer stamens, three short inner stamens, three valves to the capsule, 
and three seeds or three rows of seeds in each fruit. Many palms still 
keep pretty well to this primitive arrangement, but a few of them 
which have specially protected or highly developed fruits or nuts have 
lost in their later stages the threefold disposition in the fruit, and pos- 
sess only one seed, often avery large one. There is no better and 
more typical nut in the whole world than a cocoa-nut—that is to say, 
from our present point of view at least, though the fear of that awful 
person, the botanical Smelfungus, compels me to add that this is not 
quite technically true. Smelfungus, indeed, would insist upon it that 
the cocoa-nut is not a nut at all, and would thrill us with the delight- 
ful information, innocently conveyed in that delicious dialect of which 
he is so great a master, that it is really “a drupaceous fruit with a 
fibrous mesocarp.” Still, in spite of Smelfungus with his nice, hair- 
splitting distinctions, it remains true that humanity at large will still 
call a nut a nut, and that the cocoa-nut is the highest known de- 
velopment of the peculiar nutty tactics. It has the largest and most 
richly stored seed of any known plant ; and this seed is surrounded 
by one of the hardest and most unmanageable of any known shells. 
Hence the cocoa-nut has readily been able to dispense with the three 
kernels which each nut used in its earlier and less developed days to 
produce. But though the palm has thus taken to reducing the num- 


56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ber of its seeds in each fruit to the lowest possible point consistent 
with its continued existence at all, it still goes on retaining many 
signs of its ancient threefold arrangement. ‘The ancestral and most 
deeply ingrained habits persist in the earlier stages ; it is only in the 
mature form that the later acquired habits begin fully to predominate. 
Even so our own boys pass through an essentially savage childhood of 
ogres and fairies, bows and arrows, sugar-plums and barbaric nursery 
tales, as well as a romantic boyhood of medizval chivalry and advent- 
ure, before they steady down into that crowning glory of our race, 
the solid, sober, matter-of-fact, commercial British Philistine. Hence 
the cocoa-nut in its unstripped state is roughly triangular in form, its 
angles answerimg to the separate three fruits of simpler palms ; and 
it has three pits or weak places in the shell, through which the em- 
bryos of the three original kernels used to force their way out. But as 
only one of them is now needed, that one alone is left soft ; the other 
two, which would be merely a source of weakness to the plant if un- 
protected, are covered in the existing nut by harder shell. Doubtless 
they serve in part to deceive the too inquisitive monkey or other 
enemy, who probably concludes that, if one of the pits is hard and 
impermeable, the other two are so likewise. 

Though I have now, I hope, satisfactorily accounted for the milk 
in the cocoa-nut, and incidentally for some other matters in its econ- 
omy as well, Lam loath to leave the young seedling, whom I have 
brought so far on his way, to the tender mercies of the winds and 
storms and tropical animals, some of whom are extremely fond of his 
juicy and delicate shoots. Indeed, the growing point or bud of most 
palms is a very pleasant succulent vegetable, and one kind—the West 
Indian mountain- -cabbage—deserves a better and more justly descrip- 
tive name, for it is really much more like seakale or asparagus. I 
shall try to follow our young seedling on in life, therefore, so as to 
give, while I am about it, a fairly comprehensive and complete biogra- 
phy of a single flourishing cocoa-nut palm. 

Beginning, then, with the fall of the nut from the parent-tree, the 
troubles of the future palm confront it at once in the shape of the nut- 
eating crab. This evil-disposed crustacean is common around the 
sea-coast of the Eastern tropical islands, which is also the region 
mainly affected by the cocoa-nut palm ; for cocoa-nuts are essentially 
shore-loving trees, and thrive best in the immediate neighborhood of 
the sea. Among the fallen nuts, the clumsy-looking thief of a crab 
(his appropriate Latin name is Birgus latro) makes great and dreaded 
havoc. To assist him in his unlawful object he has developed a pair 
of front legs, with specially strong and heavy claws, supplemented by 
a last or tail-end pair armed only with very narrow and slender pincers. 
He subsists entirely upon a cocoa-nut diet. Setting to work upon a 
big fallen nut—with the husk on, cocoa-nuts measure in the raw state 
about twelve inches the long way—he tears off all the coarse fiber bit 


THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT. 57 


by bit, and gets down at last to the hard shell, Then he hammers 
away with his heavy claw on the softest eye-hole till he has pounded 
an opening right through it. This done he twists round his body so 
as to turn his back upon the cocoa-nut he is operating upon (crabs are 
never famous either for good manners or gracefulness) and proceeds 
awkwardly but effectually to extract all the white kernel or pulp 
through the breach with his narrow pair of hind pincers. Like man, 
too, the robber-crab knows the value of the outer husk as well as of 
the eatable nut itself, for he collects the fiber in surprising quantities 
to line his burrow and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxuri- 
ous couch. Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs and the ra- 
pacity and cunning of all-appropriating man! ‘The spoil-sport Malay 
digs up the nest for the sake of the fiber it contains, which spares him 
the trouble of picking junk on his own account, and then he eats the 
industrious crab who has laid it all up, while he melts down the great 
lump of fat under the robber’s capacious tail, and sometimes gets from 
it as much as a good quart of what may be practically considered ag 
limpid cocoa-nut oil, Sic vos non vobis is certainly the melancholy 
refrain of all natural history. The cocoa-nut palm intends the oil for 
the nourishment of its own seedling ; the crab feloniously appropriates 
it and stores it up under his capacious tail for future personal use ; 
the Malay steals it again from the thief for his own purposes ; and 
ten to one the Dutch or English merchant beguiles it from him with 
sized calico or poisoned rum, and transmits it to Europe, where it 
serves to lighten our nights and assist at our matutinal tub, to point 
a moral and adorn the present tale. 

If, however, our cocoa-nut is lucky enough to escape the robber- 
erabs, the pigs, and the monkeys, as well as to avoid falling into the 
hands of man, and being converted into the copra of commerce, or 
sold from a costermonger’s barrow in the chilly streets of ungenial 
London at a penny a slice, it may very probably succeed in germinat- 
ing after the fashion I have already described, and pushing up its head 
through the surrounding foliage to the sunlight above. Asa rule, the 
cocoa-nut has been dropped by its mother-tree on the sandy soil of a 
sea-beach ; and this is the spot it best loves, and where it grows to 
the stateliest height. Sometimes, however, it falls into the sea itself, 
and then the loose husk buoys it up, so that it floats away bravely till 
it is cast by the waves upon some distant coral reef or desert island. 
It is this power of floating and surviving a long voyage that has dis- 
persed the cocoa-nut so widely among oceanic islands, where so few 
plants are generally to be found, Indeed, on many atolls or isolated 
reefs (for example, on Keeling Island) it is the only tree or shrub that 
grows in any quantity, and on it the pigs, the poultry, the ducks, and 
the land-crabs of the place entirely subsist. In any case, wherever it 
happens to strike, the young cocoa-nut sends up at first a fine rosette 
of big, spreading leaves, not raised as afterward on a tall stem, but 


58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


springing direct from the ground in a wide circle, something like a 
very big and graceful fern. In this early stage nothing can be more 
beautiful or more essentially tropical in appearance than a plantation 
of young cocoa-nuts. Their long, feathery leaves spreading out in 
great clumps from the buried stock, and waving with lithe motion 
before the strong sea-breeze of the Indies, are the very embodiment 
of those deceptive ideal tropics which, alas! are to be found in actual 
reality nowhere on earth save in the artificial palm-houses at Kew, and 
the Casino Gardens at too entrancing Monte Carlo. 

For the first two or three years the young palms must be well 
watered, and the soil around them opened ; after which the tall, grace- 
ful stem begins to rise rapidly into the open air. In this condition it 
may be literally said to make the tropics—those fallacious tropics, I 
mean, of painters and poets, of “Enoch Arden” and of “ Locksley Hall.” 
You may observe that, whenever an artist wants to make a tropical 
picture, he puts a group of cocoa-nut palms in the foreground, as much 
as to say, “ You see there’s no deception ; these are the genuine, un- 
adulterated tropics.” But as to painting the tropics without the palms, 
he might just as well think of painting the desert without the camels. 
At eight or ten years old the tree flowers, bearing blossoms of the 
ordinary palm-type, degraded likenesses of the lilies and yuccas, 
greenish and inconspicuous, but visited by insects for the sake of their 
pollen. The flower, however, is fertilized by the wind, which carries 
the pollen-grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the 
nuts gradually swell out to an enormous size, and ripen very slowly, 
even under the brilliant tropical sun. (I will admit that the tropics 
are hot, though in other respects I hold them to be arrant impostors, 
like that precocious American youth who announced on his tenth 
birthday that in his opinion life wasn’t all that it was cracked up to 
be.) But the worst thing about the cocoa-nut palm, the missionaries 
always say, is the fatal fact that, when once fairly started, it goes on 
bearing fruit uninterruptedly for forty years. This is very immoral 
and wrong of the ill-conditioned tree, because it encourages the idyllic 
Polynesian to lie under the palms all day long, cooling his limbs in 
the sea occasionally, sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the 
tangles of Nezra’s hair, and waiting for the nuts to drop down in due 
time, when he ought (according to European notions) to be killing 
himself with hard work under a blazing sky, raising cotton, sugar, 
indigo, and coffee, for the immediate benefit of the white merchant, 
and the ultimate advantage of the British public. It doesn’t enforce 
habits of steady industry and perseverance, the good missionaries say ; 
it doesn’t induce the native to feel that burning desire for Manchester 
piece-goods and the other blessings of civilization which ought prop- 
erly to accompany the propagation of the missionary in foreign parts. 
You stick your nut in the sand; you sit by a few years and watch it 
growing ; you pick up the ripe fruits as they fall from the tree; and 


THE MILK IN THE COCOA-NUT. 59 


you sell them at last for illimitable red cloth to the Manchester piece- 
goods merchant. Nothing could be more simple or more satisfactory. 
And yet it is difficult to-see the precise moral distinction between the 
owner of a cocoa-nut grove in the South-Sea Islands and the owner 
of a coal-mine or a big estate in commercial England. Each lounges 
decorously through life after his own fashion ; only the one lounges 
in a Russia-leather chair at a club in Pall Mall, while the other 
lounges in a nice soft dust-heap beside a rolling surf in Tahiti or the 
Hawaiian Archipelago. 

Cnriously enough, at a little distance from the sandy levels or al- 
luvial flats of the sea-shore, the sea-loving cocoa-nut will not bring its 
nuts to perfection. It will grow, indeed, but it will not thrive or fruit 
in due season. On the coast-line of Southern India, immense groves 
of cocoa-nuts fringe the shore for miles and miles together; and in 
some parts, as in Travancore, they form the chief agricultural staple 
of the whole country. “The state has hence facetiously been called 
Cocoanutcore,” says its historian; which charmingly illustrates the 
true Anglo-Indian notion of what constitutes facetiousness, and ought 
to strike the last nail into the coffin of a competitive examination 
system. A good tree in full bearing should produce one hundred and 
twenty cocoa-nuts in a season; so that a very small grove is quite 
sufficient to maintain a respectable family in decency and comfort. 
Ah, what a mistake the English climate made when it left off its 
primitive warmth of the Tertiary period, and got chilled by the ice 
and snow of the Glacial epoch down to its present misty and dreary 
wheat-growing condition! If it were not for that, those odious habits 
of steady industry and perseverance might never have been developed 
in ourselves at all, and we might be lazily picking copra off our own 
cocoa-palms, to this day, to export in return for the piece-goods of 
some Arctic Manchester situated somewhere about the north of Spitz- 
bergen or the New Siberian Islands. 

Even as things stand at the present day, bionwoye it is wonderful 
how much use we modern Englishmen now make in our own houses 
of this far Eastern nut, whose very name still bears upon its face the 
impress of its originally savage origin. From morning to night we 
never leave off being indebted to it. We wash with it as old brown 
Windsor or glycerine soap the moment we leave our beds. We walk 
across our passages on the mats made from its fiber. We sweep our 
rooms with its brushes, and wipe our feet on it as we enter our doors. 
As rope, it ties up our trunks and packages; in the hands of the 
house-maids it scrubs our floors ; or else, woven into coarse cloth, it 
acts as a covering for bales and furniture sent by rail or steamboat. 
The confectioner undermines our digestion in early life with cocoa- 
nut candy; the cook tempts us later on with cocoa-nut cake ; and 
Messrs. Huntley and Palmer cordially invite us to complete the ruin 
with cocoa-nut biscuits. We anoint our chapped hands with one of 


60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


its preparations after washing ; and grease the wheels of our carriages 
with another to make them run smoothly. Finally, we use the oil to 
burn in our reading-lamps, and light ourselves at last to bed with 
stearine-candles. Altogether, an amateur census of a single small 
English cottage results in the startling discovery that it contains 
twenty-seven distinct articles which owe their origin in one way or 
another to the cocoa-nut palm. And yet we affect, in our black in- 
gratitude, to despise the question of the milk in the cocoa-nut.— Corn- 
hill Magazine. 


LONGEVITY OF ASTRONOMERS. 
By Dr. A. B, M. LANCASTER. 


HE average length of human life in civilized countries is caleu- 
lated to be about thirty-three years. This mean applies to the 
whole of the population of a country. But certain distinctions may 
be made, between different professions for example, among which con- 
siderable variations are observable. It is easy to believe that some 
professions would have the general effect of increasing the probable 
duration of life, while others would abridge it. It is generally ad- 
mitted that men devoted to scientific pursuits enjoy the expectation 
of a considerably longer life than the average. We have been curious 
enough to inquire how much foundation for this opinion there is in 
the case of astronomers, whose observations, calculations, and studies 
imperiously require a quiet, sedentary, and regular life. Our investi- 
gation has been facilitated by MM. Houzeau and Lancaster’s “ Biblio- 
graphie Générale de l’Astronomie,” in the biographical chapter of which 
we found all the information we needed. In this chapter are given 
the date of birth and death of 1,741 astronomers, of periods reaching 
from the most ancient times to our own days. Calculating the mean 
length of life of the whole 1,741, we have found it to be sixty-four 
years and three months. Fully to appreciate the value of this figure, 
Wwe must compare it with that representing the average expectation 
of life at the age at which the astronomer may be supposed to have 
begun his career. If we fix this age at eighteen years, the person 
enjoys an average expectation, according to the mortality-tables, of 
living to sixty-one years. The astronomer, then, enjoys an advan- 
tage equivalent to an additional expectation of three years and three 
months. If we examine the ages to which they actually lived, we find 
that, out of a thousand astronomers, 596 lived to be seventy years old ; 
260 to between seventy and seventy-nine ; 126 to between eighty and 
eighty-nine ; 15 to between ninety and ninety-nine ; and three to be 
over a hundred years old. 
Taking a population in mass, say that of Belgium, of a thousand 


LONGEVITY OF ASTRONOMERS. } 61 


persons having reached the age of eighteen years, there die 944 before 

they are seventy years old ; 42 between seventy and seventy-nine ; 13 
between eighty and eighty-nine ; and one between ninety and ninety- 
nine. The divergencies between the two groups are very evident. 

If we limit our investigations to a purely intellectual domain—that 
is, if we confine the examination to scientific and literary men and 
artists—we shall find that the chances of life are greatest with the first 
and least with the last. A. Quetelet has, in his “ Anthropometrie,” 
made a comparison on this point between the most famous men of 
antiquity and of modern times, and has found that the mean life of 
fourteen most illustrious artists was fifty-nine years and four months ; 
of twenty-four literary men, sixty-five years and six months; and of 
twenty-two scientific men and philosophers, seventy-three years and 
eleven months. On our own side, we have made a selection of the 
twenty-three most celebrated astronomers, and have found their aver- 
age term of life to be seventy-one years and eleven months. The 
duration of life among these different classes of men of intellectual 
life varies, as we have seen, when we pass from one to the other. The 
variations depend both on external conditions peculiar to each of them, 
and upon the objects of their labors and studies. The two causes are 
in fact connected, the first proceeding naturally from the second. 

Professor P. Riccardi, in his “ Biblioteca Matematica Italiana,” gives 
a table of the average life of the mathematicians of Italy, in the order 
of their fame. He has arranged his mathematicians in four catego- 
ries, comprising: 1. The three most illustrious names (Archimedes, 
Galileo, and Lagrange). 2. Forty-seven mathematicians of great repu- 
tation. 3. Fifty of the second rank. 4. Three hundred and eighty of 
the third rank. The average duration of life in these categories of 
mathematicians was—1. Seventy-six years and eight months. 2. Six- 
ty-nine years and five months. 3. Sixty-six years and four months. 
4, Sixty-five years and ten months. 

The fame of a scientific man being generally in proportion to the 
industry with which he works, we may draw our inferences from these 
facts as to the relations between activity and duration of life. 

Another interesting fact has been brought out in our researches for 
this article. The excitement of the life of our age and the consequent 
diminution of its length have been frequently spoken of. We do not 
live as long as formerly, it is said, but we live more rapidly. The 
latter hypothesis may be true, but the former one is certainly false, as 
statistics have demonstrated for the present century. In Belgium, 
among other countries, the mean of life, which, during the period from 
1841 to 1845, was thirty-one years and three months, was lengthened 
to thirty-three years in the lustrum from 1871 to 1875. A similar dif- 
ference has been observed in other countries. Data for comparison 
are scarce for centuries previous to the present one, but our statistics 
of the lives of astronomers may give us some information on this point. 


62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


We have determined the average length of life of the adepts of the 
science of the sky who died before 1780 and of those who have died 
since that year. We have obtained sixty-three years and six months 
for the former, and sixty-four years and eleven months for the latter. 
The advantage in favor of these is not to be despised. 

Taking a hundred individuals in each of these categories, there 


died at different ages : 
Before 1870.. After 1870. 


Before seventy years Of age.........sccecercrecce 62 57 
Between seventy and seventy-nine...........eeeeee 23 28 
Between eighty and eighty-nine...............004- 12 13 
Between ninety and ninety-nine............seceee 2 2 
Over a hundred sci sc vie Keiedo'hs 69 wien eK voles am woies 1 0 


The conclusion at which we arrive has already probably occurred 
to more than one reader. Become an astronomer, if you wish to live 
long. We will add, whoever follows this counsel will not only see 
the limits of his life far removed, but he will also find in the study and 
contemplation of the heavenly bodies a satisfaction more durable than 
any earthly pleasures.—Zranslated for the Popular Science Monthly 
from Ciel et Terre. 


4 
bf 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 
By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 


XXVIII. 


[ NOW proceed to examine the chemical changes which occur in 
the course of the cookery of vegetable substances used for food. 
My readers will remember that I referred to Haller’s statement, 
“ Dimidium corporis humani gluten est,” which applies to animals 
generally, viz., that half of their substance is gelatine, or that which 
by cookery becomes gelatine. This abundance depends upon the fact 
that the walls of the cells and the framework of the tissues are com- 
posed of this material. 

In the vegetable structure we encounter a close analogy to this. 
Cellular structure is still more clearly defined than in the animal, as 
may be easily seen with the help of a very moderate microscopic power. 
Pluck one of the fibrils that you see shooting down into the water of 
the hyacinth-glasses just at this season, or, failing one of these, any 
other succulent rootlet. Crush it between two pieces of glass, and 
examine. At the end there is a loose, spongy mass of round cells ; these 
merge into oblong rectangular cells surrounding a central axis of spiral 
tube or tubes, or greatly elongated cell-structure. Take a thin slice 
of stem, or leaf, or flower, or bark, or pith, examine in like manner, 
and cellular structure of some kind will. display itself, clearly demon- 


THH CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 63 


strating that whatever may be the contents of these round, oval, hex- 
agonal, oblong, or otherwise regular and irregular cells, we can not 
cook and eat any whole vegetable, or slice of vegetable, without en- 
countering a large quantity of cell-wall. It constitutes far more than 
half of the substance of most vegetables, and therefore demands prom- 
inent consideration. It exists in many forms with widely-differing 
physical properties, but with very little variation in chemical composi- 
tion—-so little, that in many chemical treatises cellular tissue, cellulose, 
lignin, and woody fiber are treated as chemically synonymous. Thus, 
Miller says: “ Cellular tissue forms the groundwork of every plant, and 
when obtained in a pure state its composition is the same, whatever 
may have been the nature of the plants which furnished it, though it 
may vary greatly in appearance and physical characters ; thus, it is 
loose and spongy in the succulent shoots of germinating seeds, and in 
the roots of plants, such as the turnip and the potato ; it is porous 
and elastic in the pith of the rush and the elder; it is flexible and 
tenacious in the fibers of hemp and flax ; it is compact in the branches 
and wood of growing trees ; and becomes very hard and dense in the 
shells of the filbert, the peach, the cocoanut, and the Phytelephas or 
vegetable ivory.” 

Its composition in all these cases is that of a carbohydrate, i. e., 
carbon united with the elements of water, which, by-the-way, should 
not be confounded with a hydrocarbon, or compound of carbon with 
hydrogen simply, such as petroleum, fats, essential oils, and resins. 
There is, however, some little chemical difference between wooden tis- 
sue and the pure cellulose that we have in finely-carded cotton, in linen, 
and pure paper-pulp, such as is used in making the filtering-paper for 
chemical laboratories, which burns without leaving a weighable quan- 
tity of ash. The woody forms of cellular tissue owe their characteristic 
properties to an incrustation of lignin, which is often described as 
synonymous with cellulose, but is not so. It is composed of carbon, 
oxygen, and hydrogen, like cellulose, but the hydrogen is in excess 
of the proportion required to form water by combination with the 
oxygen. 

My own view of the composition of this incrustation (lignin prop- 
erly so called) is that it consists of a carbohydrate united with a hydro- 
carbon, the latter having a resinous character ; but whether the hydro- 
carbon is chemically combined with the carbohydrate (the resin with 
the cellulose), or whether the resin only mechanically envelops and 
indurates the cellulose I will not venture to decide, though I incline to 
the latter view. As we shall presently see, this view of the constitu- 
tion of the indurated forms of cellular tissue has an important practi- 
eal bearing upon my present subject. To indicate this beforehand I 
will put it grossly as opening the question of whether a very advanced 
refinement of scientific cookery may or may not enable us to convert 
nut-shells, wood-shavings, and sawdust into wholesome and digestible 


64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


food. I have no doubt whatever that it may. It could be done at 
once if the incrusting resinous matter were removed, for pure cellulose 
in the form of cotton and linen rags has been converted into sugar ar- 
tificially inthe laboratory of the chemist ; and in the ripening of fruits 
such conversion is effected on a large scale in the laboratory of Nature. 
A Jersey pear, for example, when full grown in autumn is little better 
than a lump of acidulated wood. Left hanging on the leafless tree, 
or gathered and carefully stored for two or three months, it becomes 
by Nature’s own unaided cookery the most delicious and delicate pulp 
that can be tasted or imagined. 

Certain animals have a remarkable power of digesting ligneous tis- 
sue. The beaver is an example of this. The whole of its stomach, and 
more especially that secondary stomach the cecum, is often found 
crammed or plugged with fragments of wood and bark. I have 
opened the crops of several Norwegian ptarmigans, and found them 
filled with no other food than the teodled of pines, upon which they 
evidently feed during the winter. The birds, when cooked, were 
scarcely eatable on account of the strong resinous flavor of their flesh. 

I may here, by-the-way, correct the commonly-accepted version of 
a popular story. We are told that when Marie Antoinette was in- 
formed of a famine in the neighborhood of the Tyrol, and of the 
starving of some of the peasants there, she replied, “I would rather 
eat pie-crust”’ (some of the story-tellers say “pastry ”) “ than starve.” 
Thereupon the courtiers giggled at the ignorance of the pampered 
princess who supposed that starving peasants had such an alternative 
food as pastry. The ignorance, however, was all on the side of the 
courtiers and those who repeat the story in its ordinary form. The 
princess was the only person in the court who really understood the 
habits of the peasants of the particular district in question. They cook 
their meat, chiefly young veal, by rolling it in a kind of dough made 
of sawdust, mixed with as little coarse flour as will hold it together ; 
- then place this in an oven or in wood-embers until the dough is hard- 
ened to a tough crust, and the meat is raised throughout to the cook- 
ing-point. Marie Antoinette said that she would rather eat croutins 
than starve, knowing that these croutins, or meat pie-crusts, were given 
to the pigs ; that the pigs digested them, and were nourished by them 
in spite of the wood-sawdust. 

When I come to the other constituents of vegetable food it will be 
understood that the changes effected in their cookery are but nominal, 
and that nearly the whole business of vegetable cookery consists in 
rendering the cellular tissue more digestible than it is in the raw state ; 
or in breaking it up to liberate its contents. When on the subject of 
cooking animal food, I had to define the cooking temperature as de- 
termined by that at which albumen coagulates, and to point out the 
mischief arising from exceeding that temperature and thus rendering 
the albumen horny and indigestible. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 65 


No such precautions are demanded in the boiling of vegetables. 
The work to be done in cooking a cabbage or a turnip, for example, is 
merely to soften the cellular tissue by the semi-solvent action of hot 
water ; there is nothing to avoid in the direction of overheating. Even 
if the water could be raised above 212°, the vegetable would be rather 
improved than injured thereby. 

» The question that now naturally arises is, whether modern science 
can show us that anything more can be done in the preparation of 
vegetable tissue than the mere softening in boiling water. In my first 
paper I said that the practice of using the digestive apparatus of sheep, 
oxen, etc., for the preparation of our food is merely a transitory bar- 
barism, to be ultimately superseded by scientific cookery, by preparing 
vegetables in such a manner that they shall be as easily digested as 
the prepared grass we call beef and mutton. I do not mean by this 
that the vegetable we should use shall be grass itself, or that grass 
should be one of the vegetables. We must, for our requirement, se- 
lect vegetables that contain as much nutriment in a given bulk as our 
present mixed diet, but in doing so we encounter the serious difficulty 
of finding that the readily soluble cell-wall or main bulk of animal 
food—the gelatine—is replaced in the vegetable by the cellulose, or 
_ woody fiber, which is not only more difficult of solution, but is not, 
nitrogenous—is only a compound of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. 


XXIX. 


Next to the enveloping tissue, the most abundant constituent of 
the vegetables we use as food is starch. Laundry associations may 
render the Latin name “ fecula,” or “farina,” more agreeable when: 
applied to food. We feed very largely on starch, and take it ima 
multitude of forms. Excluding water, it constitutes above three: 
fourths of our “ staff of life” ; a still larger proportion of rice, which 
is the staff of Oriental life, and nearly the whole of arrowroot, sago, 
and tapioca, which may be described as composed of starch and water. | 
Peas, beans, and every kind of seed and grain contain it in prepon- 
derating proportions ; potatoes the same, and even those vegetables 
which we eat bodily, all contain within their cells considerable quan- 
tities of starch. 

Take a small piece of dough, made in the usual manner by moisten- 
ing wheat-flour, put it in a piece of muslin and work it with the fingers 
under water. The water becomes milky, and the milkiness is seen to 
be produced by minute granules that sink to the bottom when the 
agitation of the water ceases. These are starch-granules. They may 
be obtained by similar treatment of other kinds of flour. Viewed 
under a microscope they are seen to be ovoid particles with peculiar 
concentric markings that I must not tarry to describe. The form and 
size of these granules vary according to the plant from which they are 
derived, but the chemical composition is in all cases the same, except- 

VoL. xxv.—5 


66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ing, perhaps, that the amount of water associated with the actual 
starch varies, producing some small differences of density or other 
physical variations. 

Taking arrowroot as an example. To the chemist arrowroot is 
starch in as pure a form as can be found in nature, and he applies this 
description to all kinds of arrowroot ; but, looking at the “ price cur- 
rent’ in the “Grocer” of the current week (February 16th), I find, 
under the first item, which is “ Arrowroot,” the following : “ Bermuda, 
per pound, 1s. to 2s.”; “St. Vincent and Natal, 23d. to 8d.” ; and 
this is a fair example of the usual differences of price of this com- 
modity. Nine farthings to ninety-six farthings is a wide range, and 
should express a wide difference of quality. I have on several occa- 
sions, at long intervals apart, obtained samples of the highest-priced 
Bermuda, and even “missionary” arrowroot, supposed to be perfect, 
brought home by immaculate missionaries themselves, and therefore 
worth three and sixpence per pound, and have compared this with the 
twopenny or threepenny “St. Vincent and Natal.” I find that the 
only difference is that, on boiling in a given quantity of water, the 
Bermuda produces a somewhat stiffer jelly, the which additional te- 
nacity is easily obtainable by using a little more twopenny (or I will 
say fourpenny, to allow a good profit on retailing) to the same quan- 
tity of water. Putting it commercially, the Natal, as retailed at four- 
pence per pound, and the Bermuda at its usual retail price of three 
shillings, I may safely say that nine ounces of Natal, costing twopence 
farthing, is equal to eight ounces of Bermuda, costing eighteenpence. 
Both are starch, and starch is neither more nor less than starch, unless 
it be that the best Bermuda at three shillings per pound is starch plus 
humbug. 

The ultimate chemical composition of starch is the same as that of 
cellulose—carbon and the elements of water, and in the same propor- 
tions ; but the difference of chemical and physical properties indicates 
some difference in the arrangement of these elements. It would be 
quite out of place here to discuss the theories of molecular constitu- 
tion which such differences have suggested, especially as they are all 
rather cloudy. The percentage is: Carbon, 44°4; oxygen, 49°4; and 
hydrogen, 6°2. The difference between starch and cellulose that most 
closely affects my present subject, that of digestibility, is considerable. 
The ordinary food-forms of starch, such as arrowroot, tapioca, rice, etc., 
are among the most easily digestible kinds of food, while cellulose is 
peculiarly difficult of digestion ; in its crude and compact forms, it is 
quite indigestible by human digestive apparatus. 

Neither of them is capable of sustaining life alone ; they contain 
none of the nitrogenous material required for building-up muscle, nerve, 
and other animal tissue. They may be converted into fat, and may 
supply fuel for maintaining animal heat, and may supply some of the 
energies demanded for organic work. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 67 


Serious consequences have resulted from ignorance of this, as shown 
in the practice of feeding invalids on arrowroot. The popular notion 
that anything which thickens to a jelly when cooked must be propor- 
tionally nutritious is very fallacious, and many a victim has died of 
starvation by the reliance of nurses on this theory, and consequently 
feeding an emaciated invalid on mere starch in the form of arrowroot, 
ete. The selling of a fancy variety at ten times its proper value has 
greatly aided this delusion, so many believing that whatever is dear 
must be good. I remember when oysters were retailed in London at 
fourpence per dozen. They were not then supposed to be exceptionally 
nutritious and prescribed to invalids, as they have been lately, since 
their price has risen to threepence each. 

The change which takes place in the cookery of starch may, I 
think, be described as simple hydration, or union with water; not that 
definite chemical combination that may be expressed in terms of chem- 
ical equivalents, but a sort of hydration of which we have so many 
other examples, where something unites with water in any quantity, 
the union being accompanied with an evolution of some amount of 
heat. Striking illustrations of this are presented on placing a piece of 
hydrated soda or potash in water, or mixing sulphuric acid, already 
combined chemically with an equivalent of water, with more water. 
Here we have aqueous adhesion and considerable evolution of heat, 
without the definitive quantitative chemical combination demanded by 
atomic theories. 

In the experiment above described for separating the starch from 
wheat-flour, the starch thus liberated sinks to the bottom of the water, 
and remains there undissolved. The same occurs if arrowroot be 
thrown into water. This insolubility is not entirely due to the inter- 
vention of the envelope of the granules, as may be shown by crushing 
the granules while dry, and then dropping them into water. Such a 
mixture of starch and cold water remains unchanged for a long time— 
Miller says “an indefinite time.” 

When heated to a little above 140° Fahrenheit, an absorption of 
water takes -place through the enveloping membrane of the granule, 
the grains swell up, and the mixture becomes pasty or viscous. If 
this paste be largely diluted with water, the swollen granules still re- 
main as separate bodies, and slowly sink, though a considerable exos- 
mosis of the true starch has occurred, as shown by the thickening of 
the water. It appears that in their original state the enveloping mem- 
brane is much folded, the folds probably forming the curious marking 
of concentric rings, which constitutes the characteristic microscopic 
structure of starch-granules, and that, when cooked at the temperature 
named, the very delicate membrane becomes fully distended by the 
increased bulk of the hydrated and diluted starch. 

A very little mechanical violence, mere stirring, now breaks up 
these distended granules, and we obtain the starch-paste so well 


68 ' THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


known to the laundress, and to all who have seen cooked arrowroot. . 
If this paste be dried by evaporation, it does not regain its former in- 
solubility, but readily dissolves in hot or cold water. This is what I 
should describe as cooked starch. 

Starch may be roasted as well as boiled, but with very different 
effects. The changes that then occur are much more decided, and 
very interesting. I will describe them in my next.—KAnowledge. 


we 
> ane 


HOW FLIES HANG ON. 
By Dr. J. E. ROMBOUTS. 


T was believed at one time that flies and some other insects owe 
the faculty of running over smooth bodies like glass to the nu- 
merous hairs with which their feet are provided catching in the pores 
of the material. The absurdity of this supposition is readily apparent 
on examining glass with the microscope ; and no naturalist can be 
found in these days to uphold it. Another theory, which has been 
frequently advanced, explains the fact by affirming that the feet ter- 
minate in little suckers, by the application of which to the smooth sur- 
face the insect is able to adhere by the force of the pressure of the 
air, in the same manner that the street-boy fastens his leather sucker 
tightly to the flagging. Blackwall’s investigations have demonstrated 
that such a contact as is here supposed does not take place. He has 
seen flies running over the inner sides of the bell-glass receiver of an 
air-pump from which the air had been exhausted. If we examine the 
foot of a fly through the microscope, we shall find that there are no 
suckers on it, but that the foot-cushions are furnished with very fine 
hairs that prevent all close contact with the glass. The theory in ques- 
tion which invokes the pressure of the air was first broached by Dr. 
Derham, and was accepted by most of his contemporary entomologists. 
Other observers, among them Dr. Hooke, were of the opinion that the 
insects were able to attach themselves to the glass by virtue of some 
sticky matter in or on the hair. Blackwall explained the fact by say- 
ing that a viscous substance flowed from each hair ; and probably the 
majority of the later entomologists have accepted this explanation. In 
answer to it, we may say that, if there really were a flow of a viscous 
fluid from the hairs, the flies would not be able to move after they had 
rested in one spot for a little while, for the liquid would have dried or 
hardened so as to detain them ; but we know that the insect can always 
fly away instantaneously, even if it has remained in the same place for 
hours without moving. 
I have concluded from my experiments that it is not the pressure 
of the air nor the power of an adhesive liquid that gives flies the fac- 


HOW FLIES HANG ON. 69 


ulty of running over smooth bodies, but that the power should be 
attributed to the molecular action between solid and liquid bodies ; 
or, in other words, to-eapillary adhesion. 

If we examine the under part of the pulvilli (Fig. 1) with a micro- 
scope, we shall see distinctly that it is furnished with numerous hairs, 
regularly distributed. These hairs terminate, at their lower end, in a 


Fie. 1.—Unper Parr or a Frx’s Foor.—1. Pulvilli, 200 times. 2 Hairs found on the sides, 
670 times. 3. Different forms of hairs. 


kind of bulb, the form of which varies, whence flows an oily liquid that 
dries slowly and does not harden for a long time. The minute drops 
left on the glass by the hairs may be taken away, even after two or 
three days have passed, without our having to moisten them, by sim- 
ply rubbing a piece of fine paper over them. I have devised an ap- 
paratus for collecting these drops by cutting a hole in a piece of board 
over which I fix a glass slide. Turning the board over so that the 
glass shall be at the bottom, I have a little cell with a glass floor. 
With the aid of a piece of paper gummed to the wings, I introduce a 
fly into this cavity in such a manner that the pulvilli shall rest upon 
the floor. Then, putting the board under the microscope with the 
glass slide uppermost, we have the fly’s feet under our eyes. The in- 
sect, struggling for liberty, places his pulvilli against the glass, and 
leaves after each effort, traces that may be observed very distinctly, 
for they are perfectly visible in a good light (Fig. 2). 


70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


We may discover, whenever the feet of the fly come again into 
contact with these tracks or minute drops, that they are composed of 
a very liquid substance, for they spread quite readily on the glass. We 
can not admit, as some naturalists assume, that the liquid can hold the 
club-shaped hair-ends by suction. If this were the case, the ends 


Fie. 2.—UNDER Part oF A Ftiy’s Foot.—1i. Pulvilli, 200 times. 2. Tracks left on the glass. 3. 
Form of the hairs. 

would change shape during the suction, and would take the form of a 

disk. The fly puts its feet down and lifts them up with an incom- 

parable facility that would not exist if the limb were really acted upon 

by the pressure of the air. 

There is no evidence here of an adhesive substance; such a sub- 
stance would harden after two or three days, and would dry or at 
least become viscous, like Venetian turpentine or sirup. 

The power which we are investigating can be due only to capillary 
action ; for the liquid and the hairs are the only parts that touch the 
polished surfaces. The idea occurred to me that the faculty arose 
from the attraction that each minute drop exercises upon the hair with 
which it is in contact ; and I made several experiments to demonstrate 
the possibility of such an effect. 

I suspended a hair from a pane of glass, by means of oil of olives. 
Sticking the cut end of the hair into the oil, I fixed the part, by means 
of the oil that adhered to it, to the glass, which I had previously 
washed with great care. I thus succeeded in suspending from the 


HOW FLIES HANG ON. 71 


glass a hair 16 centimetres long, with a volume of liquid not exceed- 
ing its diameter. Replacing the oil of olives with water, I obtained 
the same result. The hair was 0:06 of a millimetre in diameter, and 
the weight suspended may be calculated to have been 0-00045 of a 
gramme. Repeating the experiment with horse-hairs, I found that a 
hair 7°5 centimetres in length remained suspended under the same 
conditions. The hair was 0°12 of a millimetre thick, consequently the 
weight adhering to the glass was 000085 of a gramme. <A hog’s bristle 
0°18 of a millimetre in diameter was suspended, although, being 55 
millimetres long, it represented a weight of 0°00132 of a gramme. 

I also experimented with a hair ending in a bulb, which I formed 
by holding the hair to a flame. I fixed to the glass a hair 0°06 of a 
millimetre in diameter, terminating in a bulb 0°12 of a millimetre in 
diameter, and weighing 0°00085 of a gramme, or the same as the horse- 
hair previously used. 

The results of these experiments added weight to my supposition 
that the liquid does not have to be viscous to enable the flies to stick. 
To gain an absolute conviction, I weighed a number of flies, and found 
their mean weight to be 0°045 of a gramme. I then ascertained the 
number of hairs on the lower part of the pulvilli, and the size of the 
extremities which they brought to bear upon the glass. It is not an 
exaggeration to put the number on each pelote at 800 or 1,000; this 
would give the fly a total of 10,000 or 12,000 hairs, by means of which, 
with the assistance of a minute drop of liquid, it could support itself 
on a solid body. It is proper to add, however, that a fly running on 
a window has only three or four of its feet on the glass at a time, and 
that therefore only half of its hairs, or 5,000 or 6,000 of them, are 
serving it at once. I repeated my experiments, to determine the 
weight hairs are capable of supporting when suspended in the man- 
ner I have described, and found again that a hair 0°06 of a millimetre 
in diameter will bear a weight of 0°00045 of a gramme ; of 0°12 milli- 
metre, 0°00085 of a gramme; and of 0°18 millimetre, 0°00132 of a 
gramme, when the air is in motion. Then, according to my caleula- 
tions, a fly would be able to walk upon glass, even if it weighed 
0°020 of a gramme more than it actually does. I tested this by past- 
ing little papers on the wings of flies to increase their weight. They 
still kept themselves on the glass; but they walked upward with 
some difficulty when their weight was doubled. 

I perceived in the course of my experiments that the flies, espe- 
cially the weighted ones, ceased to adhere to the glass when it was 
moistened with the breath. Blackwall had essayed to explain this fact 
' by assuming that the sticky substance by means of which he supposed 
they adhered mingled with the water, and was so much diluted by it 
as to cease to be effective. I found, by examination with the micro- 
scope, that this was not the case; no mixture or dilution took place, 
but rather a repulsion of the oily liquid by the water, and that that, or 


72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the contrary of what Blackwall assigned, was the reason adherence 
failed. Adherence likewise failed when the opposite side of the glass 
was moistened with ether, in consequence of the condensation of vapor 
occasioned by the evaporation of the ether. 

Adherence also fails completely when the glass is covered with a 
thin wash of oil. And a fly which has been put upon a glass so 
covered, and is then transferred to a clean glass, will not be able to 
adhere to that till after some interval. An extremely thin coating of 
oil is enough to bring about a failure to adhere ; even the rubbing of 
the finger on the glass is sufficient. The failure in this case is caused 
by the running together of the little drops of liquid on the hairs, by 
which the adhering surface is much reduced below the total surface 
presented by the little drops acting separately. Each foot then acts 
as a single hair, the diameter of which is equivalent to its own; and, 
even if its diameter were equivalent to a millimetre, the six feet bear- 
ing together upon the glass would not be competent to sustain the 
fly. For, according to the experiment with the horse-hair, a diame- 


oO 2, 
MSS SIO 


Fig. 3—Foot or PoLyprosus sERicEvs.—1. Pulvilli, with hairs and hooks. 2. Three hairs, con- 
; siderably magnified. 3. A hair more considerably magnified. 


ter of 0°12 of a millimetre will bear 0°00085 of a gramme ; conse- 
quently, a diameter of a millimetre will bear 0°007 of a gramme, and 
the six feet together 0:042 of a gramme. 

It is very difficult, if not impossible, for a fly to walk on a vertical 
polished surface when it is thinly covered with dust. When, after it 


WHERE DID LIFE BEGIN ? 73 


has made the effort, we examine its feet with the microscope, we shall 
perceive that the interspaces between the hairs are filled with dust. 
After it has rubbed its feet against one another for a short time, and 
has passed its wings over them, the dust will be found to have dis- 
appeared, and it will again be able to walk on glass. The object of 
this labor, which flies may be observed to be performing at every 
moment, is not, then, as was once supposed, to cleanse the wings, but 
to keep the feet in good condition to stick on smooth surfaces. The 
wings are supplied with a kind of rough hairs that may very well fill 
the place of brushes. | 

Blackwall believed that flies cleansed their feet for the purpose of 
removing the superfluous viscous liquid from their pile. If this were 
the case, all the parts of the insect that touched its feet would shortly 
be covered with that substance ; and, if it does not dry but becomes 
gelatinous, the fly would collect all the dust with which it comes in 
contact, and would soon look like a lump of dirt. Contrary to this, 
we know that flies are always clean. 

Other insects that can walk on glass like flies have also, like them, 
little hairs with club-shaped terminations on the bottoms of their feet, 
and adhere in the same way. The accompanying illustration (Fig. 3) 
represents the end of the foot of a beetle (the Polydrosus sericeus), and 
shows that it is provided with all the appurtenances we have been de- 
scribing. 

I think I have proved by my experiments that the faculty possessed 
by flies of walking over polished bodies should not be attributed to a 
viscous liquid, but simply to capillary action. Even if this liquid, 
which causes the hairs to adhere to the polished surface, were nothing 
but pure water, the flies would be able to support themselves upon it, 
whatever position they might be in.—TZranslated for the Popular 
Science Monthly from La Nature. 


yw, 
> A ae 


WHERE DID LIFE BEGIN?* 
By G. HILTON SCRIBNER. 


is aes subject of the distribution of plants and animals has for a long 
time engaged the attention of many able, persistent, and dis- 
criminating investigators. Much time and effort have been expended 
in simply observing and describing the various means by which they 
get about from place to place. The methods and means by which the 
seeds of plants are carried and deposited in new localities, the agency 
of insects, birds, and other animals in their distribution, no less than - 


* Preliminary portion of the author’s monograph upon this subject published by 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. 


74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


their own ingenious contrivances for floating with the wind and tide, 
and for catching on to every moving object, all have been carefully 
observed and faithfully chronicled. 

The first important truth enforced by these observations is that all 
organic life on the earth is, in a generic or tribal sense at least, migra- 
tory and nomadic. The individuals may be rooted and stationary, 
but the tribe is traveling, constantly leaving old fields and surround- 
ings and as constantly arriving in new ones, sometimes crowded out, 
sometimes starved out, and sometimes invited out, but always moving 
—moving on to a new environment, better suited, taking all things into 
consideration, to satisfy the pressing needs of, and to develop and 
raise in the scale of being, both the individual and the species, 

A second great truth taught by examining the methods of these 
movements and studying the causes of this ceaseless tramp of organic 
life is, that certain essential elements of the environment itself are 
usually found to be traveling with or a little in advance of the migra- 
tory species. In other words, the rainfall and isothermal lines, the cli- 
matic and other conditions of life, are constantly and slowly changing 
relative to the locality, but moving in fact. It has been frequently 
observed that certain species, occupying some particular territory now, 
have at some recent time in the past been enabled by such changes 
to crowd out other occupants of the same territory, and in turn will 
be undoubtedly, by similar changes and means, crowded out them- 
selves. All kinds of plants and animals which have remained in one 
locality until they have lost the means of movement, which can not 
or will not travel, must sooner or later first degenerate and then be 
exterminated. For instance, a rain-belt or an area of dew-fall veers 
slowly but permanently from the north to the south; an arid soil is 
made fertile, and a fertile soil is left arid; the grass and flowering 
plants in endless variety move with the dew or the rain-belt ; the deer 
follow the grass, and the wolves follow the deer ; a thousand varieties 
of insects follow the flowering plants, and the insectivorous birds and 
other animals, herbivorous and carnivorous, bring up the rear, and so 
on, through all the interdependencies of life, the change of a single 
essential condition, the movement of one variety, causes a disturbance 
and movement of all in the neighborhood. Thence comes all this 
ceaseless and migratory activity among the flora and fauna of the 
earth. 

This condition of things would indicate the possibility at least that 
life upon the earth had in the main commenced in some favored area, 
and traveled thence far and wide over the surface of the globe, driven 
out by changes of environment, lessening in effect the favorable con- 
ditions of its development in the place of its beginning, and ever 
beckoned on by more favorable conditions in adjacent districts. As 
there are no plants and no animals, with the exception of man, and 
possibly his companion the dog, and his pest the rat, that can thrive 


WHERE DID LIFE BEGIN ? 75 


in most latitudes where any life is possible, so it is very evident that 
plants and animals, as we now see them, could not have made their 
advent upon the earth universally or simultaneously. Every geologi- 
cal fact contradicts both suppositions. Besides, to allege either is to 
claim, first, that all parts of the earth became habitable, for some form 
of life, at the same time, which is scarcely possible ; and, secondly, 
such an allegation would do away with the main question of distribu- 
tion, render superfluous most means of movement, and make it sheer 
nonsense to talk about the time, methods, and character of the distri- 
bution of that which had from the beginning been fully distributed. 
It is much more probable that life made its first advent upon this 
globe in some favored locality, and not everywhere at once. 

It would seem as axiomatic a proposition as can be made in natural 
science, that life would make its first appearance on that part of the 
earth, or on that part of any developing planet, which by climatic and 
and all other concurrent conditions was first prepared, if not to origi- 
nate, at least to receive and maintain it. Nothing can be more certain 
than that it could not make its first appearance on that part, or on any 
of those parts, wanting these conditions. 

By concurrent conditions of climate or temperature, wherever the 
phrase is used herein, I mean such currents of air and ocean, such 
evaporation and condensation of water, such disintegration of rock, 
such electrical and chemical changes, new combinations, phenomena, 
and movements as are influenced by or accompany changing climate 
or temperature, together with all the secondary and remote effects 
caused thereby. And in speaking of the first appearance of life it 
matters not, to my mind, whether it was a creation, a development, 
or a transplantation ; whether it was a lichen on the rock or a monad 
in the sea ; asingle solitary primordial cell, or one molecule of plasmic 
matter anywhere. ‘This inquiry is not for the causes, methods, char- 
acter, or extent of first life ; it is simply and only concerning its prob- 
able primus locus. 

If we are so fortunate as to discover where life began on the earth, 
it will be safe enough to rest upon the assumption that much, if not 
all, of the present life on the globe is its legitimate result and outcome. 


I. 


Are there, then, any data, any accepted facts touching the condi- 
tion of our globe antecedent to the advent of plants and animals which 
would enable us to compare and contrast its past with its present con- 
dition, and which under known laws would indicate what portion of 
the earth’s surface first became, by temperature, climate, and other 
concurrent conditions, habitable for life? Can any reasonable, proba- 
ble, and still existing cause be discovered occurring in the very center 
of such first habitable portion which would have dispersed all vegetal 
and animal life and sent it in equal distribution through all the seas 


76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


and over all the great continents as rapidly as such other portions of 
the earth became by temperature, climate, and other conditions ready 
to receive and maintain it? Is there any one locality answering to 
these conditions, and yet of which it may be said, in a grander and 
truer sense than it was said of Rome, that all roads lead to and from 
it ; not only highways diverging to every part of the world, but with 
vehicles upon them; seed-wagons running constantly in the direction 
of the most favorable distribution and to the remotest parts of the 
‘earth? Any locality so related to the topography of the whole earth 
as to render such extensive movements of plants and animals from it 
in all conceivable directions, and to all distances, not only easy and 
probable, but consistent with their present distribution? Is there 
anything in similarity of form, anatomy, structure, size, color, food, 
habits, habitat, longevity, modes of propagation, terms of gestation, 
and capacity for inter-breeding between certain flora and fauna of the 
Eastern Continents and the Western, which would suggest that many 
species and varieties so widely separated might have come originally 
from the same locality and ancestry? Are plants and animals always 
improved, developed, and rendered prolific more by being moved one 
way than another? Are the prevailing bottom currents of air and 
ocean in the direction of such favorable movements? Are cases of 
extermination and degeneration the result of a counter-movement, or 
a failure to make such favorable movements ? 

Many facts and considerations exist and may be presented pointing 
to a solution of these questions, and fairly answering some of them. 

Let us consider, in the first place, the probable condition of the 
earth previous to the advent of any sort of life upon its surface. A 
large portion of those who have formed any intelligent opinions, in 
the light of modern thought and investigation, upon the subject of 
cosmogony, believe and hold very firmly that the earth was at one 
time an intensely hot globe—indeed, a molten mass—and that in the 
lapse of time it has cooled down by radiation to its present tempera- 
ture. It is not at all necessary for the purposes of the present inquiry 
to examine the so-called nebular theory, nor even to ask when or how 
this globe became so heated, nor to what extent it has now become 
cooled, nor need we inquire whether the earth is now but a molten 
mass covered with a comparatively thin crust, or has cooled and hard- 
ened to its very center. It is important, however, to have it under- 
stood at the outset that the facts and considerations here presented 
are addressed to those, and those only, who have reached and adopted 
the conclusion that this globe, at some time in the process of its forma- 
tion and development, passed through a fiery ordeal, that the primary 
rocks are of igneous formation, and that there are many other existing 
conditions and obvious facts which can not well be accounted for 
except upon the hypothesis that the whole earth was once a molten 
mass. 


WHERE DID LIFE BEGIN ? a9 


Even after these admissions one embarrassment presents itself, hap- 
pily, however, not affecting the argument, viz. : 

So fully has every conceivable inference, every supposable fact 
and phenomenon in the development and history of the earth, been 
reviewed and discussed over and over again, in the light of this primi- 
tive glowing molten mass, by able and discriminating writers, that it 
may seem presumptuous at this late day to attempt any new deduc- 
tion, or to draw any new conclusion radically important, touching this 
matter. But if the views here presented have been expressed before, 
in the relation of cause and effect, the writer has not been fortunate 
enough to meet with them, and it is quite safe to say that if they are 
correct their significance as a factor in other problems at least will 
not be questioned. 

It is not claimed that these views have been proved to be true 
inductively, but there are certain facts and phenomena pointing di- 
rectly to definite conclusions hereinafter stated which I am sure every 
one holding and believing that the earth was at one time a molten 
mass will find it easier and more reasonable to admit than to deny. 

Regarding the earth, then, as at one time an intensely hot globe, 
totally destitute of organic life, one of the principal and indispensable 
conditions of rendering it habitable for plants and animals evidently 
would be the radiation into space of its excessive and destructive heat. 
The accomplishment of this, with the train of concurrent effects which 
would follow, or at least ever have followed the gradual reduction of 
temperature, is all that would be necessary to render the earth a suit- 
able place for the maintenance of vegetal and animal life. At any 
rate this is precisely what has taken place since the commencement of 
the Azoic age, and is still taking place on parts of the earth’s surface 
to-day, visible and obvious to any observer. 

Our inquiry, therefore, is reduced to this question: What part or 
parts of the earth’s surface first became sufficiently cooled by radiation 
to be habitable by plants and animals ? 

A supposed case may help us in reaching a correct answer to this 
question. Let us assume, then, that the earth, at the time it was a 
molten mass, had been and was revolving in an orbit so near the sun 
that the amount of heat it would have been receiving from the sun 
would have just equalized the amount of heat it was losing by radia- 
tion. Under these conditions it would have cooled as the sun cooled 
—neither faster nor slower. This helps us to understand that the heat 
received by the earth from the sun is, and ever has been, an offset, so 
far as it goes, to the heat lost from the earth by radiation. A state- 
ment of the loss of heat from the earth during any definite time may 
be formulated in this way: From the heat lost by the earth by radia- 
tion during a given period subtract the heat received by the earth from 
the sun during the same period, and the remainder will be the earth’s 
net or actual loss of heat. Sidereal heat received by the earth being 


78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


infinitesimal in comparison, is not here taken into the calculation. 
But, were it more considerable, it would not be important in this con- 
nection, for it falls upon all parts of the earth about equally. 

It is evident, from the present condition of the earth’s surface, that 
at the time it was a molten mass, and fora long time thereafter, it 
radiated heat into space much more rapidly than it received heat from 
the sun ; but nevertheless the heat of the sun is, and always has been, 
offsetting the loss of heat from the earth by radiation to the full ex- 
tent of the heat which the earth had been receiving from the sun 
during the time. 

But this sun-heat, this offset to radiation, has not been received by 
all parts of the earth equally. The equatorial belt, or torrid zone, has 
always received the most per square foot, or in proportion to its area. 
The two intermediate or temperate zones have received the next largest 
amount per square foot, or in proportion to their area ; while the polar 
or frigid zones have received the least per square foot, or in proportion 
to their area. If the amount of sun-heat received at the equator be 
rated at 1,000, then, upon the same basis, the average of sun-heat 
throughout the torrid zone should be rated at 975, the average sun- 
heat throughout the temperate zones at '757, and the average sun-heat 
throughout the frigid zones at 454, or less than one half that of the 
torrid and less than two thirds that-of the temperate zones. We speak 
here, and shall hereafter, of the geographical zones of the earth for 
the sake of convenience. 

The greatest amount of heat received from the sun and offsetting 
radiation from the earth, other things being equal, is, of course, as we 
have seen, at the equator, and less and less every degree north and 
south of this line to the poles. If, then, the frigid zones have been 
during all this time receiving the least heat from the sun—the least 
offset to their own loss of heat by radiation—does it not follow that 
they were the first parts of the earth sufficiently cooled to maintain 
vegetal and animal life? The inference seems inevitable. 


CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM. 


By rue Rev. Canon CURTEIS. 


7 title at the head of this article may appear to some a contra- 
diction in terms. But it is not really so. And no religious man 
need shrink from saying : “I am a Christian agnostic. I hold firmly 
by the doctrine of St. Paul, who exclaims, in sheer despair of fathom- 
ing the unfathomable, ‘O the depth of God! How unsearchable are 
his judgments, and inscrutable his ways!’ I say, with Job and all the 
great prophets of the Old Testament, ‘Canst thou by searching find 


CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM. 79 


out God?’ And I bow to the authority of Christ, who tells me, ‘No 
man hath seen God at any time’ ; ‘ God is a Spirit’ ; ‘ Blessed are they 
that have not seen and yet have believed.’ And, in so holding, I am in 
full accord with the Church. Isay with her, ‘We know Thee now by 
faith’ ; ‘The Father is incomprehensible (tm-mensus)’ ; ‘There is but 
one God, eternal, incorporeal, indivisible, beyond reach of suffering, 
infinite —in short, a profound and inscrutable Being. Nor do I find 
that Catholic theology, for 1800 years, has ever swerved from a clear 
and outspoken confession of this agnosticism. So early as the second 
century, we read in Justin Martyr, ‘Can a man know God, as he knows 
arithmetic or astronomy? Assuredly not.’* Irenzus, in the same cen- 
tury, repeatedly speaks of God as ‘indefinable, incomprehensible, in- 
visible.’+ That bold thinker in the third century, Clement of Alexan- 
dria, declares (with Mr. Spencer) that the process of theology is, with 
regard to its doctrine of God, negative and agnostic, always ‘setting 
forth what God is not, rather than what he is.’{ All the great fathers 
of the fourth century echo the same statement. St. Augustine is strong 
on the point. John of Damascus, the greatest theologian of the East, 
says bluntly, ‘It is impossible for the lower nature to know the higher.’ * 
Indeed, it would be a mere waste of time to adduce any more of the 
great Catholic theologians by name. They are all ‘agnostics’ to a 
man. And M. Emile Burnouf is quite right when he says, ‘Les doc- 
teurs chrétiens sont unanimes 4 déclarer que leur dieu est caché et in- 
compréhensible, qu’il est plein de mystéres, qu’il est poles de la foi et 
non pas de la raison.’ ” | 

Thus there is nothing new under the sun, not even in the high- 
est flights of modern philosophy ; and no man, with all the fathers 
of the Church at his back, need hesitate to say, “I am a Chris- 
tian agnostic.” Yet all who concur in this will, I am sure, warmly 
welcome a powerful auxiliary like Mr, Herbert Spencer, if only he 
remain true to the principles so lucidly set forth in the last num- 
ber of this review (“ Popular Science Monthly,” January, 1884). For 
although he might not himself care to qualify his philosophy by the 
‘adjective “Christian,” fearing thereby to limit—as a philosopher is 
bound not to do—his perfect freedom of speculation, still his guidance 
is none the less valuable to those who are approaching the same sub- 
' ject from a different side. The Christian, indeed, is, of all men, the 
most absolutely bound-over to be truthful. When, therefore, any great 
leader of thought arises, whether in the higher or the lower depart- 
ments of human inquiry, the liegeman of a “God of truth” must 
needs feel such reverence as Dante expressed for Aristotle, “the great 


* “Trypho,” sec. 3. + iv, 34, 6, ete. ¢ “Strom.,” v, 11. 

# “Te fide,” i, 12. 

] “Science des Religions,” p. 15. (Christian doctors are unanimous in declaring that 
their God is hidden and incomprehensible, that he is full of mystery, that he is the ob- 
ject of faith and not of reason.) 


80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


master of them that know”; and will borrow from the other twin 
luminary of the medieval Church, St. Augustine, that most apt of all 
mottoes for a really “Catholic” philosopher, “The Christian claims 
as his Master’s own possession every broken fragment of truth, wher- 
ever it may be found.” In the firm conviction, then, that in Mr. Spen- 
cer’s works much truth—not in detached fragments merely, but in 
large, coherent masses—is to be found, the present writer hopes to 
show how little there is to repudiate, how much to accept and to be 
sincerely grateful for, in his masterly speculations : 

1. First of all, Mr. Spencer led us in his interesting article* to 
take a retrospective view of religion, in its origin and history. Nat- 
urally, he does not approach the question in the old-fashioned way. 
His purpose is not dogmatic, but analytic. That lovely Haggada, 
therefore, or religious story whereby, for babes and philosophers 
alike, the wonderful genius which constructed the Jewish Scriptures 
has projected, once for all, upon a plane surface (as it were) a pict- 
ure of the origin of all things— this our man of science properly 
passes by ; and he proceeds to inquire how precisely the beginnings of 
things, and especially of religion, may be conceived. And since, in 
these days, we have all of us “evolution” upon the brain, it was not 
to be expected that any other line of thought should be attempted. 
Indeed, it may be fairly conceded that, amid our modern scientific 
environment, no other method of inquiry is just at present possible. 
We belong to our own age. And while other ages have taken grand 
truths en bloc and have deftly hammered them out into finer shapes 
for practical use, the special delight and the crowning glory of our 
own age consist rather in a power of tracking things backward. Hence 
a hundred books of (so-called) “ origins” issue annually from the press. 
Of course, no origin is ever really described, simply because there is 
no such thing in nature as “an origin.” If there were, at that point 
all hunt upon the traces of evolution would abruptly come to an end ; 
whereas, by the usual scientific hypothesis, evolution knows neither 
beginning nor end. By “origins,” therefore, can only be meant arbi- 
trary points a little way back, marked (as children or jockeys set up a 
starting-post) for commencing the inquiry. Indeed, it is very easy to 
imagine some imperturbable savage—say, a Zooloo of Natal or an Eng- _ 
lish school-boy—asking the most reprehensible questions as to what 
happened before the “origin” began. Such a critic would be sure to 
express a languid wonder, for instance, as to how the primeval star- 
mist got there ; or he would casually inquire whence the antediluvian 
thunder-bolt, which introduced vegetable life upon this globe, procured 
its vegetation ; or he would ask why Mr. Spencer’s aboriginal divine, 
roused from his post-prandial nightmare, should have selected a 
“ghost,” out of the confused kaleidoscope of his dreams, as the recipi- 
ent of divine honors. Nay, as was long ago suggested by a much 


* “Religious Retrospect and Prospect,” ‘ Popular Science Monthly,” January, 1884. 


CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM. 81 


more serious thinker in reply to a similar theory : “To stop there is to 
see but the surface of things; for it still remains to ask how mankind 
have effected this transformation of a metaphor (or a dream) into a 
god, and what mysterious force has pushed them into makin g the tran- 
sition. . . . In order to change any sensuous impression into a god, 
there must have previously existed the idea of a god.”* Yes, clearly 
the latent idea must have been, in some way, already ingrained in 
human nature, so that it only needed (as Plato would say) an awaken- 
ing from its hibernation ; else why should human dreams produce a 
“religion” and bestial dreams produce none? The question, there- 
fore, is not fully answered by Mr. Spencer’s entertaining speculation, 
any more than the miracle (as Dr. Biichner all but calls it) of “heredi- 
tary gout” is explained by the jubilant pean of the materialist, “‘ Give 
me but matter and force, and all obscurities instantly vanish away !” + 
For no reasonable man, who accepts the modern doctrine of the eter- 
nity and identity of energy, can entertain a doubt that religion—the 
most powerful human stimulant we know of—must have pre-existed 
somehow in the bosom of the unknown, though it only revealed itself 
at a certain fitting stage in the development of the world. And when 
we have reached this confession, have we not simply found our way 
back to that general truth which the Church has couched in every sort 
of parable and symbol, viz., that (the “how” and the “when” being 
left for history to unravel) religious ideas, especially in their most 
fruitful and catholic form, are a ‘gift, an unfolding, a revelation from 
the bosom of the unknown God? 

2. There are, however, far more serious and more ‘ats subjects 
for reflection suggested by Mr. Spencer’s paper, than any which relate 
to the past. Let by-gones be by-gones! Our contemporaries are an 
impatient generation, and are very apt to consign to their mental 
waste-paper basket anything which they are pleased to condemn as 
“ancient history.” What, then, has Mr. Spencer to tell us about the 
present state of religion? and what hopes does he unfold to us as we 
gaze, under his direction, into the future ? 

It is truly disappointing to be obliged to say of so devoted a stu- 
dent and so patient a thinker (1), that he has failed to work his sub- 
ject out, and (2) that he has fallen into a passion.[ It would be well 
worth while to make these two not unfriendly charges, if only they 
should succeed in inducing this able writer to give to the world some 
further product of his thinking on the strangely fascinating subject of 
religion. For the truth is that, when Mr. Bradlaugh and others pro- 
claim, “I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of 
God,” * they almost put themselves out of court at once by parading 
their inherent defect of sympathy with ordinary mental conditions. 
And when, in higher social grades, Dr. Congreve and the Positivists 

* Burnouf, p.29. —« + Biichner, “ Vie et Lumiére” (French translation), p. 315. 

} “First Principles,” p. 115. # “Plea for Atheism,” p. 4. 

VOL, xxv.—6 


82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


openly “substitute Humanity for God,”* and refuse the transforming 
adoration of the heart to any conception which is not level to the 
bare positive understanding, they also—with all their eloquence and 
persuasive amiability—“ charm” their contemporaries utterly in vain. 
As modern England will never again become papal and medizyval, so 
(it may be safely predicted) modern England will never become athe- 
ist or positivist. Our countrymen are in too healthy and vigorous a 
mental condition to impale themselves on either horn of this unconge- 
nial dilemma. But they may, and it is to be hoped they will, surren- 
der themselves to the far higher and more scientific teaching of men 
like Mr. Spencer ; and will learn from them to think out to just and 
practical conclusions the deeply interesting—and to some minds the 
quite absorbing—question of religion, 

But then—with all respect be it said—-Mr. Spencer must really help 
us to think further on than he has yet done; or he will find the Chris- 
tian clergy (whom he is under temptation to despise) will be before- 
hand with him. He has most ably “ purified” for us our idea of God ; 
he has pruned away all kinds of anthropomorphic accretions ; he has 
dressed up and ridiculed afresh the Guy Fawkes crudities of by-gone 
times, which he apparently “‘sees no reason should ever be forgot” ; 
he has reminded the country parsons of a good many scientific facts, 
which they read, it is true, in every book and review from Monday till 
Saturday and then so provokingly forget on Sundays; and he has 
schooled them into the reflection that a Power present in innumerable 
worlds hardly needs our flattery, or indeed any kind of service from 
us at all. But then all this is abundantly done already by the steady 
reading, from every lectern throughout the land, of those grand old 
prophets and apostles of the higher religious thought, who perpetually 
harp upon this same string. “God,” they reiterate, “is not a man,” 
that he should lie or repent ; “ Bring no more vain oblations” ; “The 
sacrifices of God are a troubled spirit” ; “Thou thoughtest wickedly 
that I am such a one as thyself” ; “God dwelleth not in temples made 
with hands, neither is worshiped with men’s hands, as though he 
needed anything.” Nay, the present writer—who probably sits under 
a great many more sermons in the course of the year than Mr. Spencer 
does—is firmly persuaded that every curate in the Church of England 
and every Nonconformist minister are perfectly aware of these great 
truths and on suitable occasions preach them ; and that what they 
want to be taught is something beyond all this A BC and all this ne- 
gation—viz., what are the fundamental conceptions on which they 
may securely build up, not their philosophical negations, but their 
popular assertions about religion. For a religion of mere negations is 
as good as no religion at all. It seems hardly worth while to go down 
Sunday after Sunday to St. George’s Hall, or to any other hall, simply 
to be told that Heaven has nothing whatever to say to us. We can 


* “ Positivist Prayer-book.” 


CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM. 83 


not believe that we are physically so well cared for as we are—natu- 
rally selected, evolved, provided with every possible adaptation to our 
material environment; and given the prize at last as “the fittest of all 
possible beings to survive ”—and then are left utterly in the lurch as 
regards all our higher wants. No, our instinct revolts against such a 
supposition ; and we crave to know on what grounds something can 
be said, as well as on what grounds almost everything can be denied. 

3. Now, Mr. Spencer could help us in this quest, if he would. His 
analysis, in “ First Principles,” of our religious conceptions shows what 
he could do. He there—while carefully warning us that all our knowl- 
edge is merely relative, and that our reasoning faculties do not present 
to us truth as it is, but only as it is reflected on the mirror of our 
mind—places nevertheless such confidence in those faculties that he 
allows them, in Buddhist-fashion, to strip away feature after feature, 
as it were, from our religious conception of God, and to reduce it to a 
grim skeleton labeled “ Everlasting Force.” But why “ Force” only ? 
To begin with, surely this also is a “conception.” It is engendered 
by a multitude of observations blending into a higher unity and taking 
at last a definite shape. And the only sanction it has to rest upon is, 
not (ex hypothest) any certainty or absolute truth in human logic, but 
simply an ineradicable faith that, to us at any rate, the notions of 
“permanence” and ‘force ” sufficiently represent, though they may 
not actually be, the truth. We seem, then, already to have made the 
grand transition from reasoning to conceiving, from destruction to 
construction, from restless analysis to quiet synthesis, and from logic 
to belief that the great Unknown is, in one word, Power—“ an infinite 
and eternal energy.” 

4, But just as we draw from the stores of our own consciousness 
this idea of “‘ Power,” of force, of muscular or mental energy, precisely 
in the same way we are justified in drawing the idea of “purpose ”’ in 
the direction of that energy. In fact, wescan not anyhow conceive 
of force without “ direction” of some kind ; and our instincts im- 
peratively demand of us, when we think of force in the highest and 
sublimest way we can, that we impregnate that idea with another 
product of our plastic imagination, and conceive it as efficiently directed 
to some worthy end—in short, as power and wisdom combined. This 
may be, and undoubtedly is, quite as human and relative and pro- 
visional a conception as that of a pure blind, unguided Force would be. 
But while the mind shrinks with unmitigated horror from the notion 
of “an infinite and eternal Energy,” loose as it were in the universe, 
without any rational purpose or aim, but wielding portentous cosmic 
forces at hap-hazard, as a madman or a rogue-elephant might do, the 
mind rests and is satisfied when it can once feel assured that all is 
guided and has perfect efficiency for (what we can only call) some 
worthy “design.” The word is, of course, utterly inadequate when 
things of such a scale are in question. But can Mr. Spencer or any one 


84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


else deny that, whatever sanction the human and relative conception 
of “power ” draws from the inner certainties of our own sensations, 
that same, or a still higher, sanction can also be claimed for the con- 
ception of an infinite and eternal “ Wisdom”? And if so, it appears 
that, if the agnostic lines which had reached the one conception were 
prolonged a little further, they would also reach the other ; and that 
so the magnificent idea would be recovered for mankind of an Intelli- 
gent Being, with whom our infinitesimal yet kindred minds can enter 
into relations, and the wonder of whose works we can—as surely men 
of science above all others do—appreciate and assimilate as a kind of 
nutriment to ourselves. 

5. But even then the imperative instinct which demanded the in- 
tegration of Nature’s observed forces into a conception of Infinite 
Power, and which was irresistibly borne on to add wisdom also to that 
Power—even then it is not pacified. It clamors for one more quality ; 
and then it will be still. Relative, human, provisional—call it what 
you will—nevertheless this third and complementary conception will 
no more take a denial, will no. more obey a frown and waive its right 
to rush into the inevitable combination, than matter will politely waive 
its chemical affinities. As the human mind is stupefied with terror at 
the bare idea of swift and gigantic energy abroad in the universe with- 
out purpose or intelligence (as we inadequately say) to guide it, so 
assuredly the human heart stands still in palsied horror at the frightful 
thought of “an infinite and eternal force,” guided indeed by an infi- 
nite cunning, but checked by no sort of goodness, mercy, or love. In 
short, no authority on earth—not even that of all the philosophers and 
scientists and theologians that have ever lived—could impose upon any 
man, who thought Mr. Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles” out to 
their ultimate conclusion, the portentous belief in an eternal, almighty, 
and omniscient Drviz. And therefore to add goodness to the other 
two factors of power and* wisdom, which we are compelled by the 
constitution of our nature to attribute to the Great Unknown, is par- 
donable because inevitable. But if so, it seems that agnosticism—if 
allowed to develop freely on its own lines, without artificial hindrance 
—must needs become a “ Christian agnosticism.” And it only remains 
to ask, why in the world should not such an agnostic “ go to church,” 
fall in with the religious symbolism in ordinary use, and contribute his 
moral aid to those who have taken service under the Christian name 
on purpose to purify gross and carnal eyes, till they become aware of 
the Great Unknown behind the veil, and so come to relatively know 
what absolutely passes knowledge? 

6. There is only one obstacle in the way; and that is of so un- 
worthy a character that it passes comprehension how men of culti- 
vation can allow it a moment’s influence upon their conduct. The 
objection referred to has never been more clearly expressed than by 
one whom we all delight to honor and to listen to, Professor Tyndall. 


CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM. 85 


He wrote as follows in the pages of this Review a few years ago 
(November, 1878) : “It is against the mythologic scenery, if I may 
use the term, rather than against the life and substance of religion, 
that Science enters her protest.” But how, in the name of common 
sense and charity, is religion—that special provision for bringing 
strength to the feeble-minded, elevation to the lowly, and wisdom 
to the ignorant—to be brought home to all mankind, without the 
use of even coarse symbolism, which is as “relative”? to the masses 
for whom it is intended as scientific conceptions are to philosophers ? 
In both cases the realities behind are most imperfectly represented ; 
and a higher intelligence, if it were not loving as well as intelligent, 
would certainly display impatience with Professor Tyndall’s own 
kindly effort a few pages further on, where he says, “How are we to 
Jigure this molecular motion? Suppose the leaves to be shaken 
from a birch-tree ; and, to jix the idea, suppose each leaf to repel and 
attract,” and soon. Is it not clear that the Professor is here doing 
the very same thing, in order to bring science home (all honor to 
him !) to the unlearned, which he refuses to the ministers of religion 
when they try to bring home the Gospel to the poor? How can 
such subtile ideas, such far-reaching thoughts, as those of theology 
be brought home to the mass of mankind without the boldest use of 
symbol and of figured speech? How can that most precious result 
of Christianity, a unity of general conceptions about mankind and 
about the Great Unknown, be secured without a symbolism of the 
very broadest and most striking kind? Panoramas can not be painted 
with stippling-brushes. Nor, indeed, does any sort of painter aim to 
compete with the bald truthfulness of photography. He does not 
imitate—he merely hints. He throws out things éwvavta ovvetoioty, 
He summons the imagination of the spectators themselves to his aid 
and awakens their finer susceptibilities. And by this means a “ pict- 
ure,” which is in itself the most unreal of all unrealities, becomes in 
skillful hands a fruitful reality for good, perhaps, to a hundred gen- 
erations. 

If, then, any scientific man does not for himself need rituals and 
symbols, still let him remember how invaluable an aid these things 
are to the mass of mankind. Let him reflect how the purest and 
loftiest ideas of the Eternal lie enshrined within every form of Chris- 
tian adoration, and how the most touching memories speak in every 
Christian sacrament. Is it nothing, too, to be brought in contact 
with the boundless gentleness and tolerance of Christ ; to hear such 
words as “ He that is able to receive it, let him receive it,” and “‘ He 
that is not against us is on our side”? Is it nothing to feel the sympa- 
thy of such a devoted benefactor of Europe as St. Paul, and to accept 
his judgment that “he who regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the 
Lord ; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not 
regard it”? Nay, is it nothing to bow the knee in acknowledged 


86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


brotherhood beside the simple and the lowly ; to submit to learn from 
them, as we all learn from our children in the nursery; and to feel 
ourselves, in spite of our divergent views and notions, in the attitude 
of common adoration before the Great Unknown? Better this, 
surely, by far than to cover with philosophic scorn ministrants whose 
days are given to soothing every form of human distress, amid whose 
simplest teaching can always be detected in undertone the deep 
thoughts of Hebrew prophets and apostles, and to despise whom is to. 
crown once more, with paper or with thorns, the meek head of Curisv. 
—WNineteenth Century. 


THE BEGINNINGS OF METALLURGY. 


By Dr. E. REYER, or Vienna. 


He recognized cosmical conditions, we conclude that the earth, 
like the other bodies in the universe, was originally a mass of 
vapor, which has undergone gradual cooling, condensation, and solidi- 
fication. The heavier parts collected into a core, which, very likely 
resembling meteoric iron, was in the primeval epoch covered with 
glowing liquid masses of silicates, and the whole was surrounded by 
dense vapors. As the solidification proceeded, the ocean was deposited 
from the vaporous envelope, while the rarer atmosphere remained 
above. Both these elements are still mobile, and afford media for 
organic life. 

The stratification of the rocks follows the existence of the ocean. 
The water dissolves matter out of the silicate crust and deposits it 
again. Thus have been and are still formed shales, sandstones, and 
limestones. The depositions have not, however, gone on without in- 
terruption ; but the sedimentary beds have in all periods down to our 
own day been at times broken through by eruptions of the underlying 
silicates. Hence we meet so frequently in the various formations alter- 
nate masses of sedimentary and eruptive rocks. Both kinds have been 
used by men from the earliest times in tools and as building materials. 
On the one hand, stones have been employed in slabs and blocks in 
the construction of houses and walls, to mark graves, and for altars ; 
on the other hand, smaller stones and flakes have been fashioned into 
instruments for beating and slinging; tough stones having weight 
have served as hammers, sharp chips of flint and obsidian for cutting 
and boring and piercing instruments. By the contrivance of these 
instruments man put himself in a condition to perform numerous opera- 
tions. ‘The ancient Egyptians, the Central-American races, and other 
civilized peoples certainly executed a large part of their works in stone 
with stone tools. Even the smoothing and polishing and the boring 


THE BEGINNINGS OF METALLURGY. 87 


and sawing of stones do not necessarily require metallic tools, but 
were all formerly done with instruments of stone and wood. 

It was believed a little while ago that the stone age was superseded 
by a bronze age. A closer examination of the subject has made it 
clear that we have in this case to deal not with sharply distinguished 
intervals, but with different degrees and conditions of civilization, 
which existed at the same time among different nations, and even 
among different classes of the same nation. Stone tools and weapons 
were still in use in Northern Europe long after the hard metals had 
become common in the South ; but even in Southern Europe the poorer 
classes continued to use stone implements till late in historical times. 

Survivals of stone-age civilization are now met with among only a 
few peoples ; men have as arule advanced to the metal-using stage, 
which has acquired its significance in consequence of the production 
of the hard metals. It is our purpose to review the origin, the ac- 
quisition, and the application of these important materials. 

I have already spoken of the core of the earth as consisting chiefly 
of iron, while the crust is composed of eruptive silicates. ‘The fluid 
from which these masses have been derived is a mixture of several 
combinations, the principal elements of which are oxygen, silicon, the 
lighter earth and alkali metals, and the heavier metal, iron. Oxygen 
predominates, and is combined with the other elements into stony 
oxides. ‘The excess of oxygen floats around the oxidized dead-burned 
globe as life-air. I have mentioned only iron among the heavy metals 
important in civilization because it is the one that plays the most im- 
portant part in the composition of the rocks. We also find smaller 
masses of other heavy metals in the primitive matter of the earth. 
Most of them appear sparsely distributed in the eruptive rocks in com- 
bination with sulphur, but a few occur in oxides. Besides these we 
also find ores concentrated in crevices and in pockets in rock-masses 
of different kinds, where they have been carried in aqueous solution. 
These local accumulations of ores first made it possible for men to 
obtain the rarer metals in masses and apply them to use. The metal- 
lic sulphurets nearer to the surface have been changed by atmospheric 
action partly into the simple metals, partly into oxides. This was a 
fact of great importance in the beginnings of metallurgic art ; for the 
oxides are much easier to reduce to the condition of pure metal than 
the sulphurets. The unmixed metals—the precious metals and copper 
—are, of course, immediately available, and can be brought into any 
form that may be desired by hammering or casting. But little advan- 
tage was, however, derived from this circumstance. The first decisive 
step was not made till the hard metals, bronze and iron, were pro- 
duced. These substances could not, however, be obtained at once, for 
neither the tin required for the manufacture of bronze nor iron in the 
metallic state was at hand ; and it was a great step when the thought 
first occurred to man of separating the metallic elements from their 


88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


stony ores. The myths of different nations generally indicate a god 
or a hero as the inventor of metallurgy ; but it is now hardly doubt- 
ful that this god was in most cases a human mind directed by some 
accident. 

Tin, iron, and the other metals, as we have said, do not occur pure, 
but as oxides in stone. They have a strong affinity for oxygen, and 
can not be separated from it and produced in a metallic condition, ex- 
cept by the aid of powerful reagents. There is one element which has 
a stronger affinity for oxygen than any metal—glowing charcoal, which, 
in the contest with the metallic oxide, wrests the oxygen from it. In 
the innumerable places where the primitive man—hunter, fisher, or 
nomad—built his fires, there can not have failed to be some where the 
red-hot coals would lie upon a soil containing ores. This would be 
sufficient to reveal the metallic treasure. By the occurrence of acci- 
dents of this kind, men’ learned to recognize the metal, and in a similar 
way how to extract it from the earth. 

Of the two hard metals we have named, bronze came earlier into 
use, while the fabrication of iron belongs to a later period of civiliza- 
tion. It has been thought strange that bronze, a compound of two 
constituents, should have been got and used earlier than the simple 
metal, iron. And it has been objected that the former product is gen- 
erally too soft to be valuable for weapons and tools, that pure copper 
is hard to get, and that tin-ore occurs in only a few places. All of 
these objections must yield to historical facts ; and they can not be 
upheld against opposing geological considerations, First, it isnot true 
that an alloy is harder to produce than a single metal. Man must in 
the beginning have melted up together the ores of different kinds as 
they occurred associated in nature, and thus have obtained a variety 
of alloys. Among others, copper and tin ores occur near each other 
in several regions. In such places bronze would have been produced, 
at first accidentally, afterward on purpose. In other places, where 
these metals are not naturally associated, one or the other of the con- 
stituents, or perhaps the alloy already formed, had to be imported. The 
second objection is no less fallacious : if substances containing phos- 
phorus are melted up with the ores, the resultant product will have 
considerable hardness, which may be increased by repeated tempering 
and hammering. The third objection rests on observations in the most 
famous copper districts of Europe. It must be remembered in respect 
to the mines of these regions, that the operations have been carried on 
for a long time at a great depth, where the sulphurous copper-ores are, 
it is true, very hard to utilize. But in former times the ores lay nearer 
to the surface, and they were, in the degree that they were exposed, 
purified and made more reducible by atmospheric agencies. Oxides, 
carbonates, and pure copper were to be found. They were easy to 
smelt, and gave a pure product. It must also be remembered that tin 
was not so scarce in the earliest times as it is now ; and there are still 


THE BEGINNINGS OF METALLURGY. 89 


many places where it is not profitable to mine, that afford washings of 
tin of considerable richness. We thus see that the metal was useful, 
and that there was a sufficiency of rich, easily-worked ores. The con- 
ditions were, then, favorable for a long blossoming of the civilization 
of the bronze age. 

The oldest historical information on this subject is furnished to us 
by the Egyptian inscriptions. From them we conclude that that highly 
civilized nation was in possession of metals from the beginning of its 
history. While the Indian Indra appears armed with the thunderbolt, 
* Akman ” of meteoric stone, and the German god, Thor, carries his 
stone Mjélnir, the Egyptian gods are provided with metallic weapons ; 
an evidence that the people were already acquainted with metals. 
Moreover, we find the spear designated after the name of a metal in 
the earliest inscriptions. As we say of weapons, “ the sharp steel,” as 
the Greeks and Romans described their weapons as of bronze and later 
of iron, so the Egyptians designated their lances by the name of bronze, 
and when describing bronze gave the sign for a metal, and explained 
it by the addition of that fora lance. Bronze was the prevailing metal. 
The metallic vessels, tools, and weapons of the ancient empire are rep- 
resented in red, not in blue. It was the same essentially in the new 
empire, although the Egyptians had then become acquainted with 
articles of iron, and had obtained them by conquest and trade. 

We meet this form of civilization again in reviewing the history 
of Mesopotamia and Syria. Babylon ruled over an alluvial plain, and 
was obliged to get all its metals from abroad by trade or conquest ; 
Assyria possessed copper and iron within its own territory, but was 
dependent on other countries for tin. The countries whence this metal 
was obtained in antiquity were Midian, the Hindoo-Koosh, Farther 
India, and, at a later period, Spain and Britain ; but the Phenicians 
managed and controlled the trade in the indispensable mixed metal. 
Inasmuch as one of the essential metals was not found within the ter- 
ritories of the old nations of civilization, it will not do to ascribe the 
discovery of the manufacture of bronze to them. We must unques- 
tionably look for the metallurgists of primeval times in other coun- 
tries ; and, in fact, traditions are not wanting to support such an 
assumption. The Hittites are mentioned by the Egyptians as the 
iron-workers of ancient times. The Mosaic books mention Tubal-Cain 
(a personified people) as the inventors and masters of metallurgy ; and 
the Greeks designate, not the Phcenicians nor the Babylonians or 
Egyptians, but the Phrygians, as the ancient masters of art in bronze 
and iron, and praise the Chalybes of the Black Sea as distinguished 
steel-smiths. 

Reviewing the facts we have so far adduced, we find that we have 
ascertained, first, that the ancient nations of civilization were predomi- 
nantly in a bronze age; second, that they were dependent on other 
nations for the production of bronze ; and, third, that peoples strange 


oo . THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


to them were practiced in iron-working at a period when they were 
still using only bronze. The metallurgy of the hard metals as a whole 
was thus originally not wrought out by the civilized peoples of whom 
we know the most, but by tribes who do not play so great a part in 
history ; by peoples who have not been perpetuated in fame by having 
founded great states, or by imperishable monuments or written records, 
but whose contribution to the world’s advancement consists in the fact 
that, living in lands rich in metals, they discovered and developed the 
processes for working them. 

I have sketched the metal-culture of the East as it represented 
itself to us at a time when the prehistoric stone age and a deep bar- 
barism still almost exclusively prevailed in Europe. We now turn to 
the Indo-Germanic peoples, among whom we shall consider the Greeks 
in particular, and the other nations collectively. These peoples make 
their appearance late on the scene of history, and their myths play 
about a time when the Semito-Hamitic states had already left behind 
them the traces of a long civilization. We may, however, safely as- 
sume that many of the tribes had practiced metallurgy for three or 
four thousand years. We come to this conclusion from the fact that 
several of the peoples had the same names for the metals. They must 
therefore have been acquainted with metals and used them in their 
ancient common Asiatic home. This is confirmed by the Greek myths, 
which mention the Phrygians, who were settled in Asia Minor and on 
the adjoining:islands, as the oldest metal-workers and the instructors 
of the Hellenes. They worked not only in bronze, but also in iron. The 
Indians also seem, at least just after the Buddhist reformation, to have 
been good iron-workers. Analogous conditions appear to have existed 
in Europe, where single peoples, at a relatively early period, even be- 
fore the immigration, possessed metals, and when the remarkable fact 
meets us frequently that particular tribes (in contrariety to the mass 
of the ancient civilized peoples) obtained and worked iron. 

We next consider the case of the Greeks, who are highly interest- 
ing to the historian of civilization not only by their great individuality 
but also by their multifarious relations with Eastern civilization. The 
original inhabitants of the country in which this important people set- 
tled appear to have been the Pelasgians, who may also be regarded as 
earlier immigrants of the Indo-European race. The Greeks probably 
learned the so-called Cyclopean architecture from them, but nothing 
supports the belief that they were influenced in metal-working by 
them. The Greeks obtained their start in those arts from the island- 
ers and the Semites of the Asiatic coast through trade and coloniza- 
tion. 

The most ancient settler in Greece is said to have been Cecrops, who 
came from Egypt in the second millennium before Christ. He founded 
Athens and gave laws to the people. From the same country came 
Danaus, who founded Argos. Pelops came from metal-rich Phrygia. 


THE BEGINNINGS OF METALLURGY. gi 


His sons conquered Mycene. A Semitic life also ruled in Orchome- 
nos a few generations before the Trojan War. The city was wealthy, 
and the extensive plain was made tillable by an extensive system of 
aqueducts. ‘Thebes, which was also founded by immigrants from the 
East, was the rival of this colony. The mythical hero Cadmus built 
the Cadmeian citadel and surrounded the city with the famous walls ; 
he taught the nomadic people agriculture and the Phenician writing, 
opened mines, and constructed aqueducts. ‘The colony flourished rap- 
idly, and accomplished the ruin of the formerly rich Orchomenos. 
Lastly, the myths tell of the doughty Sisyphus, who founded Corinth 
and established there the Semitic worship and Eastern civilization. 

A lively activity went out from these and other colonists and colo- 
nies. Even the Semitic religion was partly accepted by the Greeks, 
The gloomy and repulsive service of Melkarth was always strange and 
abhorrent to them, but the worship of the fructifying Dionysus with 
its jolly festivals was warmly received. It entered into the life of the 
Hellenes and became national not only in the strongly Semitic islands, 
but everywhere on the Grecian mainland. The lascivious, mystic 
worship of the Semitic goddess of love, although humanized and beau- 
tified, was also one of the peculiarities of the Grecian people. 

Notwithstanding this many-sided and powerful Semitic influence, 
which lasted for several centuries, the striving for national indepen- 


dence was strong even in the time of the earlier myths. Theseus, - 


about a hundred years before the Trojan War, freed Athens from 
the island-chief Minos, to whom the state was then tributary. The 
Argonauts went out from Orchomenos and sought the distant metal- 
bearing land of Aja. The sons of the Argonauts besieged Troy, 
where they obtained treasures, the multitude and splendor of which 
astonished them. These were the first efforts of the Greeks to try 
their strength with the higher civilized Asiatics. 

The great dispersion of the Grecian tribes took place in the suc- 
ceeding times. The vigorous people spread on every side, and de- 
veloped an unprecedented colonial activity. In the tenth and ninth 
centuries it settled numerous islands, and established a constant con- 
nection with the Asiatic mainland. The Milesians founded in the 
Pontus in the eighth century the city of Sinope, where they traded in 
iron and slaves, and Trapezium flourished in the ore-bearing country 
of the Chalybes. Syracuse, the metropolis of Italian Greece, was 
founded, and the colonization of Agrigentum from Rhodes followed. 
In the seventh century rose the cities of Selinus, Sybaris, and Croton. 
While the Corinthians were spreading out in the Mediterranean, the 
dominions of the Milesians were growing up on the Black Sea. In 
the sixth century, they had more than seventy colonies in those re- 
gions, and the productions of Colchis, of the Caucasus, and Armenia, 
of the Ural and the Danubian countries were flowing to them. 

The ancient Oriental civilization, however, still long kept a promi- 


92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


nent position by the side of these flourishing marts. Its influence 
on the development of Greece and of all the European peoples was 
deep and significant. As Roman civilization exercised a creative and 
shaping work long after the Germans had broken the power of the 
southern people, so also did Semitic civilization continue prominent 
among the Hellenic peoples long after the emancipation of the Greeks. 
If we take the progress of the Greeks in metal-working especially 
into view, it reveals its dependence upon the Orient. According to 
their traditions, the Greeks received the processes of preparation and 
the applications of the metals from the Phrygians, but learned the 
higher technics of metal-work from the Phenicians. Intercourse with 
the latter people also introduced the Oriental art forms to the West. 
All the productions of the earlier Grecian art bear an Oriental stamp ; 
Mynias, who reigned in Orchomenos a generation before the Trojan 
War, was celebrated for his treasures of metals. He had an arched 
treasure-house, the walls of which were covered, after the Assyrian- 
Phenician fashion, with plates of metal. He held intercourse with 
the Phenicians, from whom he learned the art of building canals and 
irrigation. The treasury of Atreus, at Mycenz, was likewise covered 
with metallic plates. Ulysses remarked the same style of ornamenta- 
tion in the palace of Alcinous, where the walls were covered with 
plates of copper and the cornice was made of iron. In all of these 
cases we are informed from descriptions and from the latest excava- 
tions concerning the measure of Oriental influence in ancient Greece. 
The useful metal in those times was almost exclusively the brown 
“chalkos.” Of it consisted alike the finer wares which the Pheni- 
cians introduced and the common fabrics which were imported from 
the neighboring islands, or were already made at home. It is sig- 
nificant of that early time that the smith was bluntly called “ chal- 
keus ”—copperer, or bronze-smith. The material, especially the home- 
made bronze, may not, it is true, have been of the best. The lances 
would bend, and the swords would break off at the handle. The bet- 
ter kinds of weapons, at least in Homer’s time, seem to have been 
designated as “foreign,” or as the gift of the gods. But after the 
dispersion of the Grecian tribes, following this period, a domestic in- 
dustry of a better kind sprang up. The mines of Eubcea were ex- 
ploited ; the copper-smiths of Delos furnished metallic chairs and beds ; 
from Aigina came all kinds of bronze vessels, and thence originated 
also the first stamped money. * Most important of all was the develop- 
_ ment of statue-casting, which was introduced in the fiftieth Olympiad, 
and quickly reached a high perfection. The Spartans had already in 
a former age built their temple of Minerva with its bronze reliefs, rich 
in figures. At a later period, every city had its statues of metal, and 
some cities, during the time of their vigor, had thousands of them. 
While thus bronze served at first quite generally, afterward pre- 
dominantly for artistic purposes, iron in the course of time came to 


THE BEGINNINGS OF METALLURGY. oa 


the front as the useful metal. We have already mentioned that the 
weapons of ancient times were almost exclusively made of bronze. I 
now say, besides, that_the Greeks were acquainted with iron even in 
the mythological period. Whether any of the Grecian tribes worked 
in iron of itself is, however, doubtful. The blacksmiths of Crete and 
Lemnos are described as Phrygians ; and we know nothing more exact 
with reference to the origin of the Beotians, who worked in iron in the 
most ancient times. We know, indeed, that they had trade relations with 
the Pheenicians, but this gives us no light respecting the iron art among 
them, for the Phenicians of ancient times excelled only in bronze 
working. It is also possible that they may have acquired some knowl- 
edge of metal-work in their Asiatic home. Whether this was the 
case, or the Beotians learned to work in iron from the islanders, it is 
certain, first, that this primitive iron industry produced nothing of im- 
portance ; and, second, that although foreign weapons of steel were 
known and famous, bronze still prevailed fora long period as the metal 
of use. Homer, indeed, speaks of an iron that the country-people 
used in covering their plowshares ; he was likewise acquainted with 
the blue iron of which spear-heads were made, and with the temper- 
ing of steel; and excellent weapons of iron are described in the 
Iliad ; but never, to my knowledge, is it mentioned that they knew 
how to make good steel weapons in Greece. ‘The warriors were almost 
entirely armed with bronze, rarely with iron, and large articles of iron 
were very costly. It must not be concluded from this that small, 
simple vessels requiring neither a handsome shape nor a particular de- 
gree of hardness were not made out of nativeiron. In Homeric times, 
as I have said, plowshares were shod with a strip of iron of black- 
smith’s work. The iron reaping-hook came into use afterward. In 
Hesiod’s time iron had gained the predominance over bronze among 
several tribes. I content myself with giving the history of metal- 
working in this single nation. With respect to the other European 
peoples we have a right to suppose that several of the tribes were ac- 
quainted with metallurgy in their original homes. They brought the 
knowledge of metals to Europe, which till then had been acquainted 
only with stone art. The greater number of the immigrants belonged 
to a lower grade of civilization, and the masses were still armed with 
weapons of stone ; but among them were a few individuals or families 
who brought some skill in metal-work from their Asiatic homes. In 
the course of time the people who lived near these metal-workers ob- 
tained metals from them, and the further diffusion of those materials 
was promoted by trade and war. 

The most favorable situation was that of the dwellers on the south- 
ern sea, who enjoyed the opportunities afforded by the Phenician trade. 
The ships of this people frequented the Black and Adriatic Seas, and 
the Spanish and Gallo-Britannic waters. Their goods were carried to 
the North by the inland routes. Foreign and domestic fabrics and 


94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


shapes competed with each other over extensive districts ; iron came 
in contact with bronze, and both materials crowded upon the hard 
stone weapons of the earlier time. Steel had gained the predominance 
over bronze in all Southern Europe in the time of the Romans, and the 
last remains of stone-age civilization in that part of the world were ex- 
tinguished in the early middle ages. Thus the same cycle of technical 
changes was completed in Europe as in the East. Still, considerable 
differences may be observed in the course of development in the two 
cases. The metal-working age begins much later in the West than in 
the East. Semitic civilization attained its highest development under 
the predominance of bronze, while the higher intellectual life of the 
Europeans is accompanied by that iron-working art which now rules 
over the whole earth. Roman iron mastered the East ; but it has 
gained immensely greater victories of peace in the Western world within 
a century through the agency of iron roads and wagons, swift steam- 
ers, and skillfully built and mighty engines.—Translated for the 
Popular Science Monthly from the Deutsche Rundschau. 


OUR NEW SKIN AND CANCER HOSPITAL. 
By WILLIAM J. YOUMANS, M.D. 


2. ease project recently initiated for establishing in New York on an 
adequate scale a hospital for the treatment of skin-diseases is 
of great importance to this community: It has been long under- 
stood that medical progress can only be best facilitated by the con- 
centration of thought upon special groups of diseases, and that for 
this purpose special institutions are demanded. We have in New 
York four eye and ear hospitals, two for the ruptured and crippled, 
one for the throat, several for children’s diseases, and the great Wom- 
an’s Hospital known the world over for the advances in science made 
within its walls. But in regard to hospitals for the treatment of cuta- 
neous affections we are not only behind the age and greatly deficient 
in this country, but in a condition of almost complete destitution. 
Something has been done in Philadelphia in this direction in a small 
way, but nowhere else until the beginning now made in this city. 
Students have been compelled to go abroad to find adequate facilities 
for the study of skin-diseases in the large hospitals of Paris, Vienna, 
Berlin, London, and other places ; although cases of diseases of the 
skin and cancer are very common in this country, very many occurring 
among us of the most severe, distressing, and often destructive char- 
acter. 

In regard to the relative frequency of these diseases in this city 
and country it may be stated that the number of persons thus afflicted 


OUR NEW SKIN AND CANCER HOSPITAL. 95 


is very large and appears to be increasing ; at least 15,000 new cases 
of skin-disease occur in this city yearly among the poor, while there 
is no proper hospital-accommodation for their care. In the matter of 
cancer the needs of the city are still more painfully evident. The 
malady is reported by the registrar-general to be on the increase in 
Great Britain, and the mortality from it has increased in New York 
of late years, according to the returns of the Board of Health, as may 
be seen from the following figures : 

“In 1869 there were 304 deaths from cancer, being a little over 
one per hundred of deaths from all causes. In 1879 there were 572 
deaths from cancer in this city, or a little over éwo per hundred of all 
deaths: that is, in ten years the proportion of deaths from cancer had 
nearly doubled, one death out of every fifty being from this dreadful 
disease. In 1880 there were 659 deaths from cancer, or 2°06 per cent 
of all deaths in this city ; in this latter year cancer actually caused 
more deaths than scarlet fever, this being a very light year, with 618 
deaths from this latter disease. In 1882 the mortality-tables showed 
731 deaths from cancer in this city, or more than two daily. During 
these fourteen years 6,843 persons died of cancer in New York city. 
Patients suffering from cancer are welcomed in no hospital; in most 
institutions they are absolutely refused, and nowhere in this country 
are cancer cases grouped together with a view of studying the disease 
as to its nature and cure.” 

These painful facts show the urgency there was to take some seri- 


_ous steps toward the alleviation of this vast amount of suffering, and 


the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital has been established for this 
purpose. The institution was incorporated in 1882, and a dwelling- 
house was secured in 1883 at No. 243 East Thirty-fourth Street, where 
patients have been received and treated for the past year. The ac- 
commodations are, however, very limited, and so wholly insufficient 
that vigorous measures are now being taken for the extension of its 
operations until they shall become adequate to meet the public wants. 
Not only could but few patients be received, as the hospital now con- 
tains but twenty-nine beds, but serious difficulty has been encountered 
from the application of numerous cases of cancer for which the accom- 
modations were wholly unsuitable. Some of these were in such ad- 
vanced stages that their admission would have resulted in polluting 
the atmosphere to such a degree that the other beds could not be occu- 
pied. This experience has forced the managers to enter upon an 
enlarged plan of operations by which all patients, in whatever stage 
or condition of disease, may be taken for treatment without detriment 
to others. 

A question may obviously arise as to the propriety of associating 
cancerous with skin diseases in the same institution ; but the authori- 
ties of the hospital are well convinced that great advantages will ensue 
from this combination, and they have given the reasons for it in an 


96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


instructive circular which we here reproduce with but slight abridg- 
ment : 

Cancer, as popularly understood, does not represent a distinct dis- 
ease, such as pneumonia, small-pox, or diphtheria, but the name sug- 
gests only some terrible malady of an eating or destructive nature, 
often, if not generally, terminating fatally after a period of great suf- 
fering. Among the medical profession the term cancer has been in 
time past, and to a certain extent is to-day, applied somewhat care- 
lessly to a variety of diseases, or morbid conditions, presenting the 
feature of destruction of tissue to a greater or less extent ; and even 
the highest science has not yet fully determined to what state or dis- 
ease the name cancer should belong exclusively. Therefore, if a hos- 
pital were established exclusively for cancer it would be extremely diffi- 
cult to determine just what cases should be received, and in the end 
but a small proportion of really proper cases would be cared for, if all 
but true cancer, as scientifically determined, were excluded. 

This may be illustrated, by supposing that a section of the city 
were taken, say from Thirty-fourth Street to Forty-second Street, and 
from river to river, and from every house all persons were gathered, 
who either—1. Supposed or feared that they had cancer ; 2. Had been 
told by friends or by some quack doctor that they had cancer ; or, 3. 
Had been informed by a legally licensed physician that they were 
afflicted with this disease. It would be perfectly safe to say that not 
one half, if indeed one third of all these persons would be the sub- 
jects of carcinoma, or rea! cancer, such as could be rightly entered un- 
der that name on the books of a hospital. The remainder of the large 
number would be afflicted with a great variety of affections, excluding, 
of course, some who were perfectly healthy, but with imaginary ail- 
ments. Of these others, who had not cancer, some would have very 
simple skin-diseases, entirely curable by proper treatment; many 
would have some of the ulcerating forms of syphilis, which are con- 
stantly mistaken for cancer, and which often so closely resemble it as 
to render the diagnosis most difficult, indeed impossible to one not 
fully acquainted with the former disease ; some would have lupus, a 
skin affection which may also simulate cancer ; besides these there are 
ulcers of various kinds, also rare diseases, sucks as sarcoma, rhino- 
scleroma, lipoma, morphea, keloid, lymphangioma, and other diseases 
belonging to the department of dermatology, to say nothing of true 
leprosy which occasionally is presented for treatment. All of these 
could readily at times suggest the disease cancer to the patient or 
physician. Besides these there would be tumors of various kinds, 
abscesses, swellings of bones and many different conditions which the 
body or its parts may take on in disease, which would constantly be 
presented at the clinic of an institution for the cure of cancer. 

The argument and suggestion are submitted, if one whose attention 
and thought are constantly devoted to the various diseases which 


OUR NHW SKIN AND CANCER HOSPITAL, 97 


appear on and beneath the skin, and which may at times very closely 
simulate cancer, if such a one is not more likely to recognize and 
treat the disease successfully than one who takes the single disease 
cancer for treatment without being acquainted with other appar- 
ently similar affections? If the dermatologist is not competent to 
care for cancer, under whose province does it specially fall? It must 
be remembered that there is nothing peculiar in the treatment of can- 
cer, and that there is perhaps no regular physician in this country who 
can be said to stand distinctly pre-eminent in the knowledge of its 
nature and treatment: it is the quacks who are mainly known in 
connection with cancer. 

Cancer is described and treated of in the books on diseases of the 
skin, and is constantly exhibited and lectured upon in the public clin- 
ics on diseases of the skin. In many instances cancer attacks the skin 
alone, and in many more instances it appears first on or just beneath 
the skin, and afterward affects other organs. The cases of skin-can- 
cer, which are often terribly destructive, constantly fall under the 
care of the dermatologist, and are most frequently sent to him in con- 
sultation and for treatment by other physicians. 

By the union of cancer with skin-diseases in the same institu- 
tion, many persons may be led to seek relief long before the case would 
be recognized as cancer either by the patient or by many physicians ; 
and thus the disease may often be arrested very early in its course, - 
when wrong and harmful treatment or neglect may allow the disease 
to spread until it is too late to hope for any permanently good results 
from treatment. Of this many cases in proof could be cited. 

Many individuals would be inclined to go to an institution which 
treats skin-diseases in conjunction with cancer, when they would be 
unwilling to admit that they had cancer ; as a rule, the disease is kept 
secret as long as possible. ‘There would also be less fear of a surgical 
operation connected with such an institution than in one specially de- 
voted to cancer alone. It often happens that patients who are afflicted 
with true cancer refuse to have a surgical operation performed, either 
at all, or until, after long suffering, they are led to it as a last resort, 
when it is too late. Such patients will often submit to treatment by 
caustics, which in certain cases yield most excellent results. In skin- 
cancer the method by caustics is often to be preferred to operations by 
the knife, the results being rather more sure, and the scar often much 
less disfiguring. Such cases certainly are best cared for by the derma- 
tologist, who daily has to do with applications soothing or caustic to 
the skin. 

If the future offers any hope for the real cure or prevention of can- 
cer, is it not in the way of careful and patiently conducted experi- 
ments with diet, drugs, etc.? Who is better fitted for the study of 
cancer as a disease than the dermatologist, who has devoted his atten- 
tion to the study and management of the system as influenced by such 

VOL. Xxv.—7 


98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


constitutional conditions as gout, rheumatism and scrofula, and such 
poisons as malaria, leprosy and syphilis? The dermatologists, also, 
have been foremost in the study of pathology and microscopic anat- 
omy, upon which our present knowledge of cancer largely rests. 

The study of such a chronic disease as cancer, then, belongs very 
naturally to the dermatologist, who has continually to do with mala- 
dies often very destructive in character, which may last over months, 
and sometimes years, although, as in many other affections, he may 
require to call in the aid of others to accomplish certain ends ; as, 
when the eye or throat is affected, or serious surgical or gynecological 
operations are to be performed, etc. ; the same may happen in the 
practice of any medical man. 

The surgeon, who naturally inclines toward operative interference, 
is less likely to take an active interest in chronic cases and those unfit 
for operation than one who sees the complaint more broadly, and 
probably earlier, from its medical stand-point, and who seeks the aid of 
the surgeon only in suitable cases, as occurs also in private practice. 
In his endeavor to avoid the use of the knife he is the more inclined 
to search for the cause of cancer and the means of reaching it medi- 
cally, and is thus more nearly on the right track toward prevention 
and cure than he who sees a case of cancer mainly from its operative 
aspect. | 

For the reasons here set forth, the New York Skin and Cancer 
Hospital was planned several years since, and nearly two years ago the 
foundation of the institution was laid by a few gentlemen, who signed 
the certificate of incorporation, April 8,1882. After very considerable 
thought, and after conference with gentlemen well acquainted with 
hospital work, and with a number of prominent medical men, it was 
decided to organize the medical service upon this plan, and to have 
the main conduct of the institution devolve largely upon those who 
were well acquainted both with cancer in its various phases and with 
also the other affections with which it might be confounded. 

But as it was recognized that many very serious operations have 
constantly to be performed in connection with this disease, it was de- 
termined to secure for the institution, and for the patients requiring 
aid, the very best surgical skill obtainable. Believing that those con- 
nected with other large hospitals, and in the habit of operating daily, 
could operate more skillfully and successfully than those whose expe- 
rience was more limited, it was decided to add to the medical staff two 
operating surgeons, who should “perform such operations as are re- 
quested by the attending physicians, subject, however, to their own 
judgment and the advice of the consulting physicians and surgeons, if 
desired.” In this manner, while the disease is studied and eared for 
medically, none need suffer for the lack of the best surgical aid when 
required. 

It was also recognized that many operations upon women were bet- 


OUR NEW SKIN AND CANCER HOSPITAL, 99 


ter performed by those who were familiar with this branch of practice, 
and who were operating daily in their own special department. For 
this purpose a gynecologist was added to the service, who should have 
charge of cases of internal cancer in females. eseedach as this class 
forms quite a large proportion of all the cases occurring in females, 
and the disease may at times prove very troublesome, a separate ward 
was set apart for the purpose, under the exclusive care of the gy- 
nzcologist, where special treatment could be more satisfactorily car- 
ried on. 

To meet the further requirements of the hospital, a consulting © 
board of physicians and surgeons was formed, containing gentlemen 
of prominence in various departments of medicine, in order that the 
best advice might be obtained in cases affecting the eye, ear, throat, 
etc., and in matters of general medical importance, A pathologist was 
also added to aid in the study of disease. 

In the consideration of the subject of the association of cancer and 
skin-diseases in the same institution, it must be remembered that it is 
against common medical precedent to have a hospital devoted to a single 
disease, such as cancer. The tendency of specialism is to become too 
narrowed, to fix too much attention upon one single subject or portion of 
the body, to the exclusion of others which may and generally do have 
the utmost relative importance. When, from studying or practicing a 
special branch of medicine, one comes to confine the attention to a sin- 
gle disease, the danger is increased manifold. Those who have hereto- 
fore claimed to devote their exclusive attention to cancer have been 
mainly found among the class of quacks who prey upon the credulity 
and ignorance of suffering humanity. Cancer, to be studied and treated 
scientifically, requires to be still kept where it belongs, one disease out 
of others of the same class. The London Cancer Hospital, the only 
one of its kind, as far as we know, would undoubtedly have been the 
means of much greater good if it had not been a special institution for 
a single disease, which from that cause has never had the hearty sup- 
port of the British medical profession ; its usefulness might have been 
greatly increased had it either been attached to some other hospital 
(as, for instance, there is a cancer department attached to the Middle- 
sex Hospital), or had it received at the same time the many cases of 
skin-disease which are often confounded with cancer. 

If it be asked why the necessity of including the name cancer in 
the title of the hospital, it may be answered that only thus is the full 
scope of the institution made known to the public, and by this means 
multitudes of persons will be reached, who otherwise would never 
know that this disease was treated in the institution. As it appears by 
its recent annual report, the work at the hospital has been steady and 
useful ; it has been limited, however, by the capacity of the present 
building and by the limited means at hand for the work. With the 
establishment of the Country Branch Hospital, which has been con- 


ido. eee POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


templated from the first, and which will shortly be accomplished, 
which can be enlarged to any extent on the isolated pavilion plan, it 
is hoped and expected that the institution will soon devote much of 
its energies to cancer in all its forms and phases. The comparatively 
small number of persons with skin-diseases requiring treatment in bed 
may soon be greatly outnumbered by the cancer cases, but the institu- 
tion will still remain a skin and cancer hospital, if the foregoing prin- 
ciples are correct, and if it is sought to do the greatest amount of good 
to the largest number of sufferers. 

| It being determined for these cogent reasons to adopt the plan of 
combining skin-diseases and cancerous affections in the same hospital, 
the problem arose as to the best method of carrying out the project, 
and for this purpose it was decided to establish a branch of the insti- 
tution in the country adjacent to the city of New York. In his late 
address at the first annual meeting of the officers and friends of the 
hospital, Dr. L. Duncan Bulkley, the first of the medical officers, briefly 
reviews what has been done, and gives a very clear statement of the 
reasons that have induced the authorities to organize a country branch 
of the establishment. We give the main portions of his address : 

“ At this our first annual meeting, we find that the accommodations 
thus far secured are totally inadequate for the needs of the service ; 
during the last few months our building has been quite as full as is 
desirable for health, while cases have been turned away which were 
unsuitable for our contracted quarters, and many male patients have 
been unable to gain admittance, all the beds devoted to this class 
being kept continually full... . | 

“The object of our thought this evening is, therefore, the means 
of extending the capacity and efficiency of our hospital, that. it may 
approach somewhat to the size and requirements demanded by the 
large numbers of sufferers who call for our sympathy and aid. How 
can these ends be best attained? In which direction shall we enlarge, 
and how can we secure the greatest benefits to those who put their 
lives and their health in our hands? 

“The tendency has been in all cities to build large and expensive 
structures, into which the greatest number possible of patients should 
be crowded, with the impression that thereby the best medical and 
surgical aid was afforded to the largest number of individuals. 

“ But the matter of bringing many patients together for treatment 
in one room and under a single roof has been studied from statistics 
by a number of competent and conscientious persons, and the results 
obtained are not a little startling when the mortality of such institu- 
_ tions is compared with that found among patients in private houses, 
and in cottage hospitals made to conform as nearly as possible to the 
conditions found in private houses. 

“While the present magnificent building of the New York Hospital 
was being erected in Fifteenth Street, a committee of the governors of 


OUR NEW SKIN AND CANCER HOSPITAL. 101 


that hospital were engaged in making a report in regard to ‘a village 
of cottage hospitals,’ which was printed in 1876, and is a most careful 
and thorough study of the subject, from a scientific stand-point, and 
is most conclusive in favor of the country plan of treating patients. 
From this report, and also from the work on hospital construction and 
organization issued by the Johns Hopkins Hospital, I shall draw vari- 
ous of the facts and statements which I wish briefly to present. 

“Careful study has demonstrated beyond peradventure that the 
nearer the condition of the patient approaches that of a member of a 
well-ordered household, the better are the chances of recovery ; in 
small and separate hospitals the mortality diminishes with the size of 
the building, while in larger and more crowded hospitals the mortality 
is found to increase proportionately, and it reaches its height in those 
in which these conditions have existed for the longest time. 

“Tn the report referred to is a quotation from Sir James Y. Simp- 
son’s essay on ‘ Hospitalism,’ giving the following figures regarding 
mortality after amputations, which may be well considered in the 
present connection : 


In large hospitals of Paris : ; . 62 per 100 die. 
In British hospitals, with 800 to 600 beds, 41 “ “ & 
“ “ “ “ 800 “ 901 “ 380 “ “ “ 
“ “ “ “< 200 “ 101 “ 23 “ “ 74 
“ <3 “ “ 100 “ 26 “ 18 “ “ “ 
ta : “ 25 beds or less, 14 “ “ & 
In isolated rooms in country practice . 11 “ “% “& 


In other isolated cottage hospitals in England during the year 1869, 
the mortality after operations was reduced to 6°7 per cent. 

“In Bellevue Hospital there was at one time a mortality of forty- 
eight per cent after amputations, and at two of the public reception 
hospitals in New York the deaths in 1870, after amputations, were re- 
spectively sixty-five and sixty-two per cent. Other more recently 
built and better constructed hospitals show, of course, a very much 
smaller mortality, but the fact can not be gainsaid that large, sub- 
stantial structures of brick and mortar, in a crowded city, do every- 
where show a mortality much higher than that obtaining in locations 
where pure air, quiet, and sunlight can assist in man’s endeavors to 
combat disease and injury. Spencer Wells, a prominent English sur- 
geon, expressed the view that no surgical operation attended with risk 
to life should ever be performed in a great general hospital in a large 
town, except under such circumstances as would render removal to 
the country, or to a suburban cottage hospital, more dangerous. 

“Much more could be added to show the advantages to be derived 
from securing a country location where a certain proportion of our 
cases could be sent, but time allows only a brief mention of important 
points in regard to the scheme actually proposed. 

** Several locations have been under consideration for some time ; 


102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


e 


for, from the first inception of the hospital it was designed to have a 
country branch hospital where the more offensive and chronic cases 
could be provided for in a better manner and more cheaply than in a 
building in the city. From the statistics now at hand we learn that 
seven hundred and thirty-one persons died, from cancer in New York 
city during 1882, that is at the rate of two daily: from this number 
it is probable that there are between two and three thousand cancer 
patients now in the city, and, as this is the only institution in the 
United States especially devoted to cancer, the numbers who would 
ultimately seek aid from this city, and from other portions of ne 
country, would be very large. 

“The idea, therefore, of a country hospital would be one composed 
entirely of pavilions containing a few patients each, so that the capaci- 
ty of the hospital could be enlarged to almost any extent, as necessity 
required, while each pavilion, being of comparatively little cost, could 
be removed and destroyed whenever those terrible scourges of hospitals 
occurred in them, such as pysemia, erysipelas, hospital gangrene, and 
other unknown causes of excessive mortality. 

“In regard to the comparative cost of locating and running such 
a hospital, the showing is very greatly in its favor. Recently it was 
proposed to erect a wing or separate building in connection with the 
Woman’s Hospital of this city, for the treatment of cancer, and the 
cost was to be about $140,000. This would give accommodations 
for not over eighty patients at the utmost, and could not be in- 
creased in size, however great the necessity ; moreover, the objection 
would always exist in regard to the possibility or rather probability of 
the building becoming infected sooner or later with the poisonous 
germs of cases so loathsome as certain of those afflicted with cancer 
must become sooner or later. In addition, the mortality there must 
necessarily have been high, from the crowded locality, and from the 
presence of the noisy railroad. | 

“Now there is at present under consideration a tract of ground 
in a most desirable locality, containing nearly one hundred and fifty 
acres, with a number of valuable buildings upon it, which can be ob- 
tained for $50,000. Upon this twenty pavilions, each containing four 
beds, could be erected for $1,000 each, including furnishing. This 
would give accommodation for eighty patients at a cost of but $70,000, 
one half the cost of the proposed city building, leaving $70,000 of the 
amount for investment. Moreover, the country hospital could be 
extended to almost any size as occasion demanded, whereas, at the 
beginning there need be only a few pavilions erected, the number 
being increased as required, 

“The cost of maintaining patients in such a place would be less 
than in the city, whereas the advantages waiewra to the patients would 
be incomparable. 

“With fifty and more gentlemen and ladies thoroughly interested 


; 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 103 


in our work, and with the support and encouragement of the medical 
profession and the press, no hesitation should be felt in pressing for- 
ward to such-an extending of our usefulness as the importance of the 
subject seems to demand. 

“Our president, Mr. Scribner, has been over the plot of ground 
under consideration, and can testify as to its suitability for the pur- 
pose. : 
“TI would move that a committee of three gentlemen and three 
ladies be appointed to take the matter into consideration, and to visit 
this proposed site, if thought best, and to report on the subject to 
their respective boards.” 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 
By THOMAS FOSTER. 


SELF VERSUS OTHEBS. 


MAN’S power of increasing happiness depends both directly 
and indirectly on his fitness’ for the occupations of his life. 
Directly, because if unfit, whether through ill-health or inaptitude, he 
works with pain instead of pleasure, and because he gives less satis- 
faction or causes actual annoyance to those for whom his occupations, 
whatsoever they may be, are pursued. Indirectly, because as a result 
of work pursued under such conditions he suffers in temper and quality 
as a member of the body social. Hence all such care of self as is 
shown by attention to bodily health, by the careful culture of personal 
good qualities, by just apportionment of time to personal require- 
ments, and so forth, may be regarded as of the nature of duty. In 
such degree as pleasure, recreation, change of scene, quiet, and the 
like, are necessary for the maintenance or improvement of the health, 
the care to secure these, so far from being held to be a concession to 
self, should be esteemed a most important point in “the whole duty 
of man.” 

A narrow view of duty to others may direct attention to what lies 
near at hand. Just as the savage consumes, to satisfy the hunger of 
a day, seed which should have been devoted to provide for many days 
in the future which lies beyond his ken, so the man who has no— 
thought but of what lies near at hand, is apt to sacrifice health, 
strength, and fitness for work, from which great and long-lasting bene- 
fits might have been reaped, to obtain painfully and uncomfortably 
much smaller results. By overwork and self-sacrifice—self-devotion 
if you will—a man may in a few years effect much material good to 
those around him— perhaps more than in the time he could have 
effected by a wiser apportionment of his work and strength. But at 


104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the end of a much shorter period of work than he could have accom- ° 
plished with ease and pleasantness, ere a tithe perhaps of the good he 
was really competent to do has been effected, his health breaks down, 
his strength fails him, he can no longer do the good he wanted so 
much to do. Nay, worse, life not only becomes a burden to him, but 
he becomes a burden to others. A wise and thoughtful care of, self 
would have avoided this. Such care of self, then, even if regarded 
from the point of view which should be taken by the rest, is simply 
far-sighted regard for others. 

Perhaps the simplest way of testing the matter is by considering 
what would happen if all or many of the members of a community 
followed a course which is commonly spoken of as if it were meritori- 
ous. It is manifest that a community chiefly composed of persons 
who neglecting self broke down their health and strength in exhaust- 
ing efforts to advance the well-being of others would be a community 
constantly burdened by fresh accessions of worn-out and used-up 
members—including eventually most of those who had been most 
anxious to serve their fellows. 

But the question becomes still more serious when the known facts 
of heredity are taken into account. The evil effects of self-neglect, 
whether in the form of overwork, or asceticism, or avoidance of all 
such pleasurable emotions as lighten the toils and worries of life, or 
in other ways, affect posterity as well as the individual life. Ill-health 
and weakness are transmitted to children and to children’s children 
through many generations. It is not going too far to say that on the 
average more misery is wrought and to a much greater number by 
neglect of self than can be matched by any amount of benefit con- 
ferred during life, still less by such benefit as directly arises from self- 
sacrifice. A man shall work day after day beyond his strength for 
ten years, and by such ‘excess of activity shall perhaps accumulate at 
the expense of a ruined constitution what may confer a certain amount 
of happiness on several persons, or keep discomfort from them. Prob- 
ably with better-advised efforts during that time more real good might 
have been conferred on those same persons, for man does not live by 
bread alone ; and certainly in the long run even of a single ordinary 
life much more good may be done by combining zeal for others with 
due regard for the welfare of self. But when we consider the multi- 
plied misery inherited by the offspring of weak, sickly, and gloomy 
parents, we see that even though, on the whole, there had been during 
life a balance in favor of happiness conferred, this—more than out- 
weighed even in the first generation—would be many hundred times 
outweighed in the long run. 


CARE FOR SELF AS A DUTY. 


The thought seems strange to many that in conduct which appears 
to them mere care of self there may be further-seeing regard for others 


THH MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 105 


than in simple self-sacrifice. Yet the matter is so obvious when pointed 
out as to suggest later a different sort of retort—namely, that it was 
scarce worth pointing out. Only, as it happens that this truly obvious 
matter has been grievously overlooked, as the teacher of this essentially 
true and therefore demonstrable lesson has been rebuked for inculcat- 
ing mere self-seeking, it is tolerably clear that the lesson was very much 
needed. 

Let us consider how obviously true it is, however, as he presents it. 
Take, for instance, the matter on which I touched in my last—viz., the 
consideration of the known laws of heredity. ‘ When we remember,” 
says the clear, calm teacher of our time, “ how commonly it is remarked 
that high health and overflowing spirits render any lot in life toler- 
able, while chronic ailments make gloomy a life most favorably cir- 
cumstanced, it becomes amazing that both the world at large and 
writers who make conduct their study should ignore the terrible evils 
which disregard of personal well-being inflicts on the unborn, and the 
incalculable gcod laid up for the unborn by attention to personal well- 
being. Of all bequests of parents to children the most valuable is a 
sound constitution. Though a man’s body is not a property that can 
be inherited, yet his constitution may fitly be compared to an entailed 
estate ; and, if he rightly understands his duty to posterity, he will see 
that he is bound to pass on that estate uninjured if not improved. To 
say this is to say that he must be egoistic to the extent of satisfying 
all those desires associated with the due performance of functions, 
Nay, it isto say more. It is to say that he must seek in due amounts 
the various pleasures which life offers. For beyond the effect these 
have in raising the tide of life and maintaining constitutional vigor, 
there is the effect they have in preserving and increasing a capacity 
for receiving enjoyment. Endowed with abundant energies and vari- 
ous tastes, some can get gratifications of many kinds on opportunities 
hourly occurring ; while others are so inert, and so uninterested in 
things around, that they can not even take the trouble to amuse them- 
selves. And, unless heredity be denied, the inference must be that due 
acceptance of the miscellaneous pleasures life offers conduces to the 
capacity for enjoyment in posterity; and that persistence in dull, 
monotonous life by parents diminishes the ability of their descendants 
to make the best of what gratifications fall to them.” 

All this is clear and obvious enough when thus pointed out ; though 
the very passage in which Mr. Spencer here so clearly shows that to 
be happy, so far as by due regard of personal well-being one can make 
one’s self happy, is a duty, has been selected for abuse as though he 
taught simply this—seek to gratify self in every available way. The 
kind of rebuke justly passed on those who in the search for pleasure, 
in mere self-gratification, ruin their health, lose happiness, become 
morose, gloomy, and misanthropic, lose taste for all pleasures lower as 
well as higher, and hand on to their children and their children’s chil- 


106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


dren these and other evil effects of the grosser forms of self-indulgence, 
has been passed upon the teacher of that far-seing care of self by which 
the health is preserved, happiness obtained, the whole nature strength- 
ened and sweetened, the enjoyment of all forms of pleasure increased, 
and in all these respects the lot of posterity improved to many—nay, 
to uncounted generations. 

On the other hand, there are those who, seeing that the doctrine 
taught is unassailable on that side, assert that it is and always has 
been obvious—forgetting how many morose and gloomy people there 
are who show by their mere existence that in the past (of which they 
are the descendants) the contrary doctrine has prevailed, as it still 
exists in the present (which they in part represent), and will continue 
doubtless for many generations. 

If it be agreed that Mr. Spencer’s teaching in this matter is need- 
less where it is accepted and useless where it is needed (because none 
who would be benefited by it will listen), I answer that the case is 
otherwise. There are thousands now, and their number will be largely 
increased in the future, who have found in this teaching the lesson 
which they needed to make their lives happy and their influence in 
their own time and in the future blessed. It has come as a new and 
cheering light to them (I was going to say as a revelation, but the 
word would be misinterpreted) to see in happiness, their own included, 
the answer to the doleful question, Is life worth living? If by self- 
mortification, overwork, wear end worry, I make myself wretched and 
fail to make those around me happier, I may well ask in mournful 
accents that foolish question. If I not only fail so to make others 
happier but make them less happy, and hand on gloom and misery to 
future ages, I may not only ask it gloomily but answer it sadly, Life is 
not worth living. Better, were it lawful, to cease the painful and use- 
less, the worse than useless, contest. But if by due care and thought 
of self, by reasonable enjoyment of the bright and pleasant things 
which life brings to most, Iin some degree or wholly counterpoise 
such pains and sorrows as life brings to all, and at the same time help 
to brighten the lives of those around, and those also of generations as 
yet unborn, how shall I doubt what answer to give to the question, Is 
life worth living? Not sad is the answer, but bright and cheering. 

There is still not a little to be said respecting the due care of per- 
sonal well-being. Just here I close by remarking that, in the attempt 
to simplify Mr. Herbert Spencer’s nomenclature, I certainly did not 
improve the title of this chapter by calling it “ Self versus Others” as 
I did till now, instead of “ Egoism versus Altruism,” as he called the 
chapter in the “ Data of Ethics” bearing on the same subject. Due 
care of self is not a matter of “self versus others,” seeing that care 
of personal well-being is essential to the influence of self for the good 
of others. I have therefore given to this section a new sub-title. 

But there is another aspect of this part of our subject which re- 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 107 


quires careful attention. We have already touched on the effects 
which would follow if all the members of society in their zeal for the 
interest of others disregarded the requirements of their own health and 
well-being, and overlooked the effects of unwise neglect of self on the 
interests of their descendants, and therefore of the society of which 
their descendants would form part. Nor, in considering this aspect of 
the subject, have we been dealing with imaginary evils, seeing that 
many of the defects of the body social at the present day can be clearly 
traced to such misdirected, though well-meaning, efforts on the part of 
the better sort in past ages. 

But, when we consider the mixed nature of all communities, the mis- 
chief of ill-regulated disinterestedness as compared with far-seeing 
consideration of the interests of family, race, and nation, becomes 
more obviously a matter of practical moment. 

If ail men sought the good of others before their own, it is obvious 

that a confusion of interests would arise—other but not less unsatisfac- 
tory, perhaps, than that which exists in a society where, let their doc- 
trines be what they may, the greater number seek their own welfare 
first. If, on the other hand, a// men were moved by far-seeing consid- 
erations and a well-regulated care for the interests of others, no special 
care would be needed, and few rules would have to be laid down, to 
insure the progress and happiness of the community. But, as a mat- 
ter of fact, neither one nor the other state of things exists. The body 
social as at present existing may be classified, as regards care for oth- 
ers and self-seeking, into the following principal divisions : 
' <A. First, there are those who in precept, and as far as they can in 
practice also, think of others before themselves, who repay injuries by 
benefits, answer reviling by blessing, and adopt as their rule the prin- 
ciple that those who injure and hate them are those whom they should 
chiefly love and toward whose well-being their efforts should be chiefly 
directed. This class is very small; it is always losing members, but 
is probably increased by fresh accessions about as fast as it is dimin- 
ished by those who leave it. 

B. Secondly, there are those who, having for their chief aim the 
well-being of those around them and of mankind generally, yet recog- 
nize as necessary even for the advancement of that object, a due re- 
gard for the well-being—the health, strength, cheerfulness, and even 
the material prosperity—of self.* This class, like the first, is small ; 
but steadily increases in every advancing community. 

* One or two correspondents, whose letters have been handed to me, seem still unable 
to dissociate the idea of self-regard from the idea of selfishness, and imagine the man who 
duly cares for his own well-being (as the only effective way of fitting himself to be useful 
to others) to be necessarily one who really has at heart only his own comfort. It might 
be shown that the man who selfishly seeks his own comfort really goes the worst possible 
way to secure his own. happiness. But, apart from this, such a man is not the man of 


whom I am speaking. I am inquiring what the man should do who really wishes to in- 
crease the happiness of those around him most effectively ; and I show how his care for 


108 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


C. Thirdly, come those who in all societies, at present, form far 
the greater part of the community—those, viz., who think chiefly of 
their own interests or their families’, yet, though not specially careful 
to increase the happiness of others, are not selfishly intent on their 
own well-being only. 

D. Fourthly, there are those who think solely of themselves, or, if 
they look beyond themselves, care only for their nearest kinsfolk, con- 
sciously disregarding the interests of others, and seeking only in the 
struggle for life the advancement of themselves or their families, 

E. Lastly, there are those who, in their struggle to advance self, 
are prepared to prey on others if need be ; in other words, willfully to 
do mischief to others for their own advantage. 

In this classification we consider only the actual conduct of the 
various orders, not their expressed opinions. Were these to be taken 
into account, the classification would remain nominally unchanged, but 
the numbers belonging to the different classes would be very much 


their happiness involves, if he is wise, a due regard for his own happiness and well-being 
also—and even primarily, because his existence and his fitness to do good necessarily came 
‘before the good he may be able to do. 

One correspondent asks whether a man who could save life at his own peril ought 
not, according to the views I have indicated, to consider whether his iife might not be of 
greater value to the community than the life which he could save by sacrificing or endan- 
gering his own. I may remark in passing that the man who most freely acknowledged, 
as a matter of pure reasoning, that in such a case he ought to weigh his own life’s worth 
against the worth cf that other life would probably be the first to risk his life for others; 
while the man who made cheap parade of his readiness to sacrifice his life would probably 
be the readiest to slink away at the moment of danger. Weare not considering, however, 
what men should do under sudden impulse of danger affecting others—and especially the 
weak and tender. If we were, we might point out that in such cases there is much more 
at issue than the mere value of the lives at stake. If I saw a child, weak-minded, crippled, 
of small worth as a member of the body social, in danger from which I could save it at 
the risk or even the certainty of losing my own life (which I might judge of more value to 
the community), I trust that, whcther I had to act on impulse or after reflection, I should 
act, not as weighing the value of that life against my own, but rather as considering what 
would be the evil influence of cowardice and meanness in a community. If I had time 
to reason, I right reason that, whatever value my life might have, must go but a small 
way to counterbalance the effect of evil example. 

In many cases, however, men are bound first to think of the value of their life: they 
do so even in cases where eventually they know that their life must be sacrificed. The 
captain of an endangered ship, for instance, cares for his own life more than for the life 
of any on board, while his skill and experience are necessary to save life; and his actions 
in detail might under conceivable circumstances seem suggestive of mean care for his own 
life, when he knows at the very time that, after he has seen off the last boat—perhaps 
before many minutes are past—he and his best officers must go down with the ship. 

It is singular and significant, however, that cavils such as I have here touched upon, 
come without a single exception in letters otherwise so worded as to show inexperience, 
deficiency of reasoning power, or that turn of mind, unfairly regarded as specially belong- 
ing to the weaker sex, which does not reason at all, but simply repeats parrot-like, and 
with constant reference to the last word, the maxims (often quite misunderstood) learned 
by rote in childhood 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 109 


altered. Most of the members of the body social in civilized, and 
especially in Christian countries, would be assigned in that case to 
Class A—though every one knows that in reality this class is a very 
small one indeed. Class B would be scarcely changed in number, 
because, while members of that class are ready to maintain that the 
views on which their conduct depends are, in their opinion, sound and 
just, these views are not such as the members of other classes are 
anxious to simulate. They are not popular views, like the self-sacri- 
ficing ones which so many pretend to hold, but by no means really act 
upon. 

It is tolerably obvious that the well-being of society as a whole re- 
quires that Classes D and E shall not be unduly large, compared with the 
whole number of the community. Whatever tends to diminish their 
number, and especially the number of Class E, must tend to increase the 
well-being—that is, the happiness—of the social body. Class C, which 
always constitutes the main body, merges by insensible gradations 
into Class D, and Class D into Class E. Comparatively slight changes, 
influences relatively unimportant, suffice to transfer large numbers 
from the indifferent Class C to the self-seeking Class D, and similarly 
slight changes may suffice to transfer many from the simply self-seek- 
ing Class D to the noxious Class E. The lines of distinction between 
the first three classes are more marked. Members of the first class 
are more apt, at present, to pass into the third class than into the 
second, though little it should seem is needed to make these (the self- 
forgetting, enemy-loving members of the community) pass into the 
section combining due care of self with anxious desire to increase the 
happiness and well-being of the social body. -That any members of 

the second class should pass either into the first, whence most of them 

came, or into the third, whose indifference to the welfare of others is 
unpleasing to them, or into the fourth, whose selfishness is abhorrent 
to them, is unlikely ; for which reason this class should logically have 
occupied the first place, seeing that the class we have set first really 
merges both into the second and into the third, which should, there- 
fore, be set on different sides of it. We had a reason, however, 
which many will understand, for not depriving Class A of the position 
it holds theoretically, though practically the class has no such stand- 
ing, and is especially contemned by Class C, the noisiest in pretending 
to accept its principles. 

Since, then, the welfare of the body social depends mainly on the 
relative smallness of Classes D and E, the selfish and the noxious, it 
follows that an important, if not the chief, duty to society, for all who 
really and reasoningly desire the well-being and progress of the com- 
munity, is so to regulate their conduct as to cause these classes to be- 
come relatively smaller and smaller. Conduct which can be shown to 
encourage the development of these classes, to make selfish ways 
pleasanter, and noxious ways safer, is injurious to the body social, and 


110 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


is therefore wrong ; while, on the contrary, conduct which tends to 
increase relatively the number of those who are considerate of the 
welfare of others, is beneficial to the community, tends to increase the 
happiness of the greater number, and is therefore right. If, there- 
fore, it can be shown that the principle adopted by Class A, however 
self-sacrificing, must tend to work far wider mischief in encouraging 
the development of selfishness and wrong-doing than it can possibly 
effect in the way of good (the good being local and casual, the evil 
systematic and wide-spread), then will it become clear that the prin- 
ciple adopted by Class B, which equally seeks the good of others, but 
-entirely avoids the risk of encouraging the selfish and the evil-disposed, 
is that which can alone lead to permanent improvement and happiness 
in the social body. 
This, as we shall next proceed to show, is unquestionably the case. 
—Inowledge. 


WAS HE AN IDIOT? 
By Rev. W. A. CRAM. 


he the quiet little town of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, there 
has lately died a man whose life appears to the writer to present 
a psychological study of marked interest. Nature, in what are called 
her freaks, or abnormal products, oft-times gives us hints of powers 
altogether beyond the ordinary, but destined, it may be, through the 
development of the race, to become common possessions of mankind. 
This man furnishes a case in point. 

The subject of our paper was about five feet six inches in height, 
when standing upright, but he stooped very much as he walked, 
his hands hanging far forward. His body was long, his legs very 
short, so that in walking he made the lifting, jerking movement in his 
step characteristic of quadrupeds trained to walk upright. His fore- 
head, to the eye of a phrenologist, was very fully and finely developed. 
His occiput rose in a high point, but on each side there was a very 
‘deep depression. Phrenologically speaking, his head would have been 
considered well formed, save for these two depressions at the back. 

His education, if so we may call it, was limited to learning the let- 
ters of the alphabet, so as to know them singly at sight, but he was 
unable to combine them into syllables or words. He could count as 
far as five or six, but beyond that became confused. He had a decided 
literary taste, judging from his interest in books and papers, in pe- 
rusing which he spent much of his time, and apparently found much 
enjoyment. He did not hold the paper with column perpendicular, 
but horizontal, reading always from right to left. If any one gave 
him a book or paper, with page or column perpendicular, he at once 


WAS HE AN IDIOT? Lik 


shook his head, and placed it with the column horizontal. While pe- 
rusing the paper, he would stop occasionally, lean back in his chair, and 
laugh, as if much amused at the matter. That he gathered some pe- 
culiar impression of what was in the paper is plain from the fact that 
he would be greatly interested in some part, and carefully lay the 
paper away till his sister came to visit them at the old home, when he 
would eagerly go and get it, and, poinitng to the part that had in- 
terested him, would say, “Read—read!” There was another pe- 
culiarity about his reading. He would begin to read when it was 
growing dark, and continue till hardly anything was distinguishable 
to others in the room. At first thought, one would naturally sup- 
pose that he could not see, or really read, but was simply indulging 
in some kind of idiotic amusement. One simple fact seems to nega- 
tive such a conclusion. He kept old papers filed away in the garret, 
hundreds of them in different piles. If, by chance, an article happened 
to be spoken of by the family in conversation as having been in some 
paper six months or a year before, and the desire expressed to see it 
again, this man would go to the garret, and from a pile of a hundred, 
in total darkness, select the one containing the article mentioned, 
and bring it down to the family to read. This he did again and 
again, yet he could not read a single word as others commonly read. 

The mathematical powers of this man were really wonderful in 
certain directions. Without a moment’s seeming thought he would 
tell the dominical letter for any year past or future that might be 
named. There seemed no limit to his power in this one line. He ap- 
peared to go through no process of calculation, but at once saw or 
grasped the result as by some more inward or subtile power of ap- 
prehension. His brother again and again proved the correctness of 
his answers, although the mathematical result that the brother ob- 
tained by a half-hour’s “figuring ” this seeming idiot attained in a 
moment. Strangers coming to the house would oft-times tell him 
their age, the day and month of their birth. He would immediately 
tell them the day of the week they were born, also the day of the 
week their birthday would fall upon in any year to come. The day 
of the week that Christmas or fourth of July would come in any 
year they would mention, he would tell without a moment’s apparent 
calculation, and yet he could not count, or reckon in the ordinary 
way, more than a child of three years old! His particular literary 
preference seemed to be for almanacs, often having three or four 
about him, which he apparently studied and compared. When it 
came near the end of the year, he was anxious and urgent to get the 
new year’s almanac. 

There was one peculiar performance that betokened a certain de- 
gree of musical taste and apprehension, He would sit for hours, with 
a board two or three feet long resting on his knees, and rub ribbon- 
blocks over it in various ways, producing different sounds, not alto- 


112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


gether without method and with a kind of crude harmony. In this he 
found great enjoyment, often leaning back in his chair and laughing 
heartily at some unexpected combination of sounds. In the warm 
weather he employed a musical instrument of grand proportions, for 
he used the whole side of a long, old-fashioned barn, rubbing the 
blocks up and down as high as he could reach, the different boards 
giving forth somewhat different sounds as he rubbed his blocks over 
them. Ina crude way he seemed to play upon the different boards, 
as an organist touches the different keys of his instrument. After 
years of this kind of musical performance, the boards on the side of 
the barn were worn quite thin. 

He would never use or touch, if he could help it, any sharp-edged 
tool, being afraid of them as of some animal that might sting or bite. 
He was a hearty eater, and while eating would frequently stop and 


make the peculiar grunt characteristic of the hog while eating, then 
turning his head a little would seem to listen, and then go on eating. 


x Ot) 
At, 


Was this man a case of arrested development? Looked at in one 


“way, he appeared so. The great length of the body, the short lower 


4 '. limbs, the forward stoop, the arms hanging far forward, the voracious 
_ eating, the frequent grunt, the animal-like turning of the head and 


listening while eating—all these things point to arrested development. 


On the other hand, the excessive development of certain other senses 
or faculties seems to show how, when certain unfolding powers and 
organs of the human being are suppressed, the life-forces shoot out 
and up enormously in other organs and senses ; as in a young growing 
tree, if the top be broken off and most of the main branches lopped 
away, the sap flows more vigorously into the remaining branches, 
and they become enormously developed. Thus the common mathe- 
matical powers of counting and calculation appeared to be nearly 
aborted or suppressed, as he was unable to count or solve the simplest 
arithmetical problem in the common way ; yet he solved in an instant 
mathematical problems that, by what we call our normal mental facul- 
ties, required several minutes of careful figuring to find a solution. 
Blinded and imprisoned where we commonly see and understand, had 
some of his faculties and powers surpassed the ordinary bounds in a 
higher and finer development? It appeared so. Was he an idiot? 
What meant his power of seeing in the dark, of selecting from among 


a file of hundreds a paper containing a particular article, published a 


year or more before, though he had never learned to read a sentence 
as we understand reading ? May it not be that the printed page gives 
impressions of one kind to our common sight and understanding, and 
of another, finer kind to subtiler senses, and a different, may be a 
clearer understanding ? Thus we trace a man’s way by the tracks 
he makes in the snow or soft ground, while his dog follows him more 
surely, not by these so palpable signs, but by some finer track or im- 
pression, over or within what we see. May it not be that while we 


SKETCH OF MARY SOMERVILLE, 113 


trace and apprehend the thoughts of the printed page, through the 
impression of the black lettering, this man received some finer im- 
pression from the printed page than any we know? 

In closing this short account of a remarkable individual, we would 
only record one or two events prior to his birth, which afford some 
little explanation of what appears in this man as arrested development. 

His mother, not long before his birth, passed through a severe attack 
of measles. This at the time was not reckoned in the account of 
causes that might have unfavorably influenced the unborn child. One 
thing, however, was recognized as the probable cause of a pre-natal 
organic disturbance, viz., the fright of the mother by some hogs 
kept on the farm. Herein we have a possible explanation of those 
strange actions while eating, the peculiar grunt, the turning of the 
head, and the listening attitude, which are frequently observed when 
swine are feeding. a es 
ast 


4 
S 
v 


SKETCH OF MARY SOMERVILLE. 


£6 ITHOUT forming what is ordinarily called an eventful 
career,” says an English essayist,* “the life of Mrs. Somer- 
ville is marked by a degree of interest far beyond that which attaches 
to the lives of many men and women who have shown more striking 
traits of temperament and character. It is the unobtrusive record of 
what can be done by the steady culture of good natural powers, and 
the pursuit of a high standard of excellence, in order to win for a 
woman a distinguished place in the sphere habitually reserved to men, 
without parting with any of those characteristics of mind, or charac- 
ter, or demeanor, which have ever been taken to form the grace and 
glory of womanhood.” ‘ Nature” speaks of her as an illustrious 
woman, “unique, or almost unique, from one point of view, though so 
beautifully womanly from others.” Sir Charles Lyell spoke of her, in 
one of his letters (“ Life,” Vol. I, page 373), as “the first of women, 
not of the blue.” 

Mrs. SomERVILLE was born in Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland, 
December 26, 1780, and died at Sorrento, near Naples, November 29, 
1872. Her father was Sir William George Fairfax, who commanded 
the admiral’s ship in the battle of Camperdown, and was afterward 
made a vice-admiral. There was nothing congenial in the surround- 
ings of her childhood to the scientific pursuits for which she even 
then seems to have had an inclination, and the influences under which 
she lived were rather adverse to the gratification of her tastes in that 
direction. Her earliest pictures of herself represent her ds “a lonely 
child picking up shells along the shore,. . . or gathering wild-flow- 

* “ Saturday Review,” January 10, 1874. 
VoL. xxv.—8 


114 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ers and ere on the heath-clad links, . . - having neither dolls nor 
playmates.” ‘When the tide was out,” sie says in her “ Personal 
Recollections,” “I spent hours on the sand, looking at the star-fish 
and sea-urchins, or watching the children digging for sand-eels, cock- 
les, and the spouting razor-fish. I made a collection of shells, such as 
were cast ashore, some so small that they appeared like white specks 
in patches of black sand. There was a small pier on the sands for 
shipping limestone brought from the coal-mines inland. I was aston- 
ished to see the surface of these blocks of stone covered with beauti- 
ful impressions of what seemed to be leaves; how they got there I 
could not imagine, but I picked up the broken bits, and even large 
pieces, and brought them to my repository. I knew the eggs of many 
birds, and made a collection of them.” 

When ten years old, she was sent to school at Musselburgh, 
where she spent a year of misery. The chief thing she had to do at 
this expensive establishment was to learn by heart a page of John- 
son’s dictionary, not only to spell the words, give their parts of speech 
and meaning, but as an exercise of memory to remember their order 
of succession. Besides this, she had to learn the first principles of 
writing, and the rudiments of French and English grammar. From 
this place “she returned home, as she naively says, like a wild animal 
escaped from ‘a cage, to revel once more in the curiosities of the sea- 
shore, sitting up half the night to watch the stars or the aurora, and 
having an instinctive horror, which clung to her through life, of being 
alone in the dark.” Four or five years later she received her first 
introduction to mathematics, by one of the most curious accidents 
that could be imagined—through a fashion-magazine. At one of the 
tea-parties given by her mother’s neighbors, she became acquainted 
with a Miss Ogilvie, who asked her to go and see fancy works she 
was engaged upon. “I went next day,” Mrs. Somerville writes, “and 
after admiring her work, and being told how it was done, she showed 
me a monthly magazine with colored plates of ladies’ dresses, charades, 
and puzzles. At the end of a page I read what appeared to me to be 
simply an arithmetical question ; but in turning the page I was sur- 
prised to see strange-looking lines mixed with letters, chiefly X’s and 
Y’s, and asked, ‘What is that?’ ‘Oh,’ said Miss Ogilvie, ‘it is a 
kind of arithmetic—they call it algebra ; but I can tell you nothing 
about it.? And we talked about other things; but, on going home, 
I thought I would look if any of our books could tell me what was 
meant by algebra. In Robertson’s ‘Navigation,’ I flattered myself 
that I had got precisely what I wanted ; but I soon found that I was 
mistaken. I perceived, however, that astronomy did not consist in 
star-gazing, and, as I persevered in studying the book for a time, I 
certainly got a dim view of several subjects which were useful to me 


afterward. Unfortunately, not one of our acquaintances or relations _ 


knew anything of science or natural history ; nor, had they done so, 


SKETCH OF MARY SOMERVILLE. 115 


should I have had courage to ask any of them a question, for I should 
have been laughed-at.” She was afterward introduced to Nasmyth, 
the landscape-painter, under whom she practiced in copying pictures. 
One day she heard him say, in talking with some ladies about per- 
spective: ‘You should study Euclid’s ‘Elements of Geometry’; the 
- foundation, not only of perspective, but of astronomy and all manta 
ical science.” “Here, in the most unexpected manner,” she says, “I 
got the information I wanted, for I at once saw that it would help me 
to understand some parts of Robertson’s ‘ Navigation’; but as to go- 
ing to a bookseller and asking for Euclid, the thing was impossible.” 
She afterward obtained, through a tutor in the family, a Euclid and a 
Bonnycastle’s “ Algebra,” and studied—herself being her only teacher 
—her geometry by stealth, reading late in the night after she had gone 
to bed. The servants reported to her mother that she was consuming 
candles extravagantly, and orders were given to take away her candle 
as soon as she was in bed. She had, however, already gone through 
the first six books of Euclid, and was now thrown on her memory. 
She continued her geometrical exercises by beginning with the first 
book of her author and demonstrating a certain number of problems 
every night, till she could nearly go through the whole. She also 
studied Latin, reading six books of Cesar’s “‘ Commentaries,” and Greek 
enough to read Xenophon and part of Herodotus. While these things 
were going on, her father came home for a short time, and, learning 
what she was about, said to her mother: “We must put a stop to this, 
or we shall have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days. There was 
X: , who went raving mad about the longitude.” Her mother, 
though pleased with the acquisitions in music she made, was as unsym- 
pathetic as her father with her scholastic tastes ; and, believing that 
women’s duties were domestic, took great pains to divert her mind 
from her chosen “unladylike” pursuits, and keep her busied with house- 
hold occupations. She received some sympathy from her uncle, the 
Rev. Dr. Somerville, afterward her father-in-law, who was one of the 
first to perceive her rare qualities ; and from Professor Wallace, of the 
University of Edinburgh, who gave her a list of mathematical books, 
chiefly French. “I was thirty-three years of age,” she writes, “ when 
I bought this excellent little library. I could hardly believe that I 
possessed such a treasure when I looked back on the day that I first 
saw the mysterious word ‘algebra,’ and the long course of years in 
which I had persevered, almost without hope. It taught me never to 
despair. I had now the means, and pursued my studies with increased 
assiduity; concealment was no longer possible, nor was it attempted. I 
was considered eccentric and foolish, and my conduct was highly dis- 
approved of by many, even by some members of my own family.” 
The future Mrs. Somerville had also gifts of another kind than 
her scholastic ones. She was admired for her good looks, and called 
“the Rose of Jedburgh”; and was conspicuous for her beauty, the 


116 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


youthfulness of her manner, and her light and graceful figure, to the 
end of her life. She was married in 1804 to Mr. Samuel Greig, Rus- 
sian consular agent in London, who has been credited with encour- 
aging her scientific tastes, but incorrectly. Her daughter, Martha 
Somerville, says that “Mr. Greig took no interest in science or litera- 
ture, and possessed in full the prejudice against learned women which 
was common at that time.” But he did not prevent her from study- 
ing. After three years of married life she returned, a widow, to her 
father’s house in Burntisland, with two little boys, one of whom died 
in childhood. With her second husband, Dr. William Somerville, 
whom she married in 1812, “she found sympathy with her intellect- 
ual tastes, and a stimulus to her energy for culture.” Nevertheless, 
his sister had written to her on the first announcement of the en- 
gagement, expressing the hope that now she would give up her foolish 
manner of life and studies, and make a respectable and useful wife. 
Dr. Somerville having been appointed Inspector of the Army Medi- 
cal Board and Physician to Chelsea Hospital, they removed to London 
in 1816. Here Mrs. Somerville introduced herself to the scientific 
world and attracted attention by some experiments on the magnetic 
influence of the violet rays of the solar spectrum, the results of which 
were published in the “ Philosophical Transactions” of 1826. 

In the year following the reading of this paper, Lord Brougham 
proposed to Mrs. Somerville to write for the series of publications of 
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge an epitome or 
popular exposition of Laplace’s philosophy, as laid down in his 
“Mécanique Céleste.” Acting upon this suggestion, she composed 
her ‘‘ Celestial Mechanics,” a work in which, though it is founded on 
Laplace’s treatise, the author did not hesitate to express her own in- 
dependent opinion of the value of the great astronomer’s various 
propositions. The book proved to be too large and elaborate for the 
library for which it had been primarily intended—or, as Sir John 
Herschel expressed it, “written for posterity, and not for the class 
whom the society designed to instruct ”—and was published separate- 
ly, in 1831. It made her famous. The approval which it won, says 
“Nature” in a leading article, “from the first mathematicians and 
physicists of the day, seems to have surprised no one more thoroughly 
than the writer herself, who had carried on her studies with such 
unostentatious industry within her own home that she was scarcely 
conscious how exceptional were her attainments.” On the recom- 
mendation of Professors Whewell and Peacock, the “ Mechanism of 
the Heavens” was introduced upon the list of studies prescribed by 
the University of Cambridge as “essential to those students who as- 
pire to the highest places in the examinations.” 

In 1834 she published “The Connection of the Physical Sciences,” 
a work which was highly praised in the “Quarterly Review,” was 
spoken of by Humboldt as “generally so exact and admirable a trea- 


SKETCH OF MARY SOMERVILLE. 117 


tise,” has passed through nine editions in English, and was translated 
into Italian and published m Florence in 1861. In the next year she 
was awarded by the Government a literary pension of £200, which 
was afterward increased to £300; and was made an honorary mem- 
ber of the Royal Astronomical Society, the second woman—Caroline 
Herschel being the first—on whom this honor was conferred. Her 
bust, by Chantrey, was placed, by a subscription of the Fellows, in the 
great hall of the Royal Society. 

Mrs. Somerville’s best-known work is her “Physical Geography,” 
one of the earliest systematic treatises on that important subject, on 
which so much attention has since been bestowed, which was pub- 
lished in 1848, It has passed through several editions in England and 
the United States, has been translated into several foreign languages, 
and still holds a place as a first authority, even with experts, among 
the numerous learned works that have since been published on the 
subject. Of the publication of this book, Mrs. Somerville says: “I 
was preparing to print my ‘Physical Geography’ when ‘ Cosmos’ 
appeared. I at once determined to put my manuscript in the fire, 
when Somerville said: ‘Do not be rash ; consult some of our friends— 
Herschel, for instance.’ So I sent the MS. to Sir John Herschel, who 
advised me by all means to publish it.” She afterward sent a copy of 
a later edition to Baron Humboldt, who wrote her a very kind letter 
in return, in which he spoke of the book as “ that fine work, that has 
charmed and instructed me since it appeared for the first time. To 
the great superiority you possess, and which has so nobly illustrated 
your name in the high regions of mathematical analysis, you add, 
madame, a variety of information in all parts of physics and descrip- 
tive natural history. After the ‘Mechanism of the Heavens,’ the 
philosophical ‘ Connection of the Physical Sciences’ has been the ob- 
ject of my profound admiration. . . . The author of the rash ‘Cosmos’ 
should, more than any other one, salute the ‘Physical Geography’ of 
Mary Somerville. . . . I do not know of a work on physical geography 
in any language that can compare with yours.” 

Her last work, “On Molecular and Microscopic Science,” contain- 

‘ing a summary of the most recent and abstruse investigations in that 
department, was published in 1869, when she was close upon her nine- 
tieth year. This book was begun, she tells us in her “ Recollections,” 
about eight years before, when she was unoccupied, and felt the neces- 
sity of having something to do, desultory reading being insufficient to 
interest her ; “and as I had always considered the section on chemis- 
try the weakest part of the ‘Connection of the Physical Sciences,’ I 
resolved to write it anew. My daughters strongly opposed this, say- 
ing, ‘Why not write a new book?’ They were right ; it would have 
been lost time ; so.I followed their advice, though it was a formidable 
undertaking at my age, considering that the general character of sci- 
ence had greatly changed.” Instead of being discouraged by the mag- 


118 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


nitude of the field opened to her, “I seemed to have resumed the 
perseverance and energy of my youth, and began to write with cour- 
age, though I did not think I should live to finish even the sketch I 
had made, and which I intended to publish under the name of ‘ Mo- 
lecular and Microscopic Science,’ and assumed as my motto, ‘Deus 
magnus in magnis, maximus in minimis’ (‘God great in great things, 
greatest in the least’), from Saint Augustine.” 

This list of Mrs. Somerville’s principal publications does not in- 
clude all, nor even the most difficult of her works, for she produced, 
also, monographs on the “ Analytical Attraction of Spheroids,” “The 
Form and Rotation of the Earth,” “The Tides of the Ocean and 
Atmosphere,” “and, besides many others of equally abstruse nature, 
a treatise of two hundred and forty-six pages ‘On Curves and Sur- 
faces of the Higher Orders,’ which she herself tells us she wrote 
con amore, to fill up her morning hours while spending her winter in 
Southern Italy.” 

With all these labors, and this concentration of her mind on the 
most difficult problems of physics and mathematics, Mrs. Somerville 
shone in the domestic circle, and enjoyed society and its amusements. 
‘In reading the personal recollections of this wonderful woman,” says 
“Nature,” “nothing strikes one more than the ordinary and even com- 
monplace conditions under which her great intellect advanced to ma- 
turity. In her case, the only exceptional features were her natural 
gifts, and her perseverance in cultivating them. Although ‘the one 
woman of her time, and perhaps of all times,’ so successfully did she 
conceal her learning under a delicate feminine exterior, a shy manner, 
and the practical qualities of an efficient mistress of a household, 
coupled with the graceful, artistic accomplishments of an elegant 
woman of the world, that ordinary visitors, who had sought her as a 
prodigy, came away disappointed that she looked and behaved like 
any other materfamilias, and talked just like other people.” Mrs. 
Marcet wrote to her, announcing her election to a scientific society 
of Geneva: “You receive great honors, my dear friend, but that 
which you confer on our sex is still greater, for, with talents and 
acquirements of masculine magnitude, you unite the most sensitive 
and retiring modesty of the female sex; indeed, I know not any 
woman, perhaps I might say any human being, who would support 
so much applause without feeling the weakness of vanity.” Miss 
Somerville says in the “Recollections”: “It would be almost in- 
credible were I to describe how much my mother contrived to do 
in the course of the day. When my sister and I were small chil- 
dren, although busily engaged in writing for the press, she used to 
teach us for three hours every morning, besides managing her house 
carefully, reading the newspapers (for she always was a keen and, I 
must add, a liberal politician), and the most important new books on 
all subjects, grave and gay. In addition to all this, she freely visited 


SKETCH OF MARY SOMERVILLE. 119 
and received her friends. Gay and cheerful company was a pleasant 
relaxation after a hard-day’s work. My mother never introduced 
scientific or learned subjects into general conversation. When they 
were brought forward by others, she talked simply and naturally 
about them, without the slightest pretension to superior knowledge. 
Finally, to complete the list of her accomplishments, I must add that 
she was a remarkably neat and skillful needle-woman.” 

“At Edinburgh,” says the English essayist in the “Saturday Re- 
view,” “she had the opportunity of seeing Mrs. Siddons and John 
Kemble on the stage, and contracted a passion for Shakespeare. 
Poetry and works of the imagination had a charm to her from the © 
first ; and no girl more enjoyed dancing, or had more numerous part- 
ners at balls. At the same time, a degree of diffidence, mainly at- 
tributable to the seclusion of her early years, forbade her taking part 
in conversation, or speaking across the table. Through all her amuse- 
ments, severe as the winter might be, she rose at daybreak, and, 
wrapped in a blanket, no fire being allowed, read algebra or the clas- 
sics till breakfast-time. If tired in mind, as she was often conscious 
of becoming, in spite of her perseverance, refreshment was sought in 
poetry, or in stories of ghosts and witchcraft, of which she was con- 
stitutionally fond, being what the Scotch call eerie when in the dark 
or by herself, although having no actual belief in ghosts, and feeling 
a proper scorn for spirit-rappers.” The practice of writing in bed, re- 
ferred to in the preceding extract, appears to have been habitual with 
her, and “ Chambers’s Journal” gives a picture of her making it a rule 
“not to get up before twelve or one, although she began work at 
eight ; reading, writing, and calculating hard—with her pet sparrow 
resting upon her arm—four or five hours every day, but these four or 
five hours were spent abed.” 

“The restless activity of her intellect,” says “Nature,” “never 
slumbered. When she received her first lessons in painting and mu- 
sic, she began at once to try and trace out the scientific principles on 
which these arts are based, and never rested till she had gained some 
knowledge of the laws of perspective and of the theory of color, and 
had learned to tune her own instruments.” Another writer depicts the 
versatility of her life, and the abundance of the scientific friendships 
she contracted in association with her husband, who, “a traveler, a 
naturalist, a good classic, and a critical writer of English,” was ‘‘one 
to share her studies and to be her support and companion in so- 
ciety and in travel... . Geology and mineralogy are among the first 
of their joint studies, and the extravagance of their cabinet of speci- 
mens is criticised. Acquaintance with the Herschels opens up practi- 
cal astronomy. In London, Arago and Biot, who had heard of the 
English lady reading Laplace, express surprise at her youth. At 
Paris friendship is renewed with these savants, with whom are met 
Laplace himself, Arago, and Professor Humboldt ; Cuvier does the 


120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


honors of the Jardin des Plantes, and Gay-Lussac and Larrey enter- 
tain her with chat. ... At Geneva she met Mrs. Marcet, whose ‘Conver- 
sations on Chemistry’ were said by Faraday to have first opened his 
mind to the wonders of that science. There, too, were Sismondi and 
De la Rive. A letter from De Candolle, whose acquaintance she had 
made there, gives shortly afterward some excellent hints for the prose- 
cution of the botanical studies in which she had already made much 
progress. The interest which she takes in the most diverse branches 
of knowledge makes every one forward to bring her the first intelli- 
gence of anything new or of significance. Dr. Young is eager to sub- 
mit an Egyptian horoscope he has that evening deciphered from a 
papyrus of the age of the Ptolemies ; Wollaston hurries to Hanover 
Square to show, by means of a small prism in a darkened room, the 
seven dark lines he had discovered crossing the solar spectrum, the 
germ of the most important series of modern discoveries in solar phys- 
ics ; Babbage discourses over his analytical engine ; Sir J. Herschel 
exhibits nebule and binary stars in the field of his great reflector ; 
Ada, Byron’s daughter, afterward Lady Lovelace, compares difficulties 
with Mary Somerville in mathematics. Among her most intimate and 
valued friends was Maria Edgeworth, to which number were later 
added Joanna Baillie and her sister. Year by year her acquaintance 
and correspondence grew, until they included well-nigh every name 
of distinction in literature or science.” 

This activity continued till the last day of her life. She spent 
many years in Italy, having removed there for the benefit of the health 
of her husband, who died at Florence in 1861 at the age of ninety- 
one, and continuing to reside there till her death. In ber eighty-ninth 
year she revised some of her earlier mathematical manuscripts, which 
had been forgotten for many years, and was surprised at the facility 
she still retained for the calculus. One of her latest writings was the 
acknowledgment of the receipt from Mr. Spottiswoode of a parcel of 
recent advanced books upon the higher algebra, including quaternions. 
In her ninety-second year, when she had written of the “ Blue Peter 
having long been flying at her foremast,” and of her soon expecting 
the signal for sailing, she was interesting herself in the phenomena of 
volcanic eruptions, and speculating on their effects, and was following 
with unabated interest the progress of scientific discovery and keeping 
up with the record of events. She died in sleep. The list of scientific 
societies of which Mrs. Somerville was a member, and of honors she 
received, is a long one, and includes a number of American societies. 
She also had among her personal friends many men of chief distinction 
in American science and letters. 

During her later years Mrs. Somerville noted down some recollec- 
tions of her life, and they, edited and supplemented by her daughter, 
Martha Somerville, were published in 1873, under the title of “ Per- 
sonal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville.” 


CORRESPONDENCE, ; 


12) 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


A TYPICAL EXPERIENCE. 


Messrs. Editors: 

I AM one of your devoted readers, enjoy 
nearly all your articles, swallow nearly 

all of your latest theories, and try experi- 

ments suggested by the valuable chapters 

upon “Chemistry of Cookery.” 

Yesterday being the first pause in the 
deluge which we have endured for three 
weeks, I took advantage of the fair weather 
to make some calls, donned my better gown, 
and, alas! my best shoes, and paid twelve 
debts to society. 

Returning at night, foot-sore and weary, 
I subsided into a wrapper, a pair of slippers, 
and an easy-chair, to enjoy a pleasant hour 
with the newly-arrived ‘‘ Popular Science” 
for March, 1884. 

In turning over the leaves, which hap- 
pily are always cut, my aching feet caused 
me to read with eagerness the chapter on 
“Fashion and Deformity in the Feet,” hop- 
ing to find some practical help for a life-long 
distress, the only consolation for which has 
heretofore been that I have not four feet to 
shoe, and the only hope for the future that 
I may one day become, with the addition of 
hands, like a cherub on a tombstone, a head 
and two wings. 

I think no Chinese woman ever suffered 
much more from her poor little cramped 
toes than has your correspondent; so natu- 
rally I enjoyed Lord Palmerston’s suggestion 
as to the treatment of shoemakers, shivered 
over all the interesting plates showing dif- 
ferent fine specimens of deformed feet, re- 
joicing that my own pedal extremities were 
not so distorted, and read on with increasing 
hope that the person who understood the 
trouble so well would give a remedy. 

ine my disappointment and chagrin 
after following the writer through all these 
charming and harrowing details to find this, 
and this only, at the end of the chapter: 
‘““We may hope for some not far-distant 
time when our demand will be for a normal, 
healthy foot, in a natural and comfortable 
covering, and not for a crippled and dis- 
torted, withered, ugly ‘club,’ bound in an 
instrument of torture”! 

Now, this is exactly what I have hoped 
and striven for all my life, but how is a 
nineteenth-century woman to obtain the 
boon ? 

I have tried one shoemaker after another 
with like result. Each new one daintily 
lifts my old boot, pours contempt upon the 
shoemaker who made it, points out all its 
defects, and tells how much better he will 


do for me. I, with renewed hope, also de- 
nounce the old boot and the last shoemaker, 
and tell the new disciple of Crispin how 
much better work I expect from him. Meas- 
urements are taken; the new boots come 
home; I put them on and hobble round in 
agony. The shoemaker looks puzzled; al- 
ters the buttons; adds a lift to the outside 
of the heel; pockets my money, and after 
that answers my appeals with “‘ They will be 
all right after you have ‘broken them in.’” 

I suppose it is all the fault of my feet 
that the shoes never do get broken in. The 
shoemaker is all right, the boots all that 


ought to be desired; but, in the first place, 


my feet are not rights and lefts, though 
they look like ordinary feet, and all my 
shoes must be “ broken in” by wearing the 
left one on the right foot, and vice versa. 
Then, too, the skin is sensitive, and blisters 
easily ; so Iam doomed to hear fine concerts 
with two thoughts on my toes, trying to curl 
them into a more tolerable corner of my 
last “easy”? shoes, The most eloquent ser- 
mon is heard with my toes twingeing quite 
as often as my conscience, while the supreme 
consciousness of being well dressed in com- 
pany is undermined by the stronger con- 
sciousness of being altogether too weil shod, 
and the most rapturous enjoyment of art or 
nature hindered by a very intrusive demand 
of the lower nature. 

And now, in addition to the woes I know, 
comes the horrible fear of those I have just 
learned are possible. If, in addition to two 
little toes now not altogether like those of 
the Venus de’ Medici, two or three corns and 
numerous blisters, my agonies are likely to 
culminate in such fearful extremities as are 
depicted from Figs..5 to 10 in your late 
paper, and my poor feet are liable to be 
pictorially presented to the happier mortals 
of the future in some twentieth-century 
“Popular Science Monthly,” to illustrate 
the barbarous customs of our own age, what 
shall I do? 

It is so easy to say a woman should be 
independent of fashion, and consult health 
and comfort alone! How can one be inde- 
pendent of the shoemaker, unless she uses 
Indian moccasins, makes her own shoes, or 
goes barefooted ? 

Now, in common hu(wo)manity, after 
conjuring up these dreadful warnings and 
haunting pictures to terrify my already in- 
flamed imagination, do tell us where and 
how to get comfortable coverings for our 
feet, and secure the everlasting gratitude of 

A Surrerinc WoMAN. 

Provipence, R. L., February 23, 1884. 


122 


A CURIOUS CASE OF ALBINISM. 


Messrs. Editors : 

THERE is recorded in one of the popular 
encyclopedias the instance of a Welsh fam- 
ily in which each alternate child was an 
albino. This is, without doubt, remarka- 
ble; but there is now living, in a rural vil- 
lage on the banks of the Hudson, the rem- 
nants of quite as interesting a family, com- 
posed of both colored and white negroes. 
The wonder is, that some one curious in re- 
search has not long since found them out, 
made them a study, and perhaps woven 
them into history. 

Accustomed to see the members of this 
family daily, in my early life, they yet never 
ceased to be a new source of interest and 
astonishment; and, desiring to see them 
again, and to learn a few additional facts 
in regard to their history, I recently made 
a special journey to our native town—theirs 
and mine—expressly to meet them and talk 
with them once more. 

The colored progenitors are still living, 
and are now probably between sixty and 
seventy years of age. Thirteen living chil- 
dren have been born to them, of whom five 
have been pure albinos, and eight just as 
pure representatives of the African type. 
The first birth was black, after which they 
regularly alternated, white and black, as far 
as the tenth, after which all were black. 

According to the authorities upon this 
subject, albinos are usually males, yet four 
out of the five in this family have been fe- 
males. The texture of the skin with this 
class is generally coarse and rough, but 
with these it has always seemed to me to 
be fine and delicate. The mental ability of 
albinos, as a class, ranks low, but it is not 
true in this instance—in fact, during my 
recent visit to them I was much impressed 
with their practical sense and quite correct 
use of language. In music the whole fam- 
ily, black and white, has evidenced native 
ability that is almost genius, A piano is one 
of the few household gods, and they have all 
been accustomed to play and sing from ear- 
liest childhood, without instruction, but very 
acceptably. Years ago, when the family was 
large, their clear, pure, though untrained 
voices awakened long echoes through the vil- 
lage streets, and even the most critical gossips 
found no fault with the melodious strains. 

But three of the thirteen children are 
now living—one colored and two white 
daughters. The colored daughter has been 
married several years, and is the mother of a 
large family, none of whom, I am informed, 
bear abnormal traces. Both white daugh- 
ters married colored husbands (their associ- 
ations are, in fact, entirely with the colored 
people), and one is now a widow. She has 
been the mother of two black children, both 
of whom are dead. The other daughter has 
been married but a few months, 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


As children, playing harmoniously and 
affectionately together, the spectacle was 
very curious; I hardly know whether to 


‘term it one of pleasure or pain, but the ab- 


normal and incongruous must, perhaps, al- 
ways be productive of more or less painful 
emotions, even if there be no physical or 
mental suffering apparent in the object. 

Those of the family that have died, 
whether black or white, faded young and 
with slight provocation; but the three now 
remaining appear healthy and strong. 

As children, the albinos struggled with 
the sunlight, always placing both hands 
closely around the eyes, thus excluding every 
possible ray; but I observed, while with 
them recently, that they were far less sensi- 
tive to the light than formerly, and they so 
acknowledged. Because of their sensitive 
sight, Linnzeus called this class of people 
nocturnals, 

My purpose in this letter has merely 
been to call attention to this family, which 
has impressed me all my life as one of great 
interest. If any of my readers should desire 
further information, I shall very willingly, 
through the medium of this magazine, give 
names and address, or any facts in my own 
knowledge which have not been recorded in 
this communication. J.8. H. 

ALBANY, New York, Jarch 20, 1884. 


INSECTS AND DISEASE. 


Messrs. Editors: 

In the January number of “The Popu- 
lar Science Monthly ” is a letter from A. G: 
Boardman, of Macon, Georgia, in which he 
describes the painful and mischievous re- 
sults which follow when a “minute fly,” 
called a “black gnat,” flies into the eye and 
is killed by its secretions. He connects 
these consequences with the carrying of in- 
fection-germs by insects, 

The true explanation of the intense pain 
and subsequent inflammation is, I believe, 
much simpler. Formic acid is a powerful 
irritant. It was originally obtained by 
pounding ants in a mortar, and distilling 
their remains. It is now produced much 
more easily, and has been shown to be se- 


creted not only by ants but by other insects, 


and this secretion is apparently exaggerated 
when the insect is attacked or irritated. It 
is probably a means of defense. This be- 
ing the case, such a fly, during its death- 
struggles amid the secretions of the eye, 
would emit a maximum amount of this irri- 
tant. 

Cantharadin is another active irritant 
principle, emitted not only by the Spanish 
fly, from which it is named, but also by 
many other insects. Its irritant properties 
resemble those of formic acid, but are still 
more powerful; so much so, that +47 of a 
grain applied to the outer skin of the body 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


will produce a blister. On so sensitive a 
surface as that of the eye a very small frac- 
tion of this fraction would-do serious mis- 
chief. —-—~ W. Martrev Wittiaqs. 


STONEBRIDGE PARK, WILLESDEN, ' 
Mipp.esex, ENGLAND. 


GRAPES AS FOOD. 


Messrs. Editors: 

Dr. Oswatn’s article on “Enteric Dis- 
orders” (in your issue of December, 1883) 
recommends the grape-diet. Although the 
use of the grape is thus frequently extolled 
in general terms, I find that every individ- 
ual has his own opinion as to how the fruit 
should be used. A doctor of standing has 
assured me that grape-skins were as indi- 
gestible as hard-boiled white of egg, and fit 
to be swallowed by no one. Again, I have 
heard it said that, when the system is in 
need of an astringent, the tannin in grape- 
skins answers that want; while the acid of 
the pulp and the mechanical irritation of 


123 


the seeds act as mild laxatives. The infer- 
ence was, that a healthy stomach should re- 
ceive the whole fruit and keep its normal 
balance; as, however, the skin and seeds 
might be too irritating for a delicate stom- 
ach, the balance might still be kept by tak- 
ing in pulp alone; further, that skin and 
pulp, or seeds and pulp, should be swallowed 
according as the system needed an astrin- 
gent or a laxative diet. Others still would 
have the seeds as well as the skins rejected, 
under all circumstances. The same differ- 
ence of opinion exists as to whether the 
skins of apples, raw and baked, as well as 
of plums, pears, and tough-skinned fruits 
in general, should be taken into a healthy 
stomach. 

As Dr. Oswald has emphasized the die- 
tetic value of the grape, it would be a satis- 
faction to know what, in detail, is his view 
of its proper use. 

Respectfully yours, 
Saran U. C. Boron. 


GREENVILLE, Ptumas County, CAL., 
February 28, 1834, 


EDITOR'S TABLE, 


PROGRESS AND SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT. 


HE contrasts in the social condition 

of rich and poor—the lofty, lu- 
minous mountains of wealth, and the 
deep, dark valleys of poverty—have ever 
formed a picturesque subject for rhe- 
torical treatment, which has always 
made popular such books as ‘‘ The Glo- 
ry and the Shame of England.” Mr. 
George’s *‘ Progress and Poverty ”’ viv- 
idly pictures the social contrasts but 
ventures further, and opens the question 
of causes. He points to the millionaires, 
and their works, and their ostentation ; 
to the beggars in their wretchedness, 
and says society is sick, very sick, and 
growing sicker every day; and, after 
sufficiently declaiming over its danger- 
ous condition, he says, Here is the cause 
of the malady and this is the pill that 
will cure it. It had been supposed that 
social progress involved improvement, 
through many correlated agencies and 
by slow methods, but on this theory 
the sovereign use of Mr. George’s pill 
was not so apparent. So, with a stroke 
at the close of his book, he smashed 


Darwin with his dawdling evolution, 
and thus cleared the way for his own 
prescription to cure the poverty and 
wretchedness of mankind. 

Yet the rhetorician is not the man to 
deal with these subjects—except for lit- 
erary or sensational purposes. A quite 
different order of mind is required to 
give us sound instruction upon them. 
First of all we must know the facts, not 
in a vague and general way, but ac- 
curately and in detail, and so classified 
that their real meanings are unmistak- 
able. England, as we have intimated, 
is the country where social contrasts 
are most striking—where superabound- 
ing wealth is set off against the ex- 
tremest destitution, poverty, and squalid 
wretchedness; and England, therefore, 
must afford the most terrible example 
of that alleged downward working of 
progress, which but continually aggra- 
vates the evils of poverty. 

It was fitting, therefore, that a wide- 
ly informed and thoroughly disciplined 
student of social facts, the President ot 
the Statistical Society, Dr. Robert Gif- 


124 


fen, should take up this subject carefully 
and systematically, and furnish us with 
trustworthy conclusions in regard to it. 
Dr. Giffen has prepared an elaborate 
essay on ‘‘ The Progress of the Working- 
Classes in the last Half-Century,” frag- 
ments of which have appeared in some 
newspapers, but which we now give to 
the readers of ‘The Popular Science 
Monthly ” in full. It does not confirm 
the theories of Henry George, but, on 
the contrary, invalidates them. As Mr. 
Gladstone writes to Dr. Giffen: “I have 
read with great pleasure your masterly 
paper. It is probably in form and in 
substance the best reply to George.” 
Dr. Giffen goes exhaustively into the 
particulars of the social condition of the 
working-classes of England fifty years 
ago, and at the present time. He shows 
that wages have very greatly increased 
in that period, and he shows how much 
they haveincreased with different classes 
of laborers. He shows that accompa- 
nying this increase in the money-earn- 
ings of the masses there has been a 
marked diminution in the prices of all 
the chief articles which the masses con- 
sume. 
wages have increased, the hours of labor 
are diminished. And, while the pur- 
chasing power of money has been in- 
creased over the whole range of neces- 
saries and conveniences to be had fifty 
years ago, there are many new things 
in existence at a low price which could 
not then have been bought at all. Free 
trade has cheapened wheat in England 
to such an extent as to revolutionize the 
domestic economy of the poorer classes. 
The fluctuations in the price of bread 
half a century ago and earlier led to 
periodic starvation; with free trade 
those fluctuations are greatly dimin- 
ished, while the higher wages of laborers 
afford better protection against them. 
Meats generally, except bacon, have in- 
creased sensibly in price; but meat, 
fifty years ago, was a luxury to a great 
degree out of the reach of the laboring- 
classes. Rents are also higher, but the 


Moreover, while the money | 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


houses are much better; while the la- 
borer, consuming meat, and with supe- 
rior household accommodations, has still 
a large surplus from the rise of wages, 
as Dr. Giffen proves in detail. It is 
also shown that the cost of government 
has been greatly diminished to the work- 
ing-man. Taxes are less, and local gov- 
ernment is cheaper. Education is great- 
ly reduced in cost, postage is cheapened, 
free libraries are open, sanitary meas- 
ures are carried out, and such has been 
the general and substantial social im- 
provement that life has been lengthened 
with a gain of two years in the average 
duration among males, and of nearly 
three and a half years among females, 
No such change could take place with- 
out a great increase in the vitality of 
the people. 

We enumerate some of these points in 
this opportune and admirable paper that 
our readers may be attracted to read it 
with care, and not pass it by because of 
its length and its tabular statistics, which 
are, in fact, its most important part. 


YALE PROFESSORS ON COLLEGE S1TUD- 
TES. 

Tue “ Princeton Review ” for March 
opens with an article, by Professor 
George P. Fisher, of Yale College, on 
‘“‘The Study of Greek,” and to this suc- 
ceeds an article entitled ‘‘ Our Colleges 
before the Country,” by Professor Will- 
iam G. Sumner, of the same institution. 
Both papers deserve attention. Dr. 
Fisher begins his discussion of Greek 
by making some concessions which are 
significant at the present time. He says: 


The defense of the classics is often based 
on exaggerated statements, and is really 
weakened by being placed on narrow grounds. 
It is idle to pretend that the study of the 
classics is as indispensable to culture now as 
it was three or four centuries ago. 

There is truth in Macaulay’s sharp saying, 
that if ‘‘ ancient literature was the ark in 
which all the civilization of the world was pre- 
served during the deluge of barbarism,” still 
we do not read ‘that Noah thought himself 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


bound to live in the ark after the deluge had 
subsided.’? At present there is an abundance 
If the choice were given us whether to give to 
the flames the entire English literature of the 
last three centuries, or all the writings of the 
Greeks and Romans, the classics would have 
to perish. If we superadd to the English au- 
thors the German, French, and Italian writers 
of the modern period, there can be no question 
as to the literary value of the aggregate of 
these treasures when compared with the liter- 
ature of antiquity, collectively taken. A man 
who has studied Lessing, Goethe, and Kant, 
Pascal, Moliére, and Sainte-Beuve, Shake- 
speare, Milton, Locke, and Wordsworth, with 
Luther’s Bible or the authorized English 
version, can not be regarded as an uncultured 
person, even if he has never opened the covers 
of a Latin and Greek classic, Stil less can he 
be thus stigmatized if he has acquainted him- 
self with Homer and Thucydides, Tacitus and 
Horace, Plato and Cicero, through the me- 
dium of fairly good translations into the ver- 
nacular. 

The sweeping assertion sometimes hazard- 
ed, that classical training is in all cases neces- 
sary for distinctively literary excellence—for 
perfection of style—is contradicted by too 
many facts: Every one who has read the 
pages of John Bunyan, or the speeches of 
John Bright, knows better. Johnson was 
much more of a classical scholar than Gold- 
smith, but Goldsmith’s English is far better 
than Johnson’s. Native genius and tact have 
too large an influence in this matter to admit 
of any such universal rule or test as the clas- 
sical bigots would lay down. 

It is a very narrow view which holds that 
there is only one method of education—one 
beaten track on which all must walk. 

' Jt is not all persons who aspire after an in- 
tellectual life who are to be recommended to 
spend their time upon Greek, or even upon 
Latin. 
young persons, who devote a series of years to 
mental training in schools and colleges, should 
not, in case their aptitudes and intended vo- 
cation so prompt them, dispense with Greek, 
and pursue, in the room of it, the natural and 
physical sciences, or the modern languages, 
or both. 


These cautious concessions, though 
' no doubt entirely candid, have evidently 
been extracted from the professor by the 
strain which has been recently put upon 
the classical question, for he recognizes 
that the movement which broke out at 
Harvard College under the impulse of 


There is no good reason why many’ 


125 


Mr. Adams’s address, and which is un- 
derstood to be favored by the president 
of that institution, will probably result 
in a modification of the collegiate course, 
and that ‘‘in this case the example of 
Harvard is likely to be followed by a 
greater or less number of other col- 
leges.” But, while yielding these sevy- 
eral points, Dr. Fisher is careful not to 
surrender the main classical position, 
which is, to maintain the prestige of 
Greek and Latin as the essential ele- 
ments of a broad, liberal education. He 
here stands upon the old ground and 
plies the old arguments, the most im- 
portant of which seems to us strikingly 
unsatisfactory. Dr. Fisher says: 


The objects of study, the object-matter, 
are the world and man. The ‘world’? is 
here the synonym of nature. It embraces the 
physical universe, including the earth, its 
productions, and its inhabitants other than 
men. This is the realm of the natural and 
physical sciences. The grand progress of 
these studies is the most striking feature of the 
times, as regards the advance of knowledge. 
No one can be called an educated man at this 
day who is ignorant of the departments of in- 
quiry which deal with nature. They provide, 
when earnestly pursued, a discipline of their 
own. But they can never supersede as a 
means of culture the study of man. This is 
the “* proper study of mankind,” the supreme 
object of curiosity, and source of mental and 
moral development. In this statement, re- 
ligion is not forgotten ; but it is through the 
contemplation of man primarily, and of na- 
ture, that we learn of God. Man—what he’is, 
what he has thought and done, the civilization 
which he has created—this is that object of 
study, to which belongs a transcendent worth. 
In this study, embracing history, philosophy, 
politics, literature, religion, are the fountains 
from which cultivation is to be derived. To 
an individual cultivated thus, the sciences of 
nature gain a new quality, an ideal element, a 
suggestiveness, of which, independently of 
this advantage, they are destitute. 


Man as an object of study is here 
separated from nature, and the separa- 
tion is held to be so complete as to give 
rise to two great divisions of study. 
These are independent of each other, 
may be separately pursued, and result 
in two distinct systems of education. 


126 


Science may take nature, and the clas- 
sics will appropriate man, as the respect- 
ive objects of study. Dr. Fisher says: 

Now, at the foundation of a thorough and 
comprehensive survey of nature there lies one 
branch of knowledge. At the foundation of 
the thorough and comprehensive study of 
man there lies another. Each of these two 
fundamental studies is essential to the full 
understanding of things that now are—of 
nature as it is spread out before us, and of 
humanity in its present advanced condition. 
In other words, the present scene, in order to 
be radically comprehended, must be looked 
at in the light of these two fundamental 
studies. 


Dr. Fisher then proceeds to work out 
this view, by referring to mathematics, 
which is a leading element in ail liberal 
education, and showing its fundamental 
relation in the sphere of the sciences of 
nature; and he then makes the surpris- 
ing affirmation that what. mathematics 
is in the study of nature that also is 
classics in the study of man. He says, 
‘* Analogous to the relations of mathe- 
matics to the sciences of nature is the 
relation of the Greco-Roman history 
and civilization to our modern society.” 
And, after referring to the historic posi- 
tion of the Greeks, the Romans, and the 
Hebrews, and their providential relation 
to modern affairs, he says, ‘‘ As God has 
made nature mathematically, so he has 
governed the life and development of 
mankind as here indicated.” The suc- 
ceeding steps of the argument are obvi- 
ous. To understand man and modern 
things we must study the ancients, and 
“‘how shall this knowledge of antiquity 
be obtained? It can be obtained after 
a fashion at second hand. But for a 
‘liberal’ education, for that direct and 
penetrating view of ancient society 
which alone satisfies the ideal of such a 
culture, the languages of Greece and 
Rome must be learned. In the study 
of them the youth is put into immediate 
intercourse with the mind of the an- 
cients. The veil is lifted.” 

Now, the first objection to this view 
is that, as a matter of fact, the veil is 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


not lifted, and the minds of college 
youth are not “put into immediate in- 
tercourse with the mind of the an- 
cients.” It is notorious that, after five 
or ten years of study, ‘“‘ the average pu- 
pil can not read the Greek and Latin 
authors with any facility. Unable to 
read them, he lays them aside forever. 
Not unfrequently he sells the books 
which he has laboriously conned.” Dr. 
Fisher, in referring to this objection, 
admits that it “‘ can not be confuted by 
a sneer.” It has so much truth that 
he recognizes it as ‘‘a deserved rebuke 
to methods of. teaching which have 
come into vogue, and which loudly call 
for reform.” This is a tacit confession 
that the study of Greek and Latin, 
which Dr. Fisher holds to be the key 
to a great department of knowledge 
concerning man and human society, is 
a total failure with the great mass of 
college students. 

But the whole argument is futile. 
Man is not to be separated from nature 
as an object of study. He is a part of 
nature, and can only be understood as . 
nature is understood, and by exactly 
the same mental procedures. Mathe- 
matics is a fundamental condition of 
the sciences of nature, and they can 
not be cultivated or understood with- 
out it. To say that the classical lan- 
guages hold any such relation to the 
study of man is preposterous. We have 
man and all his activities and institu- 
tions before us, to be directly explored 
by observation, analysis, comparison, 
and all the perfected intellectual pro- 
cesses by which truth is established 
and knowledge extended. To be sure, 
we have not the ancients before us, but 
to understand them we had better study 
living men and existing society rather 
than to waste time on dead languages 
which, in nine cases out of ten, are 
never sufficiently learned to be of the 
slightest use for the purpose here con- 
templated. When living men are first 
studied and understood, translations will 
quite suffice to apply that knowledge 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


to the interpretation of the ancients. 
That there is a science of man, though 
yet imperfect; and a science of mind 
rapidly growing, and a science of socie- 
ty roughly established, it is impossible 
to deny, and they determine for us the 
method of future investigation. And it 
is not by the study of ancient languages 
that these sciences have been created, 
nor is it by their ardent devotees that 
they are being now pursued and devel- 
oped. As it is mainly by the men who 
have given the classics the go-by that all 
science has been cultivated, so it is to- 
day by men who are ignorant or not at 
all proficient in those old studies that 
the higher sciences pertaining to hu- 
manity are most vigorously and suc- 
cessfully pursued. And as it is not to 
the classicists but to the scientists that 
the world must look for further light 
on the nature, activities, and relations 
of man, so it is not to the dead lan- 
guages but to the modern sciences that 
young men are to be commended to 
gain the best understanding of humani- 
ty, both in the present and the past. 


Professor Sumner’s article, ‘* Our 
Colleges before the Country,” is writ- 
ten from the thoroughly modern point 
of view. It is a breezy discussion of 
college tactics, and quite unprofessorial 
in the freedom of its criticisms of col- 
lege functionaries’ habits, ideas, and 
studies. Appreciating the merits of 
classical study, and acknowledging his 
own indebtedness to it, Professor Sum- 
ner is alive to its short-comings, the 
exaggerated claims that are made for 
it, and the bad results that flow from 
its prescriptive position in modern col- 
legiate education. We quote some pas- 
sages from this admirable article, some 
of which it will be seen are not without 
bearing upon the preceding discussion : 

Now, however, the advocates of the old 
classical culture, ignoring or ignorant of all 
the change which has come over human 
knowledge and philosophy within fifty years, 
come forward to affirm that that culture still 
is the best possible training for our young 


127 


men and the proper basis for the work of our 
colleges. How do they know it? How can 
anybody say that one thing or another is just 
what is needed for education? Can we not 
break down this false and stupid notion that 
it is the duty of a university, not to teach 
whatever any one wants to know, but to pre- 
scribe to everybody what he ought to want 
to know? Some years ago, at a school-meet- 
ing in one of our cities, a gentleman made 
an argument against the classics. A distin- 
guished clergyman asked him across the 
room whether he had ever studied the clas- 
sics. He replied that he had not. ‘*I thought 
not,’’ replied the clergyman, as he sat down. 
He was thought to have won a great victory, 
but he had not. His opponent should have 
asked him whether he had ever studied any- 
thing else. Where is the man who has stud- 
ied beyond the range of the classical culture 
who retains his reverence for that culture as 
superior to all other for the basis of educa- 
tion? No doubt a man of classical training 
often looks back with pleasure and gratitude 
to his own education and feels that it has 
been of value to him; but when he draws an 
inference, either that no other course of dis- 
cipline would have been worth more to him- 
self, or that no other discipline can be gener- 
ally more useful as a basis of education, he 
forms a judgment on a comparison one branch 
of which is to him unknown. 

When, however, all this is admitted in 
regard to the uses of a classical training, what 
does it prove in regard to the claims of the 
classics to be made the basis of all higher 
education, or the toll which every one must 
pay before he can be admitted to the guild of 
the learned? Nothing at all. I have known 
splendid Greek scholars who could not con- 
struct a clear and intelligible argument of six 
sentences. They always became entangled 
in subtilties of phrase and super-refinement 
of words. I have known other great Greek 
scholars who wrote an English which was so 
dull that scarcely any one could read it. On 
the other hand, there are men whose names 
are household words wherever the English 
language is spoken, because they can say 
what they mean in clear, direct, and limpid 
English, although they have never had any 
classical culture at all. I have known whole 
classes to graduate at our colleges who had 
never read a line of Aristotle, and who had 
not a single correct notion about the life 
and polity of the Greeks. Men graduate now 
all the time who know nothing of Greek his- 
tory and polity but the fragments which they 
pick out of the notes on the authors which 
they read. It is grotesque to talk about the 


128 


recondite charms and graces of classical cult- 
ure when one knows what it amounts to for 
all but here and there one. It is a rare thing 
for a man to graduate who has read Grote or 
Curtius, although he has studied Greek for 
five or six years. Any one who reads no 
Greek and never goes to college, but reads 
Grote or Curtius, knows far more of Greek 
life, polity, and culture than any but the 
most exceptional college graduate. Ido not 
believe that this was formerly true. It ap- 
pears that faithful students in former times 
used such means as then existed for becom- 
ing familiar with clussical life and history far 
more diligently than is now customary. Clas- 
sical studies, having sunk. to a perfunctory 
character, now stand in the way of faithful 
study of anything. 

I go further, and, if the classics are still 
proposed as the stem of a liberal education, to 
be imposed upon every student who seeks a 
university training, I argue that classical cult- 
ure has distinct and mischievous limitations. 
The same may no doubt be said of any other 
special culture, and whenever any other cult- 
ure is put forward as possessing some exclu- 
sive or paramount value, it will be in orderto 
show that fact. I do not doubt that I gained 
great profit fromia classical training. Part of 
the profit I was conscious of. I think it very 
likely that I won other profit of which I was 
unconscious. I know that it cost me years of 
discipline to overcome the limitations of the 
classical training, and to emancipate my mind 
from the limited range of processes in which 
it had been trained. For the last ten years 1 
have taught political economy to young men 
of twenty-one years or thereabout who had 
been prepared for me by training in a curricu- 
lum based on classics. They have acquired 
certain facilities. They have a facility in 
‘¢ recitation’? which is not always produced 
by familiarity with the subject. The art of 
recitation is an art all by itself. Very often 
it is all a man has won from his college train- 
ing. Sometimes it consists in beating out a 
little very thin, so as to make it go a great 
way ; sometimes it consist in ‘* going on one’s 
general information,’ and profiting to the ut- 
most by any hint in the question ; sometimes 
it consists in talking rapidly about something 
else than the question. Some men never 
can come to a point, but soar in lofty circles 
around and over the point, showing that they 
have seen it from a distance; others present 
rags and tags of ideas and phrases, showing 
that they have read the text, and that here 
and there a word has stuck in the memory 
without sequence or relation. The habit of 
reading classics with a ‘‘ pony” for years has 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


produced these results. Many of these men 
must he regarded with pity because their 
mental powers have been miseducated for 
years, and when they try to acquire some- 
thing, to make it their own, to turn it into a 
concise and correct statement and utter it 
again, they can not do it. They have only 
acquired some tricks of speech and memory. 

The case of men who have studied honest- 
ly, but who have been educated almost ex- 
clusively on grammar, is different. No doubt 
they have gained a great deal, but I find that 
they hardly ever know what a ‘‘ law’? is in 
the scientific sense of the word. They think 
that it is like a rule in grammar, and they are 
quite prepared to find it followed by a list of 
exceptions. They very often lack vigor and 
force in thinking. They either accept au- 
thority too submissively, if the notion which 
is presented does not clash with any notions 
they had received before, or, if they argue, 
they do so on points of dialectical ingenuity. 
They do not join issue closely and directly, 
and things do not fall into order and range in 
their minds. They scem to be quite con- 
tented to take things and hold them in a 
jumble. It is rare to find one who has 
scholarship enough to look up an historical 
or biographical reference. It is generally as- 
sumed by them that if ‘‘no lesson has been 
given out’’ they have nothing to do. One of 
the most peculiar notions is that a *‘ lecture”? 
has no such importance as a ‘ recitation”? ; 
that to cut the former is of no consequence, 
but that to cut the latter is serious. In short, 
the habits and traditions in which men have 
been trained when they reach senior year in 
college are such that they are yet boys in 
responsibility, and, although they are very 
manly and independent in many respects, 
they are dependent and unmanly in their 
methods of study, in their conception of duty, 
in their scholarship, and in their code of con- 
duct in all that affects the institution. It has 
been claimed for the classics that they give 
guidance for conduct. This is, to me, the 
most amazing claim of all, for, in my experi- 
ence and observation, the most marked fact 
about classical culture is that it gives no guid- 
ance in conduct at all. 

The tendency of classical studies is to ex- 
alt authority, and to inculcate reverence for 
what is written, rather than for what is true. 
Men educated on classics are apt to be caught 
by the literary form, if it is attractive. They 
are fond of paradoxes, and will entertain two 
contradictory ideas, if only each come in a 
striking literary dress. They think that they 
prove something when they quote somebody 
who has once said it. If any one wants to 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


keep out ‘‘ new ideas,” he does well to cling 
to classical studies. They are-the greatest 
barrier to new ideas and the chief bulwark 
of modern obscurantism. The new sciences 
have produced in their.votaries an unquench- 
able thirst and affection for what is ¢rve in 
fact, word, character, and motive. They have 
taught us to appreciate and weigh evidence 
and to deal honestly with it. Here a strong 
contrast with classical training has been de- 
veloped, not because classical training led 
men to be false, but because the scientific 
love of truth is something new and intense. 
Men of classical training rarely develop the 
power to go through from beginning to end 
of a course of reasoning on a straight line. 
They go on until they see that they are com- 
ing out at a result which they do not like. 
Then they make a bend and aim for a result 
which they do like, not regarding the broken 
continuity, or smoothing it over as carefully 
as possible. Classical training, in the world 
of to-day, gives a man a limited horizon. 
There is far more beyond it than within it. 
He is taught to believe that he has sounded 
the depths of human knowledge when he 
knows nothing about its range or amount. If 
any one wants to find prime specimens of the 
Philistinism which Matthew Arnold hates, 
he should seek them among the votaries of 
the culture which Matthew Arnold loves. 
The popular acuteness long ago perceived 
this, and the vile doctrines of anti-culture 
have sprung up and grown just in proportion 
as culture has come to have an artificial and 
technical definition, as something foreign to 
living interests, 


SPENCER ON PARLIAMENTARY INFLU- 
ENCE. 


Mr. Herpert Spenoer, having been 
invited to allow his name to be sub- 
mitted to the Liberal Association of 
Leicester as a candidate for Mr. Peter 
Taylor’s parliamentary seat, has writ- 
ten a letter to the Rev. J. Page Hops, 
one of the committee, declining the in- 
vitation on several grounds. We re- 
print the communication : 


88 QuEEN’s-GaRDENS, Bayswater, W.., t 
February 21. 

My pear Sir: While I am gratified by 
the compliment, and by the manifestation of 
sympathy implied in your proposal, I fear I 
can not respond to it in the way you wish. 
Several reasons, each of them sufficient, de- 
ter me. 

In the first place, my health is such that 

VOL. XxvV.— 9 


129 


discharge of parliamentary duties would be 
impossible. When I tell you that until last 
night I have not dined out for nearly a 
year, because I have been unable to bear the 
amount of excitement involved, you will see 
that it would be absolutely out of the ques- 
tion for me to undertake the nightly wear 
and tear which the life of a member entails. 
Even in the best state of that variable health 
which I have had these twenty-eight years, 
I am able to write, or rather to dictate, only 
three hours a day ; and such being the case, 
you will see that the labors implied by active 
political life, could I bear them, would make 
it impossible for me to do other work. As I 
regard such other work as by far the more 
important—as I think I can do more good by 
endeavoring to complete what I have under- 
taken than by occupying myself in listening 
to debates and giving votes—I should not 
feel that I was doing right in exchanging the 
one career for the other. 

Far too high an estimate is, I think, made 
of the influence possessed in our day by a 
member of Parliament, now that he has come 
to be, much more than in past times, subject 
to his constituents—now that the House of 
Commons as a whole is more and more 
obliged to subordinate itself to public opin- 
ion ; the implication is, that those who form 
public opinion are those who really exercise 
power. It is becoming a common remark that 
we are approaching a state in which laws are 
practically made out-of-doors, and simply 
registered by Parliament ; and if so then the 
actual work of legislation is more the work 
of those who modify the ideas of the electors 
than of those who give effect to their ideas. 
So regarding the matter, I conceive that I 
should not gain influence, but rather should 
lose influence, by ceasing to be a writer and 
becoming a representative. 

But, apart from these general reasons, 
there is the more special reason that, if chosen 
by the electors of Leicester, I should prove a 
very impracticable member. My views on 
political matters are widely divergent from 
those of all political parties at present exist- 
ing. That which I hold to be the chief busi- 
ness of legislation—an administration of jus- 
tice such as shall secure to each person, with 
certainty and without cost, the maintenance of 
his equitable claims—is a business to which 
little attention is paid; while attention is ab- 
sorbed in doing things which I hold should 
not be done at all. As I could not agree to 
be merely a delegate, voting as was desired 
by those who sent me, but should have in all 
cases to act on my own judgment, I should 
be in continual antagonism to my constitu- 


130 


ents, most of whom, Liberal as well as 
Conservative, hold opinions from which I 
dissent, and who would wish me to sup- 
port measures which I entirely disapproved. 
Hence, even if elected, I should be quickly 
called upon to resign. 

You will thus see that the choice of me as 
a candidate would be extremely impolitic, 
even had I no reason of a personal kind for 
declining to stand, Thanking you for your 
kind expressions, and regretting that I am 
unable to accede to your request, believe me, 
sincerely yours, 


(Signed) HERBERT SPENCER. 


To this letter the reverend gentle- 
man to whom it was addressed replied, 
regretting that the state of Mr. Spen- 
cer’s health and work would not per- 
mit him to engage in parliamentary du- 
ties, but declaring that the other rea- 
sons which Mr. Spencer assigned for 
not taking the nomination were most 
excellent reasons why he should con- 
sent toit. ‘* Leicester,” said Mr. Page 
Hops, ‘in the person of Mr. Taylor has 
had an admirable training in the art of 
letting its members alone, and I trust 
it will be still further developed in this 
direction. You certainly will never be 
called upon ‘to resign’ by such a con- 
stituency as ours; and I am truly sorry 
that your health and your work will 
not allow you to make proof of this.” 

In itself, this transaction is perhaps 
of small moment, but it has significance 
as showing that in England at least 
there is a decline in the consideration 
formerly attached to political office- 
holding, which is accompanied by an 
equally significant increase on the part 
of constituencies of resistance to par- 
tisan domination. When Mr. Spencer 
says that “far too high an estimate is 
made of the influence possessed in our 
day by a member of Parliament,” this 
is not so much a mere personal opinion 
as the expression of a palpable and 
widely admitted truth. The letter has 
elicited extensive discussion, and the 
most influential organs of public senti- 
ment in that country unhesitatingly ac- 
knowledge it. The ‘“ Pall Mall Gazette” 
remarks: ‘‘ No one who has had any 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


experience of the inner working of our 
constitution can gainsay this dictum. 
The real governing force in the country 
at present is not Parliament but public 
opinion, and the shaping of public opin- 
ion is a work which, in all but a few 
exceptional cases, can be much more 
effectively carried on outside Parlia- 
ment than from within its walls.” 

But the offer of the Leicester con- 
stituency to be represented in Parlia- 
ment by the most radical thinker in 
England, a man of no party, and hold- 
ing views widely divergent from those 
entertained by both parties, is espe- 
cially instructive as showing the value 
assigned to independence of thought, 
and the recognized supremacy of prin- 
ciples in English politics. Without as- 
suming that this action of the Leicester 
politicians is at all representative of 
the intelligence and independence of 
other English constituencies, the gen- 
eral and quite emphatic approval of their 
course shows that it is in wide agree- 
ment with English thought. While it 
is generally admitted that Mr. Spencer 
did wisely in declining to enter Parlia- 
ment, even if his bad health were not a 
barrier, and on the ground that he can 
do his work better outside of the par- 
liamentary walls than within them, 
not a word of objection that we can 
discover has been raised on personal 
grounds, or because of the extreme and 
obnoxious opinions which it has become 
customary to impute to Mr. Spencer. 
The implication is that his non-parti- 
san independence and his radical views 
would be excellent things in Parlia- 
ment, but that his influence would be 
greater outside of it. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


Bacrerra. By Dr. Antoine Maenin and 
GrorcE M. Srernsere, M. D., F.R. M.S. 
New York: William Wood & Co, Pp. 
494, Price, $4. 

Dr. STERNBERG’s translation of Dr. Mag- 
nin’s work on “ Bacteria,” noticed in these ~ 
pages at its first appearance three years 
ago, forms about one third of the present 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


volume. In order to bring that treatise up 
to the present state of knowledge on the 
subject, Dr.Sternberg has added chapters 
on “Technology,” “Germicides and Anti- 
septics,” ‘“ Bacteria in Infectious Diseases,” 
and “ Bacteria in Surgical Lesions.” Under 
the first head he describes methods of ob- 
taining both natural and artificial culture- 
fluids uncontaminated, and gives directions 
for arranging culture-vessels and for ex- 
amining the bacieria. His list of antisep- 
tics includes some sixty substances, and he 
gives, besides the results of his own extended 
and careful tests of their powers, some re- 
sults obtained by other investigators. 

The diseases which have been supposed 
to depend upon the action of some micro- 
organism are also passed in review, and 
an abstract is given of what has been ob- 
served in regard to each. Dr. Sternberg 
reproduces from an earlier paper his state- 
ment of the @ priori argument in favor of 
the existence of a yellow-fever germ, and 
then considers the experimental evidence 
which supports that view. “It must be 
admitted,” he says, “that this is very un- 
satisfactory.” His personal investigations 
are recorded in the “ Preliminary Report of 
the Havana Yellow-Fever Commission. of 
the National Board of Health,” from which 
he quotes at length. “Having reported,” 
he continues, “my own failure to find the 
yellow-fever germ, I must now refer to the 
recent announcements of its discovery in 
Mexico by Dr. Carmona, and in Brazil by 
Dr. Freire.” In regard to the latter he 
‘says: “The writer is not prepared to esti- 
mate the value of the evidence here offered, 
inasmuch as we are not informed whether 
the yellow-fever blood used in the first in- 
oculation experiment was obtained _ post 
mortem or ante mortem. . 

“Hineman, a very competent German 
physician practicing in Vera Cruz, has not 
been more successful than the writer in 
finding the Pernospera lutea of Carmona, or 
Cryptococcus xanthogenicus of Freire, in 
the blood of yellow-fever patients before 
death. He examined the blood of patients 
in the last stage of the disease, taking blood 
from the hand, thinning it with artificial 
serum, and bringing it at once under the 
microscope. He says: ‘In nine cases so 
examined not the slightest deviation from 


131 


normal blood could be found. . . . No or- 
ganisms were found.’” The volume is il- 
lustrated with twelve heliotype plates and 
thirty woodcuts, and contains a bibliographi- 
cal list. 


FLOWERS AND THEIR PEDIGREES. By Grant 
ALLEN, author of “Colin Clout’s Calen- 
dar,” “ Vignettes from Nature,” “The 
Evolutionist at Home,” etc., ete, New 
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 266. 
Price, $1.50. 

Tus is a very choice book, the best of 
an excellent class, England has at present 
no writer at all comparable to Grant Allen 
in the power of popularizing biological sub- 
jects. He is a thorough and accomplished 
student in a broad range of modern subjects 
involving the phenomena of life and mind, 
and their interpretation by the principle of 
evolution. He is as far as possible from 
being a mere compiler of other men’s opin- 
ions, but gives a stamp of originality to his 
work, throwing light upon the subjects he 
treats by new suggestions, ingenious expla- 
nations, and the presentation of his top- 
ics in fresh aspects and new relations. He 
is, moreover, a writer of remarkable per- 
spicacity and attractiveness, pleasant, easy, 
humorous, and a perfect type of the high- 
grade popularizer of science. 

If this is warm praise, the book before 
us justifies it. It is spoken of by the Eng- 
lish press in terms of very unusual commen- 
dation, and we entirely agree with one of 
them, which declares the volume to be “as 
interesting as any novel from the first page 
to the last.” 

We can do the author no better justice, 
and convey to our readers no clearer idea of 
the import of the book, than to reproduce 
its explanatory introduction : 

Our beautiful green England is carpeted, more 
than any other country in the world, perhaps, save 
only Switzerland and a few other mountain-lands, 
with a perpetual sward of vivid verdure, interspersed 
with innumerable colors of daisies, and buttercups, 
and meadow-sweet, and harebells, and broader 
patches of purple heather. It is usual to speak of 
tropical vegetation, indeed, with a certain forced ec- 
stasy of language; but those who know the tropics: 
best know that, though you may find a few excep- 
tionally large and brilliant blossoms here and there: 
under the breadth and shade of equatorial forests, 
the prevailing tone is one of monotonous dry green- 
ery; andthere is nothing anywhere in very south- 
ern climes to compare, as to mass of color, with our’ 
Scotch hill-sides, our English gorse-clad commons, 


132 


or our beautiful dappled meadows and cornfields, 
all aglow with the infinite wealth of poppies, blue- 
bottles, foxgloves, ox-eye daisies, and purple fritil- 
laries. The Alps alone can equal the brilliant color- 
ing of our own native British flora. Poor as it is 
in number of species—a mere isolated fragment of 
the wider European groups—it can fearlessly chal- 
lenge the rest of the whole worldin general mingled 
effect of gayety and luxuriance. 

Now, every one of these English plants and 
weeds has a long and eventful story ofits own. In 
the days before the illuminating doctrine of evolu- 
tion had been preached, all that we could say about 
them was that they possessed such and such a 
shape, and size, and color; and, if we had been asked 
why they were not rounder or bigger or bluer than 
they actually are, we could have given no sufficient 
reason, except that they were made so. But since 
the great principle of descent with modification has 
reduced the science of life from chaos to rational 
order, we are able to do much more than that. We 
can now answer confidently, Such and such a plant 
is what it is in virtue of such and such ancestral 
conditions, and it has been altered thus and thus by 
these and those variations in habit or environment. 
Every plant or animal, therefore, becomes for us a 
puzzle to be explained, a problem to be solved, a 
hieroglyphic inscription to be carefully deciphered. 
In the following pages, I have taken some half- 
dozen of familiar English weeds or flowers, and tried 
thus to make them yield up the secret of their own 
origin. Each of them is ultimately descended from 
the common central ancestor of the entire flower- 
ing group of plants; and each of them has acquired 
every new diversity of structure or appearance for 
some definite and useful purpose. As a rule, traces 
of all the various stages through which every spe- 
cies has passed are. still visibly imprinted upon the 
very face of the existing forms: and one only re- 
quires a little care and ingenuity, a little use of com- 
parison and analogy, to unravel by their own aid 
the story of their own remoter pedigree. This is 
the method which I have here followed in the pa- 
pers that deal with the various modifications of the 

- daisy, of the grasses, of the lilies, of the strawberry, 
and of the whole rose family. 

Again, not only has each English plant a gen- 
eral history as a species, but it has also a separate 
history as a member of the British flora. Besides 
the question how any particular flower or fruit came 
to exist at all, we have to account for the question 
how it came to.exist here and now in this, that, or 
the other part of the British Islands. For, of 
course, all plants are not to be found in all parts of 
the world, and their distribution over its surface 
has to be explained on historical grounds just as 
a future ethnologist would have to explain the oc- 
currence of isolated French communities in Lower 
Canada and Mauritius, of African negroes in Ja- 
maica and Brazil, or of Chinese coolies in San Fran- 
cisco and the Australian colonies. In this respect, 
our English plants open out a series of interesting 
problems for the botanical researcher; because we 
happen to possess a very mixed and fragmentary 
flora, made up to a great extent of waifs and strays 
from at least three large distinct continental groups, 
besides several casual colonists. Thus while at Kil- 
larney we get a few rare Spanish or Portuguese 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


types, in Caithness and the Highlands we get a few 
rare Alpine or Arctic types ; and while in Norfolk 
and Suffolk we find some central European strag- 
glers, the ponds of the Hebrides are actually occu- 
pied by at least one American pond-weed, its seeds 
having been wafted over by westerly breezes, or 
carried unconsciously by water-birds in the mud 
and ooze which clung accidentally to their webbed 
feet. Moreover, we know that at no very remote 
period, geologically speaking, Britain was covered 
by a single great sheet of glaciers, like that which 
now covers almost all Greenland: and we may 
therefore conclude with certainty that every plant 
at present in the country has entered it from one 
quarter and another at a date posterior to that great 
lifeless epoch. This, then, gives rise to a second 
set of problems, the problems connected with the 
presence in England of certain stray local types, 
Alpine or Arctic, southern or transatlantic, Euro- 
pean or Asiatic. Questions of this sort I have 
raised and endeavored to answer with regard to 
two rare English plants in the papers on the hairy 
spurge and the mountain tulip. 

In short, these little essays deal, first, with the 
evolution of certain plant types in general; and, 
secondly, with their presence as naturalized citizens 
of our own restricted, petty, insular floral common- 
wealth. 


Recorp or Famity Facctties: Consisting 
of Tabular Forms and Directions for en- 
tering Data, with an Explanatory Pref- 
ace. Pp. 64. Price, 90 cents, Also, 
Lire-History ALBuM. Pp.170. Price, 
$1.25. By Francois Gatton, F. R. 8. 
London: Macmillan & Co. 

Tue “Record of Family Faculties” “ is 
designed for those who care to forecast the 
mental and bodily faculties of their children, 
and to further the science of heredity,” be- 
ing arranged for entering descriptive and 
historical data in regard to the fourteen di- 
rect ancestors which constitute the three 
generations immediately preceding a family 
of children. 

Space is allowed also for descriptions 
of brothers and sisters of these ancestors, 
and of other relatives about whom little is 
known, Some of the entries called for are: 
“‘Mode of Life, so far as affecting Growth 
or Health; Bodily and Mental Powers, and 
Energy, if much above or below the Aver- 
age; Favorite Pursuits; Minor Ailments, 
and Graver Illnesses; Cause and Date of 
Death, and Age at Death.” In the preface 
Mr. Galton rebukes the vanity of those who 
parade’the fact of their descent from some 
distant, illustrious ancestor, and remarks 
that “one ancestor, who lived at the time — 
of the Norman Conquest, twenty-four gen- 
erations back, contributes (on the supposi- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


tion of no intermarriage of kinsfolk) less 
than one part in 16,000,000 to the consti- 
tution of a-manof the present day.” He 
deems three generations far enough to go 
back for hereditary information, except that 
any distinctly alien element of race or dis- 
ease, which has been introduced earlier, 
should be noted. Mr. Galton holds that 
“the natural gifts of each individual being 
inherited from his ancestry, it is possible to 
foresee much of the latent capacities of a 
child in mind and body, of the probabilities 
of his future health and longevity, and of 
his tendencies to special forms of disease, 
by a knowledge of his ancestral precedents. 
When the science of heredity shall have be- 
come more advanced, the accuracy of such 
forecasts will doubtless improve; in the 
mean time we may rest assured that fewer 
blunders will be made in rearing and edu- 
cating children, under the guidance of a 
knowledge of their family antecedents, than 
without it.” As a stimulus to the making 
of these records, Mr. Galton has offered £500 
in prizes “to those British subjects resident 
in the United Kingdom who shall furnish 
him before May 15, 1884, with the best ex- 
tracts from their own family records.” 


The “ Life-History Album” is arranged 
to contain the biological experience of one 
person, and is to be begun by the parents 
of a child and continued by the person ‘him- 
self from the time that he becomes old 
enough. It is expected to prove of service 
in the following ways: “1. It will show 
whether, and in what way, your health is 
affected by the changes that take place in 
your residence, occupation, diet, or habits. 
2. It will afford early indication of any de- 
parture from health, and will thus draw 
attention to conditions which, if neglected, 
may lead to permanent disorder.... 3. A 
trustworthy record of past illnesses will en- 
able your medical attendants to treat you 
more intelligently and successfully than they 
otherwise could, for it will give them a more 
complete knowledge of your ‘constitution’ 
than could be obtained in any other way. 

. 4. The record will further be of great 
value to your family and descendants; for 
mental and physical characteristics, as well 
as liabilities to disease, are all transmitted 
more or less by parents to their children, 


+32 


and are shared by members of the same 
family.” 

The first page of the “Album” is for 
a “ Description of Child at Birth,” and there 
is a leaf each for a “Record of Life His- 
tory,” “Record of Medical History,” “ An- 
thropometric Observations,” and “ Photo- 
graphs” for each five years of life up to 
seventy-five. There are also charts on 
which to record the stature and weight— 
one for each five years up to twenty-five, 
another for a summary of these five; one 
for the years from twenty-five to fifty, and 
one for the years from fifty to seventy-five. 
On each chart except the last are printed 
curves showing the average stature and 
weight of the male and female population 
of the United Kingdom, so that the indi- 
vidual may compare the curves which he 
constructs for himself with these. The ap- 
pendix contains tests of vision, notes on ap- 
paratus, etc. 


Ciavis Rerum (The Key of Things). Nor- 
wich: F, A. Robinson & Co. Pp. 142. 
Price, $1. 

Tus book embodies the conclusions of 
its author in régard to the plan of the uni- 
verse. He names six modes of being as 
elements in which the universe subsists, 
viz., matter, force, life, soul, spirit, and 
God, defining soul as “that mode of being 
which is characterized by intellect and will,” 
and spirit as “that mode of being which 
is characterized by consciousness of God.” 
In his closing chapter, “Consummation,” 
he says: “Matter, force, life, soul, and 
spirit, came forth from God in order that, 
by the interior operation of their several 
laws, they might be fitted to return to him. 
. . . The return of the extrinsic universe, 
through human nature, into God, is accom- 
plished by the incarnation of the Word, and 
by the personal union with him of all other 
perfect individual men.” 


BLEACHING, DYEING, AND CALICO-PRINTING. 
With Formule. Edited by Joun Garp- 
nER, F.1.C., F.C.8. Philadelphia: P. 
Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 203. Price, 
$1.75. 
In the chapter on “Bleaching,” after a 

brief historical review, cotton, linen, woolen 

goods, silk, feathers, paper materials and 
paper, straw, and wax, are successively 


134 


taken up, and the outlines of the processes 
are given in each case. In the second 
chapter some thirty formule for dyeing 
cotton are given, and twenty for dyeing 
wool and silk. Several modes of calico- 
printing are sketched, and the formule for 
a large number of styles are given. There 
is a fourth chapter in which a short account 
is given of each of the important dye-stuffs, 
The aim of the editor has been to compile 
‘a ready and serviceable manual for prac- 
tical workers,” which may be referred to 
with the expenditure of less time and trou- 
ble than is necessary with such larger.and 
more elaborate works as Crookes’s “ Prac- 
tical Hand-Book of Dyeing and Calico- 
Printing,” Ure’s “ Dictionary,” Wagner’s 
“Chemical Technology,” and others, which 
have been consulted in the preparation of 
the volume. 


PROCEEDINGS AND TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
Roya Society or Canapa, 1882 anp 
1883. Montreal: Dawson Brothers. 
Tue Dominion to the north of us is con- 

stantly evidencing more and more of na- 

tional life. Since 1867, when the British 
provinces became a confederation, Canada 
has shown an energy and enterprise which 
would have been impossible to a series of 
separate colonies having no bond of polit- 
ical unity. Within the last few years, the 
development of railways and manufactures 
in Canada has quite paralleled that of the 

United States, and, in the higher matters 

of public and university education, the Do- 

minion exhibits an advance which is full of 
promise for her future. Among the proofs 

_ that our northern neighbors are progress- 

ing in matters of broad, national culture, 

none can be more satisfactory than the es- 
tablishment, by the Marquis of Lorne, of 
the Royal Society of Canada two years ago. 

The society, founded on the lines of its 

great English prototype, is intended to pro- 

mote literature and science; and, in bring- 
ing together the most eminent scholars and 
scientists of the country, will undoubtedly 
attain the good results of mutual help, criti- 
cism, and emulation which attend such as- 
semblages the world over. The society con- 
sists of four sections: French literature, 
history, and allied subjects; English litera- 
ture, history, and allied subjects; mathe- 
matical, physical, and chemical sciences; 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


geological and biological sciences. The 
presidents of these sections, who were ap- 
pointed by the Marquis of Lorne for the 
purpose of organizing the society, were 
Messrs. J. M. Lemoine, Daniel Wilson, T. 
Sterry Hunt, and A. R. C. Selwyn. The 
first president of the society was Principal 
Dawson, of McGill University, who was suc- 
ceeded last year by Dr. P. J. O. Chauveau, 
of Montreal, and in 1884 that city will again 
give the society its president in the person 
of Dr. T, Sterry Hunt. 

The Proceedings and Transactions before 
us are not only valuable in themselves, but 
they give us incidentally some interesting 
insight into the peculiarities of Canadian na- 
tional life. That the papers by the French- 
Canadian members should be published in 
their language is enough to show that the 
element they represent in the population 
is very far from genuine assimilation with 
their compatriots of British descent. © In- 
deed, competent observers of the situation 
declare that the adhesion of the French 
Canadians to their language, religion, laws, 
and institutions was never firmer than now. 
Is America to behold the development of a 
race French in speech, customs, and senti- 
ment? Is the province of old Quebec to 
be thus reconquered by France after all? 
Surely no better topic than this curious 
phase of Canadian sociology could be treat- 
ed in the next volume of Transactions which 
the Royal Society of Canada will publish to 
the world. Perhaps the causes lie in the 
wonderful fecundity of the race, the con- 
tentment with narrow fortunes which keeps 
so many of them at home, and the indul- 
gent policy toward them by Great Britain 
—that empire which, having lost its best 
group of colonies by harsh treatment, seems 
determined in Canada to retain the allegi- 
ance of a conquered race by a noble mag- 
nanimity. 

The volume before us manifests the in- 
fluence which the classical and literary edu- 
cation of French Canadians has had on 
their scientific culture. Although number- 
ing one fourth of the nation, their repre- 
sentatives in the Royal Society are but one 
eighth the membership of the two scientific 
sections; and, while the scientific contribu- 
tions of the French-speaking members are 
scarcely up to the standard of those from 
their British confréres, in the literary de- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


partments, the papers in French have a 
grace and beauty of style which show that 
the language of France has lost nothing 
by its study having been transferred to 
America for more than two centuries. The 
sketches of the first settlers of Canada are 
sufficiently well given to deserve introduc- 
tion to the readers of the continent. 

Dr. Daniel Wilson’s paper, on the pre- 
Aryan American man, is a valuable contri- 
bution to the study of the Indian tribes, 
upon whose history discovery and research 
are every year throwing more light. Dr. 
Alpheus Todd, the constitutional historian, 
whose death occurred last January, has given 
us a paper on the establishment of free 
public libraries, with valuable hints derived 
from his long experience as parliamentary 
librarian. 

The scientific contributions to the Trans- 
actions are noteworthy. With an area for 
the scope of the naturalist as extensive as 
our own, the range of research and explora- 
tion in the Dominion affords splendid oppor- 
tunities to her men of science. In develop- 
ing knowledge concerning the vast territory 
of Canada, the Geological Survey has done 
noble work. That survey, mainly estab- 
lished by the exertions of the late Sir Will- 
iam E. Logan, with the co-operation of Dr, 
Hunt and Mr. Billings, has given scope to 
the acumen and research of men such as the 
Dawsons, father and son, Bell, and Harring- 
ton, whose labors in the fields of systematic 
geology and paleontology are known and 
valued by the students of both Europe and 
America. The volume before us gives a 
paper by Principal Dawson on the creta- 
ceous and tertiary floras of British Columbia 
and the Northwest Territories, eight fine 
quarto illustrations accompanying his paper. 
His son, Dr. George M. Dawson, describes a 
general section of the geology from the 
Laurentian axis to the Rocky Mountains. 
Dr. T. Sterry Hunt contributes a paper on 
the geological history of serpentines, where- 
in he defends by new arguments their 
aqueous origin, a thesis which he has long 
maintained. Incidentally to this, he con- 
denses into a few pages the history of the 
pre-Cambrian rocks of Southern Europe 


with their included serpentines, and shows 
in this connection that the great groups of 


these rocks previously pointed out by him 


in America are equally developed in the Old 


tse. 


World. In his memoir on the Taconic ques. 
tion in geology, Dr. Hunt begins by a trib- 
ute to the labors of Amos Eaton, the found- 
er of American stratigraphical geology. He 
then gives in detail an account of the so- 
called Taconian or Taconic rocks, the true 
age of which has been the subject of so 
much dispute; by a wide induction of facts 
gleaned from all Eastern North America, he 
proceeds to show that these rocks are of 
pre-Cambrian age, and probably paralleled 
with the youngest pre-Cambrian group of 
the Alps described by him in his preceding 
memoir. These rocks, it may be said, in 
their wide range of distribution, include the 
white statuary marbles of both Vermont 
and Italy. This paper, of some fifty pages, 
is the first half of Dr. Hunt’s elaborate 
memoir, and terminates in a comprehensive 
review of the early geological history of 
Eastern North America, _ 

Although geology is much the best rep- 
resented science in these Transactions, the 
other departments of the sections give us 
original papers of value. Dr. E. Haanel 
contributes an account of experiments in 
using hydriodic acid as a blow-pipe reagent, 
and four remarkably well-executed plates in 
colors serve to illustrate his paper. A se- 
ries of reports of the transit of Venus, De- 
cember 6, 1882, show the wide interest 
taken in that event in the chain of Cana- 
dian cities stretching from Montreal to Win- 
nipeg. The observations, as a whole, were 
satisfactory. 

Dr. Robert Bell’s explanation of the 
causes of the fertility of the Northwest 
shows the immense variety of natural forces 
which decide whether a region shall or shall 
not furnish a nation with food and fuel. 
Mr. W. Saunders’s papers on Canadian for- 
estry and on the noxious insects of the 
country are suggestive and timely. 

The publishing committee of these 
Transactions remark with pardonable pride 
that the paper, type, and illustrations are all 
of home production. 


A System or Rueroric. By C. W. Barpeen. 
New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 
814, Price, $1.50. 

Part I of this book is entitled “Sen- 
tence-Making,” and contains a large amount 
of such matter as is usually found in the 
“ false-syntax” section of grammars. Part 


136 


' II is on “Conversation,” and, besides di- 
rections for attaining the purposes of con- 
versation, includes chapters which treat of 
elocution, etiquette, and the minor morali- 
ties of the subject. Under “ Letter-Writ- 
ing” letters are treated in the classes “ of 
Friendship, of Courtesy, of Business, to 
Newspapers”; bad penmanship and allied 
sins are touched upon, and chapters on 
“ Narration,” “‘ Description,” and “ Punctua- 
tion” are added. Then follow three forms 
of discourse, which, as the author remarks, 
need not be practiced by all persons. The 
chapters under “The Essay” treat of the 
subjects to which rhetorics generally are 
mainly devoted. Under “Oratory” are dis- 
cussed “ Eloquence, Argument, Extempo- 
raneous Speaking, and Delivery.” The 
treatment of “ Figurative Language ” is 
placed under “ Poetry,” together with a dis- 
cussion of “‘ What constitutes Poetry ?” and 
a chapter on “ Rhythm.” 


Enercy in Nature. By Wiriram Lant Car- 
penTER, B. A., B.Se., F.C.S., etc. Tllus- 
trated. London, Paris, and New York: 
Cassell & Co.,‘limited. Pp. 212. Price, 
$1.25. 

THERE is a large and growing class of 
persons, who, while they do not care to 
make a close study of any special branch 
of physical science, yet desire to know what 
additions are being made to the knowledge 
of those general principles which underlie 
the phenomena of nature, and who desire 
also to understand how these principles are 
applied in the wonderful mechanical con- 
trivances which they see multiplying about 
them. To this constituency Professor Car- 
penter has addressed the present volume, 
which contains, with some additions, the 
substance of a course of six lectures upon 
the “Forces of Nature and their Mutual 
Relations,” delivered under the auspices of 
the Gilchrist Educational Trust, in the au- 
tumn of 1881. “The book may be short- 
ly described,” says the author, “as an en- 
deavor to expound in popular yet accurate 
language the meaning and consequences of 
that important principle known as the con- 
servation of energy. Considerable pains, 
however, have been taken, especially in 
dealing with electricity, to illustrate and ex- 
plain the very latest developments of the 
subjects treated in the text, since the trans- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


formation of mechanical into electrical en- 
nergy by the dynamo-machine is a remarka- 
bly good example of the general principle.” 
The illustrations used in presenting the sub- 
ject are generally “ matters of common ex- 
perience,” and hence many interesting ex- 
planations have found their way into the 
volume. 


A DerensE or Mopern Tuoucut: In Reply 
to a Recent Pamphlet by the Bishop of 
Ontario on “ Agnosticism.” By Wi11- 
14M D. Le Sueur, B.A. Toronto: Hun- 
ter, Rose &Co. Pp. 40. Price, 15 cents. 
WE printed a portion of this masterly 

pamphlet last month, and the interest it 

has excited on the part of many to see the 
whole of the argument makes desirable this 
further reference to it. Everybody should 
be obliged to the lord bishop for having 
printed his discourse, not because of any 
value it had in itself, but because of the 
ability of the reply it elicited. Mr. Le 
Sueur’s exposition needs no praise, but we 
applaud his fidelity to duty in so effectually 
exposing the weakness of the bishop’s case, 
and then in printing the criticism at his own 
expense, as probably the publishers thought 
it would be no speculation for them. Let 
every one who was gratified with the frag- 
ment we furnished, and interested to see the 
remainder, send a dollar to the publishers to 
get as many of the pamphlet as it will bring. 
Exira copies will be excellent to give away. 


A PLEA For THE CurE oF Rupture. By Jo- 
sepH H. Warren, A. M.,M.D. Boston: 
James R. Osgood & Co. Pp. 117, with 
Plates, Price, parchment, $1. 

THE essay which gives the title to this 
book—“ A Plea for Operative Measures for 
the Relief and Cure of Hernia ””—was a pa- 
per read before the meeting at Liverpool of 
the British Medical Association, and is pub- 
lished, with very slight alterations, as it ori- 
ginally appeared in the Association’s jour- 
nal, <A chapter is given on tissue-repair, 
with a brief summary of the application and 
operation of the method of subcutaneous 
injection. An account of the new conform- 
ateur for showing the contour of hernia, etc., 
a paper on the causation of hernia, and a 
paper on the proper fitting and wearing of 
trusses, etc., have been contributed by fel- 
low-physicians of the author. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


Tue TorocrarHer; His INstRUMENTS AND 
Metuops. [Illustrated with numerous 
Plates, Maps, and vings. By Lewis 
M. Haupt, A.M., C.E. Philadelphia: 
J. M. Stoddart. Pp.184. Price, $4.00. 
Tuts book is designed for the instruction 

of students. It opens with a chapter on 

“How and what to observe,” which is fol- 

lowed by one on “The Instrumental Out- 

fit,” in which are described, with cuts, the 
prismatic compass, chronometer, barometer, 
odometer, pedometer, clinometer, sextant, 
hand-level, heliotrope, reflector, and range- 
finder, the name of some maker being given 
with each. The next three chapters are on 

“‘ Scales of Maps,” ‘‘ Forms of Record,” and 

“Graphical Representations,” and are sup- 

plied with diagrams and tables for illustra- 

tion and reference. Under “Instruments 
and Methods used in ‘Filling in,’” direc- 
tions are given for making stadia measure- 
ments, for the use of the plane-table, and 
of the transit. Directions for determining 
the true meridian follow, with descriptions 
of two forms of solar transit. Short chap- 
ters are devoted to “Hydrography” and 

“Underground Topography,”;  “ Field 

Sketching,” ‘‘ Computations,” and ‘“ Model- 

ing” are taken up successively, and the 

final chapter is devoted to “ Applications,” 
in which are considered the locating of 
common roads, railroads, canals, and pipe- 
lines ; irrigation, aqueducts, and the locating 
of cities. Among the accompanying maps 
may be mentioned one of the Yellowstone 

National Park, one of the floor of the Mam- 

moth coal-bed in the vicinity of Summit 

Hill, Carbon county, Pennsylvania, and 

charts of Hampton Roads, and Boston Bay. 


a 


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 


Houghton Farm: Experiment-Orchard and 
ee New York: Print of “The Hub.” 


The Rocky-Mountain Locust and the Chinch- 
Bug. Entomological Division, Department of Agri- 
oe i Washington : Government Printing-Office. 

> 
p. 36. 
The Disease of Inebriety and its Social-Science 


Relations. By T. D. Crothers, M.D. Hartford, 
Conn. Pp. 14. 


Reports of Experiments on Insects injuriously 
affecting the Orange-Tree and the Cotton-Plant. En- 
tomological Division, Department of Agriculture. 
Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp, 62. 

Reports of Observations and Experiments in 
Practical Work. Division of Entomology, Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. Washington: Government 
Printing-Office. Pp. 72, with Three Plates. 


Observations of Comets, 1880-1882. Cincinnati 
Observatory. Pp. 80, with Nine Plates. 


137 


' Experimental Determination of Wave-Lengths 
in the Invisible Prismatic Spectrum, By 8. P. Lang- 
ley. Pp. 20. 

Distribution of Gluten within the Wheat-Grain. 
By N. A. Randolph, M.D. Philadelphia. Pp. 5. 

The Quaternary Gravels of Northern Delaware 
= Sati Maryland. By Frederick D. Chester. 

p- 12. 

A Case of Recurrent Dropsy of the Left Middle 
Ear. By Drs. Charles H. Burnett and Charles A. 
Oliver. Pp. 26. 

Meeting of the International Prison Congress at 
Rome, in October, 1884. U.8. Bureau of Educa- 
a, : Washington: Government Printing-Office. 

p- . 

Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Wash- 
ington, 1883. Washington. Pp. 168. 

“The Canadian Record of Natural History and 
Geology.” J.T. Donald, Editor. Montreal: John 
Lovell and Son. Pp. 64. 

Transactions of the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ 
Club. Ottawa, Canada: Citizen Printing and Pub- 
lishing Company. Pp. 90, with Plate. 

The Feces of Starch-fed Infants. By N, A. 
Randolph, M.D. Philadelphia. Pp. 4. 


Medical Thoughts of early Compiled by 
B. Rush Field, M.D. Easton, Pa.: “* Free Press.” 
Pp. 16. 

Biogen. By Professor Elliott Coues. Boston: 
Estes & Lauriat. Pp. 66. 

The Railroad as an Element in Education. By 
org Alexander Hogg. Louisville, Ky. Pp. 


Tenth Annual Report of the Zodlogical Society 
of Cincinnati. Pp. 16. 

Report of the New York State Survey for 1883. 
James T. Gardiner, Director. Albany: Van Ben- 
thuysen Printing-House. Pp. 182, with Six Maps. 

The External Therapeutics of Pulmonary Con- 
sumption. By Dr. Thomas J. Mays. Upper Lehigh, 
Pa. Pp. 20. 

House - Drainage. By William Paul Gerhard. 
Lap agi Durham House-Drainage Company. 
Pp. 


Reflex Nervous Influence and the Causation and 
Cure of Disease. By Dr. D. T. Smith. New Or- 
leans, La. Pp. 11. 


* Miscellaneous Netes and Queries, with An- 
swers.” January and i nag 1884 (double num- 
ber). Manchester, N. H.: 8. C. and LL. M. Gould. 
Pp. 24+16+16. 20 cents; $1 for ten numbers. 

Pilot-Chart of the North Atlantic for March, with 
Supplement of 5 pages. By Commander J. R. Bart- 
lett. Washington: U. 8. Hydrographic-Office. 

Susceptibility to Malaria, or Personal Predisposi- 
tion to Malarial Fevers. By Dr. J.P. Dake. Nash- 
ville, Tenn. Pp. 9. 

Medical Legislation in the United States. By 
Dr. J. P. Dake. Nashville, Tenn. Pp. 14. 


jou Institutes. By Professor George A. 
Smyth. Pp. 27. 

Bilateral Asymmetry of Function. By G. Stan- 
ley Hall and E, M, Hartwell. Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, Baltimore. Pp. 17. 

“The Analectic” (Medical Journal Monthly). 
Edited by Walter 8. Wells, M.D. New York: G. 
P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 48. $2.50 per year. 

Topographical Surveying. By Henry F. Wal- 
ling, C. E. New York: D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 208. 
50 cents. 

Relations of Animal Diseases to the Public 
Health. By FrankS. Billings,D. V.S. New York: 
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 446. $4. 

Clear Light from the Spirit-World. By Kate 
Eee: New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. Pp. 


Darwinism stated by Darwin himself. By Na- 
than Sheppard. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 
Pp. 351. Price, $1.50. 


138 


Dynamic Electricity. By R. E. Day. New 
York: D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 167. 50 cents. 

Politics. By William W. Crane and Bernard 
-eirrigg New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 305. 
$1.50. 

Report of the State Board of Health of Connecti- 
cut. Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood, and Brain- 
ard Co. Pp. 124, 

Economic Tracts, First and Second Series, 1881 
and 1882. New York: Society for Political Educa- 
tion. Pp. about 200. $1. 

Christianity Triumphant. By John P. Newman, 
D. D. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Pp. 136. 
75 cents. 

Protection to Young Industries as applied in the 
United States. By F. W. Taussig, Ph.D. New 

York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 72. 

Third Annual Report of the United States En- 
tomological Commission. Washington: Government 
Printing-Office. Pp. about 500, with Plates. 

My Musical Memories. By R. W. Haweis. New 
York; Funk & Wagnalls. Pp. 283. $1. 

Medical Directory of Philadelphia, 1884. By 
Samuel H. Hoppin, M.D. Philadelphia: P. Blakis- 
ton, Son & Co. Pp. 205. $1.50. 

Political Economy. By Emile de Laveleye. 
Translated by A. W. Pollard. New York: G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 288. $1.10. 

My House: An Ideal. By O. B. Bunce. New 
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Pp. 108. $1. 

The Bowsham Puzzle. By John Habberton. 
New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Pp. 222. $1. 

Flowers and their Pedigrees. By Grant Allen, 
New York: D. Appleton &Co. Pp. 264. $1.50. 

The Cinchona Barks. By ¥. A. Fliickiger, Ph. D. 
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. 

A Text-Book of the Principles of Physics. By 
gee ate London: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 


Recent Wonders of Electricity. New York: 
— College of Electrical Engineering. Pp. 168, 
2. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


Edward J, Hallock, A. M., Ph. D.—It is 
with much regret that we have to announce 
the death, on March 22d, of Dr. Hallock, 
for many years a contributor to this jour- 
nal. He was born in Peekskill, New York, 
on the 19th of June, 1845. His early edu- 
cation was in the local schools of his birth- 
place, ending with the Peekskill Military 
Academy. In 1865 he entered Columbia 
College, whence he graduated four years 
later, receiving the degree of Bachelor of 
Arts. He was the recipient of the first prize 
in German, and in 1872 the college also 
conferred upon him the degree of Master of 
Arts. Soon after graduating he sailed for 
Germany, and commenced the study of 
chemistry in the University of Berlin. In 
1870 he returned to this country, and was 
appointed assistant to President Parrish, 
of Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia. 
Upon President Parrish’s resignation, he 
too resigned, and, leaving Swarthmore Col- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


lege, was appointed assistant to Professor 
Joy, occupying the chair of Chemistry in 
Columbia College. This place he held for 
several years, acting as professor during 
Dr. Joy’s illness. He went to Germany 
again in 1877, and was assistant to Pro- 
fessor Hofmann, in Berlin, and received in 
1878 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
from the University of Heidelberg. Re- 
turning then to this country, he was for 
two years Professor of Chemistry in the 
Southern Medical College, Atlanta, Georgia. 
Since 1878 he had been engaged in a large 
field of scientific work, lecturing in many 
educational institutions, and acting on the 
editorial staff of the ‘‘ Boston Journal of 
Chemistry ” and the “Journal of Applied 
Chemistry.” He was a contributor also to 
many of the scientific journals of this city. 
Two laborious chemical indices are his work : 
one an “ Index to the Literature of Titani- 
um,” the other an “ Index to the Literature 
of Glucose,” the latter prepared, at the re- 
quest of Dr. C. F, Chandler, for the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences. Both of these 
have been published, the latter appearing 
only a short time before his death. His 
last piece of literary work was a sketch of 
his German master in chemistry, Dr. Hof- 
mann, which appeared in the April “‘ Popu- 
lar Science Monthly.” 

Dr. Hallock was a man of simple man- 
ners, modest to a fault, and with great sin- 
cerity and uprightness of character. He 
carried this trait into all his work. He was 
an excellent scientific teacher, and aimed at 
thoroughness as the first object of instruc- 
tion. He lectured before many popular 
schools, and his patience was greatly tried 
by the tendency he constantly encountered 
on the part of their managers to make the 
lectures showy and sensational, so as to 
captivate ignorant patrons and advertise 
the institution. 


- On the Supposed Discovery of Iron in 
Prehistoric Mounds.—It has been generally 
understood that an iron or steel sword was 
found many years ago by Dr. Hildreth in 
one of the prehistoric mounds at Marietta, 
Ohio, and that an iron blade and a plate 
of cast-iron were found by Mr. Atwater in a 
mound at Circleville; and these supposed 
facts have been used to maintain the sup- 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


position that the mound-builders were ac- 
quainted with iron, or had intercourse with 
people who had-iron; or that the mounds 
were erected after the builders came in con- 
tact with Europeans, or have been intruded 
upon since they were built. The discovery, 
during the past year, of masses of mete- 
oric iron and several ornaments made of it 
in mounds in the Little Miami Valley has 
caused Professor F. W. Putnam to review 
the statements that have been made in re- 
lation to the subject. Examining the origi- 
nal statements from which these deductions 
have been drawn, he finds that the evidence 
does not show that steel or iron was found. 
Dr. Hildreth described as among the articles 
found at Marietta “three large circular boss- 
es, or ornaments for a sword-belt, or a buck- 
ler,” composed of’ copper, overlaid with a 
thick plate of silver. Dr. Atwater found at 
Circleville a piece of antler, in one end of 
which a hole had been bored, bound with a 
band of silver, which he called “ the handle 
either of a small sword or large knife,” and 
distinctly states that “no iron was found, 
but an oxide remained of similar shape and 
size.” On the same page he speaks of “a 
plate of iron, which had become an oxide, 
but, before it was disturbed by the spade, re- 
sembled a plate of cast-iron.” This oxide, 
Mr. Putnam says, in the absence of exact 
evidence, “‘ could be readily accounted for by 
one familiar with the traces of oxidized cop- 
per, iron-colored clay, and traces of oxide of 
iron, which are often met with in mound 
explorations.” Professor Putnam compares 
the ‘bosses’ described by Hildreth with 
similarly-shaped articles of copper found in 
mounds in Franklin, Tennessee, and in the 
Little Miami Valley, which were evidently 
ear-ornaments, and decides that they were 
of the same character. Dr. Hildreth also 
describes “a plate of silver, which appears 
to have been the upper part of a sword- 
scabbard ; it is six inches in length and two 
in breadth, and weighs one ounce; it has 
no ornaments or figures, but has three lon- 
gitudinal ridges” (there are actually five), 
“which probably correspond with edges, or 
ridges, of the sword.” This is compared 
by Professor Putnam with a similar article 
of copper from Franklin, Tennessee, and 
another of meteoric iron from the Little 
Miami, which were evidently not sword- 
scabbards, though their precise use can only 


139 


be conjectured. Thus, “not a shadow of a 
sword can be traced in this connection ; the 
point of the supposed scabbard is a com- 
mon copper bead; the upper part of the 
scabbard is an ornament of a particular pat- 
tern,,of which three others almost identical 
in shape are known from other mounds; 
and the ‘bosses’ or supposed ornaments of 
a sword-belt are ear-rings.” Dr. Hildreth 
states, however, that a piece of iron-ore was 
found in his mound, and Professor Putnam 
regards this statement as of great interest, 
“now that we know from the discoveries of 
the past year that the peculiar and malle- 
able qualities of meteoric iron were known 
to the builders of the group of mounds 
in the Little Miami Valley.” The ear-orna- 
ments, he also observes, “exhibit a degree 
of skill in working the native metals of cop- 
per, silver, and iron, simply by hammering, 
which is conclusive evidence of the advance 
made by early American tribes in ornament- 
al art.” 


Unseientifie Science-Teaching.—Dr. W. 
B. Carpenter, in discussing a paper on “ Sci- 
ence-Teaching in Elementary Schools,” re- 
cently read before the London Society of 
Arts, said that “the facts and conclusions 
stated in the paper entirely accorded with 
his own experience; and he also agreed 
with what Dr. Gladstone had said on the 
importance of what might be called living 
knowledge of these subjects, in opposition 
to dead knowledge. For instance, the use 
of an air-pump had been referred to: no- 
body could teach a child the action of a 
pump or the use of a barometer without ex- 
plaining the pressure of the air, but that 
was merely a form of words unless the 
child had the air exhausted from under 
his hand, and felt that a considerable force 
was necessary to withdraw it. From a long 
experience of examinations, he could en- 
tirely indorse what had been said of the 
cramming system of getting up subjects 
from books. He had examined in science 
for the Indian Civil Service, and had often 
found candidates giving the most excellent 
descriptions, entirely from memory, out of 
books, of objects which they did not even 
know by sight when put before them. That 
was not scientific knowledge at all, it was 
merely something committed to memory ; 
the only use of which was that it exercised 


140 


the memory, but it did not exercise the ca- 
pacity for observation and reasoning upon 
observation, which was the special value of 
scientific teaching. . . . A daughter of the 
late Robert Chambers, some years ago, took 
much interest in introducing the teaching 
of animal physiology into primary schools, 
and she used to go into one of the schools 
in the Cowgate, Edinburgh, twice a week, 
and give lessons in it, and no doubt her 
teaching was of the most attractive kind ; 
at any rate, the children were so much in- 
terested in it that some of the clerical man- 
agers of the school were annoyed that the 
children cared so much more for this sub- 
ject than for their ordinary lessons. No 
doubt there was a great deal of teaching 
about the dimensions of the tabernacle, and 
the number of fringes on the high-priest’s 
garments, and so on, which the children did 
not appreciate so much as the animal physi- 
ology, and the result was that Miss Cham- 
bers was asked to discontinue ; but the chil- 
dren held a meeting, and passed resolutions 
that they would not come to school at all if 
she were not allowed to go on; and, as she 
described, the clergy came and requested 
her to continue her teaching. This was a 
good illustration of the fact, which all who 
attended tothe subject knew, that science 
well taught was apprehended by children in 
a remarkable degree. 
apprehended what was put before it intelli- 
gently ; and, in an older child, reasoning 
went on concurrently with observation.” 
Dr. Armstrong, who also joined in the 
discussion, remarked that ‘ schoolmasters 
might say to men of science: ‘ You are no 
doubt right in the main in urging us to 
teach science, but you have not yet put be- 
fore us a proper method of teaching sci- 
ence ; it is not yet sufficiently developed ; 
there are too few teachers.’ And when a 
schoolmaster asked what book you would 
recommend him for teaching any particular 
science, they were compelled to confess that 
they could not honestly recommend any, for 
most text-books were tainted, more or less, 
with the vice which had been alluded to— 
that they tended rather to teach bare facts 
than to develop the intellectual faculties. 
What was wanted was more co-operation on 
the part of those who understood the sub- 
ject, not a few people here and there intro- 
ducing systems of their own. They also 


A very young child 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


wanted instruction as to the meaning of 
science ; the public generally did not know 
what science meant; and had no idea that 
the intention was to teach boys and girls to 
use their eyes and their minds.” 


A Crab-Shell Barometer.—The south- 
ernmost province of Chili comprises the Chi- 
loe Islands, on which a remnant of the Arau- 
canian Indians still exists, in a population 
of whites, Indians, and mixed. There is so 
much moist and wet weather on these islands 
that the prognostications are mainly di- 
rected to tell the fair weather. The natives 
use a curious instrument for this purpose, 
known as the “ Barometro Araucano.” It 
is the exuviated or cast-off shell of an Ano- 
muran crab, probably of the genus Lithodes. 
This dead shell is peculidrly sensitive to at- 
mospheric change. In dry weather it re- 
mains nearly white, but with the approach 
of moisture small red spots appear on the 
shell, increasing in number and size with 
the increase of humidity, until the rain 
comes, when the shell becomes all red, and 
retains this color throughout the wet season. 


The Swiss Society of Natural Sciences.— 
The Swiss Society of Natural Sciences held 
its sixty-sixth annual reunion at Zurich in 
August, and was attended by men from 
many countries. The meeting was opened 
by M. Cramer, Professor of Botany in the 
University of Zurich, with an address, in 
which, besides reviewing the progress of 
the natural sciences, he laid particular stress 
upon the study of the minute organisms 
which have recently been brought into 
prominence. Professor Meyer traced the 
progress of chemistry under the influence 
of the ideas of Mendelejeff and L. Mayer, 
and showed how a classification had become 
possible of all simple solids under five dis- 
tinctly separated families. The likenesses 
on which the classification is based are so 
strong that the discovery of gallium was 
foreseen; its density and atomic weight 
were determined three years before the ele- 
ment was actually separated by the French 
chemist M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Pro- 
fessor Meyer concluded his address by show- 


ing how science is indebted to men who 


think, who found theories on experiments, 
and then verify the truth of their hypothe- 
ses by renewed investigations. Professor 


POPULAR MISCELLANY, 


Hermann Fol, of the University of Geneva, 
described his studies on animal individual- 
ity, embracing- particularly his researches 
into the origin of double beings, two-head- 
ed monsters, and the like. Professor F. A. 
Forel presented an interesting paper on 
the variations of temperature of the Swiss 
lakes, which he has made the subject of 
several years of study. Professor Suess, of 
Vienna, read a paper in exposition of the 
modern theory of the upheaval of mount- 
ains. Professor Clausius, of Berne, was 
elected president of the society. 


False Knowledge.—Dr. Oliver Marcy, 
geologist and classicist, and formerly Presi- 
dent of the Northwestern University, has 
some sensible remarks on educational fal- 
lacies, in the Chicago “ Evening Herald” : 
‘There is much wrong education. The hu- 
man mind is burdened with false knowl- 
edge. It comes to us in tradition. It con- 
stitutes a large part of our libraries. All 
the false notions of the ancients stand upon 
our shelves. False knowledge is forced 
upon us in the instruction we receive. We 
are taught that we must go to school to the 
ancients ; that they had the truth, and knew 
more and were wiser than the people of this 
age; that in the art of composition, both in 
prose and in poetry, the moderns are infe- 
rior to the men of ancient time; that it is 
necessary, in order to acquire a good style 
in English, to study composition in Greek, a 
language whose structure is wholly unlike 
that of the English. The Greek mythology 
is represented as a beautiful blossom of the 
human intellect, worthy of years of patient 
study. We are taught that a man educated 
in the knowledge that existed 300 years be- 
fore Christ is better educated than a man 
educated in the knowledge of the nineteenth 
century. If these are not fallacies, what 
ground have we for expecting that the hu- 
man race will have any better mental con- 
dition in the future? If these are not fal- 
lacies, what has become of the law of prog- 
ress? One of the most detrimental fallacies 
imbibed with our education is the notion 
that words have a potency of meaning in 
themselves. The truth is, they have only 
such meanings as we attach to them. They 
stand for notions already in our minds. 
When uttered or written they have no 
power to generate the same notions in other 


141 


minds as they represent to us, unless the 
other parties have associated these same 
notions with the sounds we utter or sets of 
visible marks similar to those we write. 
Meaning does not exist in a word by virtue 
of its root or its history. Roots and word 
histories are of interest in the study of 
words as such in philology, but, in the se- 
lection of a word to express an idea, the 
question is not what the word has stood for 
in the minds of persons long since dead, but 
what it stands for now in the minds of the 
living. The new meaning of every word is 
different from its old meaning, and in some 
cases the new meaning is directly contrary 
to that of the old. No one can obtain the 
new notion from the study of the old word ; 
for instance, the notion which is now repre- 
sented by the word animal. The Greek 
anemos stood for wind and for a breath. 
The Latin anima stood for spirit and life, as 
then understood. The Latin animal stood 
for a living being; but no Roman or Latin 
ever used this word to represent the idea 
for which the word now stands in the mind 
of the scientific man, for the modern idea 
had no existence in those days. The man 
whose vernacular is the English tongue takes 
a very indirect route, and makes a very 
unproductive journey, when he seeks the 
meaning of the now English word animal 
through its roots and its history. The pres- 
ent meaning can be obtained only by ob- 
serving and studying animals themselves in 
connection with the thoughts and observa- 
tions of modern investigators. Persons who 
get into the habit of obtaining their ideas 
from Latin and Greek roots generally have 
no disposition to seek knowledge in any 
other way. They are satisfied with the im- 
perfect notions which they thus obtain from 
the old words, and forever remain ignorant 
of the real nature of the things for which the 
new words stand. Agassiz was so impressed 
with the fallacy of names that he never per- 
mitted his students to know the name of an 
object of study till they had formed a prop- 
er notion of it by a minute study of the ob- 
ject itself. Names to the ignorant convey 
but very superficial notions. These fallacies 
are affecting the education, the life, and 
the thinking of all our people. We should 
throw them off as we grow in clear think- 
ing, as the growing lobster throws off his 
shell. There is much confusion of mind 


142 


produced by words which become fashion- 
able for a time, and are made to carry a 
great variety of meanings, and frequently 
no definite meaning. Such a word is ‘ cult- 
ure.’ Arnold has defined it, and Huxley 
has lectured on his definition, and Mr. Ar- 
nold has lectured in reply. Still, though it 
is used every day, no one can tell exactly 
what it means. The common notion at- 
tached to it is that of traveling in Europe 
and looking at picture-galleries. In educa- 
tional circles the word ‘ discipline’ is thrown 
at you on all occasions. It is the answer 
given to all educational inquiries ; but its 
meaning to most minds is not clear. It gen- 
erally stands for memorizing the rules of 
Latin prosody and committing the names of 
the Greek divinities, Another false notion 
which we absorb with our instruction is that 
all knowledge comes from books — that 
knowledge originates in books. The exist- 
ence of this belief may be denied, because 
a second thought shows its absurdity; but 
the fallacy has taken possession of the mind 
of most students of books and controls their 
practical life. Knowledge is sought by 
them in books, and in books alone. The 
man educated only in books does not know 
how to find a truth except by means of a 
book. It is a fallacy to think that the best 
education is an education to interpret books, 
and not an education to interpret nature.”” 


Solar Storms and Sun-Spots.— What- 
ever may be said in the matter of terres- 
trial weather-prediction, astronomers have 
learned to foretell with considerable cor- 
rectness the occurrence of. the mighty solar 
storms which produce what are called sun- 
spots; that is, they can tell what years will 
be characterized by many sun-storms and 
what years by few, for ten or twelve years 
in advance. The great sun-spots which 
were seen in the later months of 1882 were 
predicted at least twelve years before; and 
astronomy is far better assured that in the 
years 1898 and 1894 there will be many 
sun-spots than meteorologists are that any 
given month in the future of the present 
year will be of the normal character. But 
though the periodicity of the spots seems 
to be established, the reason of it is still 
wholly unknown. We have learned, from 
the observations of Professor Langley and 
the story told by the spectroscope, that so 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


much of the light of the body of the sun is 
absorbed by its atmosphere that its color 
is changed from the real bluish violet to 
the yellowish white that we see; that the 
vapors in that atmosphere are largely me- 
tallic, and the rains on the sun are rains of 
metallic drops; that its storms rage over 
regions as large as the whole surface of the 
earth, and travel with a velocity compared 
with which the swiftest atmospheric move- 
ments on the earth are as rest; and that 
its constant emission of light and heat 
represents the equivalent of a consumption 
of fuel so far beyond what man can con- 
ceive that figures can give no idea of it. 
A connection seems to be fairly established 
between solar storms and magnetic disturb. 
ances on the earth. Yet there are storms, 
revealed by the protuberances on the edge 
of the solar disk, that are not felt on the 
earth; but this is because they rage on a 
part of the sun not turned toward the earth, 
and spend their effects in other portions 
of space. Whenever the face of the sun 
turned toward the earth has shown evi- 
dence of perturbation, our planet has re- 
sponded quickly enough—quite as quickly 
as it responds to the rays of solar light. 
It seems clear, also, that the temperature 
of the earth as a whole is affected by the 
absence or presence of many spots on the - 
sun’s surface. But that there is any con- 
nection between the rain and wind cycles, 
the periods of famine and financial crisis, 
the recurrence of disasters and shipwrecks, 
bad vine-years, etc., as some have assumed 
to infer, has not yet been established; and 
the observations on these points are so con- 
tradictory as to have no value, 


Microbes in Brieks.—Director ’Parize, 
of the agricultural station at Morlaix, 
France, has discovered that the crumbling 
of soft bricks and other earthen articles, 
which has been ascribed wholly to the action 
of moisture, is largely promoted, if it is not 
caused, by the growth of microbes. His 
attention was called to the fact in examin- 
ing some mucedines which had grown upon 
a brick partition in a close, moist place, 
when he remarked some swellings or blis- 
ters in the plaster, from which a fine, red 
dust escaped when it was broken. Nothing 
but the brick-dust could be seen with the 
ordinary magnifier, but the application of 


NOTES. 


a microscope of five hundred diameters re- 
vealed hosts of living microscopic organ- 
isms. Among them were micrococci, one- 
celled alge and their spores, amibes, and 
cilix, moving with extreme rapidity, and 
some of the organisms in the process of 
budding. Deductions and lessons of con- 
siderable value and of quite wide exten- 
sion may follow from this discovery. 


Prevention of Floods in Mountain-Val- 
leys.—Herr Carl Sonklar, of Innspruck, has 
published a paper on the means of prevent- 
ing the floods to which the valleys of the 
Tyrolese Alps are subject. The remedy he 
proposes consists chiefly in the restoration 
and preservation of the forests that former- 
ly clothed the mountains; and he suggests 
a set of very minute regulations and practi- 
cal measures to promote that end, which, as 
well as all that is done about the forests, 
by private owners as well as by the public 
and the communes, are to be closely watched 
by the Government. To the plantation and 
cultivation of trees he would add barriers or 
dams accross the ravines, to detain the wa- 
ter of the freshets temporarily so that the 
washed-down mineral matter and gravel shall 
settle there and not be carried into the culti- 
vated valleys below. 


Storage-Batteries in Electric Lighting. 
—The composing-room of the Aberdeen 
(Scotland) ‘‘ Journal” is lighted with perfect 
satisfaction by means of incandescent lamps 
supplied by accumulators. The electricity 
is stored by one of the engines used for the 
printing machinery during the intervals be- 
tween issuing the different editions of the 
daily paper; and the accumulators, so 
charged, keep the lamps burning brightly 
all night, without needing to be replenished. 
Illumination through accumulators is wholly 
free from the unsteadiness which is com- 
plained of in using lights directly dependent 
on machinery, and is free from the risk of 
a sudden excess in the current destroying 
the carbon-filament of the lamp. The ac- 
cumulators recommend themselves, more- 
over, aS possessing “the enormous advan- 
tage of only yielding up the quantity of 
electricity actually consumed by the lamps 
alight at the moment, whereas, when the 
lighting is done directly from a dynamo, if 


143 


part of the lamps are put out, an equivalent 
resistance must be inserted in order to 
prevent the breakage of the remaining 
lamps.” 


NOTES. 


Art the recent annual dinner of the Yale 
alumni resident in Boston and vicinity, opin- 
ions in regard to the classics, of the same 
tenor as those with which the Yale students 
have been so sedulously dosed all winter, 
were expressed by several speakers, includ- 
ing General F. A. Walker, President of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But 
we learn, from the report in the “ Boston 
Transcript,” that there was one dissenting 
voice: “ Mr, Starr H. Nichols, of New York, 
of the class of ’54, spoke next. He criti- 
cised the training of the colleges in the clas- 
sics and mathematics as not developing the 
judgment of the students. They live ina 
Greek and Roman atmosphere, and can not 
distinguish between the ideal and the prac- 
tical, They should have something to make 
them athletes in the business of life. Men 
should come out from college not feeling like 
strangers and pilgrims in the world, but at 
home. Classic learning does everything for 
a man except one thing, but that is the 
greatest thing of all, which is, to maintain 
one’s self like a man in the world.” 


M. NorpEnsk16xp reports that he noticed 
that the snow falling in Stockholm toward 
the end of December was soiled with a black 
dust. Analyzing the dust, he found that it 
contained considerable carbonaceous matter, 
which burned with a flame, and left a resi- 
due containing oxide of iron, silica, phos- 
phorus, and cobalt. He regards the ob- 
servation as confirmatory of his theory of 
a regular accession of cosmic dust to the 
earth. 


Dr. George ENGLEMANN, a distinguished 
American botanist, died February 4th, in St. 
Louis, Missouri, where he had lived since 
1835. He was for many years a successful 
and honored physician in St. Louis, but was 
best known—to the whole world—by his 
scientific achievements. He was born and 
schooled in Germany, and, removing to 
Belleville, Illinois, began his botanical work 
by publishing a monograph in Latin on the 
habits of a creeper on the hazel-bush. This 
at once attracted attention in his native 
land. He made several excursions with Dr. 
Asa Gray through the West. He was espe- 
cially well informed on the cactus; and was 
largely influential in introducing the present 
method of classification of plants, based on 
microscopical examinations and investiga« 
tions. 


~— 


144 


Dr. Epwarp Davy, who is now living in 
Australia at the age of seventy-seven years, 
appears to have anticipated all other claim- 
ants in suggesting the use of electricity for 
telegraphing. He published a paper on 
the subject in the “ Mechanics’ Magazine” 
in 1838 ; but there has recently been found, 
among his old manuscripts, an outline, 
dated in 1836, “of a new plan of tele- 
graphic communication, by which intelli- 
gence may be conveyed with precision to 
unlimited distances in an instant of time, 
independent of fog and darkness,” His 
first idea was to use static electricity, but 
he afterward adopted electro-magnetism, 
with deflections of the galvanometer. He 
used half as many wires as there are letters 
of the alphabet, making each wire, accord- 
ing as it Worked a deflection to the right or 
to the left, answer for two letters. 


Dr. Henry Macavctey, of Belfast, Ire- 
land, has suggested a plan for making the 
sun do direct service in cooling the air it 
heats, by using Mochot’s solar- engine to 
pump cold air into dwellings, factories, etc. 
The drawback to his proposition is, that it 
depends upon ice to furnish the cooling in- 
fluence, and this is not always on hand in 
tropical countries, 


THE great collection of fungi of Baron 
Felix von Thiimen, of Vienna, was offered 
for sale a few months ago. It includes, in 
two hundred and twenty-one portfolios, more 
than thirty-five thousand specimens, repre- 
senting one thousand genera, and fifteen 
thousand species and varieties, besides forty 
portfolios more recently acquired, contain- 
ing fifteen thousand specimens of five thou- 
sand species and varieties, still unarranged. 
It furnished the material by the aid of 
which Dr. A.’ Minks’s “ Symbole bs cio ge 
cologice”’ was prepared. ~ 


Dr. Crosskry writes: “It is a wonder- 
ful thing to see the power of experimental 
science over the roughest lads. My own 
belief is that, in our young blackguards, we 
have a most amazing reserve power of sci- 
entific research; they are alive in every 
sense, and I have watched them at the 
science-lessons as keenly interested as if 
they were up to mischief in the streets.” 


Ir appears from a recent observation by 
Dr. Fleitman, that much less time than has 
been generally supposed is required for the 
formation of mineral veins. About two 
years ago, Dr. Fleitman filled up a ditch 
with common clay containing iron, Having 
had occasion to dig out the ‘ditch anew, he 
was surprised to find that the character of 
the clay had been changed, and it had 
turned white. It was also permeated in 
various directions by cracks from a twenty- 
fifth to a sixth of an inch in section, which 
were filled with compact iron pyrites, 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


- Tue death is announced of Francois Le- 
normant, one of the most distinguished 
scholars of the age in Oriental archeology 
While he was at ‘home in all branches of 
this subject, his work was more especially 
concerned with the Asiatic civilizations and 
the cuneiform inscriptions. His book on 
the “Beginnings of History” is a real store- 
house of the results of the latest researches 
in this field, and is one of the most satisfac- 
tory compendiums of extremely ancient his- 
tory. He was a devoted Roman Catholic, 
but did not shrink from the boldest conclu- 
sions which the students of the ancient rec- 
ords have reached; and he had no trouble 
in satisfying himself of their complete har- 
mony with the biblical record and Jewish 
traditions rightly interpreted. 


Mr. D. E. Satmon has shown, in a com- 
munication to ‘ Science,” that the micro- 
coccus which is the cause of typhoid in 
hogs was discovered by Dr. Detmers of 
our r Department of Agriculture, and was de- 
scribed by him, with additional knowledge 
each time, in the reports giving the results 
of his investigations from 1878 to 1882. 
Mr. Salmon, co-operating also with the De- 
partment of Agriculture, demonstrated that 
this micrococcus exists in the blood during 
the life of the animal, that it can be cul- 
tivated in flasks, and that the sixth succes- 
sive cultivation is still competent to produce 
the disease. Thuillier, working with Pas- 
teur, made an independent discovery of the 
same organism, without knowledge of the 
American work, in 1882. Before either of 
these discoveries, Klein, in 1876, encount- 
ered the organism, but failed to connect 
it with the virus of the disease, and after- 
ward assigned the malady to a different 
schizophyte. 


Dr. D. J. Maceoway, in his “ Notes on 
Earthquakes in China for 1882,” mentions 
three classes of earthquakes as distinguish- 
able in that country—insular, littoral, and 
interior. Earthquakes in Formosa and Hai- 
nan are frequently felt on the mainland to 
the coast-mountains, but not above tide- 
water, except in the basin of the lower 
Yangtse. They are sometimes accompa- 
nied by marine disturbances, and are often 
followed by increased action in the sol/a- 
tara and complaints of malaise, consequent, 
doubtless, upon the emission of hydrosul-. 
phuric gases, Of the three principal in- 
terior seismic foci, Szechuen, Shansi, and 
Kansuh, the two former are situated far 
from volcanoes, and their shocks are often 
reported as continuous for considerable pe- 
riods. 


A movement has heen started in Brad- 
ford, England, to test the legality of the 


imposition of home-lessons on the children 
| in the elementary schools. 


ARNOLD HENRY GUYOT. 


THE 


POPULAR. SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


JUNE, 1884. 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 
By HERBERT SPENCER. 


IL. 


ff Macs reply to all this will doubtless be that nothing better than 
guidance by “collective wisdom” can be had—that the select 
men of the nation, led by a reselected few, bring their best powers, 
enlightened by all the knowledge of the time, to bear on the matters 
before them. ‘ What more would you have?” will be the question 
asked by most. 

My answer is that this best knowledge of the time with which leg- 
islators are said to come prepared for their duties is a knowledge of 
which the greater part is obviously irrelevant, and that they are blame- 
worthy for not seeing what is the relevant knowledge. No amount of 
the linguistic acquirements by which many of them are distinguished 
will help their judgments in the least ; nor will they be appreciably 
helped by the literatures these acquirements open to them. Neither 
the history of Thucydides, nor the biographies of Plutarch, nor the 
dialogues of Plato, will in any considerable degree prepare them for 
judging how this or that measure will operate on social life. Not even 
Aristotle’s “ Politics” will give them much help in judging how acts 
of Parliament are likely to work. They may ponder on the doings of 
all the great men by whom, according to the Carlylean theory, society 
is framed, and they may spend years over those accounts of interna- 
tional conflicts, and treacheries, and intrigues, and treaties, which fill 
historical works, without being much nearer understanding the how 
and the why of social structures and actions, and the ways in which 
laws affect them. Nor does such information as is picked up in the 

vor. xxv.—10 


146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


factory, on ’change, or in the justice-room, go far toward the required 
preparation. 

That which is Jan needed is a systematic study of natural causa- 
tion as displayed among human beings socially aggregated. Though . 
a distinct consciousness of causation is the last trait which intellectual 
progress brings—though with the savage a simple mechanical cause is 
not conceived as such—though even among the Greeks the flight of a 
spear was thought of as guided by a god—though, from their times 
down almost to our own, epidemics have been habitually regarded as 
of supernatural origin—and though among social phenomena, the most 
complex of all, causal relations may be expected to continue longest 
unrecognized ; yet, in our days, the existence of such causal relations 
has become clear enough to force on all who think the inference that 
before meddling with them they should be diligently studied. The 
mere facts, now familiar, that there is a connection between the num- 
bers of births, deaths, and marriages, and the price of corn, and that 
in the same society during the same generation the ratio of crime to 
population maintains a kindred regularity, should be sufficient to make 
all see that human desires, using as guide such intellect as is joined . 
with them, act with approximate uniformity. It should be inferred 
that, among social causes, those initiated by legislation, similarly op- 
erating with an average regularity, must not only change men’s actions, 
but, by consequence, change their natures—probably in ways not in- 
tended. There should be a recognition of the fact that social causa- 
tion, more than all other causation, is a fructifying causation ; and it 
should be seen that indirect and remote effects are no less inevitable 
than proximate effects. I do not mean that there is denial of these 
statements and inferences. But there are beliefs and beliefs—some 
which are held but nominally, some which influence conduct in small 
degrees, some which sway it irresistibly under all circumstances ; and 
unhappily the beliefs of law-makers respecting causation in social 
affairs are of the superficial sort. Let us look at some of the truths 
which they tacitly admit, but which are ee at all taken account 
of in legislation, 

There is the indisputable fact that each human being is in a cer- 
tain degree modifiable both physically and mentally. Every theory 
of education, every discipline, from that of the arithmetician to that 
of the prize-fighter, every proposed reward for virtue or punishment 
for vice, implies the belief, embodied in sundry proverbs, that the 
use or disuse of each faculty, bodily or mental, is followed by an 
adaptive change in it—loss of power or gain of power according to 
demand. 

There is the fact, also in its broader manifestations universally rec- 
ognized, that modifications of nature, in one way or other produced, 
are inheritable. No one denies that by the accumulation of small 
changes, generation after generation, constitution fits itself to condi- 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 147 


tions ; so that a climate is wholesome to the adapted race which is 
fatal to other races. No one denies that peoples who belong to the 
same original stock but have spread into different habitats where they 
have led different lives have acquired in course of time different apti- 
tudes and different tendencies. No one denies that under new con- 
ditions new national characters are even now being molded, as wit- 
ness the Americans. And if no one denies a process of adaptation 
everywhere and always going on, it is a manifest implication that 
adaptive modifications must be set up by every change of social con- 
ditions. 

To which there comes the undeniable corollary that every law 
which serves to alter men’s modes of action—compelling, or restrain- 
ing, or aiding, in new ways—so affects them as to cause in course of 
time an adjusted nature. Beyond any immediate effect wrought, there 
is the remote effect, wholly ignored by most—a remolding of the aver- 
age character: a remolding which may be of a desirable or an unde- 
sirable kind, but which in any case is the most important of the re- 
sults to be considered. 

Other general truths, which the citizen, and still more the legislator, 
ought to contemplate until they become wrought into his intellectual 
fabric, are disclosed when we ask how social activities are produced ; 
and when we recognize the obvious answer that they are the aggre- 
gate results of the desires of individuals who are severally seeking 
satisfactions, and ordinarily pursuing the ways which, with their pre- 
existing habits and thoughts, seem the easiest—following the lines of 
least resistance: the truths of political economy being so many se- 
quences. It needs no proving that social structures and social actions 
must in some way or other be the outcome of human emotions guided 
by ideas—either those of ancestors or those of living men. And that 
the right interpretation of social phenomena is to be found in the co- 
operation of these factors from generation to generation follows inevi- 
tably. 

Such an interpretation soon brings us to the inference that, of the 
aggregate results of men’s desires seeking their gratifications, those 
which have prompted their private activities and their spontaneous 
co-operations have done much more toward social development than 
those which have operated through governmental agencies. That 
abundant crops now grow where once only wild berries could be 
gathered is due to the pursuit of individual satisfactions through 
many centuries. The progress from wigwams to good houses has 
resulted from wishes to increase personal welfare ; and towns have 
arisen under the like promptings. Beginning with peddlers and with: 
traffic at meetings on occasions of religious festivals, the trading or- 
ganization, now so-extensive and complex, has been produced entirely 
by men’s efforts to achieve their private ends. Perpetually govern- 
ments have thwarted and deranged the growth, but have in no 


148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


way furthered it, save by partially discharging their proper function 
and maintaining social order. So, too, with those advances of knowl- 
edge and those improvements of appliances by which these structural 
changes and these increasing activities have been made possible. It 
is not to the state that we owe the multitudinous useful inventions 
from the plow to the telephone ; it is not the state which made possi- 
ble extended navigation by a developed astronomy ; it is not the state 
which made the discoveries in physics, chemistry, and the rest, which 
guide modern manufacturers ; it is not the state which devised the — 
machinery for producing fabrics of every kind, for transferring men 
and things from place to place, and for ministering in a thousand ways 
to our comforts. The world-wide transactions going on in merchants’ 
offices, the rush of traffic filling our streets, the retail distributing sys- 
tem which brings everything within easy reach and delivers the neces- 
saries of life daily at our doors, are not of governmental origin. All 
these are the results of the spontaneous activities of citizens, separate 
or combined. Nay, to these spontaneous activities governments owe 
the very means of performing their duties. Divest the political ma- 
chinery of all those aids which science and art have yielded it—leave 
it with those only which state-officials have invented—and its func- 
tions would cease. The very language in which its laws are registered 
and the orders of its agents daily given is an instrument not in the 
remotest degree due to the legislator, but is one which has unawares 
grown up during men’s intercourse while pursuing their personal satis- 
factions. 

And then a truth, to which the foregoing one introduces us, is that 
this spontaneously-formed social organization is so bound together that 
you can not act on one part without acting more or less on all parts. 
We see this unmistakably when a cotton-famine, first paralyzing cer- 
tain manufacturing districts and then affecting the doings of whole- | 
sale and retail distributors throughout the kingdom, as well as the 
people they supply, goes on to affect the makers and distributors, as 
well as the wearers, of other fabrics—woolen, linen, etc. Or we see it 
when a rise in the price of coal, besides influencing domestic life every- 
where, hinders the greater part of our industries, raises the prices of 
the commodities produced, alters the consumption of them, and changes 
the habits of consumers. What we see clearly in these marked cases 
happens in every case in sensible or in insensible ways. And, manifest- 
ly, acts of Parliament are among those factors which, beyond the ef- 
fects directly produced, have countless other effects of multitudinous 
kinds. As I heard remarked by a distinguished professor, whose stud- 
ies give ample means of judging, “ When once you begin to interfere 
with the order of Nature there is no knowing where the results will 
end.” And, if this is true of that sub-human order of Nature to which 
‘he referred, still more is it true of that order of Nature existing in the 
social arrangements produced by aggregated human beings. 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 149 


And now, to carry home the conclusion that the legislator should 
bring to his business. a vivid consciousness of these and other such 
broad truths concerning the human society with which he proposes to 
deal, let me present somewhat more fully one of them not yet men- 
tioned. 


The continued life of every higher species of creature depends on 
conformity, now to one, now to the other, of two radically-opposed 
principles. The early lives of its members and the adult lives of its 
members have to be dealt with in contrary ways. We will contem- 
plate them in their natural order. 

One of the most familiar facts is that animals of superior types, 
comparatively slow in reaching maturity, are enabled, when they have 
reached it, to give more aid to their offspring than animals of inferior 
types. The adults foster their young during periods more or less 
prolonged, while yet the young are unable to provide for them- 
selves ; and it is obvious that maintenance of the species can be 
secured only by a parental care adjusted to the need consequent on 
imperfection. It requires no proving that the blind, unfledged hedge- 
bird, or the young puppy even after it has acquired sight, would forth- 
with die if it had to keep itself warm and obtain its own food. The 
gratuitous parental aid must be great in proportion as the young one 
is of little worth, either to itself or to others; and it may diminish 
as fast as, by increasing development, the young one acquires worth, 
at first for self-sustentation, and by-and-by for sustentation of others. 
That is to say, during immaturity, benefits received must be inversely © 
as the power or ability of the receiver. Clearly, if during this first 
part of life benefits were proportioned to merits, or rewards to de- 
serts, the species would disappear in a generation. | 

From this régime of the family-group, let us turn to the régime of 
that larger group formed by the adult members of the species. Ask 
what happens when the new individual, acquiring complete use of its 
powers and ceasing to have parental aid, is left to itself. Now there 
comes into play a principle just the reverse of that above described. 
Throughout the rest of its life, each adult gets benefit in proportion 
to merit—reward in proportion to desert : merit and desert in each 
case being understood as ability to fulfill all the requirements of life— 
to get food, to secure shelter, to escape enemies. Placed in competi- 
tion with members of its own species, and in antagonism with mem- 
bers of other species, it dwindles and gets killed off, or thrives and 
propagates, according as it is ill-endowed or well-endowed. Mani- 
festly an opposite régime, could it be maintained, would, in course of 
time, be fatal to the species. If the benefits received by each member 
of it were proportionate to its inferiority—if, as a consequence, multi- 
plication of the inferior was furthered and multiplication of the supe- 
rior hindered, progressive degradation would result ; and eventually 


150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the species, as a whole, would fail to hold its ground in presence of 
antagonistic species and competing species. | 

The broad fact, then, here to be noted, is that Nature’s modes of 
treatment inside the family-group and outside the family-group are 
diametrically opposed to one another ; and that the intrusion of either 
mode into the sphere of the other would be fatal to the species, either 
immediately or remotely. 

Does any one think that the like does not hold of the human spe- 
cies? He can not deny that within the human family, as within any 
inferior family, it would be fatal to proportion benefit to merit. Can 
he assert that outside the family, among adults, there should not be 
proportioning of benefit to merit ? Will he contend that no mischief 
will result if the lowly endowed are enabled to thrive and multiply as 
much as, or more than, the highly endowed? A society of men, 
standing toward other societies in relations of either antagonism or 
competition, may be considered as a species, or, more literally, as a 
variety of a species ; and it must be true of it as of other species or 
varieties, that it will be unable to hold its own in the struggle with 
other societies, if it disadvantages its superior units that it may advan- 
tage its inferior units. Surely none can fail to see that were the prin- 
ciple of family life to be adopted and fully carried out in social life— 
were reward: always great in proportion as desert was small—fatal 
results to the society would quickly follow; and, if so, then even a 
partial intrusion of the family régime into the régime of the state will 
be slowly followed by fatal results. Society in its corporate capacity 
can not, without immediate or remote disaster, interfere with the play 
of these opposed principles under which every species has reached such 
fitness for its mode of life as it possesses, and under which it maintains 
that fitness. 

I say advisedly—society in its corporate capacity: not intending 
to exclude or condemn aid given to the inferior by the superior in 
their individual capacities. Though, when given so indiscriminately 
as to enable the inferior to multiply, such aid entails mischief ; yet in 
the absence of aid given by society, individual aid, more generally 
demanded than now, and associated with a greater sense of responsi- 
bility, would, on the average, be given with the effect of fostering the 
unfortunate worthy rather than the innately unworthy : there being 
always, too, the concomitant social benefit arising from culture of the 
sympathies. But all this may be admitted while asserting that the 
radical distinction between family-ethics and state-ethics must be 
maintained ; and that, while generosity must be the essential principle 
of the one, justice must be the essential principle of the other—a rigor- 
ous maintenance of those normal relations among citizens under which 
each gets in return for his labor, skilled or unskilled, bodily or mental, 
as much as is proved to be its value by the demand for it : such re- 
turn, therefore, as will enable him to thrive and rear offspring in pro- 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 151- 


portion to the superiorities which make him valuable to himself and 
others. ve 

And-yet, notwithstanding the conspicuousness of these truths, 
which should strike every one who leaves his lexicons, and his law- 
deeds, and his ledgers, and looks abroad into that natural order of 
things under which we exist, and to which we must conform, there is 
continual advocacy of paternal government. The intrusion of family- 
ethics into the ethics of the state, instead of being regarded as socially 
injurious, is more and more demanded as the only efficient means to 
social benefit. So far has this delusion now gone, that it vitiates the 
beliefs of those who might, more than all others, be thought safe from 
it. In the essay to which the Cobden Club awarded its prize in 1880, 
there occurs the assertion that “the truth of free trade is clouded over 
by the laissez-faire fallacy”; and we are told that “we need a great 
deal more of paternal government—that bugbear of the old econo- 
mists.” * 

Vitally important as is the truth above insisted upon, since accept- 
ance or rejection of it affects the entire fabric of political conclusions 
formed, I may be excused if I re-emphasize it by here quoting certain 
passages contained in a work I published in 1850: premising only 
that the reader must not hold me committed to such teleological im- 
plications as they contain. After describing “that state of universal 
warfare maintained throughout the lower creation,” and showing that 
an average of benefit results from it, I have continued thus : 


Note, further, that their carnivorous enemies not only remove from herbiv- 
orous herds individuals past their prime, but also weed out the sickly, the mal- 
formed, and the least fleet or powerful. By the aid of which purifying pro- 
cess, as well as by the fighting, so universal in the pairing-season, all vitiation of 
race through the multiplication of its inferior samples is prevented, and the 
maintenance of a constitution completely adapted to surrounding conditions, 
and therefore most productive of happiness, is insured. 

The development of the higher creation is a progress toward a form of being 
capable of happiness undiminished by these drawbacks. It isin the human race 
that the consummation is to be accomplished. Civilization is the last stage of 
its accomplishment. And the ideal man is the man in whom all the conditions 
of that accomplishment are fulfilled. Meanwhile, the well-being of existing 
humanity and the unfolding of it into this ultimate perfection are both secured 
by that same beneficent though severe discipline to which the animate creation 
at large is subject—a discipline which is pitiless in the working out of good, a 
felicity-pursuing law which never swerves for the avoidance of partial and tem- 
porary suffering. The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon 
the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the 
weak by the strong, which leave so many “in shallows and in miseries,” are the 
decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence. . . 

To become fit for the social state, man has not only to lose his savageness, 
but he has to acquire the capacities needful for civilized life. Power of appli- 


* “On the Value of Political Economy to Mankind,” by A. N. Cumming, pp. 47, 48. 


152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


cation must be developed; such modification of the intellect as shall qualify it 
for its new tasks must take place; and, above all, there must be gained the 
ability to sacrifice a small immediate gratification for a future great one. The 
state of transition will, of course, be an unhappy state. Misery inevitably re- 
sults from incongruity between constitutions and conditions. All these evils 
which afflict us, and seem to the uninitiated the obvious consequences of this or 
that removable cause, are unavoidable attendants on the adaptation now in 
progress. Humanity is being pressed against the inexorable necessities of its 
new position—is being molded into harmony with them, and has to bear the 
resulting unhappiness as best it can. The process must be undergone, and the . 
sufferings must be endured. No power on earth, no cunningly-devised laws of 
statesmen, no world-rectifying schemes of the humane, no communist panaceas, 
no reforms that men ever did broach or ever will broach, can diminish them one 
jot. Intensified they may be, and are; and, in preventing their intensification, 
the philanthropic will find ample scope for exertion. But there is bound up 
with the change a normal amount of suffering, which can not be lessened with- 
out altering the very laws of life... . 

Of course, in so far as the severity of this process is vaitipuben by the spon- 
taneous sympathy of men for each other, it is proper that it should be miti- 
gated; albeit there is unquestionable bara done when sympathy is shown, 
without any regard to ultimate results. But the drawbacks hence arising are 
nothing like commensurate with the benefits otherwise conferred. Only when 
this sympathy prompts to a breach of equity—only when it originates an inter- 
ference forbidden by the law of equal freedom—only when, by so doing, it sus- 
pends in some particular department of life the relationship between constitu- 
tion and conditions, does it work pure evil. Then, however, it defeats its own 
end. Instead of diminishing suffering, it eventually increases it. It favors the 
multiplication of those worst fitted for existence, and, by consequence, hinders 
the multiplication of those best fitted for existence—leaving, as it does, less room 
for them. It tends to fill the world with those to whom life will bring most 
pain, and tends to keep out of it those to whom life will bring most pleasure. 
It inflicts positive misery, and prevents positive happiness.—‘“‘ Social Statics,” 
pp. 822-825 and pp. 380, 381 (edition of 1851). 


The lapse of a third of a century since these passages were pub- 
lished has brought me no reason for retreating from the position taken 
up in them. Contrariwise, it has brought a vast amount of evidence 
strengthening that position. The beneficial results of the survival of 
the fittest prove to be immeasurably greater than those above indi- 
cated. The process of “natural selection,” as Mr. Darwin called it, 
co-operating with a tendency to variations and to inheritance of varia- 
tions, he has shown to be a chief cause (though not, I believe, the sole 
cause) of that evolution through which all living things, beginning with 
the lowest and diverging and rediverging as they evolved, have reached 
their present degrees of organization and adaptation to their modes of 
life. So familiar has this truth become that some apology seems 
needed for naming it. And yet, strange to say, now that this truth 
is recognized by most cultivated people—now that the beneficent 
working of the survival of the fittest has been so impressed on them 
that, much more than people in past times, they might be expected to 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 153 


hesitate before neutralizing its action—now more than ever before in 
the history of the world are they doing all they can to further sur- 
vival of the unfittest ! 

But the postulate that men are rational beings continually leads one 
to draw inferences which prove to be extremely wide of the mark.* 


“Yes, truly ; your principle is derived from the lives of brutes, 
and is a brutal principle. You will not persuade me that men are to 
be under the discipline which animals are under. I care nothing for 
your natural-history arguments. My conscience shows me that the 
feeble and the suffering must be helped; and, if selfish people won’t 
help them, they must be forced by law to help them. Don’t tell me 
that the milk of human kindness is to be reserved for the relations 
between individuals, and that governments must be the administra- 
tors of nothing but hard justice. Every man with sympathy in him 
must feel that hunger and pain and squalor must be prevented, and 
that, if private agencies do not suffice, then public agencies must be 
established.” 

Such is the kind of response which I expect to be made by nine 
out of ten. In some of them it will doubtless result from a fellow- 
feeling so acute that they can not contemplate human misery without 
an impatience which excludes all thought of remote results. Con- 
- cerning the susceptibilities of the rest, we may, however, be somewhat 
skeptical, Persons, who, now in this case and now in that, are angry 
if, to maintain our supposed national “interests” or national “ pres- 
tige,” those in authority do not promptly send out some thousands of 
men to be partially destroyed while destroying other thousands of 
men whose intentions we suspect, or whose institutions we think dan- 
gerous to us, or whose territory our colonists want, can not after all 
be so tender in feeling that contemplating the hardships of the poor is 
intolerable to them. Little admiration need be felt for the professed 
sympathies of men who urge on a policy which breaks up progressing 
societies, and who then look on with cynical indifference at the wel- 
tering confusion left behind, with all its entailed suffering and death. 
Those who, when a people asserting their independence successfully 

* The saying of Emerson, that most people can understand a principle only when its 
light falls on a fact, induces me here to cite a fact which may carry home the above 
principle to those on whom in its abstract form it may produce no effect. It rarely hap- 
pens that the amount of evil caused by fostering the vicious and the good-for-nothing 
can be estimated. But in America, at a meeting of the State Charities Aid Association, 
held on December 18, 1874, a startling instance was given in detail by Dr. Harris. It 
was furnished by a county on the upper Hudson, remarkable for the ratio of crime and 
poverty to population. Generations ago there had existed a certain “ gutter-child,” as 
she would be here called, known as “ Margaret,’”’ who proved to be the prolific mother of 
a prolific race. Besides great numbers of idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, 
and prostitutes, “the county records show two hundred of her descendants who have been 
criminals.”” Was it kindness or cruelty which, generation after generation, enabled these 
to multiply and become an increasing curse to the society around them ? 


154 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


resisted us, were angry because British “honor” was not maintained 
by fighting to avenge a defeat, at the cost of more mortality and 
misery to our own soldiers and their antagonists, can not have so much 
“enthusiasm of humanity ” as protests like that indicated above would 
lead one to expect. Indeed, along with this quick sympathy which 
they profess will not let them look with patience on the pains of “the 
battle of life” as it quietly goes on around, they appear to have a cal- 
lousness which not only tolerates but enjoys contemplating the pains 
of battles of the literal kind ; as-one sees in the demand for illustrated 
papers containing scenes of carnage, and in the greediness with which 
detailed accounts of bloody engagements are read. We may reason- 
ably have our doubts about men who are so sensitive that they can not 
bear the thought of hardships borne, mostly by the idle and improvi- 
dent, and who, nevertheless, have demanded twenty-nine editions of 
“The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,” in which they may 
revel in accounts of slaughter. Nay, even still more remarkable is the 
contrast between the professed tender-heartedness and the actual hard- 
heartedness of those who would reverse the normal course of things 
that immediate miseries may be prevented, even at the cost of greater 
miseries hereafter produced. For on other occasions you may hear 
them, with utter disregard of bloodshed and death, contend that in 
the interests of humanity at large it is well that the inferior races 
should be exterminated and their places occupied by the superior 
races. So that, marvelous to relate, though they can not bear to think 
of the evils ‘accompanying the struggle for existence as it is carried on 
without violence among individuals in their own society, they can not 
only tolerate but can applaud such evils in their intense and wholesale 
forms when inflicted by fire and sword on entire communities, Not 
worthy of much respect, then, as it seems to me, is this generous con- 
sideration of the inferior at home which is accompanied by unscrupu- 
lous sacrifice of the inferior abroad. , 
Still less respectable appears this extreme concern for those of our 
own blood which goes along with utter unconcern for those of other 
blood, when we observe its methods. Did it prompt personal effort 
to relieve the suffering, it would rightly receive approving recognition. 
Were the many who express this cheap pity like the few who patiently, 
week after week, and year after year, devote large parts of their time 
to helping and encouraging, and occasionally amusing, those who, in 
some cases by ill-fortune and in other cases by incapacity or miscon- 
duct, are brought to lives of hardship, they would be worthy of un- 
qualified admiration. The more there are of men and women who help 
the poor to help themselves—the more there are of those whose sym- 
pathy is exhibited directly and not by proxy, the more we may rejoice. 
But the immense majority of the persons who wish to mitigate by law 
the miseries of the unsuccessful and the reckless propose to do this in 
small measure at their own cost and mainly at the cost of others— 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. regu 


sometimes with their assent but mostly without. More than this is 
true ; for those who are to-be forced to do so much for the miserable 
often equally or more require something doing forthem. The desery- 
ing poor are among those who are burdened to pay the costs of caring 
for the undeserving poor. As under the old poor-law the diligent 
and provident laborer had to pay that the good-for-nothings might 
not suffer, until frequently under this extra burden he broke down 
and himself took refuge in the workhouse—as at present it is admitted 
that the-total rates levied in large towns for all public purposes have 
now reached such a height that they “can not be exceeded without 
inflicting great hardship on the small shopkeepers and artisans, who 
already find it difficult enough to keep themselves free from the pauper 
taint ” ;* so in all cases the policy is one which intensifies the pains of 
those most deserving of pity, that the pains of those least deserving of 
pity may be mitigated. In short, men who are so sympathetic that 
they can not allow the struggle for existence to bring on the un- 
worthy the sufferings consequent on their incapacity or misconduct, 
are so unsympathetic that they can, with equanimity, make the strug- 
gle for existence harder for the worthy, and inflict on them and their 
children artificial evils in addition to the natural evils they have to 
bear ! 


And here we are brought round to our original topic—the sins of 
legislators. Here there comes clearly before us the commonest of the 
transgressions which rulers commit—a transgression so common, and 
so sanctified by custom, that no one imagines it to be a transgression. 
Here we see that, as indicated at the outset, Government, begotten of 
aggression and by aggression, ever continues to betray its original 
nature by its aggressiveness ; and that even what on its nearer face 
seems beneficence only, shows, on its remoter face, not a little malefi- 
cence—kindness at the cost of cruelty. For is it not cruel to increase 
the sufferings of the better that the sufferers of the worse may be 
decreased ? 

It is, indeed, marvelous how readily we let ourselves be deceived 
by words and phrases which suggest one aspect of the facts while leay- 
ing the opposite aspect unsuggested. A good illustration of this, and 
one germane to the immediate question, is seen in the use of the 
words “protection” and “ protectionist” by the antagonists of free 
trade, and in the tacit admission of its propriety by free-traders. 
While the one party has habitually ignored, the other party has habitu- 
ally failed to emphasize, the truth that this so-called protection always 
involyes aggression; and that the name aggressionist ought to be 
substituted for the name protectionist. For nothing can be more 
certain than that, if to maintain A’s profit B is forbidden to buy of C, 
or is fined to the extent of the duty if he buys of C, B is aggressed 


* Mr, Chamberlain in “ Fortnightly Review,” December, 1883, p. 772. 


156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


upon that A may be “protected.” Nay, aggressionists would much 
more truly describe the anti-free-traders than the euphemistic title 
“»protectionists” ; since, that one producer may gain, ten consumers 
are fleeced. 

Now, just the like confusion of ideas, caused by looking at one face 
only of the transaction, may be traced throughout all the legislation 
which forcibly takes the property of this man for the purpose of giving 
gratis benefits to that man. _ Habitually when one of the numerous 
measures thus characterized is discussed, the dominant thought is 
concerning the pitiable Jones who is to be protected against some evil, 
while no thought is given to the hard-working Brown who is aggressed 
upon, often much more to be pitied. Money is exacted (either directly 
or through raised rent) from the huckster who only by extreme pinch- 
ing can pay her way, from the mason thrown out of work by a strike, 
from the mechanic whose savings are melting away during an illness, 
from the widow who washes or sews from dawn to dark to feed her 
fatherless little ones ; and all that the dissolute may be saved from 
hunger, that the children of less impoverished neighbors may be edu- 
cated, and that various people, mostly better off, may read newspapers 
and novels for nothing! The error of nomenclature is, in one respect, 
more misleading than that which, as we see, allows aggressionists to 
be called protectionists ; for, as just shown, protection of the vicious 
poor involves aggression on the virtuous poor. Doubtless it is true 
that the greater part of the money exacted comes from those who are 
relatively well-off. But this is no consolation to the ill-off from whom 
the rest is exacted. Nay, if the comparison be made between the 
pressures borne by the two classes respectively, it becomes manifest 
that the case is even worse than at first appears ; for, while to the well- 
off the exaction means loss of luxuries, to the ill-off it means loss of 
necessaries. 

And now see the Nemesis which is threatening to follow this 
chronic sin of legislators. They and their class, in common with all 
owners of property, are in danger of suffering from a sweeping appli- 
cation of that general principle practically asserted by each of these 
confiscating acts of Parliament. For what is the tacit assumption on 
which such acts proceed? It is the assumption that no man has any 
claim to his property, not even to that which he has earned by the 
sweat of his brow, save by permission of the community ; and that 
the community may cancel the claim to any extent it thinks fit. No 
defense can be made for this appropriation of A’s possessions for the 
benefit of B, save one which sets out with the postulate that society as 
a whole has an absolute right over the possessions of each member. 
And now this doctrine, which has been tacitly assumed, is being openly 
proclaimed. Mr. George and his friends, Mr. Hyndman and his sup- 
porters, are pushing the theory to its logical issue. They have been 
instructed by examples, yearly increasing in number, that the indi- 


THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 157 


vidual has no rights but what the community may equitably over- 
ride ; and they are now saying, “It shall go hard but we will better 
the instruction,” and override individual rights altogether. 


Legislative misdeeds of the classes above indicated are in large 
measure explained, and reprobation of them mitigated, when we look 
at the matter from afar off. They have their root in the error that 
society is a manufacture ; whereas it is a growth. Neither the culture 
of past times nor the culture of the present time has given to any 
considerable number of people a scientific conception of a society—a 
conception of it as having a natural structure in which all its insti- 
tutions, governmental, religious, industrial, commercial, etc., etc., are 
interdependently bound—a structure which is in a sense organic. Or 
if such a conception is nominally admitted, it is not believed in such 
way as to be operative on conduct. Contrariwise, incorporated human- 
ity is very commonly thought of as though it were like so much dough 
which the cook can mold at will into pie-crust, or puff, or tartlet. 
The communist shows us unmistakably that he thinks of the body 
politic as admitting of being shaped thus or thus at will ; and the tacit 
implication of many acts of Parliament is that aggregated men, twisted 
into this or that arrangement, will remain as intended. 

It may indeed be said that, even irrespective of this erroneous con- 
ception of a society as a plastic mass instead of as an organized body, 
facts forced on his attention hour by hour should make every one 
skeptical as to the success of this or that proposed way of changing a 
people’s actions. Alike to the citizen and to the legislator, home ex- 
periences daily supply proofs that the conduct of human beings balks 
calculation. He has given up the thought of managing his wife, and 
lets her manage him. Children on whom he has tried now reprimand, 
now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfac- 
torily to any method ; and no expostulation prevents their mother 
from treating them in ways he thinks mischievous. So, too, his deal- 
ings with his servants, whether by reasoning or by scolding, rarely 
succeed for long :|the falling short of attention, or punctuality, or 
cleanliness, or sobriety, leads to constant changes. Yet, difficult as he 
finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability 
to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of 
whom he knows, not one-hundredth of whom he ever saw, and the 
great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of 
thought of which he has but dim notions, he has no doubt will act in 
certain ways he foresees, and fulfill ends he wishes. Is there not a mar- 
velous incongruity between premises and conclusion ? 

One might have expected that whether they observed the implica- 
tions of these domestic failures, or whether they contemplated in every 
newspaper the indications of a social life too vast, too varied, too in- 
volved, to be even vaguely pictured in thought, men would have entered 


158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


on the business of law-making with the greatest hesitation. Yet in 
this more than in anything else do they show a confident readiness. 
Nowhere is there so astounding a contrast between the difficulty of the 
task and the unpreparedness of those who undertake it. Surely among 
monstrous beliefs one of the most monstrous is that, while for a mean 
handicraft, such as shoe-making, a long apprenticeship is needful, 
the sole thing which needs no apprenticeship is making a nation’s 
laws! 


Summing up the results of the discussion, may we not reasonably 
say that there lie before the legislator several open secrets, which yet 
are so open that they ought not to remain secrets to one who under- 
takes the vast and terrible responsibility of dealing with millions upon 
millions of human beings by measures which, if they do not conduce 
to their happiness, will increase their miseries and accelerate their 
deaths ? : 

There is first of all the undeniable truth, conspicuous and yet abso- 
_ lutely ignored, that there are no phenomena which a society presents 
but what have their origins in the phenomena of individual human 
life, which again have their roots in vital phenomena at large. And 
there is the inevitable implication that unless these vital phenomena, 
bodily and mental, are chaotic in their relations (a supposition excluded _ 
by the very maintenance of life) the resulting phenomena can not be 
wholly chaotic: there must be some kind of order in the phenomena 
which grow out of them when associated human beings have to co- 
operate. Evidently, then, when one who has not studied such resulting 
phenomena of social order undertakes to regulate society he is pretty 
certain to work mischiefs. 

In the second place, apart from a priori reasoning, this conclusion 
should be forced on the legislator by comparisons of societies. It ought 
to be sufficiently manifest that, before meddling with the details of 
social organization, inquiry should be made whether social organiza- 
tion has a natural history ; and that, to answer this inquiry, it would 
be well, setting out with the simplest societies, to see in what respects 
social structures agree. Such comparative sociology, pursued to a very 
small extent, shows a substantial uniformity of genesis. The habitual 
existence of chieftainship, and the establishment of chiefly authority 
by war; the rise everywhere of the medicine-man and priest ; the 
presence of a cult having in all places the same fundamental traits ; 
the traces of division of labor, early displayed, which gradually be- 
come more marked ; and the various complications, political, ecclesi- 
astical, industrial, which arise as groups are compounded and recom- 
pounded by war—quickly prove to any who compares them that, apart 
from all their special differences, societies have general resemblances 
in their modes of origin and development. They present traits of 
structure showing that social organization has laws which override 


MODES OF REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 159 


individual wills ; and win the disregard of which must be fraught 
with disaster. 

And then, in the third place, there is that mass of guiding informa- 
tion yielded by the records of law-making in our own country and in 
other countries, which still more obviously demands attention. Here 
and elsewhere attempts of multitudinous kinds, made by kings and 
statesmen, have failed to do the good intended and have worked unex- 
pected evils. Century after century new measures like the old ones, 
and other measures akin in principle, have again disappointed hopes 
and again brought disaster. And yet it is thought neither by electors 
nor by those they elect that there is any need for systematic study of 
that legislation which in by-gone ages went on working the ill-being 
of the people when it tried to achieve their well-being. Surely there 
can be no fitness for legislative functions without wide knowledge of 
those legislative experiences which the past has bequeathed. 

Reverting, then, to the analogy drawn at the outset, we must say 
that the legislator is morally blameless or morally blameworthy ac- 
cording as he has or has not acquainted himself with these several 
classes of facts. A physician who, after years of study, has gained a 
competent knowledge of physiology, pathology and therapeutics, is not 
held criminally responsible if a man dies under his treatment ; he has 
_prepared himself as well as he can, and has acted to the best of his 
judgment. Similarly the legislator whose measures produce evil in- 
stead of good, notwithstanding the extensive and methodic inquiries 
which helped him to decide, can not be held to have committed more 
than an error of reasoning. Contrariwise, the legislator who is wholly 
or in great measure uninformed concerning these masses of facts which 
he must examine before his opinion on a proposed law can be of any 
value, and who nevertheless helps to pass that law, can no more be ab- 
solved if misery and mortality result, than the journeyman druggist 
can be absolved when death is caused by the medicine he ignorantly 
prescribes. 


MODES OF REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 
Br BYRON D. HALSTED, Sc. D. 


HE sexual generation of a plant is that stage in its life-history 
which bears the male and female organs, while the asexual gen- 
erations are those having no sexuality manifest. The two kinds of 
generations frequently follow each other in alternate order, when there 
is what is known as an alternation of generations. 
Growing plants continue to increase in size in a well-defined man- 
ner for a time, and then a single cell, or a small group of cells, begins 
on a new line of development. This new growth finally becomes de- 


160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


tached from the parent-plant. The offspring may, or may not, be like 
the parent. Plants which result from similar cells developed in the 
same manner belong to the same generation. If the original repro- 
ductive cells grow into plants without any union with other cells, these 
plants are asexually produced. If the union of the contents of two or 
more cells is necessary for further development, there results a sexual 
product. 

It is the purpose of this paper to trace the relative size of the two 
generations above described, in a number of the higher orders of plants. 
In doing this, the fact of the alternation will be developed. The series 
of orders will begin with the humble Hepatice, and end with the most 
highly developed of flowering plants. The Hepatice, or liverworts, 
are small, flowerless plants of very simple structure, which grow for 
the most part in moist places upon the bark of trees, surface of long- 
exposed rocks, earth, etc. One of the leading genera is Marchantia, 
species of which abound on the earth of flower-pots in greenhouses 
and elsewhere. The leaf-like expansion or thallus is the sexual gen- 
eration, and bears the male and female organs in depressions of the 
surface. The male parts, called antheridia, produce spermatozoids, 
which are spiral, slender bodies, provided with two motile hairs or 
cilia, as locomotive appendages. The female organs (archegonia) are 
at first single cells, which by division form flask-like structures, the 
lower cell of which is the female germ-cell. When this germ is ferti- 
lized by the antherozoids, which enter at the neck of the “flask,” it 
undergoes a development, varying somewhat in the different orders, 
but essentially a sporangium or spore-case is produced, in which are 
very many spores and slender spiral threads 
arranged in rows. This sporangium is the yh 
second and asexual generation of the liver- 
wort. The complexity of the structure of 


NY 


MANU 


snnPPaNINN (ae 
yy 


Fra. 1. Fie. 2. 


the first or feaf-like generation and of the sexual organs and sporangia 
increases in the hepatice group in passing from the lower to the higher 
forms. In the highest group there are stems with leaves arranged in 


MODES OF REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 161 


rows, and the sporangia are raised on long stalks. Fig. 1 shows at ta 
portion of Marchantia polymorphia, with an upright receptacle, h, 
bearing the male organs. In Fig. 2 is seen a stem of Plagiochila 
asplenioides ; a is a ripe sporangium, and 6 one that has opened. 

In the mosses, the next class in the upward scale of plant-life, the 
spore germinates by producing a fine green thread, which branches and 
forms a plant much resembling many of the filamentous fresh-water 
alge. In the order Sphagnacee this “alga form” is a flat expansion 
similar to the sexual generation of many liverworts. Fig. 3 shows 


the germinating spores of Funaria hygrometrica, at A, and the fine 
branching, green threads (B) that are afterward produced. The true 
moss-plant, with its small stems, and fine, regularly arranged leaves, 
originates from specialized cells in the protonema, or alga form. K, in 
Fig. 3, shows the rudiment of a leaf-bearing axis. On the conspicuous 
moss-plant, arising from such small beginnings, the sexual organs are 
borne. ‘They are usually produced in clusters at the ends of the leafy 
axes. Most mosses have only one sex represented in a single tip, and 
some species have the separation of the sexes so complete that a plant 
bears only one kind. Mosses, as well as trees and shrubs, are some- 
times moneécious or diecious. Fig. 4 shows the male and female 
organs very much magnified. The antheridium, A, is a stalked, club- 
shaped structure, inclosing a large number of sperm-cells, 6, each of 
which produces a spiral spermatozoid, c. These minute bodies move 
rapidly by means of two cilia, and find their way to the neck of the 
female organ, B. The germ-cell, 5, to be fertilized, is at the base of 
the long structure, with a mucilaginous channel, /, leading down to 
it. After the spermatozoids have united with the germ-cell, the latter 
soon begins a new growth, and a young sporangium results. Fig. 5 
shows different stages in the development of the sperm-case ; and in 
VoL, xxvy.—11 


162 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Fig. 6 is seen a vertical section of one fully grown, showing the vari- 
ous parts of theca, calyptera, operculum, etc. In this complicated 
sporangium, small spores in great numbers are produced, and with 
their perfection ends the last chapter in the life-history of the moss. 


Fie. 4. 


The spore produces a fine filamentous growth, from which the true 
moss-plant develops. This is the sexual generation, and from ferti- 
lized germ-cells, which it bears, the asexual generation is produced, 
consisting of the spore-case, its stalk, and, most important of all, the 
many spores. 

We now come toa more exalted group of plants, and the first of 
the cryptogams with spiral vessels and other ducts in the wood, The 
ferns are so familiar to all that any description of their general appear- 
ance is unnecessary. The first generation proceeds directly from the 
spore, and consists of a simple green expansion which is short-lived and 
very small, not usually exceeding half the size of a small finger-nail, 
This prothallus, as it is termed, has small, root-like hairs which fix it 
to the earth or elsewhere. The prothallia are to be seen in large num- 
bers on the sides of flower-pots in neglected greenhouses. Lach little 
green scale is a young fern-plant during its sexual generation. The 
male and female organs are much the same shape as those of mosses. 


MODES OF REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 16; 


Fig. 7 shows a prothallus seen from the under side and much magnified ; 
h, are the root-hairs ; an, antheridia ; and ar, archegonia. The an- 
theridia produce cork-screw coiled antherozoids which pass to the 
archegonia and fertilize their germ-cells. The second generation de- 


velops from the germ-cell, as shown in Fig. 8. By a further growth of 
stem and fronds, the well-known state of the fern is produced. The 
spores are borne on the under side or edges of the fronds. In some 
species the spores are formed only on a portion of the fronds, the 
others being sterile. The plant commonly known as the fern does 
not have any male or female parts, and may live for many years, pro- 
ducing countless spores. The sexes are confined to the minute scale, 
which is so small as to pass unnoticed, and if seen would not suggest 
its origin or destiny. Dr. Farlow has discovered instances where the 
prothallia produced fern-plants without the usual process of fertiliza- 
tion. These are only the exceptions which prove the rule. 

There is a little group of ferns to which the “‘adder-tongue ” be- 
longs, that has the prothallus underground, consisting of an irregular 


164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


mass of colorless cells, which may not exceed one twenty-fifth of an 


inch in diameter. 


Fie. 8. 


species the male and female parts are on sepa- 
rate plants (diecious). The antheridia-bearing 
prothallia are much smaller than the female, the 
latter being sometimes half an inch in length. 
The structure of the male and female organs is 


This group forms another step toward.a greater 


simplicity of the sexual generation in plants. The 
spores of the Ophioglossacew are developed less 
superficially on the fronds than in the lower or- 
ders of ferns. This is a morphological point 
which is worthy of mention here. The whole 
structure of the asexual generation is more highly 


a developed than in other ferns, while the sexual 


generation is much reduced and simplified. 

The “Lquisetacee, or horse-tails, form a small 
group of flowerless plants, with hollow, jointed 
stems and cone-like spore-heads (Fig. 9). The 
scouring-rush, with its rough, grooved stem, is a 
leading member of this family. The prothallia 
are small and irregularly branched, and in most 


int 
An 


Fie. 9. 


much the same as in ferns. The antherozoids are larger, and the 
archegonia are more deeply situated in the prothallus. The conspicu- 


eee es Se ee eR 


MODES OF REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 165. 


ous horse-tail develops from the fertilized germ-cell, and constitutés 
the spore-bearing asexual generation. In some species a colorless or 
brownish stem comes up in early spring, which bears the spores on 
whorls of modified leaves, and afterward perishes. Later in the spring 
the green stems arise. This shows a greater differentiation in the 
asexual generation. 

Next above the horse-tails come the Rhizocarpee, a small crypto- 
gamic group of water-plants, inhabiting ditches, streams, etc. Thus 
far, in our upward course, we have found only one kind of spore. 
Here there are two sorts, the large and the small. The former pro- 
duce archegonia, and are therefore essentially female, while the smaller 
spores are male, and produce antherozoids. These spores are formed 


_in spore-cases, termed sporocarps. Fig. 10 shows a plant of Marsilia 


salvatrix, reduced one half; K is the terminal bud; 00, leaves; 
Ff, sporocarps. In these last the spores of both sizes are produced. 
The contents of the small or male spores divide and develop into a 
number of antherozoids, which afterward escape through a rupture in 
the spore-wall. A small portion of the spore does not take part in 
this formation of antherozoids, and may be considered the prothallus. 
In the large or female spore the prothallus is larger, and only one end 
of the spore bears a single archegonium. In Fig. 11, at A, is shown 


Fie. 11. 


a vertical section of the archegonium end of alarge spore ; ww are 
parts of the ruptured spore-wall ; pp is the prothallus, and g the germ- 
cell. At Bis a male spore of the same species, with its wall ruptured, 
and the corkscrew-like antherozoids, s, escaping. The second generation 
soon develops from the fertilized germ-cells, and produces the mature 
plant. It is seen that the sexual generation in the Marsilia group is 


- reduced to two kinds of spores, with their rudimentary prothallia. In 


another branch of the Rhizocarpew, while in most features the life- 
history is as just described, there is a further differentiation in the 
sporocarps. The male and female spores are produced in separate 
sporocarps. Fig. 12 shows a section through three spore-cases, two 


166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of them bearing the small males pores, and the third, a, the large fe- 
male spores. : 

In the next higher group, as arranged by botanists, we find the 
club-mosses ; these are common plants with 
trailing or upright very leafy stems. Fig. 
13, A, shows the tip of a spore- bearing 
branch, natural size, and B a longitudinal 
section much enlarged. The large spores 
are borne in sporangia on one side, while 
the small ones are on the left. The differ- 
entiation has now reached the place where 
there is a definite arrangement of the spo- 
rangia on the plant bearing them. In the 
development of the male spores the cells in 
which the antherozoids form are not produced directly from the spore- 
contents. ‘This is a valuable link in the chain of relationship which 
binds this group with higher plants—in fact, helps to bridge what gulf 
there may have been thought existing 
\ between the flowerless and flowering 
plants. The ripe male spore-contents 
are changed into a few cells, one of 
which remains sterile and is consid- 
ered the prothallus, while from the 
other cells—which taken as a whole 
constitute the antheridium—the cells 
which afterward bear the antherozoids 
are formed. In the genus Selaginella 
the female spore produces a small pro- 
thallus, as shown at 1, Fig. 14. The 
portion above d d, in this cross-section 
of the spore, is the prothallium, and at 
eeare two embryo plants. At2isa 
young archegonium not opened; 3 
shows one further advanced, with the 
fertilized germ-cell divided. A is a 
male spore, showing the cell-division ; 
D is a later state of the same, with the 
large antheridium fiiled with sperm- 
cells. The rudimentary prothallus is 
at v. The female is still more simple 
in Jsoetes, shown in Fig. 15: 1 is the 
longitudinal section of the female 
spore, with an archegonium, a7, at 
the top; 2 shows the early differen- 
tiation of cells into archegonia, ar, a7, with their germ-cells, g g ; 
3, 4, and 5 show successive stages in the development of the germ-cell. 


Fie. 12. 


MODES OF REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 167 


There is a close resemblance to the embryo sac of Gymnosperms 
(pines, spruces, etc.). The prothallus is very much reduced, and pro- 


Fre. 14. 


jects through the slit in the spore-covering. In the development of 
the female germ-cell after fertilization, there is an elongation of the 
upper part (see ¢, Fig. 14), forming the part called the suspensor, a 


body which is not found in other cryptogams, but is present in embryos 
of flowering plants. 
We now pass to phenogamous or flowering plants, in which the 


aa 
~ 


168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


small male spore of the higher cryptogams takes the name of pollen- 
grains, and the larger female spore is known as the embryo sac. The 
latter does not sever its connection with the mother-plant until after 
an embryo plant has formed. On this account the prothallium—which 
we have seen as an independent structure in ferns and diminishing 
gradually as we ascended in the scale of flowerless plants—is here but 
feebly developed. The flower-bearing plant, whether herb, shrub, or 
tree, is the asexual generation producing two kinds of structures, 
which, by their development and union of parts, produce a plant like 
the one from which the sexual generation sprang. The pollen-grain is 
usually a small spherical or oval body that, when mature, separates 
from the case (anther) in which it was formed. Figs. 16 shows the 
form of some simple pollen-grains. Grain A shows the rudimen- 
tary prothallium as a small cell, 
y; B is a pollen- grain forming 
the tube. Much the same is seen 
at C and D, excepting that the 
prothallium is made up of three 
small cells. In structure and func- 
tion these pollen-grains are almost 
identical with the male spores of 
higher eryptogams. The embryo 
sac is more or less surrounded by 
the substance of the parent-plant, 
and develops within itself a pro- 
thallus of small size which is 
known as the endosperm, and is a 
store-house of nourishing matter 
for the young embryo. One or 
more cells form the homologue of 
the archegonia in higher cryptogams with its female germ. ‘The male 
cell or pollen-grain no longer develops a number of mobile, fertilizing 
antherozoids or spermatozoids ; but, instead, the whole pollen-grain 
passes to a receptive surface (stigma) situated somewhere near the 
female organ, from which it sends out a tube that penetrates the tissue 
provided for its passage (style) until it reaches its destination and 
mingles its contents with those of the female cell. Circumstances ob- 
tain: in the flowering plants which render mobile bodies like spermato- 
zoids worthless as a means of fertilization. In many cases the male 
element needs to pass from one tree to another, and even from one 
country to another. The first observed result of fertilization is the 
formation of the suspensors, mentioned under Selaginella. At the 
lower end of the suspensor the young plantlet is formed with its one 
or more small seed-leaves and a short root and stem. In this growth 
the food-material in the endosperm is frequently entirely exhausted. 
The ovule, as the female cell with its immediate surrounding tissue is 


Fre. 16. 


MODES OF REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 169 


termed, becomes inclosed-with one or more coats of varying thickness, 
and, when’ the whole structure has reached maturity and is ready to 
separate from the parent-plant, we have the familiar body known as a 
seed. The seed is an independent plant-structure designed to develop 
into a mature herb, shrub, or tree, when the conditions are favorable 
for its germination and growth. 

The lowest class of flowering plants is the Gymnosperms—which 
includes the cycads and cone-bearing plants. The ovules are naked, 
and the embryo develops considerable endosperm. This corresponds 
to the prothallus of higher cryptogams, as in it the corpuscula, which 
correspond with archegonia, are formed. The pollen-grains are several- 
celled, thus suggesting a prothallus, especially as only a part of the 
grain takes part in the formation of the tube and the male fertilizing 
fluid. The gymnosperms evidently occupy an intermediate place be- 
tween the higher cryptogams and the angiosperms or flowering plants 
with their ovules inclosed in an ovary. This last class contains the 
great mass of plants with evident floral organs, and is divided into the 
exogens, like the oak, apple, and rose, and the endogens, illustrated by 
the grasses and cereal grains. 

The points that interest us most in the present consideration are, 
that, unlike the gymnosperms, the ovules are inclosed in an ovary ; the 
endosperm forms in the embryo sac after fertilization, and the pollen- 
grain sends out its tube without previous cell-division. The pollen-grains 
often have no rudimentary pro- 
thallus. The first result of fer- 
tilization is the formation of a 
cellulose wall around the germ- 
cell. This cell soon divides, 
forming the suspensor at the 
lower end, from which the em- 
bryo plantlet is developed. The 
endosperm-cells form at the 
same time at the opposite end 
of the embryo sac. Fig. 17, A, 
shows a longitudinal section of 
a young ovule shortly after fer- 
tilization. The embryo sac is 
at e, with a small embryo at 
the left end, and free endo- 
sperm-cells formed at the other. The embryo is shown more magnified 
at B, and at C isseen the same more advanced. The endosperm is rich 
in food-materials for the growing embryo, and may be entirely absorbed 
and the space occupied by the latter. 

It now remains for us to determine the extent of the sexual genera- 
tion in the flowering plants. Among gymnosperms it is not difficult to 
see that it consists of the pollen-grain and the embryo sac with its endo- 


Fre. 17. 


170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


sperm. The male prothallus is reduced and rudimentary, and one cell of 
the pollen-grain, representing the antheridium, produces a tube instead 
of antherozoids. The endosperm is the female prothallus, and in it the 
germ-cell develops. The asexual generation is the plant that grows 
from the fertilized germ. In the angiosperms the sexual generation is 
reduced to its simplest form, namely, a single cell for the male part, 
and one or a few cells for the female. 

We thus see that the alternation of generation, viewed in the light 
of its presentation among mosses and ferns, practically disappears in the 
higher flowering plants. The sexual generation is so reduced and 
merged with the asexual that the two seem to become one, and, were it 
not that the gradual simplifying of this generation may be traced, it 
would not be thought to exist. 

If we recapitulate, in the reverse order, it is easy to evolve a con- 
spicuous, independent plant from the single-celled pollen-grain, and a 
similar self-supporting plant from the simple embryo sac. The first 
step back is to the gymnosperms, where the ovules are not in ovaries, 
and the embryo sac has a rudimentary prothallus in the endosperm. 
The pollen-grain is made up of more then one cell. From this group we 
pass to the Selaginelle, in which we have the female spore, with its rudi- 
mentary prothallus, and the smaller male spore, having one cell for the 
prothallus, the remaining ones forming the antherozoids. Descending 
to the Rhizocarpee, both the spores increase in size and complexity. 
Further back we come to the higher orders of ferns, with but one kind 
of spore, the small prothallus, bearing both sexual organs. The lower 
orders have this sex-bearing generation much more developed. In the 
mosses and Hepatice the sexual generation surpasses the asexual in 
size and complexity. 

The relative size of the two generations might be represented to the 
eye by drawing a rectangle with a diagonal, Fig. 18. One triangle 


SEXUAL GENERATION 


ASEXUAL GENERATION 


SWYAdSOISNY 


HEPATICAE 


Fra. 18. 


would indicate the size and complexity of the sexual generation, while 
the other represented the asexual generation. The sexual generation 
diminishes from the Hepatice to the angio-sperms, while the asexual 
generation increases. 

The engravings here employed are from treatises on botany by 
Sach, Prantl, and Bessey, to whom the writer is also indebted for many 
of the facts brought together. 


EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 171 


EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION OF THE NERVOUS 
SYSTEM.* 


By J. HUGHLINGS JACKSON, M.D., F. B.S. 


R. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : The doctrine of evo- 
lution daily gains new adherents. It is not simply synonymous 
with Darwinism. Herbert Spencer applies it to all orders of phenom- 
ena. His application of it to the nervous system is most important 
for medical men. I have long thought that we shall be very much 
helped in our investigations of diseases of the nervous system by con- 
sidering them as reversals of evolution—that is, as dissolutions. Dis- 
solution is a term I take from Spencer as meaning the reverse of the 
process of evolution. The subject has been worked at for many years. 
About half a century ago, Laycock applied the doctrine of reflex 
action to the brain. Sir Charles Bell, in speaking of degrees of drunk- 
enness, and Baillarger, in remarking upon aphasia, have pointed out 
that there is a reduction from the voluntary toward the automatic. 
The late Dr. Anstie’s researches | are perhaps the most valuable of all 
contributions toward the study of diseases of the nervous system as 
examples of dissolution, although he did not use that term. I refer 
also with great respect to the most valuable and highly original work 
which Ross, Ribot, and Mercier have done in the same direction. 
The brilliant researches of Hitzig and Ferrier, besides their obvious 
great value in other ways, are of very great value in supporting the 
doctrines of evolution and dissolution of the nervous system. In this 
connection I gladly mention with great respect a recent valuable paper 
on cerebral localization by Dr. Sharkey. . 

Wishing as soon as possible to give illustrations of dissolution, I 
will make the necessary preliminary as short as I can. I speak only 
of the most striking aspects of evolution and dissolution, leaving en- 
tirely out of account some very important factors specially insisted 
upon by Herbert Spencer. I regret that time renders it necessary for 
me to simplify my subject by serious omissions. Spencer, to whom I 
am under the deepest obligation, must not be judged by my present 
application of his doctrines, or rather of part of them. I have to ask 
pardon for the use in this lecture of some popular terms. “ Most 
voluntary,” though it has a technical sound, is, when used in contrast 
to “most automatic,” a popular term, and later on it will be discarded. 
I have also to acknowledge an omission ; I speak for the most part of 
the cerebral system only, almost ignoring all divisions of the cerebel- 

* This is the first of the Croonian Lectures, delivered before the Royal College of 
Physicians by J. Hughlings Jackson, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal College of 
Physicians, Physician to the Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic, and to the London 


Hospital. 
+ “ Stimulants and Narcotics.” 


172 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


lar system. For the present I neglect the absolute distinction there 
really is between mental and nervous states. 

Beginning with evolution, and dealing only with the most conspic- 
uous parts of the process, I say of it that it is an ascending develop- 
ment in a particular order. I make three statements, which, although 
from different stand-points, are about the very same thing: 1. Evolu- 
tion is a passage from the most to the least organized—that is to say, 
from the lowest well-organized centers up to the highest least organized 
centers. Putting this otherwise, the process is from centers compara- 
tively well organized at birth up to those, the highest centers, which are 
continually organizing through life. 2. Evolution is a passage from the 
most simple to the most complex ; again from the lowest to the high- 
est centers. There is no inconsistency whatever in speaking of centers 
being at the same time most complex and least organized. Suppose a 
center to consist of but two sensory and two motor elements, if the sen- 
sory and motor elements be well joined, so that “currents flow ” easily 
from the sensory into the motor elements, then that center, although 
a very simple one, is highly organized. On the other hand, we 
can conceive a center consisting of four sensory and four motor ele- 
ments, in which, however, the junctions between the sensory and the 
motor elements are so imperfect that the nerve-currents meet with 
much resistance. Here is a center twice as complex as the one pre- 
viously spoken of, but of which we may say that it is only half so well 
organized. 38. Evolution is a passage from the most automatic to the 
most voluntary. The triple conclusion come to is, that the highest 
centers, which are the climax of nervous’ evolution, and which make 
up the “organ of mind,” or physical basis of consciousness, are the 
least organized, the most complex, and the most voluntary. So much 
for the positive process by which the nervous system is “put to- 
gether ”—evolution. Now for the negative process, “the taking it to 
pieces ”—dissolution. 

Dissolution being the reverse of the process of evolution just spoken 
of, little need be said about it here. It is a process of undevelopment ; 
it is a “‘taking to pieces” in the order from the least organized, the 
most complex, and the most voluntary, toward the most organized, 
most simple, and most automatic. I have used the word “ toward,” 
for if dissolution were up to and inclusive of the most organized, etc., 
if, in other words, dissolution were total, the result would be death. I 
say nothing of total dissolution in these lectures. Dissolution being 
partial, the condition in every case of it is duplex. The symptomatol- 
ogy of nervous diseases is a double condition ; there is a negative and 
there is a positive element in every case. Evolution not being entirely 
reversed, some level of evolution is left. Hence the statement “to 
undergo dissolution” is rigidly the equivalent of the statement “ to be 
reduced to a lower level of evolution.” In more detail, loss of the 
least organized, most complex, and most voluntary implies the reten- 


EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 173 


tion of the more organized, the less complex, and the more automatic. 
This is not a mere truism ; or, if it be, it is one that is often neglected. 
Disease is said to cause the symptoms of insanity. I submit that dis- 
ease only produces negative mental symptoms answering to the disso- 
lution, and that all elaborate positive mental symptoms (illusions, hal- 
lucinations, delusions, and extravagant conduct) are the outcome of 
activity of nervous elements untouched by any pathological process— 
that they arise during activity on the lower level of evolution remain- 
ing. The principle may be illustrated in another way without undue 
recapitulation. Starting this time with health, the assertion is that 
each person’s normal thought and conduct are, or signify, survivals of 
the fittest states of what we may call the topmost layer of his highest 
centers, the normal highest level of evolution. Now, suppose that 
from disease the normal highest level of evolution (the topmost layer) 
is rendered functionless. This is the dissolution, to which answer 
the negative symptoms of the patient’s insanity. I contend that his 
positive mental symptoms are still the survival of his fittest states— 
are survivals on the lower, but then highest, level of evolution. ‘The 
most absurd mentation and most extravagant actions in insane people 
are the survival of their fittest states. I say “fittest” not ‘‘ best” ; in 
this connection the evolutionist has nothing to do with good or bad. 
We need not wonder that an insane man believes in what we call his 
illusions ; they are his perceptions. His illusions, etc., are not caused 
by disease, but are the outcome of activity of what is left of him (of 
what disease has spared), of all there then is of him ; his illusions, etc., 
are his mind. 

After this brief sketch I mention what may appear to be a draw- 
back. Scarcely ever, if ever, do we meet with a case of dissolution 
which we can suppose to be the exact opposite of evolution. Often 
enough, however, do we meet with its near opposites. I will try to 
dissipate any difficulties that may arise. We make two broad divis- 
ions of cases of dissolution—uniform and local. 

In uniform dissolution the whole nervous system is under the same 
conditions or evil influence, the evolution of the whole nervous system 
is comparatively evenly reversed. In these cases the whole nervous 
system is “reduced,” but the different centers are not equally affected. 
An injurious agency, say alcohol, taken into the system, flows to all 
parts of it, but the highest centers, being least organized, “ give out” 
first and most ; the middle centers, being more organized, resist longer, 
and the lowest centers, being most organized, resist longest. Did not 
the lowest centers for respiration and circulation resist more than the 
highest do, death by alcohol would be a very common thing. An- 
other way of stating the foregoing is to say that increasing uniform 
dissolution follows a “ compound order,” Three stages may be rudely 
symbolized thus, using the initial letters of highest, middle, and lowest 
centers. First stage or depth of dissolution, A; second stage, A,+™ ; 


174 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


third stage, h,+m,+/2; etc. Although I shall say very little later on 
of involvement of middle and lowest centers in cases of uniform disso- 
lution, it is most important, especially with regard to clear notions on 
localization, to recognize that the order of dissolution is a compound 
order. 

The next division is local dissolution. Obviously disease of a 
part of the nervous system could not be a reversal of the evolution of 
the whole ; all that we can expect is a local reversal of evolution, that 
there should be loss in the order from voluntary toward automatic in 
what the part diseased represents. Repeating in effect what was said 
on uniform dissolution, it is only when dissolution occurs in all divis- 
ions of the highest centers that we can expect a reduction from the 
most voluntary of all toward the most automatic of all. Dissolution 
may be local in several senses. Disease may occur on any evolution- 
ary level on one side, or on both sides ; it may affect the sensory ele- 
ments chiefly, or the motor elements chiefly. It must be particularly 
mentioned that there are local dissolutions of the highest centers. It 
will be granted that in every case of insanity the highest centers are 
morbidly affected. Since there are different kinds as well as degrees 
of insanity, for examples, general paralysis and melancholia, it follows, 
of necessity, that different divisions of the highest centers are morbid- 
ly affected in the two cases. Different kinds of insanity are different 
local dissolutions of the highest centers. 

I now come to give examples of dissolution. I confess that I have 
selected cases which illustrate most definitely, not pretending to be 
able to show that all the diseases of which we have a large clinical 
knowledge exemplify the law of dissolution. However, I instance 
very common cases, or cases In which the pathology has been well 
worked out; they are cases dependent on disease at various levels 
from the bottom to the top of the central nervous system. Most of 
them are examples of local dissolution : 

1. Starting at the bottom of the central nervous system, the first 
example is the commonest variety of progressive muscular atrophy. 
We see here that atrophy begins in the most voluntary limb, the arm ; 
it affects first the most voluntary part of that limb, the hand, and first 
of all the most voluntary part of the hand; it then spreads to the 
trunk, in general to the more automatic parts. To speak of a lower 
level of evolution in this case is almost to state a barren truism. At 
a stage when the muscles of the hand only are wasted, there is atrophy 
of the first or second dorsal anterior horn; the lower level of evolu- 
tion is made up of the higher anterior bone for muscles of the arm. 
This statement, however, is worth making, for it shows clearly that 
by higher and lower is meant anatomico-physiologically higher or 
lower. 

2. Going a stage higher we come to hemiplegia, owing to destruc- 
tion of part of a plexus in the mid-region of the brain. Choosing the 


eae tad 


ofl 
sleds 


HVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 175 


commonest variety of hemiplegia, we say that there is loss of more or 
fewer of the most voluntary movements of one side of the body ; we 
find that the arm, the more voluntary limb, suffers the more and 
longer ; we find, too, that the most voluntary part of the face suffers 
more than the rest of the face. Here we must speak particularly of the 
lower level of evolution remaining ; strictly we should say collateral 
and lower. We note that, although unilateral movements (the more 
voluntary) are lost, the more automatic (the bilateral) are retained. 
Long ago this was explained by Broadbent. Subsequent clinical re- 
searches are in accord with his hypothesis. The point of it is that the 
bilateral movements escape in cases of hemiplegia in spite of destruc- 
tion of some of the nervous arrangements representing them ; the 
movements are doubly represented—that is, in each half of the brain. 
Hemiplegia is a clear case of dissolution, loss of the most voluntary 
movements of one side of the body with persistence of the more auto- 
matic movements. 

3. The next illustration is paralysis agitans. Apart from all specu- 
lation as to the seat of this disease, the motorial disorder illustrates 
dissolution well. In most cases the tremor affects the arm first, begins 
in the hand, and in the thumb and index-finger. The motorial disor- 
der in this disease becomes bilateral ; in an advanced stage paralysis 
agitans is double hemiplegia with rigidity—is a two-sided dissolution. 

4, Next we speak of epileptiform seizures which are unquestion- 
ably owing to disease in the mid-region of the brain (middle motor 
centers). Taking the commonest variety, we see that the spasm most- 
ly begins in the arm, nearly always in the hand, and most frequently 
in the thumb or index-finger, or both ; these two digits are the most 
voluntary parts of the whole body. 

5. [The next illustration was by cases of temporary paralyses 
after epileptiform seizures. | 

6. Chorea is a disease in which the limbs (the most voluntary 
parts) are affected more than the trunk (the more automatic parts), 
and the arms (the more voluntary limbs) suffer more than the legs. 
The localization of this disease has not been made out ; symptomati- 
cally, however, it illustrates dissolution. Chorea has a special interest 


forme. The great elaborateness of the movements points to disease 


“high up ”—to disease on a high level of evolution. Twenty years 
ago, from thinking on its peculiarities, it occurred to me that some 
convolutions represent movements—a view I have taken ever since. 

7. Aphasia. This well illustrates the doctrine of dissolution, and 
in several ways. We will consider a case of complete speechlessness : 
(a.) There is loss of intellectual (the more voluntary) language, with 
persistence of emotional (the more automatic) language. In detail 
the patient can not speak, and his pantomime is of a very simple kind ; 
yet, on the other hand, he smiles, frowns, varies the tones of his voice 
(he may be able to sing), and gesticulates as well as ever. Gesticula- 


176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tion, which is an emotional manifestation, must be distinguished from 
pantomime, which is part of intellectual language. (6.) The frequent 
persistence of “ Yes” and “No,” in the case of patients who are oth- 
erwise entirely speechless, is a fact of extreme significance. We see 
that the patient has lost all speech, with the exception of the two most 
automatic of all verbal utterances. ‘‘ Yes” and “No” are evidently 
most general, for they assent to or dissent from any statement. In 
consequence of being frequently used, the correlative nervous arrange- 
ments are of necessity highly organized, and, as a further consequence, 
they are deeply automatic. (c.) A more important, though not more 
significant, illustration is that the patient who can not get out a word 
in speech nevertheless understands all that we say to him. Plainly 
this shows loss of a most voluntary service of words, with persistence 
of a more automatic service of words. We find illustrations in small 
corners. (d.) There are three degrees of the utterance “No” by 
aphasics. A patient may use it emotionally only—a most automatic 
service ; another patient may also be able to reply correctly with it 
—a less automatic but still very automatic service. (Here there is 
some real speech.) There is a still higher use of it, which some 
aphasics have not got. A patient who can reply “No” to a question 
may be unable to say “ No” when told to doso. You ask the aphasic, 
“Is your name Jones?” he replies, “No.” You tell him to say 
“No,” he tries and fails. ‘You ask, “ Are you a hundred years old ?” 
He replies, “No.” You tell him to say “No.” He can not. 
While not asserting that the inability to say “No” when told is a 
failure in language, it is asserted that such inability with retention of 
power to use the word in reply illustrates dissolution. (e.) A patient 
who is speechless may be unable to put out his tongue when told to 
do so; that he knows what is wanted is sometimes shown by his put- 
ting his finger in his mouth to help out the organ. ‘That the tongue 
is not paralyzed in the ordinary sense is easily proved. The patient 
swallows well, which he could not do if his tongue were as much para- 
lyzed as “it pretends to be.” Besides, on other occasions he puts out 
his tongue, for example, to catch a stray crumb. Here is a reduction 
to a more automatic condition ; there is no movement of the tongue 
more voluntary than that of putting it out when told. 

[The lecturer then remarked on swearing and on the utterance of 
other and innocent ejaculations by aphasics, remarking that some of 
these utterances had elaborate propositional structure but no propo- 
sitional value. The patients could not repeat, say, what under excite- 
ment they uttered glibly and well. He spoke next of the frequent 
retention of some recurring utterance by aphasics, such as “Come on 
to me.” ‘These were not, from the mouth of the aphasic, of any prop- 
ositional value, were not speech. He had no explanation to offer of 
these, but stated the hypothesis that they were the words the patient 
was uttering, or was about to utter, at the time he was taken ill. ] 


EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 177 


8. So far I have spoken of local dissolution occurring on but one- 
half of the nervous system on different levels. Coming to the highest 
centers I speak of uniform dissolutions—of cases in which all divisions 
of these centers are subjected to the same evil influence. I choose some 
cases of insanity. In doing this I am taking up the most difficult of 
all nervous diseases. I grant that it is not possible to show in detail 
that they exemplify the principle of dissolution, but choosing the sim- 
plest of these most complex cases we may show clearly that they illus- 
trate it in general, I take a very commonplace example—delirium in 
acute non-cerebral disease. This, scientifically regarded, is a case of 
insanity. In this, as in all other cases of insanity, it is imperative to 
take equally into account not only the dissolution but the lower level 


of evolution that remains. The patient’s condition is partly negative 


and partly positive. Negatively, he ceases to know that he is in hos- 
pital, and ceases to recognize persons about him. In other words, he 
is lost to his surroundings, or, in equivalent terms, he is defectively 
conscious. We must not say that he does not know where he is be- 
cause he is defectively conscious ; his not knowing where he is, is 
itself defect of consciousness. The negative mental state signifies, on 
the physical side, exhaustion, or loss of function, somehow caused, of 
some highest nervous arrangements of his highest centers. We may 
conveniently say that it shows loss of function of the topmost layer of 
his highest centers. No one, of course, believes that the highest centers, 
or any other centers, are in layers ; but the supposition will simplify 
exposition, The other half of his condition is positive. Besides his 
not knowings, there are his wrong knowings. He imagines himself to 
be at home or at work, and acts as far as practicable as if he were; 
ceasing to recognize his nurse as a nurse, he takes her to be his wife. 
This, the positive part of his condition, shows activity of the second 
layer of his highest centers ; but which, now that the normal topmost 
layer is out of function, is the then highest layer ; his delirium is the 
“survival of the fittest states,” on his then highest evolutionary level. 
Plainly, he is reduced to a more automatic condition. Being (nega- 
tively) lost, from loss of function of the highest, latest developed, and 
least organized, to his present “real” surroundings, he (positively) 
talks and acts as if adjusted to some former “ ideal” surroundings, 


necessarily the more organized. 


I now make some general remarks on the eight illustrations, in 
order to prevent certain misunderstanding. It is asserted, again, that 
each of the eight cases is a different dissolution. All that is meant is 
that each shows a reduction from the voluntary toward the automatic 
in what the center, or part of it, which is diseased, represents. If we 
take extreme cases, the case of progressive muscular atrophy and the 
case of insanity (delirium in acute non-cerebral disease), we say that 
the two are alike, because in each there is reduction to a more au- 
tomatic condition, and we say, too, that they are very unlike, the 

VOL, xxv.—12 


178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


parts of the nervous system morbidly affected being exceedingly dif- 
ferent. 

I have so far almost ignored the distinction between nervous states 
and mental states. Now, if the case of insanity be considered asa 
series of mental phenomena only, it would be absurd to compare or 
even to contrast it with progressive muscular atrophy, which is a 
series of physical phenomena only. But no difficulty can arise if it 
be understood that insanity, or ‘disease of the mind,” is with medical 
men disease of the highest nervous centers revealing itself in a series 
of mental phenomena. We compare and contrast disease of the high- 
est centers with disease of some anterior horns (some lowest centers) 
revealing itself in atrophy of certain muscles. But, acknowledging 
this, it may be said that the two things are so exceedingly different 
that it is frivolous to compare or even to contrast them on any basis. 
Yet, no one denies that each is a morbid affection of the central nerv- 
cus system ; this being granted, the rejoinder to those who insist on 
the extreme unlikeness is that the lesion in one is at the very bottom, 
in the other at the very top, of the central nervous system ; two lesions 
can not possibly be farther apart in the central nervous system.- Still 
it may be said that classification, on the principle of dissolution, if 
true, is of no value ; that it is of no use making an orderly ascending 
series from progressive muscular atrophy to insanity—of no use show- 
ing that progressive muscular atrophy is reduction to a more auto- 
matic condition in a small corner on the lowest level, that hemiplegia 
is such reduction on a larger scale higher up, and that insanity is such 
a reduction on the topmost level, and on the largest scale—that even 
if this kind of work could be thoroughly well done it is not worth any 
one’s while to doit. I grant that such a classification is not of direct 
value, but yet I think it of much indirect value for clinical purposes. 
We require in our profession two kinds of classification. The use of 
two classifications may be easily illustrated. There is a classification, 
or strictly an arrangement, of plants by the farmer for practical pur- 
poses, and there is a classification of plants by the botanist for the 
advancement of biology. I submit that there is no more incongruity 
in classing together progressive muscular atrophy and insanity upon 
the basis mentioned than there is in classifying the bamboo with 
common grass, or the hart’s-tongue with the tree-fern in a botanist’s 
garden. Such kind ‘of classification of plants would be absurd in a 
farm.or kitchen-garden, and so would a classification of diseases of 
the nervous system upon the principle of dissolution be absurd in an 
asylum’or in the wards of a hospital. I know of no other basis on 
which cases of insanity, diseases of the highest centers, can be studied 
comparatively with non-mental diseases of the nervous system—dis- 
eases of lower centers. 

I next speak of different depths of dissolution. The deeper the 
dissolution the shallower the level of evolution remaining. In hemi- 


EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION. 179 


plegia, owing to lesion of the internal capsule, there are, according to 
the gravity of the lesion, three degrees or depths (of course the divis- 
ion into three degrees is arbitrary). In the first degree there is some 
paralysis of the face, arm, and leg ; in the second degree there is more 
paralysis of these parts, and, in addition, there is a greater range of 
paralysis ; the patient’s head and eyes are turned from the side par- 
alyzed. Here is illustrated what I call “compound order.” ‘The dif- 
ferencé between the two degrees is not that in the second there is 
more paralysis only, nor that there is a greater range of paralysis only, 
but in both respects ; there is more paralysis of the parts affected in 
the first degree and extension of range of paralysis to parts beyond 
them. An adequate doctrine of localization has to account for such 
increase of paralysis in compound order on increasing gravity of le- 
sions. In the third degree of, or rather beyond, hemiplegia there is 
universal immobility. In this degree the patient has lost conscious- 
ness, and this loss may be said to explain why he does not move the 
other or “second” side of his body. I hope to show later that ex- 
planations of materialistic states by psychical states are invalid. I 
wish here to bring evidence in support of the opinion I have long held, 
that all parts of both sides of the body are represented in each half of 
the brain. The view I take is simply an extension of Broadbent’s 
hypothesis, already referred to. My supposition’ is that the limbs of 
the two sides are very unequally represented in each half of the brain, 
while the bilaterally acting muscles are very nearly equally represented 
in each half. Evidence that at least some parts of both sides of the 
body are represented in each half of the brain is that consecutive to a 
negative lesion of one internal capsule there is wasting of nerve-fibers 
“ descending ” into both sides of the spinal cord. 

Degrees of epileptiform seizures illustrate different depths of dis- 
solution. There are degrees of these from (to take an example) spasm 
of the thumb and index-finger to universal convulsion.* That these 
degrees are compound is very evident. The first stage of the fit is, 
to speak roughly, that the arm is a little affected ; the second stage is 
that the arm is more affected, and the face a little ; the third stage is 
that the arm is most affected, the face much, and the leg a little. This 
compound order of spreading, which any adequate doctrine of localiza- 
tion has to account for, may be symbolized thus: a, then a,+/, then 
dz;+f2+, etc. There are degrees beyond this to universal spasm ; 
these cases I submit supply further evidence that both sides of the 
body are represented in each half of the brain. Certain experiments 
of Franck and Pitres¢ bear in a most important way on the question 

* Tam not speaking of epileptic attacks, which depend, I think, on discharges begin- 
ning in parts of centers of a higher, the highest, level of evolution. A man long subject 
to very limited epileptiform seizures may at length have seizures beginning in the same 
way, and becoming universal, but these are not epileptic seizures, they are only moro 


severe epileptiform seizures. 
+ “ Archives de Physiologie,” 15 Aoft, 18838, No. 6. 


180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


as to double representation. After exposing the so-called motor re- 
gion * of each half of the brain of a dog, they removed the motor re- 
gion on one half, and then found that faradization of the “ arm-center” 
on the half intact (left) produced universal convulsion ; they found, 
too, that the spasm followed a particular order—that it affected the 
right arm (so to call it), then the right leg, then the left leg, and then 
the left arm.t Here seems to be evidence that both sides of the body 
are represented in each half of the brain, and also that the two sides 
are differently represented in each half. The distinguished French 
physicians to whose observations I have referred hold, I must mention, 
that “le cerveau commence Vattaque, la protubérance, le bulbe et la 
moélle la généralisent.” If this be so, still proof is given that move- 
ments of all parts of the body are under command of, if not repre- 
sented fully in, each half of the brain. This is a matter of extreme 
importange for the doctrines of evolution and dissolution. The evi- 
dence, as I read it, is that the middle motor centers (a discharge be- 
ginning in parts of which causes epileptiform seizures) of each half 
of the brain represent movements of both sides of the body. Other 
facts will, I think, show that the highest motor centers rerepresent in 
more intricate combinations all that the middle centers have repre- 
sented in simpler combinations; a discharge beginning in part of 
these more evolved centers produces an epileptic seizure, which is, so 
to speak, a “more evolved convulsion ” than an epileptiform seizure. 

[In the remainder of the lecture many degrees of aphasia were in- 
stanced, to illustrate again different depths of dissolution and different 
shallows of evolution remaining, and also to illustrate the dual symp- 
tomatology of disease. The wrong words uttered by a patient who 
has “defect of speech” are owing to activities of healthy nervous ar- 
rangements, while the disease is answerable only for the patient’s not 
saying the right words. The states comparable in a case of “ defect 
of speech” with the states in the case of another aphasic who can only 
say “ No” are: (1) negatively, the inabilities in the former to say the 
right words with the latter’s speechlessness, and (2) positively, the 
utterance of numerous wrong words by the former with the retention 
of “Yes” and “No” only by the latter. In the former the dissolution 
is slight, and the level of evolution very high ; in the latter the disso- 
lution is deep, and the level of evolution very shallow.|—Zhe Lancet. 


* I say “so-called motor region” not because I deny that the parts in this region are 
motor—lI call them the middle motor centers—but because I believe the parts in front to 
be motor also, to be the highest motor centers. 

+ “L’epilepsie peut done se généraliser malgré la destruction préalable de la zone 
motrice d’un cOté, malgré la section longitudinale complete du corps calleux.” (Franck 
and Pitres.) 


THE POLE AND WIRE EVIL, 181 


‘THE POLE AND WIRE EVIL. 


By OLIVER E. LYMAN. 


HEN any system of business is so conducted as to arouse a feel- 

ing of opposition on the part of right-minded citizens generally, 
it is safe to say that some evil exists, which renders the immediate ref- 
ormation of that system, in whole or in part, a matter of public im- 
portance. Judged by this standard, our telegraphic and electrical sys- 
tem would seem to be in need of reformation. That it has evil features 
no one can deny, and nothing about it, perhaps, is more obnoxious than 
the method at present in vogue in cities of constructing lines over- 
ground—a method which has increased in obnoxiousness with the re- 
cent remarkable growth and expansion of the electrical system. 

The mode of construction has not been conformed to the changed 
conditions which this growth, simultaneously with the progress of civ- 
ilization, has brought about. The same method of hanging wires on 
posts which was introduced by Professor Morse has been persevered in 
ever since, regardless of the fact that the conditions which rendered his 
single line across an open country, twoscore years ago or so, innocent 
and proper, are not the same in our densely-built and populated cities 
of to-day. Ignoring other causes of change, the telegraphic business, 
most of which is conducted in cities, has wonderfully increased. In 
place of his one company there were in 1880 seventy-seven telegraphic 
and one hundred and forty-eight telephone companies in the United 
States, which numbers have, since that time, been greatly increased by - 
the more general introduction of the system of telephonic communica- 
tion and the incorporation of many electric-light companies, to say 
nothing of an increase in telegraphic associations. The single wire 
from Washington to Baltimore had increased in 1880 to 325,517 
miles of wire, 34,305 of which were operated by the telephone com- 
panies, and in October, 1883, one company alone, the Western Union, 
was operating 432,726 miles of wire, nearly enough to reach from the 
earth to the moon and back again. This same company in 1866 used 
only 75,686 miles of wire, so that it will be seen it has nearly six 
times as much wire strung over the country as it had then, and these 
432,726 miles of wire are exclusive of 144,294 miles of cables and 
poles. Of the latter ungainly commodity it set up, in the year 1880 
alone, 168,056, which is about two thirds of all the poles erected that 
year. 

The magnitude of these figures is by no means wholly due to the 
extension of lines in newly developed portions of the country. The 
growth has taken place in cities as well. In New York city, for in- 
stance, there are now twenty-five public telegraph and four telephone 
companies, to say nothing of electric-light organizations and private 


182 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


parties using wires. Their operations are conducted in two hundred 
and eighty-five offices, allowing only one office to each telephone com- 
pany. But, as each telephonic subscriber requires a separate instru- 
ment, there are, practically, as many Offices as subscribers, and the 
above number must be increased by several thousands. As each 
of these thousands of telegraphic and telephonic offices has from one 
to several hundred wires running from it to some other point, one real- . 
izes what a gigantic net-work of wires has been woven over us ; and, 
when we add the testimony of the senses, the stupendousness of the 
encroachment becomes still more apparent. From roofs of private 
buildings and from poles in public streets the meshes depend, each pole 
strung with from to one to one hundred and sixty or even more wires. 
At the corner of Wall and Water Streets, for instance, is a pole with 
one hundred and ninety-six insulating points. Be these public ways 
wide or narrow matters not, so far as encroachment is concerned. 
Some of the largest poles have been erected in the narrowest ways. In 
Fulton Street, west of Broadway, for example, there are poles seventy- 
eight inches in circumference. In other places poles sixty and sixty- 
four inches in circumference have been placed, and a diameter of a foot 
and a half is common. 

Now, all these facts and figures bear startling testimony to the ex- 
tent to which a system of encroachment upon public and private rights 
may silently proceed when unchecked. When to this thought we add 
a recollection of the instances of danger, obstruction, and accident oc- 
casioned to life, limb, and property by wires and poles, it must be ad- 
mitted that a system, whose benefits can hardly be overestimated, has 
nevertheless become, through an utter disregard of the changed condi- 
tions brought about by time, obnoxious in its operation. In the lan- 
guage of modern thought, it has failed to adjust itself to its changed 
external relations. . It is out of correspondence with its environment. 
This want of correspondence in the case of a human being is called 
death. In the case of the system under discussion, instinct has taught 
the layman to call it a public nuisance, which, if so, is theoretically 
about the same thing as death, inasmuch as, in the eye of the law, that 
which is a public nuisance has forfeited the right to exist. That this 
lay opinion is right and that the system is, per se, a public nuisance, is 
amatter of elementary law. 

How comes it, then, that such a condition of things has arisen? Ask 
the offending corporations, and they will tell you that it is a legalized 
nuisance, and point to legislative enactments which they claim legalize 
their acts. It becomes necessary, then, to examine these enactments. 
In a magazine article it is of course impossible to review the laws of 
all the States. We propose to confine ourselves, therefore, to those 
affecting New York city, which is the longest-suffering and most in- 
terested of our municipalities. 

The Legislature of the State of New York, in 1848, authorized the 


THE POLE AND WIRE EVIL. 183 


incorporation of companies for the purpose of constructing a line of 
wires of telegraph through the State, from and to any point within it. 
This was the franchise, and it was given upon certain terms, conditions, 
and liabilities. Lines of telegraph might be constructed along and 
upon any of the public roads and highways, or across any of the waters 
within the limits of the State, by the erection of the necessary fixtures, 
including posts, piers, or abutments for sustaining the cords or wires of 
such lines, provided the same were not constructed so as to incommode 
the public use of the roads or highways or injuriously interrupt the 
navigation of the waters. By a subsequent act, in 1853, it was: pro- 
vided that any number of persons might associate for the purpose of 
owning or constructing, using and maintaining a line or lines of elec- 
tric telegraph, whether wholly within or partly beyond the limits of 
the State, or for the purpose of owning any interest in such line or lines 
of electric telegraph or any grants therefor, upon such terms and con- 
ditions and subject to such liabilities as were prescribed in the act of 
1848, Such association was authorized to erect and construct from 
time to time the necessary fixtures for such lines of telegraph, upon, 
over, or under any of the public roads, streets, and highways, and 
through, across, or under any of the waters within the limits of the 
State, subject to the restrictions contained in the act of 1848. 

It is under these acts that the evil we complain of has principally 
arisen. With regard to the exceptions, as, for instance, the electric- 
light companies, although the language of the statutes authorizing their 
creation is in some respects different, the principles laid down in this 
article are, in the main, so far applicable that the same general conclu- 
sions are deducible. For the same reason, therefore, that led us to 
avoid a general review of all the State laws, no separate discussion on 
this point will be instituted. 

It will be observed that, in the legislative acts cited, unqualified 
power as to the methods of exercising the franchise is not given. The 
companies are, in effect, prohibited from erecting any fixtures except 
those which are necessary, and, whether necessary or not, the land-fix- 
tures must not incommode the public use of the streets. Any unneces- 
sary or incommoding fixtures still remain an unlegalized public nui- 
sance. Are, then, the wires and posts necessary, as at present erected ? 
Do they incommode the public use of the streets ? 

Take the latter question first. When a street is laid out and opened, 
all persons acquire the right to use it, to pass and repass at their pleas- 
ure on any part and in such direction as may suit individual conven- 
ience and taste.* . This is what is meant by the public use of a street. 
Now, the right of the public to use the public streets freely and in 
every part can not well be exercised when poles occupy a portion of the 
land. If what is called “the fourth dimension of matter” were a real- 
ity, a person might be able to pass through the pole without disadvan- 


* Allen’s “Telegraph Cases,” p. 139. 


184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tage to himself or the pole, but “the fourth dimension” is not as yet 
a demonstrated fact, and without it the space occupied by the poles is 
withdrawn from the public use. The fact that sufficient space re- 
mains for public traffic is immaterial.* The public use of the streets 
is therefore disturbed and inconvenienced, or, in other words, és in- 
commoded. This, unfortunately, is not the full extent of the disturb- 
ance. To illustrate: 

That man should be protected in the enjoyment of life, limb, inset 
property is recognized in every system of law. That the fire depart- 
ment is a potent instrument in such protection goes without saying. 
That its occupancy of the streets, with its paraphernalia of safety and 
protection, is a proper public use of the streets, none will gainsay ; and 
that the fullest facilities should be afforded it for the untrammeled 
exercise of its protective powers is self-evident. Now, a New York 
city fire-department official recently stated that the firemen are delayed | 
at almost every fire in raising ladders by the wires which are strung 
in front of the houses. He considers them a very serious obstruction, 
and adds that if there were no telegraph-wires strung through the 
streets the fire department could raise a much longer ladder than they 
do at present. Serious difficulty, he continued, is met with in fighting 
fires from the outside of buildings, on account of the wires, which 
make a net-work in front so strong that it is impossible to force the 
water through it. Poles, too, are in some instances placed so close to 
hydrants as to interfere with the firemen’s work. This being so, how 
can it be denied that the public use—and a very important public use 
—of the streets is seriously interfered with and incommoded? Must it 
not, then, be admitted that, measured by one of the tests of legality, 
the overground system falls short of the requirements necessary to 
bring it within the pale of protective legislation, and must still be ad- 
judged an unlegalized public nuisance ? 

How does it stand the other test prescribed by the Legislature? 
Are poles and over-ground wires necessary fixtures in cities? The 
companies contend that the statutes expressly authorize the erection 
of posts and wires. Is this so? The act of 1848 (which, if not sup- 
planted by the act of 1853, is the only one which refers to posts) 
authorized the erection of the necessary fixtures, including posts, piers, 
or abutments. The only permission given is to erect such fixtures, 
including posts, piers, or abutments, as are necessary. Only by doing 
violence to the English language can the words be interpreted other- 
wise. The construction placed upon them by the companies, followed 
out, leads to an absurdity. If, as they claim, there is unlimited author- 
ity to erect poles in the streets whether necessary or not, there is ex- 
actly the same authority to erect, in the streets, piers and abutments. 
But it is plain that such erections were never intended to. be made in the 
streets, and no company would claim it. The fallacy lies in confound- 


* Allen’s “ Telegraph Cases,” p. 180. 


THE POLE AND WIRE EVIL, 185 


ing the franchise, which is to construct lines, with the method of its 
exercise. ‘The two are distinct. The former is absolute ; the latter is 
conditioned. None can dispute the right to construct lines, but how 
it shall be done depends upon what is necessary. Piers and abutments 
may be necessary in certain places, and posts in others. "When neces- 
sary they may become lawful ; but neither piers, abutments, nor posts 
are lawful erections where they are unnecessary. This is a fair con- 
struction of the language used. 

Are posts, then, necessary to the enjoyment of the franchise of the 
telegraphic companies in cities? That depends upon whether there is 
any other practicable way of exercising the franchise which is less of 
a nuisance, for the franchise must be exercised, in crowded cities, at 
least, in such manner as to obviate the nuisance, if possible, and inflict 
the least injury upon others, the best means to that end being em- 
ployed, and, if there are two ways in which a franchise can be exer- 
cised, one of which would create a nuisance and the other would not, 
or would at least diminish it, that method must be adopted which will 
obviate the nuisance, or reduce it toa minimum. Otherwise, the act 
becomes unlawful for exceeding the limits within which obstructions 
- are allowed in the interests of the public.* ) 

Now, it is well known that there is, besides the overground system, 
an underground method of constructing lines. The latter, manifestly, 
does not permanently obstruct the streets, or incommode the public 
use of them. In fact, the courts have decided that it is not in fact or 
in law a nuisance.t Moreover, under this system, the exercise of the 
franchise is very unlikely to result in injury to person or property. If 
this system is practicable, the telegraphic companies must, in view of 
the principles applicable to their case, adopt that method. For, if the 
pole system is a nuisance, and the underground way is not ; or, if the 
former permanently obstructs the streets, and the latter does not ; or, 
if the pole system is dangerous to life, limb, and property, and the 
underground plan is not, or is less so—then, so long as the poles are 
left standing, and the wires strung, the franchise is not exercised in 
such manner as to reduce the nuisance to a minimum, and to inflict the 
least injury upon others, and the corporate acts are unprotected by law. 

The question of necessity resolves itself, then, into a question of 
the practicability of the underground system. There are many who 
claim it to be impracticable, and, as a matter of course, there are im- 
perfections in the system, in which respect the overground method is 
like it. But to all that may be said against it, there is one indisputable 
reply, that subterranean wires are serving their purposes successfully 
in various parts of the world to-day. The system is successful in 
London ; also in Paris, and other European cities. Miles of wire have 
been successfully operated in Washington. An underground system 
has been tried with success in Philadelphia. It has worked well in 


* § 60, N. Y., 510. ¢ Allen’s “Telegraph Cases,” p. 173. 


136 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


other cities ; and, finally, for its own convenience, the Western Union 
Company has several miles of wire underground in New York city, 
which are also operated successfully. When to these undisputed facts 
we-add that such a practical genius as Edison has declared that there is 
no reason whatever why all wires operating electrical apparatus should - 
not be underground, except expense, which in the eye of the law is no 
excuse, there is sufficient demonstration of the practicability of the 
system for the purposes of this article. Unless such evidence can be 
rebutted, the companies are guilty of erecting, in the exercise of their 
franchise, unnecessary and therefore unlawful fixtures. 

If unlawful, within the meaning of the legislative enactments, no 
aldermanic sanction can save them ; for the stream can not rise higher 
than its source. Permission by the Common Council, if inconsistent 
with the law of the State, is wholly void, and, even if this were not 
the case, it is questionable whether the Common Council of the city 
has power to consent to the erection of a single pole. The charter 
gives it power to regulate the use of poles in streets, but the power 
to regulate a nuisance is not the power to create one. This becomes 
more apparent taken in connection with the prohibitive side of the 
charter, by which the Common Council is forbidden to permit any 
encroachment upon or obstruction of the streets, except the temporary 
occupation thereof during the erection or repair of a building on a lot 
opposite the same. Now, this either means something or nothing, 
and, with the principles in regard to legalizing nuisances in mind, we 
are inclined to believe it means all that we claim. 

Before leaving this point, it may be added that, even if there were 
no such thing as an underground system, it is quite probable that 
most of the poles now standing would have to be condemned as nui- 
sances ; for, if smaller poles of the same or another material, such as 
iron, would answer the same purpose, the obstruction as it now exists 
is not reduced to a minimum, and, under the principles of which we 
have spoken, are therefore unlawful. That smaller poles would do, 
is, we think, capable of demonstration, but it is not necessary to enter 
upon a discussion of this matter, as our objections are aimed at the 
overground system as a whole. 

To the reasons we have thus far given why the poles and wires 
should come down, there may be added another reason. Recent ele- 
vated-railway litigation has made the public more or less familiar with 
certain principles of law regarding the use of streets by private corpo- 
rations. Whether the fee of a street is owned by the abutting own- 
ers, or has been taken by the public, but in trust to be used as a public 
street, no structure upon the street can be authorized that is inconsist- 
ent with the continued use of the same as an open public street, with- 
out compensation to the abutting owners, who are entitled to use it.* 
Measured by this principle, there is no difference between an elevated- 


* 90 N. Y., 122; 91 N. Y., 153. 


THE POLE AND WIRE EVIL. 187 


railway structure and a telegraph-pole. Both are uses of the street 
inconsistent with the use of the same as an open public street. Such 
use in both cases violates the rights of abutting owners to freely use 
or pass over the street. How, then, has a single post been legally 
erected, if the owner of the premises, whose rights are violated by the 
erections in front of his property, has not first received compensation, 
be it ever so little, awarded him in due form? It is safe to assume 
that not one cent has ever been paid by way of such compensation, 
and, that being the case, such structures must fall under the prohibi- 
tion of the above principle, and are therefore unlawful. 

But, if, after all, none of the foregoing objections are tenable, is 
there no way of getting rid of the evil? If a panacea does not 
already exist, one suggests itself in legislation. Our State Legislature 
can relieve us. It has the power to drive the poles and wires from 
the street, and compel the construction of lines underground. As to 
wires yet unstrung and poles yet unerected, it may be said this course 
would be quite proper, but with regard to those already up (assuming 
that they are legally up) would not such legislation be manifestly un- 
constitutional, as impairing the obligation of the charter contract 
which, we will say, authorized their erection ? 

Now, the framers of the Constitution, in declaring against the 
enactment of laws impairing the obligations of contracts, never in- 
tended that the Legislature should altogether avoid retrospective action 
upon the civil relations of parties to existing contracts. No Legisla- 
ture ever did avoid it, they said, and to require it would be extremely 
inconvenient.* It has accordingly frequently been held by our courts 
that the clause in question does not so far remove from State control 
the rights and properties which depend for their existence or enforce- 
ment upon contracts as to relieve them from the operation of such 
general regulations for the good government of the State and the pro- 
tection of the rights of individuals as may be deemed important. ¢ 
All enactments are subject to the subsequent exercise by the Legisla- 
ture of what is known as the police power, which the Legislature can 
not alienate, if it would, but must reserve to itself in order to avoid 
embarrassment in the exercise of control over the general welfare. By 
virtue of this power the Legislature may, for the public welfare, sub- 
ject persons and property to various restraints and burdens. It may 
abate nuisances, even if in their origin they may have been permitted 
or licensed by law. It would be monstrous if it were otherwise. Ifa 
charter implies that a corporation may always continue to exercise its 
rights in the same way in which their exercise was at first permissi- 
ble, and under the regulations then existing and those only, the public 
would be helpless when, without anybody’s fault, circumstances so 
change that what was once lawful, proper, and unobjectionable, be- 


* Cooley’s “ Constitutional Limitations,” p. 716. 
+ Curtis’s “ History,” vol. ii, p. 367. 


188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


comes a public nuisance, endangering the public health or the public 
safety. As circumstances change, regulations affecting the exercise 
of a franchise may be changed, too. “It can not be,” said the Court 
in one case, “that the mere form of the grant should prevent the use 
to which it is limited being regarded and treated as a nuisance when 
it becomes so in fact.” * In that case, as in many others, the exercise 
of the police power was held constitutional, even though it directly 
violated rights theretofore given. By this power the removal of mill- 
dams once lawfully erected has been compelled, and railroads have 
been obliged to adopt devices for safety not prescribed in their origi- 
hal charters, even though it caused expense. That is not a matter to 
be considered when a question of public safety is concerned. Then 
why should this power not be resorted to in the ease of telegraphic 
and electrical obstructions ? Are they exceptions to the rule that 
when under changed circumstances lawful erections become nuisances 
they may be abated? We think not. The police power ought to be 
exercised. Legislation, by virtue of it, driving the wires underground 
and the poles from sight, would, we submit, be in every respect con- 
stitutional and proper. 

Such legislation might take the form of direct enactments against 
the evil, or of a delegation of authority to act in the matter to munici- 
palities. While the police power can not be alienated, it may be 
delegated to a municipality ; for one of the objects of the creation 
of municipalities is to exercise certain powers of the State in localities. 
In New York city, it may be that, in the right to regulate the use of 
streets for poles, the local legislative body has been already clothed 
with this power sufficiently to meet the evil. Be that as it may, the 
point remains the same, that the evil is to be met by legislation. 
Whether by the principal directly, or indirectly by its agent, matters 
not, so far as its propriety or constitutionality is concerned. 

If we are right in our conclusions in this article, why should the 
evil be allowed longer to exist ? Is the corporate power greater than 
the influence of public opinion? Or, if so, shall public opinion be 
left unsupported by concerted action? As in politics, or almost any 
other sphere of action where many are concerned, so, in the suppres- 
sion of this evil, much depends upon the part taken and the activity 
displayed by the individual. Those who put forth no exertion to save 
their rights and tranquilly sleep on them need not be surprised if their 
rights are trampled upon. | 


* Cowen (N. Y.), 605. 


Oe te at ae 
ye 


STETHOSCOPY. 189 


STETHOSCOPY. 
Br SAMUEL HART, M.D. 


NE fifth of the adult population of Christendom is suffering from 

chest or thoracic diseases of a degree varying from the insig- 

nificant to the most grave; while another fifth is living in constant 
fear of being or becoming their victims. 

In fact, diseases of the lungs and heart far exceed those of any 
other class in prevalence and fatality—consumption, so called, causing 
one fourth of the mortality between the ages of seventeen and thirty- 
five years—while diseases of the heart are of well-known formidable 
eharacter, and raise the proportion of thoracic or pectoral diseases to 
a surprising ratio. 

The study of this subject, as regards the causes and preventives, 
the symptoms and cure, has received the diligent attention of scientists 
and sanitarians as well as of physicians. 

Leaving to the physician his subject in its multiple and exhaustless 
forms, I propose in this paper to give some account of the practical 
diagnosis, or methods of determining the nature, exact locality, and 
extent of thoracic disease, by means of stethoscopy, or the physical 
exploration of the chest. 

The thorax incloses the essentially vital organs—the lungs with 
their pleurz, or delicate membranous coverings, and the heart with 
its pericardium and great blood-vessels. These, actuated through their 
system of nerve-filaments, give the rhythmic heavings of respiration 
and the throb and pulses of the blood-circulation. 

Although so admirably guarded against harm by the strong and 
elastic chest-walls, and against all inimical approach by that ever-vigi- 
lant sentinel, the epiglottis, they are, from the very nature of their 
functions, pre-eminently subject to danger from without as well as 
from within. The delicate mechanism of living lung-tissue can not be 
subjected to direct observation ; the minute cells for containing air 


would be crushed by air admitted from without, and the heart ar- 


rested for a moment for inspection would never beat again ;' yet the 
vital operations of these organs are well understood and their morbid 
conditions can be read almost as if exposed to view. 

On firmly applying the ear to the walls of the chest of a person in 


health, certain sounds can be heard, varying in loudness and clearness 


with the quarter of the chest at which the ear is applied, and with the 
age or individual peculiarity of the person examined, or his state of 
action or repose. .The double sound of the heart, embracing what are 
known as the first and second sounds, is heard distinctly : the former 
caused by the strong muscular contractions of the ventricles, mainly 
the left, whose function it is to distribute the blood to the system. 


190 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


This contraction causes the pulse, with its many qualities of quick or 
slow, soft or hard, regular or intermittent, and others which furnish 
to the tactus eruditus-valuable indications of the physical condition 
not only of the heart itself, but also of the system at large. 

The sounds of respiration are also heard: the inflation of healthy 
air-cells, producing the vesicular murmur, is audible even to the un- 
aided ear. , 

This direct application of the ear to the chest (called immediate 
- auscultation) is preferred by some as having advantages over the 
mediate or instrumental method. The former is, however, open to 
some objections which are readily apparent, both as regards the sub- 
ject and the examiner ; while the stethoscopic method possesses nu- 
merous advantages, without the objections. 

The following is a brief description of the appliances ordinarily in 
use in exploring the thoracic contents : 

First in importance among these is the stethoscope (Fig. 1). This 
instrument, in its primitive form, was exceedingly simple: at first a 
cylinder of paper, rolled tightly and of convenient length. A ready 
substitute was found in wood ; and this was carved or turned to give 
lightness and to improve appearance. Cedar and ebony have been 
preferred, as being of fine quality and easily polished. Vulcanite and 


various metals are also used, made in similar form—i.e., a tube of 
suitable length, expanded at one end into a hollow cone for applica- 
tion to the chest, and suited at the other end to the rim or opening of 
the ear. In these as in all other forms the object is to insure, when in 
use, a confined column of air extending from the bare walls of the 
chest of the person examined to the ear of the listener ; and upon the 
completeness of the adjustment and consequent inclosure of the air 
depends the efficiency of the instrument, since the confined air—not 
the instrument—is the medium of conduction of the sounds. 

The flexible tube was used later as a step in stethoscopic evolution, 
which gives the advantage of allowing comfortable respiration with- 
out disturbing the inclosed air of the tube by the movements of 
breathing, which tend to press the instrument alternately against the 
ear of the listener (Fig. 2). 


STETHOSCOPY. igt 


The binaural stethoscope (Fig. 3) of Dr. Camman, of New York 
city, is unquestionably the best instrument known. Its name signifies 
its peculiar advantages. Two tubes (one for each ear), suitably curved, 


oO 


Fra. 2. 


and each furnished with a rounded bulb for accurate fitting to the 
opening of the ear, are connected at the other ends with a hollow cone 
for application to the chest of the person examined. The cones or 
chest-pieces are of various sizes, and are adjusted and used inter- 
_ changeably according to the required extent of field which has its’ 
limits between one and two inches in diameter. They are made from 
ebonized wood, vulcanite, or soft rubber, the latter being required to 


Fie. 3. 


prevent painful pressure on uneven surfaces of the chest. In a part of 
their course the tubes are elastic, the remainder being metallic. They 
are so constructed as to be easily and perfectly adjustable to the ears 
by softly elastic springs. By this arrangement both ears are not only 
equally engaged with the same sounds, but other sounds are practically 
excluded. This feature is fairly represented in the binocular micro- 
scope and in the stereoscope, which possess the full advantages derived 
from the use of both eyes. Thus the stethoscope heightens and places 
in relief our auditory perception of the movements and conditions of 
deep-seated vital organs, giving prominence to the lines and shades of 
@ picture otherwise flat and indistinct. It will, of course, conduct all 
sounds communicated to it from without, thus making it necessary to 
avoid all frictional contact with the instrument, even of the lightest 
clothing ; and the listener will steady it deftly by thumb and finger to 
escape confusion from a multiplicity of sounds. By the practiced ear, 
however, most of the numerous adventitious sounds can readily be 
eliminated and the attention successfully fixed on the one sought. 

The means next in importance in questioning the condition within 
the thoracic cavity is percussion. It consists in striking upon the 
chest with carefully-suited force with the tips of one or more of the 


192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


fingers slightly bent ; or with a light elastic hammer called the per- 
cussor (Fig. 4). The finger of the other hand or a solid, flattened 
disk, the pleximeter, must be held firmly against the chest to receive 
the stroke and to educe the proper resonance. ‘The percussion-sound, 
though apparently unmusical, must have its intensity, be high or low, 
and have its peculiar ¢imbdre—all requiring acuteness of hearing and 
judgment in interpretation. 

The spirometer is of use for measuring in cubic inches the maxi- 


Fie. 4.—F1int’s PeERcussoR AND PLEXIMETER. 


mum amount of respirable air, of which each individual has his normal 
quantity, but which is subject to changes from organic affections of 
the lungs. 

The cyrtometer is used for delineating the external contour of the 


’. chest and for exact comparison of one side with the other. 


Numerous other instruments are of real utility, only one of which, 
however, will be mentioned. 

The sphygmograph is an instrument of somewhat complicated mech- 
anism. It is used to “feel the pulse” and to record its impressions. 
It will give its frequency and rhythm, its varying tension and strength, 
the condition of the heart and certain valves, with a delicacy and ex- 
actitude which, compared with the results obtainable by the most sen- 
sitive finger, are like the perfect work of photography compared with 
the attempts of the juvenile charcoal artist. With its touch upon the 
heart or its vessels, and its pen apparently in sympathy and vital con- 
nection with them it will record in delicate but infallible tracery the 
diagnosis, and mayhap the prognosis, of the subject under examination, 
which may be read with trembling expectation. 

In this instrument the impulse of the blood-movements is commu- 
nicated to the pen by water contained in flexible tubes. The oblong 
receptacle, also containing water, is connected with one of these tubes. 
_ It has on one side an elastic projection which is to be securely fixed 
upon the pulse to be examined. All vibrations received by it are 
transmitted by the water through the tube to the chamber. On the 
upper surface of the chamber is a delicate membrane which receives _ 
the vibrations with every requisite as to quality and exactitude. The 
movement of its wave is, however, microscopic, and, in order to render 
it visible and legible, an exceedingly light and sensitive lever termi- 


STETHOSCOPY. 193 


nating ina pen isso placed in contact with the membrane as to amplify 
manifold in tracings the movement it receives. The inscription is 
received on a slip of smoked glass, which is made to move beforé the 
pen with precision by a mechanism which also acts as the chronograph, 
indicating the time at the lower edge of the glass in seconds and 


Fig. 5.—Kryt’s Compounp SPHYGMOGRAPH. 


fifths. A second pen with similar connection is made to trace on the 
same slide the movement of another pulse at a distant part of the © 
system. 

Space will not permit of reference to the numerous and important 
accessory contrivances of the complete instrument, nor to the numer- 
ous indicatory marks on the following cuts. To the specialist they 
are significant and essential. Simultaneous tracings of the heart and 
a large blood-vessel of the neck are shown below (Fig. 6). It should 
be explained that the upward stroke in the tracing answers to the 
heart-beat ; the downward stroke and succeeding wavelets indicate 
the recoil of the blood and the tension of the vessels ; while the whole 
cycle with its chronometric line below furnishes a wonderful map. 

This graphic method includes cardiography, in which a tracing is 
obtained of the pulsations of the heart, and pneumography, in which 


are recorded the movements of respiration. It includes also the mul- 
VOL. xxv.—13 


194 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. | 


tiple simultaneous method, in which two or more vital movements— 
for instance, of the heart, pulse, and respiration—are recorded at the 
same time, showing their exact relations to each other. The sphygmo- 
graph, in the compound form of Dr. Keyt (Fig. 5), with a chrono- 


{ 
DIF. 0812 SEC. 


Tia. 6. 


graphic attachment, is a modern mechanical help in stethoscopy of 
great value, and has given important light on questions of physiology 
and pathology. It is an instrument of precision, of scientific interest 
and importance, and in difficult physical explorations the graphic 
method is found almost indispensable. 

A few cases will now be given illustrative of practice in stetho- 
scopy. A patient has the following symptoms: “Shortness of breath, 
smotherings, cough with little expectoration, pain of the side, varying 
from the sharp stitch to the dull and aching pain.” ‘The illness and 
distress are evident, and though the question of present relief is upper- 
most in the patient’s mind, he has sufficient intelligence to demand 
and to comprehend the cause. From the symptoms given it may 
with about equally reasonable grounds be supposed that the trouble 
depends upon organic changes of the heart, its valves, or its pericar- 
dium ; of the lungs or their pleure ; or upon disturbances not directly 
connected with these organs at all, but arising from impressions trans- 
mitted through the reflex system of nerves; or it may be owing to a 
combination of two or more of these eauses. 

No amount of experience or tact will enable the physician to do 
more than to guess the diagnosis from these symptoms. He is unable 
to prescribe intelligently the needed means of relief and of the ex- 
pected cure except by means of physical exploration of the chest. On 
inspection, increased frequency of breathing is observed: this is a 
suggestion only. 

On applying the stethoscope the heart is found somewhat dis- 
placed, but perfectly healthy as regards its size, its valves, its mem- 
branous covcrings—an important step by way of exclusion of certain 
possible conditions. 


STETHOSCOPY. 195 


The whole of the left lung is found performing its functions 
healthfully. Nor is any disease found in the upper portion of the 
right lung ; but, on searching the lower two thirds of this side, there 
is found an entire absence of all sounds of respiration ; and, under 
percussion, no normal resonance due to the presence of spongy lung- 
tissue is heard—the sound is non-resonant. A partial resonance 
would be dullness ; in this case it is “flat.” 

These data prove the absence of all healthy lung-tissue in the 
lower two thirds of the right side of the chest. What, then, occupies 
this region? The lung solidified by morbid changes may be there ; 
or it may be displaced by a tumor, or by fluids; and each of these 
morbid conditions has nearly the indications mentioned. On care- 
fully examining the upper limit of flatness of sound, while the patient 
is sitting or standing, it is found to extend exactly horizontally around 
the chest. Next, requiring the patient to recline backward, the phy- 
sician finds the boundary-line of flatness to have changed to two or 
three inches lower on the front, while upon the back of the chest it 
will be higher than before ; yet the line is still strictly horizontal. 

The significance of this test is that, though the chest has changed 
its position, its movable contents, obeying their physical law, tend to 
preserve a horizontal surface. 

Certain complications may prevent the availability of this “ hydro- 
static test”; but when found it is infallible, and in this case excludes 
all of the Mpened conditions. 

The diagnosis now is, that the right lung has been compressed into 
a narrow compass in the upper part of the chest by the gradual accu- 
mulation of from thirty to forty ounces of fluid; and this fluid has 
also so encroached upon the heart as to cause some displacement and 
to embarrass its action as well as that of the left lung. These condi- 
tions account fully for the symptoms mentioned, and for the distress 
of the patient. 

Negatives, exclusions, and probabilities alone are inadmissible ; a 
diagnosis is required. The.examiner may not guess from the symp- 
toms ; his tests must be objective, and as positive as the laws of 
physics. They must not fail, for the life of his patient is at stake ; 
and the treatment to follow will prove his skill, or, may be, his fatal 
error. If a small hollow needle be pressed through the chest-walls 
into the suspected region, the outpouring fluid will bring the needed 
relief and will verify the predictions of the ear by actual sight, weight, 
and measurement. This case is one of no uncommon occurrence, the 
treatment almost painless, and very satisfactory as to present relief 
and the prospect of permanent cure ; the lung may expand to its nor- 
mal size, and resume its functions healthfully. And the case is one 
requiring only the ordinary and easier means of diagnosis. 

The acutest ear and the most practiced discernment are required 
in meeting the difficulties arising from complications of diseases, and 


196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the absence of those sounds and changes which are sufficiently distinct 
and characteristic—a condition to be expected in all earlier stages of 
pectoral troubles. 

A life-insurance agent brings to his company’s medical examiner 
an individual whom he considers an exceptionally “good risk.” He 
has the facial appearance, the physique, and record of perfect health. 
The examiner, in making up the rigid descriptive list for his company, 
must assure them, as “‘ parties of the first part,” that in this case the 
sounds of the heart are perfectly natural ; that its movements are en- 
tirely correct as regards their rhythm, strength, and frequency ; that 
the pulse does noé intermit, etc. ; and that there is no disease or mor- 
bid condition, or tendency thereto. Tested by the spirometer, the ap- 
plicant is found to breathe easily the amount of air known to be the 
average for persons of his size (more strictly, height). By the usual 
tests of auscultation nothing is found wrong. On a more scrutinizing 
review of the case, as becomes the faithful officer who is to be the im- 
partial judge on the trial, a small area is found near the upper portion 
of one lung where, by percussion, the normal resonance has given 
place to a degree of dullness—a sound which signifies the half-way 
limit between the resonance of perfect health and the “flatness ” of 
advanced change. 

This quality of sound would pass unobserved, except for easy com- 
parison with the adjacent portion of the same lung, and with the cor- 
responding part of the opposite one. The dullness is found to be 
better shown by light percussion than by more forcible strokes—an 
indication of the superficial situation of the changed tissue. 

On again applying the stethoscope over the region, the natural 
vesicular quality of the inspiratory murmur is found to be changed to 
_ the broncho-vesicular murmur—indicating partial solidification of 
lung, which, if more complete, would give the bronchial or tubular 
sound. The pitch of its tone is raised, and it is “rough” or “harsh.” 
A sound of expiration is also heard distinctly, while normally it is 
barely audible. 

There are now three facts which tend to becloud the otherwise 
good record of the case. 

A further test may be made by auscultation of the applicant’s voice. 
On applying the stethoscope upon the place mentioned, the subject is 
required to speak or count in his ordinary tone of voice. There will 
be heard sounds apparently near the ear, approaching in distinctness 
to words—not articulate, as would be heard in complete solidification, 
but easily distinguished from the distant jarring sound of a healthy 
lung, called vocal fremitus. 

The applicant has now through his own honest voice given ad- 
verse testimony. Try next whether he shall whisper a confirmation 
of the same unfavorable story. The whispering voice heard through 
solidified lung-tissue is increased in intensity and raised in pitch, 


STETHOSCOPY. | 197 


which, discouraging symptoms being found in this case, may suffice 
although further tests are available. 

There are now five witnesses, each of whose testimony is more 
than “circumstantial ” ; collectively they agree perfectly and are in- 
variably truthful. 

The following decision must be rendered : The applicant is in pos- 
session of health so good, and a record so favorable, that he has proba- 
bly made his application for life-insurance in all fairness, but, subjected 
to the company’s exact tests, he is debarred._ He must be rejected on 
the ground of organic pulmonary lesion. A portion of one of his 
lungs is by some morbid process changed from its delicate, spongy 
structure to one which is more solid; the air-vesicles have been en- 
croached upon by material which not only has interfered with their 
functions (though inappreciably to himself), but which may prove a 
progressive and fatal invasion. 

This case is one of a numerous and highly important class—an in- 
dividual in fair health, without symptoms of any disease, is, by the 
stethoscopic ordeal, accounted a “bad risk,” or is denied the advan- 
tages of assurance, and informed that some hygienic or curative 
course is essential for his safety. 

On the other hand it may be stated that, without multiplying illus- 
trations, there are very numerous instances in which the subjective 
indications (symptoms) of organic disease are so prominent and the 
distress so urgent as to appear conclusive proof of imminent danger. 
A test of a few moments’ time will make the correct diagnosis and 
furnish a comforting stethoscopic negative. 

Disorders of the heart, although of less frequent occurrence than 
those of the lungs, are of equal importance and require the best skill 
of the examiner. 

In searching for its disordered conditions it is necessary to keep 
in mind the anatomical features of the organ. As a piece of mech- 
anism it is a pump, constructed of pliant, fleshy walls ; it has four 
chambers with numerous valves, and its column and chorde. Pro- 
tected from friction and abrasion by the constantly renewed fluid 
within its strong membranous incasement, it expends an incredible 
amount of force in its incessant and exclusive work of propelling the 
blood. But it must also be considered as a sensitive center with an 
apparently independent vitality, in direct communication, through its 
web-work of nerves of the sympathetic system, with every organ and 
tissue of the body, according to whose demands, as well as to the 
varying activities of the brain, it regulates its movements. 

The manner of this response is frequently so energetic and tumultu- 
ous as to cause much mental disquietude, if not real physical distress, 
and to furnish the well-known question, whether there be “functional 
or organic disease,” 

Its vigorous impulsion, its notable sounds, and its location near the 


198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


chest-walls, render a study of the condition of the heart entirely prac- 
ticable by stethoscopic auscultation. By this method its size, its loca- 
tion, and the state of each of its valves can be learned with much pre- 
cision. 

The heart-sounds are sufficiently loud and distinct to be suscepti- 
ble of much exactitude of description and characterization. The con- 
traction of the ventricles, which mainly produces the “ first sound,” is 
the exertion of a force equal to the grasp of a strong hand ; it is forci- 
ble and quick, but its time as represented by its sound is measurable. 
This sound is composed of two elements—one of propulsion, with a 
“booming” quality which is the characteristic, and one of valvular, 
or sudden clicking sound. Its rhythm, as observed in its succession, 
is trochaic. 

The “second sound ” is principally caused by the sudden arrest by 
the semi-lunar valves, of the column of blood in its tendency to return 
to the heart under the elastic recoil of the arteries after their forcible 
distention. It is quick and valvular; it is higher in pitch than the 
first sound and its rhythm is iambic. 

Each of these sounds is more or less ringing and clear and has its 
appropriate timbre. 

After an almost imperceptible interval, the “first sound” is fol- 
lowed by the “second,” then by a rest; the whole cycle occupying 
about one second of time. Its dete may be represented as fol- 
lows: first sound, 4; ; second sound, ;3,; rest, . Hach has its ex- 
act normal place of greatest intensity and perfection, relative to the 
external topography of the chest, and variations from this rule will be 
an index of change of structure within the heart itself, or of displace- 
ment from malformations or morbid conditions of the adjacent organs. 

It is convenient to designate as heart-sounds those sounds which 
are normal, and as heart-murmurs those sounds which are adventitious 
and, as a rule, indicative of organic changes. 

The murmurs are of peculiar character, of great variety, and usu- 
‘ally of important significance. They originate either within the heart 
(endocardial) from defective valves or obstructed orifices, or else 
without it (exocardial) from friction against morbid accumulations 
within its membranous envelope ; or, finally, though exceptionally, or 
are found to depend upon certain conditions of the blood. 

The murmurs are very numerous and variable, and difficult of de- 
scription according to any rules of rhythmics, melodies, or dynamics ; 
as will be seen from the following names applied to them—and these 
only a fraction of the whole list: sawing, rasping, scratching, scrap- 
ing, grinding, creaking, rubbing, churning, blowing, whistling, cooing, 
purring. And, as if from poverty of language, fashion or necessity has 
led to borrowing from abroad ; as frémissement cataire, bruit de souffle, 
bruit de scie, etc. The terms in use should through some convention- 
ality be revised. Many of them, however, are practicably indispensa- 


STETHOSCOPY. 199 


ble and fairly expressive of sounds actually and distinctly heard, for 
which a verbal rendering is necessary. 

The loudness and clearness of the murmurs are iy no means pro- 
portionally indicative of their gravity ; since one barely audible may 
from its location and character be a low premonition of mischief, while 
a more demonstrative one may have no important significance. 

In a rare case, a musical murmur was heard exactly resembling the 
notes of the cuckoo ; it was so loud as not to be the exclusive prop- 
erty of stethoscopists, for it could be heard at a distance of several feet. 
Moreover, it was shown by the “demonstrator,” post longam vitam, 
that the heart whence the sound had proceeded was entirely free from 
all organic disease. 

The mechanism concerned and the method of determining the kind 
and location of a murmur may be referred to very briefly. 

As an example, organic disorder of the aortic semilunar valve will 
be presumed. Imperfections of this valve are among the more fre- 
quent diseases of circulation, and are of import more or less serious 
according to their extent ; its total failure nullifies every anatomical 
perfection in all the other organs of circulation. 

With the stethoscope suitably placed, a distinctly audible murmur 
will be detected. On observing the rhythmic succession of “first ” 
and “second” sounds the murmur will be found to occur exactly with 
or in place of the latter, whose sudden click will at least be notably 
weakened. ‘The murmur is found over the position of the semi-lunar 
valve and extending downward in a line toward the middle of the 
chest ; it is slightly prolonged after the “second sound.” No other 
murmurs are discovered. These are sufficient data for a diagnosis. 

The observer has seen, as it were, two ounces of blood destined for 
the wants of the system driven through the semilunar gateway into 
the great vessels; this movement was accompanied by the normal 
booming “ first sound” and was attended by no murmur. ‘There was, 
then, no obstruction or narrowing of the orifice, nor roughness of the 
valve, that by consequent vibrations could produce a murmur. But 
the observer has seen the measure of blood, under the elastic pressure 
of the vessels, returned upon the semilunar valve for momentary sup- 
port, where, instead of being promptly arrested by the three-winged 
leaflets,.a portion passed between their narrowed or irregular edges 
into the heart, and at this instant of regurgitation the murmur was 
heard. The blood could flow unobstructedly from the heart, but its 
unfavorable retroversion was made possible by the organic imperfec- 
tion called insufficiency of the semilunar valve of the aorta. 

The sphygmograph alone would have written the above diagnosis 
in this uncomplicated case with entire completeness, and its tracings 
would have shown also, as a part of the pathological history, that the 
valvular defect originated many months ago; that, through the natu- 
ral curative processes the heart had gradually increased in strength 


200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


until full compensation for the defect had been reached ; and that, 
with the growth of strength there had been corresponding enlarge- 
ment, which, instead of being a morbid condition, however, is in this 
instance really conservative and favorable. 

While stethoscopy possesses an interest amounting to fascination, 
from its vital importance, from the numerous difficulties which can be 
overcome by reasonable diligence, and from the great degree of exac- 
titude on the whole attainable, it still has its difficulties intrinsic and 
its difficulties of circumstance. In its practice observations must be 
made principally through the single sense of hearing ; for, practically, 
the organs which are within the range of a whisper are to the other 
senses as distant as the antipodes. 

There are difficulties from within the chest, from overpowering 
abnormal sounds, as in the asthmatic subject, where the noisy “rales” 
entirely predominate, rendering auscultation of the heart temporarily 
impracticable. 

Obscurities and difficulties arise in a negative way from lack of 
expression ; occasionally, all sounds are distant and confused, re- 
sponses are slow and ambiguous, and the observer is made to feel the 
need of a perfected microphone which shall amplify, localize, meas- 
ure, and, in fine, characterize all obscure indications. | 

Difficulties from circumstances arise from disturbing voices or foot- 
steps, or the roar and rattle of busy streets, and innumerable other 
sounds which may in part preoccupy the ear with their clangor. There 
are difficulties from disinclination on the part of the individual exam- 
ined to offer the requisite time and facilities. There is too often in- 
competence on the part of the examiner; his sense of hearing as an 
auscultator may be defective, though not appreciable by any other 
test. He may never have acquired the requisite degree of skill gained 
only by persevering practice, commencing with the normal conditions 
in healthy persons, thence through every class and grade of morbid 
states, until he has become the trustworthy adept, if not the technical 
expert. 

Difficulties exist to prevent the full popular benefit from stetho- 
scopy, arising from the want of a better general knowledge of its claims 
and capabilities. Formerly, when the circulation of the blood and the 
functions of respiration were unknown and the arteries were supposed 
to be air-vessels, the materia medica was a wonderful list with which 
the physician made his round of experiments. In those days, in case 
of a mysterious death, the verdict of the coroner’s court would be, 
“ Died by the hand of God,” and was considered as duly explicit. 

Sufficient advancement has now been made not only to demonstrate 
the physiology of the lungs, heart, and arteries, but to comprehend 
every shade of their diseased conditions and to show that the larger 
part of the remedies once in use were entirely inapplicable ; and the 
coroner, with no irreverent intent, but under the fear of the charge of 


COAL AND THE COAL-TAR COLORS. 201 


ignorance, must now demonstrate the physical means and the exact 
locality of the fatal impress—perhaps found as a heart-obstruction, or 
a minute embolus deep in the labyrinth of the brain, to which some 
physiological clew may have led. 

Aside from the inherent obscurity and difficulty connected with 
the subject of medicine, there remains as a heritage of by-gone ages 
an unwonted mystery associated with it, which should be more rapidly 
dispelled ; and while the profession is making good progress in elabo- 
rating and writing its more exact laws, it is the duty of the intelli- 
gent laity to free themselves from the vestiges of mysticism, and seize 
upon the more prominent and available facts and principles which 
are their appropriate possession. 


COAL AND THE COAL-TAR COLORS. 


By M. DENYS COCHIN. 


THIN thirty years, the agriculture of some countries has been 

subjected to an unprecedented competition. Vegetable pro- 
ductions identical with those they were accustomed to furnish have 
been extracted from stone-coal. Coal was at first employed only as a 
combustible ; then it gave us gas and illuminating oils. Now it fur- 
nishes us perfumes and colors; the flavors of bitter-almonds and of 
vanilla, and the orange-red of madder, which is no longer cultivated 
around Avignon. We derive from coal what we used to look for in 
living plants, and the art of the chemist has fabricated vegetable sub- 
stances. It would not, however, be correct to say that vegetable sub- 
stances have been constituted from mineral elements, for coal is not a 
mineral, but a decomposed vegetable product. It is not pure carbon, 
but a mixture of hydrocarbons, of combinations which chemistry calls 
organic, because they proceed from living organisms and preserve a 
distinctive character peculiar to substances that have been endowed 
with life. It is not, then, the mineral world that yields us the per- 
fumes and colors that were furnished by plants and flowers, but an 
intermediate world in which the remains of the vegetation of past 
ages are preserved. 

If we heat bituminous coal in a close vessel communicating with 
cooled receivers, we shall have carbon left in our retort, mixed with 
a little sulphuret of iron. This is coke. The products of the distilla- 
tion that pass over will be of two kinds; a thick liquid, coal-tar, and 
carbureted hydrogen gases. The gases are used for lighting. Thirty 
years ago the coal-tar was not used for anything. We shall proceed 
to inquire what profit is now derived from it. What is it precisely 
that takes place in the retort? Shall we believe that the light and 


203 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


spongy coke was a kind of skeleton of coal intimately united with 
more complex substances, and that coal is a mixture of pure carbon 
and combined carbon? No; coal, as a whole, is a mass of substances 
composed of combinations of carbon with other bodies. These com- 
binations are modified by heat. The tarry liquids and the gases do 
not exist in the coal, but are formed as the temperature rises in the 
retort. Coke is left, because in the changes that are made éarbon is 
in excess. The coal-tar is not separated from the coke, but is made in 
the retort, and the bodies we find in it are results of combinations that 
are brought about between the substances which existed in the coal. 

M. Berthelot heats to a dull red heat the gas acetylene, the mole- 
cule of which is composed of four atoms of carbon and two atoms of 
hydrogen. At the end of the operation the acetylene is condensed 
and is changed into a liquid, benzine, which is composed of twelve 
atoms of carbon and six of hydrogen. Three molecules of acetylene 
have been in some way welded together to furnish a molecule of ben- 
zine. We have seen acetylene condensed and combined as it were 
with itself. It also combines with hydrogen and forms olefiant gas, 
or ethylene. The latter unites with the benzine and gives, by syn- 
thesis, a liquid hydrocarbon, styrolene, identical with the styrolene 
which is produced by the styrax or Oriental liquidamber. Finally, 
from the union of the styrolene and the olefiant gas results naphtha- 
line, a solid hydrocarbon, which crystallizes in thin lamelle and 
abounds in coal-tar. Anthracene is one of the most valuable of the 
hydrocarbon extracts of coal-tar. It evidently did not exist as anthra- 
cene in the coal, but has been formed during the distillation, a solid, 
crystalline body, by the combination and condensation of gases. 

So, when coal is heated to a very high temperature, the substances 
that are disengaged in a gaseous form do not always remain in that 
state. Heat is not always a cause of the dissolution of bodies and of 
the dispersion of their elements. "When exposed to a temperature ex- 
ceeding 1,000° C. (1,800° Fahr.) these gases condense ; their molecules 
draw together; and they form, after a few changes, combinations 
richer in carbon, and consequently less volatile. We had gases, but, 
when our apparatus has had time to cool, we shall find liquids, even 
crystals. In other cases, dissociation is effected by heat. Carbonic 
acid, one of the most common and stable compounds in the world, the 
final resultant of all combustion, loses its oxygen under excessive heat, 
and becomes an oxidizing agent. In this way good authorities explain 
the production of phenic, acetic, and cresylic acids, as hydrocarbons 
oxidized by the oxygen of carbonic acid. The hydrocarbons may also 
be dissociated. A liquid hydrocarbon analogous to benzine, toluene, 
takes hydrogen and leaves a deposit of anthracene. Formene, or 
marsh-gas, a hydrocarbon which produces chloroform when the hydro- 
gen in it is replaced with chlorine, loses hydrogen and yields anthra- 
cene. 


COAL AND THE COAL-TAR COLORS. "203 


Sometimes contrary forces are developed simultaneously, and bod- 
ies are at the same time subjected to an influence which brings them 
together and to another one which separates them ; the result will 
depend upon slight differences in the temperature or in the propor- 
tions of the different bodies present. Benzine and carbonic acid unite 
to form benzoic acid ; benzoic acid decomposes into carbonic acid and 
benzine. Styrolene is produced by the union of benzine and olefiant 
gas, and in decomposing yields benzine and acetylene. Benzine makes 
its appearance again if anthracene and naphthaline are heated in the 
presence of hydrogen. Sometimes, between these contrary forces, an 
equilibrium is established. Thus, acetylene will combine with hydro- 
gen and form olefiant gas; but olefiant gas will decompose at the same 
temperature, giving out its two elements; while, if the three gases 
are present and all pure, action will be suspended, for the opposing 
tendencies will be counterbalanced. 

These are only a few of the examples of the reactions that take 
place when organic substances are raised to a high temperature. The 
four simple substances entering into the constitution of organic bodies 
form among one another more compounds than are furnished by all 
the minerals. If heating takes place in the open air, combustion en- 
sues, and all these innumerable substances are oxidized and dissipated 
in the atmosphere as carbonic acid and aqueous vapor. But, if we 
work in a medium free from oxygen and all other foreign elements, 
they react upon one another, and a multitude of bodies are formed or 
decomposed by the interchange of elements, and the mixture we get 
when the heat is removed is a mixture of new elements. So, solid and 
dry coal gives the coal-tar liquids and illuminating gas, which did not 
exist in it, but were formed under the influence of heat. 

Of what organic substances coal is really composed we know only 
imperfectly. Chemists have not succeeded in making real analyses 
of it. We can tell how much of impurities, such as sulphuret of iron, 
it contains, and how much coal-tar and gas can be got from it; we 
may classify a specimen as a rich, a poor, or a bituminous coal, or as 
_ one giving a long or a short flame, but we do not separate and deter- 
mine the chemical elements. 

The analyst has not very many resources at his disposal for sepa- 
rating an intimate mixture of several bodies. The first means is that 
of distillation. Different bodies sublime at different temperatures, 
according to their various degrees of volatility ; each of them, under 
the same atmospheric pressure, passes from the solid to the liquid 
state at one temperature, and from the liquid to the gaseous at an- 
other. These temperatures are called, respectively, the point of fusion 
and the boiling-point. Fractional distillations are performed in ac- 
cordance with this principle. When the heat is raised to a certain 
degree, one class of bodies, at a higher temperature another class of 
bodies, which had not reached their boiling-point at the former temper- 


204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ature, will be collected in the cold receiver. The operation becomes 
complicated and the results perplexing when the mixture consists of 
substances capable of being modified by the degrees of heat applied. 
In such cases the analysis must be carried on at a lower temperature, 
and the operator must depend upon solvents, the effects of which are 
different on different bodies. This method has been tried on coal by 
M. Commines de Marcilly, who employed boiling liquids or their vapors 
in open and in closed vessels, and in Papin’s digester, by the aid of 
which he obtained a stronger pressure than that of the atmosphere. 
Acids and alkalies had no action, but neutral liquids, such as ether, 
benzine, sulphuret of carbon, and chloroform, were evidently colored 
by the coal. The experiments deserve to be carried further. 

Coal-tar, the liquid product which is formed when coal is roasted 
in a close vessel, appears as a thick, black paste, giving no hint of the 
richness of the substances which may in their turn be formed and 
separated from it. The first product, water saturated with ammonia, 
passes over when the liquid is heated to between 175° and 192° Fahr. 
for twenty or thirty hours. Then a fractional distillation is performed, 
under which the light oils are separated at below 266° Fahr. ; the me- 
dium oils at between 266° and 392°; and the heavy oils at between 
392° and 678°; while a thick residue is left in the retort. Our study 
is with the oils. 

The first two classes of oils are again distilled in a large alembic 
heated by steam under high pressure ; first is collected for the medium 
oils all that passes between 266° and 392°. ‘That which passes at be- 
low 266° is mixed with light oils, while the products passing at above 
392° are mingled with heavy oils. The light oils are next purified in 
a similar manner. The latter products are known in commerce as 
naphtha-oils, and are chiefly carburets of hydrogen. The eighteen or 
twenty of them which have been distinguished form a series, in which 
the proportion of carbon to hydrogen increases regularly. Those least 
rich in carbon are gaseous ; then come the liquid hydrocarbons, and 
last the solid compounds. We select the liquid distillates for further 
operations. ‘The first step is to rid the product of the gases that may 
still be dissolved in it, and the alkaline or acid impurities it may con- 
tain—foreign matters which give to the naphtha a repulsive odor. 
They are separated by washing successively with water, which re- 
moves some of them, sulphuric acid, which acts on the alkalies, and 
caustic soda for the removal of acids and what excess of sulphuric 
acid may remain. The naphtha is then subjected to a fourth distilla- 
tion, and benzine is obtained at a temperature of between 184° and 
240°. 

Before proceeding with the history of this valuable substance we 
will mention that the medium oils are treated with sulphuric acid and 
soda in the same way as the light oils, except that, as they are richer 
in alkalies and acids, they have to be treated with stronger proportions 


COAL AND THE COAL-TAR COLORS. 205 


of the cleansing agents. They are then put into the market as illu- 
minating oils. ~They may also be used for solutions of India-rubber, 
but sulphuret of carbon is preferred for that purpose. 

Faraday discovered benzine in 1825 among the products arising 
in the manufacture of oil-gas, and called it bicarbureted hydrogen. 
Mitscherlich, in 1825, in treating benzoic acid with soda, obtained a 
volatile liquid which he called benzine. Hofmann, in 1825, demon- 
strated that these two substances were the same. Berthelot explained 
the formation of the substance, and made a synthesis of it by heating 
acetylene, its molecule being composed of three molecules of that gas 
united, or of twelve atoms of carbon and six of hydrogen. Benzine 
is a type of a class of organic bodies that furnish, by substitution, 
innumerable series of derivatives. They are like buildings from which 
we can take the stones one at a time and replace them with others, 
They are the organic radicals, in which a number of atoms of carbon 
and hydrogen are associated in such a way that the energy of one 
atom of hydrogen is left free. In benzine, for instance, we may sub- 
stitute for each atom of hydrogen an atom of chlorine and get benzine 
monochloride, benzine dichloride, etc., or an atom of bromine or iodine 
and get benzine bromide and benzine iodide ; or another radical, such 
as methyl or ethyl, and get methylbenzine or ethylbenzine, dimethyl- 
benzine, trimethylbenzine, and so on. These theories permit us to 
account for the long series of bodies which organic chemistry has re- 
vealed, many of which are now employed in industry. 

Benzine, as everybody knows, is a light liquid, perfectly colorless, 
and having a nauseous odor. It nevertheless furnishes perfumes and 
dyes. Charles Mansfield, who was the first person to utilize benzine, 
and make it on a large scale, announced in 1847 that he had found 
among the derivatives of stone-coal an oil that might take the place of 
the oil of bitter-almonds. It was nitrobenzine. Mitscherlich had pre- 
viously produced, by the lively reaction of nitric acid on benzine, a 
colorless liquid, in which a compound molecule of nitrogen and oxygen 
was substituted for one of the six atoms of hydrogen in benzine, but 
his experiment never got beyond the laboratories. It was attended by 
too great dangers. Nevertheless, Mansfield ventured to repeat it in 
his shop, and succeeded in basing an industrial operation upon it. 
Nitrobenzine can not be pure unless the benzine was pure, and that is 
rarely the case with the commercial article. In the mixture of hydro- 
carbons, of which naphtha is constituted, are some very nearly alike in 
composition and in respect to their boiling-point, and it is difficult, 
even with the best distilling apparatus, to arrest the passage of some 
of them. Toluene, for example, nearly always comes over with ben- 
zine. Like it, it is attacked by nitric acid and then yields a nitro- 
toluene. There has also been found, associated with nitrobenzine, a 
peculiar yellowish-colored acid, endowed with the smell and taste of 
the pineapple ; and its ethers taste like the strawberry or the rasp- 


206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. 


berry. It has given the flavor to many a sherbet and many a confec- 
tion. - 

Nitrobenzine is known in trade under the purely fanciful name of 
essence of mirbane, and is used by perfumers as a substitute for the 
oil of bitter-almonds—a substance which is also made artificially. It 
plays an important part in modern industry, because it is employed in 
the manufacture of aniline. 

As the experiments in synthesis are continued, and more and more 
complicated bodies are evolved from the primitive hydrocarbon, the 
wealth of the field of researches open to the investigator becomes more 
and more surprising. How many combinations have already been 
effected, and how many thousand remain to be discovered! Benzine 
is only one of many hydrocarbons derived from coal-tar, and nitroben- 
zine is only one of the nitrogenized derivatives from it. There are 
also iodine, bromine, and chlorine derivatives, which may be obtained, 
- not only by successive substitutions of those substances for one or 
more atoms of hydrogen, but also by additions of them, without dis- 
placing hydrogen. Sulpho-derivatives are also known, as well as ni- 
trogenized derivatives of benzine chloride, iodide, and bromide, In- 
stead of chlorine, iodine, and bromine, we may substitute organic 
radicals for hydrogen and get other new series. And these series of 
derivatives furnished by benzine are paralleled by other like series 
derived from toluene, xylene, and a hundred other hydrocarbons. 
Mathematicians exhibit a formidable total of the different possible ar- 
rangements according to which the units may be grouped by twos and 
threes, etc. ; the seven notes of the musical scale are arranged in in- 
finite variations ; and chemistry disposes the seven or eight bodies 
occurring in organic matters in a similar endless diversity of combina- 
tions. If we are permitted to extend the comparison, we may say 
that as the musical arrangements are based upon a certain fundamental 
chord, so types of chemical arrangements center around a particular 
model, like benzine, to which it is easy to bring the whole series into 
relation. 

Aniline exists already formed in coal-tar, but in very small quan- 
tity. Industry does not look after it, for the processes of extraction 
would be too costly. It is more convenient to make nitrobenzine and 
then reduce it, or deprive it of its oxygen by bringing it in contact 
with substances that will take that element from it. This may be 
effected by several processes. Sulphureted hydrogen, iron in fine par- 
ticles, and acetic acid, are often employed as reducing agents. All 
the substances we have thus far derived from coal-tar are colorless. 
The moment has come for colors to appear. We have obtained aniline 
by deoxidizing nitrobenzine. If we are expecting in turn to recover 
nitrobenzine by oxidizing aniline, we shall find ourselves mistaken. 
We can, indeed, fix oxygen upon the hydrogen, but the hydrogen- 
atoms will separate during the process from the molecule of aniline. 


- 


COAL AND THE COAL-TAR COLORS. 207 


Not a fixation of oxygen, but a departure of hydrogen, takes place. 
Then a phenomenon of condensation is exhibited ; a number of the 
molecules unite to form a molecule of rosaniline. This wonderful col- 
orant may be constituted by the action of almost any of the oxidizing 
agents known in chemistry upon aniline. Curiously, rosaniline would 
not be formed if the aniline were absolutely pure. Theoretically, 
its molecule is formed by the union of a molecule of aniline and two 
molecules of toluidine, with a loss between the two of six atoms of hy- 
drogen. It can not be obtained by oxidizing either of these bases 
separately. Rosaniline is solid at ordinary temperatures, and crys- 
tallizes readily in lozenges or in fine needles, which are white when 
protected from the air, but become rose and then red when brought in 
contact with it. The nature of the change it undergoes is unknown. 
It is not apparent in the composition. MRosaniline is soluble in water, 
and more soluble in alcohol, and has basic qualities so strong as to dis- 
place ammonia from its salts; and it is most frequently employed as 
a salt. It furnishes not red only, but all colors, according as it is 
treated in the combinations into which it is made to enter. Violet 
was first discovered by Mr. Perkins, in 1856, while trying to make ar- 
tificial quinine by the action of bichromate of potash on sulphate of 
aniline. He gave up the search for quinine, and turned his attention 
to manufacturing the color. Three years afterward MM. Renard and 
Verguin produced fuchsine, a purple salt of rosaniline, by treating 
commercial aniline with a dehydrogenizing agent, bichloride of tin. 
It is a mixture of hydrochlorate of rosaniline and salts of tin, and is 
used by dyers and wine-merchants. Aniline is now oxidized by the ac- 
tion of arsenic into crude red (rouge brut), a violet mixture, composed 
principally of arsenite and arseniate of rosaniline, which is converted 
into fuchsine by bringing about a substitution of hydrochloric for 
arsenious or arsenic acid. This is done by boiling crude red with hy- 
drochloric acid, or, more usually, with sea-salt. A double decompo- 
sition takes place, and, when the liquor is cooled, crystals of fuchsine 
are found in the bottom of the vessel, while the arsenites and arseni- 
ates of soda are retained in the mother-water. Not all the coloring- 
matter, however, is deposited in the crystals, and a good operator 
loses nothing. Treated with carbonate of soda, the mother-water gives 
a precipitate, from which is extracted a color known as aniline garnet 
or yellow fuchsine. Nor is this all. The crude red has left a violet 
deposit in the bottom of the boats in which it was cooled; this is 
washed in boiling water ; the water is colored red, and a blue dye- 
stuff is collected from it. More is left still. The crude red has passed 
through filters, and they have retained some insoluble substances. 
These are carefully gathered up ; they form a paste which is boiled 
with diluted hydrochloric acid and filtered over again to extract 
what fuchsine is left. The insoluble residue furnishes aniline ma- 
roon, a beautiful color readily applicable to wool. Thus a single 


208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


operation has given us the violet red of fuchsine, garnet, blue, and 
maroon. : | 

Whence come all of these colors? And how does chemistry ex- 
plain the provision of so various hues by the same body? ‘The differ- 
ences do not arise solely from the fact that the same base, rosaniline, 
is found associated with different acids. We must not forget that we 
had at first, notwithstanding the separations effected by fractional dis- 
tillations, a mixture of substances. These substances react upon one 
another ; and the theory of their reactions, of which we have already 
given some idea, appears so ingenious and interesting that we must 
say a few words more about it. 

Benzine and toluene, mixed, furnished, after some reactions, a mixt- 
ure of aniline and toluidine. Two molecules of toluidine and one 
molecule of aniline united, with a loss of hydrogen, to form a mole- 
cule of rosaniline. Now, two molecules of aniline and one molecule 
of toluidine, also losing hydrogen, might also unite in a similar man- 
ner; or three molecules of aniline, or three molecules of toluidine, 
might be introduced in the process, with analogous results. Here we 
have four distinct arrangements, four possible cases, conceived in 
theory and realized in practice. In the first case we had rosaniline ; 
in the second, we have mauvaniline ; in the third, violaniline ; and, in 
the fourth, chrysotoluidine. We have described the first of these 
substances. The second forms light-brown crystals, that become 
darker on heating, while the liquids in which they are dissolved take 
a violet tinge. Violaniline is hardly soluble, and difficult to get crys- 
tallized ; it is a’ very dark—nearly black—brown powder. Its salts, 
when a few drops of concentrated sulphuric acid are added to the 
solution, give a dark blue. Chrysotoluidine is yellow. All these 
bodies are formed during the preparation of fuchsine, and are sepa- 
rated by filtration or through their differences in solubility, or inca- 
pacity for crystallization. The separation of the substances which do 
not crystallize is difficult and incomplete. The red continues united 
with the yellow in greater or less proportion, and gives maroon or 
garnet. . 

Through all these processes, in which we have observed the hydro- 
carbons decomposing one another, and forming new compounds, we 
have found that the chemistry of coal does not always have to borrow 
its powerful reagents, its acids and alkalies, from mineral chemistry ; 
but that the compounds of carbon themselves, closely allied in consti- 
tution and properties, are very frequently capable of reacting upon 
and transforming one another, without the intervention of foreign 
agents. Instead of acids uniting with bases to give rise to a third 
kind of bodies, salts, we have carburets, bases, uniting by twos or by 
threes, with or without the loss of one of their elements, and forming 
double or triple molecules of compounds, which may still be of the 
same chemical type. The first experiments in the practical applica- 


COAL AND THE COAL-TAR COLORS. "209 


tion of these reactions were made by MM. Charles Girard and De 
Laire. Chemists, as we have said, understand by organic radicals cer- 
tain groups of atoms of carbon and hydrogen, which are capable of 
- combining with an atom of hydrogen in the same manner as an atom 
of bromine, or iodine, or chlorine, or which may be substituted for an 
atom of one of these substances in one of its combinations. In a 
complex body like rosaniline, one or more atoms of hydrogen may be 
removed and replaced by as many atoms of the organic radical. MM. 
Girard and De Laire caused aniline to react upon rosaniline. Aniline 
is an organic base, an ammoniacal compound. In common ammonia, 
one atom of nitrogen is combined with three atoms of hydrogen. In 
aniline, one of the atoms of hydrogen is replaced by the radical 
phenyle. The converse is also possible, and, if phenyle is in its turn 
replaced by hydrogen, the ammonia should reappear. This reaction 
was provoked by heating fuchsine and aniline together. Rosaniline 
gave up an atom of hydrogen and took the radical phenyle. Aniline 
lost phenyle, which was replaced by hydrogen ; the ammonia was dis- 
engaged, and phenyl-rosaniline was produced. It is a bright sky-blue. 
We can vary its color. The exchange we have just described may 
be effected successively for three atoms of hydrogen against three 
molecules of phenyle, according to the amount of aniline employed ; 
and we shall have monophenyle, diphenyle, or triphenyle rosaniline. 
The first is violet-blue, the second clear-blue, and the third a blue we 
might call blue-light (bleu umiére), because its hue loses none of its 
freshness—and, in fact, gains luster—even in an artificial light. 

MM. Girard and Laire’s discovery was of great theoretical and 
practical interest, and important consequences followed it. The method 
was general, and permitted the substitution, in most of the organic 
bases, of radicals for two or three atoms of hydrogen. The same 
chemists succeeded in doing with the hydrochlorate of aniline as they 
had done with the hydrochlorate of rosaniline, and obtained diphe- 
nylated and triphenylated aniline, from which they extracted blue 
coloring matters ; then they brought the salts of these complex bases 
under the review of their experiments. An iodine salt of trimethylated 
rosaniline gave them a magnificent green, of such fixity and luster 
that it might be called, like the blue which they had previously pre- 
pared, green-light (vert lumiére). 

The light oils of coal-tar are almost wholly composed of carburets 
of hydrogen ; in the heavy oils bases and acids are also found with 
some very condensed carburets. They contain, for example, the ready- 
formed aniline, which it has not been found profitable to extract from 
them, and phenic acid, which, besides its valuable antiseptic proper- 
ties, has been serviceable to the fabricants of coloring matters. In 
1834 M. Runge, in preparing phenic acid, found in the residue a yel- 
low substance, which is called coralline, or rosolic acid. In 1859 M. 
Jules Persoz, heating this substance with ammonia, obtained a beau- 

VOL. xxv.— 14 : 


210 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tiful red body, which he called peonine. Two years afterward, the 
manufacturers to whom he sold his patents put in the market a sky- 
blue substance, azuline, which also was a derivative of rosolic acid. 
The precise nature of rosolic acid has not been determined ; but M. 
Fresenius has extracted an orange-yellow matter from it, which he 
calls aurine, and has devised a process for procuring it by heating 
phenie and sulphuric acids together, and adding oxalic acid six or 
seven hours afterward. It is not much used now, but is of interest as 
furnishing in itself blue, red, and yellow. The most important bodies 
derived from the heavy oils are naphthaline and anthracene, both car- 
burets of hydrogen. Naphthaline, which is solid at ordinary tem- 
peratures, and crystallizes with great facility in thin lamelle, is ob- 
tained simply by leaving the oils in the cold for five or six days, when 
it becomes solidified. The liquid is decanted off, and the crystals are 
pressed, to remove the included oil, into thick cakes. Naphthaline is 
a member of the same series as benzine, and is subject to a similar 
series of reactions. Reducing its nitrate, Zinin obtained an organic 
base analogous to aniline, naphthylamine, which is transformed by 
the less of hydrogen into rosanaphthylamine. From this is obtained 
the hydrochlorate of rosanaphthylamine, a body analogous with fuch- 
sine, of a beautiful rose-color, and easily crystallizable, but of a clearer 
rose with less of violet than fuchsine. It is dull when applied to 
wool, but gives very brilliant hues with silk. Dissolved in alcohol, it 
produces a strange and wonderful effect. The liquid turns bright red, 
and, under proper presentation to the light, may be seen to be traversed 
with phosphorescent clouds. If left to stand till the alcohol has slowly 
evaporated, the bottom of the vessel will be covered with beautiful 
green, iridescent needles. Naphthaline also furnishes some very com- 
plex compounds, whence have been derived very yellow dyes, among 
which Manchester yellow and Martins yellow are the best known. 
Experiments in substituting molecules of organic radicals. for atoms 
of hydrogen, as has been done with rosaniline, have been made with 
some success, but the blues thus obtained have not the remarkable 
fixity and luster of the similar rosaniline products. 

No ‘discovery of coal-tar products is more extraordinary or more 
fruitful in its bearings than that of the extraction of alizarine, or the 
artificial preparation of the coloring principle of madder, the effect of 
which has ‘been to work a real economical revolution, and to destroy 
the most profitable agricultural industry of large districts of country. 
The madder-root has furnished the most generally used of all dye- 
stuffs, and the one which constituted the basis of nearly all our colors. 
The substance to which it owes its peculiar virtues still performs the 
same functions, but, instead of being derived from the cultivated root, 
it is now procured by chemical synthesis from stone-coal. 

_ Alizarine is prepared from anthracene, the second of the more im- 
portant bodies which we have already spoken of as contained in the 


COAL AND THE COAL-TAR COLORS. 211 


heavy oils of coal-tar. It forms a part of the deposit of solids which 
forms when the heavy oils are left standing in the cold, from which 
are obtained the crystals of naphthaline. When this deposit is raised 
to a temperature of 250° C. (482° Fahr.), the naphthaline and the in- 
definite oily substances are distilled away, and there is left anthracene, 
with some impurities. The impurities may be removed by means of 
the very light oils of petroleum, which dissolve them and leave the 
anthracene ; or by the light oils of coal-tar, which dissolve the anthra- 
cene and leave them. When anthracene has been sufficiently purified 
it is submitted to the action of oxidizing agents, and anthraquinone is 
obtained by precipitation as a resultant. By this direct process we 
have made a ternary body of our hydrocarbon, and have combined it 
with a proportion of oxygen which we can not increase by any further 
process of a direct character ; but the alizarine which we are seeking 
to get is richer in oxygen than anthraquinone, The second degree of 
oxidation has to be attained by an indirect process ; we bring it about 
by withdrawing some atoms of hydrogen from the molecule and sub- 
stituting for them molecules containing oxygen. The authors of the 
synthesis accomplished it in a process of two steps, by putting bromine 
in place of hydrogen and the elements of water in place of the bromine. 
But bromine is expensive, and so the manufacturers now make alizarine, 
not from a bromized but from a sulphureted anthraquinone. Of all 
the coloring substances derived from coal-tar, alizarine is the one which 
is now made in the greatest quantity. According to the report of M. 
Wiirtz, made in 1878, eight factories, two of which were very exten- 
sive, were then in full activity in Germany, two in Switzerland, one in 
England, and one in France, which last the proprietors had had the 
courage to establish in the very center of the madder-raising district. 
The quantity of alizarine then produced was estimated at 3,500 kilo- 
grammes, or nearly 9,000 pounds daily, and it has doubtless been since 
considerably increased. | 
Anthracene, the basis of the manufacture of alizarine, is relatively 
abundant in coal-tar, forming sometimes from seven to eight per cent 
of its mass. It has been observed that coal-tar is rich in anthracene in 
proportion as it is poor in toluene, and M. Berthelot has explained the 
fact by showing that toluene, decomposed by heat, produces anthra- 
cene ; hence the relative amount obtained of either is likely to vary 
according to the temperature-conditions of the distillation. The dif- 
ferences may also probably depend upon the character of the coal and 
of the matter first employed at the point of departure of all the opera- 
tions. But, as we have said, this point of departure is essentially un- 
known. All of our products have been obtained from a vegetable or 
organic, not from the primary mineral, carbon ; not from carbon either, 
but from compounds of carbon and hydrogen of a character which we 
have not yet been able to produce by synthesis of the primary min- 
eral elements, but which the sun stored up for us ages ago, working 


212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


through the agency of organic growth. From a black and amorphous 
matter we have made to issue crystalline substances of every shade of 
color—reds, saffrons, greens, violets, and blues—alizarine, the same sub- 
stance as tints the flowers of the madder, and that wonderful aniline, 
colorless as the ray of light before it has been resolved by the prism, 
but containing in posse, like the same ray, all the colors of the rainbow. 
What do we know of stone-coal, the origin of so many marvels and 
refractory to all analysis? Nothing, except that it has lived.— Z7rans- 
lated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux 
Mondes. ; 


ee oe 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. — 
By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 


XXX, 


HE changes which occur when starch-granules are subjected to 
the action of water, at a temperature of 140°, have been de- 
scribed. If the heat is raised to the boiling-point, and the boiling 
continues, the gelatinous mass becomes thicker and thicker; and if 
there are more than fifty parts of water to one of starch a separation 
takes place, the starch settling down with its fifty parts of water, the 
excess of water standing above it. Carefully-dried starch may be 
heated to above 300° without becoming soluble, but at 400° a remark- 
able change commences. The same occurs to ordinary commercial 
starch at 320°, the difference evidently depending on the water re- 
tained by it. If the heat is continued a little beyond this it is con- 
verted into dextrin, otherwise named “ British gum,” “ gommeline,” 
“‘starch-gum,” and “ Alsace gum,” from its resemblance to gum-arabic, 
for which it is now very extensively substituted. Solutions of this in 
bottles are sold in the stationers’ shops under various names for desk 
uses. 

The remarkable feature of this conversion of starch into dextrin 
is that it is accompanied by no change of chemical composition. 
Starch is composed of six equivalents of carbon, ten of hydrogen, and 
five of oxygen—O,H,,O,, i. e., six of carbon and five of water or its 
elements. Dextrin has exactly the same composition ; so also has 
gum-arabic when purified. But their properties differ considerably. 
Starch, as everybody knows, when dried, is white, and opaque and 
pulverent ; dextrin, similarly dried, is transparent and brittle ; gum- 
arabic the same. If a piece of starch, or a solution of starch, is 
touched by a solution of iodine, it becomes blue almost to blackness, 
if the solution is strong ; no such change occurs when the iodine solu- 
tion is added to dextrin or gum. A solution of dextrin when mixed 
with potash changes to a rich blue color when a little sulphate of cop- 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 213 


per is added ; no such effect is produced by gum-arabic, and thus we 
have an-easy test for distinguishing between true and fictitious gum- 
arabic. 

The technical name for describing this persistence of composition 
with changes of properties is csomerism, and bodies thus related are 
said to be isomeric with each other. Another distinguishing charac- 
teristic of dextrin is that it produces a right-handed rotation on a ray 
of polarized light—hence its name, from dexter, the right. 

The conversion of starch into dextrin is a very important element 
of the subject of vegetable cooking, inasmuch as starch-food can not 
be assimilated until this conversion has taken place, either before or 
after we eat it. I will therefore describe other methods by which this 
change may be effected. , 

If starch be boiled in a dilute widieasons of almost any acid, it is con- 
verted into dextrin. A solution containing less than one per cent of 
sulphuric or nitric acid is sufficiently strong for this purpose. One 
method of commercial manufacture (Payen’s) is to moisten ten parts 
of starch with three of water, containing ;4, of its weight of nitric 
acid, spreading the paste upon shelves, allowing it to dry in the air, 
and then heating it for an hour and a half at about 240° Fahr. 

But the most remarkable and interesting agent in effecting this 
conversion is diastase. It is one of those mysterious compounds which 
have received the general name of “ferments.” They are disturbers 
of chemical peace, molecular agitators that initiate chemical revolutions, 
which may be beneficent or very mischievous, The morbific matter 
of contagious diseases, the venom of snake-bite, and a multitude of 
other poisons, are ferments. Yeast is a familiar example of a ferment, 
and one that is the best understood. I must not be tempted into a 
dissertation on this subject, but may merely remark that modern re- 
search indicates that many of these ferments are microscopic creatures, 
linking the vegetable with the animal world ; they may be described 
as living things, seeing that they grow from germs and generate other 
germs that produce their like. Where this is proved, we can under- 
stand how a minute germ may, by falling upon suitable nourishment, 
increase and multiply, and thus effect upon large quantities of matter 
the chemical revolution above named. 

I have already described the action of rennet upon milk, and the 
very small quantity which produces coagulation. There appears to be 
no intercession of living microbia in this case, nor have any been yet 
demonstrated to constitute the ferment of diastase, though they may 
be suspected. Be this as it may, diastase is a most beneficent ferment. 
It communicates to the infant plant its first breath of active life, and 
operates in the very first stage of animal digestion. 

In a grain of wheat, for example, the embryo is surrounded with 
its first food. While the seed remains dry above-ground there is no 
assimilation of the insoluble starch or gluten, no growth, nor other 


214 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


sign of life. But when the seed is moistened: and warmed, the starch 
is changed to dextrin=by the action of diastase, and the dextrin is 
further converted into sugar. The food of the germ thus gradually 
rendered soluble penetrates its tissues ; it is thereby fed and grows, 
unfolds its first leaf upward, throws downward its first rootlet, still 
feeding on the converted starch until it has developed the organs by 
which it can feed on the carbonic acid of the air and the soluble min- 
erals of the soil. But for the original insolubility of the starch it 
would be washed away into the soil, and wasted ere the germ could 
absorb it. The maltster, by artificial heat and moisture, hastens this 
formation of dextrin and sugar ; then by a roasting heat kills the baby 
plant just as it is breaking through the seed-sheath. Blue-ribbon 
orators miss a point in failing to notice this. It would be quite in 
their line to denounce with scathing eloquence such’ heartless infan- 
ticide. 

Diastase may be obtained by simply grinding freshly germinated 
barley or malt, moistening it with half its weight of warm water, al- 
lowing it to stand, and then pressing out the liquid. One part of dias- 
tase is sufficient to convert two thousand parts of starch into dextrin, 
and from dextrin to sugar, if the action is continued. The most fa- 
vorable temperature for this is from 140° to 150° Fahr. The action 
_ceases if the temperature be raised to the boiling-point. 

The starch which we take so abundantly as food appears to have 
no more food-value to us than to the vegetable germ until the conver- 
sion into dextrin or sugar is effected. From what I have already 
stated concerning the action of heat upon starch, it is evident that 
this conversion is more or less effected in some processes of cookery. 
In the baking of bread an incipient conversion probably occurs 
throughout the loaf, while in the crust it is carried so far as to com- 
pletely change most of the starch into dextrin, and some into sugar. 
Those of us who can remember our bread-and-milk may not have for- 
gotten the gummy character of the crust when soaked. This may be 

‘felt by simply moistening a piece of crust in hot water and rubbing 
it between the fingers. A certain degree of sweetness may also be 
detected, though disguised by the bitterness of the caramel, which is 
also there. 

The final conversion of starch-food into dextrin and sugar is ef- 
fected in the course of digestion, especially, as already stated, in the 
first stage—that of insalivation. Saliva contains a kind of diastase, 
which has received the name of salivary diastase and mucin. It does 
not appear to be exactly the same substance as vegetable diastase, 
though its action is similar. It is most abundantly secreted by her- 

_bivorous animals, especially by ruminating animals. Its comparative 
deficiency in carnivorous animals is shown by the fact that, if vege- 
table matter is mixed with their food, starch passes through them un- 
altered. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 215 


Some time is required-for the conversion of the starch by this 
animal diastase, and in some animals there is a special laboratory or 
kitchen for effecting this preliminary cookery of vegetable food. 
Ruminating animals have a special stomach-cavity for this purpose 
in which the food, after mastication, is held for some time and kept 
warm before passing into the cavity which secretes the gastric juice. 
The crop of grain-eating birds appears to perform a similar function. 
It is there mixed with a secretion corresponding to saliva, and is thus 
partially malted—in this case before mastication in the gizzard. 

‘At a later stage of digestion, the starch that has escaped conversion 
by the saliva is again subjected to the action of animal diastase con- 
tained in the pancreatic juice, which is very similar to saliva. 

It is a fair inference from these facts that creatures like ourselves, 
who are not provided with a crop or compound stomach, and mani- 
festly secrete less saliva than horses or other grain-munching animals, 
require some preliminary assistance when we adopt graminivorous 
habits ; and one part of the business of cookery is to supply such pre- 
liminary treatment to the oats, barley, wheat, maize, peas, beans, etc., 
which we cultivate and use for food. 


XXXI, 


Having described the changes effected by heat upon starch, and 
referred to its further conversion into dextrin and sugar, I will now 
take some practical examples of the cookery of starch-foods, begin- 
ning with those which are composed of pure, or nearly pure, starch. 

When arrowroot is merely stirred in cold water it sinks to the bot- 


tom undissolved and unaltered. When cooked in the usual manner to ~ 


form the well-known mucilaginous or jelly-like food, the change is a 
simple case of the swelling and breaking up of the granules described 
as occurring in water at the temperature of 140° Fahr. There appears 
to be no reason for limiting the temperature, as the same action takes 
place from 140° upward, to the boiling-point of water. 

I may here mention a peculiarity of another form of nearly pure 
starch-food, viz., tapioca, which is obtained by pulping and washing 
out the starch-granules of the root of the manzhot, then heating the 
washed starch in pans and stirring it while hot with iron or wooden 
paddles. ‘This cooks and breaks up the granules and agglutinates the 
starch into nodules which, as Mr. James Collins explains (“ Journal of 
Society of Arts,” March 14, 1884), are thereby coated with dextrin, to 
which gummy coating some of the peculiarities of tapioca-pudding. are 
attributable. It is a curious fact that this manihot-root, from which 
our harmless tapioca is obtained, is terribly poisonous. The plant is 
one of the large family of nauseous spurgeworts (Huphorbiacee). The 
poison resides in the milky juice surrounding the starch-granules, but, 
being both soluble in water and volatile, most of it is washed away in 
separating the starch-granules, and any that remains after washing is 


216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


driven off by the heating and stirring which has to reach 240°, in 
order to effect the changes above described. 

I suspect that the difference between the forms of tapioca and 
arrowroot has arisen from the necessity of thus driving off the last 
traces of the poison with which the aboriginal manufacturers were so 
well acquainted as to combine the industry of poisoning their arrows 
with that of extracting the starch-food from the same root. No cer- 
tificate from the public analyst is demanded to establish the absence of 
the poison from any given sample of tapioca, as the juice of the mani- 
hot-root, like that of other spurges, is unmistakably acrid and nau- 
seous. 

Sago, which is a starch obtained from the pith of the stem of the 
sago-palm and other plants, is prepared in grains like tapioca, with 
similar results. Both sago and tapioca contain a little gluten, and 
therefore have more food-value than arrowroot. 

The most familiar of our starch-foods is the potato. I place it 
among the starch-foods, as, next to water, starch is its prevailing con- 
stituent, as the following statement of average compositions will show : 
Water, 75 per cent ; starch, 18°8; nitrogenous materials, 2; sugar, 
3; fat, 0°25 salts, 1. The salts vary considerably with the kind and 
age of the potato, from 0°8 to 1°3 in full grown. Young potatoes con- 
tainmore. In boiling potatoes, the change effected appears to be sim- 
ply a breaking up or bursting of the starch-granules, and a conversion 
of the nitrogenous gluten into a more soluble form, probably by a cer- 
tain degree of hydration. ‘ As we all know, there are great differences 
among potatoes, some are waxy, others floury ; and these, again, vary 
according to the manner and degree of cooking. I can not find any 
published account of the chemistry of these differences, and must, 
therefore, endeavor to explain them in my own way. 

As an experiment, take two potatoes of the floury kind ; boil or 
steam them together until they are just softened throughout, or, as we 
say, “well dorie.” Now leave one of them in the saucepan or 
steamer, and very much overcook it. Its floury character will have 
disappeared, it will have become soft and gummy. The reader can 
explain this by simply remembering what has already been explained 
concerning the formation of dextrin. It is due to the conversion of 
some of the starch into dextrin. My explanation of the difference 
between the waxy and floury potato is that the latter is so consti- 
tuted that all the starch-granules may be disintegrated by heat in the 
manner already described, before any considerable proportion of the 
starch is converted into dextrin, while the starch of the waxy potatoes 
for some reason, probably a larger supply of diastase, is so much more 
readily convertible into dextrin that a considerable proportion be- 
comes gummy before the whole of the granules are broken up—i. e., 
before the potato is cooked or softened throughout. 

I must here throw myself into the great controversy of jackets or 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 217 


no jackets. Should potatoes be peeled before cooking, or should they 
be boiled in their jackets ? I say most decidedly in jackets, and will 
state my reasons. From 53 to 56 per cent of the above-stated saline 
constituents of the potato is potash, and potash is an important con- 
stituent of blood—so important that in Norway, where scurvy once 
prevailed very seriously, it has been banished since the introduction 
of the potato, and, according to Lang and other good authorities, it is 
owing to the use of this vegetable by a people who formerly were in- 
sufficiently supplied with saline vegetable food. 

otash salts are freely soluble in water, and I find that the water 
in which potatoes have been boiled contains potash, as may be proved 
by boiling it down to concentrate, then filtering and adding the usual 
potash test, platinum chloride. 

It is evident that the skin of the potato must resist this passage of 
the potash into the water, though it may not fully prevent it. The 
bursting of the skin only occurs at quite the latter stage of the cook- 
ery. The greatest practical authorities on the potato, Irishmen, ap- 
pear to be unanimous. I do not remember to have seen a pre-peeled 
potato in Ireland. I find that I can at once detect by the difference of 
flavor whether a potato has been boiled with or without its jacket, and 
this difference is evidently saline. 

These considerations lead to another conclusion, viz., ‘that baked 
potatoes, and fried potatoes, or potatoes cooked in such a manner so 
as to be eaten with their own broth, as in Irish stew (in which cases 
the previous peeling does no mischief), are preferable to boiled pota- 
toes. Steamed potatoes probably lose less of their potash juices than 
when boiled ; but this is uncertain, as the modicum of distilled water 
condensed upon the potato and continually renewed may wash away 
as much as the larger quantity of hard water in which the boiled 
potato is immersed. 

Those who eat an abundance of fruit, of raw salads, and other 
vegetables supplying a sufficiency of potash to the blood, may peel 
and boil their potatoes ; but the poor Irish peasant who depends upon 
the potato for all his sustenance requires that they shall supply him 
with potash. 

_ When traveling in Ireland (I explored that country rather ex- 
haustively when editing the fourth edition of “ Murray’s Hand-book”), 
I was surprised at the absence of fruit-trees in the small farms where 
one might expect them to abound. On speaking of this, the reason 
given was that all trees are the landlord’s property ; that if a tenant 
should plant them they would suggest luxury and prosperity, and 
therefore a rise of rent ; or, otherwise stated, the tenant would be fined 
for thus improving the value of his holding. This was before the 
passing of the Land Act, which we may hope will put an end to such 
legalized brigandage. With the abolition of rack-renting, the Irish 
peasant may grow and eat fruit ; may even taste jam without fear and 


nie THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


trembling ; may grow rhubarb and make pies and puddings in defiance 
of the agent. When this is the case, his craving for potato-potash 
will probably diminish, and his children may actually feed on bread. 

As regards the nutritive value of the potato, it is well to under- 
stand that the common notion concerning its cheapness as an article of 
food is a fallacy. Taking Dr. Edward Smith’s figures, 760 grains of 
carbon and 24 grains of nitrogen are contained in one pound of pota- 
toes ; two and one half pounds of potatoes are required to supply the 
amount of carbon contained in one pound of bread; and three and 
one half pounds of potatoes are necessary for supplying the nitrogen 
of one pound of bread. With bread at three halfpence per pound, 
potatoes should cost less than one halfpenny per pound, in order to 
be as cheap as bread for the hard-working man who requires an 
abundance of nitrogenous food. 

My own observations in Ireland have fully convinced me of the 
wisdom of William Cobbett’s denunciation of the potato as a staple 
article of food. The bulk that has to be eaten, and is eaten, in order 
to sustain life, converts the potato-feeder into a mere assimilating ma- 
chine during a large part of the day, and renders him unfit for any 
kind of vigorous mental or bodily exertion. If I were the autocratic 
Czar of Ireland, my first step toward the regeneration of the Irish peo- 
ple would be the introduction, acclimatizing, and dissemination of the 
Colorado beetle, in order to produce a complete and permanent potato- 
famine. The effect of potato-feeding may be studied by watching 
the work of a potato-fed Irish mower or reaper who comes across to 
work upon an English farm where the harvest-men are fed in the 
farm-house and where beer is not excessive. The improvement of his 
working powers after two or three weeks of English feeding is com- 
parable to that of a horse when fed upon corn, beans, and hay, after 
feeding for a year on grass only. 

The reader may have observed that the starch-foods already de- 
scribed are all derived from the roots or stems of plants. Many . 
others might be named that are used in tropical climates where little 
labor is demanded or done, and but little nitrogenous food required. 
Having treated the cookery of the chief constituents of these parts of 
the plant, the fiber and the starch, I now come to food obtained from 
the seeds and the leaves. 

Taking the seeds first, as the more important, it becomes necessary 
to describe the nitrogenous constituents which are more abundant in 
them than in any other part of the plant, though they also contain the 
starch and cell material, or woody fiber, as already stated. 

In No. 29 of this series, page 65, I described a method of sepa- 
rating starch from flour by washing a piece of dough in water, and 
thereby removing the starch-granules, which fall to the bottom of the 
water. If this washing is continued until no further milkiness of the 
water is produced, the piece of dough will be much reduced in dimen- 


ENSILAGH AND FERMENTATION. 219 


sions, and changed into a gray, tough, elastic, and viscous or glutinous 
substance, which has been compared to bird-lime, and has received the 
appropriate name of gluten. When dried, it becomes a hard, horny, 
transparent mass. It is insoluble in cold water, and partly soluble in 
hot water. It is soluble in strong vinegar, and in weak solutions of 
potash or soda. If the alkaline solution is neutralized by an acid, the 
gluten is precipitated. 

If crude gluten obtained as above is subjected to the action of hot 
alcohol it is separated into two distinct substances, one soluble and the 
other insoluble. As the solution cools, a further separation takes place 
of a substance soluble in hot alcohol, but not in cold, and another 
soluble in either hot or cold alcohol. The first—viz., that insoluble in 
either hot or cold aleohol—has been named gluten-fibrin ; that soluble in 
hot alcohol, but not in cold, gluten-casein ; and that soluble in either 
hot or cold alcohol, gluten. I give these names and explain them, as 
my readers may be otherwise puzzled by meeting them in books where 
they are used without explanation, especially as there is another sub- 
stance, presently to be described, to which the name of vegetable casein 
has also been applied. The gluten-fibrin is supposed to correspond 
with blood-fibrin, gluten-casein with animal casein, and gluten with 
albumen.— Knowledge. 


oe 


ENSILAGE AND FERMENTATION. 
By MANLY MILES, M.D. 


HE preservation of green fodder in the form of ensilage is now 

attracting so large a share of the attention of practical farmers, 

that a brief sketch of the history of the process, and an outline of the 

known facts in regard to fermentation, must be of interest to the gen- 

eral reader, as well as the student who wishes to trace the laws of 
evolution in the development of improved methods in agriculture. 

Nearly thirty years ago, Adolf Reihlen, who owned a sugar-factory 
near Stuttgart, in Germany, preserved a crop of fodder-corn, which 
had been injured by frost, by burying it in trenches or pits, and coy- 
ering it with the soil thrown out to protect it from the atmosphere. 
This method of preserving corn-fodder was suggested by the well- 
known process of making “brown or sour hay” by packing newly-cut 
grass in pits, which had been practiced for many years by farmers in 
Europe. 

When the pits were opened, several months afterward, the fodder- 
corn had a greenish color and a peculiar odor, but its value as cattle- 
food was not apparently diminished. M. Reihlen was so weli pleased 
with the results of his experiment, that he made a practice of “ pitting” 
a quantity of fodder-corn every year, to obtain a supply of succulent 
feed for his cattle during the winter. 


220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


In 1870 M. Vilmorn called the attention of French farmers to the ad- 
vantages of this method of preserving green fodder, which M. Reihlen 
had then successfully practiced for many years. The new method was 
so favorably received and extensively introduced in France, that it soon 
became known as the French system of ensilage. The application 
to a new crop of the old system of curing grass as “brown or sour 
hay” was in fact accepted as a practically new method, which was 
designated as the “ensilage of maize.” : 

M. Morel seems to have been the pioneer in the practice of the 
new system, the results of his experience having been published in the 
“ Journal d’Agriculture pratique” of October 19, 1871. Others, en- 
couraged by this report, followed his example, and for several years the 
“ensilage of maize” was the leading topic of discussion in the agri- 
cultural papers of France. In 1877 M. Auguste Goffart published, in 
Paris, a work on ensilage, giving his experience for several years with 
silos of masonry above ground, in which the covers of boards were 
loaded to give a continuous pressure to the mass, and thus exclude the 
air. The covering and weighting of the silo, as practiced by M. Goffart, 
was an improvement on former methods, and it appears to be the only 
point on which he can make a claim of originality. A translation of 
this work, which has been the standard authority on ensilage, was 
published in New York in 1878, and had a marked influence on the 
introduction of the system in this country. 

As early as 1873 agricultural papers in Great Britain and America 
gave occasional brief notices of the preservation of green fodder in 
pits as practiced in France and Germany, and the process was usually 
referred to as the “potting” or “pitting” of fodder. 

In 1875 three earth-silos were filled with fodder-corn and broom- 
corn seed, under my direction, in Illinois, with results that were quite 
satisfactory. These experiments were reported in “The Country Gen- 
tleman” in 1876, page 627, together with an account of the experience 
of several French farmers who had used ensilage on a large scale. In 
this paper the French terms “silo” and “ ensilage ” were introduced, as 
they had a definite meaning not well expressed by any English words, 
and they are now in common use. 

Mr. Francis Morris, of Maryland, who has had the credit of making 
the first experiments with ensilage in this country, made his first silo 
in 1876. Others soon followed his example, and now we find silos in 
every part of the country, and ensilage has become a familiar cattle- 
food. The first silos, as we have seen, were simple pits dug in the 
ground, and the soil thrown out was used to cover and protéct the 
ensilage. In many soils these pits served but a temporary purpose ; 
and the next step in their development was a lining of masonry to 
give the pits a permanent character. From the difficulty of keeping 
the water out of these pits, in many localities, silos of masonry were 
made above ground, and these at first were massive and expensive. 


ENSILAGE AND FERMENTATION. 221 


The next step in advance, which quite naturally followed, was, to sub- 
stitute a-movable cover of boards, with weights to give the required 
pressure, for the cover of earth which had been used in the less perfect 
form of the silo. As an air-tight inclosure was found to be the essen- 
tial condition in the construction of a silo, lighter walls were made as 
a matter of economy, with good results, and even frames of timber, 
lined with boards or planks, were substituted for the more expensive 
structures, with complete success. 

A balloon-frame of scantling, of suitable size, covered on the out- 
side with matched boards, and lined on the inside with two thick- 
nesses of one-inch matched boards, with a layer of tarred paper between 
them, thus securing a practically air-tight inclosure surrounded by a 
dead-air space as a protection against frost, is, in the opinion of the 
writer, the best and cheapest form of construction. If the boards and 
timbers are saturated with hot coal-tar, which can readily be done 
with trifling expense, the durability of the silo will be very much in- 
creased. From the fact that wood is not so good a conductor of heat 
as walls of masonry, it will be seen, from what follows, that wooden 
silos may have an important: advantage over any others in preserving 
the ensilage, which, in connection with the saving of expense in their 
construction, must have an influence in bringing them into general use. 

There are many conflicting statements in regard to the value of 
ensilage as a cattle-food, and it may be, that the failure to realize the 
exaggerated claims that were made for it when. first introduced has 
resulted in a reaction which naturally leads to a low estimate of its 
value. It must, however, be admitted that a large proportion of the 
farmers who have used it are fully satisfied that it is a desirable and 
valuable form of cattle-food, and many would not limit its use to the 
winter months. Others speak with less confidence of the results of 
their experience, and are inclined to admit, with those who are not con- 
vinced of the utility of the process, that the acidity which is devel- 
oped to a greater or less extent, in most cases, is decidedly objection- 
able. Experience at the condensed-milk factories is claimed to be 
unfavorable to ensilage as food for cows, and some of them refuse to 
receive milk from farms where it is fed. 

That there are great differences in the quality of the ensilage made 
on different farms, or even in that made on the same farm in different 
seasons, there can be no doubt, and these differences must be attributed 
to variations in the conditions under which the ensilage is made, which 
must result in corresponding modifications of the process of fermenta- 
tion. When the influence of these varying conditions, which include 
the peculiarities of the crop, as well as the method of filling the silo, 
is so well understood that ensilage of a uniform and desired quality 
can be produced with certainty, the most important objections that 
are now made to it will be obviated, and it will readily take its place 
on the farm as a staple article of cattle-food. 


222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


My studies of ensilage have for some time past been directed to 
methods of preventing acidity and securing a desirable degree of uni- 
formity in quality, and thus far the results are, to say the least, en- 
couraging. The experimental silo at the Massachusetts experiment 
station was made under my direction, on the plan of the wooden silo 
described above. It was filled in two and a half days with over seven- 
teen tons of fodder-corn, cut in one and a fourth inch lengths, and 
thoroughly packed as it was put in. A tight cover made of two thick- 
nesses of planed boards and planks was put on, and loaded with barrels 
of earth that were estimated to give a pressure of over sixty pounds 
per square foot. For convenience of access to the interior of the 
mass, a gas-pipe one and a fourth inch in diameter was driven through 
a hole in the middle of the cover, to the depth of four feet, the upper 
end being carefully packed to make a tight connection with the planks 
of the cover, and the upper end was closed with a plug. 

When the cover was put on, September 8th, the temperature was 
82° Fahr., two feet below the surface. Observations were made from 
time to time, of the temperature and rate of settling, as recorded in the 
following table : 


Depth of por a akg dy t f 
DATE, anes > iy Ter ea Catal bir. 
the surface. 
Ft. In. Degrees Fahr. Degrees Fahr. 

PGE BUR ois v.0 alse dea - 40's sepa 8..+8 82 ins 
46 ORR a tee sca wk als lata adh (Oe §2 
RUUN hss ha och eas Sheers 7 28 78 
of TASS as ote aa ac path 6 9 77 

" I cig a a clea a tie bce ea 5 aia 82 62 

9 Ga a A Eg Sal a fe hae 84 55 

eg LOSS. 5: CPE 5 114 84 68 

: eo ab nk ao opie aa Sie 5 114 87 72 

* BA a os ae oa cake 5 104 85 69 

- TER. AWAY BS 5 oF 82 59 
” Roca bie desea nalene 5 9% 84 

vn DMs rks cakes SAAR E eu 5 8694 84 61 

« WAUG SCac Ga ee he Coes SS 5 94 84 62 

39 BO is i Fe aa kin hie Rae Wile 5 9 83 56 

* BR iene sa aM ake ES 82 61 

* Pre cans PRR odes ole #e 5 684 80 58 

¥ PHS se C4 Ss BOON Ub Viale Oe 5 8 80 50 

i BT Wee pagan aes orb aan 5 7% 80 50 

™ SOU ces Pics ecasaeees 5 64 80 60 

Bo 20th. SEARO 5 TH 79 53 

"3 SOth..» 2 a0 bane ea enn 5 4 78 59 

SROIOOE ASL... asc cco ue cae Rove an 5 ‘It 78 + . 
Rett Dad. seers EPR ais bee 54 76 

We OG é-0:6 0:5 s dul'g ek eee bee 5 iy 76 44 

PERG SAD oo. oy oe kw eA RED 5 664 76 43 
GME. os veces cieweebwe teas oh 68 
CE EGR 5 ved ase seieenemeen 65 
EO SS rere. s° aps 64 
* SE AAP aid gd Dak's 59 
DIOCHMINY GAG ig ok 5 cevig cic ce eh od aR ‘ea 54 

OO ooo in cc ek sku 5 Bt 49 22 


ENSILAGH AND FERMENTATION. 223 


The weights as applied gave a uniform pressure ; but the cover, as 
will be seen from the table, did not settle at a uniform rate. There 
was a fall of 5° in temperature during the first three days, then fol- 
lowed a gradual but not uniform rise, until the maximum of 87° was 
reached at the end of the first week. It will likewise be noticed that 
a variation of but 5° from the initial temperature occurred during the 
first three weeks after the cover was put on and weighted, and that 
the fall in the temperature was not uniform. 

Experiments were repeatedly made with samples of ensilage, taken 
through the tube, from the interior of the silo. The samples obtained 
on the 9th of September swarmed with bacteria, which were remark- 
ably active and rapidly increasing by self-division. After the first few 
days the indications of rapid reproduction were not so marked, but the 
activity of the bacteria was not sensibly diminished until the temper- 
ature had fallen below 60°, more than two months after the silo was 
filled. ‘The variations in temperature and in the rate of settling were 
undoubtedly connected with the vital activity of the bacteria, but the 
precise relation of these variations could not be traced. 

The real significance of these minute organisms can not be fully 
appreciated without a review, including a brief history, of the known 
facts of the process of 

FERMENTATION.—The alchemists were acquainted with ferments 
and fermentation as early as the thirteenth century, but we need not 
stop to notice their crude theories in regard to the process. In 1659, 
Willis, an English physician, presented a theory of fermentation, which 
was revived by Stahl, the originator of the phlogiston theory, in 1697. 
According to the theory of these philosophers, ferments had a peculiar 
motion of their particles which they communicated to the particles of 
fermentable substances and thus produced fermentation. The discov- 
ery of carbonic acid by Black (1752), of oxygen by Priestley (1774), 
and of the composition of the atmosphere and water by Cavendish 
(1781), laid the foundation for the experiments of Lavoisier, who at- 
tempted a quantitative determination of the changes taking place in 
the transformation of sugar into alcohol. Gay-Lussac (1815) revised 
the figures obtained by Lavoisier, by less perfect methods, and made 
a close approximation to a correct formula. In 1828 Dumas and Boul- 
lay pointed out and corrected errors in the formule of Gay-Lussac, 
and in this amended form they were, for many years, accepted as an 
aceurate statement of the phenomena of alcoholic fermentation. After- 
ward, however, the discovery was made that glycerine and succinic 
acid are constant products of the process, and the formulx had to be 
again corrected. ‘These formule, even in their amended form, did not 
take into the account the yeast which had been recognized as an essen- 
tial element in the process, and theories were formed to account for 
its action. Berzelius attributed the influence of yeast to a “catalytic” 
action—mere contact with the ferment being sufficient to excite fer- 


224 THH POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


mentation in a fermentable substance without any other direct rela- 
tion. In 1840 Liebig<presented a theory of fermentation which was 
generally adopted by chemists. He recognized fermentation and 
putrefaction as essentially similar processes. Albuminoid substances, 
from the complex arrangement of their molecules, were assumed to 
be in a state of unstable equilibrium tending to decomposition, and 
their putrefactive transformations, which were communicated to fer- 
mentable substances, were the cause of fermentation. He claimed that 
“yeast produces fermentation in consequence of the progressive decom- 
position which it suffers from the action of air and water.” Fermenta- 
tion and putrefaction were claimed to be processes of combustion or 
oxidation. This theory was more fully elaborated, in 1848, by assign- 
ing to the decomposing albuminoid ferments a peculiar molecular mo- 
tion which communicated to fermentable substances a similar vibration 
of their particles, and a consequent decomposition. This was in fact 
but a revival of the theory of Willis and Stahl more than two hundred 
years before. Notwithstanding its general acceptance by chemists, 
Liebig’s theory failed to recognize one of the essential factors of fer- 
mentation, and we must now turn our attention to a brief outline of 
some of the discoveries which disproved it, and furnished on the other 
hand a complete and satisfactory explanation of the process. 
Leeuwenhoek, in 1680, made the discovery that yeast was composed 
of minute granules, but, with the imperfect lenses of that time, he 
failed to determine their real character. Fabroni, in 1787, described 
the yeast-granules as a vegeto-animal substance ; and Astier, as early 
as 1813, claimed that this ferment was endowed with life, and derived 
its nourishment from the fermenting materials, thus causing fermenta- 
tion. About 1838 Cagniard-Latour and Schwann, by independent ob- 
servations, rediscovered the yeast-granules of Leeuwenhoek, and, by 
means of the better microscopes at their command, succeeded in prov- 
ing that they were vegetable cells which were reproduced by budding. 
Schwann, by a series of ingenious experiments, proved that the germs 
of the living ferments were conveyed to fermentable substances by the 
air, and that they were the cause of fermentation, while the free ad- 
mission of oxygen, under conditions that excluded the germs, was with- 
out effect. The experiments of Schwann were, in themselves, sufficient 
to establish the truth of the physiological theory of fermentation, but 
they were entirely ignored by Liebig and the advocates of his chemical 
theory. A complete demonstration of the true theory of fermentation 
was finally made by Pasteur (1857-’79) in a series of experiments which, 
from the skill displayed in their conception, and the remarkable accu- 
racy secured in conducting them in accordance with strictly inductive 
methods, may safely be classed among the most brilliant records in the 
history of science. He repeated the experiments of his predecessors, — 
invented new methods of investigation by which he was enabled to 
eliminate all possible sources of error, and answered his opponents by 


ENSILAGH AND FERMENTATION, 225 


an accumulation of experimental evidence that could not be contro- 
verted. He proved that sugar was acted upon by a variety of fer- 
ments, each giving its own peculiar product, and that the different 
kinds of fermentation, properly so called, as the alcoholic, the lactic, 
the acetic, the viscous, the butyric, and putrefactive, were each the 
result of the vital activity of distinct and specific organisms. 

Ferments are now generally divided into two classes: 1. The so- 
called soluble or chemical ferments, as acids and diastase, which 
“invert” cane-sugar and transform it into dextrose, or change starch 
into dextrin. These soluble ferments, according to Dumas, “always 
sacrifice themselves in the exercise of their activity,” but they do not 
produce fermentation in the strict sense of the term. 2. The true 
ferments, which, through the investigations of Pasteur, are now known 
to be living organisms that produce fermentation as a function of 
their vital activity. Unlike the soluble ferments, these living organ- 
isms increase at the expense of the substances fermented. ‘The true 
fermentations are therefore purely physiological processes, which are 
defined by Pasteur as “the direct consequence of the processes of 
nutrition, assimilation, and life, when they are carried on without the 
agency of free oxygen,” or, “as a result of life without air.” 

The organized ferments, which belong to the class of fungi, may 
be divided into two groups, the saccharomycetes, or budding fungi— 
the active agents of alcoholic fermentation, of which yeast may be 
taken as the type—and the schizomycetes, or fission fungi, which in- 
clude the lactic, the butyric, and similar ferments, and the organisms 
that produce putrefaction ; most of them are of the form known as 
bacteria, and they multiply rapidly by subdivision. It is probable 
that all the members of both groups propagate by means of spores, as 
well as by their special processes of budding and fission, but there 
are many species in which reproduction by spores has not been ob- 
served. The living organisms (bacteria) found in samples of fresh 
ensilage belong to the group of schizomycetes. Thus far no members 
of the group of saccharomycetes (yeast or alcoholic ferments) have 
been observed, by me, in samples from the interior of the silo that 
had not been exposed to the air. When a large surface of ensilage is 
exposed to the air, after the silo is opened, a variety of ferments may 
make their appearance, and with them several species of molds, but 
they are evidently produced from germs derived from the air. 

The mold-fungi are not included in the class of ferments, as Pasteur 
has proved that they act as ferments under exceptional conditions only, 
and even then they do not produce active fermentation. The alco- 
holic ferments have been studied more thoroughly than the others, 
from their importance in the manufacture of beer, wine, etc., but many 
of the facts developed in their investigation are undoubtedly appli- 
cable to other ferments: 

From Pasteur’s experiments with fruits in an atmosphere of car- 

VOL, xxv.—15 


226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


bonic acid, it appears that any vegetable cells which are capable of 
extracting their needed supply of oxygen from organic combinations 
may, by this manifestation of their vital activity, act as ferments, 
and the true ferments are distinguished from these, not by a differ- 
ence in their specific action, but from the fact that they are capable 
of carrying on the functions of nutrition and assimilation with much 
greater activity without a supply of atmospheric oxygen. Pasteur 
has likewise proved that the alcoholic ferments develop rapidly ia 
the presence of air, but that their function as ferments is impaired by 
this ready supply of oxygen. In the absence of air, on the other hand, 
asin an atmosphere of carbonic acid, they take their supply of oxygen 
from organic substances, as sugar, and their function as ferments is 
increased. When the life of the bacteria or other organized fer- 
ments is destroyed, the processes of fermentation and putrefaction 
cease, and this takes place at a temperature of from 122° to 140°, 
according to observations made in the course of the controversy in 
regard to spontaneous generation. After the organized ferments are 
killed, fermentation or putrefaction can not take place until the living 
ferments are again introduced. The canned articles of food which 
are now so common in the markets are an illustration of the applica- 
tion of this principle. In their preparation heat is applied, which 
kills the bacteria—the active agents of fermentation—and the cans are 
then sealed to prevent the introduction of a fresh supply of germs 
from the atmosphere. . The popular notion that canned articles of food 
are preserved by excluding the atmospheric oxygen, which has been 
derived from the application of Liebig’s chemical theory of fermenta- 
tion, is without foundation. The experiments of Schwann, Pasteur, 
and Tyndall conclusively prove that articles which are peculiarly lia- 
ble to undergo putrefactive changes, as urine, and an endless variety 
of vegetable and animal infusions, can be kept without change for 
months and years when abundantly supplied with free oxygen, if 
proper precautions are taken to exclude the living organisms that are 
the real cause of fermentation. These experiments have likewise 
proved that the germs of the bacteria of fermentation and putrefac- 
tion are widely distributed in the air, and the supposed cases of spon- 
taneous fermentation, or putrefaction, are readily explained by the 
“seeding ” of the fermenting substances with germs derived from the 
atmosphere. 

As fermentation is strictly a physiological process, the fermented 
product may be looked upon as the residuum of what is required in the 
nutritive processes of the bacteria of fermentation. 

The variations in the quality of ensilage, to which attention has 
already been directed, are readily explained by differences in the con- 
dition of the crops, as to maturity and development, and the manner | 
in which it is packed in the silo, all of which must have an influence 
on the performance of the nutritive functions of the bacteria, and cor- 


ENSILAGH AND FERMENTATION. 227 


responding variations will consequently be presented in the residual 
or fermented product. As in other cases involving the activity of liv- 
ing organisms the molecular changes taking place under such different 
conditions can not be expressed in any definite chemical formula. 

In advocating these views, Pasteur says: “ Originally, when fer- 
mentations were put among the class of decompositions by contact- 
action, it seemed probable, and in fact was believed, that every fer- 
mentation had its own well-defined equation, which never varied. In 
the present day, on the contrary, it must be borne in mind that the 
equation of a fermentation varies essentially with the conditions un- 
der which that fermentation is accomplished, and that a statement of 
this equation is a problem no less complicated than that in the case 
of the nutrition of a living being. To every fermentation may be 
assigned an equation in a general sort of way—an equation, however, 
which, in numerous points of detail, is liable to the thousand varia- 
tions connected with the phenomena of life. Moreover, there will be 
as many distinct fermentations brought about by one ferment as there 
are fermentable substances capable of supplying the carbon element of 
the food of that same ferment, in the same way that the equation of 
the nutrition of an animal will vary with the nature of the food which 
it consumes. As regards fermentation producing alcohol, which may 
be effected by several different ferments, there will be, in the case 
of a given sugar, as many general equations as there are ferments, 
whether they be ferment-cells properly so called, or cells of the organs 
of living beings functioning as ferments. In the same way the equa- 
tion of nutrition varies in the case of different animals nourished on the 
same food, and it is from the same reason that ordinary wort produces 
such a variety of beers when treated with the numerous alcoholic fer- 
ments which we have described. These remarks are applicable to all 
ferments alike : for instance, butyric ferment is capable of producing 
a host of distinct fermentations, in consequence of its ability to derive 
the carbonaceous part. of its food from very different substances, from 
sugar, or lactic acid, or glycerine, or mannite, and many others. When 
we say that every fermentation has its own peculiar ferment, it must 
be understood that we are speaking of the fermentation considered as 
a whole, including all the accessory products. We do not mean to 
imply that the ferment in question is not capable of acting on some 
other fermentable substance, and giving rise to fermentation of a very 
different kind. Moreover, it is quite erroneous to suppose that the 
presence of a single one of the products of a fermentation implies the 
co-existence of a particular ferment. If, for example, we find alcohol 
among the products of a fermentation, er even alcohol and carbonic- 
acid gas together, this does not prove that the ferment must be an 
alcoholic ferment, belonging to alcoholic fermentations, in the strict 
sense of the term, nor again does the mere presence of lactic acid ne- 
cessarily imply the presence of lactic ferment. As a matter of fact, 


228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


different fermentations may give rise to one or even several identical 
products.” 

From this statement of the physiological conditions that modify 
the products of fermentation, it must be seen that uniformity in the 
quality of ensilage can only be secured by preventing fermentation 
altogether, or confining it within the narrowest possible limits, This 
can only be done by killing the bacteria of fermentation in the ear- 
liest stages of their activity, which would result in the production of 
ensilage free from acidity, and closely resembling, in quality, the green 
fodder from which it is made. If the bacteria can be killed, when the 
silo is covered and weighted, the inclosed mass of ensilage will be 
practically preserved under the same conditions as fruits, or vegeta- 
bles, or meats, are preserved when canned. 

The practical question, then, presents itself as to how this can best 
be accomplished. An extended series of observations on the samples 
of ensilage from the experimental silo have already been made, to de- 
termine the temperature required to kill the bacteria which cause the 
acid fermentations. This will, undoubtedly, vary somewhat with the 
kind of produce under treatment, and its condition when put in the 
silo. Thus far my experiments seem to indicate that a temperature of 
from 115° to 122°, maintained for one or two hours, will be sufficient 
‘to kill the bacteria under the conditions in which they are now placed. 
In this connection attention must be called to the fact that the time of 
exposure to a given temperature is quite as important as the tempera- 
ture itself. A given temperature, continued for several days, may have 
a better effect than a higher one maintained but a few minutes. Again, 
a degree of heat that will kill the mature and active bacteria will not, 
in all probability, kill the germs which may produce succeeding gen- 
erations of active bacteria if the given temperature is continued but 
a short time. 

From the results rotund’ in the table, it is reasonable to infer 
that an initial temperature sufficiently high to kill the active bacteria 
would be continued for several weeks; and this, in all probability, would 
insure the destruction of any successive generations of bacteria that 
might be produced from the germs that had not been killed. For 
this purpose, silos with walls of wood may have an important advan- 
tage over those constructed of materials that are better conductors of 
heat. 

In filling the silo, all writers on ensilage agree in giving directions 
which are based on Liebig’s chemical theory of fermentation. The 
thorough packing of the ensilage as it is put in and the rapid filling 
of the silo are points that are strongly urged to prevent, as far as pos- 
sible, the exposure of the fodder to the oxygen of the atmosphere, 
which is assumed to be the exciting cause of fermentation. In the 
light of the physiological theory of fermentation it will, however, be 
readily seen that the living ferments, which produce acidity, are 


ENSILAGE AND FERMENTATION. 229 


buried with the fodder as it is packed in the silo, and the exclusion 
of the atmosphere, as Pasteur has proved, is a condition that, favors 
fermentation, the oxygen itself not being directly concerned in the 
process. When the greatest care is taken in packing the ensilage, the 
temperature of the mass will often rise above 100° Fahr. (I have ob- 

‘seryed a temperature of 105° under such conditions) ; and, when the 
time of filling is extended over several days, a considerably higher 
temperature may be developed. 

There are good reasons for the belief that, with less packing of the 
fodder when put in the silo, the time of filling may be safely extended 
until the temperature rises to a point that is fatal to the bacteria, and 
this is the probable explanation of the reported cases in which the 
ensilage is said to be “sweet,” or free from acidity. 

The efficient cause of this preliminary heating process, or the 
changes in the fodder involved in its development, have not been 
determined by experiment, and we do not know the precise conditions 
under which the best results may be obtained. 

In the present state of our knowledge of the subject, the most 
desirable method may be to fill the silo without any packing, beyond 
that produced by the weight of the superincumbent mass, and then 
allow it to remain until the desired temperature is reached, before put- 
ting on the cover and weights. The best method can only be deter- | 
mined by carefully conducted experiments, that are made with a full 
knowledge of the different conditions that may have an influence in 
modifying the results. It can not, however, be doubted that sour ensi- 
lage can only be produced by conducting the process so that the tem- 
perature does not rise above the point that is fatal to the bacteria 
(probably 115° to 120°). 

Observations on temperature have been generally neglected when 
silos were filled, and we, therefore, lack the necessary data for deter- 
mining the precise temperature required to prevent fermentation, or 
the most favorable conditions for producing it, from the results of 
practical experience, 

Several cases have been reported to me in which the fodder at the 
time of filling the silo was supposed to be “spoiled” from the high 
temperature developed before it was covered and weighted, but on 
opening these silos, after several months, the result uniformly ob- 
tained was ensilage of the best quality, free from acidity. But a sin- 
gle case has, however, come to my knowledge, in which the exact tem- 
perature was recorded at the time of filling the silo, when the resulting 
product was sweet ensilage. Mr. George Fry, of England, reports the 
results of his experience the past season, which is of particular interest 
in connection with my experiments with ensilage. He filled a silo 
with Trifolium incarnatum (crimson clover), “rough grass,” and 
“clover and rye grass,” between the 7th and 30th of June, the tem- 
perature recorded at the time of covering being 132° six feet from the 


230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


surface. The cover was weighted with twelve inches of sand. On July 
11th, and again on the 17th, the cover was taken off, and the silo was 
filled with “‘ meadow-grass,” to make up for the loss in settling. The 
temperature observed at these dates was 140° at a depth of six feet. 
In another silo, filled with clover and “rye-grass” and “meadow- 
grass,” between June 30th and July 11th, when the cover was put on’ 
and weighted, the recorded temperatures were (July 7th) 149° and 
(July 14th) 158°, The first-mentioned silo was opened October 25th, 
and the ensilage is described as “of a brown color, and of a sweet, lus- 
cious odor, free from acidity, very much resembling that of ordinary 
hay,” and it was at once eaten by cattle, sheep, and horses, with ap- 
parent relish. ° 

Mr. James Chaffee, of Wassaic, New York, informed me that from 
unavoidable delays in filling his silo with fodder-corn, in 1882, the 
ensilage became so “hot,” before it was covered and weighted, that 
he feared it would be entirely spoiled ; but, when it was opened in the 
fall, the fodder was perfectly preserved, of a brown color, and sweet, 
delicious odor, without the slightest indication of acidity. His cows 
ate it with such a decided relish that he had no hesitation in saying 
it was the best ensilage he had ever made. Last year he followed the 
usual method of rapid filling and thorough packing, and his ensilage, 
when opened, was very sour, and in quality decidedly inferior to that 
made in 1882. Other cases of a similar import might be given to show 
that a temperature sufficiently high to kill the bacteria and prevent 
fermentation can readily be obtained in the process of filling the silo, 
and that the ensilage under such conditions is of much better quality 
than when the temperature is kept within the range that is favorable 
for the development of the acid ferments. 

Experiments are now needed to determine the exact temperatures 
required for destroying the organisms that cause fermentation, under 
- the different conditions presented at the time of filling the silo, and 
the special methods of practice that may be desirable in the treatment 
of different crops. This field of experimental investigation is of the 
greatest practical interest, and we may safely predict that the ther- 
mometer will soon be found as indispensable in securing the best results 
in the ensilage of green fodder as it is now in the various processes of 
the dairy. ; 


GEOGRAPHY AND THE RAILROADS. 
By Dr. J. JASTROW. 


hia should be regarded as a prominent purpose, in any scientific de- 
scription of the earth, to point out how geographical influences 
have impressed their mark on organic and inorganic nature and in the 
field of human civilization. Alexander von Humboldt set an admi- 


GEOGRAPHY AND THE RAILROADS. 231 


rable example of the manner in which this should be done when he 
studied the relations existing between the geographical structure and 
the vegetation of different regions. Remarks upon the influence of 
soil and climate on plant-life are as old as the study of botany itself, 
but a scientific plant-geography has been developed only since Hum- 
boldt took the subject up. It has been followed by the study, upon 
similar principles, of geographical influences on animal life ; and since 
Carl Ritter’s time the diversified aspects of human civilization have 
been subjects of unceasing study from similar points of view. In this 
study, religious ideas, personal, civil, and legal rights, customs, and all 
the features of social and political life have been examined with refer- 
ence to the influence of geographical conditions in shaping and modi- 
fying them. At first sight the management of railroads would seem 
to be one of the least amenable of all subjects to this method of con- 
sideration. Originating and brought to a considerable degree of per- 
fection in England, the railroad system has been transplanted bodily 
into other countries, without considering any modifications of its 
methods necessary except in obedience to the most imperative excep- 
tional physical requisitions. Yet modifications and individual differ- 
ences of character have been impressed upon the railroad service of 
different countries by the silent working of varying geographical con- 
ditions. These differentiations were especially studied by the late Max 
Maria von Weber, whose theories respecting them are expounded in a 
posthumous work recently published in Berlin, in which he has con- 
sidered the subject under the headings of the “ Geography of Railroad 
Life” and the “ Physiognomical Aspects of the Railroad Systems of 
Different Civilized Nations.” 

We may in the first place regard the manner in which the function 
and service of the railroad system are dependent upon the form and 
relations of a country’s boundaries. The construction of the railways 
in insular countries is governed wholly by mercantile considerations, 
while, in countries whose boundaries are exposed, military and political 
objects claim prominence. Thus, an English railway-map affords a 
most accurate picture of the relations of the country to production and 
trade, and of the office of the railroads as the medium of communica- 
tion between the great coal and iron fields on one side and the world’s 
mart on the Thames on the other side. But the ramifications of the 
German system would be incomprehensible to one who did not con- 
sider that, equally with mercantile requirements, the political interests 
of a congeries of small states, the central situation of the empire among 
a number of jealous and ambitious powers, and the great military de- 
ficiency of the absence of a natural eastern boundary, have exerted a 
- dominant influence in its arrangement. The clearly mercantile feat- 
ures of the organization of the railroads in states whose natural bounda- 
ries give them security are thus neither more nor less appropriate 
than the military and administrative methods prevalent in states 


) 


232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


whose political integrity is precarious ; and we have, in the degree to 
which additional defensive resources are needed, the first element of 
individualization according to geographical conditions. 

The shape and extension, though the most obvious, constitute only 
one of the features in which the railroad system is affected by geo- 
graphical conditions. Regarding the lines in the mercantile aspect, 
we find that the relative importance of their freight and passenger 
traffic is likewise subject to such influences. While in Germany freight 
is the all-important element. in estimating the value of the business 
done by the railroads, and it would be thought folly to depend chiefly 
on the receipts from passengers, this is not the case in all countries, 
Herr von Weber gives a table of the relative value of the passenger 
and freight business of six countries, from which the results are de- 
duced that in Austria it is as 1 to 43; in Russia, as 1 to 3°2; in Prus- 
sia, as 1 to 2°7; in England, as 1 to 1:3; in Italy, as 1 to 0°9 ; and in 
Denmark, as 1 to 0°5. In the first three countries here named, the 
excess is very largely in favor of the freight traffic ; in England, the 
values of the two kinds are more nearly equal, while in Italy and Den- 
mark the excess is on the side of the passenger traffic. The first three 
countries are continental, the last three are maritime. Where there are 
abundant water-ways to compete with the railroads, the freight, which 
seeks the easiest routes, goes to them, and the railroads have to rely 
more largely upon passengers ; where water-ways are more rare, as on 
the great Continental plains, the freight is of necessity carried on the 
railroads, and they find in it the source of their most lucrative business, 
by the side of which the passenger traffic may sink into relative insig- 
nificance. 

With equal acumen Herr von Weber has remarked a differentiation 
in conformity to geographical diversities in the means and apparatus 
which railroads employ in the performance of their work. At first 
sight it would appear that the wagons in which the goods are carried, 
which to-day are found on the Atlantic coast and in a few days more 
are removed to the borders of Asia, which in going scale Alpine ridges, 
and ‘are before long to be returned to the ocean on routes passing 
through and under the mountains by tunnels, should be of uniform 
construction. Herr von Weber divides the equipment and appur- 
tenances of a railway line into two groups, the first of which includes 
those articles that are stationary or which circulate only within a lim- 
ited area, and the second those that are liable to be moved over the 
whole circuit of an extensive and complicated system. To the former 
class, of fixed elements, he assigns the road-bed and superstructure 
and all their accessories ; to the other class, or that of movable prop- 
erties, belong the wagons. Between the two classes are the locomo- 
tives, which only rarely go outside of the particular system to which 
they belong. “While the fixed organs,” he says, ‘answer their pur- 
poses the more completely the more exactly they are adapted in indi- 


GHOGRAPHY AND THE RAILROADS. 233 


vidual character to the conditions of the place, the movable properties 
are more serviceable in proportion as they are constructed so as to be 
susceptible of a more general adaptation.” The former elements ‘are 
wholly subject to the influence of geographical conditions, and are 
conformed to the diversities of provincial and even of local circum- 
stances and requirements ; the latter set particular geographical con- 
ditions at defiance, and only do homage to them at the line which sep- 
arates districts between which no direct intercourse by railway exists. 
On the East Prussian bogs sleepers will be required of a different 
character from those which may be used on the sands of the marches ; 
French locomotives are different in structure and performance from 
those used in Germany. But the freight-wagons are the same over 
the whole Continent; and it is only after crossing the ocean that the 
question of adapting the rolling stock to different conditions becomes 
a living one. 

The following out of these principles in their particular applica- 
tions would carry us too deeply into details. A single example of the 
manner in which local conditions may rule can be drawn from the his- 
tory of early railway-building in the United States. Here ‘ were made 
in incredible haste those lines that stretch toward the West, over ex- 
tensive tracts of wild land, plains, river-bottoms, and prairies, push- 
ing through the forest which afforded the principal part of the mate- 
rial for their construction. Thus arose, as the direct result of local 
conditions, that method of construction the rapidity and temporary 
character of which received the specific name of ‘American.’ The 
substructure was hastily thrown up, a rude mass of loose earth and 
rarely well ballasted, while the superstructure was built with long 
stringers of wood which in the scarcity of iron could be armored 
with only a thin, flat strap-rail. With a superabundance of wood, 
extensive depressions of the ground were crossed with trestle-work 
instead of embankments ; the excellent quality of the wood permitted 
the rapid erection of high, broad-spanned wooden bridges ; and the 
forest also furnished the material for the construction of wooden sta- 
tion-houses, water-stations, turn-tables, and everything else that could 
be made of that material.” Now, with the growing scarcity of wood, 
and abundance of iron and steel, and the greater facility of transporta- 
tion afforded by the railroads themselves—heavy steel rails, firm em- 
bankments, iron and stone bridges, and more substantial buildings, are 
taking the place of the former flimsy structures, and the ‘‘ American ” 
type of railway-structure as above described has nearly become a thing 
of the past. 

Still, having the earlier American railroads in view, Herr von 
Weber shows that the solid wagons of European construction could 
not be trusted to the insecure foundations of these imperfectly finished 
tracks. The stiff carriages must be made more flexible, and thus origi- 
nated the adjustable trucks of the American cars and locomotive. The 


234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


locomotive was furnished with an armor in the shape of the raking 
cow-catcher or the plow-shaped pilot to remove from the track logs, 
cattle, or whatever else might be found upon it; with a head-light to 
illuminate the track; with a bell to give warning at road-crossings 
and places where the public were exposed to danger; and with a 
spark-catcher, required by the former universal use of wood as fuel 
for the furnace. In this manner the physiognomy of the American 
locomotive was the outgrowth of the novel physical and geographical 
conditions of the new continent. 

With these and other studies conducted in a similar spirit, of 
the problems which the geographical configuration of each country 
imposes upon its railway service, and the means which it permits or 
indicates for attaining a solution of them, Herr von Weber has under- 
taken to lay a scientific basis for his observations on the physiognomy 
of the railway systems among the principal civilized nations. He also 
offers some remarks on the special aspects of the service in different 
states ; and in this category he has not omitted to indicate a geo- 
graphical influence in points the determination of which would be 
regarded as wholly casual were not the evidence on the other side 
so strong. The traveler on the English railways must have remarked 
the quiet and self-sufficient manner in which every person, from the 
train-master, or conductor, to the porter, performs his duties ; it is 
pleasant to have these observations not only confirmed but also shown 
to be the sign of just that which ought to be, by a writer who is an 
authority on the art of traveling. The English railway service owes 
its “physiognomy ” to two circumstances : first, to the fact that Eng- 
land is the native country of the railway, in which the very people 
among whom the new institution grew up were intrusted with its 
working, and furnished a personal service “to the manor born” ; and, 
secondly, to the purely mercantile character which, by the natural 
features and situation of the island, the railway administration is able 
to maintain. The business at an English railway-station is done in 
the same style as in an old mercantile house, where, instead of special 
directions having to be given all the time, it is understood by every 
one that he knows what his duties are and how he is expected to per- 
form them. The case is different in Germany, where the railway sys- 
tem was transplanted already made, and it was necessary to create a 
personal service, and where the configuration of the boundaries had its 
influence, not only on the laying out of the lines, but also on the whole 
system of administration. It would not have been possible to secure 
certainty in the management if there had not been at hand a host of 
officers trained under military discipline, who, unqualified to act freely, 
knew well how to obey. An English engineer has described as the 
basis of the German service intelligent command and strict obedience. 
English management expects its subordinates to be intelligent enough 
to do the right thing without a special order. ‘ If we should charac- 


THE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR. 235 


terize ‘intelligent self-reliance’ as the genius of the English system, 
‘organized instruction’ of the French, and ‘skillful daring’ of the 
American, that of the German is unquestionably exact discipline.” - 

Herr von Weber brings out many other features in illustration of 
his theory, and, without assuming that he has made even an approach 
to exhausting the subject, summarizes his conclusions in the remark 
that “the railway system of every region having distinctly marked 
geographical characteristics appears to be a product of its physical 
structure, soil, and climate, just as its flora and fauna, except that 
man has stepped in as an intervening agent between the natural con- 
ditions and their product. At some future period, when railways shall 
have spread over the whole earth, account will be taken in the par- 
ticular adaptation of the new institutions of yet more widely differing 
and more distinctly marked geographical conditions, and the forms 
they assume will become so diversified that we shall be able to speak 
of the “ geography of railway-life as we now speak of the geography 
of the animal-world and of the plant-world.”—TZranslated for the 
Popular Science Monthly from Das Ausland... 


v 


4 


THE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR.* 
By HIS SON-IN-LAW. 


2. PASTEUR passed his childhood in a small tannery which 
his father had bought in the city of Arbois, in the department 
of the Jura, to which he removed from the ancient city of Ddle, in 
the same department, where he was born. When Louis became of 
suitable age, he was sent to the communal school, and was so proud 
of the fact that, though he was the smallest of the pupils, he went 
on the first day with his arms full of dictionaries away beyond his 
years. He does not appear, as yet, to have been a particularly dili- 
gent student. He was as likely to be found drawing a portrait 
or a sketch—and the walls of several Arboisian houses bear testi- 
monies of his skill in this art—as studying his lesson, and to go 
a-hunting or a-fishing as to take the direct way to the school. Yet 
the principal of the college was ready to predict that it was no small 
school like this one, but some great royal institution, that was destined 
to enjoy his services as a professor. As there was no Professor of 
Philosophy in the college at Arbois, young Pasteur went to Besangon 
to continue his studies. Here, in the chemistry-class, he so vexed 
Professor Darlay with his frequent and searching questions, that the 


* From a volume under this title, translated from the French by Lady Claude Hamil- 
ton. In press of D. Appleton & Co. The present article is translated and abridged di- 
rectly from the French by W. H. Larrabee. 


236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


old gentleman was disconcerted, and declared it was his business to © 
question the pupil, not Pasteur’s to question him, Pasteur then had 
recourse to a pharmacist in the town who had gained some distinction 
in science, and took private lessons in chemistry from him. He fared 
better at the Ecole Normale, where he had Balard for a teacher, and 
also enjoyed the instructions of Dumas, with whom he formed a life- 
long friendship at the Sorbonne. 3 

Pasteur’s first important investigation was suggested at about this 
time, by an observation of Mitscherlich, the German mineralogist, ‘of 
a difference in the behavior toward polarized light of the crystals of 
paratartrate of soda and ammonia and tartrate of soda and ammonia, 
bodies identical in composition and external form and other proper- 
ties. Pasteur discovered differences in the form of the crystals and 
the molecular structure of the two bodies that had escaped detection, 
and was led to consider that all things may be divided into two cate- 
gories : those having a plane of symmetry—that is, capable of being 
divided so that the parts on either side of the plane of division shall 
be equal and identical—or symmetrical bodies; and dissymmetrical 
bodies, or those not capable of being so divided. Occupied with the 
idea that symmetry or dissymmetry in the molecular arrangement 
of any chemical substance must be manifested in all its properties ca- 
pable of showing the quality, he pursued his investigations till he 
reached the conclusion that an essential difference in properties as to 
symmetry exists between mineral and dead matter and matter in 
which life is in course of development, the former being symmetrical, 
the latter unsymmetrical. 

Pasteur’s wedding-day came on while he was engaged in this in- 
vestigation. He went, not to the marriage-feast, but to his laboratory, 
and had to be sent for when all was ready. 

With his observing powers quickened by his studies of symmetry 
and dissymmetry, Pasteur went to the researches with which his life 
has been identified, beginning with his studies in fermentation. Lie- 
big’s theory, that fermentation is a change undergone by nitrogenous 
substances under the influence of the oxygen of the air, ruled at the 
time, and the observations of Schwann and Cagniard-Latour on the 
yeast-plant were overlooked or regarded as exceptional. M. Pasteur 
continued the investigation of the alcohol-producing yeast-plant, and, 
cultivating it in suitable solutions, proved that it possessed organiz- 
ing power ample to account for the phenomena. He found a similar 
organism—minute cells or articulations narrowly contracted in the 
middle—active in the lactic fermentation, capable of cultivation ; and 
another organism, a vibrion, full of motion, living singly or in chains, 
working in the butyric fermentation. 

The butyric vibrion was found to work quite as vigorously and with 
as much effect when no air was added to the decoctions, and in fact to 
perish with a stoppage of the formation of butyric acid when air was 


THE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR. 237 


too freely supplied. Reverting to the development of the yeast-plant 
and the alcoholic fermentation, he found that they also went on best 
when free air was excluded. Thus, Liebig’s dictum, that fermentation 
is the result of the action of oxygen, must be reversed or abandoned. 
The organisms working these processes were given the class-name of 
ancerobes, or beings that live without air. The French Academy’s 
impressions of the results of Pasteur’s work were spoken by Dumas, 
who said to him, “In the infinitely little of life you have discovered a 
third kingdom to which belong those beings which, with all the pre- 
rogatives of animal life, have no need of air to live, and find the heat 
they require in the chemical decompositions they provoke around 
them.” The place of the organisms in the economy of Nature had not 
yet been fixed, but Pasteur was able to declare : “ Whether the progress 
of science makes the vibrion a plant or an animal, is no matter ; it is 
a living being endowed with motion, that lives without air and is 
ferment.” It would be mere repetition to follow the experiments 
in putrefaction, where Liebig had denied that living organisms have 
any place, into which Pasteur carried the same methods and obtained 
the same results as in the case of fermentation. He proved that living 
organisms have all to do with it. 

After M. Pasteur had been collecting his proofs for twenty years, 
Dr. Bouillaud sharply asked in the Academy : “ How are your micro- 
scopic organisms disposed of ? What are the ferments of the fer- 
ments?” He, as well as Liebig, believed the question could not be 
answered. Pasteur proved, by a series of the parallel experiments of 
the kind that have since become familiar, that oxygen deprived of its 
germs is incapable of producing fermentation or putrefaction, even 
after years, while the same substances are acted upon at once if the 
germs are present ; and then answered that the ferments are destroyed 
by a new series of organisms—crodes—living in the air, and these by 
other erobes in succession, until the ultimate products are oxidized. 
‘Thus, in the destruction of what has lived, all is reduced to the 
simultaneous action of the three great natural phenomena—fermenta- 
tion, putrefaction, and slow combustion. A living being, animal or 
plant, or the débris of either, having just died, is exposed to the air. 
The life that has abandoned it is succeeded by life under other forms. 
In the superficial parts accessible to the air, the germs of the infinitely 
little erobes flourish and multiply. The carbon, hydrogen, and nitro- 
gen of the organic matter are transformed, by the oxygen of the air 
and under the vital activity of the srobes, into carbonic acid, the 
vapor of water, and ammonia. The combustion continues as long as 
organic matter and air are present together. At the same time the 
superficial combustion is going on, fermentation and putrefaction are 
performing their work, in the midst of the mass, by means of the de- 
veloped germs of the anzrobes, which not only do not need oxygen to 
live, but which oxygen causes to perish. Gradually the phenomena 


238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of destruction are at last accomplished through the work of latent 
fermentation and slow combustion. Whatever animal or vegetable 
matter is in the open air or under the ground, which is always more 
or less impregnated with air, finally disappears. The processes can be 
stopped only under an extremely low temperature, ... in which the 
microscopic organisms can not flourish. These facts come in to for- 
tify the still new ideas of the part which the infinitely little play as 
masters of the world. If their work, always latent, were suppressed, 
the surface of the globe, overloaded with organic matters, would be- 
come uninhabitable.” 

Pasteur extended his observations to the acetic fermentation, or 
conversion of alcohol into vinegar, in which he found an organism, the 
Mycoderma aceti, actively promoting a process of oxidation. Liebig 
had attributed this fermentation, also, to the presence of an albumi- 
noid body in process of alteration, and capable of fixing oxygen. He 
knew of the plant called “mother,” but regarded it as an outgrowth 
of the fermentation, and in no sense the cause. Pasteur proved, by 
experiments that left no room for doubt—the prominent characteristic 
feature in all his investigations—that the plant is the real agent in 
producing the fermentation. He eliminated from his compositions the 
albuminoid matter, which Liebig had declared to be the active agent, 

and replaced it with crystallizable salts, alkaline phosphates, and 

earths; then, having added alcoholized water, slightly acidulated with 
acetic acid, he saw the mycoderm develop, and the alcohol change into 
vinegar. Having tried his experiments in the vinegar-factories at Or- 
leans, he became so sure of his position that he offered to the Acad- 
emy, in one of its discussions, to cover with the mycoderm, within 
twenty-four hours, from a few hardly-visible sowings, a surface of 
vinous liquid as extensive as the hall in which they were meeting. 

Liebig allowed ten years to pass after Pasteur’s investigations, and 
then published a long memoir traversing his conclusions. Pasteur 
visited Liebig at Munich, in 1870, to discuss the matter with him. 
The German chemist received him courteously, but excused himself 
from the discussion, on the ground of a reeent illness. The Franco- 
German War came on; but, as soon as it was over, Pasteur invited 
Liebig to choose a committee of the Academy, and furnish a sugared 
mineral liqnid. He would produce in it, before them all, an alcoholic 
fermentation in such a way as to establish his own theory and contra- 
dict Liebig’s. Liebig had referred to the process of preparing vinegar 
by passing diluted alcohol through wooden chips, as one in which no 
trace of a mycoderm could be found, but in which the chips appeared 
perfectly clean after each operation. It was, in fact, impossible that 
there should be any mycoderm, because there was nothing on which it 
could be fed. Pasteur replied to this: “ You do not take account of 
the character of the water with which the alcohol is diluted. Like 
all common waters, even the purest, it contains ammoniacal salts and 


THE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR. 239 


mineral matters that can feed the plant, as I have directly demon- 
strated. -You have, moreover, not carefully examined the surface of 
the chips with the microscope. If you had, you would have seen the 
little articles of the Mycoderma aceti, sometimes joined into an ex- 
tremely thin pellicle that may be lifted off. If you will send me some 
chips from the factory at Munich, selected by yourself in the presence 
of its director, I will, after drying them quickly in a stove, show the 
mycoderm on their surface to a committee of the Academy charged 
with the determination of this debate.” Liebig did not accept the 
challenge, but the question involved has been decided. 

The experiments in fermentation led by natural steps to the debate 
on spontaneous generation, in which Pasteur was destined to settle 
a question that had interested men ever since they lived. The 
theory that life originates spontaneously from dead matter had strong 
advocates, among the most earnest of whom was M. Pouchet. He 
made a very clear presentment of the question at issue, saying: “The 
adversaries of spontaneous generation assume that the germs of micro- 
scopic beings exist in the air and are carried by it to considerable dis- 
tances. Well! what will they say if I succeed in producing a genera- 
tion of organized beings after an artificial air has been substituted for 
that of the atmosphere?” Then he proceeded with an experiment in 
which all his materials and vessels seemed to have been cleansed of all 
germs that might possibly have existed in them. In eight days 
a mold appeared in the infusion, which had been put boiling-hot into 
the boiling-hot medium. ‘Where did the mold come from,” asked M. 
Pouchet, triumphantly, “if it was not spontaneously developed ?” 
“Yes,” said M. Pasteur, in the presence of an enthusiastic audience, for — 
Paris had become greatly excited on the subject, “the experiment has 
been performed in an irreproachable manner as to all the points that 
have attracted the attention of the author ; but I will show that there 
is one cause of error that M. Pouchet has not perceived, that he has 
‘not thought of, and no one else has thought of, which makes his experi- 
ment wholly illusory. He used mercury in his tub, without purifying 
it, and I will show that that was capable of collecting dust from the 
air and introducing it tohis apparatus.” Then he let a beam of light 
into the darkened room, and showed the air full of floating dust. 
He showed that the mercury had been exposed to atmospheric dust 
ever since it came from the mine, and was so impregnated and covered 
with it as to be liable to soil everything with which it came in contact. 
He instituted experiments similar to those of M. Pouchet, but with all 
the causes of error that had escaped him removed, and no life appeared. 
The debate, which continued through many months, and was diversi- 
fied by a variety of experiments and counter-experiments, was marked 
by a number of dramatic passages and drew the attention of the world. 
M. Pasteur detected a flaw in every one of M. Pouchet’s successful ex- 
periments, and followed each one with a more exact experiment of his 


240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


own, which was a triumph for his position. Having shown, by means 
of bottles of air collected from different heights in a mountain-region, 
that the number of germs in the air diminishes with the elevation above 
the earth, and that air can be got free from germs and unproductive, 
M. Pasteur asserted decisively: “There is no circumstance now 
known that permits us to affirm that microscopic beings have come into 
the world without germs, without parents like themselves. Those who 
affirm it have been victims of illusions, of experiments badly made, and 
infected with errors which they have not been able to perceive or avoid. 
Spontaneous generation is a chimera.” M. Flourens, Perpetual Secre- 
tary of the Academy, said: “The experiments are decisive. To have 
animalcules, what is necessary, if spontaneous generation is real? Air 
and putrescible liquids, Now, M. Pasteur brings air and putrescible 
liquids together, and nothing comes of it. Spontaneous generation, 
then, isnot. To doubt still is not to comprehend the question.”’ There 
were, however, some who still doubted, and to satisfy them M. Pasteur 
offered, as a final test, to show that it was possible to secure, at 
any point, a bottle of air containing no germs, which would, conse- 
quently, give no life. The Academy’s committee approved the propo- 
sition ; but M. Pouchet and his friends pleaded for delay, and finally 
retired from the contest. 

The silk-raising industry of the south of France was threatened 
with ruin by a disease that was destroying the silk-worms, killing them 
in the egg, or at a later stage of growth. Eggs, free from the disease, 
were imported from other countries. The first brood flourished, but 
the next one usually fell victims to the infection, and the malady 
spread. All usual efforts to prevent it or detect its cause having failed, 
a commission was appointed to make special investigations, and M. 
Pasteur was asked to direct them personally. He did not wish to un- 
dertake the work, because it would withdraw him from his studies of 
the ferments. He, moreover, had never had anything to do with silk- 
worms. ‘So much the better,” said Dumas. ‘ You know nothing about 
the matter, and have no ideas to interfere with those which your obser- 
vations will suggest.” Theories were abundant, but the most recent 
and best authorities agreed that the diseased worms were beset by cor- 
puscles, visible only under the microscope. He began his investigations 
with the idea that these corpuscles were connected with the disease, 
although assurances were not wanting that they also existed in a normal 
condition of the silk-worm. M. Pasteur’s wife and daughters, and his 
assistants in the normal school, associated themselves with him in the 
studies, and became, for the time, amateur silk-raisers. He studied 
the worms in every condition, and the corpuscles in every relation, for 
five years. He found that there were two diseases—the contagious, 
deadly pébrine, the work of the corpuscles, and jflachery, produced by 
an internal organism ; and “became so well acquainted with the causes 
of the trouble and their different manifestations that he could, at will, 


THE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR. 241 


give pébrine or flachery. He became able to graduate the intensity of 
the disease, and-make it appear at any day and almost at any hour.” 
He found the means of preventing the disorders, and “restored -its 
wealth to the desolated silk district.” The cost of this precious result 
was a paralysis of the left side, from which he has never fully 
recovered. 7 

As early as 1860 M. Pasteur expressed the hope that he might “ be 
able to pursue his investigations far enough to prepare the way for a 
more profound study of the origin of diseases.” Reviewing, at the 
conclusion of his “‘ Studies on Beer,” the principles which had directed 
his labors for twenty years, he wrote that the etiology of contagious 
diseases was, perhaps, on the eve of receiving an unexpected light. 
Robert Boyle had said that thorough understanding of the nature 
of fermentations and ferments might give the key to the explanation 
of many morbid phenomena. The German doctor, Traube, had in 1864 
explained the ammoniacal fermentation of urine, by reference to 
Pasteur’s theory. The English surgeon, Dr. Lister, wrote in 1874 to 
Pasteur that he owed to him the idea of the antiseptic treatment of 
wounds which he had been practicing since 1865. Professor Tyn- 
dall wrote to him, in 1876, after having read his investigations for the 
second time: “For the first time in the history of science we have 
a right to entertain the sure and certain hope that, as to epidemic dis- 
eases, medicine will shortly be delivered from empiricism and placed 
upon a really scientific basis. When that great day shall come, man- 
kind will, in my opinion, recognize that it is to you that the greatest part 
of its gratitude is due.” 

The domestic animals of France and other countries had been sub- 
ject to a carbuncular disease, like the malignant pustule of man, which 
took different forms and had different names in different species, but 
was evidently the same in nature. A medical commission had, be- 
tween 1849 and 1852, made an investigation of it and found it trans- 
missible by inoculation from animal to animal. Drs. Davaine and 
Rayer had, at the same time, found in the blood of the diseased ani- 
mals minute filiform bodies, to which they paid no further attention for 
thirteen years, or till after Pasteur’s observations on fermentation had 
been widely spread. Then, Davaine concluded that these corpuscles 
were the source of the disease. He was contradicted by MM. Jaillard 
and Leplat, who had inoculated various animals with matter procured 
from sheep and cows that had died of the disease without obtaining. a 
development of the bodies in question. Davaine suggested that they 
had used the wrong matter, but they replied that they had obtained it 
direct from an unmistakable source. Their views were supported by 
the German Dr. Koch and M. Paul Bert. At this point, M. Pasteur 
stepped in and began experiments after methods which had served him 
as sure guides in his studies of twenty years. They were at once 


simple and delicate. “ Did he wish, for example, to demonstrate that 
VOL, Xxv.—16 


242 - THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the microbe-ferment of the butyric fermentation was also the agent in 
decomposition? He would prepare an artificial liquid, consisting of 
phosphate of potash, magnesia, and sulphate of ammonia, added to 
the solution of fermentable matter, and in the medium thus formed 
would develop the microbe-ferment from a pure sowing of it. The 
microbe would multiply and provoke fermentation. From this liquid 
he would pass to a second and then to athird fermentable solution of 
the same composition, and so on, and would find the butyric fermenta- 
tion appearing in each successively. This method had been sovereign 
in his studies since 1857. He now proposed to isolate the microbe of 
blood infected with carbuncle, cultivate it in a pure state, and study 
its action on animals.” As he was still suffering from a partial paraly- 
sis, he employed M. Joubert to assist him and share his honors. In 
April, 1877, he claimed before the Academy of Sciences that he had 
demonstrated, beyond the possibility of a reply, that the bacillus dis- 
covered by Davaine and Rayer in 1850 was in fact the only agent in 
producing the disease. It still remained to reconcile the facts ad- 
duced by Messrs. Jaillard and Leplat with this assertion. The ani- 
mals which they had inoculated died, but no bacteria could be found 
in them. M. Paul Bert, in similar experiments, had found a disease 
to persist after all bacteria had been destroyed. An explanation of 
the discrepancy was soon found. 

The bacteria of carbuncle are destroyed as soon as putrefaction 
sets in. The virus with which these gentlemen had experimented was 
taken from animals that had been dead twenty-four hours and had 
begun to putrefy. They had inoculated with putrefaction, and pro- 
duced septicemia instead of carbuncle. All the steps in this line of 
argument were established by irrefragable proof. M. Pasteur after- 
ward had a similar controversy with some physicians of Turin, at the 
end of which they shrank from the test experiment he offered to go 
and make before them. ‘ Remember,” shortly afterward said a mem- 
ber of the Academy of Sciences to a member of the Academy of Medi- 
cine, who was going—in a scientific sense—to “choke” M. Pasteur, 
**M. Pasteur is never mistaken.” : 

Having discovered and cultivated the microbe that produces hen- 
cholera, Pasteur turned his attention to the inquiry whether it would 
be possible to apply a vaccination to the prevention of these terrible 
diseases of domestic animals. He found that he could transplant the 
microbe of hen-cholera to an artificially prepared medium and culti- 
vate it there, and transplant it and cultivate it again and again, to the 
hundredth or even the thousandth time, and it would retain its full 
strength—provided too long an interval was not allowed to elapse 
between the successive transplantations and cultures. But if several 
days or weeks or months passed without a renewal of the medium, 
the culture being all the time exposed to the action of oxygen, the in- 
fection gradually lost in intensity. A virus was produced of a strength 


THE LIFE-WORK OF PASTEUR. 243 


that would make sick, but not kill. Hens were inoculated with this, 
and then, after having recovered from its effects, with virus of full 
power. It made them sick, but they recovered. A preventive of hen- 
cholera had been found. In the experiments upon the feasibility of 
applying a similar remedy to carbuncular diseases, it was necessary 
to ascertain whether or not animals, which had once been stricken 
with the disease, were exempt from liability to a second attack. The 
investigator was met at once by the formidable difficulty that no ani- 
mals were known to have recovered from a first attack, to serve as sub- 
jects for trial. A fortunate accident in the failure of another investi- 
gator’s experiment gave M. Pasteur a few cows that had survived the 
disease. ‘They were inoculated with virus of the strongest intensity, 
and were not affected. It was demonstrated, then, that the disease 
would not return. M. Pasteur now cultivated an attenuated carbuncle- 
virus, and, having satisfied himself that vaccination with it was effect- 
ive, declared himself ready for a public test-experiment. Announcing 
his success to his friends, he exclaimed in patriotic self-forgetfulness, 
“‘T should never have been able to console myself, if such a discovery 
as I and my assistants have just made had not been a French discov- 
ery ! 9 

Twenty-four sheep, a goat, and six cows were vaccinated, while 
twenty-five sheep and four cows were held in reserve, unvaccinated, 
for further experiment. After time had been given for the vaccination 
to produce its effect, all of the animals, sixty in number, were inocu- 
lated with undiluted virus. Forty-eight hours afterward, more than 
two hundred persons met in the pasture to witness the effect. Twenty- 
one of the unvaccinated sheep and the goat were dead, and two more 
of the sheep were dying, while the last one died the same evening ; 
the unvaccinated cows were suffering severely from fever and cedema. 
The vaccinated sheep were all well and lively, and the vaccinated 
cows had neither tumor nor fever of any kind, and were feeding 
quietly. Vaccination is now employed regularly in French pastures ; 
five hundred thousand cases of its application had been registered at 
the end of 1883; and the mortality from carbuncle has been reduced 
ten times. 

There is no need to follow M. Pasteur in his further researches in 
the rouget of pork, in boils, in puerperal fever, in all of which, with 
other maladies, he has applied the same methods with the same exact- 
ness that have characterized all his work. His laboratory at the Ecole 
Normale is a collection of animals to be experimented upon—mice, 
rabbits, Guinea-pigs, pigeons, and other suitable subjects, with the dogs 
upon which he is now studying hydrophobia most prominent. There 
is nothing cruel in-his work. His inoculations are painless, except as 
the sickness they induce is a pain, and the suffering they cause is as 
nothing compared with that which they are destined to save. On this 
subject he himself has remarked in one of his lectures : “I could never 


244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


have courage to kill a bird in hunting ; but, in making experiments, 
I have no such scruples, Science has aright to invoke the sovereignty 
of the end.” 

What he has done, M. Pasteur regards as only the beginning of 
what is to be accomplished in the same line, ‘ You will see,” he has 
sometimes said, “how this will grow as it goes on. Oh, if I only 


had time! ” 
—+0—_____- 


CLEAN DRINKING—-WATER. 


By EDWIN J. HOWE, M. D. 


MONG the. subjects that claim the study of the sanitarian, 

there is none that has a closer relation to public health, and 
hence none more worthy of careful investigation, than the water we 
drink. - Receiving it, as we do, from varied sources—from spring, 
well, brook, or river—its character varies greatly ; and, while in its 
purity bringing with it refreshment and health, in a polluted condi- 
tion it too often carries in its wake disease and death. 

The study of sanitary science during the last few years has demon- 
strated beyond a doubt that many severe epidemics have arisen from 
the use of impure water, as the reading of Witthaus, Parkes, Buck, 
‘Flint, Pavy, or other writers on the subject, will clearly prove. 

_ When we remember that water has greater solvent properties than 
any other liquid known, we can readily understand how it often be- 
comes such a disease-spreading medium. JBesides carrying with it 
vegetable and organic impurities in suspension, it dissolves many of 
those that are the most subtile and dangerous to the human organ- 
ism. The dangers of drinking impure water may best be presented in 
a few quotations from well-known authorities. 

Pavy, in “Food and Dietetics,” says: ‘“ Water has much to an- 
swer for in the causation of disease... . It” (polluted water) “is 
acknowledged to be one of the common causes of dysentery, and has 
been alleged, when derived from a marshy district, to be capable of 
inducing malarial fever and its concomitant, enlargement of the spleen. 
. . . Typhoid has been frequently communicated through the medium 
of water. Milk, adulterated with polluted water, has been the cause 
of serious outbreaks of fever.” Parkes, in his ‘‘ Manual of Practical 
Hygiene,” shows that the baneful effects of polluted water were known 
to the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates, who was born 460 B. c., asserts, 
“The spleens of those who drink the water of marshes become enlarged 
and hard.” Parkes considers typhoid, cholera, scarlet fever, and diph- 
theria, and some forms of skin-disease, “likely to be propagated by 
means of water.” } 

Polluted water that has been frozen, though improved by the 
freezing, does not become innocuous. “Ice and snow may be the 


CLEAN DRINKING-WATER. 245 


means of conveying malarial poisons to places at a distance,” by dis- 
tributing organic matter held in suspension. Dr. Edwards, of Mont- 
real, found two grains of organic matter to the gallon of melted 
shore-ice, and one grain to the gallon of river-ice. One writer, Pavy, 
says, “ River water and the water of shallow wells should always be 
regarded with suspicion,” and he adds, “There is evidence to show 
’ that the most serious consequences have arisen from the consumption 
of impure water.” Buck, in “ Hygiene and Public Health,” says, 
“The weight of evidence and authority favors the idea that the drink- 
ing-water may become the cause of disease, and in drinking a polluted 
water one always runs more or less risk.” 'The River Pollution Com- 
mission of London, after analyzing water from different sources, re- 
ported dangerous “river-water to which sewage gains access.” 

The conclusion from the above quotations is, not that one should 
abstain from drinking water on account of the difficulty in obtaining 
it pure, but that proper precautions should be observed to obtain it 
pure. Wateris Nature’s means of slaking thirst, and with its refresh- 
ing properties combines valuable therapeutic qualities. 

An excellent article, published in the “ Boston Journal of Chem- 
istry,” in treating of the curative value of water says : “ We notice the 
salutary influence of water-drinking upon many of those who resort to 
the so-called mineral springs which abound in the country. It is not 
necessary that these springs should hold abnormal quantities of salts 
of any kind to effect cures ; it is only necessary that the water should 
be pure. Ordinary springs, such as are found in every farmer’s past- 
ure, are curative springs if the waters are used freely by those who 
suffer from certain gastric or renal difficulties.” This writer asserts 
that the best known of our Eastern mineral waters shows, on analysis, 
that its curative value consists solely in its purity. 

It may be truthfully asserted that it is impossible to procure per- 
fectly pure water. “Even distilled water and fresh rain-water contain 
some ammonia, carbonic acid, and other matters which detract from their 
purity ; while the best water from rivers, wells, ponds, and tanks, con- 
tains a large number of chemical compounds, chiefly salts.” The skill- 
ful use of the microscope would condemn the water from many sources 
for drinking purposes which now is considered pure. But while we 
can not obtain strictly pure water, even by distillation, we can obtain 
it so pure that it will meet our demands, and that without danger to 
the consumer’s health. The means by which this may be accomplished 
is filtration. 

A filter is'an apparatus for separating from fluids the foreign sub- 
stances mechanically intermixed with them and held in suspension. 
While this is all that most filters aim to accomplish, yet experiments 
show that a filtering material may be used which very markedly di- 
minishes the foreign bodies usually held in solution in water, and also 
removes those held in suspension. 


246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


The devices that have been used and are now employed for filtering 
purposes are very numerous, Tracing their history from the old Hip- 
pocratic sleeve, which was a cone-shaped bag of cotton or wool, we. 
find, among others, the following materials: Thick unsized paper ; 
cloth of various texture ; sand ; asbestus ; animal charcoal ; vegetable 
charcoal ; felt ; porous stones of various kinds ; spongy iron ; porous 
earthenware ; perforated metallic disks ; sponge; carferal, a composi- 
tion consisting of a mixture of charcoal, iron, and clay ; silicated car- 
bon ; ground slag, or compounds of two or more of these substances 
mentioned. 

The essentials of a good filter for domestic purposes are—l. Effi- 
ciency in removing foreign bodies held in suspension. 2. Chemical 
power to destroy animal and vegetable impurities in solution or to 
convert them into innocuous substances. 3. Freedom from all possi- 
bility of tainting the water. 4. Simplicity of construction, so as to 
admit of the filtering material being readily renewed. 5, Cheapness. 
A good filter for domestic purposes must possess all five of these quali- 
ties. Those that have two or three of them and lack the remainder 
do not practically solve the problem of giving us clean water to 
drink. 

The Japanese use a porous sandstone hollowed in the shape of an 
egg, through which the water percolates into a receptacle underneath ; 
the Egyptians resort to a similar device; the Spaniards use a porous 
earthen pot. But these and other similar contrivances can not be thor- 
oughly cleansed; after the most thorough rinsing, some impurities 
will remain in the pores of the stone. Spongy iron and carferal are 
open to the same objection ; they will answer well for a short time, 
but soon become contaminated by pollution retained in their pores. 
Sponge, cloth, and felt, unless cleaned every day or two with hot 
water, will do more harm than good, and the average servant-girl will 
not clean them or any other filter unless under the eye of her mistress. 

The various forms of filters that are screwed to the faucet have 
only to be hastily examined to be discarded, as there is not sufficient 
filtering material in them to be of much utility, and they very soon 
become foul and offensive. Buck says, “ There is no material known 
which can be introduced into the small space of a tap-filter and accom- 
plish any real purification of the water which passes through at the 
ordinary rate of flow.” 

The various complicated closed filters, filled with any material 
which can not be removed for cleansing, condemn themselves. No 
amount of pumping water through them at different angles, which is 
at all likely to be used, can cleanse them of the impurities that adhere 
to the mass and in the pores of the filtering material used. Parkes, in 
his “ Manual of Practical Hygiene,” says, ‘“ Filters, where the material 
is cemented up and can not be removed, ought to be abandoned 
altogether.” 


CLEAN DRINKING-WATER. “267 


The various metal filters in which the water comes in contact with 
metallic surfaces, either iron, lead, tinned iron, or zinc, are objectionable 
from their appreciable influence upon the water retained in them for 
any considerable time. Pure block-tin is the least objectionable of 
any of the metals. 

The aim of most filters is to remove impurities from the water 
speedily—as rapidly as it escapes from the faucet. Experiment shows 
that effective filtration can not be accomplished in this way, as the 
water does not remain long enough in contact with the filtering ma- 
terial used to become purified of much that might be removed by slow 
filtration or percolation through the same appliance. Of all the fil- 

tering materials mentioned, it seems to me that sand and charcoal are 
the two that accomplish the best results, and of these —- char- 
coal is the best. 

Clean quartz sand will retard the passage of some impurities held 
in suspension, but no very careful investigation is necessary to demon- 
strate the presence of many impurities in water that has passed through 
it. The naked eye can detect them in most samples. Buck states, “ The 
spores of alge are not removed by the passage of water through sand,” 
and he adds that “clean quartz sand can produce little effect” on pol- 
luted water. But he and many if not all other sanitarians assert that 
charcoal does purify the water and remove the odor of putrefaction. 
While there is no lack of authority to prove the value of animal char- 
coal as a filtering material, the claims of vegetable charcoal seem to 
me to make it more serviceable. Vegetable charcoal is “the solid re- 
siduum of the destructive distillation of wood.” It is insipid and inodor- 
ous, it is insoluble in water, it is but little affected by either acids or — 
alkalies. The ash consists chiefly of carbonate of potash, silica, lime, 
and the oxide of iron. Vegetable charcoal has a strong deodorizing 
power. Water containing sulphureted hydrogen speedily loses its 
odor when filtered through it. The taste of liquids, when dependent 
on the presence of certain organic substances, is almost or entirely 
removed by filtering through it. “The purifying, antiseptic power 
of charcoal is due to the action of its absorbed oxygen upon organic 
matter.” A careful authority says: ‘Charcoal, by possessing the 
properties of absorption, decomposition, and combination, is eminently 
fitted as a filter for the purification of water, removing from it the 
color, odor and taste of its impurities by oxidizing and recombining 
them into other and inoffensive substances.” A reference to chemistry 
shows us that the following gases are absorbed by charcoal : Hydro- 
gen, nitrogen, carbonic oxide, marsh-gas, nitrous oxide, carbonic acid, 
olefiant gas, sulphurous acid, air, sulphureted hydrogen, muriatic acid, 
hydrochloric acid, and ammonia. 

Witthaus, in his “General Medical Chemistry,” says on this sub- 
ject : “Its” [vegetable charcoal’s] “ power of absorbing odorous bodies 
renders it valuable as a disinfecting and filtering agent,and in the 


248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


prevention of putrefaction and fermentation of certain liquids. It is 
with this view that the interiors of barrels intended to hold wine, beer, 
or water, are carbonized. Certain odorous culinary operations are ren- 
dered inodorous by the introduction of a fragment of charcoal into 
the pot. The efficacy of charcoal as a filtering material is due ina 
great measure to the oxidizing action of the oxygen contained in its 
pores.” : 

In the article on vegetable charcoal in the “ National Dispensatory,” 
the writer says: “The most fetid gases disengaged by putrefaction 
are among those which are the most abundantly absorbed by charcoal, 
viz., ammonia, sulphureted hydrogen, and sulphurous acid, and the 
oxygen contained in the charcoal combines with the other deleterious 
substances and generates new and inodorous compounds.” Buck says, 
“¢ All varieties of carbon formed by the destructive distillation of vege- 
table or animal matter possess the property of removing organic matter 
from solution.” Fowne’s “ Chemistry” says of charcoal, ‘‘It is said to 
absorb ninety times its volume of ammonical gas.” But sufficient author- 
ities have been quoted to prove the high estimate in which vegetable 
charcoal is held as a filtering material by chemists and sanitarians. 
Careful experimenting with it has satisfied me of its efficacy and prac- 
ticability. It is efficient, clean, easily obtained by any one, and so 
cheap that after a few weeks’ use it can be thrown away, and a clean 
supply substituted, and the cost need not be taken into consideration. 
Animal charcoal possesses valuable filtering properties, but it is very 
expensive, difficult to be obtained, and is so associated in the minds of 
the people with dead horses and the bone-yard that a strong prejudice 
exists against it. I have thus tried to show in this paper—1l. That 
clean drinking-water is essential to health. 2. Some of the well-estab- 
lished results of drinking polluted water. 3. The various filtering ma- 
terials that have been used, with their merits and objections. 4. The 
superiority and availability of vegetable charcoal as a filtering mate- 
rial. 

In conclusion, in answering the question, “‘ How, then, may we obtain 
clean drinking-water?” I would answer, by filtering the water slowly 
through properly adjusted vegetable charcoal placed in an earthen re- 
ceptacle of some kind so that the water will not come in contact at 
any stage of its passage through the filter with metal of any kind. 
Cool the filtered water by placing ice under or around the vessel in 
which the water is contained, but do not put the ice into the water, 
or its impurities will be liberated by melting and contaminate it. Act- 
ing on these suggestions, I believe clean drinking-water may be ob- 
tained in any family, and, with clean water, less sickness. 


PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 249 


“PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 
By WALTER HAYLE WALSHE, M. D. 


“The laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of Philosophy; and whoso has not 
offered sacrifices and undergone purification there, has little chance of admission into the 
sanctuary.” —Hux ey, “Life of Hume.” 

“Tt was the glory of Hippocrates to have brought Philosophy into Medicine, and 
Medicine into Philosophy.”—Avcror (?). 
“ Attendre et espérer ” (To wait and hope).—Dumas, “ Monte Cristo.” 


EW physiologists, mixing in general society, can have failed to 
notice how common it is to hear their psychological brethren (if 
referred to at all) stigmatized as atheists; and this alike in coteries 
distinguished for pugnacious religious dogmatism, and in social circles 
where indifferentism marks the prevailing tone of thought. The acri- 
mony with which the charge is made apparently increases, on the one 
hand, in the direct ratio of the bigotry or religious fervor, and, on the 
other, in the inverse ratio of the scientific enlightenment of different 
speakers. Furthermore, in certain cliques a shrewd suspicion seems to 
have arisen that, as any whole includes its parts, physiology in general 
(nay, even medical science at large) is chargeable with the delinquen- 
cies of its cerebral department, and is hence condemned by these judges 
as a representative in its entirety of atheistic proclivity and purpose. 
An illustration in point may be found in the columns of the leading 
daily journal, wherein the reviewer of the volumes of Bain, Bastian, 
and Luys on Mind, Body, and Brain, “need scarcely say that in all 
three works the physiological (some would say materialistic) aspects 
of the subject are strongly insisted upon.”* No doubt some would 
say so, and thence at a bound jump to the conclusion (a foregone one 
with all who use the word “materialist” in an adverse sense) that all 
these authors are “atheists.” In point of fact, the masses are hardly 
wiser in their estimate of medical belief than two centuries ago, when 
lay smartness and ignorance combined had fashioned the libelous 
apothegm, “ U bi tres medici, ibi duo athei” + (where three doctors are, 
there are two atheists). 

Now, metaphysical psychologists, though inquiring as boldly from 
their point of view into the genesis of mind, have contrariwise, with 
rarest exceptions, escaped and continued to escape this form of social 
obloquy. Whence comes this diversity of judgment? Are physiolo- 
gists thus penalized because they have shown that a certain definite, 
if subordinate, part is played by physics and chemistry in the complex 
_ act of evolving thought, and because they have thus, at least partially, 
succeeded in wrenching this branch of philosophy from the nerveless 
grasp of the pure introspectionist ? Has the success of cerebral physi- 


* The “ Times,” January 19, 1883. + Browne, “ Religio Medici.” 


250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ology in the surface-penetration of some of the secrets of thought-pro- 
duction led to its condemnation? Should those secrets, in obedience 
to theological casuistry, be allowed to linger on in primitive obscurity, 
as though the earnest use of our divinest gift, intellect, were not the 
most fitting and the most grateful form of homage to the all-bounteous 
Giver? If our science toils on in humble but trusting hope to fathom 
on material lines the mechanism of our mental operations, is its pur- 
suit antagonistic to belief in an Almighty First Cause?* Is there 
really any fair ground for the inference, that because physiology 
strives to trace out and interpret the conditions of the connection be- 
tween brain-substance and mind—ergo, those who labor in its field are 
of necessity atheists? The inquiries seem to deserve an answer. Let 
us, then, see to what the teachings of physiology in this direction really 
amount. Let us try to determine whether (conflicting though they 
may prove with the postulates of various narrow and sectarian systems 
of theology) those teachings really antagonize any formal or essential 
principle of deistic faith, whether, though confessedly open to the 
charge of “heresy” (that charge so dear to sacerdotalism),+ they do 
not escape even the suspicion of that treason against nature, atheism ? { 

We must prelude the inquiry into the direct work of physiology 
by a very rapid glance at the notions advanced by metaphysicians and 
theologians on the nature of mind and generation of thought. Our 
task throughout will be merely one of historical and very occasionally 
critical review. We lay no claim to originality of doctrine, but shall 
merely attempt in simple fashion to popularize knowledge, which, 
alike from its nature and from the manner of its handling, has been 
essentially limited to the few. 

1. Now, metaphysicians (they who profess their ability to formu- 
late an a priori theory of the ultimate elements of knowledge and 
nature of things) have held, as a class, that the act of thinking is in 


* Blaise Pascal (1623-’62), philosopher of no mean grasp and honesty though he was, 
strove to dissuade his generation from following out the Copernican system to its issues 
because it maintained the heretical doctrine of the movement of the earth. Pascal would 
not have merited censure for hesitating to accept the Copernican system had he argued 
on supposed philosophic grounds (Milton died uncertain which to accept, the doctrine of 
Ptolemy or Copernicus); his grave error consists in having preferred theological dogma 
to that which he felt to be truth. 

+ “Heresy,” aptly styled by Lanfrey, “ Cette éternelle protestation de la liberté de 
Yesprit humain contre les doctrines infaillibles” (That eternal protest of liberty of the 
human mind against infallible doctrines), ‘Histoire Politique des Papes,” p. 70: Ed. 
Charpentier. 

+ Atheist and atheism are words constantly used in total ignorance of their real mean- 
ing. An angry religionist, being asked for his definition of the term atheist, unhesitat- 
ingly replied, ‘I call any man an atheist who does not go to my church, or some one 
like it.” Strong in sectarian conviction, but weak in classical attainment, my friend evi- 
dently had, like one greater than he, ‘‘ small Latin and less Greek,” and knew as little of 
etymology as he felt of toleration for any creed but his own. But was he not (setting 
aside the question of verbal roots) a fair specimen of a large class ? 


PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 251 


all its stages and-all its factors a non-material process. And it does 
not involve any serious error to maintain that the formula under which 
this doctrine obtained the widest acceptance by philosophy, while it 
best satisfied the craving of ordinary people for some insight into the 
nature of their mental operations, originated with Descartes. And 
this philosopher’s well-known formula assumed : there exists a spirit- 
ual, non-extended, indivisible substance, an objective, immortal entity, 
superadded to and independent of brain, which thinks, feels, and wills 
—a substance cognizable by self-consciousness alone, and which is in 
fact the “thinking principle” or proper “soul.” Mind thus becomes 
absolutely and wholly an extra-cerebral product, and the possible 
offspring of activity on the part of the “soul” alone. The purely 
hypothetical character of this doctrine, the feeble, in some sense half- 
hearted, support given it by its originator, its incompatibility with 
every-day experiences of cerebral disease, and its proving a hopeless 
puzzle to cultured people, at once endowed with the critical faculty 
and unbiased by prejudice, all alike failed to shake its supremacy, and 
for long years it held sway, not as a makeshift, provisional, mere scho- 
lastic formula, but as an established primary truth. And all this, 
though Descartes himself, in the following words, honestly avowed his 
disbelief in the surety of his own doctrine: ‘‘ Je confesse,” he writes, 
“que par la seule raison naturelle nous pouvons faire beaucoup de 
conjectures sur Ame et avoir de flatteuses espérances, mais non pas 
aucune assurance”* (I confess that by natural reason we can make 
many conjectures about the soul, and have flattering hopes, but no 
assurance). 

Meanwhile, as mind was thus made a product of the soul, the ques- 
tion at once arose by necessary involution, What in turn was the soul ? 
Now, in all probability, no more startling chapter figures in the his- 
tory of philosophy than that chronicling the varied efforts made at 
furnishing a sufficing reply to this query. From the days of Plato to 
our own, metaphysicians seem to have lost themselves in a maze of 
conjectures, too often, unfortunately, no less dogmatic in tone than 
vague and unsatisfactory in essence. Yet be their failures, while un- 
flinchingly registered, freely forgiven ; the obscurity of the problem to 
be solved, coupled with the imperfection of the instrument selected 
for its solution, has ever proved an obstacle to success, even when that 
instrument has been handled by the deepest thinkers and most devoted 
searchers after truth. 

Thus, setting aside the profanum vulgus of illogical and inaccurate 
writers, with whom the word is but a word, carrying with it no ink- 
ling even of definite signification, we find that with some philosophers 


* In explanation of his doubtingness, we must remember Descartes was not merely a 
metaphysician—he was likewise a physicist of high distinction. The positive tendencies 
fostered by physical objective study served to counterbalance within certain limits the 
subjective transcendental activity of his grand intellect. 


252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the soul is a local, with others a universal, existence ; by some limited 
to man, by others conceded to the lower animals ; with certain thinkers 
an essence, with others a substance, with a third group a principle ; 
with some an immaterial essence without form or extension, with 
others immaterial, yet possessed of these attributes of matter; with 
the majority a simple, with the minority a compound, existence, and 
with a small fraction of the latter a tripartite body, of which each 
division is again subdivided into three; with this sect a something 
contained in the body, with that a something containing it ; with Aris- 
totle an equivalent of “all the functions, sentient and nutritive, of 
living bodies up to the highest attributes of intellect,” the “rational 
soul” being especially seated in the heart ;* with the Neo-Platonists 
an “image or product of reason,” producing in turn the corporeal ; 
with Descartes the “ spiritual substance,” or “‘ principle” just referred 
to, provided with a habitat in the pineal gland, a home exchanged by 
others for the ventricles, the corpora striata, the white substance of 
the hemispheres, their cortex, the plexus choroides, the dura mater, the 
heart, and the blood; with Locke a spiritual essence or a material 
substance—he could not “fixedly determine” which; with certain phi- 
losophers a something pre-existent from all time, with others evolved 
pari passu with the organism it inhabits ; in the opinion of one group 
of school-men perishing with the associated body, in that of a second 
wholly immortal, in that of a third mortal in the main, but in one of 
its parts immortal. Further, philosophers who maintained each soul 
was formed specially for its own individual organism, varied in all 
conceivable ways as to the time and place of union of the two, while 
the parallel difficulty followed in settling the precise moment of so- 
matic death at which separation of the two must occur.t 

The vast majority of these speculators recoiled from the pre- 


* Prochaska, ‘“ Nervous System,” quoted by Bastian, “The Brain as an Organ of 
Mind,” p. 511. On the contrary, according to the shrewder insight of one of the most 
far-seeing of physiologists, Xavier Bichat, the heart, or its vicinity, holds relationship 
to the passions, the head to intellectual phenomena. “ L’acteur,” he says, ‘qui ferait 
une équivoque 4 cet égard, qui, en parlant de chagrins rapporterait les gestes a la 
téte, ou les concentrerait sur le coeur pour annoncer un effort de génie se couvrirait 
d’un ridicule, que nous sentirions mieux encore que nous le comprendrions” (The 
actor who should make a mistake in this matter, who, speaking of his griefs, should 
refer his gestures to his head, and who should concentrate them upon his heart in 
announcing an intellectual effort, would cover himself with a ridicule that we can feel 
better than we can comprehend).—‘ Vie et Mort,” p. 42, Paris, 18138. 

+ Singularly enough, this speculative difficulty has occasionally proved the source of 
specific practical inconvenience. Thus ‘ Turkish graves are very shallow, sometimes not 
more than a foot in depth, the reason for this being that most old-fashioned Turks still 
retain the superstition that the soul does not leave the body until some time after burial, 
when it is drawn from the grave by the angel of death, who would find great difficulty 
in performing his task if the body was too deeply buried. The consequence of this is 
that in warm weather a horrible stench arises from the cemeteries,”"—“‘ God’s Acre Beau- 
tiful,” by W. Robinson, F. L.8, p. 117. 


PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 253 


sumptuous task of attempting to define the actual composition of the 
soul, a few only of the most wildly transcendental satisfying them- 
‘selves that it consisted of “a drop of ether,” of a “ globule or spark of 
heat or light,” of an “animated vapor,” etc. 

Not more widely divergent than the metaphysical notions of the 
nature of soul were the doctrines held as to the manner of intercourse 
between the soul and the body, the school of Aristotle holding that all 
objects enter into the soul by influx through the senses ; the Carte- 
sians, per contra, maintaining that it is the soul that sees and hears, 
that perception is a primary faculty, not of an organ, but of the soul ; 
while Leibnitz and his followers, denying alike the imagined influx 
from the body into the soul, and from the soul into the body, maintain 
the existence of a joint consent and coeval operation of both under. 
the influence of a so-called pre-established harmony. 

Passing from the earlier metaphysical speculators to Kant (1724- 
1804), we find once more in the history of human struggles after truth 
how much easier it is to destroy than to construct. In the firm ana- 
lytical grasp of that extraordinary thinker (“the most tremendous 
disintegrating force of modern times”) the past fallacies concerning 
the nature of the soul had scant chance of merey—the past short-com- 
ings as little of escaping exposure. Ancient philosophic creeds crum- 
bled to dust before him. But did he raise any edifice of practical 
significance on their ruins? Did he identify the soul? Where are 
they who can fancy that they are the wiser—that they have made a 
nearer approach to such identification—by accepting his quasi-mystic 
reveries on the “ego which exists beneath or rather outside conscious- 
hess, . . . 2 noumenon,* an indescribable something, safely located 
out of space and time, as such not subject to the mutabilities of these 
phenomenal spheres, . . . and of whos eontologic existence we are made 
aware by its phenomenal projections or effects in consciousness.” + 
The first clauses of this definition seem pure assumption, soaring aloft 
beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals; the latter (granting 
the premises of the so-called “noumenon’”) seems a mystified version 
of a necessary inference. Even Kant himself admits the total con- 
cept to be incapable of scientific proof; and of any other form of 
alleged proof—the so-called transcendental—what is the practical 


* The “noumenon” is an “ intelligible object—that is, one which, if it is to be cog- 
nized at all, must be so in and through the understanding without any senswous medium” 
(Kant’s “ Prolegomena,” translated by Bax, p. Ixxxvii). This “ Ding an sich,” “ thing in 
itself,” or “noumenon,” is held to be the antithesis of the sensuous phenomenon, but 
the actual relationship of the two was to Kant himself, has been to his disciples, and will 
presumably prove to the end of time to his successors, the great stumbling-block in the 
way of thinking out Kant’s whole system. 

+ Quoted by Graham, “Creed of Science,” pp. 153, 154. Kant, again, sometimes 
uses the phrase “ the thinking self,” as synonymous with soul; and speaks of the “doc- 
trine of body and the doctrine of soul—the first dealing with extended, and the second 
with thinking, Nature.” 


254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


weight? Such “proof,” inasmuch as it transcends experience, can 
never advance beyond the unreality of subjective formulation, can 
never attain the reality appertaining to objective demonstration. Nay, 
Kant admits more than this: he grants nothing can really be proved 
by metaphysics concerning the attributes, or even the existence, of 
the soul; while holding that, inasmuch as its reality can not, on the 
other hand, be disproved, such reality may, for moral purposes, be 
assumed. So that this sublimest of the world’s thinkers is obliged in 
ultimate analysis to admit that ordinary common-sense may prove as 
successful in wrestling with the problem as the vastest inborn intel- 
lectual potentiality intensified by prolonged culture. 

Reaching next the modified or hybrid metaphysical and physiolo- 
gical school of the present day (the former element largely predomi- 
nant), we find one of its most eminent representatives, Bain, seeming 
to teach that, whatever it is, the soul has but loose connection with the 
body. ‘‘The body might,” he assures us, “have its bodily functions 
without the soul, and the soul might have its psychical functions in 
some other connection than our present bodies.* But surely, as indeed 
this psychologist elsewhere himself admits, mind is a function of the 
body ; therefore it follows implicitly from his propositions that mind 
may exist without the soul, whereas the metaphysical contention de- 
nies the possibility of thought without it. Note further that this 
thinker, with wise discretion, shrinks from any disclosure of his own 
idea, either by affirmation or negation, of the nature of the soul, and 
leaves us in total ignorance of what he desires us to understand, when 
on his own behalf he employs the word. 

We may remark in passing, that Plato thought the soul could exist 
without a habitat in the human body. Kant, on the other hand, held 
it to be beyond our powers to make any affirmation as to the pos- 
sibility of its separate existence. Dugald Stewart, somewhat in the 
same vein, held that we “have no direct evidence of the possibility of 
the thinking and sentient principle exercising its various powers in a 
separate state from the body.” Here, be it observed, the soul, as with. 
Descartes, is a “principle.” Is this anything more than a mere word? 
What is the actual meaning of the term in this connection? or has it 
any meaning? What explanation does it furnish of the facts? 

The foregoing brief analysis of metaphysical opinion, though ob- 
viously and necessarily imperfect, is not one-sided or dishonest, and 
seems to render the conclusion inevitable that introspective psychology 
has failed to supply a definite presentment of the nature of soul. 
Metaphysicians have, in truth, merely postulated its existence and en- 
dowed their creation with a series of attributes, the nexus of no single 
one of which with its assumed factor has ever been made the subject 
of serious proof ; while, in speaking of mind as one manifestation of its 
activity, they simply ascribe the performance of a positive act (that of 


* “Mind and Body,” p. 1538. 


PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 255 


thinking), the mechanism of which they in no wise understand, to an 
agent (the soul), the mere existence of which they fail to substantiate. 

If it be urged on behalf of any class of metaphysical school-men, 
who may refuse to accept Kant’s modest avowal of failure, that they 
really have succeeded (because to their own contentment) in fathom- 
ing the problems of the. genesis of mind and the nature of the soul, 
and that they are not answerable for the defective intelligence of the 
outside world, which fails to follow them, the physiologist need not 
hesitate to concede that they soar in a region of visionary transcen- 
dentalism, for which his mental bias and material modes of thought 
have not fitted him either as a worker or a critic. He is as ill adapted 
for reveling in trains of speculative abstraction, whereof the issue, 
purely subjective, can never reach the reality of objective demonstra- 
tiveness, as the metaphysician for peering through lenses many a weary 
day and night to verify a single fact, the present obvious value of 
which may be nil, but of which the future story may be written as 
the starting link of chains of important truths. Between the meta- 
physical contemplative mind and the scientific observant mind the 
antagonism is so profound that the union of the two qualities in the 
same individual, even in very different degrees of potentiality, is the 
rarest of intellectual endowments. 

The physiologist of the pure observation school may, then, admit 
his deficiency in critical training for the just estimation of metaphys- 
ical methods, and this all the more resignedly in that (as we shall by- 
and-by fully see) metaphysicians are found occasionally confessing, 
nay boasting, that they fail to understand each other, while they are 
likewise accused, apparently on justifiable grounds, of not at all times 
and seasons thoroughly comprehending each man his own individual 
work. So the physiologist need not trouble himself about methods 
but ask for results. And this he has ventured to do, conceiving him- 
self entitled by the worth of the latter to gauge the efficiency of the 
former. While, then, acknowledging in a spirit of homage savoring of 
of awe the abstract grandeur of the metaphysical intellect and the 
aims of its activity, he has earnestly but not irreverently inquired, Do 
you metaphysicians not deceive yourselves? Are you quite sure you 
do not take words for ideas? Have you or have you not perpetually 
confounded figments of the brain with realities? To what increments 
of true knowledge—the real, substantial knowledge of things—can 
you lay claim? Have you of late done much more than clothe old 
thoughts in new phraseology—phraseology of greater precision than 
that it has supplanted, we may fairly concede? Have you not in 
sober truth been engaged since the dawn of philosophy —multum 
agendi, pauxillum agentes (doing much, accomplishing little)—in a 
still beginning, never ending, logomachia? Can you point among 
your fellows to that emphatic unanimity of creed on fundamental 
questions which shall demand, as its right, acceptance from the out- 


256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


side world, before which you pose as the fountain-heads of all ultimate 
knowledge? Or, have you not, on the very contrary, disagreed abso- 
lutely with each other? And, if you doubt each other, may we not in 
turn doubt you all? Is it not true that Kant never mastered, and 
loudly proclaimed he never could master, the doctrine of Spinoza? * 
Did not the philosopher of Koénigsberg declare the system of Fichte 
to be utterly untenable? Does not Schopenhauer in turn repudiate 
Kant? Were not the leading principles of Schopenhauer’s own sys- 
tem contained, and in some measure worked out, in Fichte’s “ Wis- 
senschaftslehre” ? And did not the same Schopenhauer, having failed 
to perceive the similarity (carping critics have been found malicious 
enough to more than hint that perhaps he herein judged wisely), stig- 
matize that work, the alleged germ of his own, as a “farrago of ab- 
surdities” ?+ Has not J. 8. Mill declared it to be characteristic of 
Hamilton that he seldom or never adhered to any philosophic state- 
ment he had adopted, that “an almost incredible multitude of incon- 
sistencies show themselves on comparing different passages of his 
works with each other,” and that his whole system of “intuitional ” 
philosophy is a profound mistake? { And is it not equally true that 
the adherents of the Scotch philosopher seem to have made it plain 
that his somewhat ruthless English critic never succeeded in under- 
standing him?* Furthermore, has it not been averred by one of his 
most earnest panegyrists that Kant failed himself to grasp the full 
import of his own doctrines, that the “ new light that was lighted for 
men” could not illumine his own ideas sufficiently to grasp their total 
meaning and anticipate the terms of their ultimate evolution? || Finally, 
has not Berkeley with equal truth and candor pronounced the condem- 
nation alike of his own work and of all his fellow-craftsmen in the 
fatal admission, “ We metaphysicians have first raised a dust, and 
then complain we can not see” ?¢ 

To the non-metaphysical mind it would indeed appear that the 
bootless speculations of the pure transcendentalist were calculated on 
the one hand to dishearten wayfarers on the road to truth by block- 
ing the route with unintelligible mysticism, and on the other to post- 
pone the discovery of a share of Nature’s secrets by diverting any 
available mental power into a wrong channel.) How could aught but 


* Kant’s “ Prolegomena,” translated by Bax, p. xxxv. 

+ E. B. Bax, ibid., p. 101. 

t J. 8. Mill, “ Autobiography,” pp. 275, 276, third edition, 1874. 

#* Maudsley, “ Journal of Mental Science,” vol. xi, p. 551. 

|| E. B. Bax, ibid., preface, p. 8. 

A “ Human Knowledge,” vol. i, p. 74. 

) So far from its being desirable that that rare form of gift or “acquired mental 
dexterity,” as the introspective faculty is affirmed to be by Sir William Hamilton, should - 
be vouchsafed to cultured mankind at large, the endowment may, without probable ulti- 
mate loss to real knowledge, be left in the grasp of the limited class for which its pos- 
session is claimed. 


PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICS. 257 


failure in solving the problems of mental philosophy be expected from 
a system, even though that system were sustained by surpassing intel- 
lectual force, that ignored the instrument, brain, by which the result, 
mind, is evolved? What success could be expected from an inquiry 
into the mechanism of respiration, from which all consideration of the 
structure, dynamics, and chemistry of the breathing-organs was pur- 
posely excluded? Conceive a man proceeding to investigate the re- 
Spiratory process who had never seen alung! Should we consider him 
perfectly sane? How ineffably curious, then, if not ludicrous, does it 
seem to find Bain announcing, with in some sort the tone of a man 
who has stumbled on a happy discovery, that it would be worth the 
while of metaphysicians to learn something of nerves—we presume, 
impliedly, something of brain also! Still this niggard dole of ac- 
knowledgment places the donor at all events in advance of J. S. Mill, 
who to the very close of his career contemptuously and obtrusively 
rejected cerebral physiology as a guide, of even the most subordinate 
value, in the study of mind. Why, the solitary discovery of the con- 
nection of aphasia with a special spot in a special gyrus of a special 
hemisphere of the brain, taken in conjunction with the corollaries logi- 
cally deducible from that connection, seems a far weightier offering 
toward the elucidation of the actual mechanism of mind—of the con- 
ditions under which Nature works—than all the transcendental guess- 
work furnished by the toil of metaphysicians from Plato to Schopen- 
hauer. 

Nevertheless, the conspicuous failure of purely introspective phi- 
losophy, unaided by objective investigation, to establish its special 
' psychic doctrines, does not, on the other hand, disprove the possible 
independent existence of soul as one of the factors of mind. Such ex- 
istence may be, or may not be, a reality, for anything that metaphysics 
show or do not show. The failure of transcendentalism, admitted 
even by Kant, simply proves that in wisdom which is not of pure and un- 
aided metaphysics lies such lingering hope, as an enthusiast may cling 
to, of substantiating the reality and the nature of the soul’s existence 
and practical activity. Nor does the failure signify (whatever may 
be its import as to the efficiency of transcendentalism) that introspec- 
tion must not be allowed to play a large though far from the solitary 
part in the attempt to elucidate the nature of mental operations. To 
reject the help of introspection in analyzing the phenomena of mind 
would be as illogical, nay fatuous, on the part of the physiologist as 
the negation of the utility of all objective aid by the bulk of meta- 
physicians. But in point of fact such rejection is a sheer impossi- 
bility, for we can not cogitate without examining consciousness, and 
when we do this we introspect. Besides, there are facts of mental op- 
eration, and laws regulating these facts, which lie without the pale 
of physiology as an objective factor, facts and laws which can only be 
even guessed at by the analysis of self-consciousness. The results of 

VOL, XxV.—17 


258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


such analysis plainly can not be claimed by a department of inquiry 
which deals with phenomena physically demonstrable alone ; be those 
results sound or unsound, conclusive or tentative, final or provisional, 
such as they are, they are the property of introspective psychology 
alone. Furthermore, there is a large class of psychological concepts 
framed on a combination of both kinds of evidence, subjective and 
objective. : 


PROFESSOR DVORAK’S SOUND-MILLS. 


ROFESSOR SILVANUS P. THOMPSON has made known, 
through the columns of “ Nature,” an interesting series of ex- 
periments by Professor V. Dvorak, of the University of Agram, in 
the production of an apparatus which should rotate under the influ- 
ence of sound-waves in the same way as the radiometer introduced by 
Professor Crookes rotates under the influence of rays of light and 
heat. The same idea was suggested independently to several men, 
among whom were our countrymen, Professor A. M. Mayer, of Ho- 
boken, and Mr. Edison, all of whom have made in the matter re- 
searches of great scientific interest. Professor Dvorak has devised 
four kinds of “sound-mills,” as they may be called, two of which de- 
pend on the repulsion of resonant boxes, and two on different prin- 
ciples. 
One of the instruments is represented in Fig. 1. It consists of a 
light wooden cross, balanced on a needle-point, and carrying four light . 
resonators—hollow balls of glass, forty-four millimetres in diameter, 


Fie. 2. 


with an Spening of four millimetres at one side, and responding to the 
note g’, or the middle G, of the piano-forte (= 392 vibrations). When 
this note is forcibly sounded by the tuning-fork, the air in the reso- 


PROFESSOR DVORAK’S SOUND-MILLS. 259 


nators vibrates in response, and the apparatus begins to rotate. Rota- 
tion will take place even if there is only one resonator, properly bal- 
anced ; but the phenomenon is more marked and certain if there are 
four. 

A second style of apparatus—the “ rotating resonator ”—is repre- 
sented in plan and elevation in Fig. 2. It consists of a short cylin- 
drical box of stiff paper, having four projections, each of which bears 
at its side a short open tube of paper. It is hung on a silk fiber, and 
is supplied with a small needle, projecting below to steady the motion 
during its rotation. 

The operation of these instruments depends on the principle which 
has been pointed out by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Mayer as well 
as by Professor Dvorak, that “when sounds of great intensity are pro- 
duced, the calculations, which are usually carried only to the first order 
of approximation, cease to be adequate, because now the amplitude of 
motion of the particles in the sound-wave is not infinitely small as com- 
pared with the lengths of the sound-waves themselves. Mathematical 
analysis shows that under these circumstances the wave of the pressures 
in the condensed part, and in the rarefied part of the sound-wave, is no 
longer equal to the undisturbed atmospheric pressure, but is always 
greater. Consequently, at all nodal points in the vibrations of the 
air in tubes or resonant boxes, the pressure of the air is greater than 
elsewhere ; and therefore any resonator closed at one side and open 
at the other is urged along bodily by the slight internal excess of 
pressure on the closed end.” The apparatuses therefore rotate by 
reaction. 

To produce vibrations of sufficient intensity, Professor Dvorak 
uses heavy tuning-forks mounted on resonant cases, and excited elec- 
trically. For this purpose he places between the prongs of the fork 
an electro-magnet, in which the core is composed of two plates of iron, 
separated by a sheet of paper, and cut of such a breadth as to lie be- 
tween the prongs without touching them. The core is overwound 
with insulated copper wire, as shown at E, Fig. 3, and the electro- 
magnet is mounted by a bent piece of wood, a 0 ¢, upon the sound- 
ing-box, K, of the fork. The wires are connected in a circuit with the 
battery, and with the electro-magnet of a self-exciting tuning-fork of 
the same note. The sounding-boxes of the forks must not touch the 
table, but the arm a 0 ¢ is clipped at about the point 6 in a firm sup- 
port ; and particular care must be taken to have the wood of the reso- 
nant boxes tuned into exact accord with the tone of the fork and of 
the air within the cavity of the box. 

The third apparatus is the “sound-radiometer,” and was described 
by Professor Dvorak before the Imperial Viennese Academy in 1881. 
It is more simple than the two instruments previously described, but 
its cause of action is less easily explained. It is shown in Fig. 4. It 
consists of a light cross of wood pivoted by a glass cap upon a vertical 


260 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


needle, and having attached to its four arms four pieces of white card, 
perforated with holes which are depressed conically on one side and 
raised at the other, so as to present a surface something like that of a 
nutmeg-grater. Each card has twenty-five holes thus pierced, and the 


Fie. 4. 


whole apparatus a hundred holes. The rotations are more rapid if the 
cards are set on obliquely in the fashion shown at E in the figures, with 
the burred sides outward. The rotations are produced when the “mill” 
is set in front of the resonant box. 
Dvor&k’s fourth apparatus is called by him an “acoustic anemom- 
eter,” and is represented in Fig. 5. It consists of a little “mill” of 
simple construction, A ¢ k, the vanes of which are made of small pieces 
of paper or card slightly curved, and a sounding-box, c d fg, placed a 
little way from it, while between them is held an ordinary Helmholtz’s 


resonator having its wide opening, 0, turned toward the box, and its 
narrow opening, a, toward the mill. The stem of the tuning-fork is in- 
serted in the socket F of the sounding-box. The internal increase of 
pressure induced by the vibrations of the tuning-fork through the ~ 
sounding-box in the resonator at @ has the effect of driving a jet of 
air gently against the sails of the mill, which consequently rotates. 
The two-aperture resonator of this apparatus may be replaced by a 


ARNOLD HENRY GUYOT. 261 


resonator having but oneaperture, which may be formed of a glass ball 
cut away at one side and cemented to a glass plate having a small hole 
in the center. When the air ejected from the mouth of the resonator 
is examined by the method of mixing smoke with it, and then viewing 
it through slits cut in an open disk, the currents are seen to consist of 
a series of vortex rings. A variation of this anemometer may be made 
by taking a card pierced with a hundred holes and placing it between 
the resonant box and the “mill,” when the latter will rotate in the 
wind which passes through the conical holes. 

The machines of Mayer, Mach, and others, are closely akin to those 
of Professor Dvorak in design and action. Mr. Edison also has con- 
trived a phonometer, or instrument for measuring the mechanical force 
of sound-waves produced by the human voice, in which the vibrations 
produced in the phonograph-diaphragm by a sound made ‘in the mouth- 
piece propels a finely-cut ratchet-wheel with considerable velocity. 
With this device Mr. Edison has “literally accomplished the feat of 
talking a hole through a deal board.” 


we 
ee we, 


ARNOLD HENRY GUYOT. 
By Proressorn W. B. SCOTT. 


HE political disturbances of 1848, injurious as they were to Switz- 
erland, were directly a great gain to America, for they gave to 
this country both Agassiz and Guyot, for a long time co-laborers for 
the advancement of American science and the diffusion of sound learn- 
ing among the people. “ We are led to wonder how much scientific 
progress would have been delayed in this country if it had not been 
for the inspiring and co-operating influence of these noble immi- 
grants.” * 
ArnoLp Henry Guyot was born near Neufchatel, Switzerland, Sep- 
tember 8, 1807. His early education was obtained at his native town, 
and it is interesting to note that during his school-life there he was 
president of the gymnastic club, and one of the best of the school ath- 
letes. His slight, wiry frame thus received a training in strength and 
endurance which afterward stood him in good stead when he under- 
took the immense labors of glacier-study in Switzerland and of mount- 
ain-surveying in America. On leaving Neufchatel he went to complete 
his studies in Germany, attending successively the gymnasia of Stutt- 
gart and Carlsruhe. At Carlsruhe he was an inmate of the family of 
the Brauns, and there met his countryman Agassiz, who, with Imhoff 
and Carl Schimper, was making a vacation visit to his friend Alexan- 


* “Science,” No. 55, p. 220. 


262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


der Braun. This period was one of the critical points in Guyot’s ca- 
reer. There was formed that close and tender friendship with Agassiz 
which lasted until the latter’s death, and found its final expression in 
the beautiful memoir of Agassiz which Guyot prepared for the Nation- 
al Academy of Sciences in 1877. But of still greater importance was 
the impulse toward the study of science which he received from the 
enthusiastic group of young naturalists with whom he was thus 
brought into daily and hourly contact. He says of this period: “My 
remembrances of these few months of alternate work and play, at- 
tended by so much real progress, are among the most delightful of my 
early days. . . . It would be idle to attempt to determine the meas- 
ure of mutual benefit derived by these young students of Nature from 
their meeting under such favorable circumstances. It certainly was 
very great, and we need no other proof of the strong impulse they all 
* received from it than the new ardor with which each pursued and sub- 
sequently performed his life-work.” 

In 1829 young Guyot went to Berlin in order to complete the theo- 
logical studies which he had begun at Neufchatel ; but the love of sci- 
ence was strong within him, and ‘the new field which the lectures of 
Steffens, Hegel, and Ritter opened up to his view decided him to enter 
upon the study of Nature as his life-work. Having thus decided, he 
determined to lay his foundations broad and deep, and with this end 
in view he attended lectures on nearly all departments of natural sci- 
ence : chemistry, physics, meteorology, zodlogy, geology, and physical 
geography, alike received attention, and his subsequent career showed 
the great wisdom of this thorough preparation. In 1835 he received the 
degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and at once proceeded to Paris. Here 
he resided more than four years, quietly pursuing his preparatory stud- 
ies and extending them in vacation by tours of observation through 
various European countries. He also took up the subject of his- 
tory under Michelet, and, like everything else which he touched, 
made it valuable in the great pursuit of his life, the study of earth 
and man. 

In the spring of 1838 Agassiz came to Paris, enthusiastic upon the 
subject of glaciers, and this induced Guyot to turn his attention in the 
same direction. In the summer of the same year he went to Switzer- 
land and began his work on the glaciers of that country. The results 
of the summer’s work were presented in a paper before the Geological 
Society of France during the session of 1838, at Porrentuy. This 
paper is mentioned in the “Proceedings” of the society (“ Bulletin,” 
vol. ix, p. 407), but, owing to a long illness of the author during the 
following winter, it could not be printed. The great laws of glacial 
phenomena first enunciated by Guyot in this paper were afterward 
announced as new discoveries by other observers, and were the occa- — 
sion of bitter quarrels. Afterward, when a discussion arose between 
Forbes and Agassiz, the manuscript was, on motion of Agassiz, and by 


ARNOLD HENRY GUYOT. 263 


a formal vote, deposited as-a voucher with the Society of Natural 
Sciences at Neufchatel, and was printed by that society in 1883. This 
paper contained the following contributions to the subject: 1. The 
sloping of the terminal beds of glaciers toward their interior, and their 
origin as closed-up crevasses. 2. The laminated structure or blue 
bands of glacier-ice. 3. The cause of the fan-shaped disposition of 
crevasses. 4. The more rapid motion of the glacier’s center than of 
the sides. 5. The more rapid motion of the top than the bottom of 
the glacier. 6. The movement of glaciers which takes place by means 
of a molecular displacement, whence results the plasticity of the glacier. 
Later, he added the law of the formation of transverse crevasses in a 
plane perpendicular to the steepest slope of the glacier. With rare 
modesty Guyot never took part in the fierce discussions caused by the 
claim laid by others to his own discoveries, contenting himself with a 
simple statement of the facts published long afterward in his memoir 
on Agassiz. 

In 1839 Guyot accepted a call to the Academy of Neufchatel, where 
his friend Agassiz was then settled, and there he remained till his re- 
moval to America in 1848. His chair was that of History and Physi- 
cal Geography, and he regarded the years of his work there as the 
period of his greatest intellectual activity. During this time he gave 
much attention to his glacial work, taking up the geological side of the 
question, the erratic blocks and ancient extension of the glaciers, 
and devoting to this work “absolutely single-handed, seven laborious 
summers, from 1840 to 1847.” This gigantic undertaking was brought 
to a successful conclusion, though the results were but partially pub- 
lished, inasmuch as the “Systéme Glaciaire,” by Agassiz, Guyot, and 
_ Desor, never went further than the first volume (Paris, 1847). Guy- 
ot’s collection of five thousand erratic rocks, illustrating eleven erratic 
basins, now fills a room in the Princeton Museum, a monument of 
incredibly pains-taking labor. 

The political disturbances of 1848 induced Guyot to follow his 
friend Agassiz to America, and he lived for some time at Cambridge, 
Massachusetts. He first attracted public attention by the remarkable 
series of lectures afterward published in the well-known book ‘Earth 
and Man.” These lectures were the starting-point of a great reform in 
the historical and geographical teaching of this country. For six years 
he was engaged by the Board of Education of Massachusetts as a lec- 
turer to the normal schools on geography and the methods of teaching 
it, and after he came to Princeton he followed up the work there 
commenced by preparing a series of geographical text-books and large 
maps. To use the words of a recent writer in “Science” with regard 
to these books : “It is not too much to say that they revolutionized 
the methods of teaching geography. Every series of geographies which 
has since appeared shows the influence of Guyot.” He threw aside 
the old routine methods, and brought the pupil face to face with Na- 


264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ture, showing the bearing of the earth’s physical features upon every 
department of human interest. 

Another pre-eminent service which Guyot rendered to America was 
the work he did in meteorology, a science which had received very 
little attention when he arrived in this country. From 1851 to 1859 
he worked at the preparation of the “Meteorological and Physical 
Tables,” published by the Smithsonian Institution, and also superin- 
tended the construction of accurate meteorological instruments, In 
connection with Professor Henry he must be regarded as the founder 
of the system of weather observations and reports which has resulted 
in the Government Signal Service. 

In 1854 Guyot was elected to the chair of Geology and Physical 
Geography at Princeton, a post which he filled for the thirty remain- 
ing years of his life. Until compelled to cease by the increasing in- 
firmities of age, he devoted all his vacations and spare time to his 
favorite investigations, making elaborate and careful examinations of 
the mountains from New England to South Carolina. This work in- 
volved an immense amount of hardship and fatigue, and he was fond 
of describing with quaint picturesqueness and humor his experiences 
in roughing it in the mountains of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. 
In 1861 he published in the “ American Journal of Science and Arts ” 
the results of his work up to that time, “a memoir which remains to 
this day the best existing description.” Again, in 1880, he brought out 
another memoir on the same subject, devoted chiefly to the Catskills, 
some of the rough work for which was done after he was seventy years 
old. Many shorter papers on meteorological, physical, and geograph- 
ical subjects were written at intervals, but no complete list of them has 
ever been prepared. His work during this period is a noble example of — 
what may be done without appropriations or endowments, for in those 
days Princeton was very poor, and he had to do as best he could with- 
out assistance. 

As a friend and teacher Guyot will ever be held in loving remem- 
brance till the last of his hundreds of students shall have followed him 
to the grave. His lectures were wonderfully fascinating, leading his 
hearers step by step to heights whence they could survey the whole 
field. His broad culture, gained by the combination of the humanita- 
rian and scientific studies, had given him an extraordinary power of 
generalization, stimulating his students by showing them the relations 
of any subject which he handled to the whole realm of knowledge. 
He was able to depict these sciences in their true perspective without 
distortion or exaggeration, a power which is unhappily very uncom- 
mon. ‘Those who had the rare privilege of pursuing advanced courses 
of study under his supervision will long remember the great stimulus 
to earnest work which they received from him, and the clear, philo- 
sophical views of Nature which he expounded. 

For many years Guyot labored under great disadvantages from the 


ARNOLD HENRY GUYOT. 265 


lack of proper appliances, but he never allowed these drawbacks to 
lower the character of his work. When Princeton’s day of prosperity 
came, he showed that he knew how to apply money wisely, as before 
he had been able to do grand work withoutit. The system of scientific 
expeditions to the West, which has so greatly stimulated the study 
of natural science at Princeton, and added so greatly to the treasures 
of her museums, was organized under his direction; and the wonder- 
ful growth of all the departments of natural science in the college 
must be in very large measure attributed to the wisdom and foresight 
of Guyot. 

The visible monument of Guyot’s work in Princeton will always be 
the Museum of Geology and Archeology. He expended with consum- 
mate skill the sums placed at his disposal by generous friends, and or- 
ganized an enthusiastic corps of workers, so. that a superb series of 
collections has been gathered. Thus in every department of activity 
his influence has been of the utmost service to Princeton in particular, 
and to American science in general. 

But even this brief and imperfect sketch.can not close without 
some testimony to his noble and exalted character, modest, unselfish, 
and devoted. ‘‘He never seemed to be thinking of himself, but al- 
ways of his subject and his hearers. He cared very little for fame, 
very much for the study of Nature and the education of man.” * An 
earnest and consistent Christian throughout his life, he was ever char- 
itable and tender, never indulging in acrimonious criticism or denun- 
ciation of those who differed even most widely from him. Always 
liberal, he sympathized with and appreciated honest opinion on what- 
ever side it was uttered. He was remarkable for “the beauty in his 
daily life as well as for his nobly finished work.” There is little cause 
for grief in the quiet close of such a splendid, useful, and complete 
career as this; nevertheless, we must mourn our irreparable loss, sor- 
rowing most of all that we shall see his face no more. 


* “Science,” loc. cit. 


266 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


EDITOR'S TABLE. 


THE PROGRESS OF MENTAL SCIENCE. 


T is gratifying to remark the steady 
and assured advance of psychologi- 
cal research on the objective or corpo- 
real side, or what is now better known 
as mental physiology. Without deny- 
ing the validity of the old method of 
studying the mind by introspective ob- 
servation, or that there are regularities 
and uniformities in the changes of con- 
sciousness thus revealed which are the 
proper subject-matter of science, it is 
still true that this method does not 
reach down to the conditions which 
give law to mental operations, and can 
not deal with the most fundamental 
questions of psychical science. It is 
the organic side of mind which de- 
termines mental phenomena, and the 
science of mind is, therefore, radically 
incomplete until the nervous system is 
made the basis of exploration in its 
manifestation of psychical effects. It 
can hardly be said that there was any- 
thing entitled to recognition, as a prop- 
er science of’ mind, until the bodily con- 
ditions and concomitants of feeling and 
thought became an essential part of the 
study, and, when that was done, the 
progress of knowledge upon the sub- 
ject was clear, decisive, and in the 
highest degree important. To appre- 
ciate the latest phase of this interesting 
research, it will be desirable to recall 
some of the signal steps of advance- 
ment which have been made in recent 
years in this line of investigation. 
Throughout past ages, from the an- 
cient classical period onward, although 
philosophy was ever busy with ques- 
tions concerning the nature and powers 
of the soul, nobody dreamed that it 
had a fixed and definite working rela- 
tion to the universe through the living 
mechanism with which it was associ- 
ated. The anatcmy and physiology of 


the last century, however, prepared the 
way for the successful elucidation of 
the subject, and the first great step for- 
ward was made by Sir Charles Bell 
about the year 1825, in establishing 
the double action of the nervous sys- 
tem, or that impressions from the ex- 
ternal world pour in upon the brain 
through one set of nerve-lines, while 
all the mandates of volition controll- 
ing human activity are transmitted out- 
ward along another system of nerve- 
lines. This was a triumph of anatomy 
and experimental physiology, and a 
very striking fact, yet the profound 
significance of the discovery could not 
be at all appreciated at the time, as it 
derived its chief importance from the 
train of disclosures that grew out of it. 

It was at first supposed that all pe- 
ripheral impressions are sent directly 
to the brain or sensorium, and that all 
commands of the will are also trans- 
mitted uninterruptedly from the brain 
to the muscles. But about 1840 Dr. 
Marshall Hall made another capital 
step of progress by establishing the 
reflex function of the spinal cord, or 
by showing that the spinal centers 
have a control of muscular movements 
and organic processes independent of 
the brain. The element of automatism 
in the working of the living machinery 
was here brought out, and it was dis- 
covered that there are self-working sys- 
tems in the living economy, by which 
important gradations of effect are se- 
cured. The lower and simpler cen- 
ters of the spinal system control the 
fundamental processes of organic life, 
involving the action of the heart, and 
the respiratory and digestive appara- 
tus. Itis as if these could not be in- 
trusted to the higher organ of volition, - 
which, becoming exhausted, sinks daily 
into inaction and unconsciousness, but 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


must be committed to specific centers 
which act with automatic certainty and 
never sleep. 

Pursuing this line of inquiry, a third 
important step was taken by establish- 
ing the separate and automatic func- 
tions of the sensory ganglia at the base 
of the brain and the summit of the 
spinal column. Impressions from the 
surface reaching the spinal centers are 
passed upward to the sensory ganglia, 
and there give rise to sensations and 
emerge into consciousness, reflex action 
being here extended to conscious move- 
ments. Dr. Carpenter did much to un- 
ravel this branch of the subject about 
1850, and his work on “‘ Mental Physi- 
ology,” published within a few years, 
will be found full of interesting and im- 
portant information in relation to it. 
The problems entered upon were, of 
course, of great complexity, obscurity, 
and difficulty. Dr. Laycock had car- 
ried the doctrine of reflex action into 


the cerebral hemispheres, and shown | 


its importance in the higher operations 
of the mind; and it yet remains a 
sharply debated question among nerv- 


ous physiologists how far the principle ! 


of automatism extends in the higher 
realm of our psychical life. 

It was thus gradually established 
that all mental operations, all thought, 
feeling, instinct, and volition, are the 
results, first, of the activity of the pri- 
mary nervous elements, cells, and fibers, 
by which nervous influence is accumu- 
lated and discharged; and, second, of 
the interaction of numerous automatic 
centers variously endowed, but com- 
municating with each other solely by 
the transmission of nervous force. The 
gain thus secured to mental science on 
its practical and progressive side was 
very great. The subject took its place 
among the definite and experimental 
science of the natural world. Nothing 
is so vague as the conception of mind 
from the metaphysical point of view. 
Quantitative results are unattainable 
by that method, and all limitations are 


267 


scorned by it as degrading to the dig- 
nity of spiritual being. But in inquir- 
ing into the functions of the nervous 
system we are at once deeply involved 
in the physiology of limitations. Mind- 
force can not come from nothing, any 
more than other forms of force, and 
here as elsewhere one effect is at the 
expense of another. Thinking and feel- 
ing exhaust the mechanism, and we 
are involved with practical questions 
of waste and repair, exercise and rest, 
food, blood, nutrition, and the heredi- 
tary qualities of the nerve-centers. 

Here also the study of mind widens 
out into the comprehensiveness of a 
true science by including all the grades 
of animal life as objects of psychologi- 
cal study. For here as well as every- 
where else the higher is to be inter- 
preted by the lower, the complex by 
the simple, and no animate creature is 
so far down in the scale that it does 
not illustrate some phase of mind which 
has a bearing upon the mental problems 
of higher beings. The introspective 
method of course breaks down here. 
Confined to the adult mind, it excludes 
the minds of children, and therefore the 
study of the laws of mental growth; 
confined to the human mind, it ex- 
cludes those of all inferior beings. Yet 
when it becomes a question of deter- 
mining the properties of nerve-centers, 
the nature of reflex action, of instinctive 
movements, and all forms of the laws 
of intelligence, then comparative psy- 
chology makes invaluable contributions 
to mental science. 

And there is still another division 
of the study of mind of supreme im- 
portance, to which very little was or 
could be contributed by the old meth- 
od, but which is making marked prog- 
ress by the more recent methods of in- 
vestigation: we refer to the subject of 
insanity. When we come to mental de- 
rangements, introversive study is ob- 
viously fruitless, and so long as that 
was pursued nothing was known of the 
nature of insanity. Mental disease in 


268 


its basis and causation is bodily dis- 
ease, and the multitudinous forms of 
mental weakness, degeneracy, and ab- 
erration are to be studied as effects of 
corporeal infirmity or disease of the 
nerve-structare. The light thrown upon 
the science of mind through the mani- 
festations of mental failure has been of 
great importance, and physiological in- 
vestigation has now brought us to an- 
other and very significant aspect of the 
subject. 

For all scientific men the doctrine 
of evolution is established, and its high- 
est interest to them is that it is con- 
stantly giving new clews to the inter- 
pretation of nature and opening new 
avenues to productive research. This 
doctrine teaches that the grades of life 
have arisen in past ages through the 
operation of laws by which the higher 
have been derived from the lower. But 
if this be true, then the nervous systems 
of animated beings are to be regarded 
as products of evolution, so that the 
hierarchy of nervous centers of which 
we have spoken has been built up by 
the successive attainment of higher and 
higher levels of organization. Man, as 
the latest product and highest term of 
evolution, combines in his organism the 
various automatic systems successively 
reached in the long course of organic 
development. Biology works out the 
great laws of upward and divergent 
unfolding, but there is another side 
to the phenomena which it is the busi- 
ness of pathology to investigate. Cor- 
responding to the progressive and up- 
ward changes of evolution, there are the 
downward and retrogressive changes of 
dissolution, by which the constructive 
work is reversed and undone. But, if we 
have a true theory of the way the nerv- 
ous system of man has been evolved, 
will not that theory afford guidance 
concerning the order of dissolution, and 
throw light upon the nature of nervous 
maladies and mentalderangement? This 
question has been answered affirmative- 
ly. We print a lecture by Dr. J. Hugh- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


lings Jackson, the first of a course be- 
fore the Royal College of Physicians in 
London, on the “ Evolution and Disso- 
lution of the Nervous System,” in which 
the subject is treated from the point of 
view here indicated. Dr. Hughlings 
Jackson is not only an eminent prac- 
titioner in the department of nervous 
diseases, but he is an able philosoph- 
ical student of medical subjects, and, 
although the Croonian lectures are ad- 
dressed to medical men, the one we print 
will be found of general interest as 
opening a new chapter of original in- 
vestigation in this important field of 
research, 


A MODEL BENEFACTION. 


Ir is announced in the papers that 
Mr. Andrew Carnegie has given the sum 
of fifty thousand dollars to the Bellevue 
Hospital Medical College of this city, for 
the erection and equipment of a building 
to be devoted to original investigations 
on subjects connected with the progress 
of medicine and the prevention of dis- 
ease. Mr. Carnegie is well known asa 
man of large liberality who has accumu- 
alted a fortune by his own enterprise, 
and uses it generously in the promotion 
of projects of public and private benefi- 
cence. We have before had occasion to 
observe the wise discrimination of his 
contributions, but in this case he has 
undoubtedly devoted his money to the 
noblest use for which money can ever 
be expended. The endowment of hos- 
pitals and dispensaries for the imme- 
diate relief of suffering is, of course, 
highly commendable, and they are so 
obviously necessary, and their benign 
results are so direct and palpable, that 
sympathetic charity is ever ready to 
lend them support. But that is a more 
far-sighted and efficient benevolence 
which provides for the extension of 
medical knowledge, the research into. 
the causes and conditions of disease, 
and the increase in the resources of 
medical art, by the systematic scien- 


LITERARY NOTICES, 


tific investigation to which we owe all 
the progress that has yet been achieved 
in this important field. There has 
never been a time in the history of 
medicine when the need of independent 
original research was so great as now, 
when the questions demanding elucida- 
tion were so numerous and so grave, 
and the encouragements to their pur- 
suit so promising. The sciences of ob- 
servation and experiment have done 
much for the world in many ways, and 
the medical art has fully shared in the 
advantages they have conferred; but 
work in this direction is modern, and 
that which has been accomplished is as 
nothing to what yet remains to be done. 
It is well for the medical colleges to 
teach what is known, but they need to 
know a great deal more, and it is cer- 
tainly -high time that we should have 
a class of professional investigators in 
this country so thoroughly qualified and 
prepared for their work that our stu- 
dents will not have to go to Europe 
after the facilities for profound and ex- 
haustive research. Mr. Carnegie’s gift, 
by establishing an ample and well-ap- 
pointed laboratory for the experimental 
study of important medical subjects, 
will favor the progress of American 
science, at the same time that it pro- 
motes those interests of humanity that 
are wider than nationalities. The ques- 
tions to be taken up in such an institu- 
tion and that are now in most urgent 
need of solution are many, and one of 
them was so well stated by a writer in 
a@ morning paper that we quote it: 
Histological investigations —that is, by 
means of the microscope—have within late 
years shed much light on the heretofore oc- 
cult processes taking place in the different 
parts of the body in health and disease, and, 
quite recently, scientific developments in this 
field of study have shown the vast impor- 
tance of these investigations, together with ex- 
perimental researches, as regards our knowl- 
edge of micro-organisms. Already it has 
been demonstrated that several of the infec- 
tious diseases are caused by specific parasitic 
bacteria, and it is more than probable that 
investigations now in progress will lead to 


269 


further discoveries rendering preventable and 
controllable many diseases which occasion 
much human suffering and contribute largely 
to mortality. It is, perhaps, not extrava- 
gant to say that the discoveries already made, 
conjoined with those which are foreshad- 
owed, will prove of greater importance in 
their influence on the science and practice of 
medicine than any since the great discovery 
of the circulation of the blood by Harvey. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


A Treatise oN INSANITY IN ITs MEDICAL 

Retations. By Wiii1am A. Hammonp, 

M. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 

Pp. 767. Price, $5. 

WHETHER insanity is on the increase 
throughout the civilized world, as is claimed 
by many and is certainly not improbable, or 
whether the apparent increase is due to in- 
creasing knowledge in regard to its real ex- 
tent, the growing interest and importance 
of the subject are not to be questioned. It 
is impossible that science should not have 
made great advances in the elucidation of 
this most complex subject, depending as it 
does upon the progress of physiology, psy- 
chology, pathology, and therapeutics, and 
cultivated by specialists as an independent 
branch of practical medicine ; while through 
the whole historic period down to quite re- 
cent times the ignorance, prejudice, and 
barbarism that have been displayed by so- 
ciety toward the most unfortunate of our 
fellow-creatures have been one of the dark- 
est chapters of human experience; on the 
other hand, the spirit of investigation can 
offer no triumph so great as that which has 
been achieved by the medical profession in 
dispelling old prejudices and illusions, and 
giving a rational account of the conditions, 
causes, and diversities of mental alienation. 
The subject is, indeed, yet full of obscurity, 
and far enough from having been cleared 
up, but great steps forward have been taken, 
and in no field is there more continued ac- 
tivity of research. Dr. Hammond’s com- 
prehensive and able work is a contribution 
to the subject made in the light of the latest 
achievements in all its dependent branches 
of inquiry. We have looked through his 
treatise with much interest and constant 
instruction, and have already given in the 
“Monthly” some important passages from 


270 


it as it was going through the press. We 
have been struck by one feature of the 
treatise, which indicates an important ad- 
vance, and which involves the author’s fun- 
damental view of the subject. He draws a 
line between legal and medical insanity, and 
shows that the latter conception is far wider, 
taking into account slight mental failures 
which legislation can not recognize. His 
work is not on the medical jurisprudence 
of insanity, which deals with the subject 
entirely on the legal side, but it is a scien- 
tific inquiry into all grades and forms of 
mental aberration, and deals with the sub- 
ject with reference to the treatment of men- 
tal disease rather than the responsibilities 
of the alienist class. We quote the author’s 
statement in his preface of these views by 
which he has been guided in the preparation 
of the work: 


I have long been convinced that the term “ in- 
sanity ” has hitherto been applied in altogether too 
limited and illogical a manner. It has been under- 
stood, Loth in and out of the profession, that a per- 
son, in order to be considered the subject of mental 
aberration, must, at some time ‘or other, present 
certain marked symptoms, which he can not avoid 
exhibiting, and which are sufficient to indicate to 
the world that he is not in his right mind. 

Starting from the points that all normal mental 
phenomena are the result of the action of a healthy 
brain, and that all abnormal manifestations of mind 
are the result of the functionation of a diseased or 
deranged brain, I do not see why these latter should 
not be included under the designation of “insanity,” 
as much as the former are embraced under the 
term “sanity.” There can be no middle ground, 
for the brain is either in a healthy or an unhealthy 
condition. If healthy, the product of its action is 
“sanity” ; if unhealthy, ‘* insanity.” 

Of course very little of such insanity comes under 
the signification given to the word by lawyers and 
the public generally. But legal insanity and medical 
insanity are very different things, and the two stand- 
ards can never and ought never tobe thesame. The 
law establishes an arbitrary and unscientific line, 
and declares that every act performed on one side 
of this line is the act of a sane mind, while all acts 
done on the other side result from insane minds. 
This line may be in one place to-day, and in an en- 
tirely different place to-norrow, at the whim or 
caprice ofa Legislature; it may be established on a 
certain parallel in one country, and onan entirely 
different parallel in another country. In the State 
of New York, for instance, it is drawn at the 
knowledge of right and wrong; and perhaps, all 
things considered, this is about as correct a legal 


line as a due regard for the safety of society will’ 


permit to be made. But every physician knows 
that it is absolutely untenable from his point of 
view; that it is not a medical line, and that there 
are thousands of lunatics insane enough to believe 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


themselves to be veritable Julius Caesars, and yet 
sufficiently sane to know that a particular act 
is contrary to law, and to be fully aware of the 
nature and consequences of such act. Hence it 
follows that, from a medical stand-point, there is no 
middle ‘ground between sanity and insanity. The 
line of demarkation is sharply drawn, and it is but 
a step from one territory to the other. There is a 
large proportion of the population of every civilized 
community composed of individuals whose insanity 
is known only to themselves, and perhaps to some 
of those who are in intimate social relations with 
them, who have lost none of their rights, privileges, 
or responsibilities as citizens, who transact their 
business with fidelity and accuracy, and yet who 
are as truly insane, though in a less degree, as the 
most furious maniac who dashes his head against 
the stone-walls of his cell: To many of these per- 
sons life is a burden they would willingly throw 
off, death concerned them alone, for they are 
painfully conscious of their actual suffering, and 
morbidly apprehensive in regard to the future, 
There are very few people who have not, at some 
time or other, perhaps for a moment only, been 
medically insane.’ It is time, therefore, that the 
horror of the word should be dissipated, and that 
the fact should be recognized and acted upon, that 
a disordered mind is just as surely the result of 
a disordered brain as dyspepsia is of a deranged 
stomach; that a scarcely appreciable increase or 
diminution of the blood-supply to the brain will 
lead as surely to mental derangement of some 
kind as an apparently insignificant change of the 
muscular tissue of the heart to fat will lead to a 
derangement of the circulation, and that in the one 
case there may be a hallucination, a delusion, a 
morbid impulse, or a paralysis of the will, just as 
in the other there may be an intermittent pulse, a 
vertigo, or a fainting-fit. There is no more dis- 
grace to be attached to the one condition than to 
the other. 


An EXAMINATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
UNKNOWABLE AS EXPOUNDED BY HERBERT 
Srencer. By Witiiam M. Lacy. Phila- 
delphia: Benjamin F. Lacy. Pp. 235. 
Turs volume is a metaphysical onslaught 

on Herbert Spencer’s metaphysics, and may 

be recommended to all interested in the 
subject as acute, subtile, ingenious, and 
very well stated. A writer in “Science,” 
reviewing the book, declares that the task 
of refuting Spencer’s doctrine of the un- 
knowable is merely flogging a dead horse, 
and he expresses surprise that “a man of 
extraordinary keenness and vigor of thought 
should waste so much speculation upon 
the subject.” The aforesaid writer in “ Sci- 
ence” is also greatly scandalized that the 
metaphysician Lacy is so grossly ignorant 
of the rudiments of physical science, and 
he takes some pains to expose the au- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


thor’s blundering stupidity in regard to the 
first law of motion. But the curious thing 
about it is that the writer in “Science” is 
inclined to attribute the scientific incapacity 
of this metaphysical author to Spencer him- 
self, or, rather, to make it a result of famili- 
arity with Spencer’s works. He says: “‘Mean- 
while, let the case serve as a warning to 
those who imagine that our American pub- 
lic is to receive useful instruction in element- 
ary physical science from the now popular 
works of the great teacher of the evolution 
philosophy. Here is a very good student, 
indeed — diligent, logical, and ingenious. 
What philosopher could hope for a better ? 
He has carefully studied Mr. Spencer’s 
works, and this is what he has got out of 
them.” Agem of judicial criticism, truly, 
of which “ Science” may well be proud! 


Inprana: DEPARTMENT oF GEOLOGY AND Nat- 
uRAL History. Eleventh Annual Report, 
1881. Pp. 414, with 55 Plates. Twelfth 
Annual Report, 1882. Pp. 400, with 38 
Plates. By Joun Cottert, State Geolo- 
gist. Indianapolis, Ind. 

Inprana possesses much geological inter- 
est. The formations, from the Lower Silu- 
rian to the Carboniferous, are well exposed 
in their order from east to west, and abound 
in limestones and sandstones suitable for va- 
ried economical purposes, lime, cement, and 
coal, while the northern part of the State is 
deeply covered with glacial drift. Springs 
and streams abound. The soil in the central 
and northern parts is deep, and contains the 
elements of a prolonged fertility. As late 
as 1880 timber was spoken of in Professor 
Collett’s report as still in excess. It is of 
hard wood, and suitable for fine work. Coal 
is found in fields covering an area of 7,000 
square miles, which are entered in all direc- 
tions by railroads. The non-caking “ block- 
coal” is found within an area of 600 square 
miles, and is a valuable metallurgical agent. 
The coal-mines employ a capital of $2,500,- 
000, and the same sum represents the value 
of the product of 1882. The building- 
stones are of various and excellent quali- 
ties. The odlitic limestone of Lawrence, 
Monroe, Owen, Crawford, Harrison, and 
Washington Counties is easily worked, de- 
velops in hardening a strength of from 
10,000 to 12,000 pounds to the square inch, 
takes on an agreeable color, is of unprece- 


271 


dented purity, and gives a promise of dura- 
bility. Pure glass sand is found in four 
counties, gravel is “common as air,” lime 
and cement are “‘so abundant as to escape 
attention”; brick-clay is “‘as common as 
water ”; kaolin and fire-clay occur in work- 
able beds, natural gas is mentioned, and 
some salt is produced. Fine fossils abound 
in all the formations. Professor Collett has 
added much to the value of his reports by 
calling in the aid of persons already famil- 
iar with the geology of the State and their 
own counties, and of scientific experts. In 
these volumes and the preceding report for 
1880 we have, besides the special surveys 
of ten counties, descriptions of fossils by 
Dr. J. C. McConnell, of Washington, D. C., 
Professor James Hall, and Dr. C. A. White; 
a paper on paleozoic botany, by Professor 
Lesquereux ; a flora of the elevated region 
of the State; and a microscopic study of 
potable waters, by the Rev. Dr. Curtis. Spe- 
cial attention is given to archzological feat- 
ures, 


A Text-Book oF THE PRINCIPLES OF Puysics. 
By Atreep Danret, M. A., Lecturer on 
Physics in the School of Medicine, Edin- 
burgh. London: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 
653. Price, $5. 

In its general method this book follows 
the “mode of teaching under whieh the 
whole of natural philosophy is regarded as 
substantially a single science, in which scat- 
tered facts are collected and co-ordinated by 
reference to the principles of dynamics and 
the great experimental Jaw of the conserva- 
tion of energy.” The treatise confines itself 
strictly to the field denoted by its title, ap- 
plications of principles and matters of sole- 
ly historic interest being rigidly excluded. 
After some preliminary considerations of 
measurements, including the measurement 
of force and of energy, there is a chapter 
devoted to kinematics, in which waves and 
simple harmonic motions are treated at con- 
siderable length. The essential or general 
properties of matter are next stated, and 
then the characteristics of each of the three 
states of matter. The opening of the chap- 
ter on heat well illustrates the character of 
the book, and is as follows: 

Heat isa form of energy. It would, perhaps, 


indeed be more correct to say that we designate un- 
der the one name heat two totally distinct forms of 


272 


energy. The one of these is the energy of a wave 
motion in the ether, passing from a hot body to 
surrounding objects across the intervening space, as 
from the sun to our earth, or from a hot fire to the 
colder objects upon which it shines: this we call 
radiant heat. The other form is a confused oscil- 
latory disturbance of the particles of a body: in vir- 
tue of this molecular movement a body may appear 
to our cutaneous sense of heat (a sense quite dis- 
tinct from that of touch) to be more or Jess hot or 
warm; or, in the converse case it may, on account 
of the small amount of this movement, appear to be 
relatively coolor cold. The latter form of heat may 
be called sensible heat, or heat simply, and of it we 
shall proceed to treat in this chapter. 


“ Of Ether-Waves” is the heading under 
which the phenomena of radiation, including 
reflection, refraction, and interference, are 
treated. In defining electricity and mag- 
netism, the author states that they “ are not 
forms of energy; neither are they forms of 
matter. They may, perhaps, be provision- 
ally defined as properties or conditions of 
' matter ; but whether this matter be the or- 
dinary matter, or whether it be, on the other 
hand, that all-pervading ether by which or- 
dinary matter is everywhere surrounded, is 
a question which has been under discussion, 
and which may now be fairly held to be set- 
tled in favor of the latter view.” Although 
the author, in his preface to this solid vol- 
ume, expresses the modest hope that it may 
“be found fitted to serve as an elementary 
introduction” to a course of wider reading 
and practical study, it is by no means a book 
for immature students. It is illustrated 
with about two hundred and fifty diagrams. 


THE RELATION oF ANIMAL DISEASES TO THE 

Pusiic Heattn. By Franx §. Brxxines, 

D. V.58., etc. New York: D. Appleton 

& Co. Pp. 446. Price, $4. 

THE subject considered in this volume is 
one of great practical importance both: to 
individuals and to the community at large, 
The author is a veterinary surgeon of emi- 
nent standing, a graduate of the Royal Vet- 
erinary Institute of Berlin, and honored by 
various kindred institutions and societies. 
In addition to the qualifications thus attest- 
ed, Dr. Billings has another excellent requi- 
site for the task he has undertaken, which 
is deep feeling upon the subject—an inter- 
est inspired of large knowledge—in fact, an 
intense enthusiasm well suited to the kind 
of work he has in hand, He writes with 
vigor, and often with a vehemence that 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


might involve exaggerated statement; but 
we must remember that his work is not a 
treatise on veterinary practice, or a manual 
of medical and surgical treatment of dis- 
eased animals, addressed to the profession. 
Tt is a work on the prevention of disease, 
addressed to the general intelligence of the 
community, and designed to draw attention 
to questions and to stir up a popular inter- 
est in them that shall lead to private and 
public action, and for this purpose strong 
language is entirely justifiable. His sub- 
ject, moreover, is one upon which there is 
not only much ignorance among otherwise 
well-informed people, but upon which there 
is also a great deal of narrow and unworthy 
prejudice, deserving of unsparing exposure 
and severe denunciation. 

The work is divided into three parts. 
The first, of 208 pages, is devoted to “The 
Diseases of Domestic Animals”; Part II, 
of 155 pages, describes the “ History of Vet- 
erinary Medicine” and the establishment of 
veterinary schools; Part III, of 51 pages, 
treats of “The Means of Prevention” by 
veterinary schools and institutes and a vet- 
erinary police system in the United States, 
The first part is taken up with a considera- 
tion of some of the most important infec- 
tious and contagious diseases of animals— 
those which require both scientific knowl- 
edge and official authority for examination 
and repression. An intelligent writer in 
“The Journal of Comparative Medicine and 
Surgery” thus refers to the subjects here 
discussed : 

“Trichiniasis” in men and animals is dealt with 
in pages 1 to 40, and is a capital study indeed. 
The ready detection of the disease in slaughtered 
hogs, about the pillars of the diaphragm, is espe- 
cially important. But the author has Bismarckian 
views about the’ great American hog,” which may 
raise an unjust how] from those whose pockets 
will be touched. We hope they will, for the in- 
trepid doctor is fully capable of dealing with them, 
and he should have his chance. It will be a hard 
fight and a good one. Before Government acts in 
the matter, all large pork-packers should have 
skilled examiners, licensed from some good vet- 
erinary college, to inspect and mark their products. 
These will find a more ready sale, at higher prices, 
than less well-attested articles. These certificates 
will doubtless have a higher standing than those of 
some Government officials, appointed for some po- 
litical reasons only or mainly. ' 

Next to hogs, trichinew are apt to infest rats, 
and the doctor says: “ Continued examinations of 
rats should be made in all parts of the country, and 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


their slaughter encouraged in all legal ways. In 
this regard we can even look upon the rat-pit as 
serving a useful-public purpose, and the rat-inva- 
sion theory, with reference to hogs, will receive a 
sooner final settlement.” But Mr. Bergh will surely 
interfere here, and, when Greek meets Greek, will 
come the tug of war. The directions for the pre- 
vention of trichine in swine, p. 31, are excellent, 
although little is said about disinfection, above 
which cleanliness, inspection, branding diseased 
hogs, etc., are preferred. 

“ Hog-cholera” occupies pages 41 to 50. This 
chapter is short, but excellent. The cause of the 
disease, Bacillus suis, is well tracked down, the 
microscopical examinations well given, and the pre- 
ventive measures thorough—down, in extreme 
eases, to slaughtering the infected animals in their 
own pens, and burning the latter, with all contami- 
nated wooden utensils, Sheep and rabbits are sub- 
ject to what is called “ hog-cholera,” and require 
attention in places where the disease prevails. 

“ Tape-worm” in hogs and cattle is treated of in 
a short but masterly way. The Tenia medio-ca- 
nellata comes from beef, which is especially danger- 
ous when eaten raw or very rare. Tenia soliwm 
comes from pork, and affects those who eat raw 
ham and underdone pork, and slightly smoked and 
cooked sausages. This chapter should have had a 
distinct heading, which is lacking, and may be over- 
looked by all who do not read the book regularly 
and carefully through. The same suggestion ap- 
plies to the chapter on “ Foot-and-Mouth Disease,” 
or contagious eczema of cattle. This infection is 
also apt to implicate sheep, swine, goats, deer, oc- 
casionally horses, and sometimes dogs and turkeys. 
Cases in children in New York have occurred, ap- 
parently from the use of contaminated milk; and 
the disease is cropping up in various parts of the 
country, both far North and far West. It has pos- 
sibly been imported by English cattle which have 
escaped quarantine inspection, although the spon- 
taneous generation of a similar disease, where cattle 
live in marshes and filth, can not well be denied. Ec- 
zema, or salt-rheum, is the most common skin affec- 
tion in human beings, and how much of it comes 
from cattle is not yet determined. Bollinger says: 
“ Notwithstanding the ruling opinion to the con- 
trary, the disease is much more common among 
human, beings than is suspected.” The suggestion 
of Dr. Billings, that milk should be examined for 
much more than mere dilution with more or less 
pure water, is worthy of all consideration. This 
suggestion receives still greater emphasis in the 
chapter on ‘“* Tuberculosis in Cattle,” pages 52 to 74, 
which is all too short, although pregnant with in- 
formation. The credit of first calling attention to 
this dire disease is given to Gerlach, to whom Dr. 
Billings has dedicated his book. The notion that 
pulmonary consumption may be conveyed by the 
milk of tuberculosis in cows is not a pleasant one. 
In the opinion of the reviewer, consumption is often 
afoul-air disease, caused quite as much, and even 
oftener, by inhaiing foul air, as from mere exposure 
to cold and wet. Dr. Billings says, “ In Germany, 
where the majority of the milch-cows are stall-fed, 
and that, too, in poorly-ventilated, ill-arranged, and 
filthy stables, this disease has acquired an extension 
of which we can at present make no appreciation in 


VOL, xxv.—18 


273 


this country,” although we have an inkling of it 
among swill-fed cows. Bollinger reproduced the 
disease in pigs, calves, lambs, and rabbits, fed on 
milk from tuberculous cows. Billings is nndoubt- 
edly right when he says, page 73, that “such milk 
does contain elements of a specifically infectious 
character, and there is no question that laws should 
be made, and executed also, to prevent the sale of 
such milk for human consumption, either by itself, 
or mixed with other milk, in no matter how small 
quantities. No such milk should be sold. The 
specific infection of milk from tuberculous cows is 
no trifling matter; it is one of life and death.” 
Consumption, scrofula, and marasmus are only too 
common among the hundreds of thousands of ba- 
bies that are yearly brought up on poor cow’s milk, 
However important trichiniasis may be, this far ex- 
ceeds it. 

Every consumptive cow should be branded by 
expert men. Its milk can only be given with safety 
to swine, after being boiled; and, although the no- 
tion is not a nice one, the doctor thinks they should 
be fattened and killed, as the meat is not injurious 
when well cooked. It is to be presumed that even 
“the eaters of lights” will not consume the lungs 
of such animals, and the liver and kidneys also must 
be viewed with much suspicion. 


Tue Rerations or Minp anp Brain. By 
Henry Catperwoop, LL.D. New York: 
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 527. 

THE metaphysician Sir William Hamil- 
ton, Professor of Logic in the University of 
Edinburgh, got embroiled in controversy 
with the phrenologists, and paused in his 
career of abstract speculation to make in- 
vestigations into brain-structure, skull-meas- 
urement, and alleged “ bumps ” of faculty, 
and all for the confutation of phrenological 
doctrine. Another metaphysician of Edin- 
burgh seems to have encountered a similar 
difficulty in his prosecution of the subject 
of mind. His main studies had been in the 
region of mental philosophy, as pursued by 
the old school, without especial reference 
to its corporeal foundations in the nervous 
structures of organized beings. But the 
modern scientific movement set so strongly 
in the direction of physiological inquiries,, 
or the extension of cerebral psychology, that. 
Dr. Calderwood found it necessary to pause,, 
as his great predecessor had done before, 
and give attention to the new questions that 
have arisen from the study of the organic 
side of the subject. 

Dr. Calderwood is unquestionably well 
imbued with the spirit of the scientific meth- 
od, as is shown both by his recognition of 
the necessity for the systematic study of 
bodily conditions to any one who would ar- 


274 


rive at a true understanding of mental phe- 
nomena, and also by the systematic charac- 
ter and evident thoroughness of his studies 
in the nervous system. His volume has 
interest from this point of view, quite in- 
dependent of any special conclusions at 
which he has arrived. The first edition 
was published in 1879, and met with so fa- 
vorable a reception that he has found it de- 
sirable, from his own ripening views and 
from important contributions that have been 
recently made to the subject of animal intel- 
ligence, to revise it, and publish the second 
edition, which has now appeared. While 
Dr. Calderwood has, of course, a large ap- 
preciation of the importance of the organic 
factors in psychical science, it need hardly 
be said that he writes very much in the 
interest of the old mental philosophy, and 
against what he regards as the inordinate 
claims of materialistic doctrine. The object 
of his book, as he says, “is to ascertain what 
theory of mental life is warranted on strict- 
ly scientific evidence,” and nothing certainly 
can be more significant of the progress of 
mental philosophy than this unreserved ac- 
ceptance of the strictly scientific method in 
its pursuit, and the acknowledged necessity 
there is of studying organic derangements 
in connection with mental aberrations, and 
of studying the psychical manifestations of 
inferior animals, if a valid and comprehen- 
sive theory of mind is to be reached. 


THE Fertiyization oF Frowers. By Pro- 
fessor HurMANN MUtier, translated and 
edited by D’Arcy W. Thompson, B. A. 
With a Preface by Charles Darwin. II- 
lustrated. London and New York: Mac- 
millan & Co. Pp. 669. Price, $5. 
Tus comprehensive book is a collection 

of all the latest information upon a subject 

which pertains to the relations of two 
sciences—botany and entomology. It was 
not until the close of the last century that 
the true nature and significance of flowers 
began to be perceived, and we are indebted 
to Sprengel for the earliest true explana- 
tions of the most important phenomena in 
the life of flowers, From that time onward 
observations have accumulated and expla- 
nations multiplied until the present age, 

when the whole subject received a new im- 

pulse and took a new direction under the 

influence of the Darwinian school. Of the 


THE POPULAR: SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


book before us, which is quite a cyclopedia 
of the subject, Mr. Darwin says in the pref- 
atory notice, which was one of the very last 
of his writings : 

The publication of a translation of Hermann 
Miiller’s “Die Befruchtung der Blumen,” ete., will 
without doubt be a great service to every English 
botanist or entomologist who is interested in gen- 
eral biological problems. The book contains an enor- 
mous mass of original observations on the fertili- 
zation of flowers, and on the part which insects play 
in the work, given with much clearness and illus- 
trated with many excellent woodcuts. It includes 
references to everything which has been written on 
the subject; and in this respect the English edition 
will greatly exceed in value even the original Ger- 
man edition of 1878, as Miller has completed the 
references up to the present time. No one else 
could have done the Jatter work so well, as he has 
kept a full account of all additions to our knowledge 
on this subject. 

Any one who will carefully study the present 
work, and then observe for himself, will be sure to 
make some interesting discoveries; and, as the ref- 
erences to all that has been observed are so com- 
plete, he will be saved the disappointment of find- 
ing that which he thought was new was an wana! 
well-known fact. 


Tue Uniry or Nature. By the DuKE oF 
AreyLt. New York: G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons. Pp. 571. Price, $2.50. 

Tus work is a sequel to “‘ The Reign of 
Law,” published in 1866. It is of philo- 
sophical import, and devoted to the discus- 
sion of many of the most important ques- 
tions and problems concerning the order and 
government of nature, which have come 
into great prominence in new forms in the 
present age. It is written from the ortho- 
dox stand-point, is full of acute criticisms, 
displays a wide familiarity with the results 
of science, is full of controversy, and is an 
‘elegantly printed and very handsome book 
—as becomes its ducal authorship. 


For Motuers anp Daventers: A Manvan 
oF HYGIENE FOR THE HovusEHOLD. By 
Mrs. E. G. Coox, M. D. New York: 
Fowler & Wells. Pp. 292. Price, $1.50. 
Tue author has spent many years in 

studying the causes of the sufferings of 

women and trying to relieve them. Believ- 
ing that they came of ignorance or viola- 
tion of Nature’s laws, she has composed this 
work to point out those laws, and direct such 


women as it can influence to return to them. © 


In it are discussed, briefly, the ordinary sub- 
jects of hygiene, and the special functions 


ee Dae Soe Sat a apa ase aa 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


of women, and such principles are incalcated 


as may induee-women to take care of their 
health, and make themselves fit for the prop- 
er and effective accomplishment of the pur- 
pose around which the objects of their life 
center. 


An Essay on THE Puitosoruy or SEetF-Con- 
sciousness. ByP.F.Firzgeratp. Cin- 
cinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 154. 
Price, $1.25. 

In this essay the author has aimed to 
give an analysis of reason and the rationale 
of love. He believes he has made three dis- 
coveries regarding the intellectual, the affec- 
tional, and the moral nature of man: 1. 
“That the substance or hypostasis of thought 
is Being—the Being of the individual Ego 
being in every case the stand-point of ration- 
al judgment”; 2. That the affections or 
emotions are essentially correlative and re- 
ciprocal in their nature—or that attraction 
in the spiritual world is reciprocal and com- 
plementary; and, 3. That in the rational be- 
ing, “joy of life is only completely attained 
through realization of the ideals of feeling, 
thought, and will.” 


Hanp-Boox or Tree-Piantine. By Na- 
THANIEL H. Eateston. New York: D. 
Appleton & Co. Pp. 126. Price, 75 
cents. 

Tue author of this “ Hand-Book” will 
be remembered by the readers of “ The Pop- 
ular Science Monthly ” as having contributed 
to it, in 1881, 1882, and 1883, a number of 
valuable articles on subjects relating to 
forestry. The present book relates to the 
same subject, that is, to the planting of 
trees in masses, and aims to meet the wants 
of land-owners, more especially of those 
whose lot is cast in portions of the coun- 
try destitute, or nearly so, of trees, and who 
feel the need of them, but are inexperienced 
in their cultivation. It is divided into four 
parts—‘‘ Why to plant; when to plant; what 
to plant; and how to plant ”—the questions 
coming under each of which heads are an- 
“swered clearly and in a plain, practical, 
common-sense manner. The treatise, be- 
sides having the qualities just referred to, 
is lucid and simple in its literary construc- 
tion, brief, interesting, instructive, compre- 
hensive, and withal convenient in size for 
the hand or the pocket; and it offers a com- 


‘275 


plete exemplification of what a manual on 
any practical subject for plain men ough 
to be. ; 


PRoTecTION TO YOuNG INDUSTRIES, AS AP- 
PLIED IN THE UniTeD States. A Study 
in Economic History. By F. W. Taus- 
sic, Ph. D., Instructor in Political Econ- 
omy in Harvard College. New York: G. 
P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 72. 


Tus instructive monograph on one of 
the most prominent points in the political 
economy of protection was originally written 
in competition for the Toppan Prize in Po- 
litical Science at Harvard University, and 
received that prize in October, 1882. The 
writer carefully examines the history of the 
cotton, the woolen, and the iron manufact- 
ures of this country, with reference to the 
influences that have been operative in their 
development, and the result is thus given in 
his concluding remarks. 


The three most important branches of industry 
to which protection has been applied have now 
been examined, It has appeared that the introduc- 
tion of the cotton-manufacture took place before the 
era of protection, and that—looking aside from the 
anomalous conditions of the period of restriction 
from 1808 to 1815—its early progress, though per- 
haps somewhat promoted by the minimum duty of 
1816, would hardly have been much retarded in the 
absence of protective duties. The manufacture of 
woolens received little direct assistance before it 
reached that stage at which it could maintain itself 
without help, if it were for the advantage of the 
eountry that it should be maintained. In the iron- 
manufacture, twenty years of heavy protection did 
not materially alter the proportion of home and 
foreign supply, and brought about no change in 
methods of production. It is not possible, and 
hardly necessary, to carry the inquiry much further. 
Detailed accounts can not be obtained of other in- 
dustries to which protection was applied; but, so 
far as can be seen, the same course of events took 
place in them as in the three whose history we have 
followed. The same general conditions affected the 
manufactures of glass, of earthenware, of paper, of 
cotton-bagging, sail-duck, cordage, and other arti- 
cles to which protection was applied during this 
time with more or less vigor. We may assume that 
the same general effect, or absence of effect, fol- 
lowed in these as in the other cases, 


FeperaL Taxation. By Samret Barnett: 
Pp. 45. Richmond, Va.: Andrew Bap- 
tist & Co. 

Tus pamphlet is made up of a collection 
of editorials which appeared in the “ Atlanta 
Constitution.” They consist of independent 
criticisms of our national policy in regard to 
taxation, expressed with great force and free- 


276 


dom. The writer places a high estimate on 
the value of the Federal Union, but thinks 
it would be worth more if it cost less. »While 
its benefits are inexpensive, its abuses are 
costly. Free trade between the States, which 
Mr. Barnett thinks the chief advantage of the 
Federal Union, costs nothing; while “pro- 
tection” is more expensive than the govern- 
ment itself. The tax policy of the Federal 
Government, carried on by protection, he de- 
clares to be bad in theory and even worse 
in practice; and that few, of even public 
men, have the faintest conception of how 
bad it is. Mr. Barnett proclaims a very 
important truth when he says that “ nothing 
short of a quantitative study of its imposi- 
tions can properly expose them; the pretty 
fallacies of protection melt like wax in the 
fire of quantitative analysis.” The treat- 
ment of the several topics is rather suggest- 
ive than systematic, but the pages are full 
of telling facts, and many hard blows are 
‘dealt upon the system of organized corrup- 
tion which shelters itself under the false 
pretense of protection. 


“Tue Kansas Crry Review or ScreNcE AND 
Inpustry.” Edited by Taropors §. Case. 
Kansas City, Mo.: Monthly, 64 pp. Price, 
$2.50 a year. 


Wiru its May number this magazine be- 
gins its eighth year. The “Review” is 
doing an excellent work in stimulating an 
interest in science in the rapidly growing 
country west of the Mississippi. But very 
. few of its articles are solely of local inter- 
est; a wide range of sciences is represented 
in its pages, while manufactures and the 
arts based upon science, including educa- 
tion, are by no means neglected. 


“Tue CanapiAN Recorp oF Naturat His- 
TORY AND GEOLOGY, WITH PROCEEDINGS 
oF THE Naturat History Socrery or 
MontreaL.” Vol. I, No.1. J. T. Don- 
AuD, M. A., Editor, Montreal, January, 
1884, 


THis magazine takes the place of “The 
Canadian Naturalist,” until last June pub- 
lished for the above-named society by the 
Messrs. Dawson Brothers, The “Record” is 
to be published quarterly, and, in addition to 
the society’s proceedings, will contain origi- 


nal papers on scientific subjects by Cana-' 


dians, and reprints of scientific papers of 
merit published elsewhere, which deal with 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Canadian subjects. The first number con- 
tains a report of the second annual meeting 
of the Royal Society of Canada, held at 
Ottawa in May, 1883; two short papers on 
geological subjects, by Principal J. W. 
Dawson; and an extended account of “‘ The 
Athabasca District of the Canadian North- 
west Territory,” by the Rev. Emile Petitot. 
There are also three short papers by the 
editor, and part of a memorial address on 
the late James Richardson. 


A Text-Boox or Inorcanic Cuemistry. By 
Professor Victor von Ricuter, Univer- 
sity of Breslau. Translated by Edgar F. 
Smith, A. M., Ph. D. Philadelphia: P. 
Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 424. Price, $2. 


Proressor VON RicuteEr’s treatment of 
his subject is characterized by an effort to 
show how the possession of a few facts leads 
to the formation of scientific theories, and the 
theories in turn show the investigator where 
to look for new facts. “ The Periodic System 
of the Elements,” or ‘‘ Mendelejeff’s Table,” 
is made the basis of the work, and con- 
siderable attention is given to thermo-chem- 
ical phenomena, the periodicity of which is 
brought prominently forward. There is a 
short chapter on “Crystallography,” with 
diagrams, and one on “Spectrum Analysis.” 
The volume is illustrated with a colored plate 
of spectra, and eighty-nine woodcuts. 


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 


The Past and the Present of Political Keonomy. 
By et T. Ely, Ph.D. Baltimore: N. Murray. 
Pp. 64. 

“The Journal of Sahni. Vol. V, No. 1. 
Edited by Michael Foster, M.D. Baltimore: N. 
Murray. Pp. xii-484. $5 a year. 

An pe sae 2 locating the Strongest of the 
a By W. H. Ernest H. Jobbins, M. E. Pp. 


 Aneurism of the Femoral Artery, and“a Knife- 
Wound of the Intestines. By W.0O. Roberts, M. D. 
Louisville, Ky. Pp. 11. 

Esplorazione di un Shell-mound Indiano presso 
Nueva Orleans, Luisiana. (Exploration of a Shell- 
Mound near New Orleans, La.) By R. W. Shufeldt, 
U.S. Army. Florence, Italy. Pp. 11. 

Studies from the Biological Laboratory of Johns 
Hopkins University. H. Newell Martin, D. Sc., and 
W. K. Brooks, Ph. D., Editors, Baltimore: N. 
Murray. Pp. 48, with Six Plates. 70 cents. 

The Glacial Boundary in Ohio, Indiana, and 
Kentneky. By Professor G. Frederick Wright. 
Cleveland, Ohio: Western Reserve Historical So- 
ciety. Pp. 86 

The Determination of the Flashing Point of Pe- 
troleum. By John T. Stoddard. Pp. 6. 

What and Why. By Charles E. Pratt. Boston: © 
Pope Manufacturing Company. Pp. 72. 

The Mormon Question. By J. W. Stillman. 
Boston: J. P. Mendum. Pp. 40, 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


Massachusetts Agricultural College, Report for 
fe Wright & Potter Printing Company. 


Sanitary Drainage of Tenement- Houses. By 
William Paul Gerhard,C.E. Hartford: Cox, Lock- 
wood, and Brainard Company. Pp. 40. 

Methods of Historical Study. By Herbert B. 
Adams, Ph.D. Baltimore: N. Murray. Pp. 186. 
50 cents. 

The Postal Telegraph. Speech by Hon. John A. 
Anderson, of Kansas. Washington. Pp. 23. | 

Notes on the Literature of Explosives. By Pro- 
fessor Charles E. Munroe, U. 8. N. A. Pp. 29. 

**Home Science Monthly.” Vol. I, No.1. New 
York: Selden R. Hopkins. Pp.112. $2.50 a year. 

Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural His- 
tory (Carboniferous deg e and Cockroaches). 
By Samuel H. Scudder. Boston: Published by 
the Society. Pp. 27, with Two Plates. 

Reports on the Cotton Production: Of the State 
of Texas. Pp. 173. In the Indian Territory. fa 
84. Ofthe State of Arkansas. Pp. 116. By R. H. 
Loughridge, Ph. D. Berkeley, Cal.: From the 
Tenth Census Report. 

Der freie Wehrman als Traiger der darwin- 
ischen Sittlichkeit und sozial Reform. (The Free 
Warrior as a Piilar of Darwinian Morality and So- 
cial Reform.) By John H. Becker. Berlin. 

Katy Neal: A Comedy of Child-Life. By Charles 
Be . New York: Harold Roorbach. Pp. 46. 
15 cents. 

The American University. By Professor John 
W. Burgess, Ph.D. Boston: Ginn, Heath & Co, 
Pp. 22. 15 cents. 

Fertilizers: Greensand Marl. 
Greene. Harrisburg, Pa. Pp. 29. 

Real and Imaginary Effects of Intemperance. 
By G.Thomann. New York: United States Brew- 
ers’ Association. Pp. 167. 

The Necessity of an Ambulance System in Chi- 
eago. By G. Frank Lydston,M.D. Chicago: A. 
G.N ent Pp. 8. 

Modern Sanitation. By G. Frank Lydston, M.D. 
Chicago: A. G. Newell. Pp. 23. 

Geological Survey of New Jersey. Report for 
yg By George H. Cook, State Geologist. Pp. 


Q. P. Index Aunual, 1883. Bangor, Me.: Q. P. 
Index, Publisher. Pp. 86. 

His of the Discovery of the Circulation of the 
Blood. 4 Henry C. cary soapy | M. D. Philadel- 
phia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 56. $1. 

The Parlor Muse. New York: D. Appleton & 
Co, Pp. 96. 80 cents. 

English as She is Spoke: With an Introduction 
by James Millington. New York: G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. Pp.56. 50 cents, 

Beginnings with the Microscope. By Walter P. 
Manton, oa D. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp. 


By Dr. C. A. 


Trafalgar: A Tale. By Perez Galdos. 
the Spanish by Clara Be 
Gottsberger. . 255. 

Lectures on Light. By G. G. Stokes, F. R. 8. 
London: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 133. 75 cents. 

Systematic and Descriptive Mineralogy. By J. 
H. Collins, F.G.8. New York: G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. Pp. 229. $1.25. 

The Clew of the Maze and the Spare Half-Hour. 
By the Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon. New York: 
Funk & Wagnalls. Pp. 190. 75 cents. 

“Science Ladders.” Nos. 1to6. By N. D’An- 
vers. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 
about 400. $1.50. i 

Brain - Exhaustion. By J. Leonard Corning, 
M.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 234, 

The Consolations of Science. By Jacob Straub. 
Chicago : The Colegrove Book Company. Pp. 435. 


From 
New York: W. 8. 


"277 


The Outskirts of Physical Science. By T. Nel- 
ice Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp, 187. 

Six Centuries of Work and Wages. By James 
E. Thorold Rogers, M. P. New York: G. P. Put- 
nam’s Sons. Pp. 591. 


The True Theory of the Sun. By Thomas Bass- 
gett Sages York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 

*“*The Globe Pronouncing Gazetteer.” Edin- 
burgh: Oliver & Boyd; New York: G. P. Put- 
nam’s Sons. Pp. 462, with 832 Maps. 


Sorghum: Its Culture and Manufacture econom- 
ically considered. By Peter Collier, Ph. D. Cin- 
cinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 582. $8. 


Machinery of the Heavens. By A. P. Pichereau. 
Galesburg, Lll.: The Author, Pp. 142. $1.50, 


In the Heart of Africa. By Sir Samuel W. 
Baker; condensed by E. J. W. New York: Funk 
& Wagnalls. Pp. 286. $1. 

Pine Needles, or Sonnets and Songs. By Heloise 
ogre New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1854. 

'p- 160. 


Geology and Mineral Resources of the James 
River Vailey, Virginia. By J. L. Campbell, LL. D. 
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp, 119. $1. 

The Woman Question in Europe. Edited by 
Theodore Stanton. New York: G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. Pp. 478. $3.50. 

Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 
1883. Washington: Government Printing-Office. 
Pp. 496. 

Mental Evolution in Animals. By George John 
Romanes, F. R.S8. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 
Pp. 411. $2. 

A Graveyard Flower. By Wilhelmine von Hil- 
lern. From the German, Clara Bell. New 
York: William 8, Gottsberger. Pp. 160. 

A Manual of Psychological Medicine and Allied 
Nervous Diseases. ed Edward ©. Mann, M.D. 
Philadelphia: P. Biakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 699. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


The British Association.—The British 
Association will meet in its fifty-fourth an- 
nual session at Montreal, August 27th, un- 
der the presidency of Lord Rayleigh. The 
Vice-Presidents will be the Governor-Gen- 
eral of Canada (Lord Lansdowne), Sir John 
A. Macdonald, Sir Lyon Playfair, Sir Alex- 
ander T. Galt, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir Nar- 
cisse Dorion, Hon. Dr. Chauveau, Principal 
J. W. Dawson, Professor Edward Frank- 
land, Dr. W. H. Hingston, and Dr. T. Sterry 
Hunt. Professor A. W. Williamson will be 
General Treasurer ; Captain Douglas Galton 
and A.G. Vernon Harcourt, General Secre- 
taries ; Professor T. G. Bonney, Secretary ; 
L. E. Dawson, R. A. Ramsay, S. Rivard, 8. C. 
Stevenson, and Thomas White, M. P., Local 
Secretaries ; and Mr. F. Wolferstan Thomas, 
Local Treasurer. The Presidents of the 
Sections will be: A, Mathematical and Physi- 
cal Science, Sir William Thomson ; B, Chem- 
ical Science, Professor H. E. Roscoe; C, Ge- 


278 


ology, W.T. Blanford ; D, Biology, Profess- 
or H. N. Moseley; E, Geography, Colonel 
Rhodes and P. L. Sclater, Vice-Presidents ; 
F, Economic Science and Statistics, Sir R. 
Temple; G, Mechanical Science, Sir F. J. 
Bramwell; H, Anthropology, Professor E. 
B. Tylor. It is expected that the public lec- 
tures will be by Mr. Crookes, Dr. Dallinger, 
and Professor Ball. The special discussions 
will be: Friday, August 29th, “The Seat 
of the Electro-motive Forces in the Vol- 
taic Cell”; and Monday, September Ist, 
“The Connection of Sun-Spots with Terres- 
trial Phenomena.” Most liberal provisions 
have been made by the Canadians for the 
accommodation and entertainment of their 
guests. The expenses of fifty officers are 
guaranteed ; the Dominion Parliament has 
appropriated $14,000 toward the expenses 
of ordinary members; the steamship com- 
panies have made considerable reductions 
of fares ; members of the Association are in- 
vited to bring their wives and two near rela- 
tives with them; the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
way offers free excursions to one hundred 
and fifty members from August 1st till the 
grand excursion to the Rocky Mountains ; 
and other excursions have been provided for 
or are contemplated, among which is the ex- 
cursion to the American Association, which 
meets in Philadelphia, September 3d. 


Death of Professor Klinkerfues, — 
Professor C. A. Eggert, of the Univer- 
sity of Iowa, has kindly furnished us with 
the following facts respecting the life and 
work of Professor F. W. Kiinkerfues, of 
the University of Géttingen, one of the most 
prominent astronomers in Germany, who 
died by suicide—provoked, it is supposed, 
by pecuniary losses and excessive use of 
intoxicating liquors—on the 28th of Jan- 
uary last: Professor Klinkerfues was born 
at Hofgeismar in 1827, and very early mani- 
fested a decided taste for astronomical stud- 
ies. He became a pupil of Gauss, who rec- 


ognized his very remarkable mathematical | 


talents. Some of his earlier efforts were af- 
terward incorporated, with but little change, 
in his ‘Theoretical Astronomy,” a work of 
decided merit. Two of them deserve spe- 
cial mention : one, a new method of calculat- 
ing the course of a comet from one incom- 
plete and two complete observations; and 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the other, for the computation of the orbits 
of double stars. His hypothetical method 
for the determination of the distance of 
certain fixed stars belonging to the same 
system was applied with a satisfactory re- 
sult to Sirius. Other of his hypothetical 
combinations were bold and successful in 
a high degree. Thus, he predicted a close 
relation between the meteoric shower of 
November 27, 1872, from the constellations 


| Perseus and Andromeda, and Biela’s comet, 


and that the comet would be found in 
the opposite quarter of the sky. He tel- 
egraphed to the director of the observa- 
tory in Madras: “ Biela’s comet has touched 
the earth. Look for it in Centaur, near 
the star 3.” The comet was found at the 
spot indicated. Professor Klinkerfues was 
the discoverer of comets III, 1853; III, 
IV, 1854; III, 1857; V, 1857, and II, 1863. 
He was best knownin Germany for his pre- 
dictions of the weather, which he based on 
the hygrometric indications of moisture in 
theair. Their fault was, that they depended 
on the indications at the surface, while the 
weather goes by the proportion of moist- 
ure in the upper strata of the atmosphere, 
which may be very different. His instru- 
ment, known as the Klinkerfues hygrometer, 
met with considerable success for a time, 
but was ultimately found to be of little 
practical value, and is not much used now. 
Although Professor Klinkerfues was no 
more successful in other points as a weather- 
prophet, he has enriched meteorology with 
observations and facts of some importance ; 
and it would be unjust to classify him with 
the noisy charlatans whom our newspapers 
hoist into temporary fame. Notwithstand- 


ing his mistakes, the death of such a man. 


is a loss to science. Supplemented by care- 
ful observations, his hypotheses on astro- 
nomical matters often approached mathe- 
matical certainty, and it is not easy to say 
how much he might yet have accomplished 
but for the abrupt and melancholy closing 
of his career. 


Faets about British Stature.—The An- 
thropometric Committee of the British As- 
sociation, after several years of labor, made 


its final report at the recent meeting of that — 


body. The committee was appointed for 
the purpose of “collecting observations in 


' | 
POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


the systematic examination of the-height, 
weight, and other physical characters of the 
inhabitants of the British Isles,” and, in 
performing its work, took all sorts of meas- 
urements of people of all classes, of all 
ages, and of both sexes, living in all parts 
of Great Britain, and, to a small extent, of 
persons living in Ireland. The measure- 
ments or observations covered twelve points 
by which man is externally distinguished 
‘from man, and were made upon thousands 
of people. We notice a few of the more 
striking results: In average height, the 
Scotch stand first (68°61 inches), the Irish 
second, the English third, and the Welsh 
fourth, while in weight, the Scotch still lead- 
ing with 165°3 pounds, the Welsh are sec- 
ond, the English third, and the Irish fourth. 
In the light of these two results, the Lon- 
don “Times” observes that the Scot will 
look upon the discovery made by the com- 
mittee “as simply giving the hall-mark of 
science to his own instinctive conviction 
that he is a much better man in all respects 
than the ‘fausse southron.’” As between 
the sexes in England, the average stature 
of adult males is 67°36 inches, and that of 
adult females 62°65 inches, while the aver- 
age Englishman weighs 155 pounds, and the 
Englishwoman 122°8 pounds. In strength, 
the Englishman can draw a bow with a 
power of 774 pounds, while the woman 
brings to bear a force 35 pounds less, or 
a little more than half as much. In com- 
plexion, the lighter shades rule over the 
country as a whole, buta large percentage of 
dark complexions stretch in a band across 
the center of England and Wales. The in- 
habitants of the more elevated districts 
appear to possess a greater stature than 
those of the alluvial plains, and those of 
the northern and colder districts than those 
of the southern and warmer parts of the 
island; those of the northeastern and drier 
regions are taller than those of southwest- 
ern and damper climates. A comparison 
with American army statistics does not show 
that the Anglo-Saxon race reaches a higher 
stature here than in England, as some have 
claimed, but that a close correspondence 
prevails between the two groups. Com- 
pared with other nationalities in stature, 
except as to a few extraordinarily tall Poly- 
nesians, the English professional class head 


279 


the list, and the Anglo-Saxon race takes the 
chief place among civilized communities, 
though it might stand second to the Scan- 
dinavian countries if a fair sample of their 
population could be obtained. Other gen- 
eral facts deduced from the examinations, 
as true in the British Isles at least, are that 
an open-air country life is more favorable 
to height and weight than a sedentary town 
life; that favorable hygienic and sanitary 
conditions have a marked influence on 
growth and weight; that lunatics show a 
deficiency of weight and stature, and crim- 
inals a greater one, indicating a lack of 
physical as well as mental stamina in both 
these classes; that athletes appear a little 
taller than the general population, and not 
as heavy; that growth diminishes, as we 
descend in the social scale, to a difference 
of five inches between the average stature 
cf the best and most nurtured classes of 
children of corresponding ages, and of three 
and a half inches in adults. The popula- 
tion of the manufacturing towns do not 
appear to be degenerating, but exhibit a 
slight but uniform increase in stature, and 
a large increase in weight. 


Darwinism in the Talmud.—Dr. B. 
Placzek, of Briinn, has collected citations 
from the Talmud to show that the old Jew- 
ish writers were keen observers of Nature, 
and had ideas akin to Darwinism. Joseph 
Albo, in the fifteenth century, suggested the 
thought of compensation, or interchange of 
relations, in an hypothesis that cattle are 
defective in teeth because so much of the 
tooth-stuff goes to horn, and that they make 
up for the resultant deficiency in their pow- 
ers of mastication by the faculty of chew- 
ing the cud. Other writers noticed that the 
integrity of the comb of the cock had much 
to do with its masculine potency, and that 
other birds suffer in spirit and vigor when 
deprived of their ornamental appendages, 
A writer in the “ Agada” affirmed, in justifi- 
cation of Solomon’s selection of the ant as 
an example of wise industry, that it builds 
its houses in three stories, and stores its 
provisions, not in the upper compartment, 
where they may be rained on, nor in the 
lower, where they will gather dampness, 
but in the middle one, the safest place, and 
that it gathers all it can. The ant is also 


280 


a fit type of honesty, for it regards the 
property of its neighbors, and will not rob. 
Once, it is said, when an ant dropped a 
grain of corn, a number of other ants came 
up and smelled of it, but let it lie till the 
owner came up and took it away. Simon 
ben Chalafta, “the Experimenter,” tells of 
an experiment worthy of Lubbock. On a 
very hot day he put a cover over an ant- 
hill. A sentry ant came out, observed the 
shadow, and reported upon it to his fellows, 
They came out to enjoy the coolness of the 
shade, when it was suddenly taken away, 
and the insects, irritated by the burning 
sun, fe!l upon the scout that had led them 
into the trap, and killed him. The Aga- 
dists make much of the devotion of the in- 
dividual ant to the welfare of the whole 
_ colony as a salient point of formic char- 
aeter. Dr. Placzek suggests that Solomon 
may have been acquainted with a kind of 
agricultural ants from his sentence, “‘ Pro- 
videth her meat in the summer, and gather- 
eth her food in the harvest,” where the 
former verb may, in analogy with other 
cases of its use in the Bible, refer to the 
preparation of the field. Passages are 
quoted that point to the thought that the 
difference in mental gifts between men and 
animals is only quantitative. In one of the 


books, a limit is set to the scope of scien- 


tific investigation thus: ‘‘ What is too high 
for thee, seek not to reach; what is too 
hard for thee, seek not to penetrate; what 
is incomprehensible to thee, try not to 
know; what remains hidden from thy mind, 
strive not to discover. Direct thy thought 
only to what is attainable, and trouble thy- 
self not about hidden things.” 


Geological Catastrophes.—The Duke of 
Argyll, in his address to the Edinburgh 
Geological Society, on its fiftieth anniver- 
sary, took the ground that “nothing can be 
more unphilosophical than the antithesis 
and opposition which is set up between 
what is called the law of continuity and 
what is called the doctrine of catastrophes. 
Throughout all Nature, and throughout all 
those operations of the human intellect 
which depend on the manipulation of natu- 
ral forces, we see the two doctrines to be 
perfectly harmonious—strains and tensions 
maintaining themselves in absolute silence 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


up to the bending or the breaking-point— 
pressures pressing with tremendous but 
noiseless energy up to the bursting point— 
and then moments of rapid and sometimes 
of instantaneous change. If it is irrational 
to quote the continuity of Nature as afford- 
ing any, even the least, presumption against 
sudden and great effects, it is still more 
irrational to quote it as irreconcilable with 
effects which, though catastrophes to us, 
whose scales of measurement are often the 
scales of pygmies, are in reality nothing but 
movements of infinitesimal smallness in the 
scale of Nature. I had occasion the other 
day, in delivering a popular lecture in Glas- 
gow, to exhibit a section of the globe drawn 
to the scale of one tenth of an inch toa 
mile. On that scale, which I have taken 
from my friend Mr. James Nasmyth, the 
globe is represented by a circle sixty-four 
feet in diameter, and I was able to show 
that on that portion of the curve which rep- 
resents one eighth of the circumference, the 
elevation of the highest mountain in Europe, 
Mont Blanc, was wholly invisible to the 
spectators who were half-way down the hall, 
and could barely be seen even by those who 
were close at hand. The truth is, that, 
when we come to realize the almost infini- 
tesimal smallness of the irregularities of 
the earth’s surface as compared with its 
circumference—the whole range from the 
highest height to the deepest deep being 
somewhat less than sixty thousand feet— 
the wonder comes to be that if subterrane- 
an forces are at work at all in modifying, 
from time to time, the perfect smoothness 
and sphericity of the surface, not that their 
work should be so great, but, on the con- 
trary, that it should be so very small.” 


Causes of Typhoid Fever.—In a paper 
published by the Iowa State Board of Health 
on the nature, causes, and prevention of the 
typhoid fever of America, Dr. R. J. Far- 


- quharson, Secretary of the Board, emphasizes 


the distinction between typhus and typhoid, 
an important point of which is, he believes, 
that typhoid is not contagious. A number 
of reports, American and foreign, seem to 


concur in fixing the origin of the disease in 


some condition of the ground or water, and 
indicate that it may be produced by foul 
water, by foul air, or by emanations from 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


the earth, occurring most frequently in the 
autumn and during seasons of drought. It 
has sometimes been traced with every evi- 
dence of probability to decayed wood, and 
this indicates that vegetable decay is one 
of the prime sources of its origin—a view 
which the fact that it has been produced by 
the drying of ponds does not contradict, 
but rather supports. A direct connection is 
traced, in the United States, between the in- 
crease of summer temperature and this dis- 
ease. The curves of normal temperature, 
of typhoid fever, and of malarial fevers are 
almost exactly parallel, except that the cul- 
mination of the fever curve, in September 
for Iowa, October for the Eastern States, is 
behind that of the temperature curve, which 
occurs in July. A general parallelism, but 
without the uniformity of the culminating 
point of fever, has, with the exception of 
one spot (Munich), been observed in Europe. 
Since the disease is not contagious, the mi- 
nute directions for isolation, disinfection, 
destruction of elothing, etc., so eminently 
proper in really contagious diseases, are 
useless in typhoid fever. In our present 
knowledge of the causes of the disease, but 
little can be done, and that only in a gen- 
eral way, to prevent it. The principal points 
are to see that the drinking-water is pure, 
that the house is well ventilated and not 
built over a marshy spot, that slops are re- 
moved far enough away, and that the drains 
are kept clean and washed and are occa- 
sionally disinfected with copperas ; and, 
when sickness occurs, the patient should be 
given quiet and plenty of fresh air. 


The Weather and Neuralgia.—The case 
of Captain R. Catlin, United States Army, 
as reported by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, affords 
a curious illustration of a relation between 
neuralgic pains and meteorological condi- 
tion. Captain Catlin had his foot crushed 
by a round shot in August, 1864. His leg 
was amputated below the knee. Pain was 
felt early as if in the lost foot, and became 
severe within nine months, while in other 
respects Captain Catlin is and has been in 
perfect health. Since 1871, the captain has 
kept a regular record of the hours of pain 
he suffered each year and each month. The 
maximum of pain was attained in 1874 and 
1875. During 1876 the amount of pain fell 


281 


off 100 hours (from 1,892 to 1,790), with a 
decrease of mean annual pressure and a 
corresponding increase of temperature. For 
1877, pain and pressure remained constant 
and parallel, with some increase in tempera- 
ture. In 1878 the pain decreased 200 hours, 
while an equally remarkable fall was shown 
in the barometric curve. The law of rela- 
tionship of low pressure and high tempera- 
ture to the amount of pain and the number 
of attacks of pain and the number of storms 
becomes more apparent in considering the 
quarterly and monthly distribution of pain 
and storm. “The winter months hold the 
advantage as pain-producers,” while in quar- 
terly amounts the first quarter, beginning 
with the winter solstice, leads; the fourth 
quarter, ending with the winter solstice, 
follows; and the second, or spring quar- 
ter, is next. In months, March holds the 
lead, and is closely pressed by January, after 
which follow November, December, May, 
February, April, August, October, Septem- 
ber, July, and June. The average duration 
of each attack of pain during eight years 
was 18°97 hours. The duration also bears 
a relation to the amount of pain and the 
number of storms, and is greatest in Febru- 
ary. To determine the average distance of 
the storm-center at the beginning of the pain- 
attack, sixty well-defined storms through ten 
consecutive months were taken. The aver- 
age distance was six hundred and eighty 
miles, the particular distances ranging from 
two hundred to twelve hundred miles. It 
has been observed that eating a meal, when 
the pain is on, intensifies it, and it is be- 
lieved that it often hastens the attack. Dur- 
ing seven years (1875 to 1882) nine neural- 
gic attacks of great and unusual power were 
observed, and a coincidence was traced be- 
tween them and storms of extraordinary in- 
tensity. The best regimen for this neural- 
gic subject has been found to consist in 
physical exercise, nutritious food, and light, 
agreeable occupation. 


Dr. Michael Foster on School Examina- 
tions.—Dr. Michael Foster, in a recent ad- 
dress before a pharmaceutical school in Lon- 
don, gave a vigorous expression to his views 
respecting examinations. The passing of an 
examination was regarded as a mark, stamp, 
or certificate, of what? He ventured to 


282 


think that success in this sphere of action 
merely indicated that the prize-man had 
‘the ability and skill to get on in an exami- 
nation. No doubt a stupid and idle man 
could not get first places in examinations, 
and so the industrious and clever were 
picked out by the process. But it was cer- 
tainly not the case that those who failed to 
get the highest honors in examinations went 
to the wall in after-life. On the contrary, 
he was sorry to say that he knew some who 
had succeeded to the fullest extent during 
the examinational period of their life, yet 
did not maintain their prestige as time rolled 
on. And not a few men who were signal 
failures at examinations have proved of 
enormous value in after-years. To some a 
vast amount of evil was wrought from the 
fact that no proper knowledge had been ac- 
quired to pass the standard. He advocated 
a plan of examination which is partly car- 
ried out at the School of Science, South Ken- 
sington. That was, to study and be exam- 
ined on each subject separately, and by the 
same persons who had acted as teachers, 


The Future of Physiological Experiment, 
—Professor Tyndall founds a new argument 
in favor of the practice of experimental 
physiology in the peculiar properties of in- 
fectious diseases, and their probable germ 
origin. One of the most extraordinary and 
unaccountable experiences in medicine has 
been the immunity secured by a single at- 
tack of a communicable disease against fu- 
ture attacks of the same malady. Small-pox, 
typhoid, and scarlatina, have been found, 
for example, as a general rule, to occur only 
once in the lifetime of the individual, the suc- 
cessful passage through the disorder seem- 
ing to render the body invulnerable against 
future attacks. Professor Tyndall had some 
time ago suggested to a friend that the 
phenomenon could be explained under the 
germ theory by supposing the soil, or the 
System, to be exhausted by the first para- 
sitic crop, of some ingredient necessary to 
the growth and propagation of the parasite. 
Some important essays on the subject have 
been recently published in the “ Revue Sci- 
entifique” by M. Bouley, who draws atten- 
tion to the results obtained by M. Raulin in 
the cultivation of the microscopic plant As- 
pergillus niger. The omission of potash 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


from M. Raulin’s liquid suffices to make the 
produce fall to one twenty-fifth of the amount 
collected when potash is present. The ad- 
dition of an infinitesimal amount of a sub- 
stance inimical to the life of a plant is at- 
tended with still more striking results, For 
example, one part in 1,600,000 of nitrate of 
silver added to the liquid entirely stops the 
growth of the plant. Now, supposing the as- 
pergillus to be a human parasite—a living 
contagium—capable of self-multiplication in 
the human blood, and of so altering the con- 
stitution of that liquid as to produce death; 
then, the introduction into the blood of a 
man weighing sixty kilogrammes, of five mil- 
ligrammes of nitrate of silver would insure, 
if not the total effacement of this conta- 
gium, at all events the neutralization of its 
power to destroy life. An index-finger here 
points out to us the direction which physio- 
logical experiment is likely to take in the 
future. In anticipation of the assault of 
infectious organisms, the experimenter will 
try to introduce into the body substances 
which, small in amount, shall so affect the 
blood and tissues as to render them unfit for 
the development of the contagium. And, 
subsequent to the assault of the parasite, he 
will seek to introduce substances which shall 
effectually stop its multiplication. Dr, Polli, 
of Milan, has already obtained results that 
promise well with alkaline sulphides in cer- 
tain fevers and small-pox, and Crudelli ob- 
tained similar results with arsenic against 
the malaria of the Roman Campagna. To 
enable us to administer these remedies safe- 
ly and with some assurances of success, ex- 
periments must be made of their effects, on 
different groups of individuals, and these 
individuals must be animals susceptible to 
the infection and to the counteracting appli- 
cation. ‘I appeal,” says Professor Tyndall, 
“not to the partisans of either side, but to 
the common sense of England, whether, in 
the interests of humanity, the proposed ex- 
periment is not a legitimate one.” 


Effect of School-Work on the Brain.— 
A question was recently asked Mr. Mun- 
della, in the British House of Commons, as 
to the effect of the English educational sys- 
tem on the health of children and teachers. 
He replied in substance, availing himself of 
the reports of the Lunacy Commissioners, 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


that the effect of education had-been, even 
in the midst-of-a rapidly-increasing popu- 
lation, to diminish the absolute number of 
children admitted to asylums. So, of the 


group described as teachers, schoolmasters, 


schoolmistresses, governesses, professors, 
and lecturers, the proportion admitted to 
asylums was less than that of any other 
profession. This statement should dispose 
of much of what is said about the ordinary 
routine of school occupation leading to men- 
tal disease. While pupils who are stimu- 
lated or pressed, by cramming, to over-exer- 
tion may suffer injurv, a lively exercise of 
the mental faculties on some varieties of sub- 
jects, which is the most that the majority 
of school-children attain, is more likely to 
be promotive of vigor. The fact that insan- 
ity prevails most among agricultural labor- 
ers in the rural counties, where the standard 
of education’ is lowest, and mental vacancy 
is least interrupted, tends to show that ab- 
solute blankness of mind, like the non-use 
of a physical faculty, promotes disease. So 
with teachers: while the demands on their 
brains are constant and call for vigorous 
exercise, they are, as a rule, seldom of a 
kind to involve overwhelming pressure, or 
so irregular as to admit of intervals when 
the mind is wholly unemployed and liable 
to morbid reaction. 


Poisons developed in the Body. — On 
this subject Dr. Benjamin W. Richardson 
says: “‘ In my reports to the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, I have 
pointed out that the substance amylene, an 
organic product which can be easily con- 
structed in vital chemical changes, produces 
phenomena identical with those of somnam- 
bulism and with some of the phenomena of 
hysteria. I have pointed out,in the same 
reports, that another organic product, 
called mercaptan (sulphur-alcohol), causes, 
when inhaled, symptoms of profoundest 
melancholy, and that, in the process of be- 
ing eliminated by the breath, it gives to the 
breath an odor which is identical with the 
odor evolved in the breaths of many pa- 
tients who are suffering from the disease 
called melancholia. From these observa- 
tions I have ventured to suggest that vari- 
ous forms of mental affection and of nerv- 
ous affection depend for their development 


pothesis, or at all events shakes it. 


283 


on the presence in the body of organic 
chemical compounds, formed and distilled 
through an unnatural chemical process car- 
ried on in the body itself. I have en- 
deavored to develop this subject some- 
what further by my researches on the 
action of lactic acid on animal bodies. I 
have shown by experiment that this acid, 
diffused through the body by the blood, 
acts as a direct irritant upon the lining 
membrane of the heart, the endocardium, 
and all the fibro-serous membranes of the 
body, so that a synthesis of heart-disease 
and rheumatism can be established by its 
means. Lactic acid is the most copious . 
product thrown out in the disease called 
rheumatic fever, and, as many of the phe- 
nomena resulting from that disease take 
the same form and character as those pro- 
ducible by lactic acid, I infer from the best 
evidence attainable that this acid, the prod- 
uct of a fermentative change going on in 
the body during acute rheumatism, is the 
cause of the secondary structural affections 
which so frequently follow acute rheuma- 
tism. It has been for some time past ob- 
served by several able physicians that persons 
who are suffering from the affection known 
as diabetes give off a peculiar odor from 
their breath—an odor which to some is like 
that of vinegar, to others of sour beer, to 
others of a mixture of ether and chloroform, 
to others of acetic ether. Ishould compare 
it myself to the odor of grains as it is de- 
tected in a brewery. When this odor is ob- 
served in the breath of diabetic patients, it 
frequently happens that they become sleepy, 
cold, and unconscious, with the results of 
coma and death. At one time it was sup- 
posed that these phenomena were uremic, 
and were due to the presence of urea in the 
blood ; but the absence of convulsion and 
of some other symptoms destroys this hy- 
It is 
now believed that the symptoms owe their 
origin to the decomposition of the diabetic 
sugar which is in the body, and to the 
production from that decomposition of a 
volatile ethereal fluid called acetone, a 
fluid which has been discovered in the 
blood and secretions of these affected per- 
sons, who are said therefore to be suffer- 
ing from the disease ‘acetonemia.’ From 
the action of acetone upon animal bodies 


284 


I infer that the theory of acetonzmia is 
founded on good evidence.” Dr. Richard- 
son mentions also the secondary absorption 
of poisonous matter from wounds, and from 
the abraded and ulcerating surfaces pro- 
duced in diphtheria, malignant scarlet fever, 
etc., and concludes by saying: ‘Such ob- 
servations as have been noticed under this 
short head lead to a study of another new 
point, namely, the possibility of the forma- 
tion of organic alkaloids in the body during 
some conditions of disease. Scientific dis- 
covery has not, however, advanced so far as 
to enable me at this moment to do more 
than allude to one of the newest and most 
important studies in modern medical re- 
search,” 


Mechanism of Plant-Contraction.—Dr. 
J. Burdon-Sanderson, in a lecture before 
the Royal Institution of Great Britain, per- 
formed an experimental demonstration of 
the causes and phenomena of the excitabil- 
ity of plants. The nuraber of plants which 
exhibit what is often called irritability is 
very considerable, but the illustrations of 
the lecture were drawn chiefly from typical 
specimens of only a few of the most fa- 
miliar kinds, such as mimosa, dionea, and 
two or three others. The mimosa pre- 
sents nearly the same appearance when 
asleep as when excited, but is then liable 
to a further change, by the operation of 
which it sinks to a still lower position and 
becomes limp. The excitatory effect is 
dependent on a vital change in the proto- 
plasm of the cells, which may be observed 
when the plant is asleep as well as when 
it is awake. The cells of the plant, which 
unexcited are distended or charged with 
liquid, undergo on excitation a sudden dimi- 
nution of tension or of expansion by the 
discharge of the water contained in them, 
which finds its way first into the intercel- 
lular air-spaces, and then out of the motor 
organ altogether. The discharge is due to 
a sudden loss of its water-absorbing power 
by the protoplasm of the cell, whereby the 
external cell-sac, whose elastic tendency to 
contract is kept in check only by the con- 
stantly distending action of the protoplasm, 
presses upon it with force enough to squeeze 
out the cell-contents. This action being par- 
ticipated in by all the individual cells, the 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


leaf-stalk, or whatever organ it may be that 
droops, necessarily becomes limp and falls. 
The motion of the leaf is, however “the 
result of the action of many hundred in- 
dependent cells, ali of which may act to- 
gether, but may not. In either case they 
take a great deal longer to think about it; 
for during a period after excitation, which 
amounts at ordinary summer temperature 
to about a second, the leaf remains abso- 
lutely motionless.” During this interval an 
electrical disturbance takes place in the 
plant, the character and operation of which 
were neatly shown by the aid of some 
extremely delicate apparatus. Obvious and 
well-marked differences were pointed out 
between the mechanism of plant motion 
and that of animal motion; but the differ- 
ences are not essential, for they depend 
not on difference of quality between the 
fundamental chemical processes of plant 
and animal protoplasm, but merely on dif- 
ferences of rate or intensity, ‘Both in 
the plant and in the animal, work springs 
out of the chemical transformation of mate- 
rial, but in the plant the process is rela- 
tively so slow that it must necessarily store 
up energy, not in the form of chemical 
compounds capable of producing work by 
their disintegration, but in the mechanical 
tension of elastic membranes. The plant- 
cell uses its material continually in tighten- 
ing springs which it has the power of let- 
ting off at any required moment by virtue 
of that wonderful property of excitability 
which we have been studying. Animal con- 
tractile protoplasm, and particularly that 
of muscle, does work only when required, 
and, in doing so, uses its material directly.” 


Origin of Winding River-Beds,—Major 
Stevanovics, a Hungarian officer, has pub- 
lished an essay on the laws by which the 
“wash” and meandering of rivers are regu- 
lated. Based on studies of the Theiss and 
the Danube, the principles he elucidates are 
illustrated in the windings of rivers the 
world over, with such variations only as dif- 
ferences in situations and exposures might 
oceasion. The deviations which rivers are 
constantly making in their course are, it 
appears, determined by fixed laws, which 
engineers should be competent to find out 
and regard, To understand them more fully, 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


we may imagine our river straight, evenly 
broad and deep, with no marked channel, 
and without tributaries, The formation 
of a channel begins as soon as a bit of 
the earthy constituents contained in the 
water is deposited on the ground under it, 
This causes an unequal distribution of 
the weight of the water,and a stronger 
inclination toward one or the other edge. 
The deposit slowly grows, and a sand-bar 
is formed, which presses the current over 
toward one side and gives it an angular 
direction. This causes it to strike with 
more force against one of the shores, and 
to wash it, eat it away, or undermine it, 
equally whether it be of earth or stone. 
Should there be a tributary coming in from 
the opposite side of the sand-bar, that will 
occasion the formation of a second bar, and 
this will cause the current to make another 
turn and render its course serpentine. In 
this way a system of bars is formed, that 
are represented in the course of time by 
dry alluvial deposits, from which the river 
has been constantly pushed to one side. 
Many of the peculiarities of African and 
other rivers may be explained by reference 
to these principles. The great bends of the 
Congo and the Niger may be accounted for by 
supposing that the hills that run parallel to 
their courses were weathered most on the 
side most exposed to the sun so as to cause 
a constant growth of the bars on the north 
side and a gradual pushing of the stream 
toward the equator. In Hungary, the courses 
of the streams are modified by the opera- 
tion of another force, that of the equinoc- 
tial winds called the koschava, which blow 
in the spring and fall for days at a time 
from the southeast. The waves are driven 
by the wind, especially at the time of high 
water in the spring, with more force against 
the western bank, and make longitudinal 
excavations in it at the level of the water. 
After the retiring of the flood, the over- 
hanging bank gives way and slides into the 
river, with a noise which is quite familiar to 
the people, and well understood by them. 
These excavations, extended and deepened 
by subsequent operations of the same kind, 
result in the formation of large bends; and 
the river has become very serpentine, with 
numerous narrow peninsulas jutting out at 
right angles to its current. Finally, the 


285 


peninsulas are cut through and formed 
into islands, to become in time, as has been 
the case in some instances, by the opera- 


tion of continued changes of the stream, 


a part of the other bank. Observations of 
this kind have been made in the Danube, 
and the phenomena accounted for by them 
are familiar on other rivers. Changes by 
another kind of process are caused by the 
fall equinoctial winds, which, instead of 
finding high water in their way, take up 
the’dry sand and deposit it in drifts where 
they will exercise a modifying influence on 
the course of the river. The changes that 
have taken place in the Amou-Darya of 
Turkistan, under which its course has been 
diverted from the Caspian Sea to the Sea 
of Aral, are probably effects of an agency 
of this kind. 


Russian Seientifie Societies.—Science is 
promoted in Russia by several societies 
that are very active in their respective 
fields of investigations, and which have 
earned for their country a respectable place 
among the nations where knowledge is dili- 
gently and intelligently cultivated. The 
Kiev Society of Naturalists was formed in 
1869, and is supported by a considerable 
membership. Its chief aim has been the ex- 
ploration of the natural history of the neigh- 
boring provinces. Its published “ Trans- 
actions” bear evidence of good work done 
in geology, zodlogy, botany, and kindred 
sciences. Since 1873 it has undertaken the 
yearly publication of a systematic catalogue 
of papers in mathematics, pure and applied, 
natural science, and medicine, printed in the 
numerous scientific publications of the em- 
pire. The East Siberian branch of the Rus- 
sian Geographical Society, having already 
contributed largely to the purely geographi- 
cal exploration of the unknown parts of Si- 
beria and the adjacent countries, has now 
become engaged upon a more thorough sci- 
entific exploration of Siberia itself. Among 
its later publications is an excellent geo- 
logical map of the coasts of Lake Baikal. 
The Siberian branch of the Geographical 
Society has within the last few years taken 
a lively interest in anthropology and archz- 
ology, and has been the means of making 
known many valuable discoveries in these 
branches. It has also paid much attention 


286 


to the meteorology of Siberia, has taken 
regular observations at meteorological sta- 
tions, and has collected materials for ascer- 
taining the dates of the freezing and break- 
ing up of the ice in the rivers of the country. 


NOTES. 


Concernine the statement that Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer is going around the world by 
way of Australia and San Francisco, he thus 
writes to an American friend: ‘ The rumor 
you indicate respecting my voyage to Aus- 
tralia and New Zealand is all nonsense, as 
you suspected. Last summer I had a letter 
from Sir George Gray (late Governor of New 
Zealand), pressing me to go and stay with 
him, and promising great benefit to my 
health. My reply was that the probable re- 
sult of yielding to his pressure would be 
that I should be left in mid-Atlantic with a 
cannon-shot at my feet.” 


Mr. Cuartes Dritry, of New Orleans, 
some two years ago proposed an hypothesis 
that the mounds and earthworks in the 
Western river-bottoms were intended for 
places of refuge for the people and their 
stock in time of high water and floods. 
His theory received some striking illus- 
trations during the recent expedition of 
the relief-steamer Tensas to the flooded 
districts of Red River. The water was 
found rushing through the crevasses with 
aloud noise. Trinity was completely sub- 
merged, and at Troy the situation was but 
little better. With the exception of a few 
buildings erected upon mounds (among the 
largest mounds in the United States), all 
had succumbed to the water. The grave- 
yard on one of the mounds had become a 
rendezvous for stock, pigs, sheep, and hu- 
man beings. At Lamarque, in Concordia 
Parish, where the water stood six feet deep, 
the stock were cared for on mounds or in 
houses. 


Tue American Ornithologists’ Union has 
undertaken to ascertain the true character 
of the European house-sparrow, which has 
now become so abundant in this country, 
and of the effect of its presence upon agri- 
cultural and economical interests. It has 
prepared a circular of inquiries to be sent 
out to intelligent persons who will under- 
take the observations, the tenor of the an- 
swers to which, it is hoped, will determine 
whether the bird is eligible or ineligible as 
a naturalized citizen of our land. The more 
important of the questions bear chiefly upon 
the nature of the’ sparrow’s food, the ef- 


fect of its presence upon useful birds and’ 


beneficial as well as deleterious insects, and 
its effects on shade, fruit, and ornamental 
trees, and garden fruits and vegetables. 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Persons interested in the subject may com- 
municate with the chairman of the associa- 
tion’s committee, Dr. J. B. Holder, Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History, Central 
Park, New York city. 


ProFEssor JOHN Hutton Batrour, Emer- 
itus Professor of Botany in the University 
of Edinburgh, died February 11th, in the 
seventy-seventh year of his age. He was 
chosen to fill the place of Sir William 
Hooker, at Glasgow, when Hooker was 
called from that place to Kew, and was 
elected to the Regius Professorship of 
Botany at Edinburgh in 1845. -He retired 
from this position, on account of infirmity, 
in 1877. He published much, but was bet- 
ter known as a teacher than as an original 
investigator. 


Mr. F. Cope Wuirrnovse presented to 
the Academy of Sciences (March 24th) the re- 
sults of his geological researches and survey 
of the cafion of the Nile, with especial refer- 
ence to the Pyramids of Gizeh. He denies 
that the material was brought from any con- 
siderable distance. Geology and tradition 
Show that the two large piles are recon- 
structed hills, The whole hill has probably 
been rebuilt, except the lower 180 feet. It 
seems to have been done by the excavation 
of a chamber in the center of the mass of 
soft, horizontal limestone, and the transfer 
of blocks from the ceiling to the floor until 
the top of the hill had been reached. Thus 
a precarious and dangerous mound of poor, 
clayey limestone was converted into a per- 
manent protection and stable structure 
without great expense and without disturb- 
ing the beautiful edifices of granite and 
alabaster tanks and tombs whose remains 
are still found on the terrace and near tke 
Sphinx at its foot. 


Tux death, at the age of forty-eight years, 
is announced of Richard Cortembert, a French 
geographer, who until 1878 held a position 
in the geographical department of the Bib- 
liothéque Nationale. Among his works 
were “Grands Voyages Contemporains” 
(1864), (“Great Contemporary Voyages”), 
and “Geographie Commerciale” (“‘Com- 
mercial Geography”) for schools (1868.) 
At the time of his death he was engaged 
upon a “‘ New History of Voyages.” 


Tue Rev. Dr. J. G. Macvicar, of Moffat, 
Scotland, who died February 12th, aged 
eighty-four years, was a diligent student of 
natural science in early life, and was from 
1827 the first lecturer in natural history in 
the University of St. Andrews. He was 
editor of the “Quarterly Journal of Agri- 
culture,” and was the author of “The Ele- 
ments of the Economy of Nature” and 
other scientific books and papers, and of 
a treatise on ‘The Philosophy of the Beau- 
tiful.’” His best-known work was “ An 


= 


eve - 
Tee 


NOTES. 


Inquiry into Human Nature,” which was 
composed during his residence in Ceylon, 
from 1840 to 1842. 5 


Ir has been remarked that the destruc- 
tive force of a tropical hurricane appears 
to be greater than the velocity of the wind 
will account for, when compared with the 
velocity of an ordinary head gale. Mr. 
Joseph John Murphy suggests, in the Lon- 
don “ Spectator,” that the fact may be satis- 
factorily explained by the law that the press- 
ure, and consequently the destructive force 
of any current, whether of air or water, 
is proportional, not to the velocity, but to 
the square of the velocity; so that, if the 
velocity is doubled, the destructive force is 
increased fourfold. 


J. F. Jutivs Scumint, Director of the 
Observatory at Athens, Greece, died in that 
city late in February, aged fifty-eight years. 
He was a German by birth, and was con- 
nected with several observatories in Ger- 
many before he was called to Athens in 
1858. One of his most important works is 
his map of the moon, which embodies the 
results of thirty-five years of work. He in- 
vestigated the volcanic phenomena at San- 
torin, and composed a work on volcanoes. 
He studied earthquakes and the relations of 
the moon to them, and, in meteorology, he 
published a study on the duration of the 
twilight. 


Hany, of Vienna, objects to the theory 
that the eruption of Krakatoa filled the air 
with dust enough to cause red lights all over 
the world, on account of the quantity of 
dust it would take. He calculates that the 
volume of Krakatoa, supposing it to be 822 
metres high and four kilometres in diame- 
ter at the base, was 13,780 cubic kilometres. 
Supposing it all to be reduced to dust and 
scattered over the earth, it would form a 
thickness of only three hundredths of a 
millimetre. Ata height of ten miles above 
the surface, the dust-stratum would be still 
thinner. Herr Hann does not seem to have 
taken into consideration the fact that the 
dust came from the bowels of the earth and 
not from the volcano alone; and he may 
not have made sufficient allowance for the 
extremely attenuated condition in which it 
was. 


-An International Forestry Exposition is 
to be opened this year in Edinburgh. It 
will be devoted to the exhibition of the for- 
est-products of the whole earth, and will be 
open to all nations. 


Proressor Hertnricn Cart BerGHats, a 
distinguished German geographer, cartog- 
rapher, and historiographer, died in Stet- 
tin, February 17th, in his eighty-seventh 
year. Besides his work on general atlases 
and many special maps, he was the author 


287 


of the best map of the Iberian Peninsula, 
of an atlas of Asia with fifteen maps and 
text, a physical atlas of ninety-three maps; 
of numerous important works on geography; 
of many communications to the German 
scientific papers and departments; and of a 
text-book of geography, which, translated 
into the vernacular languages, is in use in 
schools in India. 


Tue death of Dr. J. Todhunter, an emi- 
nent mathematician and author of text- 
books, is announced. 


Caprain Nets Horrmeyer, Director of 
the Meteorological Institute of Copenhagen 
since 1872, has recently died. He was the. 
author of an important paper on the storms 
of the Northern Atlantic; published for 
three years a daily synoptical weather-chart ; 
prompted the establishment of meteorologi- 
cal stations in Greenland and Iceland, and 
was Secretary of the International Polar 
Commission. 


M. Jean Bapriste Dumas, the distin- 
guished French chemist, died April 11th, in 
the eighty-fourth year of his age. Since 1823 
he has been constantly adding to our knowl- 
edge of organic chemistry. His theory of 
substitution and his treatise on chemistry 
as applied to the arts were important con- 
tributions to the science. He has been at 
different times a member of the National 
Assembly, Minister of Agriculture and Com- 
merce, and Vice-President of the Senate, of 
France. In 1868 he became Permanent Sec- 
retary of the French Academy of Sciences. 
A portrait and biographical sketch of M. 
Dumas were given in vol. xviii, p. 257, of 
“The Popular Science Monthly ” (Decem- 
ber, 1880), 


Drs. Ferrier and Gerald Yeo commu- 
nicated a paper to a recent meeting of the 
Royal Society on the effects of lesions of 
different regions of the cerebral hemi- 
spheres. They described experiments con- 
ducted upon monkeys, in which they re- 
moved, under anesthetics, certain limited 
areas of the cortex; the results of the ex- 
periments went to confirm in a very exact 
manner most ef the conclusions previously 
arrived at by Dr. Ferrier and by neuropa- 
thologists. The localization of the centers 
of sight and hearing and the effect of remov- 
ing portions of the brain in producing anes- 
thesia on the opposite side of the body 
were thus tested. 


Dr. Witson, of England, has tried to 
count the number of hairs on the human 
head. Taking a fairly hirsute head, he 
found the number of hairs on a square inch 
of surface to be 1,066. This, he estimated, 
would give 127,920 for the whole head. 
More thickly-clad heads might have 150,000 
hairs. 


288 


: A corresponpEent of “ Nature” reports 

an illustration of the power of organization 
in the mouse. He was waked up one night 
by a distinct, continuous grinding under the 
floor of his room, which lasted till after 
daylight, when it suddenly ceased, and the 
room seemed in an instant filled with mice. 
One of the mice caught on a bell-pull, and 
climbed upon it to near the ceiling. Then 
he “turned himself round, and for a few 
minutes quietly surveyed the room; then 
deliberately descended, and in two or three 
minutes not a mouse was left in the room.” 
The correspondent supposes that this scout- 
mouse was the chief-engineer of the com- 
pany, and had directed the siege-operations ; 
that he rose to an eminent point to survey 
the conquest, and that, finding it contained 
nothing of interest to mice, gave the word 
to his followers, after which they all re- 
tired. 


Accorpine to an essay by Dr. D. J. 
Macgowan, China has no copyright law, but 
authors’ rights are protected with cer- 
tainty, upon the theory that their writings 
are as really property as their material 
goods, and are .so obviously so that no 
particular designation is required. These 
rights are hereditary, and not limited. Au- 
thors do not make arrangements with pub- 
lishers; that would be undignified. They 
have their books cut and printed on their 
own premises, and then sell them to the 
trade. Ephemeral books are, however, sold 


to publishers, and are then liable to be | 


pirated. The book-trade has only the most 
limited facilities for advertising and cir- 
culating its issues; yet, the knowledge of 
new publications is very quickly spread 
through the country, and the books get to 
all interested in them in a remarkably short 
time. 


M. Josrra Lecornu has suggested sev- 
eral ways in which balloons might be used 
in astronomical research. The appearance 
of heavenly bodies near the horizon is dis- 
torted by refraction. We can not make ex- 
act allowances for the distortion, because 
we have no rule by which to measure the 
rate of atmospheric refraction, and learn 
the laws under which it varies. With 
balloons we might sound the air in all 
weathers, and in time get arule. Balloons 
also could take us above the clouds and at- 
mospheric hazes, and enable us to get direct 
views of eclipses, transits, comets, and me- 
teoric showers when they might be obscured 
at the surface, and of such phenomena as 
the aurora borealis and the zodiacal light 
_ that are always observed at the surface under 
difficulties. M. de Fonvielle has already 
made satisfactory observations and measure- 
ments of a comet and observations of shoot- 
ing-stars, from a balloon. . 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Aw Italian ship has been sheathed with 


glass instead of copper. The plates are 
cast like iron plates to fit the hull of the 
vessel, and are made water-tight by means 
of a silicate mastic. They are claimed to 
be exempt from the vices of oxidation and 
incrustation. 


M. Wrostesky has succeeded in liquefy- 
ing oxygen in considerable quantities, and 
then, by removing the pressure, allowing it 
to boil. By this means he has produced a 
cold of —186°C., or —302°8° Fahr., at which 
nitrogen has become solidified into a snow 
composed of crystals “of a remarkable di- 
mension.” M. Wroblesky announces that 
he has obtained the liquefaction of hydro- 
gen, by exposing it to the cooling influence 
of liquid oxygen at the instant of evapora- 
tion, 

A conr1ict of opinion having broken out 
between the Municipal Council of Paris and 
the gas company, as to what the price of 
gas should be, a scientific commission has 
been appointed to decide whether the gas 
industry has so advanced as to justify a 
diminution in the price. 


M. F. Trrsy states, in the “ Bulletin” of 
the Belgian Academy of Sciences, that he 
believes he has found a monthly period for 
the aurora borealis, corresponding with the 
returning presentation, every twenty-seven 
days, of the same sun-spots to the earth, 


M. Cornu lately described to the French 
Academy of Sciences a white rainbow which 
he saw on the morning of the 28th of 
November. There had been a heavy hoar- 
frost, followed by a thick, low fog. This 
rainbow was wholly white, without even as 
much iridization as is noticeable in halos, 
and had a fleecy appearance like that of the 
fumes of phosphureted’ hydrogen, or the 
smoke from the mouth of a cannon. 


Tuer detonations of the recent earthquake 
in the Straits of Sunda were distinctly heard 
through all the Philippine Islands—so dis- 
tinctly that some persons thought a battle 
was going on, or that some vessel was fir- 
ing signals of distress. 


THE savages of the Maclay coast of New 
Guinea, according to Dr. Miclucho-Maclay, 
seldom bury their dead. As soon as a man 
dies, his body is placed in a sitting posture 
and covered with palm-leaves. It is then 
exposed to the fire for two or three weeks, 
till it becomes wasted away or dried up. 
The bodies of children are simply hung up 
to decay in a basket under the roof. Burial 


is rarely given, except when an old man has © 


survived all his wives and children, and it 
is then accompanied by nutherous ceremo- 
nies. ; 


i a a ie i 8 Sn i 


€ te’ Alediaty 


a 


‘Lowa, 


tf. Fidanza deled ines 


Fi 


mets Trattaal di 


utere at 
fn at 
(28caro 


Cena, a. 
allo rel 


spolo L' Anvil 
é: Raffa. 
S 


re 
Ty LSC, 


? 
to.” 
' . 
Creistec 


2 Gesu 


o Artiste 
mi 


Arad 


OS EMEO 


‘ 


ae. 


77 
ac 


\ 


N 


Filosofo 


4 


\) 


, 


Secele 


VERROE 
pe reel. 


“A 
fer 


AVERROES. 


THE 


mero Ah SCIENCE 
Mi) IND LY, 


JULY, 1884, 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 


By HERBERT SPENCER. 


dar great political superstition of the past was the divine right of 

kings. The great political superstition of the present is the 
divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unaware to 
have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, 
and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees. 

However irrational we may think the earlier of these beliefs, we 
must admit that it was more consistent than is the latter. Whether 
we go back to times when the king was a god, or to times when he 
was a descendant of a god, or to times when he was god-appointed, we 
see valid reason for passive obedience to his will. When, as under 
Louis XIV, theologians like Bossuet taught that kings “are gods, and 
share in a manner the Divine independence,” or when it was thought, 
as by our own Tory party in old days, that “the monarch was the 
delegate of heaven,” it is clear that, given the premise, the inevitable 
conclusion was that no bounds could be set to governmental commands. 
But for the modern belief, such a warrant does not exist. Making no 
pretension to divine descent or divine appointment, a legislative body 
can show no supernatural justification for its claim to unlimited au- 
thority ; and no natural justification has ever been attempted. Hence, 
belief in its unlimited authority is without that consistency which of 
old characterized belief in a king’s unlimited authority. 

It is curious how commonly men continue to hold in fact, doctrines 
which they have rejected in name—retaining the substance after they 
have abandoned the form. In Theology an illustration is supplied by 
Carlyle, who, in his student-days, giving up, as he thought, the creed 
of his fathers, rejected its shell only, and kept the contents—was proved 

VOL, xxv.—19 


290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


by his conceptions of the world, and man, and conduct, to be still among 
the sternest of Scotch Calvinists. Similarly, Science furnishes an in- 
stance in one who united naturalism in Geology with supernaturalism 
in Biology—Sir Charles Lyell. While, as the leading expositor of the 
uniformitarian theory in geology, he ignored wholly the Mosaic cos- 
mogony, he long defended that belief in special creations of organic 
types, for which no other source than the Mosaic cosmogony could be 
assigned ; and only in the latter part of his life surrendered to the ar- 
guments of Mr. Darwin. In Politics, as above implied, we have an 
analogous case. The tacitly-asserted doctrine, common to Tories, 
Whigs, and Radicals, that governmental authority is unlimited, dates 
back to times when the lawgiver was supposed to have a warrant from 
God ; and it survives still, though the belief that the lawgiver has 
God’s warrant has died out. ‘Oh, an Act of Parliament can do any- 
thing,” is the reply made to a citizen who questions the legitimacy of 
some arbitrary state interference ; and the citizen stands paralyzed. 
It does not occur to him to ask the how, and the when, and the 
whence, came this asserted omnipotence, bounded only by physical 
impossibilities. 

Here we will take leave to question it. In default of the justifica- 
tion, once logically valid, that the ruler on Earth being a deputy of the 
ruler in Heaven, submission to him in all things is a duty, let us ask 
what reason there is for asserting the duty of submission in all things 
to a ruling power, constitutional or republican, which has no heaven- 
derived supremacy. Evidently this inquiry commits us to a criticism 
of past and present theories concerning political authority. To revive 
questions supposed to be long since settled, may be thought to need 
some apology; but there is a sufficient apology in the implication 
above made clear, that the theory commonly accepted is ill-based or 
unbased. 


The notion of sovereignty is that which first presents itself ; and a 
critical examination of this notion, as entertained by those who do not 
‘postulate the supernatural origin of sovereignty, carries us back to the 
arguments of Hobbes. 

Let us grant Hobbes’s postulate that, “during the time men live 
without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that con- 
dition which is called war . . . of every man against every man” ;*: 
though this is not true, since there are some small societies in which, 
without any “common power to keep them all in awe,” men maintain 
peace and harmony better than it is maintained in societies where such 
a power exists... Let us suppose him to be right, too, in assuming that 
the rise of a common ruling power over associated men, results from 
their desires to preserve order among themselves ; though, in fact, it. 
habitually arises from the need for subordination to a leader in war, 


* Hobbes’s “* Collected Works,” vol. iii, pp. 112, 113. 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 291 


defensive or offensive, and has originally no necessary, and often no 
actual, relation to the preservation of order among the combined indi- 
viduals. Once more, let us admit the indefensible assumption that to 
escape the evils of chronic warfare, which must otherwise continue 
among them, the members of a community enter into a “ pact or cove- 
nant,” by which they all bind themselves to surrender their primitive 
freedom of action, and subordinate themselves to the will of a ruling 
power agreed upon ;* accepting, also, the implication that their de- 
scendants forever are bound by that covenant which their great-great- 
great, etc., grandfathers made for them. Let us, I say, not object to 
these data, but pass to the conclusions Hobbes draws. He says: 


For, where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, 
and every man has right to every thing; and, consequently, no action can es 
unjust. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust, and the defi- 
nition of mvuUsTICE is no other than the not performance of covenant. . There- 
fore, before the names of just and unjust can have place, there ita be some 
coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants by 
the terror of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the 
breach of their covenant.t 


Were people’s characters in Hobbes’s day really so bad as to war- 
rant his assumption that none would perform their covenants in the 
absence of a coercive power and threatened penalties? In our day “the 
names of just and unjust can have place” quite apart from recogni- 
tion of any coercive power. Among my friends I could name half a 
dozen whom I would implicitly trust to perform their covenants with- 
out any “terror of some punishment”; and over whom the require- 
ments of justice would be as imperative in the absence of a coercive 
power as in its presence. Merely noting, however, that this unwar- 
ranted assumption vitiates Hobbes’s argument for State-authority, and 
accepting both his premises and conclusion, we have to observe two 
significant implications. One is that State-authority, as thus derived, 
is a means to an end, and has no validity, save as subserving that end : 
if the end is not subserved, the authority, by the hypothesis, does not 
exist. The other is, that the end for which the authority exists, as 
thus specified, is the enforcement of justice—the maintenance of equi- 
table relations. The reasoning yields no warrant for other coercion 
over citizens than that which is required for preventing direct aggres- 
sions, and those indirect aggressions constituted by breaches of con- 
tract ; to which, if we add protection against external enemies, the 
entire function implied by Hobbes’s derivation of sovereign authority 
is comprehended. 

_ Hobbes argued in the interests of i monarchy. His modern 
admirer, Austin, had for his aim to derive the authority of law from 
the unlimited sovereignty of one man, or of a number of men, small 


* Hobbes’s “ Collected Works,” vol. iii, p.-159. + Ibid., pp. 180, 131. 


292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


or large, compared with the whole community. Austin was originally 
in the army; and it has been truly remarked that “the permanent 
traces left ” may be seen in his “ Province of Jurisprudence.” When, 
undeterred by the exasperating pedantries—the endless distinctions 
and definitions and repetitions—which serve but to hide his essential 
doctrines, we ascertain what these are, it becomes manifest that he — 
assimilates civil authority to military authority: taking for granted 
that the one, as the other, is above question in respect of both origin 
and range. To get justification for positive law, he takes us back to 
the absolute sovereignty of the power imposing it—a monarch, an 
aristocracy, or that larger body of men who have votes in a democ- 
racy ; which body he also styles the sovereign, in contrast with the 
remaining portion of the community, which, from incapacity or other 
cause, remains subject. And having affirmed, or rather taken for 
granted, the unlimited authority of the body, simple or compound, 
small or large, which he styles sovereign, he, of course, has no difii- 
culty in deducing the validity of its edicts, which he calls positive 
law. But the problem is simply moved a step further back, and there 
left unsolved. The true question is, Whence the sovereignty ? What 
is the assignable warrant for this unqualified supremacy assumed by 
one, or by a small number, or by a large number, over the rest? A 
critic might fitly say—‘ We will dispense with your process of deriv- 
ing positive law from unlimited sovereignty : the sequence is obvious 
enough. But first prove your unlimited sovereignty.” 

To this demand there is no response. Analyze his assumption, and 
the doctrine of Austin proves to have no better basis than that of 
Hobbes. In the absence of admitted divine descent or appointment, 
neither single-headed ruler nor many-headed ruler can produce such 
credentials as the claim to unlimited sovereignty implies. 


“ But surely,” will come in deafening chorus the reply, “there is 
the unquestionable right of the majority, which gives unquestionable 
right to the parliament it elects.” 

Yes, now we are coming down to the root of the matter. The 
divine right of Parliaments means the divine right of majorities. The 
fundamental assumption made by legislators and people alike is that a 
majority has powers to which no limits can be put. This is the current 
theory which all accept, without proof, as a self-evident truth. Never- 
theless, criticism will, I think, show that this current theory requires 
a radical modification. 

In an essay on “ Railway Morals and Railway Policy,” published 
in the “ Edinburgh Review,” for October, 1854, I had occasion to deal 
with the question of a majority’s powers, as exemplified in the con- 
duct of public companies ; and I can not better prepare the way for 
conclusions presently to be drawn than by quoting some passages 
from it: 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 293 


Under whatever circumstance, or for whatever ends, a number of men co- 
operate, it is held thatif difference of opinion arises among them, justice requires 
that the will of the greater number shall be executed rather than that of the 
smaller number; and this rule is supposed to be uniformly applicable, be the 
question at issue what it may. So confirmed is this conviction, and so little 
have the ethics of the matter been considered, that to most this mere suggestion 
of a doubt will cause some astonishment. Yet it needs but a brief analysis to 
show that the opinion is little better than a political superstition. Instances may 
readily be selected, which prove, by reductio ad absurdum, that the right of a 
majority is a purely conditional right, valid only within specific limits. Let us 
take afew. Suppose that at the general meeting of some philanthropic associa- 
tion it was resolved that, in addition to relieving distress, the association should 
employ home missionaries to preach down popery. Might the subscriptions of 
Catholics, who had joined the body with charitable views, be rightfully used for 
this end? Suppose that of the members of a book-club the greater number, 
thinking that, under existing circumstances, rifle-practice was more important 
than reading, should decide to change the purpose of their union, and to apply 
the funds in hand for the purchase of powder, ball, and targets. Would the 
rest be bound by this decision? Suppose that, under the excitement of news 
from Australia, the majority of a Freehold Land Society should determine, not 
simply to start in a body for the gold-diggings, but to use their accumulated 
capital to provide outfits. Would this appropriation of property be just to the 
minority ? and must these join the expedition? Scarcely any one would vent- 
ure an affirmative answer even to the first of these questions, much less to the 
others. And why? Because every one must perceive that by uniting himself 
with others, no man can equitably be betrayed into acts utterly foreign to the 
purpose for which he joined them. Each of these supposed minorities would 
properly reply to those seeking to coerce them: ‘‘ We combined with you for a 
defined object ; we gave money and time for the furtherance of that object; on 
all questions thence arising we tacitly agreed to conform to the will of the 
greater number; but we did not agree to conform on any other questions. If 
you induce us to join you by professing a certain end, and then undertake some 
other end of which we were not apprised, you obtain our support under false 
pretenses: you exceed the expressed or understood compact to which we com- 
mitted ourselves; and we are no longer bound by your decisions.” Clearly this 
is the only rational interpretation of the matter. The general principle under- 
lying the right government of every incorporated body is, that its members con- 
tract with each other severally to submit to the will of the majority in all mat- 
ters concerning the fulfillment of the objects for which they are incorporated ; 
but in no others. To this extent only can the contract hold. For as it is 
implied in the very nature of a contract that those entering into it must know 
what they contract to do, and as those who unite with others for a specified 
object can not contemplate all the unspecified objects which it is hypothetically 
possible for the union to undertake, it follows that the contract entered into 
can not extend to such unspecified objects; and if there exists no expressed or 
understood contract between the union and its members respecting unspecified 
objects, then for the majority to coerce the minority into undertaking them is 
nothing less than gross tyranny. 


Naturally, if such a confusion of ideas exists in respect of the pow- 
ers of a majority where the deed of incorporation tacitly limits those 


294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


powers, still more is there likely to exist such a confusion where there 
has been no such deed of incorporation. But the same principle holds. 
I again emphasize the proposition that the members of an incorporated 
body are bound “severally to submit to the will of the majority in all 
matters concerning the fulfillment of the objects for which they are in- 
corporated, but.in no others. And I contend that this holds of an in- 
corporated nation as much as of an incorporated company. 

“ Yes, but,” comes the obvious rejoinder, “as there is no deed by 
which the members of a nation are incorporated—as there neither is, 
nor ever was, a specification of purposes for which the union was 
formed, there exist no limits ; and, consequently, the power of the ma- 
jority is unlimited.” 

Evidently it must be admitted that the hypothesis of a social con- 
tract, either under the shape assumed by Hobbes, or under the shape 
assumed by Rousseau, is baseless. Nay, more, it must be admitted 
that even had such a contract once been formed, it could not be bind- 
ing on the posterity of those who formed it. Moreover, if any say 
that in the absence of those limitations to its powers which a deed of 
incorporation might imply, there is nothing to prevent a majority from 
imposing its will on a minority by force, assent must be given—an 
assent, however, joined with the comment that if the superior force of 
the majority is its justification, then the superior force of a despot 
backed by an adequate army, is also justified: the problem lapses. 
What we here seek is some higher warrant for the subordination of 
minority to majority than- that arising from inability to resist physi- 
cal coercion. Even Austin, anxious as he is to establish the unques- 
tionable authority of positive law, and assuming, as he does, an abso- 
lute sovereignty of some kind, monarchic, aristocratic, constitutional, 
or popular, as the source of its unquestionable authority, is obliged, in 
the last resort, to admit a moral limit to its action over the commu- 
nity. While insisting, in pursuance of his rigid theory of sovereignty, 
that a sovereign body originating from the people “is legally free to 
abridge their political liberty at its own pleasure or discretion,” he al- 
lows that “a government may be hindered by positive morality from 
abridging the political liberty which it leaves or grants to its sub- 
jects.” * Hence, we have to find, not a physical ‘justification, but a 
moral justification, for the supposed absolute power of the majority. 

This will at once draw forth the rejoinder, “ Of course, in the ab- 
sence of any agreement, with its implied limitations, the rule of the 
majority is unlimited ; because it is more just that the majority should | 
have its way than that the minority should have its way.” <A very 
reasonable rejoinder this seems until there comes the re-rejoinder. We 
may oppose to it the equally tenable proposition that, in the absence 
of an agreement, the supremacy of a majority over a minority does | 
not exist at all. It is co-operation of some kind, from which there arise 


* “The Province of Jurisprudence Determined” (second edition), p. 241. 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 295 | 


these powers and obligations of majority and minority ; and, in the 
absence of any agreement to co-operate, such powers and obligations 
are also absent. 

Here the argument apparently ends in a dead-lock. Under the 
existing condition of things no moral origin seems assignable either 
for the sovereignty of the majority or for the limitation of its sover- 
eignty. But further consideration reveals a solution of the difficulty. 
For if, dismissing all thought of any hypothetical agreement to co- 
operate heretofore made, we ask, what would be the agreement into 
which citizens would now enter with practical unanimity, we get a 
sufficiently clear answer ; and with it a sufficiently clear justification 
for the rule of the majority inside a certain sphere, but not outside 
that sphere. Let us first observe a few of the limitations which at 
once become apparent. 

Were all Englishmen now asked if they would agree to co-operate 
for the teaching of religion, and would give the majority power to 
fix the creed and the forms of worship, there would come a very em- 
phatic “ No” from a large part of them. If, in pursuance of a pro- 
posal to revive sumptuary laws, the inquiry were made whether they 
would bind themselves to abide by the will of the majority in respect 
of the fashions and qualities of their clothes, nearly all of them would 
refuse. In like manner, if (to take an actual question of the day) 
people were polled to ascertain whether, in respect of the beverages 
they drank, they would accept the decision of the greater number, 
half, and probably more than half, would very decidedly decline. 
Similarly with respect to many other actions which most men now-a- 
days regard as of purely private concern. Whatever desire there 
might be to co-operate for carrying on, or regulating, such actions, 
would be far from a unanimous desire. Manifestly, then, had social 
co-operation to be commenced by ourselves, and had its purposes to 
be specified before consent to co-operate.could be obtained, there would 
be large parts of human conduct in respect of which co-operation would 
be declined ; and in respect of which, consequently, no authority by 
the majority over the minority could be rightfully exercised. 

Turn now to the converse question, For what ends would all men 
agree to co-operate? None will deny that for resisting invasion the 
agreement would be practically unanimous. Excepting only the 
Quakers, who, having done highly useful work in their time, are now 
dying out, all would. unite for defensive war (not, however, for offen- 
sive war); and they would, by so doing, tacitly bind themselves to 
conform to the will of the majority in respect of measures directed to 
that end. There would be practical unanimity, also, in the agreement 
to co-operate for defense against internal enemies as against external 
enemies. Omitting criminals, all must wish to have person and prop- 
erty adequately protected. In short, each citizen desires to preserve 
his life, to preserve those material things which conduce to mainte- 


296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


nance of his life, and to preserve intact his powers both of using these 
material things and getting further such. It is obvious to him that 
he can not do this if he acts alone. Against foreign invaders he is 
powerless unless he combines with his fellows; and the business of 
protecting himself against domestic invaders if he did not similarly 
combine, would be alike onerous, dangerous, and inefficient. That is 
to say, in respect of all measures for maintaining those conditions 
under which only the business of life can be carried on and its satis- 
factions obtained, every one will agree to co-operate ; and, by im- 
plication, will agree to submit to the majority on all questions thence 
arising. 

Details are not needful here; nor is it needful to discuss that bor- 
der region lying between these classes of cases, and to say how much 
is included in the last and how much is excluded with the first. For 
the present purpose, it is sufficient to recognize the undeniable truth 
that there are numerous kinds of actions in respect of which men would 
not, if they were asked, agree with anything like unanimity to be 
bound by the will of the majority ; while there are some kinds of 
actions in respect of which they would almost unanimously agree to 
be thus bound. Here, then, we find a definite warrant for enforcing 
the will of the majority within certain limits, and a definite warrant 
for denying the authority of its will beyond those limits. 

But evidently, when analyzed, the question resolves itself into the 
further question, What are the relative claims of the aggregate and 
of its units? Are the rights of the community universally valid 
against the individual? or has the individual some rights which are 
valid against the community? The judgment given on this point 
underlies the entire fabric of political convictions formed, and more 
especially those convictions which concern the proper sphere of gov- 
ernment. Here, then, I propose to revive a dormant controversy, with 
the expectation of reaching a different conclusion from that which is 
fashionable. 


Says Professor Jevons, in his work, “The State in Relation to 
Labor ”—“ The first step must be to rid our minds of the idea that 
there are any such things in social matters as abstract rights.” Of 
like character is the belief expressed by Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his 
article on copyright : “ An author has no natural right to a property 
in his production. But then neither has he a natural right to anything 
whatever which he may produce or acquire.”* So, too, I recently 
read in a weekly journal of high repute, that “to explain once more 
that there is no such thing as ‘natural right’ would be a waste of 
philosophy.” And the view expressed in these extracts is commonly 
uttered by statesmen and lawyers in a way implying that only the un- 
thinking masses hold any other. 


* “ Fortnightly Review,” in 1880, vol. xxvii, p. 322. 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 297 


One might have expected that utterances to this effect would have 
been rendered less dogmatic by the knowledge that a whole school 
of legists on the Continent maintains a belief diametrically opposed 
to that maintained by the English school. The idea of Natur-recht 
is the root-idea of German jurisprudence. Now, whatever may be 
the opinion held respecting German philosophy at large, it can not be 
characterized as shallow. A doctrine current among a people distin- 
guished above all others as laborious inquirers, and certainly not to be 
classed with superficial thinkers, should not be dismissed as though it 
were nothing more than a popular delusion. This, however, by the 
way. Along with the proposition denied in the above quotations, 
there goes a counter-proposition affirmed. Let us see what it is, and 
what results when we go behind it and seek its warrant. 

On reverting to Bentham, we find this counter-proposition overtly 
expressed. He tells us that government fulfills its office “ by creating 
rights, which it confers upon individuals—rights of personal security ; 
rights of protection for honor; rights of property”; etc.* Were 
this doctrine asserted as following from the divine right of kings, 
there would be nothing in it manifestly incongruous. Did it come to 
us from ancient Peru, where the Inca “ was the source from which 
everything flowed” ;+ or from Shoa (Abyssinia), where “of their 
persons and worldly substance he [the king] is absolute master” ; 
or from Dahome, where “all men are slaves to the king” ;* it would 
be consistent enough. But Bentham, far from being an absolutist 
like Hobbes, wrote in the interests of popular rule. In his “ Consti- 
tutional Code” | he fixes the sovereignty in the whole people: argu- 
ing that it is best to “give the sovereign power to the largest possible 
portion of those whose greatest happiness is the proper and chosen 
object,” because “this proportion is more apt than any other that 
can be proposed ” for achievement of that object. 

Mark, now, what happens when we put these two doctrines to- 
gether. ‘The sovereign people is to appoint representatives, and so to 
create a government ; the government thus created, creates rights ; 
and then, having created these rights, it confers them on the sover- 
eign people by which it was itself created. Here is a marvelous piece 
of political legerdemain! Mr. Matthew Arnold, contending, in the 
article above quoted, that “property is the creation of law,” tells us 
to beware of the “metaphysical phantom of property in itself.” 
Surely, among metaphysical phantoms the most shadowy is this which 
supposes a thing to be obtained by creating an agent, which creates 
the thing, and then confers the thing on its own creator! 


* Bentham’s Works (Bowring’s edition), vol. i, p. 801. 

+ Prescott, “ Conquest of Peru,” book i, ch. i. 

¢ Harris, “ Highlands of Aithiopia,” ii, 94. 

* Burton, “ Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomie,” i, p. 226. 
|| Bentham’s Works, vol. ix, p. 97. 


298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


From whatever point of view we consider it, Bentham’s proposi- 
tion proves to be unthinkable. Government, he says, fulfills its office 
“by creating rights.” Two meanings may be given to the word 
“creating.” It may be supposed to mean the production of some- 
thing out of nothing ; or it may be supposed to mean the giving form 
and structure to something which already exists. There are many 
who think the production of something out of nothing can not be con- 
ceived as effected even by Omnipotence; and probably none will 
assert that the production of something out of nothing is within the 
competence of a human government. The alternative conception is 
that such human government creates only in the sense that it shapes 
something pre-existing. In that case, the question arises, “ What is 
the something pre-existing which it shapes?” Clearly the word 
“creating” begs the whole question—passes off an illusion upon the 
unwary reader. Bentham was a stickler for definiteness of expression, 
and in his “ Book of Fallacies” has a chapter on “ Impostor-terms.” 
It is curious that he should have furnished so striking an illustration 
of the perverted belief. which an impostor-term may generate. 

But now let us overlook these various impossibilities of thought, 
and seek the most defensible interpretation of Bentham’s view. 

It may be said that the totality of all possessions, powers, rights, 
originally existed as an undivided whole in the sovereign people ; and 
that this undivided whole is given in trust (as Austin would say) to 
a ruling power, appointed by the sovereign people, for the purpose of 
distribution. If, as we have seen, the proposition that rights are cre- 
ated is simply a figure of speech, then the only intelligible construc- 
tion of Bentham’s view is that a multitude of individuals, who sever- 
ally wish to satisfy their desires, and have, as an aggregate, possession 
of all the sources of satisfaction, as well as power over all individual 
actions, appoint a government, which declares the ways in which, and 
the conditions under which, individual actions may be carried on and 
the satisfactions obtained. Let us observe what are the implications, 
Each man exists in two capacities. In his private capacity he is sub- 
ject to the government. In his public capacity he is one of the sov- 
ereign people who appoint the government. That is to say, in his 
private capacity he is one of those to whom rights are given ; and in 
his public capacity he is one of those who, through their agency, give 
the rights. Turn this abstract statement into a concrete statement, 
and see what it means, Let the community consist of a million men, 
who, by the hypothesis, are not only joint possessors of the inhabited 
region, but joint possessors of all liberties of action and appropriation : 
the only right recognized being that of the aggregate to everything. 
What follows? Each person, while not owning any product of his 
own labor, has, as a unit in the sovereign body, a millionth part of 
the ownership of the products of all others’ labor. This is an unavoid- 
able implication. No body of men can confer that which it has not 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 299 


got. As the government,in Bentham’s view, is but an agent, the 
rights it confers are rights given to it in trust by the sovereign people. 
If so, such rights must be possessed en bloc by the sovereign people 
before the government, in fulfillment of its trust, confers them on indi- 
viduals ; and, if so, each individual has a millionth portion of these 
rights in his public capacity, while he has no rights in his private ca- 
pacity. These he gets only when all the rest of the million join to 
endow him with them ; while he joins to endow with them every other 
member of the million ! : 

Thus, in whatever way we interpret it, Bentham’s proposition leaves 
us in a plexus of absurdities. 


Even though ignoring the opposite opinion of the German writers 
on jurisprudence, and even without an analysis which proves their 
own opinion to be untenable, Bentham’s disciples might have been led 
to treat less cavalierly the doctrine of natural rights. For sundry 
groups of social phenomena unite to prove that this doctrine is well 
warranted, and the doctrine they set against it entirely unwarranted. 

Tribes in various parts of the world show us that before definite 
government arises, conduct is regulated by customs. The Bechuanas 
are controlled by “long-acknowledged customs.”* Among the Ko- 
ranna Hottentots, who only “tolerate their chiefs rather than obey 
them,” + “ when ancient usages are not in the way, every man seems 
to act as:is right in his own eyes.” { The Araucanians are guided by 
‘nothing more than primordial usages or tacit conventions.” * Among 
the Kirghizes the judgments of the elders are based on “ universally- 
recognized customs.” || So, too, of the Dyaks, Rajah Brooke tells us 
that “custom seems simply to have become the law ; and breaking 
custom leads to afine.”“ So sacred are immemorial customs with the 
primitive man, that he never dreams of questioning their authority ; 
and when government arises, its power is limited by them. In Mada- 
gascar the king’s word suffices only “ where there is no law, custom, 
or precedent.” Raffles tells us that in Java “the customs of the 
country ”{ restrain the will of the ruler. In Sumatra, too, the people 
do not allow their chiefs to “alter their ancient usages.” Nay, occa- 
sionally, as in Ashantee, “the atttempt to change some customs” has 
caused a king’s dethronement. t Now, among the customs which we 

* Burchell, W. J., “Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa,” vol. i, p. 544. 

+ Arbousset and Daumas, “ Voyage of Exploration,” p. 27. 

¢ Thompson, G., “ Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa,” vol. ii, p. 80. 

* Thompson, G. A., “ Alcedo’s Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America,” 
vol. i, p. 405. 

| Mitchell, Alex., “Siberian Overland Route,” p. 248. 

4 Brooke’s, C., ‘‘ Ten Years in Sarawak,” vol. i, p. 129. 

) Ellis, “ History of Madagascar,” vol. i, p. 377. 

} Raffles, Sir T. S., “History of Java,” i, 274. 

$ Marsden, W., “ History of Sumatra,” p. 217. 

* Beecham, J., “ Ashantee and the Gold Coast,” p. 90. 


300 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


thus find to be pre-governmental, and which subordinate governmental 
power when it is established, are those which recognize certain indi- 
vidual rights—rights to act in certain ways, and possess certain things. 
Even where the recognition of property is least developed, there is 
proprietorship of weapons, tools, and personal ornaments ; and, gen- 
erally, the recognition goes far beyond this. Among such North- 
American Indians as the Snakes, who are without government, there 
is private ownership of horses. By the Chippewayans, who have no 
regular government,” game taken in private traps “is considered as 
private property.” * Kindred facts concerning huts, utensils, and other 
personal belongings, might be brought in evidence from accounts of 
the Ahts, the Comanches, the Esquimaux, and the Brazilian Indians. 
Among various uncivilized peoples, custom has established the claim 
to the crop grown on a cleared plot of land, though not to the land 
itself ; and the Todas, who are wholly without political organization, 
make a like distinction between ownership of cattle and of land. 
Kolff’s statement respecting “the peaceful Arafuras” well sums up 
the evidence. They “recognize the right of property in the fullest 
sense of the word, without there being any authority among them but 
the decisions of their elders according to the customs of their fore- 
fathers.” + But even without seeking proofs among the uncivilized, 
sufficient proofs are furnished by early stages of the civilized. Ben- 
tham and his followers seem to have forgotten that our own common 
law is mainly an embodiment of “the customs of the realm.” It did 
but give definite shape to that which it found existing. Thus, the fact 
and the fiction are exactly opposite to what they allege. The fact is 
that property was well recognized before law existed ; the fiction is 
that “ property is the creation of law.” 

Considerations of another class might alone have led them to pause 
had they duly considered their meanings. Were it true, as alleged by 
Bentham, that Government fulfills its office “‘by creating rights which 
it confers on individuals ” ; then, the implication would be that there 
should be nothing approaching to uniformity in the rights conferred 
by different governments. In the absence of a determining cause over- 
ruling their decisions, the probabilities would be many to one against 
considerable correspondence among their decisions. But there is very 
great correspondence. Look where we may, we find that govern- 
ments interdict the same kinds of aggressions ; and, by implication, 
recognize the same kinds of claims. They habitually forbid homicide, 
theft, adultery : thus asserting that citizens may not be trespassed 
against in certain ways. And as society advances, minor individual 
claims are protected by giving remedies for breach of contract, libel, 
false witness, etc. In a word, comparisons show that though codes 
of law differ in their details as they become elaborated, they agree in 


* Schoolcraft, H. R., “‘ Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River,” v, 177. 
+ Earl’s “ Kolff’s Voyage of the Domga,” p. 161. 


t 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 301 


their fundamentals. What-does this prove? It can not be by chance 
that they thus agree. They agree because the alleged creating of 
rights was nothing else than giving formal sanction and better defini- 
tion to those assertions of claims and recognitions of claims which 
naturally originate from the individual desires of men who have to 
live in presence of one another. 

Comparative sociology discloses another group of facts having the 
same implication. Along with social progress it becomes in an in- 
creasing degree the business of the State, not only to give formal 
sanction to men’s rights, but also to defend them against aggressors. 
Before permanent government exists, and in many cases. after it is 
considerably developed, the rights of each individual are asserted and 
maintained by himself, or by his family. Alike among savage tribes 
at present, among civilized peoples in the past, and even now in unset- 
tled parts of Europe, the punishment for murder is a matter of private 
concern : “the sacred duty of blood revenge ” devolves on some one 
of a cluster of relatives. Similarly, compensations for aggressions on 
property, and for injuries of other kinds, are in early states of society 
obtained by each man for himself. But as social organization ad- 
vances, the central ruling power undertakes more and more to secure 
to individuals their personal safety, the safety of their possessions, 
and, to some extent, the enforcement of their claims established by 
contract. Originally concerned almost exclusively with defense of 
the society as a whole against other societies, or with conducting its 
attacks on other societies, Government has come more and more to dis- 
charge the function of defending individuals against one another. It 
needs but to recall the days when men habitually carried weapons, or 
to bear in mind the greater safety to person and property achieved by 
improved police-administration during our own time, or to note the 
increased facilities now given for recovering small debts, to see that 
the securing to each individual the unhindered pursuit of the objects 
of life within limits set by others’ like pursuits, is more and more rec- 
ognized as a duty of the State. In other words, along with social 
progress there goes not only a fuller recognition of these which we 
call natural rights, but also a better enforcement of them by Govern- 
ment : Government becomes more and more the servant to these essen- 
tial requirements. 

An allied and still more significant change has accompanied this. 
In early stages, at the same time that the State failed to protect the 
individual against aggression, it was itself an aggressor in multitudi- 
nous ways. Those ancient societies which progressed enough to leave 
records, having all been conquering societies, show us everywhere the 
traits of the militant régime. As, for the effectual organization of 
fighting bodies, the soldiers, absolutely obedient, must show no per- 
sonal independence ; so, for the effectual organization of fighting soci- 
eties, citizens must have their individualities subordinated. Private 


302 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


claims are overridden by public claims, and the subject loses that 
freedom of action which he had in the primitive state. One result is 
that the system of regimentation pervading the society as well as the 
army causes detailed regulation of conduct. The dictates of the 
ruler, sanctified by ascription of them to his divine ancestor, are un- 
restrained by any conception of individual liberty ; and they specify 
men’s actions to an unlimited extent—down to kinds of food eaten, 
modes of preparing them, shaping of beards, fringing of dresses, sow- 
ing of grain, etc. The omnipresent control, which the ancient east- 
ern nations in general exhibited, was exhibited also in large measure by 
the Greeks ; and was carried to its greatest pitch in the most militant 
city, Sparta. Similarly during medieval days throughout Europe, 
characterized by chronic warfare with its appropriate political forms 
and ideas, there were no recognized bounds to Governmental interfer- 
ence: agriculture, manufacture, trade, were regulated in detail ; re- 
ligious beliefs and observances were imposed; and rulers said by 
whom only furs might be worn, silver used, books issued, pigeons 
kept, ete., etc. But along with increase of industrial activities, and 
implied substitution of the régime of contract for the régime of status, 
and growth of associated sentiments, there went (until the recent 
reaction accompanying reversion to militant activity) a decrease of 
meddling with people’s doings. Legislation gradually ceased to regu- 
late the cropping of fields, or dictate the ratio of cattle to acreage, or 
specify modes of manufacture and materials to be used, or fix wages 
and prices, or interfere with dresses and games (except where there 
was gambling), or put bounties and penalties on imports or exports, 
or prescribe men’s beliefs, religious or political, or prevent them from 
combining as they pleased, or traveling where they liked. That is 
to say, throughout a large range of conduct, the right of the citizen to 
uncontrolled action has been made good against the pretensions of the 
State to control him. While the ruling agency has increasingly 
helped him to exclude intruders from that private sphere in which he 
pursues the objects of life, it has itself retreated from that sphere ; 
or, in other words—decreased its intrusions. 

Not even yet have we noted all the classes of facts which tell the 
same story. It is told afresh in the improvements and reforms of law 
itself, as well as in the admissions and assertions of those who have 
effected them. ‘So early as the fifteenth century,” says Professor 
Pollock, “we find a common-law judge declaring that, as in a case 
unprovided for by known rules, the civilians and canonists devise a 
new rule according to ‘the law of nature, which is the ground of all 
laws,’ the Courts of Westminster can and will do the like.”* Again, 
our system of equity, introduced and developed as it was to make up 
for the shortcomings of Common-law, or rectify its inequities, proceeded 

* “The Methods of Jurisprudence: an Introductory Lecture at University College, 
_ London,” October 31, 1882. 


Pe a ae 
Ri. Satis 


NG : 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 303 


throughout on.a recognition of men’s claims considered as existing 
apart from legal warrant. And the changes of law now from time to 
time made after resistance, are similarly made in pursuance of current 
ideas concerning the requirements of justice ; which, instead of being 
derived from the law are opposed to the law. For example, that recent 
Act which gives to a married woman a right of property in her own 
earnings, evidently originated in the consciousness that the natural 
connection between labor expended and benefit enjoyed, is one which 
should be maintained in all cases. The reformed law did not create 
the right, but recognition of the right created the reformed law. 
Thus, historical evidences of five different kinds, unite in teaching 
that, confused as are the popular notions concerning rights, and includ- 


ing, as they do, much which should be excluded, yet they shadow forth 


a truth. 

Let us now go on to consider the original source of this truth. In 
a previous paper I have spoken of the open secret, that there can be 
no social phenomena but what, if we analyze them to the bottom, bring 
us down to the laws of life ; and that there can be no true understand- 
ing of them without reference to the laws of life. Let us now change 
the venue, and transfer this question of natural rights from the court 
of politics to the court of science—the science of life. The reader need 
feel no alarm ; its simplest and most obvious facts will suffice. Let us 
contemplate first the general conditions to individual life ; and then 
the general conditions to social life. Weshall find that both yield the 
same verdict. 


Animal life involves waste ; waste must be met by repair; repair 
implies nutrition. Again, nutrition presupposes obtainment of food.; 
food can not be got without powers of prehension, and, usually, of loco- 
motion ; and that these powers may achieve their ends, there must be 
freedom to move about. If you shut up a mammal in a small space, or 
tie its limbs together, or take from it the food it has procured, you 
eventually, by persistence in one or other of these courses, cause its 
death. Passing a certain point, hindrance to the fulfillment of these 
requirements is fatal. And all this, which holds of the higher animals 
at large, of course holds of man. 

If we adopt pessimism as a creed, and with it accept the implication 
that life in general being an evil should be put an end to, then there is 
no ethical warrant for these actions by which life is maintained: the 
whole question drops. But if we adopt either the optimist view or the 
meliorist view—if we say that life on the whole brings more pleasure 
than pain ; or that it is on the way to become such that it will yield 
more pleasure than pain ; then these actions by which life is maintained: 
are justified, and there results a warrant for the freedom to perform 
them. Those who hold that life is valuable, hold, by implication, that 
men ought not to be prevented from carrying on life- gd hyn, ei, 


aS i 
. t 
Ree ay 
* "ei : 


304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ties. In other words, if it is said to be “right” that they should carry 
them on, then, by permutation, we get the assertion that they “have a 
right” to carry them on. Clearly the conception of “natural rights” 
' originates in recognition of the truth that if life is justifiable, there 
must be a justification for the performance of acts essential to its 
preservation ; and, therefore, a justification for those liberties and 
claims which make these acts possible. 

But being true of other creatures as of man, this is a proposition 
lacking ethical character. Ethical character arises only with the dis- 
tinction between what the individual may do in carrying on his life- 
sustaining activities, and what he may not do. This distinction ob- 
viously results from the presence of his fellows. Among those who 
are in close proximity, or even at some distance apart, the doings of 
each are apt to interfere with the doings of others, and in the absence 
of proof that some may do what they will without limit, while others 
may not, mutual limitation is necessitated. The non-ethical form of 
the right to pursue ends, passes into the ethical form when there is 
recognized the difference between acts which can be performed without 
transgressing the limits, and others which can not be so performed. 

This, which is the @ priori conclusion, is the conclusion yielded 
@ posteriort, when we study the doings of the uncivilized. In its 
vaguest form, mutual limitation of spheres of action, and the ideas 
and sentiments associated with it, are seen in the relations of groups 
to one another. MHabitually there come to be established certain 
bounds to the territories within which each tribe obtains its liveli- 
hood ; and these bounds when not respected are defended. Among 
the Wood-Veddahs, who have no political organization, the small 
clans have their respective portions of forest; and “these conven- 
tional allotments are always honorably recognized.” * Of the ungov- 
erned tribes of Tasmania, we are told that “their hunting-grounds 
were all determined, and trespassers were liable to attack.Ӣ And, 
manifestly, the quarrels caused among tribes by intrusions on one 
another’s territories, tend in the long run to fix bounds and to give a 
certain sanction to them. As with each inhabited area, so with each 
inhabiting group. A death in one, rightly or wrongly ascribed to 
somebody in another, prompts “the sacred duty of blood-revenge” ; 
and though retaliations are thus made chronic, some restraint is put 
on new aggressions. Like causes and effects were seen in those early 
stages of civilized societies, during which families or clans, rather than 
individuals, were the political units; and during which each family 
or clan had to maintain itself and its possessions against others such. 
This mutual restraint, which in the nature of things arises between 
small communities, similarly arises between individuals in each com- 
munity ; and the ideas and usages appropriate to the one are more or 
less appropriate to the other. Though within each group there is ever 


* Tennant, ii, 440. + Bonwick, J., “ Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians,” 83, 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 305 


a tendency for the stronger-to aggress on the weaker ;. yet, generally, 
consciousness of the evils resulting from aggressive conduct serves to 
restrain. Hverywhere among primitive peoples, trespasses are followed 
by counter-trespasses. Says Turner, of the Tannese, “Adultery and 
some other crimes are kept in check by the fear of club-law.”* Fitz- 
roy tells us that the Patagonian, “if he does not injure or offend his 
neighbor, is not interfered with by others”: t+ personal vengeance 
being the penalty for injury. We read of the Uaupés that “ they 
have very little law of any kind; but what they have is of strict re- 
taliation—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”{ And that the 
les talionis tends to establish a distinction between what each member 
of the community may safely do and what he may not safely do, and . 
consequently to give a sanction to actions within a certain range but 
not beyond that range, is obvious. Though, says Schoolcraft of the 
Chippewayans, they “have no regular government, as every man is 
lord in his own family, they are influenced more or less by certain 
principles which conduce to their general benefit” : * one of the prin- 
ciples named being recognition of private property. 

How mutual limitation of activities originates the ideas and senti- 
ments implied by the phrase “ natural rights,” we are shown most dis- 
tinctly by the few peaceful tribes which have either nominal govern- 
ments or none at all. Beyond those facts which illustrate scrupulous 
regard for one another’s claims among the Todas, Santals, Lepchas, 
Bodo, Chakmas, Jakuns, Arafuras, etc., we have the fact that the 
utterly-uncivilized Wood-Veddahs, saileoai any social organization at 
all, “think it perfectly inconceivable that any person should ever take 
that which does not belong to him, or strike his fellow, or say any- 
thing that is untrue.” || Thus it becomes clear, alike theoretically and 
historically, that while the positive element in the right to carry on 
life-sustaining activities originates from the laws of life, that negative 
element which gives ethical character to it, originates from the condi- 
tions produced by social aggregation. 

So alien to the truth, indeed, is the alleged creation of rights by 
government, that, contrariwise, rights having been ‘established more 
or less clearly before government arises, become obscured as govern- 
ment develops, along with that militant activity which, both by the 
taking of slaves and the establishment of ranks, produces status ; and 
the recognition of rights begins again to get definiteness only as fast 
as militancy ceases to be chronic and governmental power declines. 


When we turn from the life of the individual to the life of the 
society, the same lesson is taught us. 


* “Polynesia,” p. 86. t+ “ Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle,” ii, 167. 
t Wallace, A. R., “Travels on Amazon and Rio Negro,” p. 499. 
* Schoolcraft, ‘‘ Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi,” v, 177. 
| B. F., Hartshorne, “ Fortnightly Review,” March, 1876. See also H. ©. Sirr, “Ceylon 
and the Ceylonese,” ii, 219. 
¥OL. Xxv¥.—20 


306 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Though mere love of companionship prompts primitive men to live 
in groups, yet the chief prompter is experience of the advantages to 
be derived from co-operation. On what condition only can co-opera- 
tion arise? Evidently on condition that those who join their efforts 
severally gain by doing so. If, as in the simplest cases, they unite to 
achieve something which each by himself can not achieve, or can 
achieve less readily, it must be on the tacit understanding, either that 
they shall share the benefit (as when game is caught by a party of 
them) or that if one reaps all the benefit now (as in building a hut 
or clearing a plot) the others shall severally reap equivalent benefits 
in their turns. When instead of efforts joined in doing the same 
thing different things are effected by them—when division of labor 
arises, with accompanying barter of products, the arrangement im- 
plies that each in return for something which he has in superfluous 
quantity, gets an approximate equivalent of something which he wants. 
If he hands over the one and does not get the other, future proposals 
to exchange will meet with no response. There will be a reversion 
to that rudest condition in which each makes everything for himself. 
Hence the possibility of co-operation SepEnus on fulfillment of con- 
tract, tacit or overt. 

Now this which we see must hold of the very first step toward that 
industrial organization by which the life of a society is maintained, 
must hold more or less fully throughout its development. Though the 
militant type of organization, with its system of status produced by 
chronic war, greatly obscures these relations of contract, yet they re- 
main partially in force. They still hold between freemen, and between 
the heads of those small groups, which form the units of early societies ; 
and in a measure they still hold within these small groups themselves ; 
since survival of them as groups, implies such recognition of the claims 
of their members, even when slaves, that in return for their labors 
they get sufficiencies of food, clothing, and protection. And when, 
with diminution of warfare and growth of trade, voluntary co-opera- 
tion more and more replaces compulsory co-operation, and the carry- 
ing on of social life by exchange under agreement, partially suspended 
for a time, gradually re-establishes itself ; its re-establishment brings 
the possibility of that vast elaborate industrial organization by which 
a great nation is sustained. 

For in proportion as contracts are unhindered and the performance 
of them certain, the growth is great and the social life active. It is 
not now by one or other of two individuals who contract, that the evil 
effects of breach of contract are experienced. In an advanced society, 
they are experienced by entire classes of producers and distributors 
which have arisen through division of labor ; and eventually they are 
experienced by everybody. Ask on what condition it is that Birming- - 
ham devotes itself to manufacturing hardware, or part of Staffordshire 
to making pottery, or Lancashire to weaving cotton? Ask how the 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 307 


rural people who here grow wheat and there pasture cattle, find it pos- 
sible to occupy themselves in their special businesses? These groups 
can severally do it only if ¢ach gets from the others in exchange for 
its own surplus product, due shares of their surplus products. No 
longer directly effected by barter, this obtainment of their respective 
shares of one another’s products is indirectly effected by money ; and 
if we ask how each division of producers gets its due amount of the 
required money, the answer is—by fulfillment of contract. If Leeds 
makes woolens and does not, by fulfillment of contract, receive the 
means of obtaining from agricultural districts the needful quantity of 
food, it must starve, and stop producing woolens. If South Wales 
smelts iron and there comes no equivalent agreed upon, enabling it to 
get fabrics for clothing, its industry must cease. And so throughout, 
in general and in detail. That mutual dependence of parts which we 
see in social organization, as in individual organization, is possible only 
on condition that while each part does the particular kind of work it 
has become adjusted to, it receives its proportion of those materials 
required for repair and growth, which all the other parts have joined 
to produce: such proportion being settled by bargaining. Moreover, 
it is by fulfillment of contract that there is effected a balancing of all 
the various products of the various needs-—the large manufacture of 
knives and the small manufacture of lancets; the great growth of 
wheat and the small growth of mustard-seed. The check on undue 
production of each commodity results from finding that after a certain 
quantity, no one will agree to take any further quantity on terms that 
yield an adequate money equivalent. And so there is prevented a 
useless expenditure of labor in producing that which society does not 
want. 

Lastly, we have to note the still more significant fact that the con- 
dition under which only, any specialized group of workers can grow 
when the community needs more of its particular kind of work, is that 
contracts shall be free and fulfillment of them enforced. If when, from 
lack of material, Lancashire failed to supply the usual amount of cot- 
ton-goods, there had been such interference with contracts as prevented 
Yorkshire from asking a greater price for its woolens, which it was 
enabled to do by the greater demand for them, there would have been 
no temptation to put more capital into the woolen manufacture, no 
increase in the amount of machinery and number of artisans employed, 
and no increase of woolens: the consequence being that the whole 
community would have suffered from not having deficient cottons re- 
placed by extra woolens. What serious injury may result to a nation 
if its members are hindered from contracting with one another, was 
well shown in the contrast between England and France in respect of 
railways. Here, though considerable obstacles were at first raised by 
the legislating classes, the obstacles were not such as prevented capi- 
talists from investing, engineers from furnishing directive skill, or con- 


308 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tractors from undertaking works ; and the high interest originally ob- 
tained on investments, the great profits made by contractors, and the 
large payments received by engineers, led to that drafting of money, 
energy, and ability, into railway-making, which rapidly developed our 
railway-system, to the enormous increase of our national prosperity. 
But when M. Thiers, then Minister of Public Works, came over to 
inspect, and having been taken about by Mr. Vignoles, said to him 
when leaving :—“ I do not think railways are suited to France,” * there 
resulted from the consequent policy of hindering free contract, a delay 
of “eight or ten years” in that material progress which France expe- 
rienced when railways were made. 

- What do all these facts mean? They mean that for the healthful 
activity and due proportioning of those various industries, professions, 
etc. which maintain and aid the life-of a society, there must, in the 
first place, be no restrictions on men’s liberties to make agreements 
with one another, and there must, in the second place, be an enforce- 
ment of the agreements which they do make. As we have seen, the 
checks naturally arising to each man’s actions when men become asso- 
ciated, are those only which result from mutual limitation ; and there 
consequently can be no resulting check to the contracts they volun- 
tarily make: interference with these is interference with those rights 
to free action which remain to each when the rights of others are fully 
recognized. And then, as we have seen, enforcement of their rights 
implies enforcement of contracts made; since breach of contract is 
indirect aggression. If, when a customer on one side of the counter 
asks a shopkeeper on the other for a shilling’s worth of his goods, 
and, while the shopkeeper’s back is turned, walks off with the goods 
without leaving the shilling he tacitly contracted to give, the case dif- 
fers in no essential way from robbery. Similarly, if analyzed, every 
breach of contract proves to be a case in which the individual injured 
is deprived of something he possessed, without receiving the equiva- 
lent something bargained for ; and is in the condition of having ex- 
pended his labor without getting benefit—has had an essential condi- 
tion to the maintenance of life infringed. 

Thus, then, it results that to recognize and enforce the rights of 
individuals, is at the same time to recognize and enforce the condi- 
tions to a normal social life. There is one vital requirement for both. 


Before turning to those corollaries which have practical applica- 
tions, let us observe how the special conclusions drawn converge to 
the one general conclusion originally foreshadowed—glancing at them 
in reversed order. 

We have just found that the prerequisite to individual life is in a 
double sense the prerequisite to social life. The life of a society in 

* “ Address of C. B. Vignoles, Esq., F. R. 8., on his Election as President of the Insti- 
tution of Civil Engineers, Session 1869-70,” p. 53. 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 309 


whichever of two senses conceived, depends on maintenance of indi- 
vidual rights. If it is nothing more than the sum of the lives of citi- 
zens, this implication is obvious. If it consists of those many unlike 
activities which citizens carry on in mutual dependence, still this 
aggregate impersonal life rises or falls according as the rights of indi- 
viduals are enforced or denied. 

Study of men’s politico-ethical ideas and sentiment, leads to allied 
conclusions. Primitive peoples of various types show us that before 
governments exist, immemorial customs recognize private claims and 
justify maintenance of them. Codes of law independently evolved by 
different nations, agree in forbidding certain trespasses on the persons, 
properties, and liberties of citizens ; and their correspondences imply, 
not an artificial source for individual rights, but a natural source. 
Along with social development, the formulating in law of the rights 
pre-established by custom, becomes more definite and elaborate. At 
the same time, Government undertakes to an increasing extent the 
business of enforcing them. While it has been becoming a better pro- 
tector, Government has been becoming less aggressive—has more and 
more diminished its intrusions on men’s spheres of private action. 
And, lastly, as in past times laws were avowedly modified to fit bet- 
ter with current ideas of equity, so now, law-reformers are guided by 
ideas of equity which are not derived from law but to which law has 
to conform. 

Here, then, we have a politico-ethical theory justified alike by 
analysis and by history. What have we against it? A fashionable 
counter-theory which proves to be unjustifiable. On the one hand, 
while we find that individual life and social life both imply mainte- 
nance of the natural relation between efforts and benefits; we also 
find that this natural relation, recognized before Government existed, 
has been all along asserting and reasserting itself, and obtaining better 
recognition in codes of law and systems of ethics. On the other hand, 
those who, denying natural rights, commit themselves to the assertion 
that rights are artificially created by law, are not only flatly contra- 
dicted by facts, but their assertion is self-destructive : the endeavor 
to substantiate it, when challenged, involves them in manifold ab- 
surdities. 

Nor is this all. The reinstitution of a vague, popular conception 
in a definite form on a scientific basis, leads us to a rational view of 
the relation between the wills of majorities and minorities. It turns 
out that those co-operations in which all can voluntarily unite, and in 
the carrying on of which the will of the majority is rightly supreme, 
are co-operations for maintaining the conditions requisite to indi- 
vidual and social life. Defense of the society as a whole against 
external invaders, has for its remote end to preserve each citizen in 
possession of such means as he has for satisfying his desires, and in 
possession of such liberty as he has for getting further means. And 


310 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


defense of each citizen against internal invaders, from murderers down 
to those who inflict nuisances on their neighbors, has obviously the 
like end—an end desired by every one save the criminal and disor- 
derly. Hence it follows that for maintenance of this vital principle, 
alike of individual life and social life, subordination of minority by 
majority is legitimate ; as implying only such a trenching on the free- 
dom and property of each, as is requisite for the better protecting of 
his freedom and property. At the same time it follows that such 
subordination is not legitimate beyond this ; since, implying as it does 
a greater aggression upon the individual than is requisite for pro- 
tecting him, it involves a breach of the vital principle which is to be 
maintained. 

Thus we come round again to the proposition that the assumed 
divine right of parliaments, and the implied divine right of majorities, 
are superstitions. While men have abandoned the old theory respect- 
ing the source of State-authority, they have retained a belief in that 
unlimited extent of State-authority which rightly accompanied the old 
theory, but does not rightly accompany the new one. Unrestricted 
power over subjects, rationally ascribed to the ruling man when he was 
held to be a deputy-god, is now ascribed to the ruling body, the dep- 
uty-godhood of which nobody asserts. 

Opponents will, possibly, contend that discussions about the origin 
and limits of governmental authority are mere pedantries. “ Govern- 
ment,” they may perhaps say, “is bound to use all the means it has, or 
can get, for furthering the general happiness. Its aim must be utility ; 
and it is warranted in employing whatever measures are needful for 
achieving useful ends. The welfare of the people is the supreme law ; 
and legislators are not to be deterred from obeying that law by ques- 
tions concerning the source and range of their power.” Is there really 
an escape here? or may the opening be effectually closed ? 

The essential question raised is the truth of the utilitarian theory 
as commonly held ; and the answer here to be given is that, as com- 
monly held, it is not true. Alike by the statements of utilitarian mor- 
alists, and by the acts of politicians knowingly or unknowingly follow- 
ing their lead, it is implied that utility is to be directly determined by 
simple inspection of the immediate facts and estimation of probable 
results. Whereas, utilitarianism as rightly understood, implies guid- 
ance by the general conclusions which analysis of experience yields. 
“Good and bad results can not be accidental, but must be necessary 
consequences of the constitution of things”; and it is “the business of 
Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of 
existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, 
and what kinds to produce unhappiness.” * Current utilitarian specu- 
lation, like current practical politics, shows inadequate consciousness 
of natural causation. The habitual thought is that, in the absence of 


* “Data of Ethics,” § 21, and $$ 56-62. 


THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 311 


some obvious impediment,- things can be done this way or that way ; 
and no question is put whether there is either agreement or eomdlags 
with the normal working of things. 

The foregoing discussions have, I think, shown that the dictates of 
utility, and, consequently, the proper actions of governments, are not 
to be settled by inspection of facts on the surface, and acceptance of 
their prima facie meanings ; but are to be settled by reference to, and 
deduction from, fundamental facts. 'The fundamental facts to which 
all rational judgments of utility must go back, are the facts that life 
consists in, and is maintained by, certain activities ; and that among 
men in a society, these activities, necessarily becoming mutually lim- 
ited, are to be carried on by each within the limits thence arising, and 
not carried on beyond those limits: the maintenance of the limits be- 
coming, by consequence, the function of the agency which regulates 
society. If each, having freedom to use his powers up to the bounds 
fixed by the like freedom of others, obtains from his fellow-men as 
much for his services as they find them worth in comparison with the 
services of others—if contracts uniformly fulfilled bring to each the 
share thus determined, and he is left secure in person and possessions 
to satisfy his wants with the proceeds ; then there is maintained the 
vital principle alike of individual life and of social life. Further, there 
is maintained the vital principle of social progress ; inasmuch as un- 
der such conditions, the individuals of more worth will prosper and 
multiply more than those of less worth. So that utility, not as em- 
pirically estimated, but as rationally determined, enjoins this mainte- 
nance of individual rights ; and, by implication, negatives any course 
which traverses them. 

Here, then, we reach the ultimate interdict against meddling legis- 
lation. Reduced to its lowest terms, every proposal to interfere with 
citizens’ activities further than by enforcing their mutual limitations, 
is a proposal to improve life by breaking through the fundamental 
conditions to life. When some are prevented from buying beer that» 
others may be prevented from getting drunk, those who make the law 
assume that more good than evil will result from interference with 
the normal relation between conduct and consequences, alike in the 
few ill-regulated and the many well-regulated. A government which 
takes fractions of the incomes of multitudinous citizens for the pur- 
pose of sending to the colonies some who have not prospered here, or 
for building better industrial dwellings, or for making public libraries 
and public museums, etc., etc., takes for granted that, not only proxi- 
mately but ultimately, increased general happiness will result from 
transgressing the essential requirement to general happiness—the re- 
quirement that each shall enjoy all those means to happiness which 
his actions, carried on without aggression on others, have brought him. 
In other cases we do not thus let the immediate blind us to the remote. 
We do not when asserting the sacredness of property against private 


312 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ageressors, ask whether the benefit to the hungry man who takes bread 
from a baker’s shop, is or is not greater than the injury inflicted on the 
baker : we consider not the special effects but the general effects which 
arise if property is insecure. But when the State exacts further 
amounts from individuals, or further restrains their liberties, we con- 
sider only the direct and proximate effects, and ignore the indirect and 
distant effects which arise when these invasions of individual rights 
are continually multiplied. We do not see that by accumulated small 
infractions of them, the vital conditions to life, individual and social, 
come to be so little fulfilled that the life decays. 

Yet the decay thus caused becomes manifest where the policy is 
pushed to an extreme. Any one who studies, in the writings of MM. 
Taine and De Tocqueville, the state of things which preceded the 
French Revolution, will see that that tremendous catastrophe came 
about from so excessive a regulation of men’s actions in all their de- 
tails, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their 
actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast be- 
coming impracticable. The empirical utilitarianism of that day, like 
the empirical utilitarianism of our day, differed from the rational 
utilitarianism in this, that it contemplated only the effects of particu- 
lar interferences on the actions of particular classes of men, and ignored 
the effects produced by a multiplicity of such interferences upon the 
lives of men at large. And if we ask what then made, and what now 
makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition 
that governmental power is subject to no restraints. 

When that “ divinity ” which “doth hedge a king,” and which in 
our day has left a glamour around the body inheriting his power, has 
quite faded away—when it begins to be seen clearly that, in a popu- 
larly-governed nation, the government is simply a committee of man- 
agement ; it will also be seen that this committee of management has 
no intrinsic authority. The inevitable conclusion will be that its au- 
thority is given by those appointing it; and has just such bounds as 
they choose to impose. Along with this will go the further conclusion 
that the laws it passes are not in themselves sacred ; but that what- 
ever sacredness they have, is entirely due to the ethical sanction—an 
ethical sanction which, as we find, is derivable from the laws of hu- 
man life as carried on under social conditions. And there will come 
the corollary that when they have not this ethical sanction they have 
no sacredness, and may rightly be challenged. 

The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit 
to the powers of kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future 
will be that of putting a limit to the powers of Parliaments. 


COLORADO FOR INVALIDS. 313 


~ COLORADO FOR INVALIDS. 


By SAMUEL A. FISK, M.D. 


fe sue romantic features of life in the Rocky Mountains have been 
so gracefully portrayed by such facile pens as those of Bayard 
Taylor, “H. H.,” Miss Bird, and some of our magazine-writers, that 
the reading public have come to regard this country as adapted either 
to the tourist, bent on seeking something unusual, looking for novel 
and startling experiences, or else as an immense treasury of gold and 
silver, an El Dorado for the miner. But there is a larger class, that 
portion of our population throughout the East and South suffering 
from some pulmonary trouble, which should be much more interested 
in Colorado than either the pleasure-seeker or the money-getter. For 
such there is a wealth of life stored up in the dry, sunny climate of 
this State, more precious than the hidden treasures which the mount- 
ains contain. 

It is the intention of the writer to supplement some past efforts in 
calling the attention of the public to this salubrious climate, by giv- 
ing a few details in regard to methods of living, society, resorts, ex- 
penses, occupations for the invalid, ete. ; and he is led to this by the 
lack of information that he has found, from a personal experience, 
exists among Eastern people in regard to these very points, and by the 
erroneous impressions which he finds most new-comers have as to what 
they are to expect. 

Before entering into these details, it may be well to call attention, 
very briefly, to the climatic conditions existing in Colorado, which are 
favorable to the arrest and cure of a large percentage of pulmonary 
troubles. A careful analysis of Signal-Service statistics for a range of 
years has shown that the climate of Colorado affords an air only + 
saturated with moisture, while the air of Jacksonville, Florida, is 3%, 
and that of Los Angeles, California, is ;88, of saturation; that the 
average rain- and snow-fall, per annum, is only a trifle over fourteen 
inches, while at Jacksonville it is forty-nine inches, at Los Angeles 
nineteen inches, and at New York forty-two inches; that the eleva- 
tion, ranging from five thousand to seven thousand feet, is such as se- 
cures the most healthful action for diseased lungs ; that the direction 
and daily motion of the winds are favorable and salubrious ; that the 
mean temperature would place this climate under the head of a “cool 
climate” ; and, lastly, and of the greatest importance, is the fact that it 
affords an average of three hundred and twenty sunny days per annum, 
or, to quote the article referred to:* “It is seen that in Denver there 
. is only about one eighth of the entire year when an invalid would be 
kept in the house on account of the weather ; in Jacksonville and Au- 


* “Science,” vol. ii, No. 35, p. 460. 


314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


gusta (Georgia) he would be confined to the house, for the same rea- 
son, one quarter of the year; in St. Paul he would be kept in-doors 
between a third and a quarter of the time; while in Boston he would 
have to be housed a good third of the time.” 

Many invalids who recognize the force of these data would, never- 
theless, hesitate to come to Colorado because of their impression that 
the people are rough and only semi-civilized, and that the lack of ac- 
commodations is so great as to make life, especially for a lady, unen- 
durable. Persons, gaining their information from newspapers, have 
a vague idea that the State is infested by the cow-boy element, that 
everybody carries fire-arms, that society is lawless or at the best crude, 
and that social life is regulated by the nouveaux riches. Such persons 
would be astonished at the facts in the case. In Denver they will find 
regular and well-laid streets, numerous and magnificent public build- 
ings, imposing rows of business blocks, numerous and flourishing 
banks, stately churches, and, above all, comfortable and wealthy 
homes. <A personal investigation will convince any one that Denver 
is the finest, cleanest, most healthful, and by far the most imposing, 
of any of the so-called new cities in the United States. It is a false 
impression that leads any one to think that affairs are crude in Colo- 
rado. Throughout the State, even in the smallest towns, are to be 
found people of culture and refinement. It is a noteworthy fact that 
the average of education is higher here than in almost any other part 
of the Union, and there is not a town in the State that is wanting a 
circle of people who have both read and traveled. It is also a mis- 
taken impression that lawlessness prevails. In the mountains one can 
go anywhere unarmed, while in the centers life and property are as 
secure as in the East. : 

It is an equally mistaken idea that would cause one to hesitate 
about coming to Colorado for fear of the privations he would have 
to endure. Throughout the State the comforts of living, in any given 
place, are as great as they would be in a place of equal size East. 
Most of the towns are supplied with water- and gas-works. The 
markets have fruits and vegetables in their seasons, and fish and 
oysters from the coast. Such articles as groceries, clothing, furni- 
ture, are to be had as readily here as elsewhere. Hotel accommoda- 
tions are as good as, if not better than, are to be found in most places 
of equal size Kast. 

It should be remembered, however, that the expenses of living may 
be higher in Colorado, which is a new country, than in the older and 
more settled portions of the Union. This is to be accounted for par- 
tially by the fact that the home production is inadequate to the con- 
sumption, by the great distance that intervenes between this State and 
the centers of supply, and by the fact that it is impossible to grow 
certain things in this soil. As the question of expense is often of 
prime importance to invalids who would like to come to Colorado, it 


COLORADO FOR INVALIDS. 315 


may not be out of place to give a few brief details. A first-class rail- 
road ticket from Chicago to Denver costs thirty-seven dollars ; a berth 
in the sleeper is eight dollars; meals are seventy-five cents apiece. 
Hotel accommodations in Denver range from two to four dollars a 
day. Comfortably furnished rooms can be found at from twelve to 
twenty dollars a month, and good board costs from five to ten dollars 
a week, These are not bottom figures, but are means. House-rents 
and servants’ wages are somewhat higher than in the East. 

The invalid having determined to come to Colorado, the question 
then arises as to the best place for him to go. This is a point of 
considerable importance, and one in regard to which very erroneous 
advice is frequently given by physicians unacquainted with the State. 
For instance, it is not an uncommon thing for Eastern physicians to 
advise their patients to go into one of the parks in mid-winter, when, 
in point of fact, the snow would be lying so deeply on the ground in 
these places that it would be impossible to get into them, and cer- 
tainly very injudicious for an invalid to attempt it. Asa broad rule 
it can be stated that the best points in which to winter are the towns 
situated at the junction of the plains and foot-hills. In the summer 
the invalid will do well to go into the mountains, to such places 
as Estes Park, Manitou Park, Poncha Springs, Wagon-wheel Gap, 
Georgetown, or Idaho Springs. 

The most available towns for the invalid who has to earn his sup- 
port are Denver and Pueblo, but there is a moderately wide field from 
which to choose when health and comfort, and not money, are the main 
considerations. Colorado Springs combines so many favorable condi- 
tions of climate, good accommodations, pleasant society, and natural 
objects of interest, as to render it, in addition to its sanitary condition, 
an almost ideal resort for phthisical invalids. Six miles to the west of 
Colorado Springs, nestling among the foot-hills at the base of Pike’s 
Peak, is Manitou, the so-called “Saratoga of the West.” Its winter 
climate is mild, but it is chiefly a summer resort, as its large hotel 
accommodations, its iron and soda springs, its baths and drives, make 
it exceedingly popular. These springs furnish a large flow of agree- 
able drinking-water of real medicinal value. The soda-spring water 
resembles the Apollinaris, while the “Iron Ute” carries, in addition 
to the carbonates of soda, lime, and magnesia, a percentage of iron 
sufficient to give a marked reaction to the prussiate-of-potassium test. 
At Poncha Springs there is an abundant flow of a hot chalybeate 
water, containing in addition salts of sulphur, soda, lime, and mag- 
nesia in solution. The mean temperature of these springs is 150° 
Fahr., and they are considered to be very valuable in the cure of 
rheumatism and kindred troubles. The natural location of Poncha is 
one of the finest in the State, and it must in time become one of the 
well-known resorts. At present the hotel accommodations are meager 
and insufficient. Idaho Springs is a popular resort, adapted to both 


316 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


winter and summer. The springs furnish agreeable bathing, the cli- 
mate is mild and stimulating ; it is so sheltered from the winds as to 
be warm, even in winter, and socially it is attractive. The hot springs 
at Las Vegas, New Mexico, combine the advantages of a good winter 
climate, excellent hotel accommodations, and baths of natural hot 
water. The temperature of these springs varies from 71° to 136° 
Fahr., and they contain salts of soda and lime. We give tables show- 
ing the constituents of these several waters : 


Manrrov. | Manrrov. | Las Vraas. Ps de ache Oy 
IN 100,000 PARTS OF SPRING- | fron Ute, Soda, ; 
WATER ARE OONTAINED— | 4°.’ | 4 FR |) No.8, | yop | aed 
(Wheeler | (Wheeler | 186° F. : dition) 
expedition). expedition). rene) 
Carbonate of soda... ...<.s555 59°34 88°80 1°50 52°81 69°42 
Carbonate of lithia........... trace trace Nae et trace 
Carbonate of lime............ 59°04 108'50 3°01 16°32 13°08 
Carbonate of magnesia........ 14°56 aes sivas 4:94 10°91 
Carbonate of iron............ 5°78 Sct eeu 707 ones 
Sulphate of potassium........ 7-01 5:12 Keres bare trace 
Sulphate of soda, ........... 80°86 87°08 17°72 50°34 23°78 
OniOre Of 008 2.6. cee ke 31°59 42°12 28°03 718 29°35 
Biliedi. . eck ss Soar iy eee 2°69 trace | 6:16 6°99 5°78 
BOUG TORIES 6 iiicaa: (hae eeRiis kts ae 57:00 Sas a trace 
Sulphate of magnesia.......... aes 32°09 
PP an EEN 21087 | 281°62 | 118-42 | 177°69 | 152°12 


Denver itself makes a good winter resort, as it combines the com- 
forts and attractions of a city with a dry, warm, and sunny climate. 
But no directions can be given as regards the place that is best 
suited to any individual case ; that should be determined by some com- 
petent physician who would take into consideration the demands of 
the case and the season of the year. In the summer it is well for the 
invalid to go into the mountains, either camping out or going to some 
of the resorts ; in the winter, let him do as the Indians did, come 
down to the edge of the plains. 

The inclination to exercise to excess and to overdo is a tendency 
which the phthisical invalid should guard against. The increased ac- 
tivity of the heart, bearing in its train an increase of metamorphosis 
and an exalted vitality, frequently leads the invalid to overrate his 
strength and to exercise too violently. In this way irreparable injury 
is not infrequently done. The exhilaration produced by the tonic air, 
coupled with the restlessness incident to change of scene, often induce 
patients, who should be resting and becoming acclimated, to take long 
and exhausting walks, or to ride distances that would tax the energies 
of a well man. It is difficult for most phthisical invalids to understand 
that they are not as strong as they once were, and to teach them that 
exercise does not mean exhausting effort. There is a wrong impres- 
sion, common to this class, which leads them to think that in order to 


COLORADO FOR INVALIDS. 317 


regain health they must bein constant motion, and that the more they 
can be doing the sooner they will get well. They forget that their 
disease is in itself a tremendous drain upon their vitality, and that 
any additional strain is to be avoided. When the heart has become 
accustomed to the additional work put upon it, by reason of the in- 
crease in elevation, and the system has adapted itself to the new con- 
ditions by which it is surrounded, it is well to undertake exercise of a 
moderate character, and the best is riding horseback. Fortunately, 
the price of ponies (from sixty to one hundred dollars) is so reasona- 
ble and the sport so popular as to make this form of exercise both pos- 
sible and attractive to every invalid. 

There is another fallacy inherent in the minds of many consump- 
tives, coming to Colorado, which should be mentioned ; that is the 
idea that the climate is the only factor in the cure of phthisis, and that 
it will be sufficient for them simply to be breathing this dry air in 
order to secure a complete recovery. It is most absurd to imagine that 
an invalid can disregard all the laws of hygiene and health, can keep 
irregular hours, smoke incessantly, disregard all changes of tempera- 
ture, expose himself in every possible way to cold, in order that he 
may become “toughened,” and then expect that the climate is going 
to work wonders in curing his trouble. And yet many a one, leading 

just this type of life, grumbles at the climate, and wonders that he does 
' not recover his health ! 

This leads us to speak of the matter of clothing. The ranges of 
temperature in Colorado are often very large, hence a person should 
be prepared for both warm and cold weather. In winter one should 
wear flannels and heavy clothes just as in New York ; in summer thin 
garments will be comfortable at midday, but woolens will be needed 
at night. The air is so dry and rare, and the soil is so exposed and 
sandy, that both solar and terrestrial radiation are rapid. The sun’s 
rays heat rapidly, and, they being withdrawn, the air is rapidly cooled. 
There is, however, this positive fact which makes thermometric varia- 
tions unfair criteria on which to base comparisons as between Colo- 
rado and the East. As has been shown, this air is exceedingly dry, and 
consequently heat and cold, as indicated by the registration of the 
mercury, are not felt as much as in New York. Mists are seldom 
seen here, and dew is rarely deposited. 

The question of occupation for the invalid is one of prime impor- 
tance, and has almost as direct a bearing upon his recovery as have 
climate and proper care. Even if it be true that consumptives are, 
as a rule, sanguine about themselves, it is equally true that, if a man 
has nothing to think of but his health, he soon becomes a hypochon- 
driac—a disease as much to be dreaded as any real malady—and every 
physician, who has had much experience with chronic invalids, knows 
how important it is that the mind should be “diverted.” The writer 
regards it as a great mistake for the phthisical invalid to be with- 


318 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


out some definite plans and occupation. As soon as practicable, it 
is advisable for such a one to take up some pursuit, either of busi- 
ness or of study, which will give such occupation as is consistent with 
his physical condition. The geology, mineralogy, fauna and flora of 
this State, so rich in themselves and so different from those in the East, 
furnish, to one so disposed, ample fields of study and inquiry, the pur- 
suit of which will be a help rather than a hindrance to recovery. The 
collecting of a cabinet, requiring as it would something of an out-of- 
door life, or the getting together of an herbarium of all the choice and 
unusual flowers and plants of this State, would furnish occupation of 
an instructive and diverting kind. If one undertakes to study even 
the birds, he will be surprised to find how many species there are, and 
will be equally astonished to discover among them his old friends the 
bobolink, wren, oriole, and the indigo-bird, of the Eastern States. 

It may be a good thing for the person affected with phthisis to go 
into ranching, after he has been in the State long enough to know 
what he is about in doing so ; but we enter a protest against the idea, 
which is somewhat prevalent in the East, that in order to recover his 
health the invalid should go on to a ranch and herd sheep. The rea-’ 
sons for making this protest are that such advice is frequently given, 
and, as we are led to judge, by physicians who have but the vaguest 
ideas of the nature of the course they are prescribing. The invalid, on 
coming to Colorado, needs to have life made as easy and pleasant for 
him as possible. As a rule, the sacrifices he has to make, in conse- 
quence of his sickness, render him for the time being peculiarly depend- 
ent upon sympathy. He should be so situated that he can have the 
benefit of pleasant society and diverting companionship. Now, ranch- 
life is necessarily somewhat rough and usually monotonous, and, when 
it comes to herding sheep, even a vigorous man, new at the business, 
finds it most irksome and fatiguing. We think it is a great mistake 
to increase the trials of an invalid by imposing upon him, in addition 
to a separation from his friends, an almost entire absence of compan- 
ionship, a life that is rough in the extreme, and a dietary that is innu- 
tritious, uninviting, and monotonous. The average ranch-house is a 
miserable shanty, out on the plains, away from neighbors, where the 
usual diet is bacon floating in grease ; hot flapjacks, made fresh with 
water and baking-powder ; molasses, and coffee without milk. 

If it be possible for the invalid to go to some nice ranch, near a 
village, where he can have good, wholesome diet, pleasant associates, 
out-of-door occupation, and where his hours will necessarily be regu- 
lar, then the conditions for recovery are excellent. Such ranches are 
to be found. But the average ranch, on the plains, is much inferior 
to the average farm-house in the East, and the surroundings and diet 
are such as, at first, to try very severely the strongest man. 

The matter of diet is one to which, as it seems to the writer, suffi- 
cient attention is not usually paid by the invalid.’ He should be so 


COLORADO FOR INVALIDS. 319 


situated that he can have an abundance of plain, nutritious food, well 
cooked, and a variety sufficient to invite the palate. It stands to rea- 
son that if the waste in the system, produced by the disease, is not 
only to be made good, but if, in addition, as is desirable, the patient 
is to put on fat, he must take into his system material sufficient in 
quality and quantity wherewith to do it. Any place, be it on a ranch 
or at a boarding-house, where the table is uninviting and nauseous, 
is a bad one for the invalid, and one that he should leave as soon as 
possible. It is on this ground that we base a good deal of our objec- 
tion to ranch-life. As indicated, the food is usually poor in quality, 
insufficient in quantity, and indigestible. Contrary to what might be 
supposed, even on a cattle-ranch, milk is seldom to be had, and, if the 
black coffee is to be drunk aw lait, it is made so with condensed milk. 
The life, also, is monotonous and trying, and the distance from medi- 
cal assistance, if needed, is so great as to be, in hemorrhagic cases, of 
serious importance. The writer is convinced that ranch-life, the so- 
called “ranch-cure for consumptives,” especially those just out from 
the East, is a mistake ; and he is certain that its good qualities, in giv- 
ing occupation and an out-of-door life, are to be had without the bad 
ones, by going to some one of the many towns on the eastern slopes — 
of the Rocky Mountains. 

In conclusion, it may be appropriate to speak very briefly of the 
classes of pulmonary troubles to which this climate is adapted. It 
will not be possible to give a complete list, nor to attempt to catalogue 
the varieties, but merely to mention, in the most general way, the 
kinds of pulmonary disease that experience has shown to be relieved in 
Colorado. It may not be inappropriate to begin with a strong nega- 
tive, and to say that this climate is not adapted to persons suftering 
from the last stages of phthisis. The elevation and rarity of the air 
throw so much extra work on the already embarrassed heart and 
lungs that the difficulty is increased and the end is only hastened. 
Such cases need the comforts of home, and the consolation of friends, 
more than change of scene or climate; and we protest against the 
cruelty of sending such invalids to Colorado as a dernier ressort, when 
the probable issue will be that they have been subjected to an exhaust- 
ing and fatiguing journey only to give up their life, in a short time, 
in a strange land. The opinion that the altitude is not suited to hem- 
orrhagic cases is generally discountenanced by the medical profession 
in this State. Such cases are found to do very well here if they be 
taken early enough ; and experience shows that there is nothing in 
mere altitude to increase the tendency to relapses. Even those cases 
where there is a strong hereditary tendency to phthisis are found to 
do admirably in this climate, provided they come early enough. The 
so-called catarrhal pneumonias, in the early stages, where: resolution is 
slow, are admirably adapted to this climate. Bronchitic and asthmatic 
patients find relief and cure here. Where heart-lesions exist, especially 


320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


if they be complicated with dilatation, elevation is contraindicated. 
Many cases of nasal and pharyngeal catarrh do admirably here, and 
deafness, arising from chronic catarrh of the middle ear, is frequently 
cured. In general, Colorado will be found to be an admirable resort 
for enfeebled and debilitated persons who need rest, change of scene, 
and general “toning up.” 

It has become a by-word that there are two sliaken of persons who 
come to Colorado—those who come to get health, and those who come 
for wealth. We think that the former more often realize their antici- 
pations, and, having found a new interest in life, in consequence of 
their return to health, they show their appreciation and gratitude by 
remaining in the air and sunshine that have made “life new around 
them.” How often one hears the expression, “I owe everything to 
Colorado air,” it is impossible to say ; but so large a class of our 
population have sought and found a restoration of health here, that 
one can not refrain from carrying the good tidings to the thousands 
upon thousands in the East who are seeking wherewith they may be 
cured. , 


—we = 
~~ 


THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
By Rev. GEORGE G. LYON. 


SSUMING that the Being worthy of the highest adoration in 
heaven and on earth must be incomprehensible, and that his 
will and ways must be past finding out, no conceivable symbol can be 
final, or can be either satisfactory or helpful, except in a period of 
immaturity ; and hence nothing can be more necessary than a new 
faith, or more reasonable than its confident and constant expectation ; 
and that which is now dawning on the Christian world is doubtless 
destined to have its day. They who have toiled hard and borne the 
heat and labor of the preceding day and feel the need of rest, and they 
who dislike the dawn and love to slumber until noon, will be more an- 
noyed than gratified by the light of this new morning ; but they who 
are up with the rising sun will be delighted with the dispersing dark- 
ness and the increasing brightness, and with the new beauties and the 
fresh fragrance of the clearer light and higher life. 

Thus far in its presentation the New Theology is reformatory 
rather than revolutionary in its teachings and tendencies. It accepts 
the nomenclature of the Old, but shades or expands its definitions so 
as to accord with the subtiler experiences and the enlarged observa- 
tions of the age ; and it maintains the dogmatic statements of the Old, 
but modifies their exposition so as to bring them into harmony with 
the laws and processes of being. It affirms with the Old that faith is 
the basis of salvation and of alk deliberate activity, but it gives no 


THE NEW THEOLOGY. 321 


pre-eminence to any form of faith, and tests the validity and the suf- 
ficiency ofa faith by the salvation it secures and the activity it in- 
spires. With the Old it accepts all Scripture given by inspiration as 
divine, and interprets Scripture by Scripture, but it holds in abeyance 
all biblical utterances which seem unreasonable, and rejects all which 
are in conflict with the nature of things or the course of Providence, 
and aims to understand and to corroborate the written word by the 
works of Nature; and it maintains that no portion of the Scripture 
can be a revelation of God to man except to the extent that it is 
understood and conforms to the laws of being. 

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the New Theol- 
ogy is its respect for science, indicated by its effort to put all its state- 
ments on a scientific basis and submit them in a scientific method, and 
to question the value or utility of any doctrine which does not come 
under some general and harmonious law, or which can not be scientifi- 
eally presented ; and, were this the only claim of the New Theology, 
it would entitle it to a respectful hearing, as well as put it in striking 
contrast with the Old. It does not insist that any of the great doc- 
trines derived from the Bible could have been discovered by scientific 
investigation, but, being disclosed by divine inspiration, as claimed, 
they are, when philosophically considered, recognized as reasonable 
and essential, and to be in accord with the constitution of things. It 
contends that the dogmatic teachings with respect to the trinity of the 
Godhead, the divinity of Christ, the atonement or human redemption 
in Christ, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the immortality of the 
soul, salvation by faith, the operations of the Holy Spirit, human pro- 
bation, the eternity of divine rewards and punishments, and other 
biblical doctrines, are no longer to be announced as abstract truths to 
be received by a stultified credulity and denied at the peril of the soul, 
but are illumined under the light of philosophy as natural and essen- 
tial, and can be as rationaHy believed as any other inexplicable state- 
ments of experience or observation. 

As a corollary to this respect for science the New Theology has an 
antipathy to authority, and insists on personal freedom in investiga- 
tion, and personal responsibility for conviction. ‘It concedes that au- 
thority is necessary as a guide in immaturity, and that most of the 
knowledge acquired by individuals is derived, but holds that no ipse 
dixit is final, and that all communication is to be received tentatively 
and subject to amendment or rejection ; that authority is merely me- 
chanical in its action and in its effect, and that they who submit to it 
without question are mere machinery propelled like an engine by 
steam, capable of valuable service for a season, but neither develop 
nor improve, and are deprived of all the pleasures of progress and of 
increasing vigor and usefulness. It goes further, and charges that 
commanding authority dwarfs growth and weakens ability, and is, 
therefore, largely responsible for the general inability to distinguish 

VOL, XXV.—21 


322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


between right and wrong, and for the unsettled and weak convictions 
as to good and eyil ; and, furthermore, that it is accountable for much 
of the prevailing unbelief and skepticism, for, without some collateral 
and corroborative evidence to support naked affirmations, faith be- 
comes weak, and lapses into superstitious credulity, or is abandoned 
for the more satisfactory—if not more intelligent—negations of infi- 
delity and agnosticism, And it must be admitted that it has always 
been difficult to hold the average of Christians to an unfaltering faith 
in the evangelical doctrines of Christianity—the Trinity, the divinity 
of Christ, the atonement, etc.—-that but few have a clear conception 
of any of them, that many deny one or more of them, that no two 
understand them alike, and that all have doubts and fears with re- 
spect to them ; and, therefore, the New Theology most earnestly pro- 
tests against the arbitrary and inconsiderate church canon which 
exacts unreserved or even nominal assent to all or to any articles of 
faith as a requirement of God and a condition of the divine favor and 
the soul’s salvation. It does not question the soundness of the doc- 
trines affirmed, but it recognizes the impossibility of making all men 
see them alike, or of holding them to a credulous assent to them ; and 
affirms that many who doubt and many who disbelieve them are 
among the most exemplary of mankind; that the sacred Scriptures 
comprehensively understood do not exact uniformity of faith in order 
to salvation ; and that were any symbol the basis of hope it could not 
be of universal application, and would, therefore, not be adapted to 
humanity, or be consistent with either the divine or human nature. 
It assumes that saving faith is that recognition of what is right and 
best which enforces its practice; and the sincerity and strength of 
faith are determined by the degree of the conformity of the heart and 
life of the subject to the character and requirements of the ideal. In 
other words, the aim and effort of a man to be in accord with what 
he sincerely regards the true and the perfect, whether that be fetich- 
ism or Christianity, is the exercise of saving faith, and secures the 
soul its highest commendation and the divine favor; and, since its 
real excellence is in sincerity, it may be as perfect and as acceptable 
in its first timid appliance by the feeble as in its last bold assurance 
by the strong. 

The New Theology is not a positive philosophy which rejects or 
agnosticizes the unknowable and the incomprehensible. It accepts 
authority as the starting-point of inquiry, which is skeptical but open 
_ to evidence, and takes the reasonable and the probable rather than the 
positive or the absolute as the only attainable presumption of truth 
and error. And since problematic conviction constitutes the sum of 
all human knowledge, and forms the basis of all human activity, it 
regards as impractical theorists, insensible to the operative agencies 
of the ages, all who reject the probable for the positive. 

Starting out with these leading ideas that no creed can be final so 


THE NEW THEOLOGY. 323 


long as there is the infinite to explore or the human intellect is capa- 
ble of comprehending more ; that new symbols are of periodicity and 
of rational expectation, and therefore that all creeds are tentative and 
adapted only to a transition period ; that authority is insufficient, and 
requires the corroboration of correlative facts or principles of observa- 
tion to establish faith ; that no formula of faith can be adjusted to all 
comprehensions or made the condition of salvation, and that the prob- 
able is the highest and the sufficient warrant for all human faith and 
practice—it remains to be seen if the New Theology has a clearer or 
a fuller apprehension of scriptural teaching, and if it can present its 
ideas less dogmatically and more scientifically, or as authoritative 
utterances corroborated by corresponding facts or experiences which 
are generally accepted. 

No adherent of the New Theology, however enthusiastic or confi- 
dent in his early love, presumes that in this dawn of its day its beams 
are as bright or broad as they will be at its meridian ; and the most 
zealous of its expounders confess that in its present stage it is largely 
suggestive, and possibly adapted to arrest the reactionary tendency 
to reject all scriptural teaching as of divine origin or authority on 
account of the unreasonableness of some of the current theological 
interpretations and expositions, and to unite thinking Christians and 
confirm the weak and the wavering in the faith of the gospel, by such 
a presentation of scripture truths as will be commended by their judg- 
ment, and will show them to be essential to human welfare and analo- 
gous to the laws and phenomena of Nature. It is therefore chiefly a 
contribution of suggestive definitions and methods applied to the popu- 
lar or evangelical theology. But, in order to a clearer idea of the New 
Theology and its methods, it is necessary to give a brief statement of its 
presentation of some of the more prominent evangelical doctrines, and 
especially of those which within the last few years have been made 
conspicuous through church councils and the religious and secular 
press, as the atonement, the work of the Divine Spirit, human proba- 
tion, etc. 

As to the nature and necessity of the atonement, the New Theol- 
ogy is perhaps more perplexed than as to any other evangelical topic, if 
indeed it is not agnostic, or at least without decided convictions ; and 
its adherents consider themselves as mere inquirers, investigating in an 
obscure light its profound mysteries, trusting that the dark labyrinth 
in which they are groping will lead to their fuller disclosure. It does 
not deny that in some way the mission of our Lord accomplished im- 
measurable good to mankind, for it recognizes a new and diviner life 
issuing from Calvary and streaming down through the centuries in 
ever-increasing volume, purifying the hearts and inspiring the lives of 
men, and constituting the impulsive force to all that is desirable and 
divine in human progress ; but it can not reconcile with a worthy con-. 
ception of either the divine or human nature the punishment or the 


324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


suffering of the innocent for the guilty in order to placate the divine 
anger and render the Deity propitious, or to satisfy the claims of jus- 
tice so that the Judge can be clement to transgressors of law and per- 
mit them, untrammeled by guilt for the past, to reform, or give them 
another chance to do better. Neither the divine holiness nor justice was 
ever antagonized to the sinner, and therefore never needed to be con- 
ciliated, and certainly neither could ever be reconciled with sin; so 
that an atonement either to dispose God favorably toward sinners or 
to tolerate sin, or to make any allowance for sin or to pardon sin, 
is inconsistent with the divine nature. And nothing can be more ab- 
surd than the teaching that God was at enmity with the sinner, unless 
it be the affirmation of those who believe it, that the atonement is “a 
provision of divine grace or love”; for, plainly stated, it is this: An 
atonement or means of reconciliation was necessary because God hated 
sinners, but was really instituted because “God so loved the world” 
of sinners. Men feel that God is angry with them and hostile to them, 
but certainly the atonement of Christ, whatever it be, is counteracting 
this erroneous sentiment by its disclosure of the infinite and unwaver- 
ing paternal love of God for man in the life and death of his Son ; and 
any provision of mercy which the divine wisdom and goodness has 
made for sinners is necessarily predicated on this infinite love of the 
common Father of the race. And so the New Theology objects to all 
moral views of the atonement which make provisions for waiving any 
legal process or infliction of penalty, and holds that no new provision 
of grace or special scheme of redemption for the recovery of man from 
the power and dominion of sin was necessary ; that all the elements 
for the restoration from sin to righteousness are included in the pro- 
visions of Nature, and are sufficient when quickened and invigorated by 
the Divine Spirit to reinstate men in holiness and in the favor of God. 
So that the regeneration of the human soul is as practicable with- 
out the mission or work of Christ as an additional agency as with it, 
for it consists essentially in the deliberate determination henceforth 
and forever to be at one with God; and from this determinative ini- 
tiative the optimistic element of the mind brings the peace, courage, 
and hope of faith. There is nothing now to afflict or discourage ex- 
cept the past, and that is forsaken and abhorred; and since in eternal 
progress, and effort the soul is in aceord with the laws of its being and 
the Divine Will, it gradually comes to forget, as God does, its back- 
slidings, and to think only of that which is pleasing to God and which 
will be the source of perpetual delight. 

It would not be consistent with the general run of creation had 
remedial provisions been left out of the moral nature of man while 
they are incorporated in animal, in vegetal, and in social being; nor 
would it be consistent with the infinite forethought or consideration or 
compassion of our Father in heaven to introduce a new agency essen- 
tial to human welfare which was not of immediate and universal ap- 


THE NEW THEOLOGY. 325 


plication to the race. It. is true, the advent of Christ was of interme- 
diation in-time, but in essence of being it was contemporaneous with 
accountability, and was revealed in prophetic language at the’ first 
overture of moral delinquency as the seed of the woman “that should 
bruise the serpent’s head” ; and has ever, according to all human ex- 
perience, been recognized in the ideal of good which reproaches every 
varying thought and deed, and which constitutes the inspiration and 
the encouragement to all improvement. The advent and life of our 
Lord did not therefore impart a new moral element to the world, nor is 
Christianity a new provision of grace in the plan of human redemp- 
tion ; and the time element in their introduction is a mere question of 
policy, since they are not of vital importance. That is, it was for di- 
vine wisdom to determine when it would be most advantageous to the 
race to send the quickening example and teaching of Christ into the 
world, but their advent has in no way modified the relation of God to 
man, or of man to God, nor made the provisions of human redemption 
more ample or available. They are incidents in the process of moral 
progress, and could wisely be introduced only at the proper stage of 
development, so that the delay in their intercalation can not be re- 
proachful. — 

The aim of the atonement is to exemplify a condition and life cor- 
responding to, but surpassing, the highest ideals of men, which may be 
approximately attained by every individual of the race in every stage 
of accountability ; and the effort to realize this condition and life is 
the acceptance of its provisions and its accounted righteousness or the 
transfer of Christ’s righteousness to the believer; for the faith that 
impels to be like Christ is transforming in its effect, and by its con- 
tinuous exercise believers become Christ-like in character and conduct. 
And this has ever been the result among heathen and Christians of 
efforts to attain ideal excellence ; for the human mind is so constituted 
that its desirable ideal is always an approximation to the perfection of 
Christ ; and hence the declaration of Peter, “I perceive that God is 
no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth him and 
worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”; and hence, also, the 
Christ-like worthies among Hebrew saints and pagan philosophers, 
Mohammedan dervishes, Indian fakirs, and fetich-worshipers. Moral 
processes, corresponding to those accorded to the atonement of Christ, 
have been going on in all ages and among all races, regenerating the 
hearts and improving the conduct of all believers—i. e., of all who 
aimed to realize their ideal excellence ; and this regenerating process 
was probably signified in the occult religious mysteries of the more 
cultured nations of antiquity. The atonement, therefore, is not a pro- 
vision for sin or for the sinner, but for man; and, had sin never en- 
tered the world, the mission of Christ would have been as necessary 
to the exaltation and salvation of mankind as it is under the reign and 
power of sin. It is a practical revelation of an ideal which was essen- 


326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tial to the highest good of man, and which could be eternally approxi- 
mated, but which never could be conceived by man without its dis- 
closure in the life and death of our Lord. 

In regard to the supernatural, the New Theology doubts or denies 
it in the economies of Nature and of grace, It believes in the inspira- 
tion of all scriptural and other truth, in the authenticated phenomena 
called miracles, in the regeneration of corrupted human nature by 
the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the active and efficient superin- 
tendence of divine providence ; but it maintains that the divine imma- 
nence in the world is sufficient to account for the minutest and the 
mightiest phenomena which have occurred, or which can take place, 
and that to assume special divine interferences or the interposition of 
new agencies in the communication of the Divine Will, in the govern- 
ment of the material or moral world, in the recovery of man from 
wickedness to righteousness, presumes the “sober second thought ” on 
the part of God that his original executions were defective, and needed 
amendment or reformation; that he is partial, and favors with advan- 
tages one age or one class more than another, and that he is change- 
able and unreliable. All natural wants, physical and spiritual, are in- 
dicative of the divine disposition to help, and are assurances of suitable 
supplies—material for the body and immaterial for the mind—which, 
according to all human experience, never ignore nor supersede a natural 
law or function ; and it is doubtful if any supernatural helps could be 
recognized or appreciated; so that it is not improbable that all that is 
called supernatural is of misconception, superstition, or credulity. And, 
if there be no necessity for it, or if that which is so called can be ac- 
counted for or accomplished by natural means, its exercise would be a 
useless display of energy, while, if necessary, it shows that the provis- 
ions of Nature are inadequate to its necessities and thereby reproach 
their author ; and if it intervenes to assist, or retard, or counteract, it 
must be a supersedence of the supernatural by the supernatural—a 
kingdom divided against itself and self-destructive ; for is not Nature, 
in its being and in its processes, a divine arrangement and incapable of 
any modification or rearrangement except by a greater than Nature? 
And to the affirmation that all the divine creations and phenomena are 
necessarily supernatural, it may be asked : How can there be a super- 
natural without a natural to exceed? and if supernatural, how can 
they be superseded unless by a greater than the supernatural? and 
would it not be useless to introduce the supernatural unless it could 
exceed a process of Nature or equal an act of creation ? 

But who knows what Nature is capable of ? or if it has ever been 
superseded ? or that any of the operations called supernatural are more 
than natural? As mankind advances in intelligence, the supernatural 
retires, like barbarism before civilization ; and yet, the prevalent be- 
lief of Christians is, that there is a supernatural, spiritual agency in 
the world which enlightens the mind and transforms the heart of 


THE NEW THEOLOGY. 327 


man, and which assures of the divine favor and begets the hope 
of eternal life; and a less prevalent conviction that this divine ele- 
ment has in times past performed miracles, and may even now be 
controlled to heal the sick, and cure the lame, and do superhuman 
deeds. 

It is not questioned that there is an enlightening, encouraging, and 
comforting spiritual influence in the world ; but why assume that it 
is supernatural? or that it is a new and distinct agent which is supe- 
rior to and supersedes Nature? No one has yet fathomed the mys- 
teries or power of a single element of nature, and therefore can not 
reasonably assume that Nature is insufficient to account for all the 
phenomena attributed to the supernatural, nor can any one show that 
the supernatural has ever done or can do more than is done by Nature 
in its ordinary processes. And if, as claimed, the natural occurrences 
are divine operations, then, certainly, no supernatural agency could be 
more subtile, or more powerful, or more beneficial, than a common 
process of Nature. Even the advent of Christ can not be regarded as 
a new or superseding foree in human life if he be “God manifest in 
the flesh,” for God has ever made himself known by his works and 
providence, “even his everlasting power and divinity.” The mere 
form of his appearance would not be a superior component, and if he 
were a creation he could not be a supernatural power. 

The profound conviction of the Christian mind is, that the God 
who created, upholds the universe, and watches over and guides the 
movement of every atom day and night, and guards the thoughts of 
every heart and gives them the impulse of their transforming energy. 
This is the divine in nature, and there could be no course of nature 
without it ; but it is neither a new, nor a distinct, nor a superseding 
element in nature. It is God as the ever-present and efficient force in 
matter and mind, who “rides in the whirlwind and guides in the 
storm,” who lives, and moves, and has his being in the human heart, 
and who helps in every infirmity. He is the unseen, intangible sub- 
sistence in and of self, and yet not self, which purifies the heart and 
ennobles the life, and which improves society, and “makes for right- 
eousness ” from age to age, and to the ends of the earth. 

He is the Holy Spirit, sent by our Lord, who vitalizes every letter 
and word of the Divine utterances, and abides in them so that they 
are living words, and scintillate with the radiance of their divine sig- 
nificance as the light from the urim and thummim of the high-priest of 
old, and as the shekinah from the mercy-seat between the cherubim 
over the ark of the covenant. He is the light which enlighteneth 
every man who cometh into the world, the persuasion in every invita 
tion, the comfort in every promise, the encourager in every prediction, 
and the inspiration in every hope. Every sigh over a wrong is of his 
awakening ; every smile started by a kindness springs from him ; 
every incident that teaches some good to do or some evil to shun is 


328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


his persuasive voice, and every movement toward righteousness is the 
impulse of his impending presence. 

According to his word, God is in man, living and moving of his 
own good pleasure ; not beyond his reach nor without him, but in him 
and of him, and may be recognized in every stone and star, in every 
glint of beauty and waft of fragrance, in every touch and tone of ten- 
derness, and in every strain of melody and movement of intelligence. 
What, then, would be the use or the value of the supernatural in 
nature ? 

As to the scientific dogma of the evolution of man from monad 
through monkey, the New Theology is as ready to accept it as to re- 
ject it, according to the evidence; but in no event does it see the 
necessity of nor admit a special divine interposition to complete any 
stage in the process, and it is unscientific to assume it. The divine 
immanence is constant, and is sufficient for every evolved condition 
without aid from or resort to unnatural or supernatural supplementa- 
tion to the uniformity of nature ; and, whether evolved or not, man is 
consciously and practically a moral being, capable of virtue and vice, 
and justly censurable for evil and worthy of commendation for good. 

But, more than any other, the topic which has made the New The- 
ology most conspicuous is that which is denominated a second proba- 
tion, which is yet illy conceived and variously presented. Consistent 
thinkers not only accept the doctrine of rewards and punishments, but 
hold that neither can adequately express the Divine attitude toward 
holiness and sin, nor man’s sense of propriety and justice, unless they 
be eternal. They do not assume to describe the rewards or the pun- 
ishments of the future, nor to know their constituents, but presume, 
from their appropriateness, and from the consistency in the order of 
divine things, that they will be similar to or identical with the peace 
and joy of believers, and the commotion and wretchedness of sinners 
on earth. From this point the New Theology shades off gradually 
from the Old. It holds that sin involves death or permanent dis- 
ability, and that continuous sinning becomes increasingly disastrous, 
undermining and weakening the moral nature, until it becomes so 
enfeebled as hardly to be able to perform or to enjoy the pleasures of 
a virtuous deed, and logically terminates in the extinction of moral 
being. But since, according to Scripture and science, nothing is made 
in vain, or to be destroyed, there must be hope where there is life, and 
since the annihilation of any existence implies a useless act in its erea- 
tion, or an error in the calculation of its author, it assumes that being, 
especially moral being, is an assurance of immortality, and that so . 
long as there is a spark of vitality there is a possibility, or, according 
to the nature and course of things, a probability of an awakening to 
a higher life and its eternal development. And if, with the diminu- 
tion of moral energy referred to, there is, as is claimed, an element of 
pain as a corollary of transgression, it is an additional evidence of the 


THE NEW THEOLOGY. | 329 


probability of reformation and growth, for suffering is not a penalty 
in token of disapproval, but a sign of mercy and an agency of restraint 
and reformation. The penalty of sin is death—an eternal disability— 
and the pain that accompanies it is its symptom demanding attention, 
and the application of curative remedies. As the pain of a burn, the 
gnawing of hunger, the distress of fever, are symptoms of threatened 
danger which indicate the localities in jeopardy, the disintegration of 
the tissues in process, and call for help, and disturb until relieved ; so 
the fiery darts of sin, the cravings from spiritual inanition, and the 
restless ferment from corrupt desires and vicious practices, give the 
alarm of moral dissolution, and cry “with groanings unutterable,” 
until the remedies are applied and the cure is effected. So that suf- 
fering, physical and spiritual, is the cry for mercy from the depths of 
transgression, and is the sign of hope and the assurance of a “present — 
help in time of need,” unless the desire of sufferers exceeds the meas- 
ure of the divine and human compassion. If, therefore, life is contin- 
uous and pain accompanies penalty, the possibility of recovery from 
the pain of transgression and of a new opportunity in life must be 
their concomitants, and last as long as “life and thought and being.” 
So that penalty, so long as it is accompanied with pain, is an evidence 
of probationary being, and there is certainly no philosophic nor scien- 
tific reason, and probably no biblical teaching, incompatible with these 
two principles—the continuity of life, and the remedial nature of pain; 
and, therefore, it may confidently be affirmed, where there is pain there 
as hope. 

But probationary life is not hypothecated on continuity of life, nor 
on any remedial provision in life, but on the essential nature of moral- 
ity. The phrase “second probation” is misleading, so far as it implies 
a continuity of condition or state. Each moral act—i. e., each delib- 
erate act for which a moral being is responsible—completes a proba- 
tionary period, so that a moral life is a succession of periods in which 
deliberate choice, or the acceptance or rejection of ultimate good, is 
expressed. Probation is, therefore, of instantaneity and not of continu- 
ity, except so far as continuity indicates a succession of moral or pro- 
bationary processes ; character is the tendency evoked by the last 
determination ; virtuous life is a succession of best choices, and finite 
moral being and morality terminate with probation. There is a dis- 
position in the human mind to repeat its acts, and it acquires the 
facility of habit by its repetitions, so that one virtuous or vicious act 
heralds another, but each volition determines, as it also indicates, the 
character, and therefore, if there be virtue in the future, it must be 
predicated there as here on a probationary existence, and be secured 
by deliberate choice. And to the objection that this postulatum ren- 
ders the conditions of the future as uncertain as in the present, it need 
only be said that the ordinances of Heaven are not regulated by specu- 
lative philosophers or theologians. But why should the conditions of 


330 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY. 


the future differ from those of the present? Is God variable or par- 
tial? Is not a probationary existence here wise? Could there be vir- 
tue or vice, happiness or wretchedness, without it? Could there be 
virtue or vice under constraint? "Would obedience or disobedience 
that was perfunctory, or a sequence, or of habit, were it possible, be 
of any moral quality so as to be either pleasing or displeasing to God, 
or profitable or damaging to the soul? Oris there any greater proba- 
bility of falling from virtue hereafter than here? But virtue is im- 
possible anywhere without the alternative of vice; and, since the 
tendency to repeat is confirmed by repetition, and since virtue only - 
accords with or is agreeable to the soul, is it not probable that the 
acquired taste for virtue shall continually increase until all other in- 
clination of the soul shall cease, and virtue shall be loved for itself, 
and be practiced because it is so loved? And so vice can only be vice 
when it can be rejected. It, too, may be pursued to a habit, but it is 
always hostile to nature, and can never be relished ; so that, since it is 
unnatural and disagreeable and unnecessary, it is not improbable that 
it will be resisted and ultimately be superseded by virtue; for will 
not the “ evil” always “bow before the good”? This, at least, would 
be in accord with the order of nature, and could neither minify pen- 
alty nor reproach law, and would vindicate the divine righteousness 
in the creation and redemption of man, and be the fullest and the 
grandest exhibition of the divine wisdom and love to the intelligent 
universe. 

To compass this end, Christian theology has resorted to purgatory, 
universalism, restoration, annihilation of the wicked, second probation, 
and other subterfuges, and has sought in scriptural teaching and in 
natural processes for a theodicy that would relieve the Creator from 
the reproach of the eternal punishment of sinners. To a greater or 
less extent all these schemes to rescue man from the unquenchable fire 
and the gnawings of the undying worn, or to justify their infliction, 
are evoked by shame or horror at the extreme severity of the penalty, 
and express the modifications which human wisdom and tenderness 
would interpose or substitute. They not only reproach God for in- 
humanity, but overlook the fact that his law could not be sanc- 
tioned nor be worthy of respect were its penalties either variable or 
transient. 

Death—eternal disability—must follow the first and least as well 
as the last and greatest transgression, and the eternity of its infliction 
is based on sin and not on continuous sinning. But death does not 
end life. It is a stage in a process which marks the decay or loss 
experienced by a wasted moment or a neglected opportunity which 
never can be recovered, and the beginning of a new opportunity in 
life, and can be no more reproachful in its recurrence than in its in- 
cipience. The eternity of the reward and punishment is not only an 
expression of the sanctity of the law, but of the divine respect for it, 


THE NEW THEOLOGY. — 331 


and leads its subjects to reverence it that they may enjoy its benefits 
and escape its condemnations forever. So that eternal punishment is 
adapted-to awaken pleasure and gratitude rather than shame and hor- 
ror, and needs no sentimental theodicy of human contrivance to justify 
it or to reconcile it with divine or human nature. 

The New Theology does not claim to make men better Christians, 
for it teaches that the divinest character is formed by striving after 
the best, and that no intellectual belief or formal creed can improve 
moral nature ; but it aims to give clearer and more rational ideas of God 
and his will and ways, and to present Christianity in a more attract- 
ive form and with an enlarged scope to its province. It contemplates 
the divine Creator and preserver with reference to his moral creation 
chiefly in the light of a loving Father, immanent in all the works of 
his hand, directing and supporting in every motion, and controlling all 
forces and agencies so that they shall be in harmony with his law and 
work together for good. It defines Christianity as that which is wor- 
thy of God and becoming to man, and accepts as Christian teaching 
and life everything from every source which accords with and pro- 
motes godliness. It recognizes and adores Christ as the manifestation 
of every conceivable attribute and desirable quality contained in the 
infinite Godhead, and as the only sufficient and perfect Saviour of man- 
kind ; and it holds that faith which seeks to be possessed of the mind 
of Christ regenerates the heart and makes the life Christ-like, and se- 
cures salvation to mankind by the divine or Christ-like possessions it 
imparts. It acknowledges as acceptable worship to the true God the 
sincere deyotion that is paid to any god, and insists that this is con- 
formable to sound reason and sacred Scripture ; for no two devotees 
of pagan altar or Christian shrine conceive the same God, so that there 
must be as many gods as men; and certainly any creed that does not 
include sincere idolatry and fetichism as acceptable forms of worship 
to him who is high over all, blessed for evermore, is less tolerant than 
Brahmanism, which teaches that they who have not discovered the 
highest God may worship lower gods, and also than the Supreme 
Vedie God who three thousand years ago declared, “ Even those who 
worship idols worship me.” 

It maintains that the Christian religion appertains to the whole life, 
and defines it as the purpose to do God’s will in everything, or “to do 
with our might and as unto the Lord whatsoever our hands find to do.” 
It makes the threading of a needle as sacred as a sacrament. It seeks 
to do as God would do in eating and drinking, in buying and selling, 
in speaking and thinking, in work and play, in personal indulgences, 
and in administering to the needy. Everything to do is a religious 
duty and an opening to diviner capability and enjoyment, and any- 
thing done that is not intended to please God or to achieve the high- 
est good is irreligious or infidel. 


332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. 
By GRANT ALLEN. 


T has often occurred to me as a curious fact, when I have been 

watching the bees and butterflies in an English meadow of a sum- 
mer morning, that no one should ever yet have adequately realized 
(so far as I know) the full amount of human indebtedness to those 
bright and joyous little winged creatures. I do not mean our practi- 
cal indebtedness to insects for honey and bees’-wax, silk and satin, 
cochineal and lacquer, or a hundred other such-like useful products : 
these, indeed, are many and valuable in their own way, though far 
less so than the tribute we draw from most of the other great classes 
of animal life. But there is one debt we owe them so out of all pro- 
portion to their size and relative importance in the world that it is 
strange it should so seldom meet with due recognition. Odd as it 
may sound to say so, I believe we owe almost entirely to insects the 
whole presence of color in nature, otherwise than green; without 
them our world would be wanting in more than half the beautiful 
objects which give it its greatest esthetic charm in the appreciative 
eyes of cultivated humanity. Of course, if insects had never been, 
the great external features of the world would still remain essentially 
the same. The earth-sculpture that gives rise to mountains and val- 
leys, downs and plains, glens and gorges, is wholly unconnected with 
these minute living agents; but all the smaller beauties of detail 
which add so much zest to our enjoyment of life and nature would be 
almost wholly absent, I believe, but for the long-continued esthetic 
selection of the insect tribes for innumerable generations. We have 
all heard over and over again that the petals of flowers have been 
developed mainly by the action of bees and butterflies ; and as a bo- 
tanical truth this principle is now pretty generally accepted ; but it 
may be worth while to reconsider the matter once more from the 
picturesque and artistic point of view by definitely asking ourselves, 
How much of beauty in the outer world do we owe to the perceptions 
and especially to the color-sense of the various insects ? 

If we could suddenly transplant ourselves from the gardens and 
groves of the nineteenth century into the midst of a carboniferous 
jungle on the delta of some forgotten Amazon or some primeval Nile, 
we should find ourselves surrounded by strange and somewhat monot- 
onous scenery, very different from that of the varied and beautiful 
world in which we ourselves now live. The huge foliage of gigantic 
tree-ferns and titanic club-mosses would wave over our heads, while 
a green carpet of petty trailing creepers would spread luxuriantly 
over the damp soil beneath our feet. Great swampy flats would 
stretch around us on every side ; and, instead of the rocky or undulat- 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. 333 


ing hills of our familiar Europe, we should probably see the interior 
country composed only of low ridges, unlifted as yet by the slow up- 
heaval-of ages into the Alps or Pyrenees of the modern continent. 
But the most striking peculiarity of the scene would doubtless be the 
wearisome uniformity of its prevailing colors. Earth beneath and 
primitive trees overhead would all alike present a single field of un- 
broken and unvarying green. No scarlet flower, golden fruit, or gay 
butterfly would give a gleam of brighter and warmer coloring to the 
continuous verdure of that more than tropical forest. Green, and 
green, and green, again ; wherever the eye fell it would rest alike 
upon one monotonous and unrelieved mass of harsh and angular 
verdure. 

On the other hand, if we turn to a modern English meadow, we 
find it bright with yellow buttercups and purple clover, pink-tipped 
daisies and pale-faced primroses. We see the hedges white with may 
or glowing with dog-roses. We find the trees overhead covered with 
apple-blossom or scented with horse-chestnut. While in and out 
among the beautiful flowers flit equally beautiful butterflies—emper- 
ors, admirals, peacocks, orange-tips, and painted ladies. The green 
of the grassy meadow and the blue of the open sky serve only as back- 
grounds to show off the brighter hues of the beautiful blossoms and 
the insects that pay court to them incessantly. 

To what is this great change in the general aspect of nature due ? 
Almost entirely, we may now confidently conclude, to the color-sense 
in the insects themselves. The lovely tints of the summer flowers 
and the exquisite patterns on the butterfly’s wings have alike been 
developed through the taste and the selective action of these humble 
little creatures. ‘T'o trace up the gradual evolution of the insect color- 
sense and its subsequent reactions upon the outer world, we must go 
back to a time when neither flower nor butterfly yet existed. 

In the carboniferous earth we have reason to believe that almost 
all the vegetation belonged to the flowerless type—the type now rep- 
resented among us by ferns and horse-tails. These plants, as every- 
body knows, have no flowers, but only spores or naked frondlets. 
There were a few flowering plants it is true, in the carboniferous 
world, but they belonged entirely to the group of conifers, trees like 
the pines and cycads, which bear their seeds in cones, and whose flow- 
ers would only be recognized as such by a technical botanist. Even 
if some stray archaic members of the true flowering groups already 
existed, it is, at any rate, almost certain that they must have been 
devoid of those gay petals which distinguish the beautiful modern 
blossoms in our fields and gardens. 

A flower, of course, consists essentially of a pistil or seed-produc- 
ing organ, and a certain number of stamens or fertilizers. No seed 
can come to maturity unless fertilized by pollen from a stamen. But 
experience, and more especially the experiments of Mr. Darwin, have 


334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


shown that plants produced from the pollen of one flower applied to 
the pistil of another are stronger and more vigorous than plants pro- 
duced from the stamens and ovules of a single blossom. It was to 
obtain the benefit of this cross-fertilization in a simple form that flow- 
ers first began to exist ; their subsequent development depends upon 
the further extension of the same principle. 

The pines and other conifers, the grasses and sedges, and the for- 
est-trees, for the most part depend upon the wind to waft the pollen of 
one blossom to the pistil of the next. Hence their flowers generally 
protrude in great hanging masses, so that the breeze may easily carry 
. off the pollen, and that the pistils may stand a fair chance of catching 
any passing grain. Flowers of some such types as these were doubt- 
less the earliest of all to be evolved, and their colors are always either 
green or plain brown. 

But wind-fertilization is very wasteful. Pollen is an expensive 
product to the plant, requiring much useful material for its manu- 
facture ; and yet it has to be turned loose in immense quantities on 
the chance that a stray grain here and there may light upon a pistil 
ready for its reception. It is almost:as though the American farmers 
were to throw their corn into the Atlantic in hopes that a bushel or 
two might happen to be washed ashore in England by the waves and 
the Gulf Stream. Under such circumstances, a ship becomes of im- 
mense importance ; and Nature has provided just such ships, ready- 
made for the very work that was crying out to them. These ships 
were the yet undifferentiated insects, whose descendants were to grow 
into bees, rose-beetles, and butterflies. 

Already, in the carboniferous world, winged insects had begun to 
exist. Some of these must soon have taken to feeding among the 
hanging blossoms of the first flowering plants. Insects are fond of 
the soft and nutritious pollen; and it would seem at first sight as 
though they could therefore be only enemies to the plants which they 
visited. But, as they went from flower to flower in search of food, 
they would carry pollen from one to the other, clinging to their heads, 
feet, or legs ; and so would unconsciously aid in fertilizing the blos- 
soms. Though some of the pollen would thus be eaten up, yet the 
saving effected by the substitution of the insect as a ship, for the old 
wasteful mode of dispersal by the wind, would more than compensate 
for the loss thus brought about. Accordingly, it would naturally hap- 
pen that those flowers which most specialized themselves for fertiliza- 
tion by means of insects, would gain a considerable advantage over 
their neighbors in the struggle for existence. For this purpose, 
their outer leaves ought to assume a cup-like shape, instead of the 
open clusters of the wind-fertilized type; and their form should be 
directed rather to saving the pollen than to exposing it ; while their 
efforts must chiefly be expended in attracting the insects whose visits 
would benefit them, and repelling all others. Those flowers which 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. 335 


chanced to vary most in these directions would best succeed from 
generation to generation ; and their descendants would finally become 
so modified as to be fitted for fertilization by insects only. 

It would be needless here to allude once more to the changes in 
shape and arrangement thus brought about by the action of the in- 
sects. The attraction of perfume and honey, the devices of adaptation 
and modification, by which plants allure or detain their insect visitors, 
must be taken for granted, and we must pass on to our proper subject 
of color. 

If, when insects were first beginning to visit flowers, there was any 
special difference by which the pollen-bearing parts could be easily 
distinguished from the other organs of the plant, we may be sure that 
it would be seized upon by the insects as a guide to the existence of 
food, and would so be further strengthened and developed in all future 
plants of the same species. Now, we have reason to believe that just 
such a primitive difference does exist between flowers, and leaves or 
stems ; and ¢hat difference is one of color. Even if we look at the 
catkins and grass-blossoms of our own day, we see that they differ 
slightly in hue from the foliage of their respective plants. But it 
seems not improbable that color may have appeared much more fre- 
quently and abundantly in primitive wind-fertilized flowers than in 
those of our own epoch ; because wind-fertilized flowers are only in- 
jured by the visits of insects, which would be attracted by bright 
color ; and hence natural selection would tend to keep down the de- 
velopment of brilliant tints in them, as soon as these had become the 
recognized guides of the insect eye. In other words, as flowers have 
now split up, functionally speaking, into two great groups, the wind- 
fertilized and the insect-fertilized, any primitive tendency toward the 
production of bright leaves around the floral organs will have been 
steadily repressed in the one group and steadily encouraged in the 
other. 

Did such a primitive tendency ever exist? In all probability, yes. 
The green parts of plants contain the special coloring-matter known 
as chlorophyl, which is essential to their action in deoxidizing the 
carbonic acid of the atmosphere. . But, wherever fresh energies are 
being put forth, the reverse process of oxidation is going on; and in 
this reverse process the most brilliant and beautiful colors make their 
appearance, We are all familiar with these colors in autumn leaves; 
and we may also observe them very conspicuously in all young shoots 
or growing branches, especially in the opening buds of spring, the 
blanched heads of rhubarb or seakale, and the long sprays of a sprout- 
ing potato, grown in a dark cellar. Now, the neighborhood of the 
floral organs is just such a place where energies are being used up and 
where color is therefore likely to appear. Mr. Sorby has shown that 
the pigment in petals is often exactly the same as that in the very 
young red and yellow leaves of early spring, and the crimson foliage 


336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of autumn, in the same plant. It would be impossible to go fully here 
into the evidence which might be offered on this head; an immense 
mass of facts shows us that color is always tending to appear in the 
leaves which immediately surround the floral organs; and that this 
tendency has been strengthened by insect selection of the most con- 
spicuous blossoms, until it has finally resulted in the brilliant corollas 
of such flowers as those which we now cultivate in our modern gar- 
dens. 

But all this takes for granted the very fact with which we are now 
concerned, the existence and growth of an insect color-sense. How 
do we know that insects can distinguish colors at all? For otherwise 
all this argument must be fallacious, and the presence of bright corol- 
las must be due to some other cause. 

Of all insects, bees are the most confirmed flower-haunters, and 
they have undergone the greatest modification in relation to their 
visits in search of honey. We might expect, therefore, that bees 
would exhibit a distinct color-sense; and this is actually the case. 
Sir John Lubbock’s experiments clearly prove that bees possess the 
power of distinguishing between red, blue, green, and yellow. Being 
anxious to see whether insects were really attracted by the hues of 
flowers, he placed slips of glass, smeared with honey, on paper of 
various colors ; and the bees upon which he experimented soon learned 
to return to one particular color only, even though both the paper and 
the honey were occasionally transposed. Thus we have direct evi- 
dence of the clearest sort that the higher insects do actually perceive 
the difference between various colors. Nay, more, their perception in 
this respect appears to be closely analogous to our own; for while the 
bees had no difficulty in discriminating between red, orange, or yel- 
low, and green, they did not seem to perceive so marked a distinction 
between green and blue. Now, this fact is very like that which we 
perceive to hold good with the human eye, for all of us are much more 
likely to confuse green and blue than any two other hues. | 

If, then, bees and wasps, as Sir John Lubbock has shown, and 
butterflies, as we may infer from other observations, do possess this 
developed color-sense, we may ask, how did they obtain it? In all 
probability it grew up side by side with the growth of bright-hued 
flowers. Just as those blossoms which exhibited the greatest tendency 
to display a brilliant whorl of tinted leaves, in the neighborhood of 
their stamens and pistils, would best succeed in attracting insects, so, 
in return, those insects whose eyes were most adapted for distin- 
guishing the pink and yellow blossoms from the green foliage would 
best succeed in procuring food, and would thus live down their less 
gifted competitors. : 

It may reasonably be asked, How could an animal without a color- 
sense develop such a faculty by the aid of natural selection alone? 
At first sight the question seems indeed a difficult one ; but it is pos- 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. 337 


sible, I- think, to suggest a way in which it may have happened. 
Colors, viewed objectively, consist of ether-waves having different 
rates of vibration. In an eye devoid of the color-sense, all these 
ether-waves would doubtless set up the same sort of action in all the 
ends of the nerves, and would therefore produce exactly the same 
general sensations. But if in certain eyes there was the slightest tend- 
ency for some of the nerve-terminals to respond specially to the os- 
cillations of one particular order, while others of the nerve-terminals 
responded rather to oscillations of a different order, there would be 
the first groundwork for the evolution of a color-sense. If this di- 
versity of action in the nerve-ends proved of no service to the animal, 
it would go no further, because those individuals who possessed it 
would not be favored beyond those who did not. But if it proved 
useful, as it undoubtedly would do to flower-haunting insects, natural 
selection would insure its survival and its constant increase from gen- 
eration to generation. Even color-blind people among ourselves can 
be taught by care and attention to discriminate slightly between the 
hues which they at first confuse ; and if we were to choose out, time 
after time, from a color-blind race, all those individuals who were best 
able to see these distinctions, we should, no doubt, at last succeed in 
producing a perfect color-sense. This is just what natural selection 
seems to have done in the case of bees and butterflies. 

Yet it may be urged that insects perhaps had a color-sense before 
they began to haunt flowers, and that this sense enabled them to pick 
out the brighter blossoms from the very beginning. Such an hypothe- 
sis would make the origin of beautiful flowers a much more simple 
matter ; but we can hardly accept it, for a very good reason. Before 
the existence of flowers there was probably nothing upon which in- 
sects could exert a color-sense. Now, we know that no faculty ever 
comes into existence until it is practically of use to its possessors. 
Thus, animals which always live fixed and immovable in one place 
never develop eyes, because eyes would be quite useless to them; and 
even those creatures which possess organs of vision in their young and 
free state lose them as soon as they settle down for life in a perma- 
nent and unchangeable home. So, unless insects had something to 
gain by possessing a color-sense, they could never get one, propheti- 
cally, so to speak, against the contingency of flowers at some time or 
other appearing. Of course, no creature would develop such a sense 
merely for the sake of admiring the rainbow and the sunset, or of 
observing gems and shells or other such bright-hued but useless bodies. 
It is in the insect’s practical world of food-hunting and flower-seeking 
that we must look for the original impulse of the color-sense. 

Again, throughout the whole animal world, we see good reasons 
for concluding that, as a matter of fact, and apart from such deductive 
reasoning, only those species exhibit evident signs of a color-sense to 


whom its possession would be an undoubted advantage. Thus, in this 
VOL, XXV.—22 


338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


very class of insects, bees, as Sir John Lubbock’s experiments show 
us, do undoubtedly distinguish between red, orange, yellow, and green, 
Butterflies also are attracted by colors, and will, in particular, fly down 
to objects of the same hue as their own mates. Of course, bees and 
butterflies, always living among flowers, especially require a good 
sense of color ; and so they quite accord with our expectation. Wasps, 
again, are omnivorous creatures, living partly upon animal and partly 
upon vegetable food. Everybody knows that they will quite impar- 
tially feast upon a piece of raw meat or upon the sunny side of a 
peach. Now, wasps, as Sir John Lubbock proved, can also distinguish 
colors ; but they are somewhat less guided by them, apparently, than 
are bees ; and this again bears out the same generalization. Ants are 
much more miscellaneous in their diet, they have no wings (roughly 
speaking), and they do not visit flowers except by the casual process 
of walking up the stems. Hence a color-sense would be of little or 
no use to them: and Sir John Lubbock’s experiments seem to show 
that they scarcely possess one, or only possess it in a rudimentary 
form. Once more, moths fly about in the dusk, or quite at night, and 
the flowers which lay themselves out to attract them are white or pale 
yellow, since no others are visible in the evening. Thus a perception 
of red, blue, or orange would probably be useless to them: and Mr. 
Lowne has shown that the eyes of nocturnal insects differ from those 
of diurnal insects in a way closely analogous to that in which the eyes 
of bats and owls differ from those of monkeys and humming-birds. 
These differences are probably connected in both cases with an absence 
of special organs for discriminating colors ; and we shall see a little 
later on that, while the day-flying butterflies are decked in crimson 
and orange to please the eyes of their fastidious mates, the night-flying 
moths are mostly dull and dingy in hue, or reflect the light only in 
the same manner as the night-flowering blossoms among which they 
seek their food. Ascending to the vertebrates, the birds are the class 
which live most in a world of fruits or flowers ; and Mr. A. R. Wal- 
lace has pointed out that birds on the whole need to perceive color 
more than any other animals, because their habits require that they 
should recognize their food at a considerable distance. But birds pos- 
sess a very large proportion of certain nerve-terminals called the cones, 
which are three times as numerous in their eyes as the other kind, 
called rods. These cones are almost universally believed to be the 
special organs of color-perception, and in mammals they are actually 
less numerous than the rods, which are supposed to be merely cogni- 
zant of light and shade, Nocturnal birds, such as owls, have very 
few cones, while nocturnal mammals have none. Again, the yellow 
spot in the retina, consisting almost. entirely of cones, is found in all 
diurnal birds ; but among mammals it occurs only in the fruit-eating 
class of monkeys, and inman. So that on the whole we may say the 
positive evidence justifies us in. believing that a highly-developed 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. 339 


color-sense exists only in.those animals which would be decidedly 
benefited. by its possession. And for these reasons it seems improba- 
ble that insects ever developed such a faculty until the need for it 
arose among the beautiful flowers. 

Now that we have arrived at this theoretical conclusion, let us 
hark back again for a while to the reactions which the color-sense, 
thus aroused, produced upon the flowers which gave it birth. 

We may take, as a capital example of an insect-fertilized flower, 
an English dog-rose. Compare this mentally with the wind-fertilized 
blossoms, such as grasses and catkins, and it is at once obvious that 
the great difference between them consists in the presence of a col- 
ored corolla. No wind-fertilized plant ever has a whorl of gay petals ; 
and though the converse is not quite true, yet almost all insect-ferti- 
lized plants are noticeable for their brilliant tints of red, white, blue, 
or yellow. The structures in which these pigments reside have no 
function whatsoever, except that of attracting the insect eye. They 
are produced by the plant at an enormous physiological expense ; and, 
if their object were not to secure the visits of insects, they would be 
just so much dead loss to the species. Nor is it only once that these 
colored corollas have been developed. They occur, quite independ- 
ently, in both great divisions of flowering plants, the monocotyledons 
and the dicotyledons. This coincidence could hardly have happened 
had it not been for that original tendency which we already noticed 
for pink, scarlet, or orange pigments to appear in the neighborhood of 
the floral organs. Nor is it twice only, in all probability, that flowers 
have acquired bright petals through insect visits, but a thousand times 
over. In almost every family, insect-fertilized, self-fertilized, and 
wind-fertilized species are found side by side, the one with brilliant 
petals, the others with small, green, and inconspicuous flowers. 

For comparison with the dog-rose, one could not find a better type 
than that common little early spring blossom, the dog’s mercury. It 
is a wind-fertilized flower, and it does not wish to be seen of insects. 
Now, this mercury is a very instructive example of a degenerate green 
flower. For, apparently, it is descended from an _ insect-fertilized 
ancestor with bright petals ; but, owing to some special cause, it has 
taken once more to the old wasteful habit of tossing its pollen to the 
wandering winds. AS a consequence it has lost the bright corolla, 
and now retains only three green and unnoticeable perianth-pieces, no 
doubt the representatives of its original calyx. Almost equally in- 
structive is the case of the groundsel, though in this casé the process 
of degradation has not gone quite so far. Groundsel is a degenerate 
composite, far gone on the way of self-fertilization. No class of flow- 
ers have been more highly modified to suit the visits of insects than 
the composites. Hundreds of their tubular bells have been crowded 
on to a single head, so as to make the greatest possible attractive dis- 
play ; and in many cases the outer blossoms of the head, as in the 


340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


common yellow ragwort, or in the daisy and the sunflower, have been 
flattened out into long rays, which serve as pennants or banners to 
catch the insect eye. They are very successful flowers, perhaps the 
most successful family on the whole earth. But the groundsel, for 
some reason of its own, has reversed the general family policy. It is 
rarely visited by insects, and has, therefore, apparently taken once 
more to self-fertilization ; and a complete alteration has thus been 
effected in its appearance, when compared with its sister composites. 
Though it has not yet quite lost its yellow center blossoms, it has no 
rays, and its bells are almost concealed by its large and ugly green 
involucre. Altogether, we may say that groundsel is a composite far 
advanced on its way to a complete loss of the characteristic composite 
habits. It still receives the visits of a very few stray insects ; but it 
does not lay itself out to court them, and it is, probably, gradually 
losing more and more of its winged clients from day to day. Thus 
we see that any flower which will benefit by insect-fertilization, 
whether it be a monocotyledon or a dicotyledon, high up or low down 
in either series, is almost sure to acquire brilliant petals; while, on 
the other hand, any flower which gives up the habit of relying upon 
insects is almost sure to lose or minimize its petals once more, and 
return to a state resembling in general type the catkins and grasses 
or the still lowlier self-fertilized types. 

The same sort of conclusion is forced upon us if we look at the 
various organs in each flower which display the brilliant pigments. 
The petals are most commonly the seat of the attractive coloration, as 
in the dog-rose and the marsh-mallow. But in many other flowers, 
like the fuchsia, the calyx is also beautifully colored, so as to aid in 
the general display. In the tulips and other lilies, the crocus, the iris, 
and the daffodil, sepals and petals are all colored alike. In marvel-of- 
Peru and purple clematis, the petals are wholly wanting. In the com- 
mon meadow-rue, it is the essential floral organs themselves which act 
as allurements ; while, in the mesembryanthemums, the outer stamens 
become flattened and petal-like, so as to resemble the corolla of other 
flowers. In the composites, like daisies, where many blossoms are 
crowded on one head, the outer row of blossoms is often similarly 
flattened into rays which only serve the purpose of attracting insects 
toward the fertile flowers of the center. Nor does the coloring pro- 
cess stop at the regular parts of the flower alone: the neighboring 
bracts and leaves are often even more beautifully tinted than the flow- 
ers themselves. In the great white arums, grown in windows as 
Ethiopian lilies, the actual blossoms lie right inside the big sheath or 
spathe, and cluster round the tall yellow spike or spadix in the center : 
and this sheath acts the part of petals in the more ordinary flowers. 
Many euphorbias have very inconspicuous little blossoms, but each 
small colony is surrounded by a scarlet involucre which makes them 
some of the gayest among our hot-house plants. The poinsettia, 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. 341 


which is so familiar a fashionable dinner-table plant, bears little yel- 
low flowers which would not of themselves attract the eyes of insects ; 
but it makes up for this deficiency by a large surrounding bunch of 
the richest crimson leaves, whose gorgeous coloring makes the tree a 
universal favorite with tropical bees and butterflies. The lovely bou- 
gainvillea carries the same idea one step further, for its small flowers 
are inclosed by three regularly arranged bracts of a delicate mauve or 
pink ; and, when one sees a tree covered with this magnificent creeper 
in full blossom, it forms one of the most glorious masses of color to 
be found in the whole of external nature. Many tropical plants, and 
especially those of parasitical habit, are much given to developing 
these extra allurements of colored leaves, and their general effect. is 
usually one of extreme brilliancy. From all these examples, we can 
draw the conclusion that color does not belong by original nature to 
one part of the plant rather than another ; but that wherever the col- 
ored juices which result from oxidation of chlorophyl and its ana- 
logues began to show themselves, in the neighborhood of the stamens 
and pistil, they would attract the attention of insects, and so grow 
more and more prominent, through natural selection, from generation 
to generation, till they finally attained the present beauty of the tulip, 
the rose, the poinsettia, and the bougainvillea. 

From this marvelous reaction of the color-sense in insects upon 
the vegetal world we must next pass on to its reaction upon the hues 
of insects themselves. For we probably owe the exquisite wings of 
the butterfly and the gorgeous burnished bronze of the rose-beetle to 
the very same sense and the very same selective action which have pro- 
duced the hues of the lily and the hyacinth. What proofs can be 
shown that the colors of insects are thus due to sexual selection? In 
the first place, we have the certain fact that bees at least, and prob- 
ably other insects, do distinguish and remember colors. Not only so, 
but their tendency to follow color has been strong enough to produce 
all the beautiful blossoms of our fields and gardens. Moreover, we 
have seen that while bees, which are flower-haunters, are guided great- 
ly by color, wasps, which are omnivorous, are guided to a less extent, 
and ants, which are very miscellaneous feeders, not at all. It may be 
objected that insects do not care for the color apart from the amount 
of honey ; but Mr. Anderson noticed that, when the corollas of certain 
flowers had been cut away, the insects never discovered or visited the 
flowers ; and Mr. Darwin lopped off the big lower petals of several 
lobelia-blossoms, and found that the bees never noticed them, though 
they constantly visited the neighboring flowers. On the other hand, 
many bright-colored bells have no honey, but merely make a great 
show for nothing, and so deceive insects into paying them a call on 
the delusive expectation that they will be asked to stay to dinner. 
Some very unprincipled flowers, like the huge Sumatran rafflesia, thus 
take in the carrion-flies, by resembling in smell and appearance a 


342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


piece of decaying meat. Moreover, certain inseets show a preference 
for certain special flowers over others. One may watch for hours the 
visits paid by a bee or a butterfly to several dozens of one flower, say 
a purple lamium, in succession, passing by unnoticed the white or yel- 
low blossoms which intervene between them. Fritz Miller mentions 
an interesting case of a lantana, which is yellow on the first day, 
orange on the second, and purple on the third. “This plant,” he says, 
“is visited by various butterflies. As far as I have seen, the purple 
blossoms are never touched. Some species inserted their probosces 
both into yellow and into orange flowers ; others, as far as I have 
observed, exclusively into the yellow flowers of the first day.” Mr. 
T. D. Lilly, an American naturalist, observed that the colored petu- 
nias and morning-glories in his garden were torn to pieces by bees 
and butterflies in getting at the honey, while the white or pale ones 
were never visited. These are only a few sample cases out of hun- 
dreds, in which various observers have noted the preference shown by 
insects for blossoms of a special color. 

Again, we may ask, Do different species of insects show different 
degrees of wxsthetic taste? The late Dr. Hermann Miller, who spe- 
cially devoted himself to the relations between insects and flowers, 
showed most conclusively that they do. The butterflies, which are at 
once the most locomotive and most beautiful of their class, appear to 
require larger masses of color for their attraction than any other 
group ; and the flowers which depend upon them for fertilization are, 
in consequence, exceptionally large and brilliant. Miiller attributes 
to this cause the well-known beauty of Alpine flowers, because bees 
and flies are comparatively rare among the higher Alps, while butter- 
flies, which rise to greater elevations in the air, are comparatively 
common; and he has shown that, in many cases, where a lowland 
flower is adapted for fertilization by bees, and has a small or inconspicu- 
ous blossom, its Alpine congener has been modified so as to be suited 
for fertilization by butterflies, and has, therefore, brilliant bunches of 
crimson or purple blossoms. In his last work, he shows that, while 
bees form as many as seventy-five per cent of the insects visiting the 
beautiful and attractive composites, they form only fourteen per cent 
of those which visit the plain green and white umbellates, like the 
wild-carrot and fool’s-parsley. Butterflies frequently visit the com- 
posites, but almost never the umbellates, which last depend mainly 
upon the smaller flies and other like insects. Of two small hedge- 
flowers ( Galiwm mollugo and G. verum), Miller notes that they agree 
closely in other points, but the first is white, while the second is yel- 
low, which, he says, renders it more attractive to small beetles. Of 
certain other flowers, which lay themselves out to attract wasps, Miiller 
quaintly observes that they are obviously adapted “to a less sstheti- 
cally cultivated circle of acquaintances.” So that the close studies of 
this accurate and painstaking naturalist led him to the conclusion that 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. 343 


insects differ greatly from one another in their taste for color. Prob- 
ably we shall be right ifwe say that the most xsthetic among them 
all are-the butterflies, and next the bees—these two classes having 
undergone the most profound modifications in adaptation to their 
flower-haunting life—and that the carrion-flies and wasps bring up the 
rear. 

Is there any evidence, however, that insects ever notice color in 
anything else but flowers? Do they notice it in their own mates, and 
use it as a means of recognition? Apparently they do, for Mr. Dou- 
bleday informed Mr. Darwin that white butterflies often fly down to 
pieces of white paper on the ground, mistaking them doubtless for 
others of their species. So, too, Mr. Collingwood notes that a red 
butterfly, let us say, nailed to a twig, will attract other red butterflies 
of the same kind, or a yellow one its yellow congeners. When many 
butterflies of allied species inhabit the same district, it often happens 
that the various kinds undergo remarkable variation in their coloring 
so as to be readily recognizable by their own mates. Again, Mr. Pat- 
terson noticed that certain blue dragon-flies settled in numbers on the 
blue float of a fishing-line, while two other species were attracted by 
shining white colors. On the whole, it seems probable that all insects 
possessing the color-sense possess also a certain esthetic taste for colors, 

Indeed, it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. Whenever 
an animal exercises a faculty much, the exercise comes to have pleas- 
ant feelings attached to it; and this is especially the case with all 
sense-organs. Creatures which live on honey love sweet things: car- 
nivores delight in the taste of blood. Singing birds listen with inter- 
est to musical notes: and even insects will chirp in response to a chirp 
like their own. So, creatures which pass all their lives in the search for 
bright flowers must almost inevitably come to feel pleasure in the per- 
ception of brilliant colors. This is not, as so many people seem to 
think, a question of relative intellectual organization: it is a mere 
question of the presence or absence of certain sense-centers. 

But it may finally be urged that, even though insects recognize and 
admire colors in the mass, they would not notice such minute and deli- 
cate patterns as those on their own wings. Let us see what evidence 
we can collect on this head. First of all, insects have not only pro- 
duced the petals of flowers, but also the special markings on those 
petals. Now, these markings, as Sprengel pointed out a century since, 
bear a constant reference to the position of the honey, and are in fact 
regular honey-guides. If one examines any flower with such marks 
upon the petals, it will be found that they converge in the direction 
of the nectaries, and show the bee or butterfly whereabout he may 
look for his dinner. Accordingly, they must have been developed by 
the gradual action of insects in fertilizing most frequently those flow- 
ers which offered them the easiest indication of where to go for food. 
Unless insects noticed them, nay more, noticed them closely and accu- 


344, THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


rately, they could never have grown to their present definite correla- 
tion with the nectary, a correlation which, Mr. Darwin says, first con- 
vinced him of the reality of their function. “I did not realize the 
importance of these guiding marks,” says Sir John Lubbock, “until, 
by experiments on bees, I saw how much time they lose if honey 
which is put out for them is moved even slightly from its usual place.” 
In short, insects, like men, are creatures of habit. How complicated 
these marks sometimes become, we can see in most orchids. 

Again, the attention insects pay to comparatively small details of 
color and form is clear enough from the mimicry which sometimes 
occurs among them. In some instances, the. mimicry is intended to 
deceive the eyes of higher animals, such as birds or lizards, and can 
therefore prove nothing with regard to the senses of the insects them- 
selves. But,in a few cases, the disguise is adopted for the sake of 
deceiving other insects ; and the closeness of the resemblance may be 
accepted as good evidence of acute vision in the class so mimicked. 
Thus, several species of flies live as social parasites among the hives 
or nests of bees. These flies have acquired belts of color and patches 
of hair, closely imitating the hosts whose honey they steal; while 
their larve have even the ingratitude to devour the larve of the bees 
themselves. Of course, any fly who entered a bee-hive could only 
escape detection and condign punishment at the hands—or rather at 
the stings—of its inhabitants, provided it looked so like the household- 
ers as to be mistaken by them for one of the community. So any fly 
which showed at first any resemblance to a bee would for a while be 
enabled to rob with impunity : but, as time went on, the bees would 
begin to perceive the true nature of the intruders, and would kill all 
those which could be readily distinguished. Thus, only the most bee- 
like flies would finally survive ; and the extent to which the mimicry 
was carried would be a rough test of the perceptive powers of the 
bees. Now, in these particular cases, the resemblance is so close that 
it would take in, not only an unpracticed human observer, but even 
for a moment the entomologist himself. Similar instances occur 
among Mantide and crickets. 

And now let us apply these facts to the consideration of the prob- 
lem before us. If those insects which especially haunt flowers are 
likely to have so acquired a color-sense and a taste for colors, and 
if they are capable of observing minute markings, bands, or eye-like 
spots, then we might naturally infer that they would exhibit a pref- 
erence for the most beautifully colored and variously ornamented of 
their own mates. Such a preference, long continued and handed down 
to after-generations, would finally result in the development of very 
beautiful and varied colors among the flower-haunting species. We 
might expect, therefore, to find the most exquisite insects among those 
races which are most fully adapted to a diet of honey and pollen ; and 
such I believe to be actually the case. 


OUR DEBT TO INSECTS. © 345 


Before proceeding further, precautions should be taken against a 
misconception which has already occurred in this connection. It is 
not meant that bright colors will be found only among flower-haunt- 
ers; for it may easily happen that in a few instances other causes may 
conspire to produce brilliant hues. Nor is it meant that all flower- 
haunters are necessarily brilliant ; for it may also happen that some 
special need of protection will occasionally keep down the production 
of conspicuous tints. But what 7s meant is that brilliant colors are 
found with very exceptional frequency among the specially flower- 
haunting animals. 

Butterflies are the order of insects which require the largest mass 
of color to attract them, and which seem to possess the highest ssthet- 
ic sensibility. It is hardly necessary to say that butterflies are also the 
most beautiful of all insects; and are, moreover, noticeable for the 
most highly developed ornamental adjuncts. Those butterflies make 
the best matches in their world of fashion which have the brightest 
crimson on their wings or the most exquisite gloss in their changeful 
golden scales. With us, an eligible young man is too often a young 
man with a handsome estate in the country, and with no other attrac- 
tions mental or physical. Among insects, which have no estates, an 
eligible young butterfly is one with a peculiarly deep and rich orange 
band upon the tip of his wings. Thus the cumulative proof of the 
esthetic superiority of butterflies seems well-nigh complete. 

If we examine the lepidoptera or butterfly order in detail, we shall 
find some striking conclusions of the same sort forced upon us. The 
lepidoptera are divided into two great groups, the moths and the but- 
terflies. Now, the moths fly about in the dusk or late at night ; the 
flowers which attract them are pale, lacking in brilliancy, and, above 
all, destitute of honey-guides in the shape of lines or spots; and the 
insects themselves are generally dark and dingy in coloration. When- 
ever they possess any beauty of color, it takes the form of silvery scales 
which reflect what little light there may be in the gray gloaming. The 
butterflies, on the other hand, fly by day, and display, as we know, the 
most beautiful colors of all insects. Here we must once more recall 
that difference between the structure of the eye in nocturnal and diurnal 
species which Mr. Lowne has pointed out. Nor is this all. While most 
moths are night-fliers, there are a few tropical genera which have taken 
to the same open daylight existence as the butterflies. In these cases, 
the moths, unlike their nocturnal congeners, are clad in the most gor- 
geous possible mixtures of brilliant metallic colors. 

Other instances of like kind occur in other orders. Thus, among 
the beetles, there is one family, the rose-chafers, which has been special- 
ized for flower-haunting ; and these are conspicuous for the beauty of 
their coloring, including a vast number of the most brilliant exotic 
species. Their allies, the common cock-chafers, however, which are 
not specialized in the same manner, are mere black and inconspicuous 


346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


insects. So among the flies: most of the omnivorous families are dull 
and ugly ; but several of the flower-haunting tribes are adorned with 
brilliant colors, and live upon honey. In fact, an immense majority 
of the brightest insects are honey-suckers, and seem to have derived 
their taste for beautiful hues from the nature of the objects among 
which they seek their food. 

There is one striking and obvious exception, however, which has 
doubtless already suggested itself to the minds of readers. I mean 
the bees. These are the most flower-loving of all insects, and yet 
they are comparatively plain in their coloration. We must remem- 
ber, however, that the peculiar nature of the commonwealth among 
the social bees prevents the free action of the selective preference by 
which we account for the brilliancy of all other flower-haunting species. 
The queen or mother bee is a prisoner for life ; her Majesty’s domestic 
arrangements are all made for her by the state; she does not herself 
seek honey among flowers, and those bees which do so have no power 
of transmitting their tastes to descendants, as they live and die mere 
household drudges. On the other hand, the solitary bees are in many 
cases exquisitely colored, as we might expect from their power of free 
choice ; and one flower-haunting family of the same order, the Chrysi- 
de, are aptly compared to the humming-birds in the richness of their 
coloring. 

One more peculiarity of great interest must also be noted. It ap- 
pears that many insects have two sets of colors, seemingly for different 
purposes ; the one set protective from the attacks of enemies, the other 
set attractive to their own mates. Thus several butterflies have the 
lower side of their wings colored like the leaves or bark on which they 
rest, while the upper sides are rich with crimson, orange, and gold, 
which gleam in the bright sunlight as they flit about among their 
fellows. Butterflies, of course, fold their wings with the under side 
outward. On the other hand, moths, which fold their wings in the 
opposite manner, often have their upper surfaces imitative or protect- 
ive, while the lower sides are bright and beautiful. One Malayan but- 
terfly, the Kallima paralecta, has wings of purple and orange above, 
but it exactly mimics dead foliage when its vans are folded ; and, as 
it always rests among dry leaves, it can hardly be distinguished from 
them, as it is even apparently spotted with small fungi. In these and 
many other cases one can not help believing that, while imitative color- 
ing has been acquired for protective purposes, the bright hues of the 
concealed portion must be similarly useful to the insect as a personal 
decoration, 

It would seem, then, that we owe half the loveliest objects in our 
modern world to the insect color-sense. It is the bee and the butter- 
fly which have given us the gorgeous orchids and massive creepers of 
the tropics, the gentians and rhododendrons of the Alps, the camel- 
lias and heathers of our conservatories, the may and primroses of our 


THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 347 


English meadows. To the same primitive taste, exerted in a slightly 
different direction, are due the gilded wings of Brazilian moths, and 
the exquisite tints of our own ruby or sapphire colored summer insects. 
The beauty and the glory of the world are not for the eyes of man 
alone ; they appeal equally to the bee and the butterfly, to the bird 
and the child. To some people it strangely seems a nobler belief that 
one animal only out of all the earth enjoys and appreciates this per- 
petual pageant of- natural loveliness; to me it appears, on the con- 
trary, a prettier and more modest creed, as well as a truer one, that 
in those higher and purer delights we are but participants with the vast 
mass of our humbler dumb fellow-creatures.— Gentleman’s Magazine. 


THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 


By Prorzssorn C. M. WOODWARD, Pu. D., 
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS. 


ie aoa object of this paper is to consider directly the fruits of 

manual training. By manual training I do not mean merely the 
training of the hand and arm, If a school should attempt the very 
narrow task of teaching only the manual details of a particular trade 
or trades, it would, as Felix Adler says, violate the rights of the chil- 
dren. It would be doing the very thing I have always protested 
against. That, or very nearly that, is what is done in the great ma- 
jority of European trade-schools. They have no place in our American 
system of education. _ 

The word “manual” must, for the present, be the best word to dis- 
tinguish that peculiar system of liberal education which recognizes 
the manual as well as the intellectual. I advocate manual training for 
all children as an element in general education. I care little what 
tools are used, or how they are used, so long as proper habits 
(morals) are formed, and provided the windows of the mind are kept 
open toward the world of things and forces, physical as well as spiritual. 

We do not wish or propose to neglect or underrate literary and 
scientific culture ; we strive to include all the elements in just propor- 
tion. When the manual elements which are essential to a liberal 
education are universally accepted and incorporated into American 
schools, the word “ manual” may very properly be dropped. 

I use the word “ liberal” in its strict sense of “free.” No educa- 
tion can be “free” which leaves the child no choice, or which gives 
a bias against any honorable occupation ; which walls up the avenues 
of approach to any vocation requiring intelligence and skill. A truly 
liberal education educates equally for all spheres of usefulness ; it 
furnishes the broad foundation on which to build the superstructure 


348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of a happy, useful, and successful life. To be sure, this claim has 
been made for the old education, but, the claim is not allowed. The 
new education has the missing features all supplied. The old edu- 
cation was like a two-legged stool, it lacked stability ; the new 
education stands squarely on three legs, and it is steady on the 
roughest ground. 

I shall be better understood if I briefly outline my idea of the feat- 
ures of a manual-training school: Boys from fourteen to eighteen 
years of age are admitted on examination. The grade is about that 
of a high-school. The course covers three years. The programme of 
every day includes three recitations (mathematics, language, and sci- 
ence), one hour of drawing, and two hours of shop-work—making a 
session, exclusive of lunch-time, of six hours. The order in which 
these exercises come varies in different divisions. The shops and shop- 
instructors are generally occupied during school-hours. In each sub- 
ject taught the instruction is progressive and thorough. Mathematics 
begins with arithmetic and ends with trigonometry. Language may 
be English literature and composition, history and political economy ; 
or Latin, or French. Science, beginning with Huxley’s “ Introductory 
Primer,” runs through botany, physical geography, elementary physics, 
mechanics, and chemistry. Drawing is free-hand and mechanical, pro- 
jection and “ model,” geometric, technical, and ornamental. 

The shop-work runs impartially through the range of bench, lathe, 
and pattern work in wood ; forging, brazing, and soldering metals ; 
bench, lathe, planer, and drill work in iron, brass, and steel. The aim 
is to make every exercise in every branch disciplinary—intellectually 
and morally fruitful. With the exception of the choice of Latin and 
French, there is no option in the course. 

I claim as the fruits of manual training, when combined, as it 
always should be, with generous mental and moral training, the fol- 
lowing : 

1, Larger classes of boys in the grammar and high schools ; 2. Bet- 
ter intellectual development ; 3. A more wholesome moral education ; 
4. Sounder judgments of men and things, and of living issues ; 5. Bet- 
ter choice of occupations ; 6. A higher degree of material success, in- 
dividual and social ; 7. The elevation of many of the occupations from 
the realm of brute, nnintelligéat labor, to one requiring and rewarding 
cultivation and skill; 8. The solution of “labor” problems. I shall 
touch briefly on each of these points : 

1, Boys witt stay In ScHOOL LONGER THAN THEY DO NOW.— 
Every one knows how classes of boys diminish as they approach and 
pass through the high-sehool. The deserters scale the walls and break 
for the shelter of active life. The drill is unattractive, and, so far as 
they can see, of comparatively little value. There is a wide conviction 
of the inutility of schooling for the great mass of children beyond the 
primary grades, and this conviction is not limited to any class or grade 


THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 349 


of intelligence. Wage-workers we must have, and the graduates of 
the higher grades are not expected to be wage-workers. According to 
the report of the President of the Chicago School Board, about one 
and one eighth per cent of the boys in the public schools are in the 
high-schools. From his figures it appears that, if every boy in the 
Chicago public schools should extend his schooling through a high- 
school, the four classes of the high-schools would contain some nine 
thousand boys; in point of fact, they have about four hundred. 

Superintendent Hinsdale, of Cleveland, says, ‘‘ Of one hundred and 
eight pupils (boys and girls) entering the primary school, sixty com- 
plete the primary, twenty finish the grammar, four are found in the 
second class of the high, and one graduates from the high-school.” In 
St. Louis the average age at which pupils withdraw from the public 
schools is thirteen and a half years. Now, I doubt if any reflecting 
person would consider it an unmixed good if every boy in the city 
should go through the high-school as it is at present conducted. Under 
the circumstances supposed all would probably admit that some change 
in the character of the instruction would be necessary. 

From the observed influence of manual training upon boys and in- 
directly upon the parents, I am led to claim that when the last year of 
the grammar and the high schools include manual training, they 
will meet a much wider demand ; that the education they afford will 
be really more valuable ; and, consequently, that the attendance of 
boys will be more than doubled. Add the manual elements with their 
freshness and variety, their delightful shop exercises, their healthy in- 
tellectual and moral atmosphere, and the living reality of their work, 
and the boys will stay in school. Such a result would be an unmixed 
good. Ihave seen boys doing well in a manual-training school who 
could not have been forced to attend an ordinary school. If the city 
of Boston shall carry out this year, as I hope it will, Superintendent 
Seaver’s plan for a public manual-training school for three hundred 
boys, there will be, in my judgment, one thousand applications for 
admission during the first three years. 

2. Berrer INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.—I am met here with the 
objection that I am aiming at an impossibility ; that, if I attempt to 
round out education by the introduction of manual training, to develop 
the creative or executive side, I shall certainly curtail it of elements 
more valuable still ; that the educational cup is now full ; and that, if 
I pour in my gross material notions on one side, some of the most pre- 
cious intellectual fluid will certainly flow out on the other. 

Now, I deny that the introduction of manual training does of neces- 
sity force out any essential feature of mental and moral culture. The 
cup may be, and probably is, full to overflowing, but it is a shriveled 
and one-sided cup. It is as sensitive and active in its own defense as 
are the walls of the stomach, which, when overfed with ill-assorted 
food, contracts, rebels, and overflows, but which expands and readily 


350 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


digests generous rations of a varied diet. Did you ever see one 
whose mind was nauseated with spelling-books, lexicons, and gram- 
mars, and an endless hash of words and definitions? And did you, in 
such a case, call in the two doctors, Johann Pestalozzi and Friedrich 
Froebel ? And did you watch the magic influence of a diet of things 
prescribed by the former, and a little vigorous practice in doing, in the 
place of talking, under the direction of the latter? 

The students of a well-conducted manual-training school are intel- 
lectually as active and vigorous as in any high-school. Nay, more, I 
claim, and I have had good opportunity to observe the facts, that even 
on the intellectual side the manual-training boy has a decided advan- 
tage. I have been in charge of both kinds of school, and I know 
whereof I speak. The education of the hand is the means of more 
completely and efficaciously educating the brain. Manual dexterity 
is but the evidence of a certain kind of mental power ; and this men- 
tal power, coupled with a familiarity with the tools the hands use, is 
doubtless the only basis of that sound, practical judgment and ready 
mastery of material forces which always characterize those well fitted 
for the duties of active, industrial life. 

I go astep further. When the limit of sharp attention and lively 
interest is reached, you have reached the limit of profitable study. If 
you can hold the attention of a class but ten minutes, it is worse than 
a waste of time to make the exercise fifteen. The weary intellects 
roll themselves up in self-defense, and suffer as patiently as they can, 
but the memory of those moments of torment lingers and throws its 
dreadful shadow over the exercise as it comes up again on the mor- 
row ; and how automatically, as these over-taught children take their 
places again, do they begin to roll themselves up into an attitude of 
mental stupidity ! Intellectual growth is not to be gauged by the 
length or number of thé daily recitations. I firmly believe that in 
most of our schools there is too much sameness and monotony ; too 
much intellectual weariness and consequent torpor. Hence, if we 
abridge somewhat the hours given to books, and introduce exercises 
of a widely different character, the result is a positive intellectual gain. 
There is plenty of time if you will but use it aright. Throw into the 
fire those modern instruments of mental torture—the spelling and 
defining books. Banish English grammar, and confine to reasonable 
limits geography and word-analysis. Take mathematics, literature, 
science, and art, in just proportion, and you will have time enough for 
drawing and the study of tools and mechanical methods. 

Manual exercises, which are at the same time intellectual exercises, 
are highly attractive to healthy boys. If you doubt this, go into the 
shops of a manual-training school and see for yourselves. Go, for in- 
stance, into our forging-shop, where metals are wrought through the 
agency of heat. A score of young Vulcans, bare-armed, leather- 
aproned, with many a drop of honest sweat and other trade-marks of 


THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 351 


toil, stand up to their anvils with an unconscious earnestness which 
shows how much they enjoy their work. What are they doing? 
They are using brains and hands. They are studying definitions, 
in the only dictionary which really defines the meaning of such words 
as “iron,” “steel,” “ welding,” “tempering,” “ upsetting,” “chilling,” 
etc. And, in the shop where metals are wrought cold (which, for 
want of a better name, we call our machine-shop), every new exercise 
is like a delightful trip into a new field of thought and investigation. 
Every exercise, if properly conducted, is both mental and manual, 
Every tool used and every process followed has its history, its genesis, 
and its evolution. 

I have been speaking of the shops of the manual-training school, 
not of the ordinary factory. In the latter everything is reduced as 
much as possible to a dull routine. Intellectual life and activity are not 
aimed at. The sole object of the factory is the production of articles 
for the market. In a manual-training school, on the other hand, every- 
thing is for the benefit of the boy ; he is the most important thing in 
the shop ; he is the only article to be put upon the market. No one 
can learn from a book the true force of technical terms and definitions, 
nor the properties of materials. All descriptive words and names 
must base their meaning upon our own consciousness of the things 
they signify. The obscurities of the text-books (often doubly ob- 
scure from the lack of proper training on the part of the authors, who 
describe processes they never tried, and objects they never saw) van- 
ish before the steady gaze of a boy whose hands and eyes have assist- 
ed in the building of mental images. —_ 

Then, again, the habit of clear-headedness, of precision in regard 
to the minor details of a subject, which is absolutely essential in the 
shop—an exact and experimental knowledge of the full force of the 
words and symbols used—stretches with its wholesome influence into 
the study of words and the structure of language. As Felix Adler 
says, the doing of one thing well is the beginning of doing all things 
well. Iam a thorough disbeliever in the doctrine that it is ever edu- 
cationally useful to commit to memory words which are not under- 
stood. The memory has its abundant uses, and should be carefully 
cultivated ; but when it usurps the place of the understanding, when 
it beguiles the mind into the habit of accepting the images of words 
for the images of the things the words stand for, then the memory 
becomes a positive hindrance to intellectual development. 

“ Manual training is essential to the right and full development of 
the human mind, and therefore no less beneficial to those who are not 
going to become artisans than to those who are. ... The work- 
shop method of instruction is of great educational value, for it brings 
the learner face to face with the facts of nature; his mind increases 
in knowledge by direct personal experience with forms of matter and 
manifestations of force. No mere words intervene. The manual ex- 


352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ercises of the shop train mental power rather than load the memory ; 
they fill the mind with the solid merchandise of knowledge, and not 
with its empty packing-cases.”—(Professor E. P. Seaver, Boston.) 

3. A morE Wuo tesomE Morat Epucation.—The finest fruit of 
education is character ; and the more complete and symmetrical, the 
more perfectly balanced the education, the choicer the fruit. 

To begin with, I have noted the good effect of occupation. The 
programme of a manual-training school has something to interest and 
inspire every boy. The daily session is six full hours, but I have never 
found it too long. The school is not a bore, and holidays, except for 
the name of the thing, are unpopular. I have been forced to make 
strict rules to prevent the boys from crowding into the shops and draw- 
ing-rooms on Saturdays and after school-hours. There is little tend- 
ency, therefore, to stroll about, looking for excitement. The exercises 
of the day fill the mind with thoughts pleasant and profitable, at home 
and at night. A boy’s natural passion for handling, fixing, and mak- 
ing things is systematically guided into channels instructive and use- 
ful, as parents freely relate. 

Again, success in one branch or study (shop-exercises are marked 
like those of the recitation-room) encourages effort in others, and the 
methods of the shop affect the whole school. Gradually the students 
acquire two most valuable habits which are certain to influence their 
whole lives for good—namely, precision and method. As Professor 
Runkle says, ‘“ Whatever cultivates care, close observation, exactness, 
patience, and method, must be valuable training and preparation for 
all studies and all pursuits.” 

Dr. Adler has pointed out, with great force and elegance, the influ- 
ence of the exercises of the shop upon the formation of character. This 
influence, he holds, will be “nothing short of revolutionary, inasmuch 
as it will help to overthrow many of the impure conceptions that pre- 
vail at the present day.” The tasks we set are not to be judged by 
commercial standards; our standard is one hundred per cent ; the 
articles we make are not to be sold; they have no pecuniary value ; 
they are merely typical forms ; their worth consists in being true, or 
in being beautiful, as the case may be. 

The manual-training school, when well conducted, seems to me to 
furnish to its pupils just the opportunity which Walter Scott, in “ Wa- 
verley,” says that his young hero was losing forever—“ the opportu- 
nity of acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application ; of gaining 
the art of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his 
mind for earnest investigation—an art far more essential than even 
that intimate acquaintance with classical learning which is the primary 
object of study ” (at school). 

4, SounpER JupGmMENTs oF Men anv Tuines.—The proverbially 
poor judgments of scholars have led to the popular belief that theory 
is one thing and practice a very different thing; that theoretically a 


THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 353 


thing is one way, practically another. The truth is, that correct theory 
and practice agree perfectly. If in his theory one leaves out a single 
element of the problem, or fails to give each its due weight, his theory 
is false. The school-men have been so accustomed to living in‘an ideal 
world, the world of books and books only, where they have found 
only ideal problems, and they have been so ignorant of the real world 
and the conditions of real problems, that their solutions have rey gen- 
erally been false. 

A harmonious culture develops common sense, and common sense 
is at the basis of good judgment.. We aim to raise that kind of fruit. 
Boys who put every theory to the practical test, who know something 
about what the idealists call “the total depravity of inanimate things,” 
who probe and test every statement and appliance, with whom au- 
thority and tradition, the bane of too much “ book-learning,” have little 
influence, and who therefore are apt to take things at their true value, 
are fitted to focus correctly upon the problems of real life. 

_ We hear much, and with good reason, of the value of directive 

intelligence. To be a director one must have good judgment. He who 
would successfully direct the labor of other men must first learn the 
art of successful labor himself; and he who would direct a machine 
properly must understand the principles of its construction, and be 
personally skilled in the arts of preservation and repair. Dr. Harris, 
therefore, tells but a half-truth when he says that “The new discovery 
(the invention of a new tool) will make the trade learned to-day, after 
a long and tedious apprenticeship, useless to-morrow. The practical 
education, therefore, is not an education of the hand to skill, but of 
the brain to directive intelligence. The educated man can learn to 
_ direct a new machine in three weeks, while it requires three years to 
learn a new manual labor.” —(“ Education,” May-June, 1883.) 

This last sentence is not clear tome. Somehow it seems to imply 
that the man who learns to run a machine should be more intelligent 
and requires more education than the man who made it. As to 
“directive intelligence,” I respectfully submit the following as a sub- 
stitute for the dictum of Mr. Harris: “The practical education is, 
therefore, an education of the hand to skill and of the brain to in- 
telligence. The combination will give the highest directive power.” 

5. Better Cuorce or Occupations.—This point is one of the 
greatest importance, for out of it are the issues of life. An error here 
is often fatal. But to choose without knowledge is to draw as in a 
lottery, and when boys know neither themselves nor the world they 
are to live in, and when parents do not know their own children, it is 
more than an even chance that the iiaae plug will get into the round 
hole. 

Parents often complain to me that their sons who have been to 
school all their lives have no choice of occupation, or that they choose 


to be accountants or clerks, instead of manufacturers or mechanics. 
VOL. xxv.—23 


354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


These complaints are invariably unreasonable; for how can one 
choose at all, or wisely, when he knows s0 little! 

I confidently believe that the development of the manual elements 
in school will prevent those serious errors in the choice of a vocation 
which too often wreck the fondest hopes. Itis not assumed that every 
boy who enters a manual-training school is to be a mechanic ; his 
training leaves him jree. No pupils were ever more unprejudiced, 
better prepared to look below the surface, less the victims of a false 
gentility. Some find that they have-no taste for manual arts, and will 
turn into other paths—law, medicine, or literature. Great facility in 
the acquisition and use of language is often accompanied by a lack of 
either mechanical interest or power. When such a bias is discovered 
the lad should unquestionably be sent to his grammar and dictionary 
rather than to the laboratory or draughting-room. On the other hand, 
decided aptitude for handicraft is not unfrequently coupled with a 
strong aversion to and unfitness for abstract and theoretical investi- 
gations. ‘There can be no doubt that, in such cases, more time should 
be spent in the shop, and less in the lecture and recitation room. 
Some who develop both natural skill and strong intellectual powers 
will push on through the polytechnic school into the professional life, 
as engineers and scientists. Others will find their greatest usefulness, 
as well as highest happiness,in some branch of mechanical work, into 
which they will readily step when they leave school. All will gain 
intellectually by their experience in contact with things. The grand 
result will be an increasing interest in manufacturing pursuits, more 
intelligent mechanics, more successful manufacturers, better lawyers, 
more skillful physicians, and more useful citizens. 

In the past comparatively few of the better educated have sought 
the manual occupations. The one-sided training of the schools has 
divided active men into two classes—those who have sought to live 
by the work of their own hands, and those who have sought to live 
by the work of other men’s hands. sh 

Hitherto men who have aimed to cultivate their minds have neg- 
lected their hands; and those who have labored with their hands 
have found no opportunity to specially cultivate their brains. The 
crying demand to-day is for intellectual combined with manual train- 
ing. It is this want that the manual-training school aims to supply. 

6. Marrriat Success FoR THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOR THE ComM- 
MUNITY.—Material success ought not to be the chief object in life, 
though it may be sought with honor, and worthily won ; in fact, suc- 
cess would appear to be inevitable to one who possesses health and 
good judgment, and who, having chosen his occupation wisely, fol- 
lows it faithfully. This point might, then, be granted as a corollary 
to those already given and without further argument ; but two points 
deserve special mention : 

_ I have said that the only article our shops put upon the market is 


THE FRUITS OF MANUAL TRAINING. 355 


evenly-trained boys ; I now wish to add that the article is a new one. 
You cannot determine its value by invoicing the boys who, in the 
past, have drifted without proper education and without intelligent 
choice into shops and offices. I do not claim that manual training 
will change a dull boy into a bright one, or a bad boy into a good 
one. It is by no means a sovereign remedy for all the evils that boys 
are heir to; but it will give the dull boy a chance to become less dull, 
and the bright one a chance to retain his brilliancy.. We have had 
some bad boys, but I honestly think their badness was less alluring 
and corrupting and hopeless than it would have been among boys less 
absorbed in their work. We have had some plain cases of failure, but 
they had failed everywhere else. | It is not safe to reason that, because 
a boy can not succeed anywhere else, he must. succeed in the shop. 
Brains are as essential to a good mechanic as to a good soldier or a 
good orator. Undoubtedly, more than half of our boys will find uses 
for their manual training, and they will have an immense advantage 
over the untrained boys. They are all fair draughtsmen. They have 
a wide acquaintance with hand and machine tools, and considerable 
skill in their use. They have an experimental knowledge of the prop- 
erties-of common materials ; of the effects of heat, and the nature of 
friction. They have analyzed mechanical processes and been taught 
to adapt means to ends. Such boys will never become mere machine- 
men. They will never be content to put their brains away like a piece 
of ornamental toggery for which they have no daily use. If you wish 
boys to become-narrow, unreflecting, bigoted, and helpless, when their 
machines break down and when they are thrown upon their own re- 
sources, don’t send them to a manual-training school, for you will 
surely be disappointed. 

Our graduates have been out of school less than.a year, but I have 
seen enough to justify me in saying that their chances of material suc- 
cess are unusually good. As workmen, they will soon step to the front ; 
as employers and manufacturers, they will be self-directing and. effi- 
cient inspectors. They will be little exposed to the wiles of incom- 
petent workmen. 

On the other hand, communities will prosper when their young 
men prosper. This is the dynamic age; the great forces of Nature 
are being harnessed to do our work, and we are just beginning to 
learn how to drive. Invention is in its youth, and manual training is 
the very breath of its nostrils. . 

7. Tue Exevation or Manvat OccupaTIONs FROM THE REALM OF 
Brute, UNINTELLIGENT LABOR TO ONE REQUIRING AND REWARDING 
CULTIVATION AND Sxitt.—A brute can exert brute strength ; to man 
alone is it given to invent and use tools. Man subdues Nature and 
develops art through the instrumentality of tools. Says Carlyle : ‘“‘ No- 
where do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing ; 
with tools he is all.” To turn a crank, or to carry a hod, one needs 


356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


only muscular power. But to devise and build the light engine, which, 
under the direction of a single intelligent master-spirit, shall lift the 
burden of a hundred men, requires a high degree of intelligence and 
manual skill. So the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are in 
this age of invention replaced by saw and planing mills, and water- 
works requiring some of the most elaborate embodiments of thought 
and skill.. Can any one stand beside the modern drawers of water, the 
mighty engines that day and night draw from the Father of Waters 
the abundant supply of a hundred thousand St. Louis homes, and not 
bow before the evidence of “cultured minds and skillful hands,” writ- 
ten in unmistakable characters all over the vast machinery? — 

In like manner every occupation becomes ennobled by the trans- 
forming influence of thought and skill. The farmer of old yoked his 
wife with his cow, and together they dragged the clumsy plow or 
transported the scanty harvest. Down to fifty years ago the life of 
a farmer was associated with unceasing, stupefying toil. What will 
it be when every farmer’s boy is properly educated and trained ? 
Farming is rapidly becoming a matter of horse-power, steam-power, 
and machinery. Who, then, shall follow the farm with honor, pleasure, 
and success? Evidently only he whose cultivated mind and trained 
hands make him a master of the tools he must use. With his bench 
and sharp-edged tools, with his forge and his lathe, he will “ direct” 
and sustain his farm-machinery with unparalleled efficiency. 

Some appear to think that the continued invention of tools and 
new machines will diminish the demand for men skilled in mechanical 
matters ; but they are clearly wrong. True, they will diminish the 
demand for unintelligent labor—and some prominent educators, who 
take ground against manual training, have apparently no idea of labor 
except unintelligent labor. If there are more machines, there must be 
more makers, inventors, and directors. Not one useful invention in 
ten is made by a man who is not a skilled mechanic. But, as I have 
said, the mechanics have suffered from a one-sided education. They 
have paid too little attention to science and the graphic arts. Hence 
every manual pursuit will become elevated in the intellectual scale 
when mechanics are broadly, liberally trained. 

Undoubtedly the common belief is, that it requires no great amount 
of brains or intelligence to be a mechanic ; and those who go through 
the schools are not expected by their teachers to be mechanics. Every 
bright farmer’s boy, every gifted son of a mechanic, if he but stay in 
school, is sure to be stolen away from the occupation of his father and 
led into the ranks of the “learned professions.” 

Professor Magnus calls attention to the fact that the promising 
pupils of the elementary public schools of London, who receive scholar- 
ships on account of unusual abilities, are, from a lack of secondary 
schools suited to improve directly the condition of the artisan classes, 
always sent on through the classical schools to the Universities of Ox- 


ARH SCIENCE AND ART ANTAGONISTIC? 357 


ford and Cambridge, and-trained to professional or literary careers. 
Such a result does not react favorably upon the artisan class. The 
scholarship boys return no more to their homes, and the gulf is widened 
between the spheres from which they came and those to which they 
go. Says Magnus, “I very much doubt whether the nation gains 
much by sending these children into the already overcrowded paths 
that are open to the university students.” This loss of the best minds 
and the lack of the results of a generous education do much to keep | 
down the estimation in which the working-classes are held, and throw 
the elements of society out of their proper balance. 

Here is where the influence of manual training will be most bene- 
ficial. It will bring into the manual occupations a new element, a 
fairly educated class, which will greatly increase their value, at the 
same time that it gives them new dignity. 

8. Tar Sotution or Lasor Prosiems.—Finally, I claim that the 
manual-training school furnishes the solution of the problem of labor 
vs. capital. The new education will give more complete development, 
versatility, and adaptability to circumstance. No liberally trained 
workman can be a slave to a method, or depend upon the demand 
for a particular article or kind of labor. It is only the uneducated, 
unintelligent mechanic who suffers from the invention of a new tool. 
The thoroughly trained mechanic enjoys the extraordinary advantage 
of being able, like the well-taught mathematician, to apply his skill to 
every problem ; with every new tool and new process he rises to new 
usefulness and worth. 

The leaders of mobs are not illiterate, but they are narrow, the 
victims of a one-sided education, and their followers are the victims 
of a double one-sidedness. Give them a liberal training, and you 
emancipate them alike from the tyranny of unworthy leaders and 
the slavery of a vocation. The sense of hardship and wrong will 
never come and bloody riots will cease when working-men shall have 
such intellectual, mechanical, and moral culture that new tools, new 
processes, and new machines, will only furnish opportunities for more 
culture, and add new dignity and respect to their calling. 


ARE SCIENCE AND ART ANTAGONISTIC? 
| By M. M. GUYAU. 


STORY is told of the poet Keats, that once after a dinner at 

Haydon’s, the English painter, he raised his glass and proposed 

as a toast, “ Confusion to the memory of Newton!” When asked his 

reason for offering this singular sentiment, the poet replied, “ Because 
he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow with his prism.” 


358 _ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


Is the poetry of things really destroyed by a scientific acquaintance 
with them? Does all poetry in a sense resemble that many-colored, 
light-embroidered band. which the ancients deified, and whose wholly 
geometrical and earthly texture Newton laid bare? Pascal said there 
was no difference between the poet’s trade and the embroiderer’s ; 
Montesquieu said the poet’s business was “to overload reason and 
nature with fine fancies, as we used to bury women under their dress- 
trimmings.” Voltaire regarded such expressions as only jests, though 
malicious ones; but they appear to a considerable number of the 
scientific men and thinkers of the present: day to embody the exact 
expression of a truth. Poetry, which, in the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries, had the majority of the good people on its side, has 
now, they tell us, only the minority. Science is the great obsession 
of our age; we all render to it, often unconsciously, a sort of worship, 
and can not help feeling a kind of scorn for poetry: Mr. Spencer 
compares Science to the humble Cinderella, who was hidden so long in 
the chimney-corner, while her proud sisters displayed their tinsels in 
everybody’s eyes. Now Cinderella is taking her turn; “and some 
day Science, declared the best and the fairest, will reign as sovereign.” 
M. Renan predicts a time “ when the great artists will be an antiquated 
affair, nearly useless, while the value of the scientific man will be 
more and more appreciated.” M. Renan has also expressed regret 
that he did not: himself become a scientific man instead of being a 
dilettante in erudition. Who can say that Goethe, if he had been 
born in the present age, would not have preferred to devote himself 
entirely to the natural sciences ; or that Voltaire would not have ap- 
plied himself more to mathematics, in which he showed some force ; 
or that Shakespeare would not have engaged in a more weighty occu- 
pation of his psychological powers than the construction of his dramas 
of human paltriness? Darwin’s grandfather devoted a part of his 
talent to writing poor poems; the grandson, if he had been born a 
hundred years earlier, might have done the same; but Charles Dar- 
win, in the spirit of the age in which he lived, instead of a poem of 
gardens, gave us the scientific epic of natural selection. Poems die 
with their languages, and poets can hope for their works “only an 
evening of life in the hearts of lovers”; the canvases of painters 
wear out, and, in a few hundred years, Raphael will be nothing but a 
name ; statues and monuments fall into dust ; only thought seems to 
live, and he who adds a thought to the stores of the human mind may 
live by its means as long as mankind itself. Must we believe that 
imagination and feeling are not as vital as thought, and that art must 
finally give way to science? The question is worthy of considera- 
tion, for it concerns the destiny of human genius and the shapes it is 
to assume in the future. 

The writers who predict that poetry and the arts will gradually 
disappear rest upon a number of facts, some of which are borrowed 


ARE SCIENCE AND ART ANTAGONISTIC? 359 


from physiology and history, and others from psychology. We will 
inquire, first, what the natural and historical sciences teach us concern- 
ing the medium in which art can live. 

Art, to reach its full development, requires around the artist and 
within him a cultivation of beauty of which the Greeks have given 
an example. This people had, for purity of form, for the harmo- 
nious proportion of the limbs, and for beautiful nudities, a love that 
went to the verge of adoration; and beauty was, in their eyes, in- 
vested with something sacred. This worship of beauty was revived 
at the renascence. In our days, on the other hand, strength and 
beauty of body are not the ideal. Many things seem to show that a 
too exclusive preoccupation with pleasing forms,‘as well as with orna- 
ments and decorations, are a sign by which we can recognize primitive 
conditions of civilization. With those modern people who are still in 
an inferior grade of civilization, as with the Arabs, the male sex itself 
displays much coquetry, and seeks to please especially with its strength 
and physical beauty, its vesture, and its adornments. Civilization 
gradually destroys these primitive instincts, which have been, how- 
ever, according to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Spencer, the germ of art. 
The man of our days does not care whether he has, under the conven- 
ient and ungraceful vestments that hide him, a well-developed torso 
and vigorous muscles. Coquetry survives and will doubtless continue 
to survive with women, but it too often tends to stray from its pur- 
pose, which is to bring out the beauty of the members. Women, 
who ought, more than all other persons, to endeavor to preserve pure 
and correct forms, take a thousand devices to hinder the development 
of their bodies and the circulation of their blood. So, not only the 
ancient culture, but beauty itself, seems to be falling into decadence, 
and the principal object of the arts is tending to disappear. 

Many circumstances in our artificial modern life are combining to 
produce a tendency to diminution of stature and an augmentation of 
bodily deformities ; among them the constantly increasing division 
of labor, under which the physical systems of workmen become devel- 
oped in a single direction only, and too often cramped in other direc- 
tions ; the efforts of philanthropic science to preserve the sick and 
deformed, and help them propagate their race ; the agglomeration of 
multitudes in cities ; conscription, taking the most vigorous. men for 
the army; and the dissipations of society and fashionable life, are pro- 
ducing a kind of reverse selection that may encourage infirmity and 
ugliness. The brain is becoming more and more the pre-eminently 
active organ. According to some anthropologists, the nervous system 
of the civilized man is thirty per cent larger than that of the savage, 
and it is destined to go on increasing at the expense of the muscular 
system. It is not probable, however, that this process will go so far 
as to result in permanent injury, for with the expanding development 
of the brain will go an increased quickness in detecting whatever evils 


360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


may threaten the rest of the system and readiness to apply the reme- 
dies. It is one of the prerogatives of science to cure the wounds which 
itself inflicts, and it will do this in the present case by means of a bet- 
ter regulated education, through a more complete understanding of 
hygiene and gymnastics, and generally by a more methodical applica- 
tion of the laws that regulate the harmonious development of the or- 
gans. While there is doubtless something admirable in the motionless 
purity of forms, in proportion, and in the perfect adaptation of the 
organs to their funetions which constitute plastic beauty, supreme and 
really poetic beauty, nevertheless, lies pre-eminently in expression and 
movement. To the modern age, the face is still the most beautiful 
part of the man, and that is constantly tending, by the development of 
the nervous system, of intelligence and morality, to become more ex- 
pressive. By virtue of the mutual dependence of the organs, the man 
of future ages, if the development of his nervous system continues in 
a manner compatible with bis general vigor, will wear in his very 
physiognomy the steadily brightening reflection of intelligence, “and 
infinity of thought in the depth of his eyes.” Evenif the body is less 
sturdy and less handsome than the bodies of the athletes of Polycletus 
and the fleshy giants of Rubens, the head will have acquired a superior 
beauty. Are a brow radiant with living thought and eyes through 
which the soul is shining of no value from the plastic point of view ? 
Intelligence ultimately impresses its mark upon the whole body, which, 
if less fitted under its predominance for the combat or the race, gains 
nevertheless a beauty peculiarly its own. Beauty, in short, will be intel- 
lectualized, and the same will be the case with art. Now,if modern art 
and poetry are to live chiefly by expression ; if the head and thought 
are already assuming an increasing importance in the works of our 
epoch ; if movement, the visible sign of thought, is finally to animate 
- everything with it, as in the works of Michael Angelo and Puget—will 
art be destroyed in undergoing the transformation? We might say, 
borrowing the terminology of contemporary science, that the ancients 
were mainly acquainted with “static” art, while modern art, with its 
movement and expression, is “dynamic.” Following in its course the 
evolution of human beauty, art tends to rise, as it were, from the limbs 
to the face and the brain. 

History also, as well as physiology, has furnished some specious ar- 
guments against the future of art. The development of particular arts 
seems frequently connected with particular manners and a particular 
social condition. M. Taine believes that many arts now languishing 
are threatened with starvation in the future. M. Renan says the reign 
of sculpture was over when men ceased to go half naked. Epic poetry 
disappeared when the age of individual heroism passed away, and can 
not coexist with artillery. Every art, except music, is thus dependent 
upon a past state ; and music, too, which may be regarded as the art of 
the nineteenth century, will some day have run its course. 


ARH SCIENCH AND ART ANTAGONISTIC ? 361 


The art most compromised in modern times is sculpture. Victor 
Cousin said, before M. Renan, that there could be no “ modern sculpt- 
ure” with the manners of our days. Admitting that sculpture is 
declining, the progress of science has had nothing to do with produc- 
ing this condition. On the other hand, ancient sculpture lived by sci- 
ence. The ancient artists were more learned in the technics of their 
art than modern artists. In the renascence, Leonardo da Vinci and 
Michael Angelo were great scientific geniuses. Instead of killing 
sculpture, it is modern science which will finally be capable of rejuve- 
nating it. Nothing, for example, has been of more value to art than 
the investigations of such men as Darwin upon the expression of the 
emotions. Ruskin has written that the sculptor can not be allowed to 
lack the knowledge or neglect the expression of anatomical detail ; 
but that which is the end to the anatomist is for the sculptor the 
means. Detail is to him not simply a matter of curiosity or a subject 
of investigation, but the final element of expression and grace. The 
change of manners has not produced and will not produce the disap- 
pearance of statuary. We may not have another Venus of Milo or 
Hermes of Praxiteles. But no one can assert that the sculptor may 
not become capable of embodying in stone ideas and poetic emotions 
which the Greeks, with all the plastic perfection they attained, could 
not translate or even conceive. Praxiteles could not have imagined 
Michael Angelo’s “ Night” or “ Aurora,” any more than Michael An- 
gelo could have executed some of the works of Praxiteles. 

Painting enjoys a still greater promise of vitality and advance- 
ment. Color is eternal. No Newton, with his explanations of the 
aérial arch of the rainbow, will be able to break it up or to do away 
with it. The sense of color has even grown since antiquity. The 
Greeks were without words to describe a considerable number of 
colors which we distinguish ; and their artists had certainly not as 
fine perceptions of color as Titian or Delacroix. Mankind seems to 
have been all the time growing more sensible to the language of 
tints, and to all the plays of light. Here, certainly, is an open road 
for art. 

The language of sounds is likewise inexhaustible. The idea of 
melody responds to a particular mental and moral condition of man 
which changes from age to age ; it will, therefore, change and make 
new advances with man himself. A class of musicians like Chopin, 
Schumann, and Berlioz have expressed feelings congenial to our epoch, 
and corresponding with a condition of the nervous system which Han- 
del, Bach, and Haydn could hardly have understood. Mr. Spencer 
has shown that music is a development of accent made by the voice 
under the influence of passion. The variations of tone, the modula- 
tions natural to the human voice, grow refined as the nervous organi- 
zation becomes more delicate. Musical melody following the varia- 
tions of human accents is capable of taking on as many shades as 


362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


there are feelings in the heart. Rossini has already been criticised 
with severity for the innovations he introduced into musical composi- 
tion, and for his departure from the simple themes and solos of the 
olden time. A similar reproach was laid against Wagner, and is 
doubtless held in reserve for the next musical genius that shall arise. 

Extinction has also been predicted for the poetic art, but with no 
better reason than for the other arts. Great poets still exist, and are 
still produced. They may not excel in the same way as their prede- 
cessors, but they excel as well, and reflect with equal power and equal 
grace the feelings of their age. 

From the external conditions of art we pass to the mental and 
moral conditions ; they are the most important ones. The question 
before us is, if the scientific spirit, which is gradually penetrating 
humanity and fashioning its brain from generation to generation, will 
not, in the long run, destroy the three essential faculties of the artist 
—imagination, the creative instinct, and sentiment. 

According to some philosophers, the development of the scientific 
spirit is destined to arrest that of the poetic imagination. The reign 
of science, succeeding to the dynasty of legends and religions, will 
engender a reign of “platitude”; without mystery, say others—with- 
out superstition, Goethe added, there can be no true poetry. The 
poetic imagination does, in fact, need a kind of superstition, in the 
ancient sense of the word, which will not permit it always to explain 
events by their cold reasons, and a sort of ignorance, a demi-obscurity, 
under the cover of which it may play at will around things. Nothing 
is less poetic, we might say, than a broad, bare road devoid of nooks 
and turnings, with the sun shining directly upon it; but thickets, 
shrubberies, shady corners, or anything we can not look into at the 
first glance, whatever appears to hide from and evade us, these consti- 
tute rural poetry. The fault of bare plains is that they conceal noth- 
ing from us, and we do not like a straight line because we can see 
all there is to the end of it.. The indefinable charm of evening con- 
sists in its showing us everything half veiled ; and of moonlight that 
it gives a softness to objects whose outlines we can only dimly make 
out, and causes them to appear as through a thin, transparent. obscu- 
rity. If the skies were cleared of what about them is mysterious, what 
would distinguish them from the earth we tread under our feet? The 
“aching for the infinite” that troubles some minds, also gives them 
some of their most precious joys ; and such minds would probably be 
reluctant to exchange it for universal knowledge. 

To us. the incompatibility which these writers endeavor to estab- 
lish between poetry and science is superficial. Poetry will always 
find a justification in science. Matthew Arnold remarks, in his essay 
on Maurice de Guérin, that poetry as well as science is an interpreta- 
tion of the world. The interpretations of science will never give us 
that intimate sense of things that the interpretations of poetry give 


ARE SCIENCH AND ART ANTAGONISTIC ? 363 


us, for they address themselves to a limited faculty, not to the whole 
man; for that reason poetry is eternal.. All the theorems of astron- 
omy will never prevent the view of the infinite sky exciting the vague 
restlessness in us and the unsatisfied desire to know which constitute 
the poetry of the heavens. Are there any discoveries that do not 
touch upon other mysteries, and thus favor the always still wider play 
of the imagination? Science, which begins by astonishment, ends 
also, Coleridge says, with astonishment, of which poetry as well as 
philosophy is born ; there is, therefore, an eternal suggestion, and con- 
sequently an eternal poetry in science. That very craving for the 
mysterious and the unknown which the human imagination feels, will 
appear, if we analyze it to the end, a disguised form of the desire to 
know. We have just spoken of the peculiar charm of narrow roads, 
of thickets, and turnings; the chief source of their charm is in their 
allowing us to make discoveries at every step, in their keeping the 
mind ina constant stretch of curiosity. The poetry in them does not 
come only from their closing the horizon to us, but rather from their 
always promising us something new. ‘That science is constantly 
changing the points of view from which we have been in the habit of 
regarding men and things, that it keeps on producing new light- 
effects, and: often surprises, and even vexes us, no one will deny ; but 
what-is there in that to disturb the poet? I have sometimes envied 
the ant, whose horizon is so narrow that it has to mount a leaf or a 
stone to see a half step around itself; it must be able to distinguish 
a host of things that wholly escape us ; to it a gravel-walk, a piece of 
turf, the bark of a tree, are replete with poetries unknown to us. If 
its view were enlarged it would be at first unhomed, and in the sight 
of our forests and mountains would miss the fleeting shadows of its 
grass-blades. So if we were to rise high enough we should regret to 
see the poetry of details disappearing, the little things blending to- 
gether, all the angles in which our thought was lost smoothed away, 
all the turns that excited our curiosity straightened out. Nothing, at 
first sight, but the view of a grand whole, bare and shadeless, in a 
harsh, uniform light; but what breadth! As we survey it, we see 
still beyond it, a new set of endless perspectives still losing themselves 
in the shadows ; still something to look at, to learn, and to experiment 
upon. 

There is another mystery which science can not destroy, and which 
is destined to be always.a theme of poetry ; the metaphysical mystery. 
There is no need of weaving, as the theologians do, new obscurities 
around the one that everlastingly envelops the beginning of things ; 
having got to that, the investigator himself, obliged to stop, may suffer 
himself, as Claude Bernard says, “to be rocked in the wind of the un- 
known, amid the sublimities of ignorance.” Science may dispel, with- 
out poetry suffering by it, the artificial mysteries of religions, which 
apply their symbols even to the explanation of purely scientific phe- 


364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


nomena; but it can never destroy this metaphysical mystery, which 
bears not only upon unknown laws, but upon the essence of things 
which are perhaps really incognoscible. That mystery will always be 
competent to sustain in art, above that of the beautiful, pure, and 
simple, the emotion of the sublime. 

Superstition does not appear to us any more indispensable than mys- 
tery or ignorance to the flight of the imagination, although Goethe has 
described it as “the poetry of life.” In their origin, it is true, the re- 
ligious myths had their poetry ; but it was, after all, because they were 
first attempts at explanation. Superstition consists essentially in put- 
ting in things, or back of them, wills like ours. Animals are not 
superstitious, because they do not try to comprehend. Man, on the 
contrary, tries to account for the phenomena he perceives, and, in order 
to do this, projects himself, in a fashion, into them. This first attempt 
to systematize the universe had a kind of grandeur, even in a scientific 
view, and had also its poetry. But the myths of the ancient ages can 
no longer be seriously regarded in the age of science. Is this to be 
regretted for the sake of art? Yes, they say; for it was more poeti- 
cal to put wills like ours behind exterior objects than to submit them 
to the hard laws of science: a law is not as good asa god. But we 
answer to this, that a law in itself has something of the divine. As 
one of the characteristics of divinity is infinity, a law connecting phe- 
‘nomena one with another, and inviting us unhaltingly to ascend the 
chain of causes, opens immense perspectives to the mind, and gives to 
whoever investigates it a view of infinity in the smallest objects, or, 
we might say, makes the infinite present in every phenomenon. While 
mythology compels the mind to stop in its search for causes, giving 
the capricious will of some god as its final explanation, science removes 
all limitations and puts the mind in immediate view of infinity. From 
this arises a new kind of poetry, more austere, perhaps, but more pro- 
found and more lasting. When Leibnitz respectfully put back upon 
a leaf the insect he had taken from it to look at through the micro- 
scope, he did not regard it with the same eye as an ancient would have 
regarded it. In that atom he perceived, as Pascal did in the flesh- 
worm, an epitome of the world. This idea of the infinite divine is 
quite as precious as are the classic wonders and the tinsel decorations 
of Olympus. The poet loses nothing in the transformation of the 
universe by science. Mr. Spencer, who once defended the poetry of 
science against that of the Greek odes, has made some just remarks on 
this subject. To the man of antiquity or to the ignoramus of our own 
days, a drop of water is only a drop of water. How it is changed in 
the eyes of the scientific man when he thinks that, if the force that 
holds its elements together were set free, it would produce lightning ! 
A dish of snow becomes a wonder when one examines with the micro- 
scope the varied and elegant forms of its crystals. A rounded stone 
striated with parallel scratches calls up the thought of the glacier 


THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 36s 


silently sliding over it millions of years ago. Art and science have 
this in common, that both require genius as a condition of their full 
development. Science in its highest departments, like art, can not live 
and grow except by incessant discovery. ‘The faculty which enabled 
Newton to divine the law of the stars is the same with that by which 
Shakespeare perceived the psychological laws that govern the characters 
of Hamlet and Othello. Like the poet, the man of science also must 
always be able to put himself in thought in the place of Nature, to 
learn how she acts, and to represent to himself what she might do if 
one should change the conditions of her action. The art of either is 
to place the beings of Nature in new circumstances, as if they were 
active personages, and thus, to as great an extent as possible, to reno- 
vate or new-create Nature. The hypothesis is a kind of sublime -ro- 
mance, a scientific poem. Kepler, Pascal, and Newton had, as Mr. 
Tyndall remarks, the temperaments of poets, almost of visionaries. 
Faraday compared his intuitions of scientific truth to “ interior illumi- 
nations,” to a sort of ecstasies that raised him above himself. Once, 
after long reflections on force and matter, he perceived in a poetic 
vision the whole world “traversed by lines of forces,” the endless 
vibrations of which produced light and heat throughout immensity. 
This instinctive vision was the origin of his theory of the identity of 
force and matter. Science, then, in the face of the unknown, com- 
ports itself in many respects as poetry does, and demands the same 
creative instinct. For its advancement is required the power of intui-. 
tive intelligence collected by many generations; insight, as Carlyle 
calls it, to perceive the true or the beautiful before having a full 
knowledge of it.—Zranslated for the Popular Science Monthly from 
the Revue des Deux Mondes. 


ty Om 
ver 


THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 


ONSIDERING that the voleanic eruption, of which the Straits of 

Sunda have been for the last eight months the center, is among 

the most stupendous of our times, and that the attendant phenomena 

have given-rise to many questions of the highest scientific and, we 

may add, geographical interest, a réswmé of the facts compiled from 
all the latest available sources may be interesting to our readers. 

The Island of Krakatau (such, and not Krakatoa, is the native name) 
is situated in latitude 6° 7’ south, longitude 105° 26’ east, in the fair- 
way of the Sunda Straits, about equally distant from Java and Su- 
matra, close on twenty-six miles west-southwest from the village and 
lighthouse of Anjer, the call-port or signal-station, prior to the present 
eruption, for all vessels passing through that frequented channel. It 
was a small, uninhabited island about five miles in length and three in 


366 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


breadth, culminating in two elevations, the taller of which, known as 
the Peak of Krakatau, rises (or did rise) some 2,750 feet above the sea. 
Surrounding it on all sides are numerous volcanic cones. The Tenga- 
moes (or Kaiser’s Peak) to its northwest is situated at the head of 
the Semangka Bay, and the quiescent Rajabasa to its northeast in 
the southern promontory of Sumatra; in the east by south the Ka- 
rang smolders in Bantam, and southeast rise the active cones of the 
Buitenzorg Mountains. Standing in the straits and very little to the 
north of Krakatau are the two dormant or dead cones of Sebesie and 
Sebooko. A line drawn from Rajabasa, passing along the western 
side of Krakatau, and continued thence to Prince’s Island, which 
lies off Java Head, would mark the boundary on the eastward side of 
the shallow Java Sea, which rarely exceeds fifty fathoms, and on the 
west side of the deep Indian Ocean. On looking at the accompanying 
map of the locality before the eruption it will be seen that close to the 
east and northwest sides of Krakatau there are two small fragments 
of land, Lang and Verlatin Islands respectively. It is Mr. Norman 
Lockyer’s opinion that these are two higher edges of the old rim of a 
subsided crater, overflowed in part by the sea through inequalities in 
the margin between them ; that the heights on Krakatau itself, the 
remaining portion of the old volcano summit, are cones elevated on 
this old crater-floor ; and that. the ancient funnel is practically coex- 
tensive with the area inclosed by these three islets, though till the 
20th of May last blocked up by voleanic débris. 

The earliest accounts of Krakatau we have been able to obtain are 
contained in a curious old volume, “ Aenmerckelijke Reysen van Elias 
Hesse nae en in Oost-Indien van’t jaar 1680 tot 1684” (“‘ Remarkable 
Journeys of Elias Hesse to the East Indies from the Year 1680 to 
1684”), published in Utrecht in 1694. The author relates that he 
passed on the 19th of November, 1681, “the Island of Cracatouw, 
which is uninhabited. It had about a year before broken out in erup- 
tion. It can be seen far at sea, when one is still many miles distant 
from it, on account of the continually ascending smoke of the fire ; 
we were with our ship very close under the shore ; we could perfectly 
well and accurately see the wholly burned trees on the top of the 
mountain, but not the fire itself.” About the same period Johann Wil- 
helm Vogel, one of the Dutch East India Company’s servants, who 
published in 1716 a very interesting account of his travels there, 
passed through the straits. He says: “On February 1, 1681, by God’s 
help, in front of the Straits of Sunda, where, with great astonishment, 
I saw that the island of Cracketouw, which on my former journey to 
Sumatra appeared so very green and gay with trees, lay now altogether 
burned up and waste before our eyes, and spued out fire from great 
fire-holes. And on inquiry at the ship, Captain. . ., at what time it 
broke out, . . . I was told that it was in May, 1680. . . . The former 
year, and when he was on his voyage from Bengal, he had met with a 


367 


THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 


2081.9 » a 
i - , "A GRE ay ee Gz’ 
LWA 9 ere > 
s oe, ZX ‘ OF 6b 
fs 25, * 23 
+P Yr *..se8 ok 
te 
62 £4 
oz ot : we gf k Gp | a 
Z 4 ] Suerte ot 
v 
te 
Hg ca 
Ye ee 
rele i) 9 ee: id 
& “sane” 
‘, & 
er 
ip Le 6T Bt ey 
i 
4 4 ) 21 HT ae 
Poe 2 €T INNO 
% PL EU} rE nid Shee ate oe - See Stim HRD 
at om et fe sil PS 
oY wy uLoog a 
ie ez o¢ 
ST 
ISS oT eZ 
eISeqes eTse9es 92 
oT *, GE, nh ag 
© ai: , £ 
o Nii s co O° UX lz of 
2% ae | : of a oc: 
: te. Eger iseSny ur oT sz eggrisngnyur 
a in di uondnds sin asojeg 
i gy Woudnwe ep seye ‘ if = t Qh au 


£1 if 
i 0% OVIVEVEH || Ay tz 
| : Rey sv 


myoKoogeag — : YAY OFOGG2S 


368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


great storm, and about ten miles from this island he encountered an 
earthquake on the sea, followed by most frightful thunders and 
cracklings, from which he imagined that an island, or else a piece of 
the land, had burst up, and shortly thereafter, as they drew a little 
closer with the ship to the land, and were come near to the mouth of 
the Sunda Straits, it was evident that the Island of Cracketouw had 
burst out; and his conjecture was correct, for he and all the ship’s 
company perceived the strong sulphur-atmosphere, also the sea coy- 
ered with pumice, .. . which they scooped up as curiosities.” Save 
for the observations of passing travelers, by whom the great beauty 
of its tree-clad slopes, the first verdant spot to meet the eye after 
weary weeks at sea, has been gratefully described, the volcano, after it 
died out, has had an uneventful and unrecorded history. 

On the 20th of May last year, at half-past ten in the forenoon, the 
inhabitants of Batavia were astounded by hearing a dull, booming 
noise, whether proceeding from the air or from below was doubtful, 
soon followed by the forcible drumming and rattling of all the doors 
and windows in the place. The commotion was strongest between 
half-past ten and one o’clock in the day, and between seven and eight 
in the evening. About midday a curious circumstance was observed— 
that in some spots in the city no vibrations were perceived, although 
the surrounding buildings were experiencing them. It was at once 
concluded that a volcanic eruption of an alarming character had taken 
place, but for some time it was impossible to localize the direction of 
the sounds, though the west was the quarter of the compass to which 
most people assigned them. 

A report, issued next day by the director of the observatory in 
Batavia, stated that, as he had no instruments for recording the in- 
tensity and direction of earthquake-shocks, he could certify only that 
no increase of earth magnetism accompanied the tremblings—the pho- 
tographs indicating nothing abnormal; and that the quivering was 
absolutely vertical throughout the periods mentioned above; for a 
suspended magnet with an exact registering apparatus gave no indica- 
tions of the slightest horizontal oscillations, but alone of vertical vibra- 
tions. This was verified by the observations of one of the philosoph- 
ical-instrument makers in the town on a pendulum in his shop, where 
only vertical trillings were observable at a time when the windows 
and glass doors of the house were rattling, just as if shaken by the 
hand, in so violent a way that it was difficult to carry on conversation. 
Nowhere, however, do there seem to have been observed any shocks 
of a true or undulatory earthquake. From midnight of the 20th 
throughout the forenoon of the 21st the tremulations continued very 
distinct. The same morning a thin sprinkling of ashes fell, “ whence, 
is not known,” both at Telok-betong and at Semangka, situated in 
Sumatra at the head of the Lampong and Semangka Bays respectively. 
At Buitenzorg, thirty miles south of Batavia, the same phenomena 


THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 369 


were observed ; while in the mountains farther to the southwest they 
were even more pronounced, and the Karang, a mountain situated 
about west from Batavia, it was thought must be the seat of disturb- 
ance, By this time the general opinion had decidedly ascribed to the 
west or northwest the direction whence the movements were proceed- 
ing. Krakatau itself was even named; but some of the Sumatran 
mountains were considered more likely to be the delinquents. Bata- 
via being connected with that island by a telegraph line passing along 
the north coast of Java to Anjer, across the Straits of Sunda to Telok- 
betong, thence northward to Palembang on the east, and to Padang 
on the west coast, intelligence from all parts soon began to come in ; 
but none of any eruption anywhere, beyond the notice of the fall of 
ashes mentioned above. Anjer telegraphed, “Nothing of the nature 
of an earthquake known or felt here.” This was dated the 21st ; a mes- 
sage in much the same terms had been received on the previous day, 
as well as the report of one of the Government officials to the follow- 
ing effect : “On Sunday morning, the 20th, I landed at Anjer, and 
there staid till one o’clock in the afternoon; at half-past three I 
reached Serang, and halted an hour. Neither I nor my coachman, 
either at Anjer or at Serang, or on my whole journey to Tangerang 
(near Batavia), felt or heard any earthquake or disturbance, or any- 
thing at all remarkable.” 

Anjer lies on the narrowest part of the Sunda Strait, twenty-seven 
miles from Krakatau, which formed a prominent object in one’s sea- 
ward view from the veranda of its quiet little hotel on the sea-mar- 
gin. This hotel was kept by one of Lloyd’s agents, Mr. Schuit (whose 
family perished in the subsequent disaster), who had in his veranda 
a powerful telescope for reading the signals of ships for report to 
Batavia, and by whom consequently any occurrence in the strait 
could scarcely fail to be observed. Thus during the period of great- 
est disturbance in Batavia and Buitenzorg, when men there were re- 
ferring the origin to Krakatau, eighty miles away, at Anjer, only 
twenty-seven miles distant from it, nothing was felt or heard. The 
same report was made from Merak, likewise situated on the straits, 
thirty-five miles from and presenting a clear outlook to the volcano. 
The winds prevalent in this region during the month of May are from 
the east, and would tend to drive any smoke and ashes toward the 
Indian Ocean, which might explain their not being detected from 
Anjer ; but the direction of the wind fails to account for the entire 
absence in that and the surrounding villages of the phenomena which 
were most conspicuous in Batavia. 

Not till the evening of the 21st was smoke observed to be issuing 
from Krakatau ; on the 22d the volcanic vent there seems to have 
been fully established, and the vibrations and other phenomena ex- 
perienced in Batavia quickly subsided. Now, in a letter to “ Nature,” 
Mr. H. O. Forbes has recorded the passage, during the 11th and 12th 


VOL. xxv.—24 


ce. eee THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of July, of the ship (on board which he was returning to England) 
through extensive fields of pumice spread over the ocean north and 
south as far as the eye could reach. ‘The vessel passed the voleano on 
the 9th, but till the evening of the 10th, when the steamer would be 
about a degree to the west (a little northerly) of her noon position, 
which was 102° 25’ east longitude, 6° 20’ south latitude, no pumice was 
observed. During the whole of the 11th the vessel was surrounded by 
the pumice-sheet, which about noon of the 12th, in 93° 54’ east longitude, 
5° 53’ south latitude, suddenly terminated, shortly after it had appeared 
in greatest amount, while a current had been encountered after leav- 
ing the entrance to the straits, running against the ship’s course at the 
rate of a quarter of a mile an hour. The pumice-nodules were consid- 
erably worn, but many pieces were observed as large as a child’s head. 
Several lumps were picked up infested with barnacles, of from one to 
one and a half inch in length, which represented at least some four 
or five weeks’ growth. 

The specimens of pumice obtained at sea have been submitted to 
Professor Judd and the committee appointed by the Royal Society for 
the examination of the phenomena connected with the eruption. If, 
on analysis, they should prove different in composition from specimens 
obtained directly from the volcano, a different origin will have been 
established for them ; but, should both turn out to have identically the 
same components, it will not necessarily prove that both have come from 
the same crater. The Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamer 
Siam, on her voyage from King George’s Sound to Colombo, sailed for 
four hours, on August Ist, through a similar “lava ” (pumice) sheet, in 
latitude 6° south, and 89° east longitude, the nearest land, the coast of 
Sumatra, being seven hundred miles off, and the current then running 
eastward at from fifteen to thirty miles a day. The soundings at the 
spot reached two thousand fathoms. Mr. Forbes, who incidentally 
referred to the eruption when reading his paper before the society on 
the 28th of January last, suggested that the sounds heard in Batavia 
on the 20th of May, which were altogether unperceived at spots so 
near Krakatau as Anjer, Merak, and Telok-betong, which would be 
inexplicable if they really originated there, were the result of a sub- 
marine eruption in the Indian Ocean, somewhere southwesterly from 
Java Head ; and that the tremors were propagated thither perhaps by | 
continuous strata connecting the locale of the outburst with Batavia, 
Buitenzorg, and more especially with the hills to the southwest, where 
the manifestations were so distinctly perceived. We know from Mr. 
Darwin’s * and Mr. Forbes’s ¢ observations, that the center of volcanic 
disturbance does exist in that direction, in the Keeling Atoll, situated 
six hundred miles west by south from the mouth of the straits. 
Whether or not anything unusual has been experienced in these 

* “Narrative of Survey Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle,” vol. iii. 
+t “Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,” December, 1879. 


THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 371 


islands about the third week of May, no intelligence has yet reached 
this country. We know, from what occurred at Graham’s Island, that 
pumice ejected from the sea-bottom rises to the surface, and an exam- 
ination of the chart of the currents in the Indian Ocean at once 
shows that any flotsam in the region between west and south of Java 
Head in that longitude could be drifted to the locality in which it 
was observed in the month of July. If such a submarine outburst did 
take place, Mr. Forbes suggested that somehow the orifice very soon 
became blocked after a great in-rush of water had taken place, which, 
becoming transformed into steam under enormous pressure, shaped its 
course for the nearest old earth-scar, and found vent in Krakatau, by 
an offshoot probably of the funnel of the eruption of 1680. That such 
large lumps of pumice should be carried seven hundred miles west- 
ward into the Indian Ocean does not seem probable, and is not sup- 
ported by any observations. The earlier outbursts were not of very 
unwonted vigor, for no pieces of any size are reported to have fallen 
on the neighboring coasts of Java and Sumatra; even after those of » 
August, no ship farther off than one hundred miles speaks of the fall 
of any but the “finest dust and sand.” 

On the 23d of May, a ship encountered at Flat Cape, in Sumatra, a 
large amount of pumice on the sea, which increased in amount as Kra- 
katau was neared. Of the appearance of the volcano on the 27th, we 
have a graphic account in the “ Algemeen Dagblad” newspaper, of 
Batavia, by one of a party that ascended to the crater on that day. 
As they approached the scene, the neighboring islands had the appear- 
ance of being covered with snow. The crater was seen to be situated 
not on the peak, but in a hollow of the ground, which lay from south- 
east to northwest, sloping toward the north point, in front and to the 
north side of the lower summit, looking toward Verlaten Island. Both 
heights were seen ; the southerly green, and the more northerly and 
much lower one quite covered with dust and ashes. The volcano was 
ejecting, with a great noise, masses of pumice, molten stone, and volumes 
of steam and smoke, part of which was being carried away westward 
by the monsoon wind, dropping all round and close at hand its larger 
pieces, while a higher rising cloud is specially recorded as driving 
away eastward, having evidently encountered a current in that direc- 
tion in the upper air. Some of this dust-cloud was carried far to the 
eastward, for Mr. Forbes relates that on the morning of the 24th of 
May, when in the Island of Timor, twelve hundred miles distant, he 
observed on the veranda of his hut, situated high in the hills behind 
Dilly, a sprinkling of small particles of a grayish cinder, to which his 
attention was more particularly drawn later on that and the next 
day by their repeated falling with a sudden pat on the page before 
him. The visitors to the crater seemed to have viewed with most 
amazement the grandeur of the smoke-column whirling upward with 
a terrific roar like a gigantic whirlwind, through whose sides. the 


372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ascending ¢jecta, vainly trying to break, were constantly sucked back 
_ and borne upward round and round in the center of its Stygian coils. 
The trees which once clothed this portion of the island presented only 
bare stems from which their crowns had disappeared, evidently not by 
fire, for there was no charring visible on them, but rather as if wrenched 
off by a whirlwind—perhaps of the crater itself. 

After the 28th, curiosity in these volcanic phenomena seems to have 
abated, and during the next eight or nine weeks, though the eruption 
continued with great vigor, little is recorded of its progress ; indeed, 
so completely did it seem to have been forgotten, that visitors to 
Batavia, unless they had made inquiries, might have failed to hear of 
its existence at all. During this period no local disturbances to attract 
attention or to cause the least alarm are recorded. From the logs of 
ships in the neighborhood of the straits, about the middle of August, 
numerous extracts have been published ; but many of them show that 
they have been written either with the mind bewildered and confused 
by the terrifying incidents amid which the officers found themselves, 
or from the after-recollection of the events, of which under such con- 
ditions the important dry facts of time, place, and succession, are liable 
to be unconsciously misstated. Much is therefore lost which might 
have been known ; but a few are of the utmost value. 

On the 21st of August the volcano appears to have been in in- 
creased activity ; for the ship Bay of Naples reports being unable to 
venture into the straits on account of the great fall of pumice and 
ashes. 

The first, however, of the more disastrous effects were experienced 
on the evening of the 26th, commencing about four o’clock in the 
afternoon. They were inaugurated by violent explosions heard in 
Anjer, Telok-betong, and as far as Batavia, accompanied by high 
waves, which after first retreating rolled upon both sides of the 
straits, causing much damage to the villages there, and were followed 
by a night of unusually pitchy darkness. These horrors continued all 
night with increasing violence, till midnight, when they were aug- 
mented by electrical phenomena on a terrifying scale, which envel- 
oped not only the ships in the vicinity but embraced those at a dis- 
tance of even ten to a dozen miles. As the lurid gleams that played 
on the gigantic column of smoke and ashes were seen in Batavia, 
eighty miles off in a straight line, we can form some idea of the great 
height to which the débris, some of which fell as fine ashes in Cheribon, 
five hundred miles to the east, was being ejected during the night. 

Between five and seven o’clock (for the hour is uncertain) in the 
morning of the 27th, there was a still more gigantic explosion, heard 
in the Andaman Islands and in India, which produced along both 
shores of the strait an immense tidal movement, first of recession and 
then of unwonted rise, occasioning that calamitous loss of life of 
which we have all heard. 


THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 373 


The material thrown out rose to an elevation which we have no 
means of estimating, but so tremendous was it that on spreading itself 
out it covered the whole western end of Java and the south of Su- 
matra for hundreds of square miles with a pall of impenetrable dark- 
ness. During this period abnormal atmospheric and magnetic displays 
were observed ; compass-needles rotated violently, and the barometer 
rose and fell many tenths of an inch in a minute. Following at no 
great interval, and somewhere between ten and twelve o’clock in the 
forenoon of the same day, either by successive rapid outbursts or by 
one single supreme convulsion, the subterranean powers burst their 
prison-walls with a detonation so terrific as to have been, as it seems, 
inaudible from its very immensity to human ears in its close vicinity, 
but which spread consternation and alarm among the dwellers within 
a circle whose diameter lay across nearly three thousand miles, or fifty 
degrees of longitude. 

With sunrise on the 28th the dense curtain which had enveloped 
so wide an area in darkness gradually began to clear off, and the light 
broke on a scene of devastation of the saddest kind, but on one of 
comparative placidity, as if Nature lay exhausted after her frantic par- 
oxysm. Krakatau was seen reduced to a fraction of its original size ; 
the whole of the northern portion, with the height in front of which 
the volcano first broke out, and half of the peak itself, had vanished 
(see the accompanying map). To the northward, however, two new 
pieces of land, which have received the names of Steers and Calmeyer 
Islands, raised their tops above the surface of the sea, where the morn- 
ing previous thirty to forty fathoms of water had existed. Of the 
two islets on each side of Krakatau, Lang Island is left practically 
unaltered, while Verlaten Island seems elevated somewhat, and is re- 
ported to be in eruption. But, where the volcano had been so active 
a few hours before, a sea fathomless with a line of a thousand feet is 
now to be found. 

Having thus followed the succession of events, there remains little 
doubt that the crater on the 26th of August by its constant action had 
either cleared out the old funnel into its submerged portion, or that a 
rent by subsidence or otherwise was formed, through which a volume 
of water was admitted to the heated interior, resulting in explosion 
after explosion in increasing violence, as more material for generating 
steam was finding its way into the underground recesses. 

The first great waves on the evening of the 26th and the early 
part of the 27th were probably caused by a portion of Krakatau being 
shot out northward for eight miles and dropped where we have now 
Steers Island ; while the appalling detonation in that forenoon and 
the greater wave accompanying it resulted perhaps from that still 
more Titanic effort which lifted the greater portion of Krakatau— 
several thousand million cubic yards of material—out by its one hun- 
dred and seventy fathom root, hurled it through the air over Lang 


374 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


Island, and plunged it into the sea some seven miles to the northeast, 
where Calmeyer Island now blocks the channel which mariners have 
known so long as the East Passage. 

The reports we have as to the tidal phenomena differ ecm differ- 
ent places. At many points it was observed that a distinct with- 
drawal of the water preceded the rise or great tide ; while from others, 
as in the canal at Batavia, the opposite is given as the order of 
occurrence. Everything, however, depends on the moment of the 
observation. It will be apparent that these waves were the most nat- 
ural consequents of the events, and were due certainly not to any 
seismic movement of the sea-bed, but, on the one hand, to the in-rush 
of water to,fill the deep chasms out of which the ejected portions of 
the island came, which was naturally followed first by a withdrawal 
of the water, and then by a disastrous recoil over the low fore-shores 
of Java and Sumatra ; and on the other hand to the tremendous stroke 
—the splash, in fact—imparted to the sea by such a gigantic block of 
matter, square miles in size, which must have resulted first in a great 
rise of water, followed by a withdrawal. 

It is a remarkable circumstance that in the logs of several ships 
which were in the close vicinity of the volcano in the forenoon of the 
27th, no mention is made of the great wave which proved so destruc- 
tive, and which could scarcely, one conceives, have failed to attract 
attention. May the explanation not lie in the supposition that these 
two great waves—the in-rush and the splash waves—which would 
follow each other after a short interval, had neutralized each other 
at the spots where these vessels chanced to be at the moment? 
Issuing from the narrow straits into the oceans east and west, 
these waves started off on their journey round the globe, and, from 
the records of the tide-gauges which are now coming in, we have a 
most remarkable tale unfolded. On the afternoon of the same day 
that the greater of them swept away the Javan villages, the undu- 
lations were registered unmistakably in Mauritius, the Seychelles, 
in South Africa, and on the shores of the Pacific islands ; but, as Mr. 
Lockyer informs us, they did not vanish there, but proceeded on- 
ward, and, crossing each other on the antipodes of Krakatau, jour- 
neyed back to the spot whence they had emanated, and this they did 
no fewer than four times before the equilibrium of the sea was re- 
stored so far as to be insensible to our instruments. While the tide- 
gauges have recorded their story, the delicate fingers of the baromet- 
rical registers of the world have also borne uninfluenced testimony of 
a similar kind. The blow which hurled such a mass of matter into 
the air, which originated a hurricane there and caused the barometers 
in the neighborhood of the volcano to rise and fall with unparalleled 
rapidity and a vessel distant three hundred miles to tremble, started 
an atmospheric wave also round the globe. It was first detected in 
the Kew registers, we believe, by General Strachey, who has now ex- 


THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 375 


amined a large number of barographs, from which he has been able 
to fix the dates at which the atmospheric undulations passed various 
places on the earth’s surface. As in the sea, so in the air, two waves, 
one to the east and one to the west, started from Krakatau, whose rate 
of progress has been found to be that of sound. One surprising circum- 
stance, of which we have as yet observed no explanation, is how those 
ships which were near the volcano at the moment of the supreme ex- 
plosions, of the enormity of which they seem not to have been cogni- 
zant, notwithstanding that they were heard at such immense distances, 
did not only not suffer from the concussion, but were not blown off 
the face of the water altogether. Almost coincident with the record 
of the abnormal atmospheric fluctuations, magnificent sunlight effects, 
unusually lurid skies, prolonged dawns, lengthened twilights, and 
green or blue or moon-like suns, began to be observed. From the 
dates at which these phenomena first appeared in different parts of 
the world—on the east coast of Africa on the second day, the Gold 
Coast on the third, Trinidad on the sixth day, at four thousand miles 
in the Pacific west of Panama on the seventh, and at Honolulu on 
the ninth day—it can be seen that the volcanic cloud followed a 
straight path. 

To what height the supreme outburst propelled the smoke, dust, 
and the lighter portion of matter, it is impossible at present to esti- 
mate. Mr. Whymper saw Cotopaxi, in by no means one of its extraor- 
dinary expirations, eject a column over 20,000 feet in height; but 
many multiples of this distance will doubtless be required to measure 
the spire that was shot sky-ward on the forenoon of the 27th of August 
last. At all events it rose so high that months have been required for 
it to descend. ‘Those places situated below the direct westward path 
of the cloud, which would be elevated at first as a narrow column, as 
they were carried under it by the eastward rotation of the earth, were 
the first to have the usual light of the sun changed into ominous dis- 
plays or delightful after-glows, varying in intensity according to their 
time-distance away, and therefore to the amount of the obstructing 
dust, which would also condense moisture in the upper part of the air, 
and give special absorption effects,* that had by the hour they were 
reached subsided from the atmosphere. This narrow band, gradually 
spreading out north and south, enabled the inhabitants of all lands to 
obtain a view of the gorgeous effects of broken and absorbed sun- 
beams, and a demonstration of the vastness of the power of impris- 
oned steam. 

Many questions connected with the subject remain at present un- 
explained ; but the difficulties will in great part doubtless disappear 
before our fuller information. A committee of the Royal Society, 
consisting of our highest authorities in meteorological, volcanic, and 
light. phenomena, has, as we have said, been appointed to fully investi- 


* Cf. “ Nature,” February 21, 1884, pp. 381, 882. 


376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


gate the subject, and from their labors we shall by-and-by be in pos- 
session of the first really accurate and scientific examination of the 
effects of volcanic eruptions, which in this case bids likely to result, 
to meteorological science at least, in a gain whose immense importance 
it is impossible now to calculate. Nor is it unlikely that this “biggest 
terrestrial experiment” afforded us by Nature may ultimately prove 
to have been not the least of her beneficent gifts to humanity.—Pro- 
ceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. 


THE PREVENTION OF HYDROPHOBIA.* 
By M. LOUIS PASTEUR. 


Paes important fact that certain viruses may be varied in potency, 

and that protection against one may be afforded by another less 
potent, is to-day not only gained for science, but has entered the stage 
of application. It is obvious that great interest attaches, in pursu- 
ing this line of study, to the investigation of methods of attenuation 
adapted to new virus. I announce to-day an advance thus made in 
regard to rabies. 

In passing from a dog toa monkey, and then from one monkey to 
another, the potency of rabies-virus decreases at each transfer. After 
its strength has been thus diminished, if the virus is then transferred to 
a dog, a rabbit, or a Guinea-pig, it still remains attenuated. In other 
words, it does not regain all at once the intensity of virus from a mad 
dog. Only a small number of transfers from monkey to monkey is 
necessary to bring the virus to such a state of attenuation that it will 
not induce madness in a dog when introduced hypodermically. Even 
inoculation by trepanning, that most certain method of communicating 
rabies, will produce no result except that of causing in the animal a 
condition of insusceptibility to rabies. 

The potency of rabies-virus increases in passing from one rabbit 
to another, or from one Guinea-pig to another. When it has been 
brought to a maximum in rabbits, it exhibits its full strength on being 
transferred to the dog, and is then more potent than virus from a mad 
dog. Such virus inoculated into the circulatory system of a dog in- 
variably causes madness which results in death. 

Although the virus rises in potency at each transfer from rabbit 
to rabbit, or from Guinea-pig to Guinea-pig, it must pass through sey- 
eral of these animals in order to regain its maximum potency, when 
this has first been reduced in monkeys. In like manner, the virus of 


* Communicated to the Academy of Sciences, May 19, 1884, by M. Pasteur and MM. 
Chamberland and Roux, 


THE PREVENTION OF HYDROPHOBIA. 377 


a mad dog, which, as I have just stated, lacks much of being of maxi- 
mum potency, when transferred to the rabbit, must pass through the 
systems of several individuals before reaching its maximum. 

A rational application of the results which I have just made known 
leads readily to the rendering of dogs insusceptible to rabies. We 
have learned that the experimenter may have at his disposal attenu- 
ated rabies-viruses of different strengths ; some which are not fatal 
will protect the system from the effects of more active viruses, and the 
latter against those which are fatal. Let us take anexample. Rabies- 
virus is obtained from a rabbit which has died from trepanning after 
a period of incubation which exceeds by several days the shortest 
time in which the disease may be induced in the rabbit. This invari- 
ably takes place within seven or eight days after inoculation by tre- 
panning with the most potent virus. The virus from the rabbit in 
which the incubation has been long, is inoculated, by trepanning, into 
a second rabbit, and the virus from this one into a third. With each 
successive transfer, some of the virus, which becomes stronger and 
stronger each time, is inoculated into a dog, who becomes gradually 
more hardened against the operation of the poison, until he is finally 
found capable of withstanding a fatal virus. He then becomes en- 
tirely insusceptible to rabies, the virus of a mad dog producing no 
effect upon him, whether introduced by intra-venous inoculation or by 
trepanning. By inoculation of the blood of rabid animals, under cer- 
tain conditions, I have succeeded in greatly simplifying the operations 
of vaccination, and in producing in the dog the most decided state of 
insusceptibility. I shall soon make known the details of the experi- 
ments on this point. 

Until the time when rabies shall have become extinct through vac- 
cination, the prevention of the development of this affection, in conse- 
quence of bites by rabid dogs, will be a problem of considerable inter- 
est. In this direction, the first attempts which I have made give me 
the greatest hopes of success. The period of incubation after biting 
is, | have every reason to believe, of such length that the subject may 
be.rendered insusceptible before the fatal form of the disease devel- 
ops. ‘The preliminary experiments are very favorable to this opinion, 
but the tests must be infinitely multiplied on various species of ani- 
mals before therapeutics will have the boldness to try this preventive 
on man. 

Notwithstanding the confidence with which the numerous experi- 
ments I have made during the last four years inspire me, I do not 
announce the facts that point to a possible prevention of hydrophobia 
without some apprehension. Had I had sufficient material means, I 
should have preferred not making this communication till I had so- 
licited, by the kindness of some of my associates of the Academy of 
Sciences and the Academy of Medicine, the verification of the conclu- 
sions I have just made known; and I have requested M. Failliéres, 


378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Minister of Public Instruction, to appoint a commission to which I 
may submit the dogs I have rendered insusceptible to rabies. 

The crucial experiment which I should try at the first opportunity 
would be to take from my kennels twenty dogs insusceptible to rabies, 
which should be put in comparison with twenty other dogs. The 
forty dogs should be caused to be bitten successively by rabid dogs. 
If the statements which I have made are correct, the twenty dogs 
deemed by me insusceptible will all escape, while the other twenty 
will be attacked by rabies. In a second experiment, not less decisive, 
forty dogs would be used, of which twenty had been previously vacci- 
nated, and the others had not. The forty dogs should be trepanned 
with the virus of a mad dog. The twenty vaccinated dogs would 
escape, and the other twenty would all die of rabies, with paralysis, 
or with mania.—TZranslated for the Peers Science Monthly from 
the Revue Scientifique. 


4 
% 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 
By THOMAS FOSTER. 
CARE FOR SELF AS A DUTY.—(CONTINUED.) 


T will perhaps be sufficient, in response to numerous inquiries ad- 
dressed to me respecting the supposed religious bearing of these 
papers, to remark that they are not intended to have any religious 
bearing whatsoever. Jam simply inquiring what are the rules of con- 
duct suggested when each person takes as his guiding principle the in- 
crease of the happiness of those around, an expression which must be 
taken as including himself in the same somewhat Hibernian sense in 
which Milton included Adam among “those since born, his sons.” I 
may add that nearly all the letters addressed to me have been in- 
teresting, and some have been singularly well-reasoned—all utterly 
unlike the rather spiteful and very silly letters I referred to in a foot- 
note to my last paper. Yet I can not suffer the religious element to be 
imported into the subject—no matter how courteously or kindly the 
thing may be done. I have just the same objection to see the question of 
the evolution of conduct considered from that side, which the student 
of astronomy or geology has against dealing with the objections and 
difficulties raised by those who seem always to suspect that under the 
teachings of God’s work, the universe, there may lie some grievous de- 
ceptions if not some monstrous falsehoods, If my reasoning is bad, it 
can be met and overcome on its own ground. 
I may, however, make this general remark with regard to all sys- 
tems of morality whatsoever, including those which have come before 
men in company with religious teachings. Without a single exception 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 379 


every one of these systems includes—and professes to include—features 
suitable to the special time and the special place when and where it 
was propounded. How much of any system may thus be regarded as 
local or temporary or both may be a moot point; but that some of 
each system is of that sort is absolutely certain. “Because of the 
hardness” of men’s hearts the Mosaic system, for instance, had certain 
rules ; and, because of the weakness of their hearts (who can doubt it ?), 
the system which replaced that of Moses had certain other rules. The 
same is true of every system of conduct ever propounded. We may 
believe the rule sound and good in its own time and place, “ Whoso- 
ever shall smite you on the right cheek turn to him the other also,” and 
“If any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him 
have thy cloak also.” A man may believe these rules to be more than 
sound and good, to be of divine origin—yet recognize that in our 
own time, and here, in Europe or America, the rules would work ill. 
He who so taught recognized in the same way that other rules which 
had been good in their time had lost their virtue with changing man- 
ners. He knew where it is written, “Thou shalt give life for life, 
eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” and so on; yet he only quoted these 
Scripture teachings to correct them—“ But JZ say unto you, that ye 
resist not evil, but whosoever,” etc. When he thus corrected what 
was “said by them of old time,” he did not show disrespect—what- 
ever the Scribes and Pharisees tried to make out—for the teachers of 
old time, whose words he read and expounded. He knew that “old 
times were changed,” and therefore old manners and morals gone. 
He said, “ Suffer little children to come unto me,” and loved them, not 
teaching—as had seemed more convenient and was (let us believe) 
better, in earlier days—that the child would be spoiled unless diligent- 
ly belabored with the rod. 

These times and the races and the nations now most prominent on 
the earth are even more unlike the community in Palestine nineteen 
centuries ago, than that community was unlike the Jewish people in 
the days of the more ancient lawgiver. The opponents of evolution 
may prefer to believe that the human race has been stereotyped ; but 
facts are a little against them. And even if we admitted the imag- 
ined fixedness of the human race for nineteen centuries, they would 
still have to explain the contradiction between two systems for both 
of which they find the same authority. Of course, there is no real or 
at least no necessary contradiction. Grant the human race to be 
what we know it to be, a constantly developing family, and the con- 
tradiction vanishes—we simply learn that what is best for one time is 
not best for another, even among one and the same people; how much 
more, then, must the best rules of conduct vary when different peoples 
as well as different times are considered ! 

All this, however, is a disgression, which should have been unneces- 
sary, but has in a sense been forced on me by the misapprehensions of 


380 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


many well-meaning critics (and a few who are not well-meaning at 
all, but of the Honeythunder order, teaching the law of love by re- 
viling and worse). 

The duty which each man owes to himself in regard to the mainte- 
nance of his health, the development of his powers, and so forth, which 
becomes a duty to others when regarded with reference to those more 
immediately around him or dependent upon him, and is still manifest- 
ly a duty in relation to others where the advancement of the general 
well-being, so far as he can influence it, is considered, has another 
aspect when considered in reference to those classes (D and E) * whose 
encouragement or increase would be injurious to the body social. It is 
not only essential to the evolution of conduct in the right direction 
that those who may be classed as “ men of good will” ¢ should increase 
relatively in number and influence, but also that those who are either 
absolutely men of ill-will, or are so far not of good-will that they dis- 
regard the well-being of others, should be checked and discouraged. 

This requirement for the evolution of the more altruistic kind of 
conduct involves in many cases—as a duty—conduct of a kind which 
the few real members of Class A and the many members of Class C 
who speak of themselves as belonging to Class A—regard as self-as- 
_sertive. It becomes a duty, when the matter is viewed in this light, 
to assert just rights and resist wrongful claims. For, every act of 
carelessness or self-neglect in such matters tends to the encourage- 
ment of the less valuable or noxious classes which profit by it. It 
may be that to uphold just claims or resist wrong-doing may be less 
comfortable than to give way. In such a case the duty becomes an 
altruistic one, however egoistic the action based on the consideration 
of such duty may appear. But in a number of cases the claim upheld 
may be well worth upholding in itself, the wrong resisted may involve 
gross injury. In such a case the care of a personal right or the resist- 
ance of a wrong is, in itself, egoistic. Yet may it well be that the 
person concerned may esteem it better to give up the claim or to yield 
to the wrong, until he recognizes that the idea of self-sacrifice, how- 
ever beautiful in itself, may involve a far-reaching wrong to the better 
members of the body social. 

We touch here on considerations which are in question every day, 
almost every hour, of our lives. 

Consider home-life, for example. In nearly every home there are 
those who are disposed to take unfair advantage of the rest; and they 
are far better restrained by the quiet resistance of their attempts than 
in any other way—certainly far better than by yielding, continued till 

* See “ Popular Science Monthly ” for May, p. 109. 

+ It may not be generally known outside the Roman Catholic community that the 
message rendered in the authorized version of the New Testament ‘ Peace and good-will 
toward men,” is otherwise rendered “ Peace to men of good-will.” The revised version 


reads “ Peace among men in whom He is well pleased,” which would in effect be nearer 
the Roman version. 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 381 


nothing but the anger roused by some attempt, more barefaced than 
the rest, moves to resistance. We see this especially exemplified in 
the families of careless parents—unselfish perhaps in a sense, but real- 
ly negligent of their duties. It has been said for this reason that un- 
selfish parents have commonly selfish children, which seems contrary 
to the law of heredity, but illustrates rather the natural influence of 
defective training. The fact really is, that the children of selfish par- 
ents are as a rule more selfish in character than those of the unselfish ; 
they grow up to be as unpleasant in their ways as the children of 
careless, unwatchful parents ; and their unpleasantness is more apt to 
be permanent. Yet the unchecked ways of children whose parents 
yield unwisely to them, illustrate well on a small scale (even though 
happily the mischief is often transient) how the assertion of just 
claims, and the restraint of wrong-doing, involve a form of egoism 
which must be regarded as a duty. 

In life outside the family, we constantly find the duty of resisting 
evil presenting itself in apparently egoistic aspect. In hundreds of 
ways the members of Class C show their readiness to become members 
of Class D and members of class D to develop their unpleasant ways. 
The adoption of considerate habits and care for the just claims of 
others in all the multitudinous details of our daily life, constantly 
lead to attempts by the selfish and obnoxious to take advantage of 
what they regard as mere weakness of disposition. In such cases, 
while it is by no means desirable to give up ways which are in them- 
selves essential to the well-being of the society of which we form part, 
we must—as a duty—resist the encroachments of objectionable per- 
sons—not the less that the matter insisted upon is one to which we 
attach importance, so that our firmness has its egoistic aspect. Men 
are but children of a larger growth, and there is no surer or better 
way of eliminating at least the grosser forms of selfishness than by so 
resisting unjust claims that they—simply fail. This is the appropriate 
punishment—akin to that which Mr. Spencer regards (most justly in 
my opinion) as the only proper form of punishment for children, viz., 
punishment which is the direct consequence of ill conduct. Of course, 
it will happen that mere resistance of a wrong may bring definite 
punishment—directly or indirectly—to the wrong-doer ; but (apart 
from such cases, in which we have to ask whether justice may not 
need to be tempered with mercy) all I would insist on is that the self- 
ish, grasping, oppressive members of the body social should be so re- 
sisted that, whenever it is possible, they fail of their unfair purpose. 

The rule applies in small matters as well as great. Mr. Spencer 
himself notes (though it is when dealing with selfishness specifically) a 
case of not infrequent occurrence, and perhaps of a trifling enough 
kind—the acted falsehood of railway-passengers who, by dispersed 
coats, make a traveler believe that all the seats in a compartment are 
taken when they are not. Here the detection and resistance of an 


382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, — 


attempted wrong, contemptible as it is, may excite some sense of © 
shame in the wrong-doers, though conceivably not (for such wrong- 
doers are of a shameless sort) ; but the defeat of their purpose will at 
the least involve disappointment and serve as a discouragement from 
such attempts in the future. Of course, a very zealous opponent of 
the obnoxious section of society might not be content with what I 
here advocate as the simple line of duty in such cases. He might (as 
an earnest opponent of evil did—rather harshly I think—the other 
day) take on himself to punish as well as to resist evil; and having 
been met with the customary’ falsehood as to some article deposited in 
a vacant seat, might pitch it out of the window, with the remark that he 
would be responsible to the real owner when he appeared. But this is 
going beyond the strict line of duty in such matters. 

It will appear manifest, I think, on careful consideration of the 
matter by any one who notes, for a few days or even hours, the course 
of events around him in his family and in society, that he who neg- 
lects to defend his own rights against the encroachments of Class D 
as well as of Class E, and of Class C as well as of Class D, fails as clear- 
ly in his duty to the social body as the parent who overlooks selfish 
and unruly conduct in his children. And just as the children them- 
selves whose training is thus neglected have really just reason, did 
they but know what is good for them, to complain of such mistaken 
kindness, so even the more selfish (all but the members of Class E) 
have no less reason than the unselfish, did they but know their own 
interests, to desire that considerate but firm and self-regardful con- 
duct should prevail throughout the body social. 

It has been shown that care of self necessarily precedes care of 
others, because we must ourselves live if we are to benefit others, 
It has been shown further that if there is to be progress and improve- 
ment in the race, the superior must profit by their superiority, and so 
develop in numbers and influence, while the inferior because inferior 
become less and less predominant in the community. Further, it has 
appeared that while a society improves as it becomes constituted more 
and more largely of the better sort, this improvemeut depends in large 
part on those qualities of the individual members of society which de- 
pend on due care of self. In like manner it appears that in a society 
whose members are not duly regardful of self, misery arises from the 
excess of self-denial which ends by making those who practice it bur- 
dens on the rest of the community. Lastly, we have seen that due 
care of self is desirable, and neglect of the just rights of self injurious 
to the social body, because that undue care of self which is properly 
called selfishness, and leads either to negative or positive forms of 
wrong-doing, thrives and multiplies in a community where the better 
sort allow evil and oppression to pass unchecked by the due assertion 
of self-rights. 

But now it is worth remarking that the line of reasoning which has 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 383 


been followed does not in reality indicate changed conduct. It rec- 
onciles the actual conduct of the better sorts of men with rules de- 
rived from observed facts and laws in regard to the development of 
conduct, and would tend to reconcile their conduct with their words, 
if men in general would but recognize the folly and danger of a sys- 
tem by which they have one set of rules on their lips and another for 
their actual guidance. As Mr. Herbert Spencer well puts it, the general 
conclusion to which we have been led, “though at variance with nomi- 
nally accepted beliefs, is not at variance with actually accepted beliefs ; 
while opposed to the doctrine which men are taught should be acted 
upon, it is in harmony with the doctrine which they do act upon and 
dimly see must be acted upon. . . . The laborer looking for wages in 
return for work done, no less than the merchant who sells goods at a 
profit, the doctor who expects fees for advice, or the priest who calls 
the scene of his ministrations a ‘living,’ assumes as beyond question 
the truth that selfishness, carried to the extent of enforcing his claims 
and enjoying the returns his efforts bring, is not only legitimate but 
essential. Even persons who avow a contrary conviction prove by 
their acts that it is inoperative. Those who repeat with emphasis the 
maxim,‘ Love your neighbor as yourself,’ do not render up what they 
possess so as to satisfy the desires of all as much as they satisfy their 
own desires. Nor do those whose extreme maxim is, ‘Live for 
others,’ differ appreciably from people around in their regards for 
personal welfare, or fail to appropriate their shares of life’s pleasures. 
In short, that which is set forth above as the belief to which scientific 
ethics lead us, is that which men do really believe, as distinguished 
from that which they believe they believe—or pretend they believe.” 
Which is better?—to proclaim with our lips rules of conduct 
which none of us really follow, and to denounce those who show that 
the rules which the best-minded among us really strive to follow are 
such as tend most to improve the condition of the body social, or 
frankly to recognize the just and equitable rules of conduct which 
after all are the real guides of the actions of all well-meaning men ? 
Is it well or wise to discredit these fair and proper rules by setting up 
others which seem more self-sacrificing, but which none except a few 
abnormally-minded persons of no influence (objects of ill-concealed 
contempt among those who applaud such rules) actually strive to fol- 
low—trules, moreover, which if widely followed would inevitably bring 
misery on the community? For my own part I believe that the sys- 
tem by which rules no sane man follows are set up as the real laws of 
conduct, works most serious mischief, by discouraging many from the 
attempt to be consistently fair and just to those around them as well 
as to themselves. Of what use, they feel (rather than consciously 
think), is any attempt to be merely just and considerate, when still we 
fall far short of the standard set up for our guidance? Apart from 
this lies the direct mischief to character which necessarily arises from 


384 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the confident expression of acceptance of rules which every man (ex- 
cept the few abnormal creatures I have mentioned) knows well that 
he does not follow, has never attempted to follow, and never intends 
to follow. Many are led, through their honest unwillingness thus to 
falsify their words by their actions, into an error of the opposite kind ; 
preferring rather to maintain rules of conduct which have a selfish 
aspect, while their actual conduct is unselfish, than to ape a degree of: 
disinterestedness which they do not possess, and which would (they 
know) be mischievous if really peseeeses and acted upon by any 
large proportion of the community.” 

But, lastly, let it be noticed that just care for self does not imply 
necessarily less care for others, but often more. As a mere matter of 
fact, men who carefully consider their own just claims are found to be 
more considerate, as a rule, of the claims of others, than those who 
assert that men ought not to be careful to consider what their just 
claims are. Horace long since, in his famous ode beginning “ Justum 
ac tenacem propositi virum,” drew attention to the connection com- 
monly existing between justice and firm maintenance of what is due 
to self. Of course, there are men who are unduly regardful of self, 
not being content with the maintenance of their own rights, but will- 
fully infringing the rights of others. Equally are there some who 
while negligent of their own rights are considerate of those of others. 
But these are the exceptions. As a rule one may recognize in due re- 
gard for self-rights the same principle which displays itself otherwise 
in care for the rights of others. Considering social as distinguished 
from individual opinions, assuredly Mr. Spencer is justified in what he 
says on the egoistic excesses which often accompany excessive altru- 
ism: ‘ A society in which the most exalted principles of self-sacrifice 
for the benefit of neighbors are enunciated, may be a society in which 
unscrupulous sacrifice of alien fellow-creatures is not only tolerated 
but applauded. Along with professed anxiety to spread these exalted 
opinions among heathens, there may go the deliberate fastening of a 
quarrel upon them with a view to annexing their territory. Men who 
every Sunday have listened aprovingly to injunctions carrying the 
regard for other men to an impracticable extent, may yet hire them- 
selves out to slay, at the word of command, any people in any part 
of the world, utterly indifferent to the right or wrong of the matter 
fought about. And as in these cases transcendent altruism in theory 
co-exists with brutal egoism in practice, so conversely a more qualified 
altruism may have for its concomitant a greatly moderated egoism, 

* It is, by-the-way, rather remarkable that in proportion to the apparent zeal with 
which some maintain the doctrine of universal love is the intensity of hate which they ex- 
press and doubtless feel (being in this at least, let us hope, honest) for those who differ 
from them. If the Honeythunder School of Philanthropists act seemingly on the prin- 
ciple, “Curse your souls and bodies come here and be blessed,” these seem to adopt as 


their rule, “Let us hate with all our might those who will not allow us to love every one 
better than ourselves,” 


DISEASES OF PLANTS. 385 


For, asserting the due claims of self is, by implication, drawing a 
limit beyond which the claims are undue; and is, by consequence, 
bringing into greater clearness the claims of others.” 

We have next to consider the duty of caring for others, as it pre- 
sents itself in connection with the morality of happiness.—Anowledge. 


~<a 
wer 


DISEASES OF PLANTS. 


By D. P. PENHALLOW, 
LECTURER IN BOTANY, MC GILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL, 


TUDIKS in vegetable pathology are by no means a recent devel- 
opment of science. So long ago as 1795, Schreger * issued a work 
treating of the various diseases then known, the work being in reality 
a compilation of the literature of the subject, which, up to that time, 
had been very much scattered. Then came a rather wide gap, until in 
1833 Unger issued his work entitled ‘‘ Die Exantheme der Pflanzen 
und einige mit diesen verwandte Krankheiten der Gewiichse.” From 
that time until the present we find the well-known names of Meyen, 
De Bary, Sorauer, Hartig, Frank, and others linked with a tolerably 
copious literature on this subject. We find the Germans among the 
first, if not the very first, to recognize the desirability of pursuing 
questions of this kind from a scientific stand-point, though, aside from 
purely scientific considerations, these questions were forced upon the 
general attention of the country from an economical stand-point. It 
was recognized that the important interests involved in forest-growths 
were liable to be seriously impaired through the operation of disease, 
and that, even were this not the case, the interests involved could be 
most fully protected by the development of that knowledge which 
should secure the best oversight and care of forests in all respects. A 
wise policy, therefore, dictated the establishment of forestry stations, 
the duties of which included a study of the various diseases affecting 
trees, 

In America hardly a serious thought has yet been given to such 
considerations, so far as they extend to the protection and preservation 
of our forests ; but it seems probable that the movement to protect our 
forests from ruthless destruction at the hands of man, which is each 
year assuming more tangible shape, must ultimately embrace also an 
effort to have our trees studied according to strict scientific methods, 
for the purpose of determining their relation to disease and protecting 
them from injury. But, while we find the question unconsidered from 
the exact stand-point which first developed in Germany, we do find 

* Erfahrungmissige Anweisung zur richtigen Kenntniss der Krankheiten der Wald- 


und Gastenbiume, etc., Leipsic, 1795. 
VOL. XXV.—25 


386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


that it has been forced upon our attention in another and, for those 
immediately interested, more unpleasant way. 

For the last hundred years or more, under the influence of the pe- 
culiar methods of cultivation which have been employed by our fruit- 
- growers, various diseases have appeared from time to time in several 
of our important fruits, and to such an extent have some of them de- 
veloped within the last ten or fifteen years that they have completely 
destroyed the fruit industry in some sections, and now threaten a more 
general annihilation of one of the most enticing and profitable occupa- 
tions for the farmer. Tor the last hundred years we have heard of the 
“blight ” in pear-trees, and the best records show unmistakably that 
the disease has been on the increase during that period. So badly is 
it developed in some fruit sections, as through Southern New York, 
that it is a matter of extreme difficulty to find a really healthy tree. 
For the last eighty years we have also heard of the “yellows” in 
peaches, and here again we find that history records a constant devel- 
opment of the affliction. So serious have its ravages proved that whole 
sections have been deprived of the very important industry of peach- 
culture. Not only this, but the disease is now so thoroughly estab- 
lished, and has come to be so much a matter of inheritance, that the 
life of the tree is greatly modified and even determined by it. The 
peach is naturally a long-lived tree, instances brought to my notice 
showing that it may live for upward of one hundred or more years, 
and, if well cared for, it will certainly produce fruit for a long period. 
At the present time, however, as in the great peach districts of Dela- 
ware and New Jersey, we find that, owing to the certainty of disease 
‘appearing, or the inherently weak constitution resulting from its pre- 
vious operation, the period of a profitable life is limited to nine years, 
at the end of which time the trees are rooted out of the soil as worth- 
less. 

Twenty-five years ago the Hudson River Antwerp came into culti- 
vation in Southern New York, and for a long time was a famous berry, 
and made money for those who cultivated it. Within a few years a 
disease has appeared, and to-day it is considered worthless to the fruit- 
grower. And so it is with others of our important fruits. Diseases 
are yearly becoming a more and more familiar foe for the horticultur- 
ist to deal with, and a great deal of alarm is felt, and with reason, lest 
the fruit industry in some directions be completely destroyed. Thus it 
is that within a few years it has become imperative that something be 
done, looking to the acquisition of facts which will enable us to suc- 
cessfully cope with these disorders, to ward them off or arrest their 
progress. Fortunately, the question is an important one, and so is 
yearly claiming more careful attention from scientific men. 

Diseases arise from such a variety of causes, and are so various in 
their effects, that we can not judge them all from the few given as 
illustrations. Moreover, there seems to be such an inadequate concep- 


DISEASES OF PLANTS. 387 


tion of the nature and extent of these disorders in plants, as well as 
of their influence, that it seems desirable to present a general outline 
of the subject according to our present knowledge. We will, there- 
fore, pass over a special consideration of the various scientific investi- 
gations of the last few years, and deal with the conditions under which 
the diseases develop, as well as some of the most important results of 
their action. First, let us briefly consider what constitutes a disease. 

In the animal the system is considered diseased when the functions 
of the body cease to be performed in a normal manner, and the dis- 
ease is more or less serious, according to whether one or more func- 
tions are involved, as wellas the degree to which the impairment of a 
particular function is carried. In instituting pathological comparisons 
between animals and plants, we have to keep in mind that there are 
important structural differences and physical peculiarities which may 
favor the development of disease more in one case than the other. In 
animals the mass of their structure is composed of highly vitalized and 
actively growing cells and tissues ; while in the higher plants, where 
the differentiation of structure is carried to a high degree, there is a 
very considerable portion of the body which has become incapable of 
further growth, and is virtually dead. In many cases, as in trees, the 
permanent structure predominates, and the vitalized tissues are rela- 
tively few. Furthermore, through a delicate nervous system which 
penetrates the most remote parts of the body, the whole animal organ- 
ism is brought into more or less active sympathy with the diseased 
portion, even though the disorder be one of a strictly local nature, 
while the blood as a general medium of circulation tends to dis- 
tribute the affection and thus bring the entire system into a diseased 
condition. In the vegetable kingdom we find no fluid which would 
be strictly equivalent to the blood of animals and capable of dis- 
seminating disease through the organism in a similar manner. Recent 
researches by Hillhouse,* however, seem to strongly confirm the pre- 
vious observations of Gardiner, Strasburger, Frommann, and others, 
that there is a well-defined continuity of the protoplasmic substance 
between adjoining cells through their walls, thus rendering it highly 
probable that, in plants, the protoplasm may act in a manner similar 
to the nerves of animals to bring somewhat remote parts into more 
or less active sympathy, and this consideration must have weight in 
the future, as giving us a more correct insight into the operation of 
disease and the possibilities of its complication. | 

If we clearly recognize that the physical basis of life is the same 
in both plant and animal, and that it is through disturbance, primarily, 
of the protoplasmic functions that the functions of the organism as a 
whole are disordered, then from this and what has already been stated 
it becomes evident that the pathology of plants and animals is the 


* Bot. Centralbl., XIV, 1883, pp. 89-94; Journal Royal Mic. Soc., Ser. II, vol, 
iii, p. 524. 


388 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


same, chiefly involving greater degrees of complexity in the latter, 
and that we must apply the same principles for the recognition of dis- 
ease in each case.. This view was expressed so long ago as 1846,* and 
receives confirmation in the expressions of some of our best patholo- 
gists of the present day.t Frank { tells us that “ disease is every de- 
viation from the normal condition of the species” ; while Sorauer * 
says, “ We must recognize as a disease every disturbance of the organ- 
ism which detracts from the final end of its labor, the accomplishment 
of its purpose.” 

In considering the diseases of plants, it is important to bear in 
mind that we have to deal with subjects which on the one hand are 
cultivated, and on the other hand not. In forest-trees there has been 
no modification through cultivation, and disease would not be likely 
to become complicated from this cause. In cultivated trees, and 
plants, as in the peach, pear, strawberry, raspberry, etc., a high degree 
of cultivation has resulted in a corresponding modification upon which 
the pecuniary value directly depends. This strong divergence from 
the original type involves a debility in one or more directions, and is 
quite parallel with the changes known to occur in more highly civilized 
communities of men, by reason of which diseases are not only likely 
to be more prevalent but more complicated. This analogy, as well as 
general principles, would show us that the more highly cultivated the 
varieties of fruits or plants, the more susceptible are they to the influ- 
ence of environment with the introduction of disease, and this is con- 
firmed, not only by personal observation, but by the experience of 
practical fruit-growers. 

Again, cultivated fruits always tend to revert to the original form 
when the conditions of their high state of development are withdrawn. 
Moreover, such organs often show that this excessive development has 
obliterated, wholly or in part, those important functions connected 
with the reproductive processes which they were originally designed 
to fulfill. ‘These are some of the evidences that all such monstrosities 
as our modern apples, pears, strawberries—in short, all our cultivated 
fruits—are in reality abnormal growths which we may’ designate as 
hypertrophied structures, and are therefore evidences of disease. In 
such cases, therefore, the questions of treatment are likely to become 
somewhat complicated, since, while maintaining a certain form of dis- 
ease, we’must exclude, prevent, and cure all others. 

Diseases may be general in the system; or they may be localized, 
and this is a consideration of obvious importance when we bear in 
mind that, according as they are one or the other, they may be more 
or less destructive in their effects or be controlled with greater or less 
difficulty. When a disease involves the entire system, as in peach-yel- 
lows or pear-blight, it is often a matter of great difficulty to deter- 


* Smee on “ The Potato Plant,” + “ Krankheiten der Pflanzen,” p. 2. 
t “ Lancet,” 1880, vol. ii, pp. 605, 645. # “Handbuch,” p. 56. 


DISEASES OF PLANTS. 389 


mine the controlling treatment ; but in other cases, where the disorder 
is strictly of a local character, it may be a simple matter to remedy the 
trouble. In the case of those peculiar developments of the oak which 
give us the gall-nuts of commerce, or of similar abnormal develop- 
ments in the tissues, we have instances of well-defined disease, but it 
is of a strictly local nature ; the disturbance of functional activity does 
not extend beyond very narrow limits. It becomes, then, a simple mat- 
ter to treat the case, because the part may be removed without in- 
flicting injury upon other organs of the plant, and thus the knife is the 
sure remedy. Or, again, certain diseases may originate in the break- 
ing of a limb or the fracture of a surface tissue. In such cases the 
disease will follow the injury and progress slowly, but it is often a 
simple and easy matter to prevent its introduction into the general 
system by properly caring for the wounded part in the first instance. 
Nature herself provides the means of warding off disease in just this 
way, and within certain limits her provisions are most effective. Ifa 
structure such as a vigorously-growing plant be injured, there at once 
appears a clear fluid, which gradually thickens into a mucilaginous 
substance, and finally becomes dry and hard. Under its early protec- 
tion, a tissue ‘of cork is formed over the wound as a healing and pro- 
tective structure, impervious to air or water. Under it, the injured 
parts, now excluded from the air, are able to perfect the healing pro- 
cess by the formation of new tissue. 

In plants, as in animals, diseases may be developed through a 
great variety of causes, but it is possible to bring them into a rude 
system of classification by means of which their consideration is 
greatly facilitated. The best arrangement of the kind which we have 
at present, one which answers very well, is that of Hartig,* according 
to which diseases are developed through the action of— 

1. Phenogamic plants. 

2. Cryptogamic plants. 

3. Injuries. 

4, Soil influences. 

5. Atmospheric influences. 

Under the first head we have to deal with those plants, like the 
mistletoe and dodder, which grow upon others and draw their nourish- _ 
ment directly from them—hence are truly parasitic. Plants of this 
kind may contain a certain amount of chlorophyl, but usually possess 
no true roots ; hence they are not only incapable of drawing nourish- 
ment directly from the soil, but they are also incapable of performing 
the assimilative functions by which materials for the formation of cel- 
lular structure are developed, in more than a limited manner if at all. 
Such plants, therefore, must depend entirely upon the already elabo- 
rated sap contained in their hosts, and, feeding exclusively upon this, 
the latter must suffer in a degree which is proportional to the devel- 


* “Lehrbuch der Baumkrankheiten,” p. 6. 


390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


opment of the parasite. The tissues in which the latter feeds must 
thus become diseased, primarily through lack of nutrition, and so final- 
ly develop in an abnormal manner, as is seen to be the case in the 
often enormous knots which accompany the growth of the mistletoe 
upon the oak. Such excrescences often reach a diameter of three or 
more feet. A secondary feature of such diseases is then developed in 
the readiness with which such hypertrophies often yield to decay, or 
in the decay which is introduced into the various tissues of the host 
wherever the parasite penetrates. It is evident that diseases of this 
character may be, and usually are, of a strictly local nature, and, in 
the early stages at least, it is easy to remove both the disease and 
the cause by amputation. When local action has been long continued, 
however, the highly morbid condition of a limited portion of tissue 
may in time find sympathy in adjoining parts, and so by degrees the 
whole system become involved in a chronic disorder. We may thus 
remove the cause, but additional treatment will be essential to re- 
store the system to its normal condition. 

In the second class of causes we have the cryptogamic parasites, or, 
more properly, the saprophytes, to contend with. These plants, like 
the parasites proper, are incapable of providing their own nourishment 
from the soil and air, and so must depend for their growth upon al- 
ready-formed organic matter. But this is not all: it is characteristic 
of their growth that they live upon organic matter which is in an ac- 
tive state of decomposition, and it will thus be easy to see that they 
are not far removed from being the cause of the decomposition in bodies 
which have already ceased to live. In their action upon non-vitalized 
matter, it is quite possible that they are the active promoters of dis- 
organization ; but the case is somewhat different with the living or- 
ganism. Here the growth of the saprophyte has to contend with the 
vitality of the host, and, so long as this latter is normally maintained, 
it is most probable that the intruder will fail to gain sufficient hold to 
exert any appreciable injury. But the struggle continues, and if, by 
reason of accident or peculiar conditions of environment, the vitality 
of the host be reduced below certain limits, then the saprophyte or 
parasite, as the case may be, at once exerts a preponderating influence 
which is highly deleterious. Or, again, if the plant be diseased through 
the operation of other causes, then the fungus can exert its influence 
to produce secondary features of an already disordered condition. 
These views find confirmation in the general action of fungi upon tis- 
sues. It is observed that they are more or less abundant in the rough 
outer bark and on the surface of most plants; but, though they are 
present, their growth is limited, and confined to those tissues which are 
either dead or of very low vitality, while the plant suffers in no wise 
from their presence. Let the plant be injured or diseased, however, 
and at once the parasite gains a firmer hold, the tenacity of which will 
increase continually until remedial measures are applied. Thus, we 


DISEASES OF PLANTS. 391 


often find the breakage of a limb to be but the open door by which 
rot is introduced into the interior tissues. We may consider, however, 
that with most of the mycelial forms of fungi their action is more or 
less localized, as in the smut of corn ( Ustilago maydis), or the disease 
ealled cedar-apples (Gymnosporangium Sabine), or the curl of the 
peach-leaf (Hxoascus deformans). So far as they are localized, there- 
fore, their treatment is a simple matter, since it only involves cautery 
or removal of the affected part. Owing, however, to their peculiar 
habits of growth, and the insidious rapidity with which the spores 
may be disseminated, they may cause a disease of the general system 
when the conditions of the latter are favorable. But it is not such an 
easy matter to dispose of all these organisms. In the animal, it is 
now well demonstrated that disease may be directly produced by the 
action of certain schizomycetes, such as the micrococci and allied germs ; 
and it is even claimed by some that they have a corresponding patho- — 
genic function in the vegetable organism. These latter views, however, 
rest upon insufficient evidence at present ; but, in considering certain 
diseases of plants at least, analogy would dictate measures of caution 
in formulating an opinion which wholly disregards the importance of 
these minute structures as pathogenic agents. Whether actually the 
cause of disease, or only of secondary features, in either case they are 
most difficult elements to deal with. 

The third class embraces a variety of causes which may be directly 
controllable by man or not. Injuries may be inflicted by insects, as 
so generally occurs in the formation of galls upon leaves ; in the punc- 
tures which various boring insects, as the scolytus and egeria make 
for the deposition of their eggs ; and, more especially, as in the subse- 
quent action of the larve. There are, also, injuries which may be in- 
flicted by animals and man, either by accident or design, and which 
permit the operation of fungoid growths with the development of 
secondary features. All these are of a strictly local nature, and the 
question whether or not the entire system will be involved in disorder 
must largely depend upon the extent and nature of the injury in the 
first instance. 

The treatment may or may not be difficult. Where insect action 
is strictly local, as in galls, the amputation of the parts is sufficient ; 
but, where the injury is inflicted by boring larve, the grub must first 
be destroyed, and this requires certain knowledge of the habits of 
these insects in the different stages of development. In the case of 
the scolytid borers the treatment is especially difficult, as the beetles 
are very small, and hard to destroy ; but it is an interesting fact 
that the ovipositing of these insects is in itself indicative of an 
already diseased condition,* so that the surest and best remedy is a 

* Professor Riley tells me that, so far as he knows, these borers oviposit only in 


diseased trees, though they may feed on healthy trees; and, in my observations of the 
last two years, I have been unable to collect a single fact opposed to this view. 


392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


complete destruction of the plant or tree, together with the borers, 
by fire. 

Where injuries are inflicted by man, proper attention in caring for 
the injured part will prevent the introduction of disease. Nature pro- 
vides means for the healing of injuries produced in this way, and in 
many cases it is possible for very extensive injuries to be healed with- 
out any aid beyond Nature’s own efforts. Grape-vines and other 
vigorously growing plants often exhibit a most remarkable recupera- 
tive power. One of the most notable instances of this kind was 
brought to my attention in 1874.* During the early spring the bark 
of a weeping-willow was removed from the base of the trunk, making 
a complete girdle for a distance of eighteen inches from the ground. 
In some places the cambium tissue was not fully destroyed, and this 
materially aided in the healing process. From the upper part of the 
girdle, or, more properly, from the lower portion of the uninjured bark, 
a new growth was rapidly formed and pushed downward, soon taking 
the form of aérial roots. In one or two instances these became more 
or less connected with the trunk over the girdled portion, but most of 
them remained distinct, and all finally penetrated the soil, with which 
they established a normal connection. In another instance, when re- 
moving some young squashes from vines under experiment, the former 
were separated by a knife, but left in place for collection at a later 
time. One, however, was overlooked at the time of collection, and, 
when the final harvest was made, it was discovered firmly united to 
the stem from which it was originally separated, and had attained 
considerable size. Upon careful examination of the parts, both exter- 
nally and under the microscope, it appeared that—1. When the cut was 
made the squash was not displaced, and the cut surfaces immediately 
came together again. 2. As determined by a “fault” in a crack of 
the epidermis, the squash rotated in position as the cut was made, thus 
accomplishing a displacement of nearly one quarter of an inch on the 
surface of a stem three quarters of an inch in diameter. 8. The heal- 
ing was complete in the interior of the stem, but the line of section 
was plainly visible under the microscope. 4. The union of the epider- 
mis and tissues immediately below was not accomplished, and there 
was thus left, by shrinkage of the parts, a groove which extended com- 
pletely around the stem and demonstrated the completeness of the 
section in the first instance. 

In these examples, therefore, we have illustrations of the inherent 
tendency of all plants to overcome disease and injury through the 
operation of vitality. 

In soil influences we have to contend with conditions which are 
not always so easy to control, and, when once they have produced their 
effect upon the plant, the diseased condition is a somewhat difficult 
matter to correctly diagnose and treat. Soil influences operate in a 


* “Phenomena of Plant Life,” Clark. 


DISEASES OF PLANTS. 393 


variety of ways; it may be through excessive humidity, as deter- 
mined by the stagnation of water through imperfect drainage, or the . 
natural condition and position of the water-table, or it may be through 
the mechanical condition. While these conditions may not actually 
cause disease, they will certainly promote it when once developed, 
and we therefore find a certain part of remedial measures to consist 
in thorough drainage and cultivation. But more than this, we find 
in special or general exhaustion of the soil a fruitful source of disease. 
Lands which have been cropped for a long period become at least 
specially exhausted, and in such case usually in the direction of that 
food-element most essential to the growth of the plant which has 
brought about the exhaustion. There is thus developed a debilitated 
condition of the entire system, by means of which the normal func- 
tions are impaired, and this in itself constitutes a disease. But the 
debilitated state permits the operation of other forms of  plant-life 
which would otherwise be unable to develop readily, and also allows 
certain abnormal physiological and chemical changes to occur, all of | 
which promote secondary features and thus bring about complication. 
This, it seems tolerably certain, is the case in peach-yellows, and 
may also prove to be the case in other diseases such as pear-blight. 
Diseases developed in this way, however, are most difficult to treat, 
because the entire system is involved. Remedial measures must 
therefore be directed toward—1. Removing the cause; 2. Building 
up the general system; 3. Restoring to a normal condition the dis- 
ordered organic function. In the case of peach-yellows, the results 
of chemical analysis, as well as the changes produced by special treat- 
ment, show that in all probability the specific is chlorine as con- 
tained in muriate of potash, while a general toning of the system may 
be accomplished by the judicious application of a complete food as 
determined from the ash composition. 

Atmospheric conditions are largely, if not wholly, beyond the control 
of man. They include, of course, the varying conditions of heat and 
moisture, and are thus either highly stimulating and favor the excessive 
growth of weak structure and parasites, on the one hand, or they are 
depressing and cause a stagnation of vital activity, and thus injure the 
plants, as through excessive drought ; while this, in turn, leads to the 
development of parasites, which would not otherwise gain a firm hold. 
We can not expect to modify the conditions which produce these re- 
sults ; we can only hope to so prepare the plant, by judicious treat- 
ment, that it will suffer no material injury from the peculiar meteoro- 
logical conditions in which it is placed. With this in view, we would 
doubtless find it wise to apply strong food, which will retard the vege- 
tative process, and tend to the more solid maturity of the parts already 
formed. Nor must we neglect the importance of a judicious course 
of irrigation during drought. Doubtless the time will come when 
every man who depends upon the growth of plants for his living 


. 


394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


will recognize a well-devised system of irrigation, which may be 
applied to all his orchards and cultivated fields when necessary, as 
an indispensable part of the machinery which a successful business 
demands. 

The conditions which produce disease in plants, as well as the di- 
rect and secondary effects of their operation, are likely to be more or 
less complicated, and thus render a direct course of diagnosis and 
treatment correspondingly hard to reach and apply; but we can hardly 
form a correct estimate of these difficulties by analogy with a disor- 
dered condition of the animal. We have, at the outset, structures of 
widely different organization, which not only depend upon very different 
conditions of nutrition, but which are placed in widely different condi- 
tions of environment other than this. On the one hand, we have forms 
which, once developed, occupy a definite position, and their relations 
to environment—soil conditions, food-supply, ete.—are in a measure 
fixed. On the other hand, we have more highly organized bodies, 
which are continually changing their location, and they are thus 
brought into new relationships, to which they must adapt themselves, 
and this is liable to complicate the phases of disease already present. 
I think it will appear, however, that—at least in many cases, especially 
where nutrition is chiefly involved—we must apply the same general 
principles in the one case as in the other. 

It was shown, not long since, by my friend Dr. Goessman,* that in 
certain cases of disease the normal and abnormal conditions are corre- 
lated to the presence of relatively greater and less quantities of certain 
food-elements. This was demonstrated by chemical analysis of the 
diseased wood or fruit, the naturally healthy structure, and, again, 
the diseased structure after being restored by a course of treatment 
which involved an application of the elements supposed to be wanting. 
In the case of the peach-yellows, concerning which we have the fullest 
data, he found the potash to increase in the healthy and decrease in 
the diseased ; while the lime decreased in the healthy and increased in 
the diseased ; and furthermore that, under treatment, the appearance 
of greater or less quantities of potash was reciprocal with similar 
changes in the lime present. The following analyses will show this 
relation : 

CRAWFORD’S EARLY PEACH. 


FRUIT Healthy. Diseased. 

Wetri6 OSide oi Ri Se Be a ed oe ec ree 0°58 0°46 
Gidleinns 0xi06 id oi a ee NE ee 2°64 4°68 
PARGCHUN OXIGE ss, Veinc CVAGER be Vaan e cas Va SweES 6°29 5°49 
PROMOS aka ..'s655 FS Ak GE Fas wes ce 16°02 18°07 
wreotamaium Oxide. ¢ 66. koi hcvkeeenswawe Ms i's kw ie eee 74°46 71°30 
MME shoes cebe obd dca a ciated ss eaceies 100°00 100°00 


* “ Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 1882.” 


DISEASES OF PLANTS. 395, 


Health 

BRANOHES. (cestoeed. Diseased. 

WETTIG OSIGO yn ee TES e eo cic cvcecetaccevonas sees 0°52 1°45 
OCalcitim oxide . 2... 16. cece ccc c cer scvceccevcerse ° 54°52 64°23 
Magnesium oxide. ........-ee cere cece ec cee erence 7°58 10°28 
Phosphoric acid... ...ccccccves cecccecccccerese 11°37 8°37 
ANNI CRIOO ie. 5 cise odes a tien eddie ee eas ne 26°01 15°67 
MS ve hos Son a'sins Vicdae REET Lae hkwe Stecwe's 100°00 100°00 


It has further been shown by myself * that in some cases of disease, 
notably the one just referred to, there are important modifications of 
cellular structure and cell-contents as typical of the pathological con- 
dition. The growth becomes depauperate as a whole, and also in the 
various anatomical elements of the structure. At the same time the 
foliage assumes an abnormal color, and fails to perform its functions in 
the assimilative process. Yet, again, with reference to the storage of . 
assimilated material, there is often an abnormal accumulation of such 
elaborated food in parts where it should not appear, except in limited 
quantity. 

All these conditions in the case of peach-yellows are coincident — 
with the development of the peculiar chemical conditions as noted 
above ; and it isfurther a most interesting fact that, while the excess 
of lime and want of potash occur together with depauperate struct- 
ure, loss of color in the foliage, and excessive storage of starch, an 
increase of the potash and decrease of lime occur simultaneously 
with a disappearance of these various abnormal conditions. 

We are now led to inquire as to the proper course to pursue in mak- 
ing a diagnosis. 

When the disease is strictly localized, as when produced by inju- 
ries, or by the action of parasites proper; when the local disturbance is 
of sufficiently recent origin to render it improbable that the general 
system has become involved—then the diagnosis is in most cases a 
simple matter, and chiefly involves the correct recognition of the 
cause of the disturbance—i. e., the name and character of the insect or 
parasite, or the particular means by which the injury was first in- 
flicted. 

When the disease involves the entire system, and the conditions 
become more complicated, then the difficulty increases. A correct and 
complete diagnosis can then be made only when we consider— 3 

1. The chemical composition in health and disease. 

2. The internal features, including the— 

(a) Cellular structure. 
(6) Cell-contents. 
(c) Presence of fungi in the cells. 
3. The external features, embracing the— 
(a) Color and size of the foliage. 


* “ Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society,” 1882. 


396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


(4) Color and general condition of the bark. 
(c) Character of the new growth. 

(d) Condition of the fruit. 

(ec) Presence of parasites. 

We can not hope to correctly determine the nature of diseases by 
seeking new light upon strictly botanical grounds alone—e. g., by 
assuming that they originate more or less directly in fungoid growths. 
Nor can we hope to get at the origin and cure of these disorders 
from a purely chemical stand-point. The two lines of inquiry must 
be followed together until they merge in one harmonious result. In 
such manner alone may we hope in the future to solve the difficult 
problems now awaiting the patient student, to whom they will — 
abundant reward. 

These thoughts are offered as a mere outline of the direction which 
such considerations in vegetable pathology are now taking, and of the 
form they have already assumed. 


oad» 
voy 


ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE. 


By Dr. A. BERGHAUS. 


beam and plants are fitted by their organization to adapt 
themselves to many changes of place and vicissitudes of cli- 
mate. Most of the domestic plants that are cultivated in the north 
originated in southern regions. The trees of the orange family were 
not cultivated in Italy in Pliny’s time. The citron was not raised 
there with success till the third century ; and lemons and oranges, 
which now grow in Southern Tyrol, not till later. The mulberry, 
which has now made its way to Norway, likewise did not flourish in 
Italy when Pliny wrote. Juicy peaches were not grown in Greece in 
the time of Aristotle, and even in Rhodes the blossoms only devel- 
oped into a thin, woody fruit; but the peach-tree, bearing choice 
fruit, is now common through all France, and in the gardens of Cen- 
tral Germany. Chestnuts, originally at home only in warmer Asia, 
are now equally so in Italy and Western Germany. Some plants, nota- 
bly the cereals, have enjoyed a very extensive diffusion in the course 
of centuries, and are now cultivated in nearly every part of the habit- 
able earth. Our domestic animals, which mostly came frgm Asia, 
have gone with man to all the quarters of the world ; and it is worthy 
of note that it is just those cereals and domestic animals that have 
proved themselves most useful to man, and are essential to civilized 
life, that pre-eminently possess the faculty of adapting themselves to 
all climates, and of producing the most diversified varieties. 

The power of adaptation to climates appears to be most highly 


ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE. 397 


developed in man. He is less than any other being bound to any par- 
ticular zone, and is further suited to the widest diffusion, because, con- 
fined to no especial food, he is, in the fullest sense of the word, omniv- 
orous. He is, not only by the organization of his body, but especially 
by his-mental power and his energetic will, fitted above all other 
creatures to accommodate himself to the most various influences that 
can affect him from without, and by continuous habitude to endure or - 
make bearable the strangest conditions. He can live at the extreme 
limits at which organic life can exist, and can sustain a degree of cold 
at which quicksilver freezes. ‘Thus, three Russians lived for seven 
years in Spitzbergen without suffering in health. Admiral Wrangell, 
while in the Chuckchee country in 1820, experienced a cold of nearly 
50° below zero, while his men were as lively and happy as if it had 
been summer ; and Parry and Franklin withstood a still greater cold, 
Man can also sustain an almost incredible degree of heat. The cele- 
brated physician, Boerhaave, believed that no being breathing with 
lungs could live in an atmosphere having as high a temperature as 
that of the blood. According to this dictum, one ought to die at a tem- 
perature of 100°, but Banks enjoyed good health on the Senegal when 
the thermometer rose in his cabin to above 120° and 130°. Men live on 
the southwest coasts of Africa, and in other hot regions, where the heat 
of the sand under their feet reaches 140° or 150°. Men in deep min- 
ing-shafts and under diving-bells are able to support an atmospheric 
pressure of 30,000 kilogrammes as well as a pressure of only 8,000 
kilogrammes on the highest mountains. Cassini thought that no ani- 
mal could live at a greater height than 4,700 metres, or 15,000 feet ; 
but there are several inhabited places situated at a still greater height, 
as, for instance, Gartok, in the Himalayas. Alexander von Humboldt 
ascended Chimborazo to a height of nearly 6,000 metres, or 19,286 
feet, without suffering any harm. The pressure of the atmosphere is 
so light at such elevations that, as Humboldt was assured, wild ani- 
mals when driven up to them bleed at the mouth and nose. Only the 
dog is able to follow man as far and as high as he can go; but. this 
animal, too, loses his acute smell in Congo and Syria, and the power 
of barking in Surinam and at great heights ; and the finer breeds of 
dogs can not long endure the conditions of a height of more than 
3,760 metres, or 12,500 feet, while there are towns in the Andes at as 
great a height as 13,500 or 14,000 feet. 

But there are regions in which even man perishes, to whatever race 
he may belong, and however well prepared he may be to resist, their 
deadly, influence. Among such regions is the Gaboon valley, in which 
even the negro is disabled. The inhabitants of that district are de- 
eidedly weaker in constitution, and have greatly diminished reproduc- 
tive powers, and the women are considerably in excess. There are simi- 
lar regions nearer the centers of civilization. The Tuscan Maremma 
is famous for its deadly air, and the swamps of Corsica are of like 


398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


character. In France the ponds of the Dombes and the mouth-country 
of the Charente were, till recently, no less dangerous. Life in great 
cities also seems to exercise a special influence on reproduction. Bou- 
din could not find any pure Parisians who could trace the residence of 
their ancestors in the city back for more than three generations. In 
Besancon the “old families” generally die out in not quite a hundred 
years, and are replaced by families from the country ; and the same 
is, to a greater or less extent, the case in London, Berlin, and other 
large cities. 

Has it been proved that on ships, where men are crowded together 
for months under conditions incompatible with health, particular dis- 
orders are developed, to which sailors may, indeed, gradually accus- 
tom themselves, but which are apt to mature into fatal maladies 
among people hitherto in perfect health? Can we, as Darwin sug- 
gests, ascribe to such circumstances the fearful mortality and the 
diminishing fruitfulness of the Polynesian races? Does the consump- 
tion which has become epidemic and hereditary in those islands be- 
long to the diseases that have insinuated themselves there by the aid 
of European sailors? Neither the land nor the sky has changed since 
the Polynesian archipelagoes were discovered; yet the aboriginal popu- 
lation is diminishing at a really frightful rate, while its bastard off- 
spring and the pure Europeans are increasing rapidly. 

To what extent the more or less pronounced dangerousness of a 
locality is affected by normal conditions or' by casual injurious influ- 
ences is not always easy to estimate. The character of the soil, a 
higher or lower temperature, dryness, and moisture, are not all that 
determine the character of 4 country. We have evidence of this in 
the fact that the process of acclimatization is not equally easy in both 
hemispheres. The white races fare much better in the hot countries of 
the southern hemisphere than in the corresponding latitudes of the 
northern hemisphere. Between the thirtieth and thirty-fifth parallels 
of latitude lie Algiers and a part of the United States—regions in 
which the acclimatizing of Europeans is attended with great difficulties. 
In the southern hemisphere, the southern part of the Cape Colony and 
New South Wales lie between the same parallels, and in those coun- 
_ tries white men thrive. French and English troops exhibit a rate 
of mortality eleven times as great in the northern as in the southern 
hemisphere—a striking difference, which appears to depend upon the 
greater frequency and intensity of miasmatic fevers. North of the 
equator these fevers reach in Europe to the fifty-ninth degree of lati- 
tude, while south of the equator they seldom extend beyond the 
tropic and usually do not reach it. Tahiti lies under the eighteenth 
degree of south latitude, and is free from fevers. French and English 
troops stationed in the southern hemisphere afford a mean of 1°6 per 
thousand sick with fever annually, while among those stationed in the 
northern hemisphere the proportion of fever-sick is 224 per thousand. 


ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE. 399 


Thus miasmatic fevers are two hundred times more frequent north of 
the equator than south of it, notwithstanding that there are extensive 
regions in South America and Australia covered with standing water 
and exposed toa burning sun. To this may be added that attacks of 
fever are much less severe in the southern hemisphere. Only light 
fevers prevail in the great lagoons of Corrientes ; how much more 
dangerous are the fevers of the Pontine marshes, which are, neverthe- 
_ less, very far from the equator! A European can live with much 
greater security against the contingency of fevers on the banks of the 
Parané, in South America, than on the banks of the Garigliano, in 
Italy. 

There has been no lack of attempts and theories to explain these 
differences in localities that seem otherwise generally to stand under 
the same physical relations, but none of them have been successful. 
Yet it appears to be established that the greatest difficulties in the 
way of Europeans becoming acclimated in places where their business 
leads them to settle are due to the presence of swamp miasms. We 
know that a variety of conditions must combine to produce such 
miasms, and we know also that man is able to contend against them. 
It is possible for man to open a campaign against Nature wherever he 
goes, and to introduce conditions more favorable to his becoming 
acclimated. But he has so far not been able to bring a whole country 
immediately into a healthy condition ; only time seems to be com- 
petent to bring such a work to completion, and, waiting its course, nu- 
merous victims have to be offered up. - 

The cultivation of the eucalyptus, a tree of remarkably quick 
growth, appears to be one of the most effective means now available 
for improving the condition of unhealthy localities. There are fre- 
quently tracts of limited extent in the most sickly regions where the 
process of acclimatization is relatively easy and secure. Such points 
should always be chosen by new settlers. The contrary has generally 
been the case. The beauty and fertility of the alluviums at the 
mouths of rivers, with the conveniences they offer to trade, have gen- 
erally been tempting enough to determine the location of the settle- 
ment, regardless of its qualities with reference to health ; and towns 
have been planted in such places in consideration of the apparent 
value of the money-investment, but in complete forgetfulness of the 
immense capital in human lives they are destined to swallow.—Zrans- 
lated for the Popular Science Monthly from Das Ausland. 


4oo § THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


GLASGOW’S BANDY-LEGGED CHILDREN. 
By GEORGE HAY, M. D. 


AST summer the writer crossed the Atlantic and visited his na- 
tive country, Scotland. His parents, now well advanced in 
years, were living in Glasgow, and he found himself at home. On the 
first Sunday after his arrival he took an extensive walk through the 
city, and, of course, observed the people, young and old, male and 
female. He noticed very few good-looking men or women in Glasgow. 
The men are, for the most part, short and squat, while the women 
are undersized, and anything but handsome. The people of both sexes 
physically differ entirely from the men and women of Edinburgh, 
who, as a rule, are straight and strong, well-featured and intelligent, 
and excellent examples of manly and womanly beauty. The prin- 
cipal industry of Glasgow—the building of iron and steel ships— 
demands a great deal of unskilled or rather of low-grade labor, and 
the ranks of the laborers are recruited from Ireland. Thousands of 
Irishmen are employed in this work, and earn very high wages—from 
twelve to fourteen pounds sterling in two weeks. ‘The average riveter 
is a mere animal, given to eating, and drinking, and debauchery, and, 
as a consequence, despite his high wages, he is continually on the rag- 
ged edge of poverty, misery, and destitution. Of course, there are 
some exceptions to this general rule, and they soon become inde- 
pendent. 

If, choosing some fine day when children are apt to be on the streets, 
we take a walk of a single mile in any direction in the city, we are 
sure to notice from fifty to one hundred children, between the ages of 
two and thirteen years, whose legs are deformed and distorted in ways 
which are remarkable, and to degrees which are really hideous. One 
would think that the whole juvenile population was suffering from 
rachitis or from osteomalacia. The lines in the annexed figures, in pairs, 
indicating the general contour of the leg and foot, will convey some 
notion of the deformities, of which hundreds of living examples may 
be seen on the streets of Glasgow. The short, straight lines, at the 
bottom of each pair, indicate the feet. It is generally the bones of 
the lower limb from the knee downward, the tibise and the fibula, 
which are bent in the manner indicated in the drawings, in which care 
has been taken to avoid exaggeration. 

_ In addition to those here illustrated, examples may be seen of for- 
ward or backward, regular or irregular curvature, single or double 
curvature of one leg, with an outward or inward, regular or irregular, 
single or double curvature of the other leg. In short, the legs of Glas- 
gow children may be seen twisted and distorted in every imaginable 
direction. Some of these deformities are painful to look upon, though 


GLASGOW’S BANDY-LEGGEHD CHILDREN. 401 


eS. ie cyanea 


Fig. 1.—FRont View—OvuTWARD RESULAR Fie. 2.—FrRont View—InwArpD REGULAR 


CURVATURE. CURVATURE. 
Fie. 3.—FRONT Virw—OvUTWARD AND IN- Fie. 4.—FRront ViEw—OvtTwarp Irrecu- 
WARD REGULAR CURVATURE. LAR CURVATURE. 


ox it 


Fie. 5.—Front View—Inwarp IRREGULAR Fic. 6.—Sipz View—ForwaAkD REGULAR 


CURVATURE. CURVATURE. 
Fie. 7.—SipE VIEw—FORWARD AND BACK- Fie. 8.—FrRont ViEw—Dovusrie CURVATURE 
WARD REGULAR CURVATURE. oF BoTH Lzgs. 


from a professional point of view extremely interesting. The causes 
assigned by the people of Glasgow for the prevalent deformity are 
various, but none of them seem to account for it. 
Let us consider the professional opinion first. Many of the phy- 
sicians in Glasgow account for the rachitis, or osteomalacia, by laying 
VOL. XxV.—26 


402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the blame upon the water which is supplied to the city. The water 
comes from Loch Katrine, the lake made famous by Sir Walter Scott 
in “The Lady of the Lake,” and is very pure and soft, containing, 
if the writer remembers rightly, only about half a grain of solid 
matter in the gallon, which solid matter consists mainly of silicic acid 
and a little humus in solution. It is particularly free from the lime 
salts which go to the formation of bone ; but, even though that is the 
case, such an attempt at explanation displays an astonishing amount of 
physiological ignorance on the part of those who make it. <A half- 
ounce of bread, more or less, additional in the diet, would make up 
for all the difference between a soft and a hard water. The profes- 
sional opinion may, therefore, be rejected as not pertinent. 

Another explanation was suggested to the writer by the Professor 
of Physiology in the University of Glasgow, who thought the curva- 
ture of the bones of the children was due to the abandonment of oat- 
meal as an article of diet by people whose ancestors were accustomed 
to its use, and to the substitution of wheat-bread. This seemed to 
be a very plausible opinion. But it can be objected that, in many 
places where oatmeal is hardly ever used, rachitis and osteomalacia are 
comparatively rare. For example, in the United States oatmeal has 
been comparatively little known as a food, and yet very few rachitic 
children are to be seen. Similarly in Edinburgh, so far as the writer 
could observe, oatmeal is much less used than formerly, and yet the 
diseases in question are not evidently on the increase ; and in England, 
in many places where oatmeal is only considered fit food for horses, no 
cases of rachitis or of osteomalacia were observed. Furthermore, the 
ash of wheat yields more phosphoric acid than that of oats—the former 
contains 49°81 per cent and the latter only 43°84 per cent of that sub- 
stance. It is true, however, that the ash of oats contains more lime 
than the ash of wheat ; but then wheat contains quite enough of lime 
to build up bone-tissue—hence the fact that certain people do not 
build up sufficient bone-tissue, no matter what their diet may be, is 
proof that the diseases are due to a tendency in the individuals to waste, 
and not to assimilate these very phosphates which wheat-flour con- 
tains in abundance. This explanation, also, must therefore be dis- 
missed as insufficient. 

Another opinion ascribes the deformity to the peculiar method of 
carrying their babies in vogue among the women of Glasgow. A large 
shawl or plaid is wrapped over one shoulder and around the waist of 
the mother, with one turn around the baby, which is additionally sup- 
ported by sitting on the mother’s arm. This is a very convenient way 
of carrying a baby—almost as convenient as that adopted by some 
savage tribes, whose papooses are borne in a basket slung over the 
mother’s back. It is only employed when the mother is out on an er- 
rand ; and, though the child’s legs, of course, are somewhat constrained 
by the shawl, the actual time during which that is the case amounts to 


GLASGOW’S BANDY-LEGGED CHILDREN. 403 


very little in the twenty-four hours, and is not long enough to produce 
the deformity. Moreover, not many miles away, at Saltcoats, on the 
Ayrshire coast, all the women carry their babies in precisely the same 
manner as in Glasgow, and yet not a single ¢ase of rachitis or osteo- 
malacia is to be seen there. The people of Saltcoats, however, are 
Scotch. Thesame method of carrying babies is quite common over all 
the south and west of Scotland, yet nowhere else in the country, ex- 
cept in Glasgow, are so many horrible cases of rachitis or of osteoma- 
lacia to be seen. 

Some persons, observing that many of the Glasgow mothers, 
whether married or unmarried, are workers in the mills — cotton, 
woolen, linen, and jute mills—are of the opinion that there is some- 
thing in their employment that promotes bandy-leggedness. But, 
so far as I could observe, the children of such women were no more 
rickety than the children of women in other occupations. The 
mills in Great Britain are, so far as their hygienic condition is con- 
cerned, far better provided for than the mills of any other country in 
the world; they are looked after by the Government, and regularly 
visited by a competent and responsible inspector. Mill-workers have, 
nowadays, an easy, comfortable, and healthful occupation, and really 
there is nothing in mill-work to deform or injure either the women or 
their children. 

Many lay the blame for the hui upon the air. Glasgow air 
does not appear to be different from other air, and is certainly no worse 
than that of a dozen other manufacturing cities where no unusual 
bandy-leggedness exists. Consideration of this point may, then, be dis- 
missed at once. 

The writer believes that an adequate explanation for the affliction 
may be found in the habits of the Irish people. It is well known that 
all over the south and west of Ireland thousands of the peasantry live 
in mud cabins, which are for the most part several feet below the level 
of the surrounding soil, many of them destitute of windows, doors, and 
chimneys, the places of which are supplied by simple holes. The cabins 
are warmed by a peat-fire in the center of the burrow under the hole in 
the roof. The fuel is got from the adjacent bog, and its smoke would 
speedily blear and blind the eyes of any stranger who might venture 
to go inside. Such holes are continually damp, and are hot-beds (or 
rather cold beds) of rheumatism, rickets, osteomalacia, and various 
other diseases. There are generally half a dozen or more miserable 
children, huddled together for mutual warmth in the cold months, 
along with the parents, in addition to whom there is generally at least 
one full-grown pig, with perhaps a litter of young ones. The food of 
the family consists chiefly or entirely of potatoes, and it is seldom 
indeed, that any of the members see bread or meat, although occa- 
sionally a little fish, in the shape of eels from the adjacent “bog- 
holes,” may find its way to their mouths. 


404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


According to Marshall (“ Human and Comparative Physiology ”), 
“potatoes are a weak food, one pound being only equivalent to about 
six ounces of bread, or four ounces and a half of lentils ; they are not 
much more nutritious than the succulent vegetables.” It follows that, 
in order to support the body at all, enormous quantities must be eaten. 
The stomach expands to accommodate the huge bulk of this inefficient 
food, the body becomes paunchy, and the limbs of children, enfeebled 
by rachitis, occasioned partly by the miserable food and partly by the 
unwholesome surroundings, bend under the weight of the trunk, and 
the deformity already described is the result. 'The writer remembers 
distinctly the time when large bands of Irishmen used to visit Eng- 
land and Scotland, during the autumn of each year, to be employed 
on the harvest-field as shearers or reapers. But, owing to the intro- 
duction of machinery, that occupation is gone. The harvest only em- 
ploys men for a few weeks each year; but the building of iron ships 
is carried on all through the year: the shearers have become riveters, 
and have remained in Glasgow. The late Hugh Miller, describing 
those reapers, wrote thus: ‘ Pot-bellied and bow-legged, and with 
scarcely a rag to cover them, these wretches walk abroad into the 
daylight of civilization, the annual apparition of Irish ugliness and 
Irish want.” The vice of constitution, acquired in the miserable cabins 
of the wilds of Connaught, has become hereditary, and it is the now 
recognized principle of heredity which accounts for the deformed legs 
of the children of Glasgow. When the bones are bent at obtuse an- 
gles, the deformity is usually treated in the hospitals by fracture, i. e., 
the bones (both tibiz and fibule) are broken at the angle, and the frac- 
ture is treated in the usual manner. This is done, however, after the 
bones have become hard and have assumed a permanent set. 

It may be objected by American observers that the Irish in Amer- 
ica exhibit none of these excruciating deformities. But it must be re- 
membered that few but reasonably able-bodied Irish manage to get 
to America. Few others can get together the means to pay their pas- 
sage ; and any cripples or seriously deformed. persons would be liable 
to be refused passage by the transportation companies, or rejected and 
sent back as paupers on arrival here. At this point, again, the law of 
heredity comes into play, for if the parents, and the children which 
they bring along with them, are not rachitic, the chances are that the 
children and children’s children born in America will not be rachitic 
either, 


SKETCH OF AVERROES. 405 


SKETCH OF ABUL-WALID MOHAMMED IBN-AHMED 
IBN-MOHAMMED IBN-ROSHD (COMMONLY CALLED 
AVERROES). 


By GEORGE JACKSON FISHER, M. D. 


<2 pomaam tells us that when he descended into the infernal regions, 
on arriving at limbo, which is the first and favored circle of 
hell, where the good and virtuous are permitted to reside, having been 
excluded from the bliss of paradise from neglect of baptism, he found 
“a sapient throng,” with Aristotle, “the Master ”— 


“‘ Seated amid the philosophic train ” ; 


and, when a little more he raised his brow, he “ spied ” 


“<. . . Hippocrates, 
Galenus, Avicen, and him who made 
That commentary vast, Averroés.” * 


It is of this vast commentator and renowned Saracenic physician 
that I now propose briefly to write. Averroés flourished, without a 
doubt, in the twelfth century ; there is, however, no inconsiderable 
amount of uncertainty and discrepancy among authorities concerning 
the precise time of his birth, some placing it as early as the year 1126, 
others as late as 1198. The same confusion exists as to the date of 
his death, ranging it from 1198 to 1225. The dates (1126-1198) are 
believed to be as nearly accurate as can be determined at this time. By- 
this assumption it appears that Averroés attained the age of seventy- 
two years. He was of an ancient and noble family, being the son of 
the high-priest and chief judge of Cordova, the beautiful capital city 
of Andalusia, in Spain. Cordova was the place of his nativity. 

Leo Africanus informs us (“ De Vir. Arab.,” p. 280) that Averroés 
commenced the study of philosophy, when he was but a youth, under 
the celebrated Thophail, or Ibn-Tofail (Abubacer), who is the author 
of the noted metaphysical tale “Hai Ebn Yochdan.” An English 
translation of this elegant story was published by Professor Ockley, 
of Cambridge, in London in 1711. It is not unlikely that the extreme 
admiration which Averroés always entertained for the writings of Aris- 
totle was inspired by the enthusiastic teachings of Ibn-Tofail. His 
unbounded admiration of Aristotle amounted to a profound reverence, 
for thus we find Averroés asserting that “the doctrine of Aristotle is 
the perfection of truth, and his understanding attained the utmost 
limit of human ability ; so that it might be truly said of him that he 
was created and given to the world by Divine Providence, that we 


* “Inferno,” Vision, Hell, canto iv. 


406 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


might see in him how much it is possible for man to know.” Aver- 
roés devoted a great portion of his life to literary pursuits, but chiefly 
to his chosen task of expounding the doctrines of his favorite author. 
A printed edition of his works, in ten large folio volumes, furnishes 
ample testimony of the extent of his labors, and fully justifies the 
cognomen of “The Commentator,” and of Dante’s expression “ that 
commentary vast.” He was also styted “the soul of Aristotle.” 

It has been said that he wrote his medical treatises for the purpose 
of reconciling the doctrines of Galen with the philosophy of Aristotle ; 
for it is evident that his estimation of the medical philosopher of Per- 
gamus was only second in degree to the almost veneration which he 
entertained for the philosopher of Alexandria. 

It is not within the compass or purpose of this sketch to furnish 
the reader with even a brief summary of the peculiar characteristics of 
the metaphysical doctrines which constitute what has been termed 
Averroism, or to give an account of its wide-spread influence through- 
out Europe, and particularly during three entire centuries in the 
universities of Northern Italy. I will merely state that Padua be- 
came the seat and center of “ Averroist Aristotelianism,” and that 
Petrus de Apono, about the year 1300, became a famous expositor of 
these doctrines in their relation to medicine, and an equally noted exam- 
ple of heterodoxy in matters of faith ; so much so that his effigy was 
burned in the public market-place by the executioner, at the command 
of the Inquisitors. Though for ages both Aristotle and Averroés were 
regarded as the supreme masters of the science of proof, yet their teach- 
ings were considered inimical to the requirements of religious faith ; their 
disciples were called derisively “the people of demonstration.” Later 

on, Erasmus and others poured out the vials of their contempt on 
scholastic barbarism with its “ impious and thrice-accursed Averroés.” 

To return to his personal history. Averroés lived not long after 
Avenzoar, whom he calls “admirable, glorious, the treasure of all 
knowledge,” and the most supreme in physic from Galen to his own 
time. Averroés was personally acquainted with the sons of Avenzoar. 
He was a great student. It is said that, under the most approved 
teachers of his time, he mastered theology, jurisprudence, mathemat- 
ics, philosophy, and medicine. He flourished at a time when the Mos- 
lem caliphate in Spain had attained its maximum splendor, and such 
as had only been excelled by the ancient Oriental glories of Arabia 
and Persia. Cordova was the Bagdad of the Occident. Averroés 
worshiped in great and magnificent mosques, attended schools and 
colleges of erudition and renown, consulted libraries vast in extent, 
rich and rare in quality ; walked large hospitals, whose cases supplied 
ample illustrations of all the mortal ills to which our poor humanity is 
subject ; and, having been introduced by Ibn-Tofail, the philosophic 
vizier of Jusuf, to that prince, he possessed every requisite qualifica- 
tion and influence to insure success and distinction in life. Averroés, 


SKETCH OF AVERROES. 407 


being master of the Melekitic law, was appointed cadi of Seville in 
the year 1169, and for a quarter of a century occupied his time in 
similar offices in Cordova, Seville, and Morocco, belonging at the same 
time to the court of the reigning monarch Jusuf Almansur, who, it is 
said, was fond of engaging him in philosophic discussions in relation 
to the Islam faith. 

The profound acquirements which he had made in all departments 
of learning, and particularly in scholastic philosophy, by which the 
name of Averroés had become famous, eventually resulted in his almost 
total ruin. He was accused of heresy, and his teachings were declared 
to be inimical to Moslem faith. 

The charges were signed by a hundred witnesses, who testified 
that they had listened to heresies uttered from his own lips. The Ca- 
liph’s fears of the populace, in a matter so vital to their religious 
belief, overpowered his love for Averroés, and drove him to rigid 
measures. He confiscated his property, deprived him of honors, offices, 
and emoluments, and banished him to a place outside the walls of Cor- 
dova, there to dwell with the Jews and other outcasts in the suburbs. 
Africanus goes on to say that the boys used to watch the opportunity 
of his going up to the city, at the hour of prayers, to pelt him with 
mud and stones. Such was the force of the fanatical indignation 
against poor Averroés, that everywhere he was subjected to the jeers 
and insults of a bigoted populace. All this occurred about the year 
1195, at which time a general effort was made to destroy all liberal 
culture in Andalusia, reserving only such practical branches as would 
prove most useful to the people, including eene, surgery, mathe- 
matics, and astronomy. 

From all these misfortunes, ignominy, and degradation he at length 
escaped, and betook himself to Fez, whither he was soon pursued, ar- 
rested, and committed to prison. The royal council could not agree 
concerning the issue of his fate. Instant death was demanded by some, 
while others insisted on permitting him to live, and extorting from him 
a public recantation of his errors. The final decision was that he 
should be led out bareheaded, at the hour of prayer, and placed on the 
upper step at the entrance of the mosque, that every one as he passed in 
might have an opportunity of showing his holy wrath and indignation 
by spitting in the heretic’s face. It is said that this contemptible 
treatment was submitted to with stoical indifference. "When the ser- 
vice was ended, the judge and officers of the court came forward and 
listened to a public confession of his alleged heresies. Averroés was 
then permitted to return to Cordova, where he entered in privacy, and 
remained in poverty, rags, and wretchedness ; scorned, neglected, with 
none for associates but the most degraded classes of society. Great, 
indeed, was the fall of Averroés! The limbo of Dante must at last 
have proved to him a paradise indeed ! 

This poor philosopher had not yet reached the end of his eventful 


408 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


life. Owing to the misrule of his successor in the regency of Morocco, 
the discontented people earnestly petitioned the ruler of the Faithful 
to restore their former governor, whose mildness and wisdom had se- 
cured to them so high a degree of prosperity and so many blessings. 
After much deliberation Averroés was restored to freedom, reinstated 
in his positions of honor, where his moral virtues, his amiability, his 
justice, and his humanity, were exercised to the advantage of his fel- 
low-beings. He secured the love, the applause, the admiration, and 
gratitude of the people over whom he ruled, and we are told that 
happiness gilded the evening of his days, his sun sank gently beneath 
an unclouded horizon, and his memory was a radiant halo, not unlike 
the roseate twilight that sometimes lingers along the western sky, the 
charming influence of which can only be felt and contemplated with 
emotions of grateful delight. And thus it was that Averroés closed 
his eventful life in the year of grace 1198, being but about a twelve- 
month previous to the death of his patron Almansur, with whom the 
political power of the Moslems terminated, as did the study of the 
liberal sciences with the death of Averroés. 

He was evidently a man of dignity, rectitude, and nobility; a 
wise and humane judge ; a devoted student ; a profound scholar ; and, 
though surrounded by the luxuries of a royal court, yet simple, tem- 
perate, almost rigidly abstemious in his mode of life. , 

As a medical writer Averroés was the author of two works which 
are still extant ; one being the “ Koullyath,” or “ Kulliyyat,” which is 
better known as the “ Colliget ” or “Summary”; the other is a com- 
mentary on the medical poem or cantica of Avicenna. The “ Colli- 
get,” which is his principal work, was dedicated to Abdelech, the Mi- 
ramamolin of Morocco, and contains a digest of the whole science of 
medicine, being divided into seven books. It contains but little that 
is original, though we find him speaking of his own experiences. He 
is said to be the first to state that small-pox occurs in the human con- 
stitution but once in a lifetime. His anatomy is copied entirely from 
Galen, His commentary on the cantica of Avicenna was considered 
to be the best introduction to medicine that had ever appeared. 

Some time ago I picked up a curious little duodecimo entitled 
“ Averroeana,” being a transcript of several letters from “ Averroés, an 
Arabian philosopher at Corduba, in Spain, to Metrodorus, a young Gre- 
cian nobleman, student at Athens,” in the years 1149 and 1150. Also 
“several letters from Pythagoras to the King of India,” etc., ete. “The 
whole containing matters highly philosophical, physiological, Pytha- 
gorical, and medicinal. The work having been long concealed, is now 
put into English for the benefit of mankind, and the rectification of 
learned mistakes.” London, 1695. 

P. Grinau tells us, in his prefatory letter, that his friend Petit, 
who had for many years resided in Andalusia, gave him the book, 
which he says was written by Averroés’s own hand, and that it had 


SKETCH OF AVERROES. 409: 


long lain in the library of a certain nobleman in Andalusia. It deals 
with many curious physiological questions, and furnishes proof that 
Averroés was-a practicing physician, Space will not permit me to 
make extracts from the work, though, in passing, it may be mentioned 
that he speaks of his own experiments and experiences ; for example, he 
discourses at length on the value of milk in the treatment of pulmonary 
consumption. 

The library of the Escurial in Spain still contains in manuscript 
among its treasures the greater part of the writings of Averroés, par- 
ticularly those on jurisprudence, astronomy, essays on special logical 
subjects, and his criticisms on Avicenna and Alfarabius. Other manu- 
scripts are preserved in European libraries. The Latin editions of the 
works of Averroés have been very numerous. The first appeared at 
Padua in 1472; about fifty were published at Venice, the best known 
being that by the Juntas in 1552—53, in ten folio volumes. During 
the century from 1480 to 1580 no less than one hundred editions were 
issued. This fact attests the exalted estimation in which his works 
were held. None were ever printed in Arabic. The “Colliget” was 
first printed in 1482, at Venice, in folio ; also in 1490, 1492, 1497, 1514, 
1542, and 1552. The commentary on the “ Canticles” of Avicenna were 
printed in nearly as many editions, and often with the “Colliget.” 

Should the reader desire to know more of the philosophy and the- 
ology of Averroés, he may be gratified by consulting either or both of 
the following treatises : Renan, “ Averrhoés et l’Averrhoisme,” Paris, 
1852 ; and Miiller, “Philosophie und Theologie von Averrhoés” Mu- 
nich 1859. 

What authority there may have been for the portrait of Averroés by 
Raphael, now in the Vatican, I am quite unable to state. The writer 
has a fine old print, on a folio sheet, of this portrait, engraved by P. 
Fidanza. It is done in bold pen-and-ink-like strokes, being an Ara- 
bian head covered with a massive turban, a face of earnest but fierce 
expression, more suggestive of a Bedouin chief than of a profound 
philosopher. 

The frontispiece in the present number of the “Monthly” is a re- 
duced copy of this rare engraving. 


: 


410 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


THE SURVIVAL OF POLITICAL SUPER- 
STITIONS. 


S explained by the law of evolu- 
tion, progress is the result of 
slow transformations in the parts of 
adaptable organisms under changed con- 
ditions. 
ideas that things were once suddenly 
created and may be quickly changed, 
we fail to appreciate the slowness of 
the modifications that take place, and 
how tenaciously old things survive and 
live on in their essences, with only suffi- 
cient alteration to justify the introduc- 
tion of new names. 

Wesee this strikingly illustrated in 
the history of government. There is 
an enormous overvaluation in the im- 
port of their changing forms, It was, 
of course, a great event when we of 
this country, a hundred years ago, re- 
pudiated formal monarchy, and its aris- 
tocratic and. hierarchical appendages, 
and adopted republican government in 
its place, but the real value and extent 
of the change have been in many re- 
spects much magnified. Fundamental 
ideas of the old order of things continue 
in vigorous operation, with but very su- 
perficial modification of character. 

For thousands of years the concep- 
tions of government and of kingcraft 
were identical. Nations appeared and 
disappeared in the march of history; 
empires rose and fell, systems of re- 
ligion and systems of philosophy suc- 
ceeded each other, knowledge aug- 
mented and the literary arts were per- 
fected in their different types, and great 
civilizations unfolded and passed away, 
and all this while the forms of govern- 
ment continued monarchical, and hu- 
man society was governed by the su- 
perstition that kings represent the gods 
and are infallible. The overshadowing 
and persistent superstition was that goy- 


Still, influenced by the old 


ernment was supernaturally organized, 
and that kings ruled by right divine. 
We look upon this idea now as a mere 
curious vestige of an empty illusion of 
ages of ignorance, but it was an idea 
of living application and tremendous 
power. Men religiously believed in it 
and thoroughly acquiesced in it. It was 
broadly asserted alike by the occupants 
of thrones and by the classes author- 
ized to teach the people, and they ac- 
cepted it as fundamental and sacred 
political truth. The open avowal of 
this doctrine comes down to quite mod- 
ern times. The standard of loyalty ex- 
acted by the sovereign wes thus laid 
down by King James, the translator of 
the Bible: “ As it is atheism and blas- 
phemy in a creature to dispute what 
the Deity may do, so it is presumption 


and sedition in a subject to dispute 


what a king may do in the height of his 
power; good Christians will be content 
with God’s will revealed in his word, 
and good subjects will rest in the king's 
will revealed in his law.” 

It is not yet two centuries since De 
Foe could write in England as follows: 
“It was for many years—and I am wit- 
ness to it—that the pulpit sounded noth- 
ing but absolute submission; obedience 
without reserve ; subjection to princes 
as God’s vicegerents; accountable to 
none; to be withstood in nothing and 
by no person. I have heard it pub- 
licly preached that, if the king com- 
manded my head, and sent his messen- 
gers to fetch it, I was bound to submit, 
and to stand still while it was cut off.” 

Now, it is not to be supposed that so 
deep and long-established a sentiment, 
by which the lives of generations were 
regulated, was to be extirpated from 
human nature, and dismissed to anni- 
hilation in any short period of time. 
Some features of it might fall away 


EDITOR’S 


and be repudiated, and it might be thus 
transformed, but transformation itself 
implies the living on of the essential 
thing in modified shape.. Nor can we 
say that that-which has been eliminat- 
ed and has passed away is simply the 
superstition, while the surviving ele- 
ment is some truth of reason which 
was disguised under the old expression. 
Under a less gross and palpable form 
the superstition itself continues, and 
for the divine infallibility of the king 
we have a superstitious belief in the 
practical infallibility of Congress and 
the political majority. ‘ The king may 
do all things by divine right, and we 
are bound to obey,” was the old for- 
mula; ‘the political majority may do 
all things in its sovereign pleasure, and 
everybody is bound to obey,” is the de- 
rived formula of the present time. 

The supernatural element in the case 
is undoubtedly gone, but the blind and 
unreasoning faith which is the essence 
of superstition is the survival which is 
still to be dealt with. What is the 
ground of the authority of government ? 
In what does its sovereignty consist ? 
Is it supreme and unlimited, or is it 
subject to restriction? And, if so, what 
are the principles of limitation? What 
may government do and what may it 
not do? What isthe fundamental right 
and wrong of government action to 
which all legislation is bound to con- 
form on imperative ethical grounds? 
These are questions that are forced up- 
on the age with a steadily increasing 
urgency, and the answers to which are 
of transcendent importance to the fu- 
ture progress of society. 

These questions are besides of espe- 
cial and critical moment in this country, 
where the whole community is launched 
upon the turbulent sea of politics, and 
there is the highest possible need of 
distinct and trustworthy politico-ethical 
guidance. That the subject receives lit- 
tle serious attention on the part of our 
ignorant and self-seeking politicians, oc- 


TABLE. 411 
tisan rivalry, matters little except to 
impose graver obligations upon serious- 
minded people. The degradation of 
popular government in this country 
to the basest ends of demagogism, the 
tendency to rule out all questions of 
principle as disturbing elements in the 
great game of partisan success, the sur- 
render of Legislatures to the promotion 
of sordid class interests, and the uni- 
versal negelect of the true objects of 
government, while its illegitimate ob- 
jects are everywhere vehemently pur- 
sued—all this is sufficiently notorious, 
and it marks out the definite work of 
our political reformers in the future. 
The present state of things is not a 
finality, and there is no justification for 
despair of salutary political progress. 
The passage from superstition to reason 
is slow and unsteady, but it is inevita- 
ble. Government is not to be run for- 
ever on fallacies and by political quacks. 
We are in a time of transition, which 
is always painful and discouraging, but 
tendencies are at work, and are slowly 
acquiring strength, which are certain to 
make headway against the errors and 
vices of the prevailing political system. 
It is of course very easy to be over- 
sanguine, and to form delusive expec- 
tations of good to be attained, and there 
is especial danger of this in politics, 
where it is expected by changing a vote 
or passing a law to get great results in 
a short time. But political renovation 
can come by no such superficial means ; 
we must have a revolution of ideas, re- 
sulting in sounder views of the nature, 
authority, and scope of government; 
and that this will come in its proper 
time, and give rise to a new departure 
in politics, is no more to be doubted 
than we can doubt the continued ac- 
tivity of the human mind, the further 
growth of scientific thought, or the 
many improvements and ameliorations 
that have been already accomplished. 
Meantime, the work to be done is 
simply to diffuse among the more in- 


cupied with their paltry schemes of par- ! telligent classes of the community those 


412 


Ceeper social truths and sounder politi- 
cal principles which have been worked 
out by patient and powerful intellects 
who have prized and sought the truth 
above all other things, trusting im- 
plicitly that better knowledge will at 
length yield the desirable fruits of bet- 
ter practice. This has been the policy 
of “The Popular Science Monthly.” 
We are interested in politics, but only 
in that regeneration of politics which 
will make its pursuit more honorable, 
its objects more noble, and its influence 
upon society less corrupting and de- 
basing, and more elevating and benefi- 
cent. We have frequently published ar- 
ticles animated by this spirit and pur- 
pose; and have been led to the fore- 
going remarks by a desire to call at- 
tention to the instructive and valuable 
article which opens the present number. 
We commend this discussion of the im- 
portant but neglected subject of politi- 
cal ethics to the careful perusal of all 
who are interested in the solution of 
the most pressing political problems of 
the time. 


PRESIDENT ELIOT ON LIBERAL EDU- 
CATION. 

Tue address of the President of Har- 
vard University, entitled ‘‘ What is a 
Liberal Education?” delivered in Feb- 
ruary, before the members of the Johns 
Hopkins University, and published in 
full in “The Century’ magazine for 
June, is a contribution to the subject 
so able, advanced, and independent that 
it deserves to be carefully read by all 
who are concerned in higher educa- 
tional reforms. The article has great 
and peculiar value, because it has been 
produced under the pressure of grave 
responsibility, and presents views which 
have been subjected to every critical 
test preparatory to carrying them out 
in the eminent institution of which the 
author is the distinguished head. It is 
easy to talk at random, and indulge in 
exaggerated statements, but we have 
here the cautious and measured conclu- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


sions of a wise educational policy to be 
reduced to actual practice. But caution 
here does not mean timidity. There are 
a firmness of tone and’ a boldness of 
treatment in this paper which show 
that the author appreciates the urgency 
of the situation, and has perfect confi- 
dence in the strength of his case. This 
address is therefore to be commended to 
all the friends of educational improve- 
ment as having the force, weight, and se- 
riousness of an authoritative document, 
and for this reason we are glad to observe 
its appearance in a magazine of wide 
circulation and large influence, and we 
hope it may soon be separately issued 
and extensively distributed for effect- 
ive use in the quiet campaign of colle- 
giate reform. It is a fitting sequel and 
supplement to the Harvard address of 
Mr. Adams last year, which proved so 
efficient in arousing public attention to 
the deficient working of our American 
colleges, but it is a broader and more 
philosophical discussion of the defects 
and requirements of the higher educa- 
tion at the present time, and grapples 
with the wide question of there organi- 
zation of the university curriculum, and 
the necessity of making the so-called 
liberal education more thoroughly lib- 
eral than the traditional system that has 
come down to us from the past. 
President Eliot opens his argument 
with the remark that the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts, which is the cus- 
tomary evidence of a liberal education, 
needs to be defined anew, with an en- 
largement of its signification; and he 
shows, first, that, so far from being a 
settled, permanent, and unchangeable 
ideal for. all time, as the devotees of 
the classics are so fond of maintaining, 
it has already undergone change after 
change with the progress of learning, 
so that the studies essential to the 
bachelor’s degree, both in their subject- 
matter and in their disciplinary influ- 
ence, have been radically different in 
the centuries that have succeeded after 
it was instituted. Even mathematics, 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


which seems to be the very type of un- 
changeable method, he shows to have 
undergone nothing less than a revolu- 
tion, so that that form of it, which Dr. 
Whewell defended as ‘‘a permanent 
study,” has disappeared, and been re- 
placed by another mathematics of a 
totally different sort. The modern ana- 
lytical mathematics, ‘the only mathe- 
matics now in common use in the Unit- 
ed States,” is thus characterized by the 
Master of Trinity in contrast with the 
earlier geometry. He says: ‘“‘ We must 
hold also that the geometrical forms 
of mathematics must be especially pre- 
served and maintained as essentially 
requisite for this office (the study by 
which the reason of man is to be edu- 
cated); that analytical mathematics can 
in no way answer this purpose, and, if 
the attempt be made so to employ it, 
will not only be worthless, but highly 
prejudicial to men’s minds.” 

In regard to another unalterable 
element of the disciplinary curriculum, 
President Eliot remarks: “‘ It is obvious 
that the spirit and method in which 
Latin has been, for the most part, 
studied during the present century, 
are very different from the spirit and 
method in which it was studied in the 
preceding centuries. During this cen- 
tury it has been taught as a dead lan- 
guage (except, perhaps, in parts of Italy 
and Hungary), whereas it used to be 
taught as a living language, the com- 
mon speech of all scholars, both lay 
and clerical. Those advocates of cias- 
sical learning who maintain that a dead 
language must have more disciplinary 
virtue than a living one would hardly 
have been satisfied with the prevailing 
modes of teaching and learning Latin 
in any century before our own.” Even 
Greek, so lauded as “ an instrument for 
the perpetual training of the mind of 
the later generations,” has not always 
been a constituent of the accepted 
scheme of liberal education. ‘It took 
two hundred years for the Greek lan- 
guage and literature gradually to dis- 


413- 


place, in great part, the scholastic 
metaphysics, which, with scholastic 
theology, had been for generations re- 
garded as the main staple of liberal 
education; and this displacement was 
accomplished only after the same sort 
of tedious struggle by which the new 
knowledges of the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries are now winning their 
way to academic recognition. The 
revived classical literature was vigor- 
ously and sincerely opposed as frivo- 
lous, heterodox, and useless for disci- 
pline; just as natural history, chemistry, 
physics, and modern literatures are now 
opposed. The conservatives of that 
day used precisely the same arguments 
which the conservatives of to-day bring 
forward, only they were used against 
classical literature then, while now they 
are used in its support.” 

The sticklers for traditional immu- 
tability being thus disarmed, by show- 
ing that “‘new learning has repeatedly 
forced its way in times past to full 
academic standing, in spite of the oppo- 
sition of the conservative, and of the 
keener resistance of established teach- 
ers and learned bodies, whose standing 
is always supposed to be threatened by 
the rise of new sciences,” President 
Eliot proceeds to point out the impera- 
tive necessity of still further important 
changes that shall bring university and 
college studies into completer harmony 
with the present state of knowledge 
and the demands of modern life. The 
ground taken is thus broadly stated: 
“To the list of studies which the six- 
teenth century called liberal, I would 
therefore add as studies of equal rank, 
English, French, German, history, po- 
litical economy, and natural science, 
not one of which can be said to have 
existed in mature form when the defi- 
nition of liberal education, which is 
still in force, was laid down. The 
claims of these studies are taken up 
separately; it is shown how widely 
and grossly they are neglected, and 


their right to coequal recognition 


414 


with older studies is argued with great 
force and entire conclusiveness. As an 
example of the vigor with which the 
claims of these several subjects are pre- 
sented, we quote what President Eliot 
says about the study of English: 


The first subject which, as I conceive, is 
entitled to recognition as of equal academic 
value or rank with any subject now most 
honored, is the English language and litera- 
ture. When Greek began to revive in Eu- 
rope, English was just acquiring a literary 
form; but, when Greek had won its present 
rank among the liberal arts, Shakespeare had 
risen, the English language was formed, and 
English literature was soon to become the 
greatest of modern literatures. How does it 
stand now, with its immense array of poets, 
philosophers, historians, commentators, crit- 
ics, satirists, dramatists, novelists, and ora- 
tors? It can not be doubted that English 
literature is beyond all comparison the am- 
plest, most various, and most splendid litera- 
ture which the world has seen; and it is 
enough to say of the English language that it 
is the language of that literature. Greek 
literature compares with English as, Homer 
compares with Shakespeare—that is, as in- 
fantile with adult civilization. It may fur- 
ther be said of the English language, that it 
is the native tongue of nations which are pre- 
eminent in the world by force of character, 
enterprise, and wealth, and whose political 
and social institutions have a higher moral 
interest and greater promise than any which 
mankind has hitherto invented. To the 
original creations of English genius are to be 
added translations into English of all the 
masterpieces of other literatures, sacred and 
profane. It is a very rare scholar who has 
not learned much more about the Jews, the 
Greeks, or the Romans through English than 
through Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. 

_ And now, with all this wonderful treasure 
within reach of our youth, what is the posi- 
tion of American schools and colleges in re- 
gard to teaching English? Has English lit- 
erature the foremost place in the programmes 
of schools? By no means; at best only a 
subordinate place, and in many schools no 
place at all. Does English take equal rank 
with Greek or Latin in our colleges? By no 
means; not in the number and rank of the 
teachers, nor in the consideration in which 
the subject is held by faculty and students, 
nor in the time which may be devoted to it 
by a candidate fora degree. Until within a 
few years the American colleges made no 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


demand upon candidates for admission in re- 
gard to knowledge of English; and, now that 
some colleges make a small requirement in 
English, the chief result of the examinations - 
is to demonstrate the woful ignorance of their 
own language and literature which prevails 
among the picked youth of the country. 
Shall we be told, as usual, that the best way 
to learn English is to study Latin and Greek ? 
The answer is, that the facts do not corrobo- 
rate this improbable hypothesis. American 
youth in large numbers study Latin and 
Greek, but do not thereby learn English. 
Moreover, this hypothesis is obviously inap- 
plicable to the literatures. Shall we also be 
told, as usual, that no linguistic discipline 
can be got out of the study of the native lan- 
guage? How, then, was the Greek mind 
trained in language? Shall we be told that 
knowledge of English literature should be 
picked up without systematic effort? The 
answer is, first, that, as a matter of fact, this 
knowledge is not picked up by American 
youth ; and, secondly, that there never was 
any good reason to suppose that it would be, 
the acquisition of a competent knowledge of 
English literature being not an easy but a 
laborious undertaking for an average youth— 
not a matter of entertaining reading, but of 
serious study. Indeed, there is no subject in 
which competent guidance and systematic 
instruction are of greater value. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


THE Past aND Present or Potiticat Econ- 
omy. By Ricuarp T. Ey, Ph.D. Balti- 
more: N. Murray. Pp. 64. Price, 35 
cents, 

Tats is a contribution to the “ Johns 
Hopkins University Studies in Historical 
and Political Science,” edited by Herbert B. 
Adams, and constitutes No, III of the sec- 
ond series. The scheme of publication is 
an important one, but it contains no con- 
tribution more valuable than this mono- 
graph on the present condition of political 
economy by Dr. Ely. 

There is unquestionably a good deal of 
confusion of mind among general readers 
in regard to the present condition of the 
so-called science of economics. While the 
subject continues to rank, as it has long 
ranked, as a branch of science with its ac- 
credited text-books, and its status in the 
curriculum of higher collegiate study, on the 
other hand many articles have latterly ap- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


peared in the graver reviews questioning 
the soundness of its theories, the validity 
of its principles, and the trustworthiness of 
its guidance.-A reaction has set in against 
the old forms of economical doctrine, which 
long passed current, and there are many 
who will be glad to understand the meaning 
of it. Is there no such thing as a science 
of political economy in the established sense 
of the term science? Are there no ascer- 
tainable laws in the economical division of 
social phenomena? Is political economy a 
legitimate but still an imperfect science ; 
and are the controversies that have arisen 
over many of its doctrines but the necessary 
stages of its further and higher develop- 
ment ? 

In this perplexity of inquiry, Dr. Ely 
comes to give us an account of the situa- 
tion, to trace the history of the subject, to 
show the changes that it has undergone, 
and report upon its present attitude in the 
world of thought. We do not understand 
him as denying the possibility or even the 
present existence of such a science, but he 
assumes that diversion from the old views 
has proceeded so far, and become so dis- 
tinctive, as to give rise to a new school, 
which aims to rival and replace the older 
expositions of the subject. He is an ad- 
herent of the new school, and of course, so 
far as that implies, a disbeliever in the old 
school, and, at the same time that he informs 
us, with undoubted fairness, of the features 
of contrast between them, he is also a 
strenuous advocate of the one and an ad- 
versary of the other. 

The nomenclature of these parties who 
represent different views of political econo- 
my has become quite copious, and a refer- 


ence to it will throw some light on the- 


distinctive doctrines of the opposing par- 
tisans. The political economy which may 
be said to have originated with Adam 
Smith, and which was subsequently further 
developed by Malthus, Ricardo, Senior, and 
James and John Mill, is known as “the old 
school,” and, as it originated in England, 
“the English school.” With reference to 
the authority and wide acceptance of its 
teachings, it is referred to also as “ the or- 
thodox school” and “the classical school” ; 
and, as some of the most vigorous of its 
propagandists had their headquarters at 


415° 


Manchester, it has been called “the Man- 
chester school,” while, with reference to its 
predominant method of inquiry, it has also 
been termed “the deductive school.” 

The rival system of political economy, 
which now claims attention as a “new 
school,” is declared by Dr. Ely to have 
originated in Germany about 1850, being 
represented by three young German pro- 
fessors, Hildebrand, Knies, and Roscher ; 
it is therefore known as “the German 
school.” Protesting against the deductive 
character of the English political economy, 
and asserting induction to be the proper 
basis of economical method, it is known 
as “the inductive school”; while to bring 
the subject into rank with politics, jurispru- 
dence, and theology, which are pursued by 
the historical method, the Germans desig- 
nate it by perhaps its most characteristic 
title, “the historical school.” It is claimed 
also that the new method is “ statistical,” 
“experimental,” and even “ physiological ” 
—“to call attention to the fact that it does 
for the social body what physiology does for 
our animal bodies.” 

Dr. Ely devotes the first forty pages of 
his monograph to the older political econo- 
my, dividing his statement into several sec- 
tions. Section I, “Introductory,” offers 
some general remarks on the growing evi- 
dence of the unsatisfactoriness of the po- 
litical economy of Adam Smith, and his 
English followers. Section II, “The Old 
School,” pursues the same line of thought, 
with some critical examination of the lead- 
ing doctrines that have characterized the 
English political economy. In Section III, 
“The Attractions of Economic Orthodoxy,” 
Dr. Ely points out how, from the simplicity 
of the system, it was fitted to take hold of 
men’s minds while they knew nothing of the 
real complexities and formidable difficulties 
of the subject. Because of its narrowness 
and deductive character, there came also to 
be great faith in the fundamental proposi- 
tions of the science which were regarded as 
permanent truths ; while the system was 
commended to the governing powers in 
state and society because things were to be 
left to themselves, and “no exertion, no 
sacrifice, was required on their part to alle- 
viate the sufferings of the lower classes.” 
In Section IV Dr. Ely discusses the “ Merits 


416 


of the Old School,” which he recognizes 
were great, independently of the ccrrect- 
ness of its doctrines. It did vast service as 
the pioneer in this field of research, and on 
this point we quote Dr. Ely’s words: “ Fur- 
ther, the present political economy in all 
parts of the world grew out of the classical 
political economy, and the former can not 
be comprehended until the latter has been 
mastered. It was, indeed, efforts to master, 
extend, and perfect the older school, as well 
as other causes, like later developments of 
industrial life, which gradually led to the 
most recent economic investigation. Nor 
does any one now doubt the continued and 
all-pervading—even if not all-controlling— 
influence of these motive powers which fur- 


nish Ricardo, Mill, and Senior, with their, 


major premises; but this fact was not un- 
derstood before the coryphei of the older 
political economy elucidated it, and they de- 
serve great credit for what may be fairly 
termed their discoveries. It was, for exam- 
ple, a service of no mean order to point out 
all the ramifications of self-interest in eco- 
nomic life, to set in order the phenomena 
explained by this principle, and to show 
how it prompts men to the most diverse 
deeds, which, undertaken without a view to 
the welfare of others, nevertheless redound 
to the common good. And it must be con- 
fessed that no single principles have been 
discovered by the German school, which 
throw such a flood of light on the multi- 
farious phenomena of economic life as do, 
for example, the Ricardian theory of rent 
and the Malthusian doctrine of population.” 

Having made these concessions, Dr. Ely 
proceeds elaborately in Section V to discuss 
“The Decline and Fall of the Old School.” 
He objects, first, ‘that the whole spirit of 
its practical activity was negative.” He at- 
tacks the doctrine of laissez faire, which he 
alleges grew out of that negative system, 
and has turned out to be a total failure. 
“Tt never held at any time in any country, 
and no maxim ever made a more complete 
Jfiasco, when the attempt was seriously made 
to apply it in the state.” His chief illus- 
trations of the break-down of this doctrine 
are education and the English factory sys- 
tem. He next arraigns “another favorite 
notion of the older economists, and one 
which leads to great hardship in real life, 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


that taxes are shifted so as to be divided 
fairly between different employments in 
which capital is engaged.” He then con- 
demns “the supposition that self-interest 
is the chief force of economic life,” which 
he maintains to be the leading premise of the 
English school. The doctrine of “ equality 
of wages” is attacked as an error of the old 
economists, as is also the idea “ of the natu- 
ral laws of political economy,” and the prin- 
ciple of “supply and demand.” 

We can not give the reasonings by which 
the older political economy is impeached in 
these several particulars, but their enumer- 
ation will suffice to inform the reader some- 
what of the nature and extent of the indict- 
ment against the old system by which it is 
to be discredited and put aside to make 
place for another system. 

In Section VI the new school is taken 
up and its various claims presented. Chief 
among these are that facts and statistics are 
to be more studied, that there is to be greater 
caution in theorizing, and especially in the 
use of deduction; and, above all, that the 
subject is to be dealt with historically. It 
seems to be denied that there are any prin- 
ciples of political economy to be taken as 
fundamental or universal, or as fitted to 
form the body of a science to be generally 
accepted like other sciences. The subject 
is said to involve changed conditions and 
constantly changing policy. “It is found 
that the political economy of to-day is not 
the political economy of yesterday, while 
the political economy of Germany is not 
identical with that of England or America. 
It is on this account that knowledge of his- 
tory is absolutely essential to the political 
economist.” 

Now, while Dr. Ely’s statements of the 
general case are most interesting and in- 
structive, we can hardly acquiesce in the 
validity of his argument. Much of his criti- 
cism of the older political economy may be 
taken as well-based and wholesome, while 
his argument is overdone. We may freely 
concede that the earlier expositions of po- 
litical economy were imperfect, and that 
much of its subsequent literature is open 
to objection. But science is self-corrective 
in time, and the labor of generations is 
necessary for the development of its prin- 
ciples, especially if they are of a complex 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


kind, and dependent upon the advance of 
other sciences, But the foundations of the 
old political economy were well laid; the 
method was broad, valid, and as productive 
of important results as research in any 
other field. The correctness of the pro- 
cedures has been attested by the discover- 
ies of economic laws, worked out, if not into 
their final forms, at least into such clear- 
ness and certainty as to give them value for 
practical guidance. Granting that there is 
much need for revision, amendment, en- 
largement, what is this but the common 
condition of all progressive knowledge ? 
To speak of the “decline and fall” of the 
English school of political economy savors 
of exaggeration, and seems no more proper 
than to speak of the decline and fall of any 
other branch of science when its errors are 
discovered, and it passes to a new stage of 
its development. 

Dr. Ely, as we have seen, charges that 
the whole spirit of the old school is nega- 
tive. “It was powerful to tear down, but 
it did not even make an attempt to build 
up.” Yet in the-department of science 
what can we mean by “building up” if it 
be not the organization and analysis of 
facts, the derivation of principles, and the 
establishment of a connected body of truths 
as accurate and verifiable as the nature of 
the phenomena and the condition of knowl- 
edge will admit. Is not this in the highest 
sense constructive work, and, making allow- 
ance for the necessary imperfections of the 
earlier stages of inquiry, it can not be intel- 
ligently denied that the English school of 
economists have established a body of posi- 
tive truths which can never be subverted, 
although they may be much further unfold- 
ed. We think, indeed, that Dr. Ely’s accu- 
sation against the English school may be 
turned with far greater propriety against 
the German school, which has made no dis- 
coveries, constructed no system, worked out 
no generalizations, and whose main stock 
in trade appears to consist in its attempts 
to demolish what the English economists 
have built up. 

We gather from Dr. Ely’s argument that 
a very confusing and also a most mischiev- 
ous error pervades the teachings of the new 
school—it does not discriminate between 
science and art, between economical princi- 


VOL. xxv.—27 


417, 


ples and laws and the art of practical poli- 
tics. The investigation of phenomena, the 
establishment of their relations, and the der- 
ivation of principles, is a sufficiently large 
subject to oceupy distinctive attention, and 
science proper ceases when this important 
work is done. The results gained will be 
valuable in application, but this is a sepa- 
rate field of effort. Law-making may be 
helped by science, but to rank it as itself a 
part of economic science confuses important 
distinctions. That the German school should 
favor paternalism in government, and legis- 
lative interference with the business life of 
the people, should magnify the state, belit- 
tle individualism, and question the doctrine 
of natural human rights, is what we are pre- 
pared to expect, but when all this is put for- 
ward as political economy, and a warrant 
for the installation of a “new school” to 
replace a fallen system, the case seems 
somewhat strained. It is not so easy to 
take leave of the older idea of legitimate 
science in this field of thought. And yet 
the tendency of government to encroach 
upon the liberty of citizens, and regulate 
the private affairs of industry and business, 
although as old as political tyranny, is now 
coolly put forth as the discovery of a great 
master of political economy. Dr. Ely says 
that “Adolph Wagner, the Corypheus of 
German economists,” has discovered “ the 
law of increasing functions of government ” 
—“has shown how government has taken 
upon itself function after function, and how 
the operations of government trench more 
and more upon the domain of private indus- 
try.” If the reader will here refer to what 
is said upon page 302 of this “ Monthly,” he 
will get further light upon the new school 
claim of what it considers a discovery in 
the progress of political economy. 

Dr. Ely objects to the English school, 
not only that it is deficient in facts and 
data, indulges too much in theory and neg- 
lects history, but also that it is narrow and 
ignores the wide range of social phenomena 
with which it is connected; and he refers 
to Professor Ingham’s address, in which it 
is maintained that political economy must 
in future be considered from the point of 
view of social science, or as a branch of the 
more comprehensive subject of sociology. 
But, granting that the old system is more 


418 


or less open to these objections, do they 
really stand against the English school of 
to-day, and has the German school met 
them in any adequate or systematic way ? 
History is, of course, important; but schol- 
ars may dig in history to the end of time 
to no purpose if they can not reduce their 
results to organized knowledge. We have 
the living facts all before us and all around 
us, open to immediate observation, to be 
directly studied in their actual relations, 
and, until the positive and palpable realities 
of experience are first mastered and reduced 
to valid method, it is useless to go back into 
distant ages to study these same phenomena 
in the vague representations of a history 
written in utter ignorance of the bare fact 
of the existence of such a subject as politi- 
cal economy. As well turn the anatomist 
away from his actual dissections to get help 
from history by the study of old Arabian 
treatises, or cutting up Egyptian mummies. 
History is important; but it is of very sub- 
ordinate importance, and must be preceded 
by the scientific investigation of actual facts 
and laws wherever these are accessible to 
study. German erudition may add to the 
rubbish-heaps of chaotic lore regarding the 
economic life of ancient peoples; but the 
question remains how German scholars are 
grappling with the problems of present eco- 
nomic experience. We fail to find evidence 
that they are making much headway in this 
direction. Can it be that they have fled to 
history, “‘in order to ally themselves with 
the great reformers in politics, in jurispru- 
dence, and in theology,” because of incom- 
petence to deal with this vast subject as it 
stands in our modern civilization by the 
strictly scientific method? Whatever view 
we may take of the extent of the law of evo- 
lution, it is at any rate the key of human 
progress and of social history. Has the 
historical school recognized it? On the 
contrary, we must look to England for the 
thinkers who have made this vast step 
in the advance of historical method. The 
monumental work, which complies with all 
Dr. Ely’s requirements, which consists whol- 
ly of systematized data and abstains entirely 
from theory, which considers economical 
facts in connection with all the other ele- 
ments of society,.which classifies the com- 
prehensive results of investigation with the 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


simple view of drawing scientific conclu- 
sions, and which is, moreover, grounded 
upon the principle of historical development, 
is an English enterprise—a system of de- 
scriptive sociology representing the elements 
of socicty in seventy-two communities, past 
and present, civilized and uncivilized, and 
treating of civilizations extinct, decayed, and 
still flourishing. But this valuable con- 
tribution to comparative sociology, though 
prepared with immense labor from his own 
point of view, and making an epoch in the 
progress of social science, is not even re- 
ferred to in Dr, Ely’s monograph, » 


Practica, Essays. By ALEXANDER Baty, 
LL.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 
Pp, 838. Price, $1.50. 

Tuose who are familiar with the intel- 
lectual individuality of Professor Bain and 
the range of his studies will be prepared 
to form some idea of the scope and char- 
acter of this volume of essays, which is in 
great part a reprint of articles first contrib- 
uted to reviews. But the title of the vol- 
ume indicates a characteristic which might 
not readily be inferred from the quality of 
Professor Bain’s previous works, many of 
which are scientific and speculative, while 
the papers which make up this book are of 
an eminently practical kind. There is much 
novelty and originality in many of the sug- 
gestions made, but the topics selected, and 
their mode of treatment, will be found use- 
ful and helpful to a large number of readers. 
The first two essays, on “Common Errors 
of the Mind,” are especially of this practi- 
cal character, and derive interest from the 
thorough psychological preparation of the 
writer. The next two essays have an edu- 
cational bearing; the one on “ Competitive 
Examinations,” and the other on the “ Clas- 
sical Controversy.” The fifth article is of 
particular practical interest to students as 
delineating the mode of treating philosophi- 
cal questions in debating societies. Dr. Bain 
considers ‘The University Ideal” in his 
sixth article; and the seventh, which is per- 
haps the most interesting of all, is a chap- 
ter omitted from the author’s “Science of 
Education,” and is mainly devoted to the 
methods of self-education by means of 
books. This essay abounds in instructive 
suggestions. The eighth article is on ‘‘ Secta- 
rian Creeds and Subscription to Articles,” 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


The subject is English, and is handled with- 
out reservation. The concluding paper of 
the volume is devoted to the procedure of 
deliberative bodies, and what may be called 
the economics of business in such associa- 
tions; and in this country of multitudinous 
Legislatures, and where the complaint of 
non-accomplishment of deliberative work is 
so general, the hints here given will be found 
important. 


James AND Lucretia Morr: Lire anp Ler- 
rers. Edited by their Granddaughter, 
Anna Davis Hattowett. With Por- 
traits. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
Pp. 556. Price, $2. 

Aspe from the charming interest of this 
volume as a biographical study, it will be 
found instructive as a record of social ex- 
periences during the last half-century that 
will be increasingly appreciated in the fu- 
ture. It might properly be called “The 
Life and Times of Lucretia Mott,” because 
it deals fully with her public influence so 
as to become a valuable chapter in the his- 
tory of a peculiar religious denomination, 
which is closely connected with the great 
anti-slavery reform that was full of such 
eventful issues to the country. 

The history of the Society of Friends, 
when it comes to be philosophically written, 
will be full of instructive interest. That the 
denomination is declining, is very well 
known; but it has been a power in the reli- 
gious and social life of the community, and 
has unquestionably exerted a liberalizing in- 
fluence upon the stringent dogmatism of the 
more orthodox denominations. Mystical, 
devout, narrow in many things, rejecting re- 
ligious forms, and yet tenaciously clinging 
to religious form, the Society of Friends has 
still been more protestant than the Protes- 
tants, and it was in advance of most other 
sects in working free from the iron dogmas 
of the old theology. The split that occurred 
in the society in this country about 1828, in 
which a large division of the membership 


organized into an independent society un-. 


der the leadership of Elias Hicks, was but 
the result of a growing liberality in the 
bosom of the denomination. That divis- 
ion, moreover, precipitated the question as 
to how far it was justifiable for Friends 
to enter into co-operation with the outside 
world for philanthropic objects. The so- 


419 


ciety had always been deeply pervaded by 
the anti-slavery feeling, and had entered 
its formal protests against the system of 
African oppression in a much more em- 
phatie way than other religious denomina- 
tions. There was, therefore, a strong sen- 
timent within the society that drew it into 
sympathy with the anti-slavery movement 
which began to take definite and organized 
shape in the North about 1830. But, not- 
withstanding the traditional impulses and 
vigorous tendency of the body to join in the 
general movement, there grew up an active 
policy of resistance against new alliances, 
and a determination to hold the denomina- 
tion within its old sectarian limits of exclu- 
siveness, under which it preferred to bear 
its testimonies in its own way. It was in 
this crisis of the denominational affairs that 
Lucretia Mott came forward upon the scene, 
and bore that conspicuous and influential 
part in bringing the Society of Friends into 
active participation in the anti-slavery strug- 
gle which has made her reputation, and for 
which she will be remembered in the future. 

To all interested in these reminiscences 
the present volume is peculiarly attractive. 
Its chief subject must be deemed fortunate 
in her biographer; for, while the book is a 
loving tribute to personal excellences, and 
a vivid and charming delineation of char- 
acter, it has been written with a clear ap- 
preciation of the importance of faithfully 
representing the circumstances and condi- 
tions in which Lucretia Mott accomplished 
her public work. A large portion of the vol- 
ume consists of letters which have an his- 
toric interest as throwing light upon ques- 
tions, motives, tendencies, and states of 
mind of individuals, and of masses, in the 
stirring and exciting times of the early anti- 
slavery conflict. Lucretia Mott was first of 
all, and in her whole nature, a reformer, but 
she was also from the beginning to the end 
a Quaker, and that she was a good deal of 
a politician, or at all events of a tactician, 
is shown by the shrewd and skillful course 
by which she succeeded in maintaining her 
position in the society in a time of revolu- 
tion, and when there was a strong disposi- 
tion to disown her, as many other prominent 
abolitionists were disowned because of their 
affiliations with non-religious societies. Her 
liberality of thought in religious matters was 


420 


an early trait, and is marked throughout 
her career. She was sympathetic with ad- 
vanced ideas, and, although neither philo- 
sophie nor hardly original in her bent of 
mind, she had an intuitive sympathy with 
the pioneers of liberal inquiry, and always 
spoke of their work with cordial and hearty 
appreciation. We congratulate the author 
of the book on the admirable performance 
of her agreeable task. 


Property AND Proeress, or a Brief Inquiry 
into Contemporary Social Agitation in 
England. By W. H. Matiock. New 
York: G, P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 248. 
Price, $1. 


WHatEVER we may think of Mr. Mal- 
lock as a philosopher aiming to get at the 
valuation of life, or as a constructor of so- 
cial hypotheses, we must grant that at any 
rate he is a brilliant critic and an effective 
controversialist. In this volume he over- 
hauls the peculiar socialistic doctrines of 
Mr. Henry George and Mr. H. M. Hyndman, 
exposing their fallacies and characterizing 
their influence with much acuteness of rea- 
soning and equal bluntness of speech. Those 
interested in these subjects will find the book 
more than readable. It consists of articles 
first contributed to the “ Quarterly Review,” 
and reprinted without substantial alteration. 
The writer’s aim in the discussion is thus 
stated: “One of the principal features by 
which Continental politics have been, during 
modern times, distinguished from those of 
England, has, during the last few years, de- 
veloped itself in England also. I refer to 
the attempts being now made by extreme 
radicals on the one hand, and avowed so- 
cialists on the other, to identify politics in 
the minds of the poorer classes with some 
wholesale seizure, in their behalf, on the 
property, or on part of the property of the 
richer ; to represent the accomplishment of 
such a seizure as the main task incumbent 
on a really popular government, and to 
madden the people with a conviction that, 
until the seizure is made, they will be suf- 
fering a chronic wrong. 

“When we consider the squalor and 
misery that exist in the heart of our civili- 
zation, it is not surprising that language of 
this kind should sound to many like a new 
social gospel. The aim of the present volume 
is to examine, accurately and calmly, into 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the exact amount of truth underlying this 
appeal to the sympathies, and to enable the 
reader to judge whether our contemporary 
social agitators are men of science, reveal- 
ing to us new social possibilities, or merely 
quacks beguiling us with new delusions— 
whether, in other words, they are the best 
friends of the people, or whether they are 
practically their worst and their most insidi- 
ous enemies.” 


Tue Srory or THE Coup p’Erar. By M. 
pE Maupas. Translated by ALBert D. 
Vanpam. New York: D. Appleton & 
Co. Pp. 487. Price, $1.75. 

Tue history of the coup d’état, the great 
crime by which Louis Napoleon convert- 
ed France from a republic into an empire, 
will ever be of memorable interest, from 
the character and consequences of the 
event ; but the main interest of the present 
volume is derived from the fact that it is 
written by one who was not only himself in 
the affair, but one of its master-spirits. M. 
de Maupas was chief of the police in Paris, 
and as such had control of the operations 
by which the usurpation of Louis Napoleon 
was carried out. It may be that there is 
not much in the volume in the way of reve- 
lation, or that was not more or less known 
before, but it is an important contribution 
to the historic literature of that period, 
from its detailed, circumstantial, and sys- 
tematic account of the transaction. 


THE ELipricon; AN EXrosiITION OF THE 
Eartn’s ASTRONOMY AND THE EQuaTIoN 
or Tims. By J. L. Natsu, B.A. Two- 
page Chart. New York: J. L. Naish, 
48 East Twelfth Street. 

Tus chart is an attempt, by means of 
graphic diagrams and an explanatory text, 
to make clear the difficult astronomical 
problem of the equation of time. It con- 
tains on one side six representations of the 
terrestrial and celestial sphere, intended to 
illustrate the relations of the ecliptic and 
the equator, motion in the ecliptic and in 
the equator, and mean and apparent time; 
and on the other side a section-view of the 
celestial sphere as regarded from the north 
pole of the ecliptic—the ellipticon—on 
which are given the position of the sun, the 
equation of time, and other elements of the 
problem, for each day of the year. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


HisTory OF THE LITERATURE OF THE SCANDI- 
NAvVIAN Nort. By Frepertk W. Horn, 
Ph. D. Revised by the author, and 
translated by Rasmus B. ANDERSON, 
Chicago: 8. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 500. 
Price, $3.50. 

Tue inhabitants of Norway, Sweden, 
Denmark, and Iceland once spoke a common 
language, and were closely alike in manners 
and customs. Hence the remnants of their 
early compositions which have been pre- 
served in writing are treated in this work as 
forming a single literature. After giving an 
account of the ancient collections of poems 
known as the Elder and Younger Edda, the 
author goes on to trace the development of 
the Skaldic poetry, and follows this with an 
account of the Sagas. As the present lan- 
guage of Iceland has varied less from the 
original tongue than either the Swedish or 
the Dano-Norwegian, an account of the 
modern Icelandic literature naturally follows 
the chapter on the Old Norse. In the sec- 
ond division of the book, the literatures of 
Denmark and Norway are taken up together ; 
the first two chapters trace their progress 
through the “Middle Age” and the “Age 
of the Reformation.” Then follows “The 
Period of Learning” (1560-1700), char- 
acterized by the supremacy of the Latin 
language and of theological learning. The 
next fifty years are described as the time of 
Holberg. Of this powerful writer of come- 
dies the author says: “ He not only cleared 
the ground, and winnowed away a vast 
amount of rubbish which had hindered the 
development of intellectual life, but, what 
was of chief importance, the barriers were 
thrown down which had for centuries sepa- 
rated the people from the learned class, and 
which the Reformation, with its fresh breath 
sweeping through the northern lands, had 
not been able to remove.” The period 
from 1750 to 1800 is called “The Age of 
Enlightenment,” during which appeared 
Johannes Ewald, whom the author rates as 
“one of the greatest lyric poets of the 
North—perhaps even the very greatest.” 
With the present century begins the period 
of modern Danish literature, whose foremost 
representative is Oehlenschlager. During 
this time have appeared also the well-known 
names, H. C. Andersen, Paluden-Miiller, 
Oersted, Steenstrup, Rask, and Madvig. 
The literature of Norway since 1814, when 


421 


that country obtained its independence, is 
treated in a separate chapter. In Swedish 
literary history, after the period of the Ref- 
ormation, came “The Stjernhjelm Period” 
(1640-1740), which was the time of “Swe- 
den’s golden age.” Then follow the “ Dalin 
Age” and the “ Gustavian Period,” bring- 
ing the history to 1800. Other Swedish 
writers of the present century to whom 
prominence is given are Almquist, Fredrika 
Bremer, Rydberg, Von Braun, and Rune- 
berg. There is appended to the volume a 
comprehensive catalogue by Thorwald Sol- 
berg, of the Library of Congress, of impor- 
tant books and magazine articles relating to 
the Scandinavian countries, their language . 
and mythology, which have appeared in 
English. 


Lire AND Times oF THE Ricut Hon. Joun 
Briext. By Wii114M Rosertson, author 
of “Old and New Rochdale.” London, 
Paris, and New York: Cassell & Co., 
Limited. Pp. 588. Price, $2.50. 
“One anecdote of a man is worth a 

volume of biography,” said Channing; and, 

in conformity to this dictum, the author’s 
plan has been, “ besides resetting gems that 
adorn Mr. Bright’s speeches, to weave into 
the biography interesting information which 
is not generally known, and which has been 
collected especially and solely for this work.” 

The extracts from speeches are numerous, 

embracing Mr. Bright’s utterances on a wide 

range of subjects, from the temperance 
question, on which he made his first pub- 
lic speech at the age of nineteen, to the 

land-troubles in Ireland. The book is a 

very readable account of the career of one 

of the most highly esteemed of living states- 
men. 


Tue EvipENceE For Evo.vtion IN THE HisTo- 
RY OF THE Extinct MamMatia. ByE.D, 
Corr, of Philadelphia, Pa. Printed at 
the Salem Press, Salem, Mass. Pp. 19. 
THIS essay comprises the substance of 

a paper read before the American Associa- 

tion at its Minneapolis mecting last year. 

It is a presentment of the subject, made by 

an author whose extensive acquaintance 

with the extinct mammalia of our continent 

—the remains of which he has largely con- 

tributed in bringing to light—makes him pe- 

culiarly competent to deal with it. 


422 


Locat GovERNMENT AND FREE ScHOOLs IN 
SoutH CAROLINA. 
AGE. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni- 

- versity. Pp. 40. Price, 40 cents, 
Tuts is the twelfth of the valuable series 

of “Johns Hopkins University Studies in 
Historical and Political Science.” It traces 
the development of the peculiar political 
system by which South Carolina was dis- 
tinguished before the war from the aristo- 
cratic plan of the original settlement in the 
province, under the influence of Locke’s 
“Fundamental Constitutions,” as a county 
palatine, with its lords proprietors, pala- 
tines, and its nobility of landgraves and 
cassiques. This scheme was short-lived, 
and gave way to the parish organizations 
in the coast country. Afterward the upper 
country was settled, and evolved a county 
system of local government. Then the 
county system and the parish system 
clashed, and the district system, which last- 
ed till after the war, was formed for the 
whole State. This, in turn, was remodeled, 
and the name “district” was changed to 
“county” after the war. The second part 
of the pamphlet is devoted to the history 
of “Free Schools in South Carolina,” with 
the design of showing that the State had 
earlier and more liberal provisions for free 
education than it has been supposed to have 
had. 


Vorcr, Sone, anp Sprvecu: A Practical 
Guide for Singers and Speakers. By 
Lennox Brownz, F, R. C. 8. Ed., author 
of “The Throat and its Diseases,” 
“Medical Hints on the Singing Voice,” 
etc., and Emi Breanxg, author of “The 
Mechanism of the Human Voice,” etc. 
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 
322. Price, $4.50. 

Tais work deals mainly with the physi- 
ology and hygiene and the acoustics of the 
voice. The need of a scientific basis for 
the production, cultivation, and preserva- 
tion of the voice is insisted on in the first 
chapter, and strikingly illustrated by direc- 
tions given to pupils by some authorities, 
For instance, “To focus the sound; to di- 
rect the voice toward the roof of the mouth 
—against the hard palate—against the up- 
per front teeth—into the head—to the bot- 
tom of the chest; to lean the tone against 
the eyes! to sing all over the face!” The 


f 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


stated, after which the anatomy of the vocal 


By B. James Ram- | organ is described at length, and the respir- 


atory action is explained. Under vocal hy- 
giene, the proper mode of breathing is de- 
scribed, and cases are given which show the 
loss of vocal power resulting from a waist 
deformed by constriction. A chapter on the 
laryngoscope, its use, and teachings, fol- 
lows. Voice-culture is taken up under the 
headings “ Breathing, Attack, Resonance, 
Flexibility, and Registers.” Directions are 
given for the “ Daily Life of a Voice-User,” 
and there are chapters on “ Ailments of the 
Voice-User ” and “‘ Defects of Speech.” As 
this work is the joint production of a vocal 
surgeon and a voice-trainer, who have been 
in the habit of collaborating in the treat- 
ment of patients and pupils, the authors 
believe that it possesses a completeness 
which is seldom attained by a specialist in 
a single department. The volume is illus- 
trated with photographs of the larynx and 
the soft palate in various positions, and 
with numerous woodcuts. 


Tue Gixrcitence: a Comedy Ballet in the 
Nahuatl-Spanish Dialect of Nicaragua, 
Edited by Danrez G. Brinton, A. M., 
M. D.- Philadelphia: D. G. Brinton. Pp. 
lii-94, Price, $2.50. 

Turs is the fourth volume of Dr. Brin- 
ton’s “ Library of Aboriginal American Lit- 
erature.” The play which is presented in 
it is the only specimen of the native Amer- 
ican comedy known to the editor. It is of 
comparatively recent origin, and is com- 
posed in a mixed dialect, a jargon of low 
Spanish and corrupt Aztec, or Nahuatl. It 
bears marks of its native composition in 
both its history and spirit, and illustrates 
the sort of humor popular with the tribes 
from whom it has been obtained, so that 
it is of considerable anthropological value. 
The piece is one of several kinds of bailes 
or dramatic dances common among the Na- 
huas or Aztecs of Nicaragua, and pictures 
the devices which an elder of the tribe em- 
ployed to escape the censure of the alguacil 
before whom he was brought up for disci- 
pline. Its chief literary character is a coarse, 
rollicking humor, and it contains some mu- 
sie of no little merit. The most valuable 
part of the book is the introduction, in 
which Dr. Brinton precedes the history and 


laws of sound bearing on the voice are next | a minute analysis and criticism of the play 


IITERARY NOTICES. 


with accounts of the Nahuas and Mangues 
of Nicaragua, their “bailes” or dramatic 
dances, and taeir musical instruments and 
a 


Tae Crncnona-Barxs. By Friepricn A. 
Fivuckieer, Ph. D., Professor in the Uni- 
versity of Strasburg, and author of 
“Pharmaceutical Chemistry.” Trans- 
lated by Freperick B. Power, Ph. D., 
Professor of Pharmacy and Materia 
Medica in the University of Wisconsin. 
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. 
Pp. 101. Price, $1.50. 


Tus treatise comprises a statement of 
the botanical position of the cinchonex, with 
descriptions of the most important species, 
an account of cinchona-culture and the col- 
lection of the barks, the varieties of bark, 
their appearance and structure, together 
with some statistics of the industry. In 
the section on the quantitative estimation 
of the alkaloids, the translation has a some- 
what more detailed description of the au- 
thor’s method of assay than was given in 
the original, and a more explicit account of 
the process of Squibb, as recently improved. 
The method of De Vrij has been added, and 
also his process forthe determination of 
erystallizable quinine in the mixed alka- 
loids, A history of the cinchona-barks fol- 
lows, and a list of about forty titles in the 
recent literature of the subject completes 
the volume. It is illustrated with eight 
lithographic plates and one woodcut. 


Screntiric Papers or THE Vassar Brorn- 
ERS’ INSTITUTE, AND TRANSACTIONS OF ITS 
Screntiric Section, 1881-1883. Le Roy 
C. Cooley, Ph. D., Chairman, Poughkeep- 
Ot. Fp. E48, 


Tue Vassar Brothers’ Institute was or- 
ganized in the spring of 1881, and the scien- 
tific section in June of the same year. The 
present volume of its Transactions embraces 
the proceedings of thirteen stated meetings 
up to April 18, 1883, with the chairman’s 
report of the work of the section, and nine 
papers on subjects of interest in various 
fields of science. The objects of the Insti- 
tute are to pursue such scientific researches 
as may come within the opportunities of its 
members, and to found a suitable muse- 
um. Its proceedings bear evidences of life 
and vigor. 


423. 


Tue GosrEL accorDING To Saint Matruew. 
Revised Version. Fonetic edishun, St. 
Louis: publisht bai T. R. Vickroy. Pp. 
88. Price, 50 cents. 

Tuts phonetic edition of Matthew is 
commended by its editor to those who have 
occasion to teach adults to read. The value 
for this purpose of print in which the use 
of letters is logical and uniform is attested 
by the superior readiness with which the 
reading of English has been taught in 
“‘Freedmen’s schools,” and is being taught 
to-day in certain schools of France from 
books in phonetic spelling. Dr. Vickroy 
explains in an appendix the values of the 
thirteen new letters which he uses. 


Tue Mepicat Directory oF PHILADELPHIA 
For 1884. Edited by Samvret B. Hop- 
pin, M.D. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, 
Son & Co. Pp. 205. Price, $1.50. 
Tus volume contains lists, arranged 

both alphabetically and by streets, of the 
physicians, homeeopathie physicians, den- 
tists, and druggists, of Philadelphia, with 
information in regard to the hospitals and 
other charitable institutions, medical col- 
leges, ambulance service, coroner, and quar- 
antine. It gives also the State regulations 
in regard to dissection, the registration of 
medical practitioners, and the registration 
of births, marriages, and deaths. 


BULLETIN oF THE PaiLosopntcaL Society oF 
Wasurtncton. G. K. Giizert, Secretary. 
Washington: Judd & Detweiler. Vol. 
VI. 1883. Pp. 168. 

Tue “Bulletin” is published by the co- 
operation of the Smithsonian Institution. 
The present volume contains the minutes of 
the society for 1883, and the minutes of the 
mathematical section from its organization 
to the close of the year. A number of 
valuable papers are contained in the vol- 
ume, among which we mention especially 
only the annual address of the President, J. 
W. Powell, on “ The Three Methods of Evo- 
lution.” 


D. Aprteton & Co. will publish shortly 
a volume by the author of “Conflict in Na- 
ture and Life,” entitled “Reforms, their 
Difficulties and Possibilities.” The pene- 
trating and judicial spirit exhibited in the 


424 


author’s first work will lead many readers 
to look to the promised volume with no 
little expectation. 


“ TuE Outlines of Psychology, with Special 
Reference to the Theory of Education,” by 
James Sully, now in the press of D. Apple- 
ton & Co., is the kind of book that has 
been long wanted by all who are engaged 
in the business of teaching and desire to 
master its principles. In the first place, it 
is an elaborate treatise on the human mind, 
of independent merit as representing the 
latest and best work of all schools of psy- 
chological inquiry. But of equal impor- 
tance, and what will be prized as a new 
and most desirable feature of a work on 
mental science, is the educational applica- 
tions that are made throughout in separate 
text and type, so that, with the explication 
of mental phenomena, there comes at once 
the application to the art of education. 


One of the most fascinating popular sci- 
entific books ever written is Dr, Charles C, 
Abbott’s “ Rambles about. Home,” soon to 
be issued by D. Appleton & Co. Readers of 
the early volumes of “The Popular Science 
Monthly ” know how interesting Dr. Abboit’s 
sketches are, and this book will surely im- 
pel many to spend their first leisure hours 
in the country in watching the animal life 
about them. 


Proressor Joun Trowpripvce, of Har- 
vard University, has written a text-book for 
schools, which D. Appleton & Co. have in 
preparation. It is entitled ‘“‘The New Phys- 
ics,” and admirably carries out the prin- 
ciples of the new education, in requiring 
the pupil to become familiar with the prop- 
erties of matter and the phenomena of force 
by performing experiments for himself. 


A NEw series of science text-books, each 
of which is the work of an able specialist, 
is being brought out by D. Appleton & Co. 
The “ Physiology,” by Roger S. Tracy, M.D., 
Sanitary Inspector of the New York City 
Health Department, and the “Chemistry,” 
by Professor F. W. Clarke, Chemist of the U. 
S. Geological Survey, are now ready. Be- 
fore September 1st will be issued the “ Zo- 
ology,” by C. F. Holder, and J. B. Holder, 
M. D., Curator of Zodlogy of the American 
Museum of Natural History, New York; 
and the “ Geology,” a new elementary book, 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


by Professor Joseph Le Conte, of the Uni- 
versity of California. Other volumes are to 
follow soon. 


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED, 


Proceedings, ete., of the Chautauqua Soci f 
History and Natural Science, Willian WwW. aides. 
son, Secretary. Jamestown, N. Y. Pp, 11, 


The Glacial Period in the Chautauqua Lake 
ie ae wt ray ree a. Jamestown, N. 

-: Chautauqua Society of History and tural 
Science. Pp. 13. ; ™ sf 


Massachusetts State Agricultura! Experiment 
Station. Bulletins No. 7, 8, and 9. Insects injuri- 
ous to the Apple; Fodder and Fodder Analysis ; 
Insects injurious to Farm and Garden Crops, Pp. 
12 each. 

Exhibition of Education at the World’s Indus- 
trial and Cotton Centennial Exposition. Prelimina- 

Circular. Washington: Government Printing- 


ry 
Office. Pp. 11. 


Transactions of the New York Academy of 
Sciences. Index to Vol. II], Albert R. Leeds, 
Corresponding Secretary, Hoboken, N. J. Pp. 18. 

Dictionary of the Action of Heat upon Certain 
Metallic Salts. J. W. Baird and Professor A. B. Pres- 
cott. New York: Bermingham & Co. Pp. 68, 


Reports of Division of Entomology, U. 8. De- 
partment of Agriculture. Washington: Goyern- 
ment Printing-Office. Pp. 102. 

Samuel Adams, the Man of the Town-Meeting. 
By James K. Hosmer. Baltimore: N. Marray. 
Pp. 60. Price, 35 cents. 


Physiographic Conditions of Minnesota Agri- 
culture, By Professor C. W. Hall. Minneapolis, 
Minn. Pp. 15, 

Zodlogical Society, Philadelphia. Twelfth Annual 
Reports. Pp. 25, with Plates. 

The Bible an Exact Science. By Philip T. West. 
Topeka, Kansas: George W. Crane & Co. Pp. 56. 

Alabama Weather Service, April, 1884, By R. 
H. Mills, Jr., Director, Auburn. Pp. 6, with Charts. 


The Exhalation of Ozone by Flowering Plants. 
By J.M. Anders, M.D., Ph. D. Pp. 14, 

Remarks on the Bag-Worm, pp. 88; Notes on 
North American Psyllide, pp. 12; Canker- Worms, 
pp. 82; The Army-Worm, pp. 63. By ©. V. Riley, 

h. D., Washington. 

Principal Characters of American Jurassic Dino- 
saurs; Parts VII and VIII. Pp. 8 and 12, with 
Plates, Principal Characters of American Creta- 
ceous Pterodactyls; Part I. Pp. 4, with Plate. A 
New Order of Extinct Jurassic Reptiles. PP. 1. 
by Professor O. ©. Marsh, Yale College, New 
Haven, Conn. 


= me New Theology. By the Rey. Philip 8. Moxom, 
'p. 20. 

On the Classification of the Sciences. By H. M. 
Stanley. London, Pp. 10. 

Wages and Trade in Manufacturing Industries 
in America andin Europe. By J.Schoenhof. New 
York: G, P, Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 25. 15 cents, 

Report of Bureau of Statistics, Treasu soe ah 
ment, U. 8., October-December, 1583, "Was ing- 
ton: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 160, 

Geology of the Lead and Zine Mining District of 
Cherokee County, Kansas. By Erasmus Haworth. 
Oskaloosa, Iowa : Herald Printing Co. Pp. 47. 

“ American Meteorological Journal,” nage“ 1884. 
Monthly. M. W. Harrington, Editor. etroit, 
Mich.: W. H. Burr & Co. Pp. 39. $8 a year. 

Fire-Proof Buildings with Wooden Beams and 
Girders and Dolman’s Dampers. New York: Will- 
iam H. Dolman. Pp, 13. 

On a Carboniferous Ammonite from Texas. By 
Professor Angelo Heilprin, Philadelphia. Pp, 8. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


“Home Science,” May, 1884. Monthly. New 

York: Selden R. Hopkins. Pp. 112. $2.50 a year. 

Report on the Cotton Production of Georgia. 

By R. H. Loughridge, Ph. D., Berkeley, Cal. Pp. 
1:4, with Lithological Maps. 

Recent Improvements in Astronomical Instru- 
ments. By Simon Newcomb. Washington: Goy- 
ernment Printing-Office. Pp. 28. 

Coefficients for correcting Planetary Elements. 
Pp. 48. Investigations of Corrections to Greenwich 
Planetary Observations. Pp. 56. Development of 
the Perturbative Function. Pp. 200. ashing- 
ton: Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department. 

Peabody Museum of American Archeology and 
Ethnology. Sixteenth and Seventeenth Annual 
Reports. Vol. Ill, Nos. 8 and 4. Cambridge, 
Mass. . 234, 

Archeological Institute of America. Reports 
7 84, Cambridge: John Wilson & Son. Pp. 

Geological History of Lake Lahontan, Nevada, 
By Israel Cook Russell. Washington: Govern- 
ment Printing-Office. Pp. 40. 

Synopsis of the Fishes of North America. (Bul- 
letin U.S. National Museum.) By David 8. Jordan 
and Charles H. Gilbert. Washington: Government 
Printing-Office. Pp. 1018. 

Beitrige zur Kenntniss der Kobalt-, Nickel- und 
Eisenkiese (Contributions to the Knowledge of Co- 
balt, Nickel, and Iron Gravels). By Leroy W. Mc- 
Cay, Freiberg, Saxony. 

Beitrige zur Anatomie Ancylus fluviatalis (O. F. 
Miller) and Ancylus lacustris (Geoffroy). (Contri- 
butions to the Anatomy of Ancylus, ete.). By Dr. 
Benjamin Sharp, of Philadelphia. Wirzburg, Ger- 
many. 

Medicinisch-Chirurgisches Correspondenz-Blatt 
fir Deutsch-Americanische Aerzte (Medical and 
Surgical Correspondence Leaf for German-Ameri- 
ean Physicians), Monthly. Dr. M. Hartwig, Buffalo, 
N.Y. Pp. 48. $2.50 a year. 

Property and Progress, by W. H. Mallock. New 
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 248. $1. 

Whirlwinds, Cyclones, and Tornadoes. By Will- 
iam Morris Davis. Boston: Lee & Shepard. New 
York: Charles ‘f. Dillingham. Pp. 90. 

The Book of the Beginnings. By R. Heber 
Newton. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 
811. 40 cents. 

Geological Excursions. By Alexander Winchell, 
LL. D. Chicago: 8. 0. Griggs & Co. Pp. 284. $1.50. 

Warren Colburn’s First Lessons (in Arithmetic). 
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 216. 35 
cents. 

Lecture Notes on General Chemistry. By John 
T. Stoddard, Ph. D. The New Metals. North- 
Ste Mass. : Gazette Publishing Company. Pp. 


Home and School Training. By Mrs. H. E. G. 
cag Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. Pp. 
192. 


Truths and Untruths of Evolution. By John B. 
Drury, D. D. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph 
&Co. Pp. 140. $1. 

Lectures on the Science and Art of Education. 
By Joseph Payne. New York: E. L. Kellogg & 

Pp. 256. $1. 

Fifth Avenue to Alaska. By Edward Pierre- 
pont. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 329, 
with Maps. $1.75. 

The Bible analyzed in Twenty Lectures. By 
John R. Kelso. New York: Truth-Seeker Office. 
Pp. 883. . 

Government Revenue. By Ellis H. Roberts. 
Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 389. $1.50. 

The Franco-American Cookery-Book. By Felix 
J. Déliée. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 
620. $4. 

Key to North American Birds. By Elliott Coues, 
Ph.D. Boston: Estes & Lauriat, . 863. $10.50. 


425 


POPULAR MISCELLANY, 


The Coming International Electrical Ex- 
hibition.—The Franklin Institute is mak- 
ing arrangements for the most complete 
representation of electrical appliances at the 
International Electrical Exhibition, which is 
to be held under its auspices in Philadel- 
phia, from September 2d to October 11th. 
A place is provided on its programme for 
every kind of apparatus and application of 
electricity, with the items so grouped and 
arranged as to make prominent the sig- 
nificance and value of each. Much inter- 
est is attached to the historical collection of 
all first and original electrical apparatus, 
which will form a special department, and 
which the committee are endeavoring to 
make as complete as possible. A ‘“ Memo- 
rial Library” is also to be secured, of all 
publications in any way pertaining to elec- 
trical science up to the date of the exhibi- 
tion—to include not only books, but also 
papers, reprints of articles, and notes on or 
relating to electricity. 


Deprived of the Pleasures of Taste. 
—A writer in the “Cornhill Magazine” 
says of Harriet Martineau that “she had 
no sense of taste whatever. ‘Once,’ she 
told me with a smile, when I was express- 
ing my pity for this deprivation of hers, ‘I 
tasted a leg of mutton, and it was delicious. 
I was going out, as it happened, that day, 
to dine with Mr. Marshall at Coniston, and 
I am ashamed to say that I looked forward 
to the pleasures of the table with consider- 
able eagerness; but nothing came of it, the 
gift was withdrawn as suddenly as it came.’ 
The sense of smell was also denied her, as 
it was to Wordsworth; in his case, too, 
curiously enough, it was vouchsafed to him, 
she told me, upon one occasion only. ‘He 
once smelled a bean-field and thought it 
heaven.’ It has often struck me that this 
deprivation of those external senses (for 
she lost her hearing very early) may have 
had considerable influence in forming Miss 
Martineau’s mental characteristics ; but if it 
turned her attention to studies more or less 
abstruse, and which are seldom pursued by 
those of her own sex, it certainly never 
‘hardened’ her.” 


420 


Communication with Animals,— Sir: 
You did me the honor, some weeks ago, to 
insert a letter of mine, containing sugges- 
tions as to a method of studying the psy- 
chology of animals, and a short account of 
a beginning I had myself made in that di- 
rection. 

This letter has elicited various replics 
and suggestions which you will, perhaps, 
allow me to answer, and I may also take 
the opportunity of stating the progress 
which my dog “ Van” has made, although, 
owing greatly, no doubt, to my frequent 
absences from home and the little time I 
can devote to him, this has not been so 
rapid as, I doubt not, would otherwise have 
been the case. Perhaps I may just-repeat 
that the essence of my idea was to have 
various words such as “food,” “bone,” 
“water,” “out,” etc., printed on pieces of 
card-board, and, after some preliminary 
training, to give the dog anything for which 
he asked by bringing a card. I use pieces 
of card-board about ten inches long and 
three inches high, placing a number of them 
on the floor, side by side, so that the dog 
has several cards to select from, each bear- 
ing a different word. 

One correspondent has suggested that it 
would be better to use variously-colored 
cards. This might, no doubt, render the first 
steps rather more easy, but, on the other hand, 
any temporary advantage gained would be 
at the expense of subsequent difficulty, since 
the pupil would very likely begin by asso- 
ciating the object with the color, rather 
than with the letters. He would, there- 
fore, as is too often the case with our own 
children, have the unnecessary Jabor of un- 
learning some of his first lessons, At the 
same time, the experiment would have an 
interest as a test of the color-sense in dogs. 

Another suggestion has been that, in- 
stead of words, pictorial representations 
should be placed on the cards. This, how- 
ever, could only be done with material ob- 
jects, such as “food,” ‘‘ bone,” “ water,” 
etc., and would not be applicable to such 
words as “out,” “pet me,” ete.; nor even 
as regards the former class do I see that it 
would present any substantial advantage. 

Again, it has been suggested that “ Van” 
is led by scent rather than by sight. He 
has, no doubt, an excellent nose, but in this 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


case he is certainly guided by the eye. The 
cards are all handled by us, and must emit 
very nearly the same odor. I do not, how- 
ever, rely on this, but have in use a num- 
ber of cards bearing the same word. When, 
for instance, he has brought a card with 
“ food” on it, we do not put down the same 
identical card, but another with the same 
word; when he has brought that, a third is 
put down, and so on. For a single meal, 
therefore, eight or ten cards will have been 
used, and it seems clear, therefore, that in 
selecting them “ Van” must be guided by 
the letters, 

When I last wrote I had satisfied my- 
self that he had learned to regard the bring- 
ing of a card as a request, and that he could 


‘distinguish a card with the word “ food” on 


it from a plain one; while I believed that 
he could distinguish between a card with 
“food” on it and one with “out” on it. 

I have now no doubt that he can dis- 
tinguish between different words. For in- 
stance, when he is hungry he will bring a 
“food” card time after time until he has had 
enough, and then he lies down quietly for a 
nap. Again, when I am going for a walk, 
and invite him to come, he gladly responds 
by picking up the “ out ” card, and running 
triumphantly with it before me to the front 
door. In the same way he knows the bone 
card quite well. As regards water (which 
I spell phonetically so as not to confuse him 
unnecessarily), I keep a card always on the 
floor in my dressing-room, and whenever he 
is thirsty he goes off there, without any sug- 
gestion from me, and brings the card with 
perfect gravity. At the same time he is 
fond of a game, and if he is playful or ex- 
cited will occasionaily run about with any 
card. If, through inadvertence, he brings 
a card for something he does not want, 
when the corresponding object is shown 
him, he seizes the card, takes it back again, 
and fetches the right one. No one who has 
seen him look along a row of cards, and 
select the right one, can, I think, doubt that 
in bringing a card he feels that he is mak- 
ing a request, and that he can not only per- 
fectly distinguish between one word and 
another, but also associates the word and 
the object. 

I do not for a moment say that “Van” 
thus shows more intelligence than has been 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


recorded in the case of other dogs—that is 
not my point—but it does seem to me that 
this method of instruction opens out a 
means by ‘which dogs and other animals 
may be enabled to communicate with us 
more satisfactorily than hitherto. I am still 
continuing my observations, and am now 
considering the best mode of testing him in 
very simple arithmetic, but I wish I could 
induce others to co-operate, for I feel satis- 
fied that the system would well repay more 
time and attention than I am myself able to 
give. Iam, sir, ete, Jonn Lussock. 
Hiexu Ems, Hayes, Kent. 
—London Spectator. 


Gas - Poisoning. — According to state- 
ments of Professor Pettenkofer at the re- 
cent Hygienic Congress in Berlin, the poison- 
ous property of coal-gas depends upon its 
containing carbonic oxide in the proportion 
of about ten per cent, while the other con- 
stituents, although irrespirable, do not act 
as direct poisons. The danger in breathing 
the gas depends not so much on the dura- 
tion of the exposure to a mixture of air and 
carbonic oxide as upon the amount of the 
latter contained in the air. Air containing 
only a proportion of five parts of carbonic 
oxide in 10,000 can be breathed for hours 
and even days by men and animals without 
any injury to health; while a proportion of 
seven or eight in 10,000 causes appreciable 
discomfort; of twenty in 10,000, difficulty 
of breathing, weakness, and uncertainty in 
gait; a proportion of twice that ratio leads 
to stupefaction, and higher proportions to 
extreme and fatal effects referable to the 
nervous system. [Illness attributable di- 
rectly to the entrance of gas into the 
house from the mains has been found to 
increase in the winter months, largely, 
probably because of the closing of the 
windows and the artificial heating of the 
rooms by which the gas is attracted into them. 
Dr. Pettenkofer has cited several striking 
_ instances of severe affection and even death 
that occurred in dwelling-houses in conse- 
quence of leakage from street-mains. At 
Roveredo, two sisters who slept in a base- 
ment contracted severe headaches during 
three successive nights. On the fourth 
night, which was a very cold onc, the mother 


slept with them. None of the three ap- | 


427 


peared on the following morning, and on 
investigation the two sisters were found 
dead, and the mother so nearly so that she 
only survived a few days. The escaping 
gas, under the roadway, was thirty-five feet 
distant from the room, At Cologne, three 
persons in one family were killed in a single 
night in 1871, by a leak ninety-eight feet 
away. The superintendent of a prison in 
Breslau died and his sons were afterward 
found unconscious, in the same room, in 
1879, from a leak thirty-five and a half feet 
away. Another instance has been recorded 
in Breslau, where the distance of the leak 
was one hundred and fifteen feet. At Co- 
logne the gas passed through a sewer-chan- 
nel and through the floor, while in the other 
cases it traversed layers of earth. The vari- 
ation in the degree of cold between one 
night and another, causing corresponding 
differences in the force by which the gas is 
attracted to the rooms, would, in Dr. Petten- 
kofer’s opinion, sufficiently account for the 
difference in the gravity of the effects pro- 
duced on these occasions, Gas filtered 
through the soil from the mains may be 
quite odorless, at least until it has collected 
in large amount; and herein lies the danger 
to dwellers in the basement. On the ear- 
liest occurrence of such symptoms as head- 
ache, the windows should be thrown open; 
and if, on closing them again, the symptoms 
reappear, it may be suspected that gas is 
escaping into the house. 


Dr. Crothers’s Studies of Inebriety.— 
Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, Connecticut, 
read before the London Branch of the British 
Medical Temperance Society an historical 
paper on the study of inebriety in America, 
A fact of psychological interest pertaining 
to the subject is, that inebriety in this 
country moves in waves and currents, with 
a decided epidemic and endemic influence, 
This can be traced in the rapid increase of 
drunkenness in towns and cities, till after a 
time a reaction sets in, and a marked de- 
cline follows. ‘‘ These waves of inebriate 
storms that sweep over large circles of coun- 
try are always followed by intense revivals 
of temperance interest, and are fields of the 
most fascinating psychological inquiry yet 
to be studied.” An increase of inebriety 
among our women is asserted as apparent 


428 


in the great demand for narcotics, the sale 
of beer and wine by grocers, and the divis- 
ions of saloons by general and family en- 
trances, with separate rooms foreach. The 
vice is considered a pronounced form of 
brain and nerve degeneration coming from 
well-marked physical conditions, largely con- 
trolled by social and psychical states pecul- 
iar to the country. The symptomatolog 

of the disease “ more nearly resembles that 
of insanity and general paralysis; its course 
is in waves and currents; its progress is 
shorter; and among women the use of nar- 
cotics is more prevalent than that of other 
forms of alcohol.” In estimating the value 
of remedies, Dr. Crothers believes that all 
efforts by moral means have failed, and are 
of value almost exclusively as agitations 
that will call attention to the evil. Legal 
means, by coercion and punishment, are 


likewise inefficacious, although there may be | 


a value in prohibition, to be determined by 
the experience of the future. In his own 
view, inebriety being regarded as a disease, 
like insanity, should he, like insanity, treated 
as a disease; and the cure should be sought 
in the enlightened treatment of the inebri- 
ate asylums, 


How to expose Thermometers.—Dr. H. 
A. Hazen discusses, in the “ American 
Journal of Science,” the conditions of ther- 
mometer exposure best adapted to secure 
uniform accuracy in the indications of tem- 
perature, One of the first conditions to be 
regarded is that of securing a good height 
above the ground, on which considerable 
diversity of opinion prevails. Much de- 
pends upon the immediate conditions of the 
locality. When this point is decided upon, 
a uniform and satisfactory shelter or screen 
should be provided for the instrument. 
The height and the screen should be ‘so ad- 
justed that the thermometer shall be free 
from the influence of ground-fog and that 
access of the air to it should be perfect. 
The shelter should shield from all reflected 
heat, from all direct radiation, from the sun 
by day, and from the earth to the sky by 
night, and from all radiation from sur- 
rounding objects, as well as from moisture. 
Many different forms of shelter have been 
contrived in different countries. In experi- 
menting upon the merits of these devices, a 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


standard of comparison is found in the 
swung thermometer, or, as the French call 
it, the thermométre fronde, which is a com- 
mon thermometer attached to a string or 
wire, and rapidly swung through a circum- 
ference whose radius is the length of the 
string. The theory of this arrangement is 
that, as the instrument is rapidly brought in 
contact with a large mass of air, it must 
give the temperature of the same unless the 
results are vitiated by other causes, From 
a number of experiments described by Mr. 
Hazen, the following conclusions as to the 
best dispositions of shelters are advanced : 
When exposed to direct sun-heat, they 
should be at least thirty-six inches long ; 
with proper precautions the thermometer 
“fronde,” both dry and wet, will give the 
most correct air-temperature and relative 
humidity ; a single louvre shelter is suffi- 
cient. The interposition of a second louvre 
prevents the free access of air, and if venti- 
lation is used it must affect the air which is 
propelled to the thermometer. For obtain- 
ing even approximate relative humidity in 
calm weather, single-louvred shelters are 
necessary, and for the best result an in- 
duced air-current is essential, especially in 
the winter in northern countries. Where a 
window shelter is used, there should be a 
free air-space of from six to twelve inches 
between the shelter on the north side of 
the building and the wall. The simplest 
form of screen would be four pieces of 
board ten or twelve inches square, nailed 
together box-fashion, leaving the bottom 
and the side toward the window open; the 
thermometers, dry and wet, should be placed 
five inches apart near the center of this 
screen, with their bulbs projecting below 
the plane of the lower edge. Shade may 
be given, at such times as the sun is shining 
on the north side of the house, by the ad- 
justment of the window-blinds. 


Numismatics in the United States,— 
From a paper read by Mr. W. Lee before 
the Philosophical Society of Washington, 
we learn that an extended interest in nu- 
mismatics began to show itself in this coun- 
try in 1858, at which time there were prob- 
ably not as many as a hundred coin-collect- 
ors in the United States. The interest has 
grown rapidly, until now there must be on 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


the books of the United States Mint the 
names of at least one thousand collectors 
who receive yearly the issue of the mint, 
with special proof-polish. In New York, 
alone, during the year 1882, thirty-nine col- 
lections were sold at public auction, and 
brought, in all, $68,441.36. Several of our 
large cities have numismatic societies, some 
_of which are designated as numismatic and 
archeological societies; and a number of 
periodicals devoted simply to the interest 
of numismatics obtain a satisfactory circu- 
lation. 


Seasonal Variations of Rheumatism.— 
The records of rheumatic cases in the Lon- 
don Hospital fail to show any clear relation 
between the prevalence of the disease and 
particular climatic conditions. Dr. Henry 
S. Gabbett has compared the graphic curves 
representing the numbers of cases observed 
for nine years, and remarks a general simi- 
larity between them, In nearly every case 
a wave is noticed beginning to rise at the 
opening of summer, and reaching its high- 
est elevation in July or August; then comes 
a temporary check or fall, followed by a 
rapid ascent till the summit is reached, at 
the end of autumn, when a steady fall 
occurs through the months of December, 
January, and February, till a low level is 
reached, which continues nearly even till 
about the beginning of the next summer 
elevation. The curves for different years 
do not appear to be affected by variations 
in the character of the seasons from which 
it is possible to make any deduction respect- 
ing the influence of variations of tempera- 
ture or of conditions of moisture. Accept- 
ing Messrs. Buchan and Mitchell’s division 
of the London year into six periods, cach 
having a climate peculiar to itself, “we 
find that rheumatism was most prevalent in 
the annual damp and cold period; next in 
the damp and warm period; cases were 
about equally frequent in the two periods 
characterized respectively by heat and cold; 
below these comes the dry and warm period ; 
and lowest of all, as regards the frequency 
of the disease, the period described as dry 
and cold. ... It does not, however, necessa- 
rily follow that there is any etiological con- 
nection between the above facts; the peri- 
odical prevalence of the disease may possibly 


429 _ 


be independent of conditions of climate.” 
Dr. Gabbett draws the conclusions, with a 
little more confidence, that the disease is 
neither most prevalent in the coldest months 
of the year, nor least prevalent in the warm- 
est; that it does not occur with greatest 
frequency in those months in which the 
daily variations of temperature are greatest ; 
that, although there is a certain correspond- 
ence between the rainy periods and the 
times when rheumatism is common, it is not 
close enough to point to any necessary con- 
nection. But cases of the disease are very 
numerous at that period of the year during 
which there is usually a coexistence of low 
temperature and heavy rainfall—viz., the 
end of autumn. 


Shall we put Spectacles on Children 7?— 
In a paper with this title Professor Julian 
J. Chisholm, M. D., of the University of 
Maryland, makes a plea for providing chil- 
dren with the means of counteracting their 
congenital or acquired defects of vision. 
According to the traditions, the need of 
spectacles is an indication of old age, and 
so the world interprets it. A better knowl- 
edge, however, is diffusing itself among the 
medical profession, and from them to the 
public. While advancing years may be a 
factor, it is only one of many causes induc- 
ing defective vision. The action of the per- 
fect eye conforms to the law of optics that, 
unless a lens focuses accurately on the re- 
cipient surface, the image made must be 
more or less imperfect. In front of the 
lens there is a broad, circular ligament of 
the eye, which presses against it, and, when 
objects at a short distance are to be looked 
at, by the action of a muscle (the ciliary), 
the compressing ligament is relaxed, so that 
the lens, its natural elasticity responding 
at once to the relief, becomes more con- 
vex, and is, therefore, in condition to focus 
more powerfully light coming from near 
objects.. What is called accommodation, or 
ability to change the focus, is, then, a muscu- 
lar act. When the accommodating muscles 
are temporarily enfeebled by diseased condi- 
tions of the system at large, they do not lift 
off sufficiently the flattening band, or they are 
too weak to keep up the continued action for 
the relief of lens pressure; hence we often 
find children recently recovered from an at- 


430 


tack of measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, 
whooping-cough, or from any one of the 
depressing diseases of childhood, unable to 
study as they did before theattack. A weak- 
magnifying spectacle, by helping the mus- 
cles to do their work, will enable such chil- 
dren to continue their studies till tonics daily 
administered restore the needful strength 
to the enfeebled muscles. The foregoing 
statements are based upon perfect eyes. 
Unfortunately, the eyeball, with the many 
other features, has not always the perfec- 
tion of symmetry. Near-sighted long eyes 
and over-sighted flat eyes are the common 
deviations from the standard shape, In the 
near-sighted eye, called myopic, the eye is 
so long from front to back that the lens is 
too far from the retina. The result is, that 
rays of light from a distant object come to 
a focus, and have begun to diverge when 
they reach the retina, so that the image 
formed is blurred. The second deviation 
in the form of the eye is called hyperopia, 
This is a flat eye, a very common form in 
children. It is a congenital defect, in which 
the crystalline lens is located so near the 


retina that light, passing into the eye, is : 


stopped by the retina before it comes to a 
focus. This must also produce an iil-defined 
picture. Unfortunately, faulty eyes, which 
give out under use, do not appear differently 
from perfectly shaped ones. The flatten- 
ing, or the elongation, is not in the exposed 
cornea. It is usually at the expense of the 
inner half of the eyeball, hid away in the 
socket. If children, either by inheritance 
or acquisition, have misshaped eyes, so that 
they can not see objects clearly through the 
usual range of distances, what can be the 
propriety of allowing them to, go through 
life as if in a constant fog, when a properly 
selected glass clears up the mist, and enables 
them to sce as others do ? 


Fresh-Water Pearls. —The cultivation of 
the pearls of fresh-water mussels has be- 
come an industry of considerable importance 
in Saxony and other parts of Germany. The 
pearls are generally inferior to those of the 
genuine pearl-oysters, but occasionally a 
gem of real excellence is produced, Some 
very fine settings of such were exhibited at 
the Exposition in Berlin. The Venetians 
carried on. this branch of trade to a con- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


siderable extent during the middle ages, and 
controlled it till 1621, when the Elector of 
Saxony also undertook it, at the suggestion 
of Moritz Schmirler, a draper of Oelsnitz, 
and appointed Schmirler “first pearl-fisher.” 
Schmirler was succeeded on his death by his 
son, and the business has continued in the 
family to the present day, under the su- 
perintendency of the forestry department, 
which has also to do with the waters of the 
region. The pearl-hunting is carried on in 
the spring, as soon as the water is warm 
enough to wade in for hours continuously. 
The mussels are examined by means of an 
instrument, by which the shells can be 
opened enough to see what is within them 
without hurting the mollusks. If they con- 
tain well-developed pearls, they are sacri- 
ficed ; if not, they are returned to the beds. 
The same beds are not usually gone over 
again for several years. Experiments made 
in the Elster, in the artificial production of 
pearls, have not met with much success, A 
wound in the mouth of the mollusk will 
lead to the deposition of the calcareous 
matter, but it is uncertain whether it will 
be of common shell-matter or of pearl— 
and upon this all the value of the operation 
depends. In the Dutch East Indies, the 
formation of pearls in the pearl-oyster is 
sometimes provoked by inserting a grain of 
sand within the shell. A considerable busi- 
ness is done at Adorf in the manufacture 
of articles of fancy from the nacre of mus- 
sels, 


Geological Survey of Palestine.—Pro- 
fessor Hull has just made a successful geo- 
logical survey of Palestine, preparatory to 
the construction of a geological map of the 
country. He has traced the ancient margin 
of the Gulfs of Suez and Akabah to a height 
of two hundred feet above their present 
level, so as to show that the country has 
been submerged to that extent and has been 
gradually rising; and he believes that at 
the time of the Exodus a continuous connec- 
tion existed between the Red Sea and the 
Mediterranean. The Dead Sea appears to 
have formerly stood at a height of fourteen 
hundred feet above its present level, or 
about one hundred and fifty feet above the 
level of the Mediterranean. Evidences of a 
chain of ancient lakes have been found in 


NOTES. 


the Sinaitic district, and of another chain in 
the center of the Wady Arabah, not far 
from the water-shed. The great line of 
fracture of the Wady Arabah and the Jor- 
dan Valley has been traced to a distance of 
more than one hundred miles, and the ma- 
terials for working‘out a complete theory of 
this remarkable depression are now avail- 
able. The terraces of the Jordan have been 
examined. The relation of these terraces 
to the surrounding hills and valleys shows 
that they had already been formed before 
the water reached their former level; sec- 
tions have been carried east and west 
across the Akabah and the Jordan Valley, 
and two traverses of Palestine have been 
made from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. 


Change as a Reereative Agent. — Sir 
James Paget spoke, in a recent address, at 
the Workingmen’s College, London, on the 
value of change as a mental restorative, 
and found it to consist principally in direct- 
ing the patient to some form of “ work” for 
which he has inherited a special capacity. 
The effect is produced through the awaken- 
ing and gratification of some dormant love 
or propensity which lies deep down in the 
individual nature and has been inherited. It 
thus appears that the special pleasures of 
individual lives are ancestral, or are “sur- 
vivals in us of instincts that belonged 
to our distant ancestors, who of necessity 
had to kill, to fish, to hunt, to clear the 
forests, and make the roads.” The mere 
recommendation of “change” vaguely is 
idle; but recreative change, judiciously rec- 
ommended and specifically applied, is one of 
the most powerful agents we possess for the 
treatment of disease, or of derangements 
and disturbances of the mental temperament 
and the mind. 


NOTES. 


Tue thirteenth series of Professor C. G. 
Rockwood’s “Notes on American Earth- 
quakes,” in the “ American Journal of Sci- 
ence,” includes seventy-eight notices of 
shocks that occurred on the American Con- 
tinents during 1883. Of these, eight were 
in Canada, three in New England, two in the 
_ Atlantic States, eleven in the Mississippi 
Valley, and twenty-three on the Pacific 
coast, while the rest were in Mexico, the 
West Indies, and Central and South America. 


431. 


The more important shocks were recorded 
—January 11th, Cairo, Ilinois ; March 8th, 
Panama; May 19th, Ecuador; August, Mex- 
ico; and October 6th, Alaska. Most of the 
shocks were very moderate, and caused little 
or no damage. 


Dr. Ernst Beno, a German geographer, 
died March 15th. He had been for twenty- 
eight years editorially connected with the 
“Geographische Mittheilungen ” of Justus 
Perthes in Gotha. He was joint editor of 
Behm and Wagner’s celebrated statistical 
publication. 


Tue Trustees of the University of Penn- 
sylvania have elected Dr. Joseph Leidy, 
Director, and Professor of Anatomy and 
Zodlogy, of the new Biological Department. 
Dr. J. T. Rothrock has been elected Profess- 
or of Botany; Dr. A. J. Parker, Professor 
of Comparative Anatomy; Dr. Benjamin 
Sharpe, Professor of Invertebrate Morphol- 
ogy; Dr. Horace Jayne, Professor of Ver- 
tebrate Morphology; and Dr. Harrison Al- 
len, Professor of Physiology. Women are 
to be admitted as students. 


THE whole history of the once famous 
book, the “ Vestiges of Creation,” is told by 
Mr. Alexander Ireland, in the twelfth edi- 
tion, just published. In agreement with 
what the world has long understood, the au- 
thor is at last declared on the title-page to 
have been Mr. Robert Chambers. Accord- 
ing to Mr. Ireland’s account, Mr. Chambers 
employed his wife as his amanuensis in 
writing the book, and Mr. Ireland as the 
medium of communication with his publish- 
ers. Only four persons were at first in the 
secret of the authorship, of whom Mr. Ire- 
land is the sole survivor. 4 


EXPERIMENTS by Messrs. R. Pictet and 
E. Yung have resulted in showing that some 
of the microbes at least can sustain a temper- 
ature of —70° to —130° C. (— 94° to— 200° 
Fahr.) for periods of several hours, and still 
live and thrive on the accession of more fa- 
vorable temperatures. 


Ir is suggested that papers will be ac- 
ceptable to be read before the Anthropo- 
logical Section of the British Association on 
American subjects, as follow: “ The Native 
Races of America, their Physical Characters 
and Origin” ; “ Civilization of America be- 
fore the Time of Columbus, with Particular 
Reference to Earlier Intercourse with the 
Old World”; “ Archeology of North Amer- 
ica, Ancient Mounds and Earth-Works, Cliff- 
Dwellings and Village-Houses, Stone Archi- 
tecture of Mexico and Central America,” 
ete. ; “ Native Languages of America”; and 
“ European Colonization and its Effects on 
the Native Tribes of America.” Papers 
should be sent in to the office of the Asso- 
ciation, 22 Albemarle Street, London, W., 
on or before July 1st. 


432 


Dr. Rosert Ancaus Sir, Inspector- 
General of Alkali-Works for the United 
Kingdom, died May 12th, aged sixty-seven 
years. He was the author of a “ Life of 
Dalton,” of a work on “Air and Rain,” 
and of papers in the “ Philosophical Trans- 
actions, the ‘‘ Journal of the Philosophical 
Socicty,” and the “Journal of the Society 
of Arts.” 


Mr. W. F. Hitiesranp describes, in the 
“ American Journal of Science,” what he 
regards as a new mineral which he has found 
in connection with the sulpho-bismuthite of 
copper and silver. It occurs in the form of 
small, slender crystals, in cavitics of the 
bluish-gray sulpho-bismuthite, which are 
generally bronzed by oxidation, and so deep- 
ly striated as sometimes to present the ap- 
pearance under the glass of bunches of 
needles. Their habit is strikingly like that 
of bismuthinite, for which the crystals were 
at first taken, Analyses and the examina- 
tion of their properties mark them as prob- 
ably of a pure sulpho-bismuthite of copper, 
in the more compact portions of which sil- 
ver may replace a part of the copper, while 
in some cases a further replacement of cop- 
per by lead takes place. No name is as 
yet proposed for the mineral. 


Ar a recent meeting of the Sociological 
Section of the Birmingham Natural History 
Society, it was decided to begin immediately 
the preparation of an index to the study of 
sociology. Letters were read from Mr. Spen- 
cer, approving the system which the section 
proposes to adopt, and saying that time and 
the condition of his health alone had pre- 
vented his beginning a similar work. 


M. Cartes Apotrn Wirz, the dis- 
tinguished French chemist, whose name is 
particularly associated with the progress of 
organic chemistry during the last half-cen- 
tury, died very suddenly on the 12th of May 
last. A portrait and a sketch of M, Wiirtz 
were published in “ The Popular Science 
Monthly ” for November, 1882. 


Tue American frigate Pensacola, passing 
on the 22d of December last by the Strait of 
Sunda, crossed large fields of pumice-stone, 
and continued to observe small quantities of 
such matter till the 10th of January, when 
it was in latitude 16° 7’ south, and longitude 
66°8° east. The pumice was not seen every 
day, but few days passed without observing 
some; and those cakes that were seen after 
the 1st of January were covered with shells 
and plants, while some held little crabs in 
their pores, These pumices were derived 
either from the May or the August eruption 
of Krakatoa. 


M. L. Cruts, describing, in a note to the 
French Academy of Sciences, the “ red sun- 
sets” as seen in Brazil, states that at first 
the setting of the sun was preceded by a 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


gradual darkening caused by the interposi- 
tion between the eye of the observer and the 
sun of a bed of absorbing vapors, having a 
smoky aspect, like that of “dry fog.” Ata 
later period the glow corresponded closely 
in appearance with the phenomenon as de- 
scribed in Europe. M. Cruls is of the opin- 
ion that the glow is of the same charac- 
ter as the twilight phenomena described in 
the “Espace céleste” of M. Emm. Lias, which, 
though possibly having a meteoric origin, 
partook of the character of atmospheric 
twilight. 


Sianor Quintrno Seria, President of 
the Accademia dei Lyncei of Rome, died on 
the 14th of March. He was distinguished 
for valuable researches and papers of great 
excellence in crystallographic mineralogy, 
and for his active interest in the geological 
survey and the preparation of the geologic 
map of Italy. He was President of the In- 
ternational Geological Congress at Bologna, 
in 1881. To scientific eminence he added 
ability as a statesman ; and he was for many 
years Minister of Finance in Italy. Men of 
science are invited to contribute to the plac- 
ing of a bronze wreath on his tomb, 


Proressor Dana believes that the ex- 
traordinary rise in the Ohio River, in Feb- 
ruary last, was the result of the falling of 
heavy rains at a time when the ground was 
so solidly frozen as to be wholly destitute 
of the power of absorption. Compared with 
this, the extent of the forest region had 
very little to do with the height the river 
attained ; and the same conditions of frost 
and heavy rain prevailing, the result would 
not have been materially different had the 
primitive forest been standing. 


Ir is reported that a cocoanut planta- 
tion has been started on the southern coast 
of Florida. One hundred thousand plants 
have been set out on a tract of about one 
thousand acres, at a cost of nearly $40,000, 
and next winter the number is to be in- 
creased. It requires six years for the trees 
to begin to yield returns, but it is estimated 
that in ten years the grove will pay ten per 
cent on a valuation of $2,000,000. A full- 
grown tree will mature about sixty nuts an- 
nually. The Florida cocoanut-culture is lim- 
ited, however, as it is confined exclusively to 
the sea-coast, and the trees can be grown only 
to a small extent in southern Florida, 


Proressor H. Scatecer, Director of the 
Royal Museum of Natural History at Ley- 
den, died in January last. Dr. Schlegel 
was born in Altenburg, Saxony, in 1804, 
and was appointed Director of the Museum 
in 1858. Under his superintendence, this 
institution became one of the richest of the 
kind in existence. Dr. Schlegel was a high 
authority in descriptive zodlogy, especially 
in the department of the vertebrata. 


FELIPE POEY 


THE 


POPULAR SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


AUGUST, 1884, 


HICKORY-NUTS AND BUTTERNUTS. 
By GRANT ALLEN, 


HE tall choke-cherry tree in the corner of the meadow, near the 
hickory clump, is a favorite resort of all the fruit-eating birds in 

the township for half a mile around in every direction. To the judi- 
cious human palate, indeed, the flavor of choke-cherries is not exactly 
alluring or attractive ; they have a disagreeable astringent tinge about 
their pulp that rather reminds one of alum or borax, and they are not 
sweet enough or luscious enough to be worth eating by people who 
have grapes and plums and peaches and apples and a dozen other cul- 
tivated fruits at easy command. But to the unsophisticated native 
birds it is quite clear that. choke-cherries are rather a dainty and tooth- 
some delicacy than otherwise ; and one has only to look at the pretty 
berries in order to see that they deliberately lay themselves out to at- 
tract the favorable attention of these winged allies and visitors. The 
color of the choke-cherry shows at once that it wishes specially to chal- 
lenge and allure the notice of the passer-by ; its sweet pulp and nutri- 
tive qualities show that it means them to eat it, and so aid in dispers- 
ing its seed. For the actual, final end of the choke-cherry itself, of 
course, lies in the stone and its inclosed kernel ; all the rest is merely 
the attractive covering which the plant gives in, as it were, to any 
friendly bird which will be kind enough to assist it in planting out its 
young seedlings under favorable circumstances for their future wel- 
fare. From time immemorial, those choke-cherries which best suc- 
ceeded in enticing birds to swallow them, and ultimately to scatter 
their seeds, protected from injury by the hard and horny covering, 
have left the largest number of offspring to represent them, and so 
have survived most frequently, in the person of their descendants, 

VOL. xxv.— 23 


434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


through the midst of that perpetual battling competition for the surface 
of the earth which goes on as fiercely between trees and plants as be- 
tween men themselves or other animals. To put it briefly in a single 
phrase, we may say at once that a choke-cherry is one of the kind of 
fruits which want to be eaten, and sedulously lay themselves out be- 
forehand for that very particular purpose. 

But, when we turn from the choke-cherry to the hickory-trees which 
grow close by, we are brought face to face at once with another and 
very different state of things. If the choke-cherry wants to be eaten, 
the hickory-nut clearly wants to avoid that unpleasant and destructive 
predicament. In the first place, its color, instead of being brilliant 
and attractive, like that of most edible fruits, is very quiet and unob- 
trusive, being green while the nut still remains among the fresh foliage 
upon the branches of the tree, and pale brown when it falls upon the 
dead leaves and dry grasses that cover the damp and moldering ground 
beneath. If the hickory-nut were a conscious creature which deliber- 
ately wished to escape notice, these are the precise tactics which it 
would be likely to adopt for the sake of protection. Then, again, even 
when its disguise is pierced, and the nut, with its outer husk entire, is 
spied upon the ground by some hungry animal, it is coated with a very 
nasty, bitter covering, which effectually repels one from tearing it open 
readily with the teeth. We hand-wearing human beings, however, 
may perhaps manage to peel off the outer husk with a knife or stone, 
or, by more popular practice, to put a lot of the nuts together in a 
wheat-sack and thrash them out by stamping on them with our feet. 
Even so, however, we still have the actual woody inner nut-shell itself 
to deal with ; and unless we have arrived at that highest stage of civ- 
ilization where nut-crackers are specially manufactured for us, to aid 
us in the struggle, we must crack them as best we may with our own 
precious and too unstable molars. But the native enemies of the hick- 
ory-nut—squirrels and the like—can not proceed in any such crunch- 
ing and radically destructive fashion. They must bore a hole through 
the shell somewhere, and then extract the kernel little by little with 
their long, sharp, curved front teeth ; and, somehow, the arrangement of 
the nut inside the shell is of such sort as to render this work of gradual 
excavation as difficult as possible for the aggressive rodent. The ker- 
nel, instead of being all plain and straightforward, as in the acorn or 
the chestnut, is divided up and frittered away in little troublesome 
cricks and corners which seem as if they had been invented on purpose 
to prevent you from getting a single good bite out of the nut in any 
part whatsoever. Clearly, the hickory-nut is in all these respects the 
exact antipodes of the choke-cherry : it doesn’t want to get eaten if it 
can by any means possibly help it. 

This glimpse at the habits and manners of the hickory enables us 
to give a brief and intelligible answer to the question, What is a nut ? 
The reply is, a fruit that tries by inconspicuous coloring and hard cov- 


HICKORY-NUTS AND BUTTERNUTS. 435, 


erings to escape being observed and eaten. The reason for such a dis- 
position on the part of the nut is easy enough to understand. In the 
true or sueculent fruits—fruits, that is to say, according to the popu- 
lar and strictly practical sense of the word—the part we eat is not the 
actual seed itself, the cherry-stone or plum-stone or raspberry-kernels 
(which even if we swallow we do not digest), but a soft, pulpy covering 
which has nothing essential to do with the young embryo or future 
plantlet. In nuts, on the other hand, the part we eat is the actual 
kernel or embryo itself, with all the starches, oils, and other food-stuffs 
laid up for its use by the mother-plant. In the simplest and earliest 
form of seeds, like those of mustard and cress, for example, there is 
hardly any store of nutriment put away by the mother for the ben- 
efit of its struggling seedling. These poorly endowed plantlets have 
to open their green leaves to the sunlight the moment they begin to 
sprout, and, unless they can assimilate fresh food from the air imme- 
diately under that genial influence, they must die forthwith of pure 
inanition. But at a very early period in the evolutionary history of 
plants, some seeds began to be stored at the outset with small quanti- 
ties of starch or oil, which enabled their budding embryos to push 
their heads higher above the surrounding vegetation without depend- 
ing entirely for support on the mere hand-to-mouth system of daily 
gains.. They had, so to speak, a small reserve of capital to live upon. 
Of course, this gave all such plants a great advantage over their neigh- 
bors in the struggle for existence: they could live under conditions 
where poorer seedlings would starve and die ; and so, from generation 
to generation, those kinds which laid by most material survived the best 
on the average, till at last in many cases the embryo came to be very 
richly endowed indeed with starches, oils, gluten, and other valuable 
collected food-stuffs. This is especially the case with such seeds as 
wheat, barley, rye, oats, Indian corn, rice, peas, beans, lentils, and buck- 
wheat. 

Unfortunately for the plants, however, what will feed a seedling 
will feed an animal just as well: and so, exactly in proportion as the 
plants began to lay by food-stuffs for their own purposes in their em- 
bryos, did the animals begin to prey feloniously upon these convenient 
reservoirs of nutritious gums and starches. Not only does man eat 
the cereals and pulses, which are the richest in nutriment of almost all 
seeds, but many earlier and lower animals, such as harvest-mice, rats, 
chipmunks, deer, antelopes, horses, cow-kind, and even prairie-dogs 
commit great depredations upon them, both in the wild and cultivated 
states. Still more particularly have large numbers of animals, such 
as the squirrels, dormice, monkeys, parrots, nut-hatches, and even 
many grubs, taken to feeding off the fruits and seeds of forest-trees 
or woodland bushes. As a consequence, only those richly-stored seeds 
have for the most part survived which possessed some natural means 
of defense against their aggressive enemies ; and in many instances 


436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


these means of defense have been multiplied over and over again 
for still greater precaution, so that the final outcome is a seed al- 
most absolutely fortified against the onslaught of every possible 
aggressor. 

In England, where there are only three native nut-eaters of any 
importance—the squirrel, the dormouse, and the nut-hatch—most of 
our indigenous trees have not found it necessary to arm themselves to 
any large extent against this class of depredators ; and consequently 
there are only three kinds of nuts in the truly aboriginal English flora, 
namely, the beechnut, the acorn, and the filbert. Chestnuts, walnuts, 
and horse-chestnuts are cultivated in the British Isles to some slight 
extent, but they do not thrive, and the two former seldom produce 
fertile nuts. ‘hese three native English kinds, therefore, may be 
taken as good examples of very simple and undeveloped forms of nuts, 
far inferior to the most advanced American specimens. The acorn, in 
all countries, is comparatively little armed with protective coverings : 
it has only a thin shell, and is guarded from depredations mainly by 
its slightly bitter taste, as well as by its cup, or saucer, which acts as 
a barrier against the attacks of insects who try to lay their eggs at its 
tender base. Beechnuts have a rather more leathery shell, and are 
externally protected by their prickly husk, which makes them difficult 
for the delicate noses of squirrels to tackle as they grow upon their 
native boughs. Filberts, specially exposed to the attacks of the cun- 
ning dormouse and the persistent nut-hatch, are far more effectually 
guarded by a double coat-of-mail : their shell is solid and woody in 
texture, while their outer husk, which completely envelops them from 
stem to tip, is thickly sprinkled with stiff and annoying hairs, very 
painful to our human fingers, and still more so, no doubt, to the tender 
skin on the naked noses of the inquiring rodents. 

None of these nuts belong to the same family as the nicuinys ; they 
are all independent modifications of totally different forms, which 
have simultaneously hit on somewhat the same protective method. 
But on the Continent of Europe, where a larger number of nut-devour- 
ing animals are to be found, the hickory tribe is represented by the 
common walnut. Everybody must have noticed (in conducting his 
biological studies at dessert) that the distribution of the two lobes which 
make up the kernel in the walnut is extremely like that of the hickory ; 
and the resemblance is equally close in all other important structural 
matters. The walnut shows decidedly more protective care in its cov- 
- erings than any of the few and simple English nuts. Its outer husk 
is very bitter and nasty—so nasty that even a little of the flavoring 
matter off fresh walnuts clinging to one’s fingers is enough to give a 
very unpleasant taste to any food one may touch afterward ; and the 
inner shell, though evidently rendered easier to open for the lazy 
human consumers by being previously kiln-dried to preserve the kernel 
from decomposing, is in its native state extremely hard to crack, and 


SS a a ee 


HICKORY-NUTS AND BUTTERNUTS. 437 - 


still harder to bore a hole through with teeth or bill, as any one may 
easily convince himself by trying to perform the feat with his own 
canines, or even with the point of his sharp pocket-knife. The wal- 
nut, in fact, is one of the hickory tribe, left behind in Europe and 
Western Asia; it ranges through Greece and Asia Minor, Lebanon 
and Persia, as far east as Cashmere ; and never compelled by circum- 
stances to acquire the very hard and stony coats of some among its 
American cousins. 

In the New World, however, the walnut family has been driven by 
its pressing animal foes to adopt far more vigorous and active defen- 
sive tactics. The great American forests are the very paradise of 
endless hungry nut-eaters, from the common gray squirrel, the flying- 
squirrels, and the numerous other greedy rodents of the Northern 
plains, to the screaming parrots and powerful-billed monkeys of the 
tropical South American jungles. Where enemies are so numerous 
and so persistent, only the very hardest and best-protected nuts of all 
can survive; and so the nearest American representative of the Eu- 
ropean walnut is the butternut of Canada and the Northern States— 
a far more formidable and uncompromising mouthful to tackle than 
its easy-going Old World cousin. The outer husk of the butternut 
resembles pretty well that of the walnut ; but its very stony shell is 
extremely difficult either to pierce or crack ; the sharp ridges on its 
surface are naturally very baffling to the teeth of squirrels ; and even 
when you have at last made a good hole in it, the inside can hardly 
be extracted in pieces of any bigness, because of the horny intervening 
ridges. This American walnut, in fact, is a far cuter and smarter 
form of seed-vessel than its effete European relative. There is every 
reason to believe, indeed, that the butternut is an advanced and im- 
proved descendant of the same primitive geological ancestor as the 
Greek walnut. Only, while the walnut has been standing still in pen- 
insular Greece and Anatolia for innumerable generations, the butter- 
nut has been going ahead with true American impetuosity, inventing 
one new improvement or modification after another, till it has now at- 
tained to almost absolute perfection in its adaptation to its own pecul- 
iar walk in life. 

Most of the American walnut kind, however, it must be candidly 
confessed, have not proceeded along the path of progress quite so 
quickly or so fully as the go-ahead and truly Yankee butternut. The 
majority of the best-known forms, such as the hickory, the bitter-nut, 
and pecan-nut, belong to the specially American group known as 
Caryas, with fruits usually smaller and less rich than the regular Eu- 
ropean walnuts. Even among this restricted group, however, there 
are some very instructive and interesting differences. For example, 
the true hickory-nut has a sweet and pleasant kernel, which makes it 
a great favorite with squirrels and boys. To protect itself against 
aggression, therefore, on the part of its four-footed foes—as to the 


438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


boys, it probably despairs—it has acquired a comparatively hard and 
woody shell, surrounded by a bitter and acrid husk. But its ally, the 
bitter-nut, has hit accidentally upon a still more excellent and cunning 
device : it has made the actual seed itself, the menaced kernel, a reser- 
voir for its disagreeable bitter juice. Consequently, it needs much 
less external protection than the hickory, and every American boy 
knows well that its shell can be much more readily and easily broken 
than that of its sweeter relations. Why hickory-nuts should be less 
protected than butternuts, on the other hand, is a more difficult ques- 
tion ; I incline to believe it is because of the greater number produced 
by each tree annually, so that, in spite of all the havoc wrought by 
squirrels and other depredators, enough must always have remained 
and sprouted to keep up the full normal number of the species from 
one generation to another. 

Almost all nuts follow more or less one of these two protective 
types—the type of the hickory and the type of the bitter-nut—or even 
sometimes both together. In the tropics, where forestine animals are 
most developed, the nuts often reach a very high stage of evolu- 
tion. The cocoanut is a familiar example: it has a soft outer husk, 
stringy and loose, which breaks and deadens its fall from the tall and 
graceful palm-trees on which it grows; and inside this yielding, pro- 
tective mat-work, it has a very solid shell, inclosing the large and rich- 
ly-stored kernel. But the cashew-nut is, perhaps, the most remarkable 
in some respects of any known example. It has taken most extraor- 
dinary pains to preserve its kernel from injury ; and it has done so by 
a curious combination of the tactics peculiar to attractive fruits with 
those peculiar to repellent nuts. Its stalk swells out into a fleshy edible 
tuber, something like a pear in shape, and endowed with all the usual 
allurements of bright color and sweet taste. By this bribe, it entices 
the South American monkeys to pick and aid in dispersing its seed. 
But, at the same time, it carefully wraps up the nut itself in an acrid, 
pungent covering, and places it at the outer end of the pear-like stalk. 
Woe betide the adventurous monkey who tries to eat the inner kernel 
of this decidedly well-protected nut! The pungent juice of the rind 
not only burns his tongue and lips, but even removes the skin from 
his mischievous fingers as effectually as it could be removed by a can- 
tharides-plaster. Hardly less quaint are the tactics adopted by the 
familiar pea-nut of our childhood, which is really the underground 
pod of a bean-like plant. This secretive vegetable has hit upon the 
device of producing its seeds on subterranean branches, and so escap- 
ing the notice of most open-air birds and mammals ; though, in thus 
cunningly avoiding the Scylla of the upper earth, it has merely fallen 
against the Charybdis of grubbing pigs and burrowing rodents. The lit- 
tle English subterranean clover—I forget just now whether it grows in 
America, too, and Dr. Asa Gray’s magnificent work is not at hand— 
has an even stranger plan for escaping from the sheep, on whose favor- 


HICKORY-NUTS AND BUTTERNUTS. 439- 


ite pastures it grows abundantly. It flowers above-ground, enticing 
the bees to fertilize its long, white, tubular blossoms by a copious store 
of pure and fragrant honey ; but as soon as its wee pods have been 
fairly impregnated with pollen from a neighboring head, it screws 
its stalk down spirally into the ground, by the aid of some queer little 
corkscrew gimlets developed near the tip, and so buries the precious 
seeds well out of all danger from the close-nibbling teeth of its 
dreaded foes upon the sheep-walk, 

Last of all, a few words must be said about the structural homolo- 
gies of the hickory-nut. In principle, most fruits consist of three 
separate coats or layers, inclosing the seed or seeds. These three lay- 
ers are very well seen in the peach, which consists, first, of an external 
skin ; next, of a fleshy edible portion; and, finally, a hard inner cover- 
ing—the stone—which contains the actual seed, or, as we oftener call 
it in practical language, the kernel. Now, in the hickory-nut, these 
three layers are still preserved, though ina very different apparent 
form: the outer surface, or membrane of the rind, answers to the skin 
of the peach ; the bitter and stringy interior of the rind answers to 
the edible part of the peach ; the nut-shell, or inner hard layer, answers 
to the stone of the peach ; and the nut, or actual seed, answers to the 
kernel of the peach. This example shows very well by what slight 
changes in the development of various parts a fruit may seem to prac- 
tical human eyes quite unlike some other one, which is, nevertheless, 
at bottom, layer for layer, absolutely identical with it. The only im- 
portant difference, after all, between the peach and the hickory-nut is, 
that in the fruit the middle layer becomes soft, sweet, and succulent ; 
while in the nut it becomes stringy, bitter, and nauseating. The 
almond even better enforces this simple evolutionary lesson ; for it is, 
in reality, nothing more or less than a very dry and stringy peach—a 
very slightly divergent descendant of the same ancestor: its outer- 
most layer answers exactly to the peach-skin ; its tough, fibrous rind 
is the.altered analogue of the flesh in the peach ; and its nut (which 
part alone, shelled or unshelled, we generally see at table) is the 
equivalent of the peach-stone. But if you cut open a young walnut, 
a young hickory-nut, a young almond, a young peach, and a young 
plum, you will be surprised to find how exactly they answer to one 
another, part for part, and how entirely the conspicuous adaptive dif- 
ferences in the mature nuts or fruits are due to small varieties of de- 
velopment in the very latest stages of the ripening process. Pour a 
little sweet juice into the middle coat of the almond, and it would be 
a peach ; add a little woody material to the cell-walls of the flesh in 
the peach, and it would be a very decent almond indeed. 


440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


THE GHOST OF RELIGION. 
By FREDERIC HARRISON. 


N the January number of this Review * is to be found an article on 
Religion which has justly awakened a profound and sustained in- 
terest. The creed of Agnosticism was there formulated anew by the 
acknowledged head of the evolution philosophy, with a definiteness 
such as perhaps it never wore before. Tomy mind there is nothing in 
the whole range of modern religious discussion more cogent and more 
suggestive than the array of conclusions the final outcome of which is 
marshaled in those twelve pages. It is the last word of the Agnostic 
philosophy in its long controversy with Theology. That word is deci- 
sive, and it is hard to conceive how Theology can rally for another bout 
from such a sorites of dilemma as is there presented. My own humble 
purpose is not to criticise this paper, but to point its practical moral, 
and, if I may, to add toit a rider of my own. As a summary of philo- 
sophical conclusions on the theological problem, it seems to me frankly 
unanswerable. Speaking generally, I shall now dispute no part of it 
but one word, and that is the title. It is entitled “ Religion.” To me 
it is rather the ghost of religion. Religion as a living force lies in a 
different sphere. 

The essay, which is packed with thought toa degree unusual even 
with Mr. Herbert Spencer, contains evidently three parts. The first 
(pp. 1-5) deals with the historical Evolution of Religion, of which Mr. 
Spencer traces the germs in the primitive belief in ghosts. The seccnd 
(pp. 6-8) arrays the moral and intellectual dilemmas inyolved in all 
anthropomorphic theology into one long catena of difficulty, out of 
which it is hard to conceive any free mind emerging with success. 
The third part (pp. 8-12) deals with the evolution of religion in the 
future, and formulates, more precisely than has ever yet been effected, 
the positive creed of Agnostic philosophy. 

Has, then, the Agnostic a positive creed? It would seem-so ; for 
Mr. Spencer brings us at last “to the one absolute certainty, the pres- 
ence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.” 
But let no one suppose that this is merely a new name for the Great 
First Cause of so many theologies and metaphysics. In spite of the 
eapital letters, and the use of theological terms as old as Isaiah or 
Athanasius, Mr, Spencer’s Energy has no analogy with God. It is 
Eternal, Infinite, and Incomprehensible ; but still it is not He, but It. 
It remains always Energy, Force, nothing anthropomorphic ; such as 
electricity, or anything else that we might conceive as the ultimate 
basis of all the physical forces, None of the positive attributes which 


* See “ Popular Science Monthly” for January, 1884. 


THE GHOST OF RELIGION. 441 . 


have ever been predicated of God can be used of this Energy. Neither 
goodness, nor wisdom, nor justice, nor consciousness, nor will, nor life, 
can be ascribed, even by analogy, to this Force. Now a force to which 
we cannot apply the ideas of goodness, wisdom, justice, consciousness, 
or life, any more than we can to a circle, is certainly not God, has no 
analogy with God, nor even with what Pope has called the “ Great 
First Cause, least understood.” It shares some of the negative attri- 
butes of God and First Cause, but no positiveone. It is, in fact, only 
the Unknowable a little more defined ; though I do not remember that 
Mr. Spencer, or any evolution philosopher, has ever formulated the 
Unknowable in terms with so deep a theological ring as we hear in the 
phrase “Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.” 

The terms do seem, perhaps, rather needlessly big and absolute. 
And fully accepting Mr. Spencer’s logical canons, one does not see 
why it should be called an “absolute certainty.” ‘“ Practical belief” 
satisfies me ; and I doubt the legitimacy of substituting for it “‘ abso- 
lute certainty.” “Infinite” and “Eternal,” also, can mean to Mr. 
Spencer nothing more than “to which we know nolimits, no beginning 
or end,” and, for my part, I prefer to say this. Again, “an Energy” 
—why an Energy? The Unknowable may certainly consist of more 
than one energy. ‘To assert the presence of one uniform energy is to 
profess to know something very important about the Unknowable : 
that it is homogeneous, and even identical, throughout the Universe. 
And then, “ from which all things proceed ” is perhaps a rather equiv- 
ocal reversion to the theologic type. In the Athanasian Creed the 
Third Person “proceeds” from the First and the Second. But this 
process has always been treated as amystery ; and it would be safer to 
avoid the phrases of mysticism. Let us keep the old words, for we ail 
mean much the same thing ; and I prefer to put it thus. All observa- 
tion and meditation, Science and Philosophy, bring us “to the practical 
belief that man is ever in the presence of some energy or energies, of 
which he knows nothing, and to which therefore he would be wise to 
assign no limits, conditions, or functions.” This is, doubtless, what 
Mr. Spencer himself means. For my part, I prefer his old term, the 
Unknowable. Though I have always thought that it would be more 
philosophical not to assert of the Unknown that it is Unknowable. 
And, indeed, I would rather not use the capital letter, but stick literally 
to our evidence, and say frankly “ the unknown.” : 

Thus viewed, the attempt, so to speak, to put a little unction into 
the Unknowable is hardly worth the philosophical inaccuracy it in- 
volves ; and such is the drawback to any use of picturesque language. 
So stated, the positive creed of Agnosticism still retains its negative 
character. It has a series of propositions. and terms, every one of 
which is anegation. A friend of my own, who was much pressed to 
say how much of the Athanasian Creed he still accepted, once said 
that he clung to the idea “that there was a sort of a something.” In 


442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


homely words such as the unlearned can understand, that is precisely 
what the religion of the Agnostic comes to, “the belief that there is a 
sort of a something about which we can know nothing.” 

Now let us profess that, as a philosophical answer to the theologi- 
cal problem, that is entirely our own position. The Positivist answer 
is of course the same as the Agnostic answer. Why, then, do we ob- 
ject to be called Agnostics ? Simply because Agnostic is only dog-Greek 
for “ don’t know,” and we have no taste to be called “ don’t knows.” 
The “ Spectator” calls us Agnostics, but that is only by way of preju- 
dice. Our religion does not consist in a comprehensive negation ; we 
are not forever replying to the' theological problem ; we are quite un- 
concerned by the theological problem, and have something that we do 
care for,and do know. Englishmen are Europeans, and many of them 
are Christians, and they usually prefer to call themselves Englishmen, 
Christians, or the like, rather than non-Asiatics or anti-Mahometans. 
Some people still prefer to call themselves Protestants rather than 
Christians, but the taste is dying out, except among Irish Orangemen, 
and even the Nonconformist newspaper has been induced by Mr. Mat- 
thew Arnold to drop its famous motto, “The dissidence of Dissent, 
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.” For a man to say 
that his religion is Agnosticism is simply the skeptical equivalent of 
saying that his religionis Protestantism. Both mean that his religion 
is to deny and to differ. Butthisisnot religion. The business of reli- 
gion is to affirm and to unite, and nothing can be religion but that 
which at once affirms truth and unites men. 

The purpose of the present paper is to show that Agnosticism, 
though a valid and final answer to the theological or ontological prob- 
lem—“ What is the ultimate cause of the world and of man ?”—is not 
a religion nor the shadow of a religion. It offers none of the rudiments 
or elements of religion, and religion is not to be found in that line at 
all. It is the mere disembodied spirit of dead religion : as we said at 
the outset, it is the ghost of religion. Agnosticism, perfectly legiti- 
mate as the true answer of science to an effete question, has shown us 
that religion is not to be found anywhere within the realm of Cause. 
Having brought us to the answer, “no cause that we know of,” it is 
laughable to call that negation religion. Mr. Mark Pattison, one of the 
acutest minds of modern Oxford, rather oddly says that the idea of 
deity has now been “‘defecated to a pure transparency.” The evolu- 
tion philosophy goes a step further and defecates the idea of cause to a 
pure transparency. Theology and ontology alike end in the Everlasting 
No with which science confronts all their assertions. But how whim- 
sical is it to tell us that religion, which can not find any resting-place 
in theology or ontology, is to find its true home in the Everlasting No! 
That which is defecated to a pure transparency can never supply a re- 
: * ligion to any human being but a philosopher constructing a system. It 
| : 4s qiiite conceivable that religion is to end with theology, and both 
ie Gah 


Ne 


re eae 


THE GHOST OF RELIGION. 443 


might in the course of evolution become an anachronism. But if re- 
ligion there is still to be, it can not be found in this No-man’s-land and 
Know-nothing creed. Better bury religion at once than let its ghost 
walk uneasy in our dreams. 

The true lesson is that we must hark back, and leave the realm of 
Cause. The accident of religion has been mistaken for the essence 
of religion. The essence of religion is not to answer a question, but 
to govern and unite men and societies by giving them common beliefs 
and duties. Theologies tried to do this, and long did it, by resting 
on certain answers to certain questions. The progress of thought 
has upset one answer after another, and now the final verdict of phi- 
losophy is that all the answers are unmeaning, and that no rational 
answer can be given. It follows then that questions and answers, 
both but the accident of religion, must both be given up. A base of 
belief and duty must be looked for elsewhere, and when this has been 
found, then again religion will succeed in governing and uniting men. 
Where is this base to be found? Since the realm of Cause has failed 
to give us foothold, we must fall back upon the realm of Law—social, 
moral, and mental law, and not merely physical. Religion consists, 
not in answering certain questions, but in making men of a certain 
quality. And the law, moral, mental, social, is pre-eminently the field 
wherein men may be governed and united. Hence to the religion of 
Cause there succeeds the religion of Law. But the religion of Law 
or Science is Positivism. 

It is no part of my purpose to criticise Mr. Spencer’s memorable 
essay, except so far as it is necessary to show that that which is a 
sound philosophical conclusion is not religion, simply by reason that 
it relates to the subject-matter of theology. But a few words may be 
suffered as to the historical evolution of religion. To many persons 
it will sound rather whimsical, and possibly almost a sneer, to trace 
the germs of religion to the ghost-theory. Our friends of the Psychi- 
cal Research will prick up their ears, and expect to be taken au grand 
sérieux. But the conception is a thoroughly solid one, and of most 
suggestive kind. Beyond all doubt, the hypothesis of quasi-human 
immaterial spirits working within and behind familiar phenomena did 
take its rise from the idea of the other self which the imagination con- 
tinually presents to the early reflections of man. And, beyond all 
doubt, the phenomena of dreams, and the gradual construction of a 
theory of ghosts, is a very impressive and vivid form of the notion of 
the other self. It would, I think, be wrong to assert that it is the only 
form of the notion, and one can hardly suppose that Mr. Spencer would 
limit himself to that. But, in any case, the construction of a coherent 
theory of ghosts is a typical instance of a belief in a quasi-human 
spirit-world. Glorify and amplify this idea, and apply it to the whole 
of Nature, and we get a god-world, a multitude of superhufhan Wixzije, 
spirits. tant “b:.5 x ty hy 


444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


That is the philosophical explanation of the rise of theology, of the 
peopling of Nature with divine spirits. But does it explain the rise 
of Religion? No, for theology and religion are not conterminous. 
Mr. Spencer has unwittingly conceded to the divines that which they 
assume so confidently—that theology is the same thing as religion, 
and that there was no religion at all until there was a belief in super- 
human spirits within and behind Nature. This is obviously an over- 
sight.. We have to go very much further back for the genesis of 
religion. ‘There were countless centuries of time, and there were, and 
there are, countless millions of men for whom no doctrine of superhu- 
man spirits ever took coherent form. In all these ages and races, 
probably by far the most numerous that our planet has witnessed, 
there was religion in all kinds of definite form. Comte calls it Fetich- 
ism—terms are not important : roughly, we may call it Nature-wor- 
ship. The religion in all these types was the belief and worship not 
of spirits of any kind, not of any immaterial, imagined being inside 
things, but of the actual visible things themselves—trees, stones, rivers, 
mountains, earth, fire, stars, sun, and sky. Some of the most abiding 
and powerful of all religions have consisted in elaborate worship of 
these physical objects treated frankly as physical objects, without trace 
of ghost, spirit, or god. To say nothing of fire-worship, river, and 
tree-worship, the venerable religion of China, far the most vast of all 
systematic religions, is wholly based on reverence for Earth, Sky, and 
ancestors treated objectively, and not as the abode of subjective imma- 
terial spirits. 

Hence the origin of religion is to be sought in the countless ages 
before the rise of theology ; before spirits, ghosts, or gods ever took 
definite form in the human mind. The primitive uncultured man 
frankly worshiped external objects in love and in fear, ascribing 
to them quasi-human powers and feelings. All that we read about 
Animism, ghosts, spirits, and universal ideas of godhead in this truly 
primitive stage are metaphysical assumptions of men trying to read 
the ideas of later epochs into the facts of an earlier epoch. Nothing 
is more certain than that man everywhere started with a simple wor- 
ship of natural objects. And the bearing of this on the future of 
religion is decisive. The religion of man in the vast cycles of primi- 
tive ages was reverence for Nature as influencing Man. The religion 
of man in the vast cycles that are to come will be the reverence for 
Humanity as supported by Nature. The religion of man in the twenty 
or thirty centuries of Theology was reverence for the assumed authors 
or controllers of Nature, But, that assumption having broken up, 
religion does not break up with it. On the contrary, it enters on a far 
greater and more potent career, inasmuch as the natural emotions of 
the human heart are now combined with the certainty of scientific 
knowledge. The final religion of enlightened man is the systematized 
and scientific form of the spontaneous religion of natural man. Both 


THE GHOST OF RELIGION. 445 


rest on the same elements—belief in the Power which controls his 
life, and grateful reverence for the Power so acknowledged. The 
primitive man thought that Power to be the object of Nature affect- 
ing Man. The cultured man knows that Power to be Humanity itself, 
controlling and controlled by Nature according to natural law. The 
transitional and perpetually changing creed of Theology has been an 
interlude. Agnosticism has uttered its epilogue. But Agnosticism 
is no more religion than differentiation or the nebular hypothesis is 
religion. 

We have only to see what are the ,elements and ends of religion 
to recognize that we can not find it in the negative and the unknown. 
In any reasonable use of language religion implies some kind of be- 
lief in a Power outside ourselves, some kind of awe and gratitude felt 
for that Power, some kind of influence exerted by it over our lives. 
There are always in some sort these three elements—belief, worship, 
conduct. A religion which gives us nothing in particular to believe, 
nothing as an object of awe and gratitude, which has no special rela- 
tion to human duty, is not a religion at all. It may be formula, a 
generalization, a logical postulate ; but it is not areligion, The uni- 
versal presence of the unknowable (or rather of the unknown) substra- 
tum is not a religion. It is a logical postulate. You may call it, if _ 
-you please, the first axiom of science, a law of the human mind, or 
perhaps better the universal postulate of philosophy. But try it by 
every test which indicates religion and you will find it wanting. 

The points which the Unknowable has in common with the object 
of any religion are very slight and superficial. As the universal sub- 
stratum it has some analogy with other superhuman objects of worship. 
But Force, Gravitation, Atom, Undulation, Vibration, and other 
abstract notions have much the same kind of analogy, but nobody 
ever dreamed of a religion of gravitation, or the worship of molecules. 
The Unknowable has managed to get itself spelt with a capital U; 
but Carlyle taught us to spell the Everlasting No with capitals wie. 
The Unknowable is no doubt mysterious, and Godhead is mysterious. 
It certainly appeals to the sense of wonder, and the Trinity appeals to 
the sense of wonder. It suggests vague and infinite extension, as does 
the idea of deity: but then Time and Space equally suggest vague 
and infinite extension. Yet no one but a delirious Kantist ever pro- 
fessed that Time and Space were his religion. ‘These seem all the 
qualities which the Unknowable has in common with objects of wor- 
ship—ubiquity, mystery, and immensity. But these svi it shares 
with some other postulates of thought. 

But try it by all the other recognized tests of religion. Religion 
is not made up of wonder, or of a vague sense of immensity, unsatis- 
fied yearning after infinity. Theology, seeking a refuge in the unin- 
telligible, has no doubt accustomed this generation to imagine that a 
yearning after infinity is the sum and substance of religion. But that 


446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


is a@ metaphysical disease of the age. And there is no reason that 
philosophers should accept this hysterical piece of transcendentalism, 
and assume that they have found the field of religion when they have 
found a field for unquenchable yearning after infinity. Wonder has 
its place in religion, and so has mystery ; but it is a subordinate place. 
The roots and fibers of religion are to be found in love, awe, sympa- 
thy, gratitude, consciousness of inferiority and of dependence, com- 
munity of will, acceptance of control, manifestation of purpose, rever- 
ence for majesty, goodness, creative energy, and life. Where these 
things are not, religion is not., 

Let us take each one of these three elements of religion—belief, 
worship, conduct—and try them all in turn as applicable to the Un- 
knowable. How mere a phrase must any religion be of which neither 
belief, nor worship, nor conduct can be spoken! Imagine a religion 
which can have no believers, because, ex hypothesi, its adepts are for- 
bidden to believe anything about it. Imagine a religion which ex- 
cludes the idea of worship, because its sole dogma is the infinity of 
Nothingness. Although the Unknowable is logically said to be Some- 
thing, yet the something of which we neither know nor conceive any- 
thing is practically nothing. Lastly, imagine a religion which can 
have no relation to conduct ; for obviously the Unknowable can give 
us no intelligible help to conduct, and ex vi termini can have no bear- 
ing on conduct. A religion which could not make any one any better, 
which would leave the human heart and human society just as it found 
them, which left no foothold for devotion, and none for faith ; which 
could have no creed, no doctrines, no temples, no priests, no teachers,. 
no rites, no morality, no beauty, no hope, no consolation ; which is 
summed up in one dogma—the Unknowable is everywhere, and Evo- 
lution is its prophet—this is indeed “to defecate religion to a pure 
transparency.” 

The growing weakness of religion has long been that it is being 
thrust inch by inch off the platform of knowledge ; and we watch 
with sympathy the desperate efforts of all religious spirits to maintain 
the relations between knowledge and religion. And now it hears the 
invitation of Evolution to abandon the domain of knowledge, and 
to migrate to the domain of no-knowledge. The true Rock of Ages, 
says the philosopher, is the Unknowable. To the eye of Faith all 
things are henceforth dxatadnpia, as Cicero calls it. The paradox 
would hardly be greater if we were told that true religion consisted 
in unlimited Vice. 

What is religion for? Why do we want it? And what do we ex- 
pect it todo for us? If it can give us no sure ground for our minds to 
rest on, nothing to purify the heart, to exalt the sense of sympathy, to 
deepen our sense of beauty, to strengthen our resolves, to chasten us 
into resignation, and to kindle a spirit of self-sacrifice—what is the 
good of it? The Unknowable, ex. hypothesi, can do none of these 


THE GHOST OF RELIGION. 447 


things. The object of all religion, in any known variety of religion, 
has invariably had some quasi-human and sympathetic relation to man 
and human life. It follows from the very meaning of religion that it 
could not effect. any of its work without such quality or relation. It 
would be hardly sane to make a religion out of the Equator or the Bi- 
nomial theorem. Whether it was the religion of the lowest savage, of 
the Polytheist, or of the Hegelian Theist ; whether the object of the 
worship were a river, the Moon, the Sky, Apollo, Thor, God, or First 
Cause, there has always been some chain of sympathy—influence on 
the one side, and veneration on the other. However rudimentary, there 
must be a belief in some Power influencing the believer, and whose 
influence he repays with awe and gratitude and a desire to conform his 
life thereto. But to make a religion out of the Unknowable is far more 
extravagant than to make it out of the Equator. We know something 
of the Equator ; it influences seamen, equatorial peoples, and geogra- 
phers not a little, and we all hesitate, as was once said, to speak disre- 
spectfully of the Equator. But would it be blasphemy to speak disre- 
spectfully of the Unknowable? Our minds are a blank about it. As 
to acknowledging the Unknowable, or trusting in it, or feeling its influ- 
ence over us, or paying gratitude to it, or conforming our lives to it, or 
looking to it for help—the use of such words about it is unmeaning, 
We can wonder at it, as the child wonders at the “ twinkling star,” and 
that is all. It is a religion only to stare at. 

Religion is not a thing of star-gazing and staring, but of life and 
action. And the condition of any such effect on our lives and our 
hearts is some sort of vital quality in that which is the object of the 
religion. The mountain, sun, or sky’which untutored man worships 
is thought to have some sort of vital quality, some potency of the kind 
possessed by organic beings. When mountain, sun, and sky cease to 
have this vital potency, educated man ceases to worship them. Of 
céurse all sorts and conditions of divine spirits are assumed in a pre- 
eminent degree to have this quality, and hence the tremendous force 
exerted by all religions of divine spirits. Philosophy and the eutha- 
nasia of theology have certainly reduced this vital quality to aminimum 
in our day, and I suppose Dean Mansel’s Bampton Lectures touched the 
low-water mark of vitality as predicated of the Divine Being. Of all 
modern theologians, the Dean came the nearest to the Evolution nega- 
tion. But there is a gulf which separates even his all-negative deity 
from Mr. Spencer’s impersonal, unconscious, unthinking, and unthink- 
able Energy. 

Knowledge is of course wholly within the sphere of the Known, 
Our moral and social science is, of course, within the sphere of knowl- 
edge. Moral and social well-being, moral and social education, prog- 
ress, perfection, naturally rest on moral and social science. Civilization 
rests on moral and social progress. And happiness can only be secured 
by both. But if religion has its sphere in the Unknown and Unknow, 


448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


able, it is thereby outside all this field of the Known. In other words- 


Religion (of the Unknowable type) is ex hypothesi outside the sphere 
of knowledge, of civilization, of social discipline, of morality, of prog- 
ress, and of happiness. It has no part or parcel in humanlife. It fills 
a brief and mysterious chapter in a system of philosophy. 

By their fruits you shall know them is true of all sorts of religion. 
And what are the fruits of the Unknowable but the Dead Sea apples ? 
Obviously it can teach us nothing, influence us in nothing, for the abso- 
lutely incalculable and unintelligible can give us neither ground for 
action nor thought. Norcan it touch any one of our feelings, but that 
of wonder, mystery, and sense of human helplessness. Helpless, object- 
less, apathetic wonder at an inscrutable infinity may be attractive to a 
metaphysical divine : but it does not sound like a working force in the 
world. Does the Evolutionist commune with the Unknowable in the 
secret silence of his chamber? Does he meditate on it, saying, in 
quietness and confidence shall be your strength? One would like to 
see the new Jmitatio Ignoti. It was said of old, Jgnotum omne pro 
magnifico. But the new version is to be Jgnotum omne pro divino. 

One would like to know how much of the Evolutionist’s day is con- 
secrated to seeking the Unknowable in a devout way, and what the reli- 
gious exercises might be. How does the man of science approach the 
All-Nothingness ? and the microscopist, and the embryologist, and the 
vivisectionist ? What do they learn about it, what strength or com- 
fort does it give them? Nothing—nothing: it is an ever-present 
conundrum to be everlastingly given up, and perpetually to be asked of 
one’s self and one’s neighbors, but without waiting for the answer. 
Tantalus and Sisyphus bore their insoluble tasks, and the Evolutionist 
carries about his riddle without an answer, his unquenchable thirst to 
know that which he only knows he can never know. Quiésque suos 
patimur Manes. But Tantalus and Sisyphus called it Hell and the 
retribution of the Gods. The Evolutionist calls it Religion, and one 
might almost say Paradise. 

A child comes up to our Evolutionist friend, looks up in his wise 
and meditative face, and says, “O wise and great Master, what is 
religion?” And he tells that child, It is the presence of the Unknow- 
able. “ But what,” asks the child, “am I to believe about it?” “ Be- 
lieve that you can never know anything about it.” “But how am I to 
learn to do my duty?” ‘Oh! for duty you must turn to the known, 
to moral and social science.” And a mother wrung with agony for the 
loss of her child, or the wife crushed by the death of her children’s 
father, or the helpless and the oppressed, the poor and the needy, men, 
women, and children, in sorrow, doubt, and want, longing for some- 
thing to comfort them and to guide them, something to believe in, to 
hope for, to love, and to worship—they come to our philosopher and 
they say, “ Your men of science have routed our priests, and have 
silenced our old teachers. What religious faith do you give us in its 


THE GHOST OF RELIGION. 449 


_ place?” And the philosopher replies (his full heart bleeding for them) 
and he says, “ Think on the Unknowable.” 

And in the hour of pain, danger, or death, can any one think of the 
Unknowable, hope anything of the Unknowable, or find any consola- 
tion therein? Altars might be built to some Unknown God, conceived 
as a real being, knowing us, though not known by us yet. But altars 
to the unknowable infinity, even metaphorical altars, are impossible, 
for this unknown can never be known, and we have not the smallest 
reason to imagine that it either knew us, or affects us, or anybody, or 
anything. As the Unknowable can not bring men together in a com- 
mon belief, or for common purposes, or kindred feeling, it can no more 
unite men than the precession of the equinoxes can unite them. So 
there can never be congregations of Unknowable worshipers, nor 
churches dedicated to the Holy Unknowable, nor images nor symbols 
of the Unknowable mystery. Yes! there is one symbol of the Infinite 
Unknowable, and it is perhaps the most definite and ultimate word 
that can be said about it. The precise and yet inexhaustible language 
of mathematics enables us to express, in a common algebraic formula, 
the exact combination of the unknown raised to its highest power of 
infinity. That formula is (a), and here we have the beginning and 
perhaps the end of a symbolism for the religion of the Infinite Un- 
knowable. Schools, academies, temples of the Unknowable, there can 
not be. But where two or three are gathered together to worship the 
Unknowable, there the algebraic formula may suffice to give form to 
their emotions : they may be heard to profess their unwearying belief 
in (a*), even if no weak brother with ritualist tendencies be heard to 
cry, “O 2*, love us, help us, make us one with thee!” 

These things have their serious side, and suggest the real difficul- 
ties in the way of the theory. The alternative is this: Is religion a 
mode of answering a question in ontology, or is it an institution for 
affecting human life by acting on the human spirit ? If it be the latter, 
then there can be no religion of the Unknowable, and the sphere of 
religion must be sought elsewhere in the Knowable. We may accept 
with the utmost confidence all that the evolution philosophy asserts. 
and denies as to the perpetual indications of an ultimate energy, omni- 
present and unlimited, and, so far as we can see, of inscrutable myste- 
riousness. That remains an ultimate scientific idea, one no doubt of 
profound importance. But why should this idea be dignified with the 
name of religion, when it has not one of the elements of religion, ex- 
cept infinity and mystery? The hallowed name of religion has meant, 
in a thousand languages, man’s deepest convictions, his surest hopes, 
the most sacred yearnings of his heart, that which can bind in brother- 
hood generations of men, comfort the fatherless and the widow, uphold 
the martyr at the stake, and the hero in his long battle. Why retain 
this magnificent word, rich with the associations of all that is great, 
pure, and lovely in human nature, if it is to be henceforth limited to 

VOL. XxY.—29 


450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


an idea, that can only be expressed by the formula (x*) ; and which by 
the hypothesis can have nothing to do with either knowledge, belief, 
sympathy, hope, life, duty, or happiness? It is not religion, this. It 
is a logician’s artifice to escape from an awkward dilemma. 

One word in conclusion to those who would see religion a working 

reality, and not a logical artifice. The startling reductio ad absurdum 
of relegating religion to the unknowable is only the last step in the 
process which has gradually reduced religion to an incomprehensible 
minimum. And this has been the work of theologians obstinately 
fighting a losing battle, and withdrawing at every defeat into a more 
impregnable and narrower fastness. They have thrown over one after 
another the claims of religion and the attributes of divinity. They are 
so hopeless of continuing the contest on the open field of the known 
that they more and more seek to withdraw to the cloud-world of the 
transcendental. They are so terribly afraid of an anthropomorphic 
God that they have sublimated him into a oo expression— 
“defecated the idea to a pure transparency,” as one of the most emi- 
nent of them puts it. Dean Mansel is separated from Mr. Spencer by 
degree, not in kind. And now they are pushed by Evolution into the 
abyss, and are solemnly assured that the reconciliation of Religion and 
Science is effected by this religion of the Unknowable—this chimera 
bombinans in vacuo. Their Infinites and their Incomprehensibles, 
their Absolute and their Unconditioned, have brought them to this. 
It is only one step from the sublime to the unknowable. 

Practically, so far as it affects the lives of men and women in the 
battle of life, the absolute and Unconditioned Godhead of learned di- 
vines is very much the same thing as the Absolute Unknowable. You 
may rout a logician by a “pure transparency,” but you can not check 
vice, crime, and war by it, nor train up men and women in holiness 
and truth. And the set of all modern theology is away from the an- 
thropomorphic and into the Absolute. In trying to save a religion of 
the spirit-world, theologians are abandoning all religion of the real 
world ; they are turning religion into formulas and phrases, and are 
taking out of it all power over life, duty, and society. 

I say, in a word, unless religion is to be anthropomorphic, there 
can be no working religion at all. How strange is this new cry, 
sprung up in our own generation, that religion is dishonored by being 
anthropomorphic! Fetichism, Polytheism, Confucianism, Medizval 
Christianity, and Bible Puritanism have all been intensely anthropo- 
morphic, and all owed their strength and dominion to that fact. You 

‘can have no religion without kinship, sympathy, relation of some 
human kind between the believer, worshiper, servant, and the object 
of his belief, veneration, and service. The Neo-Theisms have all the 
same mortal weakness that the Unknowable has. They offer no kin- 
ship, sympathy, or relation whatever between worshiper and wor- 
shiped. They, too, are logical formulas begotten in controversy, 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 451 


dwelling apart from man and the world. If the formula of the Un- 
knowable is (x"), or the Unknown raised to infinity, theirs is (nz), 
some unknown expression of ie Neither (2" ) nor (nx) will ever 
make good men and women. 

If we leave the region of fecovalas and go back to the practical 
effect of religion on human conduct, we must be driven to the conclu- 
sion that the future of religion is to be, not only what every real 
religion has ever been, anthropomorphic—but frankly anthropic. The 
attempted religion of Spiritism has lost one after another every re- 
source of a real religion, until risu solvuntur tabule, and it ends in a 
religion of Nothingism. It is the Nemesis of Faith in spiritual ab- 
stractions and figments. The hypothesis has burst, and leaves the 
Void. The future will have then to return to the Knowable and the 
certainly known, to the religion of Realism. It must give up explain- 
ing the Universe, and content itself with explaining human life. 
Humanity is the grandest object of reverence within the region of the 
real and the known, Humanity with the World on which it rests as its 
base and environment. Religion, having failed in the superhuman 
world, returns to the human world. Here religion can find again all 
its certainty, all its depth of human sympathy, all its claim to com- 
mand and reward the purest self-sacrifice and love. We can take our 
place again with all the great religious spirits who have ever molded 
the faith and life of men, and we find ourselves in harmony with the 
devout of every faith who are manfully battling with sin and discord. 
The way for us is the clearer as we find the religion of Spiritism, in 
its long and restless evolution of thirty centuries, ending in the legiti- 
mate deduction, the religion of the Unknowable, a paradox as mem- 
orable as any in the history of the human mind. The alternative is 
very plain. Shall we cling to a religion of Spiritism when Philosophy 
is whittling away spirit to Nothing? Or shall we accept a religion 
of Realism, where all the great traditions and functions of religion 
are retained unbroken ?— Nineteenth Century. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION.* 
By HERBERT SPENCER. 


ie days when dueling was common, and its code of ceremonial well 
elaborated, a deadly encounter was preceded by a polite salute. 
Having by his obeisance professed to be his antagonist’s very humble 
servant, each forthwith did his best to run him through the body. 


* Excepting its last section, this article had been written, and part of it sent to the 
printers, by the 30th of May ; and, consequently, before I saw the article of Sir James 
Stephen, published in the “ Nineteenth Century” for June, 1884. Hence the fact that 


452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


This usage is recalled to me by the contrast between the compliment 
with which Mr, Harrison begins his article, “The Ghost of Religion,” 
and the efforts he afterward makes to destroy, in the brilliant style 
habitual with him, all but the negative part of that which he applauds. 
After speaking with too-flattering eulogy of the mode in which I have 
dealt with current theological doctrines, he does his best, amid the 
flashes of wit coming from its polished surface, to pass the sword of 
his logic through the ribs of my argument, and let out its vital prin- 
ciple—that element in it which is derived from the religious ideas and 
sentiments that have grown up along with human evolution, but which 
is inconsistent with the creed Mr. Harrison preaches. 

So misleading was the professed agreement with which he com- 
menced his article, that, as I read on, I was some time in awakening 
to the fact that I had before me not a friend, but, controversially 
speaking, a determined enemy, who was seeking to reduce, as he would 
say to a ghostly form, that surviving element of religion which, as I 
had contended, Agnosticism contains. Even when this dawned on me, 
the suavity of Mr. Harrison’s first manner continued so influential that 
I entertained no thought of defending myself. It was only after per- 
ceiving that what he modestly calls “a rider” was described by one 
journal as “a criticism keen, trenchant, destructive,” while by some 
other journals kindred estimates of it were formed, that I decided to 
make a reply as soon as pending engagements allowed. 

Recognizing, then, the substance of Mr. Harrison’s article as being 
an unsparing assault on the essential part of that doctrine which I 
have set forth, I shall here not scruple to defend it in the most effect- 
ive way I can: not allowing the laudation with which Mr. Harrison 
prefaces his ridicule, to negative such rejoinders, incisive as I can 
make them, as will best serve my purpose. 


A critic who, in a recent number of the “ Edinburgh Review,” tells 
the world in very plain language what he thinks about a book of mine, 
and who has been taken to task by the editor of “ Knowledge” for 
his injustice, refers to Mr. Harrison (whom he describes in felicitous 
phrase as looking at me from “avery opposite pole”) as being, on one 


only in its last section have I been able (without undue interruption of my argument) to 
refer to points in Sir James Stephen’s criticism. 

Concerning his criticism generally, I may remark that it shows me how dangerous it is 
to present separately, in brief space, conclusions which it has taken a large space to jus- 
tify. Unhappily, twelve pages do not suffice for adequate exposition of a philosophical 
system, or even of its bases ; and misapprehension is pretty certain to occur if a statement 
contained in twelve pages is regarded as more thana rude outline. If Sir James Stephen 
will refer to §§ 49-207 of the “ Principles of Sociology,” occupying 850 pages, I fancy 
that instead of seeming to him “ weak,” the evidence there given of the origin of religious 
ideas will seem to him very strong; and I venture also to think that if he will refer to 
“First Principles,” $$ 24-26, § 50, $§ 58-61, § 194, and to the “Principles of Psy- 
chology,” §§ 847-851, he may find that what he thinks “an unmeaning playing with 
words” has more meaning than appears at first sight. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 453 


point, in agreement with him.* But for this reference it would not 
have occurred to me to associate in thought Mr. Harrison’s criticisms 
with those of the Edinburgh Reviewer ; but now that comparison is 
suggested, I am struck by the fact that Mr. Harrison’s representations 
of my views diverge from the realities no less widely than those of a 
critic whose antagonism is unqualified, and whose animus is displayed 
in his first paragraph. 

So anxious is Mr. Harrison to show that the doctrine he would 
discredit has no kinship to the doctrines called religious, that he will 
not allow me, without protest, to use the language needed for convey- 
ing my meaning. The expression “an Infinite and Eternal Energy 
from which all things proceed,” he objects to as being “ perhaps a 
rather equivocal reversion to the theologic type ;” and he says this 
because “in the Athanasian Creed the Third Person ‘ proceeds’ from 
the First and the Second.” It is hard that I should be debarred from 
thus using the word by this preceding use. Perhaps Mr. Harrison 
will be surprised to learn that, as originally written, the expression ran 
—“an Infinite and Eternal Energy by which all things are created 
and sustained ;” and that in the proof I struck out the last clause be- 
cause, though the words did not express more than I meant, the ideas 
associated with them might mislead, and there might result such an 
insinuation as that which Mr. Harrison makes. The substituted ex- 
pression, which embodies my thought in the most colorless way, I 
can not relinquish because he does not like it—or rather, indeed, be- 
cause he does not like the thought itself. It is not convenient to him 
that the Unknowable, which he repeatedly speaks of as a pure nega- 
tion, should be represented as that through which all things exist. 
And, indeed, it would be inconvenient for him to recognize this ; 
since the recognition would prevent him from asserting that “none 
of the positive attributes which have ever been predicated of God can 
be used of this Energy.” 

Not only does he, as in the last sentence, negatively misdescribe 
the character of this Energy, but he positively misdescribes it. He 
says—“ It remains always Energy, Force: nothing anthropomorphic ; 
such as electricity, or anything else that we might conceive as the 
ultimate basis of all the physical forces.” Now, on page 9 of the 
essay Mr. Harrison criticises, there occurs the sentence—“ The final 
outcome of that speculation commenced by the primitive man, is that, 
the Power manifested throughout the Universe distinguished as mate- 
rial, is the same power which in ourselves wells up under the form of 
consciousness ;” and on page 11 it is said that “this necessity we are 
under, to think of the external energy in terms of the internal energy, 
gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect to the Universe.” 
Does he really think that the meaning of these sentences is conveyed 
by comparing the ultimate energy to “electricity”? And does he 


* “ Knowledge,” March 14, 1884, 


454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


think this in face of the statement on page 11 that “ phenomenal mani- 
festations of this ultimate energy can in no wise show us what it is?” 
Surely that which is described as the substratum at once of material 
and mental existence, bears toward us and toward the Universe, a 
relation utterly unlike that which electricity bears to the other physi- 
cal forces. 

Persistent thinking along defined grooves, causes inability to get 
out of them ; and Mr. Harrison, in more than one way, illustrates this. 
So completely is his thought molded to that form of phenomenalism 
entertained by M. Comte, that, in spite of repeated denials of it, he 
ascribes it to me ; and does this in face of the various presentations 
of an opposed phenomenalism, which I have given in the article he 
criticises and elsewhere. Speaking after his lively manner of the 
Unknown Cause as “an ever-present conundrum to be everlastingly 
given up,” he asks—“ How does the man of science approach the All- 
Nothingness?” Now M. Comte describes Positivism as becoming 
perfect when it reaches the power to “se représenter tous les divers 
phénoménes observables comme des cas particuliers d’un seul fait 
général . . . considérant comme absolument inaccessible, et vide de 
sens pour nous, la recherche de ce qu’on appelle les causes, soit pre- 
miéres, soit finales ;” * and in pursuance of this view the Comtean 
system limits itself to phenomena, and deliberately ignores the exist- 
ence of anything implied by the phenomena. But though M. Comte 
thus exhibits to us a doctrine which, performing “the happy dis- 
patch,” eviscerates things and leaves a shell of appearances with no 
reality inside ; yet I have in more than one place, and in the most 
emphatic way, declined thus to commit intellectual suicide. So far 
from regarding that which transcends phenomena as the “ All-Nothing- 
ness,” I regard it as the All-Being. Everywhere I have spoken of the 
Unknowable as the Ultimate Reality—the sole existence: all things 
present to consciousness being but shows of it. Mr, Harrison entirely 
inverts our relative positions. As I understand the case, the “ All- 
Nothingness” is that phenomenal existence in which M. Comte and 
his disciples profess to dwell—profess, I say, because in their ordinary 
thoughts they recognize an existence transcending phenomena just 
as much as other people do. 

That the opposition between the view actually held by me and the 
view ascribed to me by Mr. Harrison, is absolute, will be most clearly 
seen on observing the contrast he draws between my view and the 
view of the late Dean Mansel. He says :— 

Of all modern theologians, the Dean came the nearest to the evolution nega- 
tion. But there is a gulf which separates even his all-negative deity from Mr. 
Spencer’s impersonal, unconscious, unthinking, and unthinkable energy. 


It is quite true that there exists this gulf. But then the propositions 
forming the two sides of the gulf are the opposites of those which Mr. 


* “ Systéme de Philosophie Positive,” vol. i, pp. 5, 14. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 455. 


Harrison represents. For whereas, in common with his teacher Sir 
William Hamilton, Dean Mansel alleged that our consciousness of the 
Absolute is merely “a negation of conceivability ;” I have, over a 
space of ten pages,* contended that our consciousness of the Absolute 
is not negative but positive, and is the one indestructible element of 
consciousness “which persists at all times, under all circumstances, 
and can not cease until consciousness ceases ”—have argued that while 
the Power which transcends phenomena can not be brought within the 
forms of our finite thought, yet that, as being a necessary datum of 
every thought, belief in its existence has, among our beliefs, the high- 
est validity of any; is not, as Sir W. Hamilton alleges, a belief with 
which we are supernaturally “inspired,” but is a normal deliverance 
of consciousness. Thus, as represented by Mr. Harrison, Dean Man- 
sel’s views and my own are exactly transposed. Misrepresentation 
could not, I think, go further. 

The conception I have everywhere expressed and implied, of the 
relation between human life and the Ultimate Cause, if not diametri- 
cally opposed with like distinctness to the conception Mr. Harrison 
ascribes to me, is yet thus opposed in an unmistakable way. After 
suggesting that («") would be an appropriate symbol “for the religion 
of the Infinite Unknowable,” and amusing himself and his readers by 
imaginary prayers made to (a"); after making a subsequent elabora- 
tion of his jew d’esprit by suggesting that (nx) would serve for the 
formula of certain modern Theisms, he says of these :— 


The Neo-Theisms have all the same mortal weakness that the Unknowable 
has. They offer no kinship, sympathy, or relation whatever between worshiper 
and worshiped. They, too, are logical formulas begotten in controversy, dwell- 
ing apart from man and the world. 


Now, considering that in the article he has before him there is in 
various ways implied the view that “the power which manifests itself 
in consciousness is but a differently conditioned form of the power 
which manifests itself beyond consciousness ””—considering that here 
and everywhere throughout my books the implication is that our 
lives, alike physical and mental, in common with all the activities, 
organic and inorganic, amid which we live, are but the workings of 
this Power, it is not a little astonishing to find it described as simply 
a “logical formula begotten in controversy.” Does Mr. Harrison 
really think that he represents the facts when he describes as “ dwell- 
ing apart from man and the world,” that Power of which man and the 
world are regarded products, and which is manifested through man 
and the world from instant to instant ? 
Did I not need the space for other topics, I might at much greater 
length contrast Mr. Harrison’s erroneous versions with the true ones. 
* Imight enlarge on the fact that, though the name Agnosticism fitly 


* “ First Principles,” § 26. 


456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


expresses the confessed inability to know or conceive the nature of the 
Power manifested through phenomena, it fails to indicate the confessed 
ability to recognize the existence of that Power as of all things the 
most certain. I might make clear the contrast between that Comtean 
Agnosticism which says that “Theology and ontology alike end in the 
Everlasting No with which science confronts all their assertions,” * 
and the Agnosticism set forth in “ First Principles,” which, along with 
its denials, emphatically utters an Everlasting Yes. And I might show 
in detail that Mr. Harrison is wrong in implying that Agnosticism, as 
I hold it, is anything more than silent with respect to the question of 
personality ; since, though the attributes of personality, as we know 
it, can not be conceived by us as attributes of the Unknown Cause of 
things, yet “duty requires us neither to affirm nor deny personality,” 
but “to submit ourselves with all humility to the established limits of 
our intelligence” in the conviction that the choice is not “between 
personality and something lower than personality,” but “ between per- 
sonality and something higher,” + and that “the Ultimate Power is no 
more representable in terms of human consciousness than human con- 
sciousness is representable in terms of a plant’s functions.” t 

But without further evidence, what I have said sufficiently proves 
that Mr. Harrison’s “ criticism keen, trenchant, destructive,” as it was 
called, is destructive, not of an actual doctrine, but simply of an imagi- 
nary one. I should hardly have expected that Mr. Harrison, in com- 
mon with the “Edinburgh Reviewer,” would have taken the course, 
so frequent with critics, of demolishing a simulacrum and walking off 
in triumph as though the reality had been demolished. Adopting his 
own figure, I may say that he has with ease passed his weapon through 
and through “The Ghost of Religion ;” but then it is only the ghost : 
the reality stands unscathed. 


Before passing to the consideration of that alternative doctrine 
which Mr. Harrison would have us accept, it will be well briefly to 
deal with certain of his subordinate propositions, 

After re-stating in a succinet way, the hypothesis that from the con- 
ception of the ghost originated the conceptions of supernatural beings 
in general, including the highest, and after saying that “one can 
hardly suppose that Mr. Spencer would limit himself to that,” Mr. 
Harrison describes what he alleges to be a prior, and, indeed, the pri- 
mordial, form of religion. He says :— : 


There were countless centuries of time, and there were, and there are, count- 
less millions of men for whom no doctrine of superhuman spirits ever took co- 
herent form. In all these ages and races, probably by far the most numerous 
‘that our planet has witnessed, there was religion in all kinds of definite form. 
‘Comte calls it fetichism—terms are not important: roughly, we may call it 


* Harrison, loc. cit., p. 497. + “First Principles,” § 81. 
+ “ Essays,” vol. iii, p, 251. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 457. 


nature-worship. The religion in all these types was the belief and worship not 
of spirits of any kind, not of any immaterial, imagined being inside things, but 
of the actual visible things themselves—trees, stones, rivers, mountains, earth, 
fire, stars,sun, and sky. (P. 498.) 


The attitude of discipleship is not favorable to inquiry ; and, as 
fanatical Christians show us, inquiry is sometimes thought sinful and 
likely to bring punishment. I do not suppose that Mr. Harrison’s rey- 
erence for M. Comte has gone this length ; but still it has gone far 
enough not only to cause his continued adherence to a doctrine espoused 
by M. Comte which has been disproved, but also to make him tacitly 
assume that this doctrine is accepted by one whose rejection of it was 
long agoset forth. In the “ Descriptive Sociology” there are classified 
and tabulated statements concerning some eighty peoples ; and besides 
these I have had before me masses of facts, since collected, concern- 
ing many other peoples. An induction based on over a hundred 
examples, warrants me in saying that there has never existed any- 
where such a religion as that which Mr. Harrison ascribes to “ count- 
less millions of men” during “countless centuries of time.” A chap- 
ter on “ Idol-worship and Fetich-worship” in the “ Principles of Soci- 
ology,” gives proof that in the absence of a developed ghost-theory, 
fetichism is absent. I have shown that, whereas among the lowest 
races, such as the Juangs, Andamanese, Fuegians, Australians, Tas- 
manians, and Bushmen, there is no fetichism; fetichism reaches its 
greatest height in considerably-advanced societies, like those of ancient 
Peru and modern India: in which last place, as Sir Alfred Lyall tells 
us, “not only does the husbandman pray to his plow, the fisher to 
his net, the weaver to his loom, but the scribe adores his pen, and the 
banker his account-books.* And I have remarked that, “had fetich- 
ism been conspicuous among the lowest races, and inconspicuous among 
the higher, the statement that it was primordial might have been held 
proved ; but that as the facts happen to be exactly the opposite, the 
statement is conclusively disproved.” f 

Similarly with Nature-worship : regarding this as being partially 
distinguished from Fetichism by the relatively imposing character of 
its objects. In a subsequent chapter I have shown that this also, 
is an aberrant development of ghost-worship. Among all the many 
tribes and nations, remote in place and unlike in type, whose super- 
stitions I have examined, I have found no case in which any great 
natural appearance or power, feared and propitiated, was not identified 
with a human or quasi-human personality. Iam not aware that Pro- 
fessor Max Miiller, or any adherent of his, has been able to produce 
a single case in which there exists worship of the great natural objects 
themselves, pure and simple—the heavens, the sun, the moon, the 
dawn, etc.: objects which, according to the mythologists, become 


* “ Relicion of an Indian Province.” + “Principles of Sociology,” § 162. 


458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


personalized by “a disease of language.” Personalization exists at the 
outset ; and the worship is in all cases the worship of an indwelling 
ghost-derived being. 

That these conclusions are necessitated by an exhaustive examina- 
tion of the evidence, is shown by the fact that they have been forced 
on Dr. E. B. Tylor notwithstanding his original enunciation of other 
conclusions. In a lecture “On Traces of the Early Mental Condition 
of Man,” delivered at the Royal Institution on the 15th of March, 
1867, he said :— 


It is well known that the lower races of ‘mankind account for the facts and 
events of the outer world by ascribing a sort of human life and personality to 
animals, and even to plants, rocks, streams, winds, the sun and stars, and so on 
through the phenomena of nature. . . . It would probably add to the clearness 
of our conception of the state of mind which thus sees in all nature the action 
of animated life and the presence of innumerable spiritual beings, if we gave it 
the name of Animism instead of Fetichism. 


Here, having first noted that the conception of Fetichism derived by 
Dr. Tylor from multitudinous facts, is not like that of Mr. Harrison, 
who conceives Fetichism to: be a worship of the objects themselves, 
and not a worship of their indwelling spirits, we further note that Dr. 
Tylor regards this ascription of souls to all objects, inanimate as well 
as animate, which he proposes to call Animism rather than Fetichism, 
as being primordial. In the earlier part of his “ Primitive Culture,” 
published in 1871, we find a re-statement of this view ; but further 
on we observe a modification of it, as instance the following sentence 
in vol. ii, p. 100. 

It seems as though the conception of a human soul, when once attained to by 
man, served as a type or model on which he framed not only his ideas of other 
souls of lower grade, but also his ideas of spiritual beings in general, from the 
tiniest elf that sports in the long grass, up to the heavenly Creator and Ruler of 
the world, the Great Spirit. 


And then, in articles published in “Mind” for April and for July, 
1877, Dr. Tylor represented himself as holding a doctrine identical 
with that set forth by me in the “Principles of Sociology” ; namely, 
that the belief in a human ghost is original, and that the beliefs in 
spirits inhabiting inanimate objects, giving rise to Fetichism and Na- 
ture-worship, are derived beliefs. 

An emphatic negative is thus given to Mr. Harrison’s assertion 
that “ Nothing is more certain than that man everywhere started with 
a simple worship of natural objects.” And if he holds that “the 
bearing of this on the future of religion is decisive ””—if, as he says, 
“the religion of man in the vast cycles of primitive ages was rever- 
ence for nature as influencing Man,’’ and if, as he infers, “ the religion 
of man in the vast cycles that are to come will be the reverence for 
Humanity as supported by Nature ”—if, as it thus seems, primitive 
religion as conceived by him is a basis for what he conceives to be the 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 459: 


religion of the future; then his conception of the religion of the fu- 
ture is, in so far, baseless, 


And now I come to the chief purpose of this article—an examina- 
tion of that alternative faith which Mr. Harrison has on sundry occa- 
sions set forth with so much eloquence. As originally designed, the 
essay, “ Religion: a Retrospect and Prospect,” was to include a sec- 
tion in which, before considering what the future of religion was likely 
to be, I proposed to consider what its future was not likely to be; and 
the topic to be dealt with in this section was the so-called Religion of 
Humanity. After collecting materials and writing ten pages, I began 
to perceive that, besides being not needful for my purpose, this section 
would form too large an excrescence. <A further feeling came into play. 
Though I had for many years looked forward to the time when an 
examination of the Positivist creed would fall within the lines of my 
work, yet when I began to put on paper that which I had frequently 
thought, it seemed to me that I was making an uncalled-for attack on 
men whom I had every reason to admire for their high characters and 
their unwearying efforts for human welfare. The result was that I 
put aside what I had written, and gave up my long-cherished intention. 
Now, however, that Mr. Harrison has thrown down the gauntlet, I 
take it up, at once willingly and unwillingly—willingly in so far as 
acceptance of the challenge is concerned, unwillingly because I feel 
some reluctance in dealing hard blows at a persunal friend. 

Surprise has been the feeling habitually produced in me on observ- 
ing the incongruity between the astounding claims made by the pro- 
pounder of this new creed, and the great intelligence of disciples 
whose faith appears proof against the shock which these astounding 
claims produce on ordinary minds. Those who, from a broad view of 
human progress, have gained the general i es that “The indi- 
vidual withers, and the world is more and more,” must be disinclined 
to believe that in the future any one individual will impose on the 
world a government like that sought to be imposed by M. Comte; who, 
unable to influence any considerable number of men while he lived, 
consoled himself with the thought of absolutely ruling all men after 
his death. Met, as he complained, by “a conspiracy of silence,” he 
was nevertheless confident that, very shortly becoming converts, man- 
kind at large would hereafter live and move and have their being 
within his elaborated formulas. Papal assumption is modest compared 
with the assumption of “the founder of the religion of Humanity.” 
A single pope may canonize a saint or two ; but M. Comte undertook 
the canonization of all those men recorded in history whom he thought 
specially worthy of worship. And such a canonization !—days assigned 
for the remembrance with honor of mythical personages like Hercules 
and Orpheus, and writers such as Terence and Juvenal ; other days on 
which honors, like in degree, are given to Kant and to Robertson, to 


460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Bernard de Palissy and to Schiller, to Copernicus and to Dollond, to 
Otway and to Racine, to Locke and to Fréret, to Froissart and to Dal- 
ton, to Cyrus and to Penn—such a canonization! in which these se- 
lected men who are the Positivist saints for ordinary days, are headed 
by greater saints for Sundays ; with the result that Socrates and God- 
frey are thus placed on a par; that while a day is dedicated to 
Kepler, a week is dedicated to Gall ; Tasso has a week assigned to 
him, and Goethe a day ; Mozart presides over a week, and a day is pre- 
sided over by Beethoven ; a week is made sacred to Louis the Eleventh, 
and a day to Washington—such a canonization! under which the 
greatest men, giving their names to months, are so selected that Fred- 
eric the Second and St. Paul alike bear this distinction ; Gutemberg 
and Shakespeare head adjacent months ; and while Bichat gives his 
name to a month, Newton gives his name to a week! This, which 
recalls the saints’ calendar of the Babylonians, among whom, as Pro- 
fessor Sayce shows, “each day of the year had been assigned to its 
particular deity or patron saint,” * exemplifies in but one way M. 
Comte’s consuming passion for regulating posterity, and the colossal 
vanity which led him to believe that mankind would hereafter per- 
form their daily actions as he dictated. He not only settles the hier- 
archy of saints who are above others to be worshiped, but he pre- 
scribes the forms of worship in minute detail. Nine sacraments are 
specified ; prayer is to be made thrice a day ; for the “ daily expres- 
sion of their emotions both in public and private” it is suggested that 
future men should use Italian ; ¢ and it is a recommended “rule of 
worship ” of the person you adore, that “a precise idea of the place, 
next of the seat or the attitude, and, lastly, of the dress, appropriate 
to each particular case,” { should be summoned before the mind. Add 
to which that in the elaborate rubric the sacred sign (replacing the 
sign of the cross) and derived “from our cerebral theory ” (he had a 
phrenology of his own) consists in placing “our hand in succession on 
the three chief organs—those of love, order, and progress.” Of ban- 
ners used in “solemn processions,” it is directed that “on their white 
side will be the holy image; on their green, the sacred formula of 
Positivism ;” and “the symbol of our Divinity will always be a wom- 
an of the age of thirty, with her son in her arms.” * Nor was M. 
Comte’s devouring desire to rule the future satisfied with thus elabo- 
rating the observances of his cult. He undertook to control the secu- 
lar culture of men, as well as that culture which, I suppose, he distin- 
guished as sacred. There is “a Positivist library for the nineteenth 
century,” consisting of 150 volumes : the list being compiled for the pur- 
pose “of guiding the more thoughtful minds,” || So that M. Comte’s 
tastes and judgments in poetry, science, history, etc., are to be the 
standards for future generations. And the numerous regulations of 


* “ Records of the Past,” vol. vii, p. 157. + ‘‘ System of Positive Polity,” vol. iv, p. 85. 
¢ “Catechism,” p.100. *‘* Catechism of Positivism,” pp. 142,143. | Ibid., p. 38. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 461 - 


these kinds are in addition to the other multitudinous regulations con- 
tained in those parts of the highly elaborated “System of Positive 
Polity,” in which M. Comte prescribes the social organization, under 
the arrangements of which “ the affective, speculative, patrician, and 
plebeian” classes are to carry on the business of their lives. 

It is, I say, not a little remarkable that a height of assumption 
exceeding that ever before displayed by a human being—a self-deifica- 
tion along with the deification of Humanity—should not have nega- 
tived belief in the general doctrines set forth by him. One might 
have thought that by exhibiting a lack of mental balance unparalleled 
among sane people, he would have wholly discredited his speculations. 
However, recognizing the fact that this is not so, and assuming that 
M. Comte’s disciples discover in the Religion of Humanity propound- 
ed by him, a truth which survives recognition of his—eccentricities, 
let us call them—we will now go on to consider this proposed creed. 


To those who have studied that natural genesis of religion summa- 
rized in the article Mr. Harrison criticises, * it will appear anomalous 
that a proposed new and higher religion should be, in large measure, a 
rehabilitation of the religion with which mankind commenced, and 
from which they have been insensibly diverging, until the more ad- 
vanced among them have quite lost sight of it. After an era during 
which worship of the dead was practiced all the world over, alike by 
savages and by the progenitors of the civilized—after an era of slow 
emergence from this primitive religion, during which the propitiation 
of ghosts completely human was replaced by the propitiation of com- 
paratively few superhuman ghosts or spirits, and finally by the propi- 
tiation of a spirit infinitely transcending humanity, and from which 
human attributes have been gradually dropped, leaving only the most 
abstract which are themselves fading ; we are told by the Positivists 
that there is coming an era in which the Universal Power men have 
come to believe in, will be ignored; and human individualities, regard- 
ed now singly and now in their aggregate, will again be the objects of 
religious feeling. If the worship of the dead is not to be completely 
resuscitated, still the proposal is to resuscitate it in a form but partial- 
ly transfigured. Though there is no direction to offer at graves food 
and drink for ghosts, yet public worship of the so-called “ Great Being 
Humanity,” “must be performed in the midst of the tombs of the 
more eminent dead, which tombs are surrounded by a sa¢red grove, 
the scene of the homage paid by their family and their fellow-citi- 
zens ;” ¢ while “at times within each consecrated tomb, the priest- 
hood will” superintend the honoring of the good man or woman: { 
proposed usages analogous to those of many ancestor-worshiping peo- 
ples. Moreover, again taking a lesson from various races of pagans, 


* And set forth at length in “ The Principles of Sociology,” Part I. 
+ “ Positive Polity,” vol. iv, p. 189. ¢ “ Catechism,” p. 137. 


462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


past and present, there is to be “a domestic altar,” at which, in kneel- 
ing attitude, adoration is to be paid to “ our own personal patrons, our 
guardian angels, or household gods :”* these being persons living or 
dead. And as exemplified by M. Comte’s worship of Clotilde de 
Vaux, the praying to a beloved person or wife may be continued for 
years ; recalling the customs of multitudinous peoples who invoke 
departed members of their families, as instance the Balonda, among 
whom if the “spot where a favorite wife has died,” . . . “is revisited, 
it is to pray to her.” f 

Now omitting for the present all thought about the worthiness of 
these objects of worship, and considering only the general nature of the 
system, there arises the question—How happens it that while in other 
respects M. Comte delineates human evolution as progressive, he, in 
this respect, delineates it as retrogressive ? Beyond all question civili- 
zation has been a gradual divergence from primitive savagery. Ac- 
cording to his own account, the advance in social organization, in knowl- 
edge, in science, in art, presents a certain general continuity. Even 
in speculative thought, M. Comte’s formula of the three stages, the 
theological, the metaphysical, and the positive, tacitly asserts move- 
ments in the same direction toward a final theory. How happens it, 
then, that with an advancing change in other things, there is to occur 
a retreating change in one thing ?—along with progression in all else, 
retrogression in religion ? 

This retrogressive character of the Comtean religion is shown in 
sundry other ways—being, indeed, sometimes distinctly admitted or 
avowed.. Thus we are told that “the domain of the priesthood must 
be reconstituted in its integrity ; medicine must again become a part 
of it,” { as from savage life upward it was until modern times. Again, 
education has been slowly emancipating itself from ecclesiasticism ; 
but in M. Comte’s scheme, after the sacrament of initiation, the child 
passes “from its unsystematic training under the eye of its mother to 
the systematic education given by the priesthood ;” * just as, after a 
parallel ceremony, the child does among the Congo people,|| and as it 
did among the ancient Mexicans. And knowingly or unknowing- 
ly, M. Comte followed the lead of the Egyptians who had a formal 
judging of the dead by the living: honorable burial was allowed 
by them only in the absence of accusations against the deceased 
proved before judges; and by M. Comte it is provided that after 
a prescribed interval, the priesthood shall decide whether the remains 
shall be transferred from their probationary resting-place to “the 
sacred wood” reserved for the “sanctified.” Most remarkable of 
all, however, is the reversion to an early type of religious belief 


* “Positive Polity,” vol. iv, pp. 100,101. + Livingstone, “South Africa,” p. 314. 
¢ “ Catechism,” p. 50. * “ Catechism,” p. 129, 

|| Bastian (A.), “ Africanische Reisen,” p. 85. 

4 Torquemada (Juan de), “ Monarquia Indiana,” book ix, chaps. xi to xiii. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 463. 


in the prescribed worship of objects, animate and inanimate. In 
“Table A, System of Sociolatry,” there are times named for the “ Festi- 
val of the Animals,” “ Festival of Fire,” “ Festival of the Sun,” “ Fes- 
tival of Iron,” etc. 


But now, passing over M. Comte’s eccentricities and inconsisten- 
cies, let us consider on its merits the creed he enunciated. In addition 
to private worship of guardian angels or household gods, there is to be 
a public worship of the “Great Being Humanity.” How are we to con- 
ceive this Great Being? Various conceptions of it are possible ; and 
more or less unlike conceptions are at one time or other presented to 
us. Let us look at them in succession. 

By M. Comte himself, at page 74 of the “Catechism of Positive Re- 
ligion,” we are told that we must— 


define Humanity as the whole of human beings, past, present, and future. The 
word whole points out clearly that you must not take in all men, but those only 
who are really capable of assimilation, in virtue of a real co-operation on their 
part in furthering the common good. 


On which the first comment suggesting itself is that the word “ whole 
points out clearly ” not limitation, but absence of limitation. Passing 
over this, however, and agreeing to exclude, as is intended, criminals, pau- 
pers, beggars, and all who “remain in the parasitic state,” it seems that 
we are to include in the aggregate object of our worship, all who have 
aided, now aid, and will hereafter aid, social growth and development. 
Though elsewhere* it is limited to those who “ co-operate willingly,” 
yet since “the animals which voluntarily aid man” are recognized as 
“integral portions of the Great Being,” and since the co-operation of 
slaves is as “ voluntary ” as that of horses, we seem compelled to include, 
not the superior men and classes only, but even those who, under a co- 
ercion such as is used to domestic animals, have helped to subdue the 
Earth and further the material progress of Humanity. And since the 
progress of Humanity has been largely aided by the spread of the 
higher races and accompanying extermination of the lower races, we 
must comprehend in our conception of this worshipful Great Being all 
those who, from the earliest savage times, have, as leading warriors 
and common soldiers, helped by their victories to replace inferior socie- 
ties by superior ones ; not only bloodthirsty conquerors like Sesostris 
(who is duly sanctified in the calendar) but even such cannibals as the 
Aztecs, who laid the basis of the Mexican civilization. 

So far from seeing in the “ Great Being Humanity,” as thus defined, 
anything worshipful, it seems to me that contemplation of it is caleu- 
lated to excite feelings which it is best to keep out of consciousness. 


But now, not to take the doctrine at a disadvantage, let us con- 
ceive the object of the Positivist’s adoration under a better aspect. 


* “Catechism,” p. 427. 


464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Let us consider what claims to godhood may be made for the Human- 
ity immediately known to us. Unquestionably M. Comte’s own doc- 
trine, that there has been going on an evolution of mankind, implies 
that such portion of the “ Great Being Humanity ” as is formed by our 
own generation, is better than the average of those portions which 
have heretofore lived and died. What then shall we say of this 
better portion ? 

Of course we must keep out of thought all the bad conduct going 
on around—the prevailing dishonesty shown in adulteration by re- 
tailers and production of debased goods by manufacturers, the inefii- 
cient and dawdling work of artisans, the many fraudulent transactions 
of which a few are daily disclosed at trials; though why we are to 
exclude the blameworthy from our conception of Humanity, I do not 
understand. But not dwelling on this, let us contemplate first the 
intellectual traits, and then the moral traits, of the people who remain 
after leaving out the worse. 

Those whose mental appetites are daily satisfied by table talk al- 
most wholly personal, by gossiping books and novels, and by news- 
papers the contents of which are usually enjoyed the more in propor- 
tion as there is in them much of the scandalous or the horrible—those 
who, on Sunday, never working out their own beliefs, receive the 
weekly dole of thought called for by their state of spiritual pauperism 
—those who, to the ideas they received during education, add only 
such as are supplied by daily journals and weekly sermons, with now 
and then a few from books, having none of their own worth speaking 
of ; we may be content to class as respectable in the conventional 
sense, though scarcely in any higher sense—still less to include them 
as chief components in a body exciting reverence. Even if we limit 
attention to those of highest culture, including all who are concerned 
in regulative functions, political, ecclesiastical, educational, or other, 
the displays of intelligence do not call forth such an emotion as that 
which M. Comte’s theory requires us to entertain. What shall we say 
of the wisdom of those, including nearly all who occupy influential 
positions, who persist in thinking that preparation for successful and 
complete living (which is the purpose of rational education) is best 
effected by learning to speak and write after the manner of two extinct 
peoples, and by gaining knowledge of their chief men, their supersti- 
tions, their deeds of war, etc.—who, in their leading school, devote 
two hours per week to getting some ideas about the constitution of 
the world they are born into, and thirty-six hours per week to constru- 
ing Latin and Greek and making verses, nonsensical or other; and 
who, in the competitive examinations they devise, give to knowledge 
of words double the number of marks which they give to knowledge 
of things? That, it seems to me, is not a very worshipful degree of 
intelligence which fails to recognize the obvious truth that there is 
an Order of Nature, pervading alike the actions going on within us 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 465 - 


and without us, to which, from moment to moment, our lives must 
conform under penalty of one or other evil; and that therefore our 
first business must be to study this Order of Nature. Nor is estima- 
tion of this intelligence raised on contemplating the outcome of this 
established culture, as seen in Parliament ; where any proposal to 
judge a question by reference to general laws, or “abstract princi- 
ples” as they are called, is pooh-poohed, with the tacit implication 
that in social affairs there is no natural law ; and where, as we lately 
saw, 300 select spokesmen of the nation cheered frantically when 
it was decided that they should continue to vow before God that 
they would maintain certain arrangements prescribed for them by 
their great, great, great, etc. grandfathers. 

On turning to the moral manifestations, we find still less that is 
calculated to excite the required religious feeling. When multitudes 
of citizens belonging to the classes distinguished as “the better,” make 
a hero of a politician whose sole aim throughout life was success, 
regardless of principle, and have even established an annual com- 
memoration of him, we are obliged to infer that the prevailing senti- 
ments are not of a very high order. Nothing approaching to adora- 
tion is called forth by those who, on the death of a youth who went 
to help in killing Zulus, with whom he had no quarrel, and all that 
he might increase his chance of playing despot over the French, 
thought him worthy of high funeral honors—would, many of them, 
indeed, have given him the highest. No feeling of reverence arises 
in one’s mind on thinking of people who looked on with approval or 
tolerance when a sailor of fortune, who has hired himself out to an 
eastern tyrant to slay at the word of command, was honored here by 
a banquet. A public opinion which recognizes no criminality in whole- 
sale homicide so long as it is committed by a constituted political 
authority, no. matter how vile, or by its foreign hired agent who is 
indifferent to the right or wrong of the question at issue, is a public 
opinion which excites, in some at any rate, an emotion nearer to con- 
tempt than to adoration. 

This emotion is not changed on looking abroad and aicaia ian 
the implied natures of those who guide, and the implied natures of 
those who accept the guidance. When, among a people professing 
that religion of peace preached to them generation after generation 
by tens of thousands of priests, an assembly receives with enthu- 
siasm, as lately at the Gambetta dinner, the toast, “The French 
army, the highest embodiment of the French nation ”—when, along 
with nominal acceptance of forgiveness as a Christian duty, there 
goes intense determination to retaliate; we are obliged to repro- 
bate either the feeling which they actually think proper, or the hy- 
pocrisy with which they profess that the opposite feeling is proper. 
On finding in another advanced society that the seats of highest 


culture are seats of discipline in barbarism, where the test of man- 
VOL. Xxv.—30 


466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


hood is the giving and taking of wounds in fights arising from triy- 
ial causes or none at all, and where, last year, a single day witnessed 
twenty-one such encounters in one university ; we are reminded more 
of North American Indians, among whom tortures constitute the 
initiation of young men, than of civilized people taught for a thou- 
sand years to do good even to enemies. Or when we see, as lately 
in a nation akin to the last, that an officer who declined to break at 
once the law of his country and the law of his religion by fighting a 
duel, was expelled the army ; we are obliged to admit that profession 
of a creed which forbids revenge, by those whose deeds emphatically 
assert revenge to be a duty (almost as emphatically as do the lowest 
races of men), presents Humanity under an aspect not at all of the 
kind which we look for in “the adorable Great Being.” Not rever- 
ence, not admiration, scarcely even respect, is caused by the sight of 
a hundred million Pagans masquerading as Christians, 

I am told that by certain of M. Comte’s disciples (though not by 
those Mr. Harrison represents) prayer is addressed to ‘ holy ” Human- 
ity. Had I to choose an epithet, I think “holy ” is about the last 
which would occur to me. 


“But it is only the select human beings—those more especially 
who are sanctified in the Comtist calendar—who are to form the ob- 
ject of worship ; and, for the worship of such, there is the reason that 
they are the benefactors to whom we owe everything.” 

On the first of these statements, made by some adherents of M. 
Comte, one remark must be that it is at variance with M. Comte’s own 
definition of the object of worship, as quoted above; and another 
remark must be that, admitting such select persons to be worshipful 
(and I do not admit it), there is no more reason for worshiping Hu- 
manity as a whole on the strength of these best samples, than there is 
for worshiping an ordinary individual, or even a criminal, on the 
strength of. the few good actions which qualified the multitudinous 
indifferent actions and bad actions he committed. The second of these 
statements, that Humanity, either as the whole defined by M. Comte 
or as represented by these select persons, must be adored as being the 
producer of everything which civilization has brought us, and, in a 
measure, even the creator of our higher powers of thought and action, 
we will now consider. Let us hear M. Comte himself on this point : 


Thus each step of sound training in positive thought awakens perpetual 
feelings of veneration and gratitude; which rise often into enthusiastic admira- 
tion of the Great Being, who is the author of all these conquests, be they in 
thought, or be they in action.* 


What may have been the conceptions of “ veneration and grati- 
tude” entertained by M. Comte, we can not, of course, say; but if 


* “ System of Positive Polity,” vol. ii, p. 45. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 467 


any one not a disciple will examine his consciousness, he will, I think, 
quickly perceive that veneration or gratitude felt toward any being, 
implies belief in the conscious action of that being—implies ascrip- 
tion of a prompting motive of a high kind, and deeds resulting from 
it: gratitude can not be entertained toward something which is un- 
conscious. So that the “ Great Being Humanity ” must be conceived 
as having in its incorporated form, ideas, feelings, and volitions. 
Naturally there follows the inquiry—“ Where is its seat of conscious- 
ness?” Is it diffused throughout mankind at large? That can not 
be ; for consciousness is an organized combination of mental states, 
implying instantaneous communications such as certainly do not exist 
throughout Humanity. Where, then, must be its center of conscious- 
ness? In France, of course, which, in the Comtean system, is to be the 
leading State ; and naturally in Paris, to which all the major axes of 
the temples of Humanity are to point. Any one with adequate hu- 
mor might raise amusing questions respecting the constitution of that 
consciousness of the Great Being supposed to be thus localized. But, 
preserving our gravity, we have simply to recognize the obvious truth 
that Humanity has no corporate consciousness whatever. Conscious- 
ness, known to each as existing in himself, is ascribed by him to other 
beings like himself, and, in a measure, to inferior beings; and there 
is not the slightest reason for supposing that there ever was, is now, 
or ever will be, any consciousness among men save that which exists 
in them individually. If, then, “the Great Being, who is the Author 
of all these conquests,” is unconscious, the emotions of veneration and 
gratitude are absolutely irrelevant. 

It will doubtless seem a paradox to say that human evolution with 
all its marvels, is to be credited neither to Humanity as an aggregate, 
nor to its component individuals ; but the paradox will not be diffi- 
cult to justify: especially if we set out with some analogies. An apt 
one is supplied by that “thing of beauty,” the Huplectella or “ Venus’ 
flower-basket,” now not uncommon as a drawing-room ornament. 
This fragile piece of animal architecture is not a product of any con- 
scious creature, or of any combination of conscious creatures. It is 
the framework unknowingly elaborated by innumerable ciliated mo- 
nads—each a simple nucleated cell, with a whip-like appendage which 
serves, by its waving movements, to aid the drawing in and sending 
out of sea-water, from which nutritive matter is obtained ; and it is 
simply by the proclivities which these monads have toward certain 
modes of growth and secretion, that they form, without the conscious- 
ness of any one, or of all, this complicated city they inhabit. Again, 
take the case of a coral island. By it we are shown that a multitude 
of insignificant individuals may, by their separate actions carried on 
without concert, generate a structure imposing by its size and stabil- 
ity. One of these palm-covered atolls standing up out of vast depths 
in the Pacific, has been slowly built up by coral-polyps, while, through 


468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


successive small stages, the ocean-bottom has subsided. The mass 
produced by these brainless and almost nerveless animals—each by its 
tentacles slowly drawing in such food as the water occasionally brings, 
and at intervals budding out, plant-like, a new individual—is a mass 
exceeding in vastness any built by men, and defies the waves in a way 
which their best breakwaters fail to do: the whole structure being 
entirely undesigned, and, indeed, absolutely unknown to its producers, 
individually or in their aggregate. 

Prepared by these analogies, every one will see what is meant by 
the paradox that civilization, whether contemplated in its great organ- 
ized societies or in their material and mental products, can be credited 
neither to any ideal “ Great Being Humanity,” nor to the real beings 
summed up under that abstract name. Though we can not in this case 
say that neither the aggregate nor its units have had any consciousness 
of the results wrought out, yet we may say that only after considerable 
advances of civilization, has this consciousness existed on the part of a 
few. Communities have grown and organized themselves through the 
attainment of private ends, mostly pursued with entire selfishness, and 
in utter ignorance of any social effects produced. If we begin with 
those early stages in which, among hostile tribes, one more numerous 
or better led than the rest, conquers them, and, consolidating them into 
a larger society, at the same time stops inter-tribal wars ; we are shown 
that this step in advance is made, not only without thought of any ad- 
vantage to Humanity, but often under the promptings of the basest 
motives in the mind of the most atrocious savage. And so onward. 
It needs but to glance at such wall-paintings as those of the conquering 
Rameses at Karnac, or to read the inscriptions in which Assyrian kings 
proudly narrated their great deeds, to see that personal ambitions were 
pursued with absolute disregard of human welfare. But for that ad- 
miration of military glory with which classical culture imbues each 
rising generation, it would be felt that whatever benefits these kings 
unknowingly wrought, their self-praising records have brought them 
not much more honor than has been brought to the Fijian king Tanoa 
by the row of nine hundred stones recording the number of victims he 
devoured. And though the outcome of those struggles for supremacy 
in which, during European history, so many millions have been sacri- 
ficed, has been the formation of great nations fitted for the highest 
types of structure ; yet when, hereafter, opinion is no longer swayed 
by public-school ethics, it will be seen that the men who effected these 
- unions did so from desires which should class them with criminals 
rather than with the benefactors of mankind. With governmental or- 
ganizations it was the same as with social consolidations: they arose 
not to secure the blessings of order, but to maintain the ruler’s 
power. As the original motive for preventing quarrels among sol- 
diers was that the army might not be rendered inefficient before the 
enemy, so, throughout the militant society at large, the motive for 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 469 . 


suppressing conflicts was partly that of preventing hindrance to the 
king’s wars, and partly that of asserting his authority. Adminis- 
tration of justice,as we know it, grew up incidentally ; and began 
with bribing the ruling man to interfere on behalf of the complain- 
ant. Not wishes for the public weal, but wishes for private profit 
and power, originated the regulative organizations of societies. So 
has it been, too, with their industrial organizations. Acts of barter 
between primitive men were not prompted by thoughts of benefits 
to Humanity, to be eventually achieved by division of labor. When, 
as among various peoples, on occasions of assembling to make sacri- 
fices at sacred places, some of the devotees took with them commodities 
likely to be wanted by others who would be there, and from whom 
needful supplies could be got in exchange, they never dreamed that 
they were making the first steps toward establishment of fairs, and 
eventually of markets : purely selfish desires prompted them. Nor on 
the part of the peddlers who, supplying themselves wholesale at these 
gatherings, traveled about selling retail, was there any beneficent inten- 
tion of initiating that vast and elaborate distributing system which 
now exists. Neither they nor any men of their time had imagined 
such a system. And the like holds of improved arts, of inventions, and, 
in large measure, of discoveries. It was not philanthropy which 
prompted the clearing of wild lands for the purpose of growing food ; 
it was not philanthropy which little by little improved the breeds of 
animals, and adapted them to human use; it was not philanthropy 
which in the course of time changed the primitive plow into the finished 
modern plow. Wishes for private satisfactions were the exclusive 
stimuli. The successive patents taken out by Watt, and his lawsuits 
in defense of them, show that though he doubtless foresaw some of the 
benefits which the steam-engine would confer on mankind, yet fore- 
sight of these was not the prime mover of his acts. Thelong con- . 
cealment of the method of fluxions by Newton, as wellas the Newton- 
Leibnitz controversy which subsequently arose, show us that while 
there was perception of the benefits to science, and indirectly to Hu- 
manity, from the discoveries made by these mathematicians, yet that 
desires to confer these benefits were secondary to other desires—largely 
the love of scientific exploration itself, and, in a considerable degree, 
“the last infirmity of noble minds.” Nor has it been otherwise with 
literature. Entirely dissenting, though I do, from the dictum of 
Johnson, that “ Noman but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” 
and knowing perfectly well that many books have been written by | 
others than “ blockheads,” not only without expectation of profit, but 
with the certainty of loss; yet I hold it clear that the majority of au- 
thors do not differ from other men to the extent that the desire to con- 
fer public benefit predominates over the desire to reap private benefit ; 
in the shape of satisfied ambition if not in the shape of pecuniary re- 
turn. And it is the same with the delights given to mankind by artis- 


470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tic products. The mind of the artist, whether composer, painter, or 
sculptor, has always been in a much greater degree occupied by the 
pleasure of creation and the thoughts of reward, material or mental, 
than by the wish to add to men’s gratifications. 

But we are most clearly shown how little either any aims of an 
- ideal “Great Being,” or any philanthropic aims of individuals, have 
had to do with civilization, by an instance which M. Comte himself 
refers to as proving our indebtedness. He says: ‘ Language alone 
might suffice to recall to the mind of every one how completely every 
creation of man, is the result of a vast combination of efforts, equally 
extended over time and space.” * Now nothing is more manifest than 
that language has been produced neither by the conscious efforts of 
the imagined “ Great Being, who is the Author of all these conquests,” 
nor by the conscious efforts of individual men. Passing over that 
intentional coining of words which occurs during the later stages of 
linguistic progress, it is undeniable that during those earlier stages 
which gave to languages their essential structures and vocabularies, 
the evolutionary process went on without the intention of those who 
were instrumental to it. The man who first, when discussing a prob- 
ability, said give (i. e. grant, or admit), so-and-so, and such and such 
follows, had no idea that by his metaphorical give (which became gif 
and then 7/) he was helping to initiate a grammatical form. The 
original application of the word orange to some object like an orange 
in color, was made without consciousness that the act would presently 
lead to enrichment of the language by an additional adjective. And 
so throughout. The minute additions and modifications which have, 
in thousands of years, given to human speech its present perfection, 
arose as random changes without thought of improvement ; and the 
good ones insensibly spread as serving better the purposes of those 
who adopted them. 

Thus, accepting M. Comte’s typical instance of the obligations 
under which Humanity during the past has placed individuals at pres- 
ent, we must say that language, having been evolved during men’s 
intercourse without the least design on their parts of conferring bene- 
fits, and without the faintest consciousness of what they were doing, 
affords no reason whatever for regarding them with that “veneration 
and gratitude” which he thinks due. 


“ But surely ‘veneration and gratitude’ are due somewhere. Surely 
civilized society, with its complex arrangements and inyolved pro- 
cesses, its multitudinous material products and almost magical instru- 
ments, its language, science, literature, art, must be credited to some 
agency or other. If the ‘Great Being, Humanity,’ considered as a 
whole, has not created it. for us—if the individuals who have co-oper- 
ated in producing it have done so while pursuing their private ends, 


* “ Positive Polity,” vol. ii, p. 48. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 471- 


mostly without consciousness that they were either furthering or hin- 
dering human progress, how happens it that such benefits have been 
achieved, and to what shall we attribute achievement of them?” 

To Mr. Harrison, if his allegiance to his master is unqualified, no 
answer which he will think satisfactory can be given ; for M. Comte 
negatives the recognition of any cause for the existence of human be- 
ings and the “Great Being” composed of them. It was one of his 
strange inconsistencies that, though he held it legitimate to inquire 
into the evolution of the Solar System (as is shown by his acceptance 
of the nebular hypothesis), and though he treats of human society as 
a product of evolution, yet all that region lying between the forma- 
tion of planets and the origin of primitive man, was interdicted by him. 
To those, however, who accept the doctrine of organic evolution, either 
with or without the doctrine of evolution at large, the obvious answer 
to the above question will be that if “ veneration and gratitude” are 
due at all, they are due to that Ultimate Cause from which Humanity, 
individually and as a whole, in common with all other things, has pro- 
ceeded. There is nothing in embodied Humanity but what results 
from the properties of its units—properties mainly prehistoric, and in 
a small measure generated by social life. If we ask whence come these 
properties—these structures and functions, bodily and mental—we 
must go for our answer to the slow operation of those processes of 
modification and complication through which, with the aid of surround: 
ing conditions, ever themselves growing more involved, there have 
been produced the multitudinous organi¢ types, up to the highest. If 
we persist in putting question beyond question, we are carried back to 
those more general causes which determined the structure and compo- 
sition of the Earth during its concentration ; and eventually we are 
carried back to the nebulous mass in which there existed, undistin- 
guished into those concrete forms we now know, the forces out of which 
all things contained in the Solar System have come, and in which 
there must have been, as Professor Tyndall expresses it, “the promise 
and potency of all terrestrial life.” Whether we contemplate such 
external changes as those of stars moving ten miles per second, and 
those which now in hours, now in years, now in centuries, arrange 
molecules into a crystal ; or whether we contemplate internal changes, 
arising in us as ideas and feelings, and arising also in the chick which 
but a few weeks since was a viscid yelk, we are compelled to recog- 
nize everywhere an Energy capable of all forms and which has been 
ever assuming new forms, from the remotest time to which science 
carries us back down to the passing moment. If we take the highest 
product of evolution, civilized human society, and ask to what agency 
all its marvels must be credited, the inevitable answer is—To that Un- 
known Cause of which the entire Cosmos is a manifestation. 

A spectator who, seeing a bubble floating on a great river, had his’ 
attention so absorbed by the bubble that he ignored the river—nay, 


472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


even ridiculed any one who thought that the river out of which the 
bubble arose and into which it would presently elapse, deserved rec- 
ognition, would fitly typify a disciple of M. Comte, who, centering 
all his higher sentiments on Humanity, holds it absurd to let either 
thought or feeling be occupied with that great stream of Creative 
Power, unlimited in Space or in Time, of which Humanity is a transi- 
tory product. Even if, instead of being the dull leaden-hued thing 
it is, the bubble Humanity had reached that stage of iridescence of 
which, happily, a high sample of man or woman sometimes shows us 
a beginning, it would still owe whatever there was in it of beauty to 
that Infinite and Eternal Energy out of which Humanity has quite 
recently emerged, and into which it must, in course of time, subside. 
As with thousands of lower types of creatures which have severally 
illustrated the truth that the life and death of the individual prefigure 
in brief space the life and death of the race, so with this highest type 
of creature, Man: a beginning and end to Humanity are no less cer- 
tain than the beginning and end to each human being. And to sup- 
pose that this relatively-evanescent form of existence ought to occupy 
our minds so exclusively as to leave no space for a consciousness of 
that Ultimate Existence of which it is but one form out of multitudes 
—an Ultimate Existence which was manifested in infinitely-varied 
ways before Humanity arose, and will be manifested in infinitely- 
varied other ways when Humanity has ceased to be, seems very strange 
—to me, indeed, amazing. 

And here this contrast between the positivist view and my own 
view, equally marked now as it was at first, leads me to ask in what 
respects the criticisms passed on the article—* Religion : a Retrospect 
and Prospect” have affected its argument. Many years ago, as 
also by implication in that article, I contended that while Science 
shows that we can know phenomena only, its arguments involve no 
denial of an Existence beyond phenomena. In common with leading 
scientific men whose opinions are known to me, I hold that it does not 
bring us to an ultimate negation, as the presentations of my view made 
by Mr. Harrison and Sir James Stephen imply ; and they have done 
nothing to show that its outcome is negative. Contrariwise, the thesis 
many years ago maintained by me against thinkers classed as orthodox,* 
and reasserted after this long interval, is that though the nature of the 
Reality transcending appearances can not be known, yet that its exist- 
ence is necessarily implied by all we do know—that though no con- 
ception of this Reality can be framed by us, yet that an indestructible 
consciousness of it is the very basis of our intelligence ;+ and I do 
not find, either in Mr. Harrison’s criticisms or in those of Sir James 
Stephen, any endeavor to prove the untruth of this thesis. More- 


* “ First Principles,” § 26. 
+ Sir James Stephen, who appears perplexed by the distinction between a conception 
and a consciousness, will find an explanation of it in “ First Principles,” § 26. 


RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 473 - 


over, as originally elaborated and as recently restated, my argument 
was that in the discovery by Science that it could not do more than 
ascertain the order among phenomena, there was involved a tacit con- 
fession of impotence in presence of the Mystery of Things—a confes- 
-sion which brought Science into sympathy with Religion ; and that 
in their joint recognition of an Unknowable Cause for all the effects 
constituting the knowable world, Religion and Science would reach a 
truth common to the two. I donot see that anything said by my 
critics has shaken this position., I held at the outset, and continue 
to hold, that this Inscrutable Existence which Science, in the last re- 
sort, is compelled to recognize as unreached by its deepest analyses 
of matter, motion, thought, and feeling, stands toward our general 
conception of things, in substantially the same relation as does the 
Creative Power asserted by Theology ; and that when Theology, which 
has already dropped many of the anthropomorphic traits ascribed, 
eventually drops the last of them, the foundation-beliefs of the two 
must become identical. So far as I see, no endeavor has been made 
to show that this is not the case. Further I have contended, originally 
and in the article named, that this Reality transcending appearance 
(which is not simply unknown as Mr. Harrison thinks it should be called, 
but is proved by analysis of the form of our intelligence to be unknow- 
able), * standing toward the Universe and toward ourselves in the same 
relation as an anthropomorphic Creator was supposed to stand, bears a 
like relation with it not only to human thought but to human feeling : 
the gradual replacement of a Power allied to humanity in certain 
traits, by a Power which we can not say is thus allied, leaves un- 
changed certain of the sentiments comprehended under the name re- 
ligious. ‘Though I have argued that in ascribing to the Unknowable 
Cause of things such human attributes as emotion, will, and intelli- 
gence, we are using words which, when thus applied, have no corre- 
sponding ideas; yet I have also argued that we are just as much de- 
barred from denying as we are from affirming such attributes ; + since, 
as ultimate analysis brings us everywhere to alternative impossibilities 
of thought, we are shown that beyond the phenomenal order of things, 
our ideas of possible and impossible are irrelevant. Nothing has been 
said which requires me to change this view: neither Mr. Harrison’s 
statement that “to make a religion out of the Unknowable is far more 
extravagant than to make it out of the Equator,” nor Sir James 
Stephen’s description of the Unknowable as “like a gigantic soap- 
bubble not burst but blown thinner and thinner till it has become 
absolutely imperceptible,” seems to me applicable. One who says that 
because the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things pro- 
ceed, can not in any way be brought within the limits of human con- 
sciousness it therefore approaches to a nonentity, seems to me like 
one who says of a vast number that because it passes all possibility of 


* “ First Principles,” Part I, chapter iv. + “ First Principles,” § 31. 


474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


enumeration it is like nothing, which is also innumerable. Once more 
when implying that the Infinite and Eternal Energy manifested alike 
within us and without us, and to which we must ascribe not only the 
manifestations themselves but the law of their order, will hereafter 
continue to be, under its transfigured form, an object of religious sen- 
timent ; I have implied that whatever components of this sentiment 
disappear, there must ever survive those which are appropriate to the 
consciousness of a Mystery that can not be fathomed and a Power 
that is omnipresent. Mr. Harrison and Sir James Stephen have said 
nothing to invalidate this position. Lastly, let me point out that I 
am not concerned to show what effect religious sentiment, as hereafter 
thus modified, will have as a moral agent ; though Mr. Harrison, by 
ridiculing the supposition that it will make good men and women, 
seems to imply that I have argued, or am bound to argue, that it will 
do this. If he will refer to the “ Data of Ethics ” and other books of 
mine, he will find that modification of human nature, past and future, I 
ascribe in the main to the continuous operation of surrounding social 
conditions and entailed habits of life; though past forms of the reli- 
gious consciousness have exercised, and future forms will I believe ex- 
ercise, co-operative influences.* 

How, then, does the case stand? Under “ Retrospect,” I aimed to 
show how the religious consciousness arose ; and under “ Prospect” 
what of this consciousness must remain when criticism has done its ut- 
most. My opponents would have succeeded had they shown (1) that 
it did not arise as alleged ; or (2) that some other consciousness would 
remain ; or (3) that no consciousness would remain. They have done 
none of these things. Looking at the general results, it seems to me 
that while the things I have said have not been disproved, the things 
which have been disproved are things I have not said. 


wee 
ror 


SOME RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST.+ 
By CHARLES C. ABBOTT, M. D. 


Wes I happen out for a stroll, the difficulty that besets me is 
not what to seek—for to ramble without an object is an abom- 
ination—but what to choose of the endless variety of objects worthy 
of attention. I do not like to determine this after I have started, but 
prefer saying to myself, “I will watch the birds to-day,” or, “I will 
hunt up the meadow-mice.” To do this at once gives an additional 
interest to a contemplated ramble ; and, in all my experience, I have 


* “Data of Ethics,” § 62. 
+ From the author’s “ Rambles about Home,” in the press of D, Appleton & Co, 


SOME RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 475 


never yet failed to find some trace, at least, of that object to observe 
which I took the walk. 

Whenever [ have seen a mink in my meadow-rambles, I have been 
impressed with the fact that all animals that fear man are as much on 
the lookout for him, and try as sedulously to avoid him, as they do any 
of their natural enemies. If they do so, is it at all strange that we so 
seldom see them when we go bungling about their haunts? We prob- 
ably never take a walk in the woods that we are not watched by many 
creatures which we do not see ; and many a squeak or whistle which, if 
heard at all, is attributed to some bird, is a signal-ery of danger made 
by some one animal which, having seen us, takes this method of warn- 
ing its fellows. I have more than once tested this in thecase of the 
mink. Mooring my boat near where I had reason to believe these 
animals had their nests, and remaining perfectly quiet and in hiding, 
I have usually been rewarded by seeing the minks moving about as 
soon as their confidence was restored by the absence of all signs of life 
in or about the boat. They would come out of their burrows, or from 
under large roots, and dive into the water, or it might be that they 
carried a mussel from the shore to their retreat. 

Any act of this kind, free from the restraint of fear, is in the case 
of all animals the most interesting and instructive, and, were our op- 
portunities of this kind more frequent, our knowledge of animal life 
would soon be largely increased. 

During the spring and summer of 1874 especially, and at all favor- 
able opportunities since, my out-door studies were largely confined to 
particular phases of bird-life, rather than to their habits generally. 
Most prominent among these was that of singing, and its relation to the 
other utterances of birds, for I had been long under the impression, and 
since am fully convinced, that a bird’s song bears just the same relation- 
ship to its various chirps, twitters, and calls, that singing with man- 
kind bears to ordinary conversation. Careful observation will enable 
any one to see clearly that every bird has a considerable range of utter- 
ance. Observe two birds immediately after mating, and what a laugh- 
able caricature of a newly-married couple—say on their wedding-jour- 
ney—are their actions and their low, ceaseless twittering! They also 
have their petty vexations and their little quarrels, in which the femi- 
nine voice is ever the louder and more rapid in its utterance, and its 
owner enjoys the precious privilege of the last word. 

But it may be urged that to constitute language, or something akin 
to it, these chirps and twitters must be shown to convey ideas. Can 
one bird tell another anything ? it will be asked. To this I answer. 
that, if any one has watched a colony of brooding krakles, or paid close 
attention to a flock of crows, he has probably satisfied himself upon this 
point. Crows have twenty-seven distinct cries, calls, or utterances, 
each readily distinguishable from the other, and each having an un- 
mistakable connection with a certain class of actions ; some of which, 


476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


as, for instance, the many different notes of the brooding-birds, are 
only heard at certain seasons. In this connection, it may be added 
that the intelligence of crows is fully one half greater than that of 
any other bird in our fauna. Instances of the exercise of much cun- 
ning and forethought on their part are almost innumerable. 

Let us see, however, if among our singing-birds there is not to be 
found evidence of an ability to communicate ideas, presumably by the 
aid of vocal sounds. Here isan occurrence that took place in my pres- 
ence in the spring of 1872. A pair of cat-birds were noticed carrying 
materials for a nest to a patch of blackberry-briers hard by. To test 
their ingenuity, I took a long, narrow strip of muslin, too long for one 
bird to carry conveniently, and placed it on the ground in a position to 
be seen by the birds when searching for suitable materials for their 
nests. Ina few moments one of the cat-birds spied the strip and en- 
deavored to carry it off, but its length and weight, in whichever way the 
bird took hold of it, and he tried many, impeded its flight. After 
worrying over it for some time the bird flew off, not, as I supposed, to seek 
other materials, but, as it proved, to obtain assistance in transporting the 
strip of muslin in question. In a few moments it returned with its 
mate, and then, standing near the strip, they held what I consider to 
have been a consultation. The chirping, twittering, murmuring, and 
occasional ejaculations were all unmistakable. In a few moments this 
chattering, if you will, ceased, and the work commenced. Each took 
hold of the strip of muslin at about the same distance from the ends, 
and, starting exactly together, they flew toward their unfinished nest, 
bearing the prize successfully away. 

I followed them as quickly as possible, and, reaching the brier- 
patch, never before or since heard such an interminable wrangling and 
jabbering. Had.I not seen the birds, I doubt if I should have recog- 
nized them from their voices. The poor birds simply could not agree 
how to use so long a piece of material to the best advantage. If ithad 
been shorter, they might have made it serviceable ; but as it was, being 
neither willing to discard it nor able to agree as to its proper use, they 
finally abandoned it altogether, and so too they did the er nest 
and the neighborhood. 

In one corner of a low-lying tract near my house, called the “ sacks 
meadow,” there remains a clump of large maples, pin-oaks, and birches 
which have somehow been spared by the former owners of the land. 
They are mine now and are safe. At the first white frost, the hollow 
maple, that throughout the summer has securely housed a family of 
short-eared owls, now gives us evidence of the fact, by dropping the 
leafy screen that hid them well from view. While the young were yet 
babies the old tree shielded them well—now they are able to shift for 
themselves, and the tree offers them shelter, but nothing more. With the 
departure of the sunlight the owls are all astir, and it is funny enough 
tosee them. Of a single owl but little can be said ; but before the 


SOME RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 477. 


family separates, and while the young are receiving their lessons in 
mouse-hunting, it becomes very evident, first, that owls are great 
talkers ; and, secondly, that they are decidedly intelligent. I was im- 
pressed with these facts during a pleasant moonlight evening last 
October, when, having taken my stand to watch the owls, I saw the 
whole family of six as they came from their nest in the tree. The 
old birds first appeared, flew directly toward the meadow, and disap- 
peared in the long grass. Soon the four young birds made their 
appearance, but only to creep cautiously along the limbs of the tree, 
and then settle themselves, in a lazy, muffled-up manner, as though 
nothing remained to be done. All the while the old birds kept up a 
peculiar call—more like a scream than a hoot—not altogether unpleas- 
ant to the ear. I am in doubt whether the young owls made any 
reply, though I took a faint clicking noise to be such. In a little 
while, however, they began to get hungry, and then they uttered un- 
mistakable cries, to which the parent owls replied by returning to the 
tree. In the beak of each owl was a mouse, or what I took to be 
such, and when they alighted on the maple I could detect, in the un- 
certain light, that they did not approach closely to the young birds, 
but, having removed the mice, which they now held in their claws, 
they chattered and screamed to their young, in a manner that could 
only be interpreted as, ‘‘Come over here and get your mouse.” It was 
evident that the young owls were to be taught to help themselves, 
and to practice their power of flight. As an inducement to do the 
latter, the mice were held temptingly before them, but quite out of 
reach. Finally, one young owl, more venturesome than his fellows, 
essayed to fly ; but it was a miserable failure, for, instead of reaching 
the desired branch, it fell short a foot or more, and tumbled to the 
ground. I can not prove that owls laugh, but I think any one who 
heard the old birds just then would never doubt the fact that they do. 
The funniest feature, however, was that the three remaining young 
birds were disgusted with what they saw, or were frightened by it— 
at all events, they hastened back to the nest, and I saw them no more 
that evening. 

Of the poor fellow that fell to the ground there is much to be 
said, as it was with it that the old birds were now wholly concerned, 
and their actions were highly entertaining. Leaving the tree, they 
flew down to the hapless bird, and muttered in low tones to it, in a 
most sympathizing manner. Their utterances now, which I could 
hear notwithstanding the racket made by the frogs, were very varied, 
and gave the impression that they were holding a conversation. After 
the lapse of a minute or more the old birds together took a short, low 
flight, and then returned to the young owl. Was it not to show it 
how easy flight was? Then again they flew away, in the same manner, 
and the young owl endeavored to follow. It was with evident diffi- 
culty that it left the ground, but when once its feet were clear of the 


478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


grass it progressed satisfactorily, though only for a short distance. 
This pleased the old birds, for one of them came to the plucky little 
fellow, and, with one wing extended, patted the young bird on the 
head and back most tenderly. At this I laughed aloud, most unfor- 
tunately, and immediately the old birds flew to the nesting-tree, and 
then discovered my hiding-place. Of all the scoldings I ever got, 
that from the owls, this evening, was the severest. As I moved away 
I recalled the oft-witnessed scene of the king-birds worrying crows. 
It was the same thing in my case. Keeping just out of reach of my 
cane, they swooped about my head and snapped their bills viciously. 
They did not dare to strike me, but they came unpleasantly near, 
and it was with a feeling of comfort that I finally reached safer 
quarters. 

A chance conversation discovered to me one companion of many 
of my walks. When a mere boy, Uz Gaunt lived in this neighbor- 
hood, having a little cottage adjoining my grandfather’s woods, and 
he, above all others, gave me my first lesson in practical zodlogy. Of 
the stories which he would tell when he was in the humor, the follow- 
ing talk about turtles is a specimen : 

‘Christmas of 77 was a green one, you may remember,” remarked 
Uz, as he shook the ashes from his pipe. “It didn’t need any hickory- 
logs blazin’ on the hearth, such as these,” and he stirred the ashes and 
rearranged the wood on the andirons as he spoke of them. ‘“ The 
weather had been mild for a long time, and once I heard frogs singin’, 
Well, this kind of thing sort of came to a focus on Christmas-day, 
which was warm even in the shade. The river was low, the meadows 
dry, and the crows as noisy as in April. I felt sort of restless-like, 
and took a walk in the meadows. I left my gun home, and thought 
I'd just look ’round. Without thinking of them when I started out, 
I wandered over to your marshy meadow, and began pokin’ about 
with my cane for snappers. You know I take kindly toa bowl of 
snapper-soup of my own fixin’.” 

“Yes, I do that, and can run along neck-and-neck with you, when 
you’re the cook.” 

“ Well, I followed the main ditch down, jumpin’ from hassock to 
hassock, and kept probin’ in the mud with my cane, when, after a bit, 
I felt something hard at the end of my stick. It wasn’t a stone or a 
stump, I knew at once. There was a little tremble run up the stick to 
my hand that told me that much—a sort of shake, as though you hit 
an empty barrel, as near as I can tell you. I’da turtle down in the 
mud, and concluded to bring it out into the daylight. There’s more 
than one way to do this, but none of ’em is an easy job to get through 
with. I kept probin’ ’round him, to try and make out where his head 
was, and then I could feel for his tail, and pull him out. Now this 
does very well for one of your common snappers, but didn’t work so 
easy in this case. I could sort of feel that turtle all over the meadow. 


SOME RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 479 - 


Wherever I put my cane down, I seemed to come to his back shell ; 
but after edgin’ out a bit for some time I could make out the rim of it, 
and I tell you he was a whopper, accordin’ to my probin’. That turtle 
seemed about as big ’round as a wash-tub, and I got regularly worked 
up about him. I wasn’t in trim for huntin’, but didn’t care. Id 
found a turtle that was worth havin’, and I meant to have him. 
Probin’ showed that he was about three feet deep in the mud, but I 
made up my mind to locate his tail and then reach down for him. So 
I did, but it was no use. I felt about, and got one ugly scratch from 
a hind-foot, but he kept his tail out of reach, or hadn’t any ; I didn’t 
know which, then. After thinkin’ a spell, I concluded I’d try to get 
a pry under him, and went for a fence-rail. It took me some time to 
get what I wanted, and when I got back that turtle had got out. I 
probed all ’round, but he’d moved. This rather took me down, but I 
kept up my hunt, and after a bit found he’d moved straight for the 
main ditch, and was tearin’ up the mud on the bottom as he went, 
This was all that saved him for me, and I no sooner learned his where- 
abouts than I went for him in earnest. I ran the rail I had right 
under him, and tried to lift him up. Thunder and lightnin’, boy, you 
might as well try to lift asteer! I disturbed him, though, and checked 
his course a bit. Jammin’ the rail down again, I guess I hit his head, 
for it riled him, evidently, and he raised right up. His head and neck 
came out of the sand, and I was for standin’ back just then. If ever 
you saw a wicked eye, that turtle had one, and his head was as big as 
my fist. Stickin’ his head out, though, gave me the knowledge I 
wanted. I knew how he laid in the mud, and I ran my rail down 
under him as far.as I could. It kept him from divin’ down, and I 
went right into the ditch to try and get a hold on his tail if I could, 
This I did, after feelin’ for it a bit, and no sooner had I gota good 
grip on it than the old fellow got free of the rail and commenced goin’ 
deep into the mud. I tugged and he dug, and it was a clear case of 
‘pull Dick, pull devil,’ between us. He was gettin’ the better of me, 
though, for I was gettin’ chilled in that water, and had nearly lost my 
hold, when the turtle gave an extra jerk, and if it hadn’t been for the 
fence-rail P’d a lost him. I was pulled for’ard, but the rail was right 
in front, so I put one foot on it, to keep from sinkin’ any deeper in 
the mire. This bracin’ gave me the advantage now, and I put all my 
strength to it. The turtle came a little, and I seemed to gain strength. 
I tugged and tugged with all my might, and presently his hind-feet 
showed. You see, he hadn’t firm enough mud to hold onto. I backed 
slowly across the ditch when I got him in open water, and got a fair 
footin’ on the ditch-bank at last. Still, I wasn’t out of the woods by 
along shot. That turtle weighed close onto seventy pounds, and Id 
no means of handlin’ him. Chilled through, with both hands needed 
to hold him, and in the middle of the mucky meadow, all that was 
left me was to try and drag him to the high, smooth meadows. It was 


480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


a tough job, I tell you. I had to walk backward, and he pulled 
against me like a frightened horse. I gained a little, slowly, and after 
a bit got on the high ground. Then I felt more at ease and took a 
rest. I couldn’t take him home, of course, in the same fashion, but I 
had a chance to let him loose, and rest my hands. How I looked 
round for a bit of rope to bridle him! It was no use, though, and 
after all I was likely to lose him altogether. After a minute’s think- 
in’, it occurred to me [’'d make a hobble out of my shirt and then slip 
home lively for the right sort of tackle.» I wasn’t long in gettin’ the 
shirt off, and I twisted it into a sort of rope and hobbled him with it. 
It was a desperate, odd-lookin’ turtle when I got through, and I 
laughed at him a bit as I turned toward the house. You see, I left 
him on his back, and his legs bound so he couldn’t use ’em to turn 
over. I skipped pretty lively, I tell you, for that mile or so twixt me 
and home, and was in a good glow when I got in. Hettie looked kind 
o’ scared when she saw me, but I put her mind to rest in two words, 
and soon was on my way back. <A bit of rope and my sheath-knife 
was all I needed. I skipped over the fields pretty lively, and was soon 
again in sight. Now, I don’t think it was an hour, by some minutes, 
before I was back on the high meadow, but, by gracious! it don’t 
take long for scenes to change in natur’ any more than it does in a 
theatre. Of all queer sights, that was the funniest I saw when I got 
back. The turtle had got half free of my old red shirt, and was pawin’ 
the air like mad, tryin’ to get on his feet again. I could see that 
much a long way off, and put on extra speed ; but when I was about 
fty yards off I stopped short. There was that turtle wrapped in my 
shirt, and a pesky skunk sort of standin’ guard over him. Now, I hate 
skunks! They don’t. pay to trap, and they rob my hen-roost every 
winter. I was afraid to frighten him, too, for fear he’d spoil my snap- 
per, and I wanted the value of a shirt out of the turtle, if nothin’ more. 
I walked a bit nearer, to make sure of how matters stood, and it was 
clear as day, the skunk thought he had a good thing of it, if he could 
only kill that snapper. I thought the same way, and didn’t want to 
be bettered by a pesky skunk. I made up my mind to jockey about 
it, a little ; and so, first, heaved a stone at the critter. It gave mea 
look and started on a slow trot, but it was all up with me, sure enough. 
He shook that thunderin’ old brush right at the turtle and—well! if 
he didn’t sicken the snapper, he did me, that’s certain. I stood the 
racket a bit, though, and tried to move the snapper, but it was no use ; 
I couldn’t keep at it long enough to do anything, and don’t believe it 
would have amounted to much anyhow. I gota stick and put the 
snapper on his feet, as well as I could, without touchin’ him, and he 
waddled off for the mucky meadow, with most of my shirt still stickin’ 
to him, and plunged into the ditch as soon as he could.” 
“So you lost the turtle after all,” I remarked in a low tone, not 
feeling sure I had heard the last of the story. 


SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 481 - 


“No I didn’t either,” Uz replied quickly. “Don’t set me down 
for such a fool as that. I knew well enough the turtle wouldn’t wan- 
der far, so I kept him in mind, and the next April I went out in proper 
trim and hunted him up. I found him after two days’ huntin’, when 
I got a dozen big ones besides, but he was the king of the lot. He 
couldn’t turn ’round in a wash-tub, and weighed somethin’ over seven- 
ty pounds. I looked all over him for some sign of my shirt, but there 
wasn’t a thread left.” 

“How old do you suppose he was?” I asked, when Uz had con- 
cluded his story. 

*T’m not sure I can say, but he was no chicken, that’s certain.” 

* According to Professor Agassiz, a turtle a foot long is close to 
fifty years old,” I replied. 

“Fifty years old! Then my big snapper came out of the ark, I 
guess,” remarked Uz. 


SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 
By LEE J. VANCE, B.S. 


fA Nloe i nature and purpose of our modern philanthropy—indeed, the 
inquiry whether or not utilitarian or altruistic considerations 
should inspire and control our actions—constitute an important and 
most instructive study in sociology. In the article on “Scientific 
Philanthropy,” translated from the “ Revue des Deux Mondes,” and 
published in the “Monthly,” 1883, this view of the question in its 
ethical aspect was almost entirely overlooked. The writer, M. Fouillée, - 
has, with much ability, controverted the arguments early advanced 
by Malthus, but latterly by Darwin, Spencer, and others, who have 
approached the problem from a purely scientific stand-point. The 
author invites criticism by stating some conclusions, the validity of 
which sociologists high in repute are quick to question. And treating 
of Philanthropy as scientific, he has proposed a subject. world-wide im 
its application and interest ; and it is proper that the incorrectness of 
his conclusions be pointed out in the same Monthly that published 
them for American readers. 

Philanthropy is founded in sentiment, and in the desire on the part 
of the strong, the favored, and the fortunate, to assure the comfort of 
the weak, unfavored, and unfortunate. It becomes scientific when 
those severe and exact logical methods of procedure—the indispensa- 
ble prerequisites to a thorough knowledge of the preparatory studies 
of biology and psychology—are used in determining the effects of the 
laws of physical and moral heredity with natural selection on the 
increase and movement of population. First, we have to deal with 
those moral foundations which, as M. Fouillée declares, are of such 

VOL. Xxv.—31 


482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


moment, though so greatly “misconceived” by Mr. Darwin and his 
partisans. Long before Darwin, Mr. Spencer, in his “Social Statics,” 
inquired : “ For what faculty is it, whose work a poor-law so officiously 
undertakes? Sympathy.” Darwin labored under the same misconcep- 
tion, for in the “ Descent of Man” he says that the aid we feel im- 
pelled to give to the helpless and incompetent is mainly the result of 
sympathy, originally acquired as part of the social instincts, and subse- 
quently rendered more widely diffused. Thus, the necessary datum 
of ethics lies in the principle, that each man must recognize and 
respect the rights and claims of another, equally with his own. It 
follows, then, that benevolence and justice spring from the same 
moral sentiment which is the foundation of every form of philan- 
thropy. If the question was one of pure ethics, it would be legitimate 
to inquire, Ought philanthropy to preserve those who, from a mental 
and physical point of view, are not fit to be preserved? Is it right 
that the scanty means of subsistence should be at the command of 
individuals who, by their own conduct, have no claim for relief? In 
reply, it may be confessed a delicate task to draw the line of demarka- 
tion sharply. The warfare waged in ethics has been at last transferred 
into the domain of sociology. The two widely different systems of 
social science—the one treating the topic by utilitarian methods, the 
other by the way of altruism—is the logical outcome of the rival claims 
of utility and intuition to be considered the rightful premises in all 
moral differences, To the one it is objected that self-interest is de- 
veloped entirely at the expense of natural sympathy ; against the lat- 
ter it is urged that the feelings of sentiment are allowed to control in 
shaping the policy of public relief, instead of using the slower and 
more cautious methods of reason. The principle upon which the senti- 
mental school is founded is co-operation, whereby the weak in body or 
in mind, without struggle, share alike with the more vigorous and pru- 
dent. The scientific sociologist starts with the competitive theory of 
life, whereby in an advancing society, with the agglomeration of popu- 
lation in great centers, it is everywhere seen that industrial virtues 
are more and more the high rewards of mental and physical vigor, 
while poverty and pain are the attendant penalties attached to weak- 
ness, idleness, and imprudence. 

Scientific Philanthropy is based on the intimate scientific connec- 
tion between biology and sociology, first enunciated by M. Comte ; is 
an attempt on the part of science to control the struggle, not only of 
man with Nature, but of man with man. Its conscious aim is, there- 
fore, to overcome the harsh ‘and rigorous effects of certain known 
biological laws. With successive differentiations of individual func- 
tions and pursuits there comes an increasing specialization of each 
differentiated member of society, and hence industrial virtues or vices 
which the parent fixes for the child by heredity leads to the existence 
of two very different classes in the community—the rich and the poor, 


‘SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 483. 


the strong and the weak, the rulers and the ruled. As population 
becomes denser and denser, the contrast between the classes becomes 
still more marked, and we find in the cities poverty, hardship, and 
suffering, face to face with wealth, luxury, and ease. This is, in truth, 
the social problem. The sympathetic party, who regard this state of 
things in society as unjust and wrong, because unequal, invoke the 
assistance of Government, in State education, in public institutions, 
and in State Boards of Charities. The question may be stated thus: 
Does scientific philanthropy render the vital competition between man 
and man more unequal? Or, as a question for the legist, it becomes : 
What public duty of relief does the State owe to its citizens? It 
seems to us that these questions constitute the problem of philan- 
thropy in its widest significance, and no apology is needed for treating 
them in detail. 

M. Fouillée has fallen into the common error of supposing Mal- 
thus a determined enemy of all charity, quite overlooking the fact that 
he has devoted a most appreciative chapter to “the direction ” of our 
benevolence (Bk. IV, chapter ix). As currently reported, the Malthu- 
sian theory would exclude all notion of public relief. Pushed to the 
extreme, it asserts that when the improvident bring into the world 
human beings for whom there is no subsistence, then we should leave 
to Nature, and not to man, the duty of dealing with the surplus of 
individuals. The Government should not step in and provide for the 
foolish improvidence of the father. To do so would ‘only act as an 
encouragement to the lower classes to multiply at a faster rate than 
the better members of society. Moreover, it is quite irreligious to 
suppose a good Creator would in this way increase the miseries and 
privations of life. It is His justice to cut off those who have not 
“the slightest right to any share in the existing store of the neces- 
saries of life.” 

Malthus aptly illustrates that all men are Nature’s guests; but 
some are entitled to partake of the viands, while others stand unin- 
vited, no covers being laid for them “at the great ‘banquet of Na- 
ture.” Here Philanthropy interposes and asks what right have the 
first guests at a free banquet, after they are filled, to keep others from 
coming for their share? In the struggle for seats at Nature’s ban- 
quet, shall the strong and vigorous turn back the chairs, and refuse to 
let the weak partake? Philanthropy insists that there is plenty of 
room at Nature’s table, and that all men shall participate in a feast 
where priority gives no one any exclusive right. Vita sedat, uti con- 
viva satur. 

These arguments seem at first glance unpitying, especially to ten- 
der-hearted people, who deplore the harsh manner in which Nature 
punishes ignorance and incompetency as rigorously as froward diso- 
bedience. M. Fouillée is indignant over the effort of Malthus to show 
us the justice of Nature’s discipline, whereby in the poverty of the 


484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


incapable, in the suffering of the imprudent, and in the early death of 
the intemperate and unhealthy, there is a far-sighted benevolence. He 
declares that, in order to escape the objections of moralists, and to 
solve the question of public relief, Malthus had “recourse to Nature, 
which knows neither pity nor justice ; he should have appealed to the 
reason and freedom of man.” While the accusation is not an emi- 
nently just one, yet it showed a profound misapprehension of the real 
nature and purpose of our modern philanthropy. The conscious aim 
of scientific Philanthropy is, in the first place, to deal with the strug- 
gle of man with Nature—is to help men to help themselves ; secondly, 
its aim is to regulate the struggle of man with man—is to help men to 
understand and adapt themselves to the conditions of existence. It is 
commonly noticed that the individual who succeeds in his struggle 
with Nature is apt to be successful in the good-natured struggle with 
his fellow-men. As Darwin proves, the intemperate suffer from a 
high rate of mortality, and the extremely profligate leave few off- 
spring. There is economy in this process of elimination, whereby the 
transmission of the industrial vices is restricted, and, in the competi- 
tion of life, the degraded members of society, unable to adapt them- 
selves to the conditions imposed by physical and social environment, 
succumb before the rest of the population. The scientific idea of 
benevolence involves, first, the preparation of man to receive intelli- 
gently Nature’s stern discipline—that is, to help him avoid all the 
evils coming from disobedience of physical agencies, and also to aid 
him in grasping those great rewards, which, as Huxley says, Nature 
scatters with as lavish a hand as her penalties. The philanthropist 
will show us that the hereditary vices which the parent establishes for 
his children and his children’s children meet in the long run with cer- 
tain punishment. If we could believe in the certainty of punishment, 
says Sir J. Lubbock, temptation, which is at the root of crime, would 
be cut away and mankind would become more innocent. The penal- 
ties attached to the consumptive, scrofulous, or syphylitic, in contract- 
ing marriage, are sharp and sure—ofttimes swift and merciless. Men 
sin from a mistaken idea of what constitutes to-day’s pleasure and 
to-morrow’s pain; and it is not pleasant to be reminded that a great 
deal of our suffering is due more to ancestral errors than to our own. 
There is no possibility of a right understanding of the nature and 
purpose of Philanthropy without considering the three forces which, 
by their intricate interaction, combine to make the individual man 
what he is, natural selection, environment, and heredity. The pro- 
cess of elimination is nothing more nor less than the slow but steady 
selection of those who give evidence of their better adaptation to 
those external conditions into which they are born. No matter 
whether individuals survive, either for their mental or for their phys- 
ical vigor, these qualities, for which they are selected, once gained and 
afterward enhanced by increased selection and heredity, become the 


SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 485. 


varied faculties of the men and women of to-day. It is to be ob- 
served, in this connection, that any character which helps in any way 
its possessor is liable to be seized upon, and in terms of sexual selec- 
tion it may be stated that variations which appear first in either sex 
early in life are transmitted to both sexes; but variations which ap- 
pear in either—late in life are transmitted to one sex only. A dis- 
ease may be sexually limited—as gout, when caused by intemperance 
during manhood, is developed in the sons in a more striking way than 
in the daughters. The principle of selection with the survival of the 
fittest encourages the multiplication of those persons best fitted for 
the conditions of life, by carrying off the weak and sickly who are 
least fitted for those conditions ; and, if left to work without check, it 
would result in the slow and steady improvement of the individual 
faculties and race characteristics, by purifying the blood, invigorating 
the energies, and strengthening the social instincts. But we civilized 
men, says Mr. Darwin, do our utmost to check the process of elimina- 
tion ; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick ; 
we institute poor-laws ; and our physicians exert their utmost skill 
to save the life of every patient to the last moment. The effect of 
the survival of all those who would be eliminated by the principle of 
selection, together with the rapid rate of increase of the reckless and 
degraded over the stronger and better members, is to increase the 
pressure of population on the means of subsistence. This it is which 
gives rise to the so-called “social problem.” Scientific philanthropy 
is, therefore, the most modern attempt to deal with this problem, 
which began in primeval times, because of man’s rapid multiplication, 
and which will continue as long as civilization continues. 

Mr. Spencer has laid down two propositions which form the basis 
of M. Fouilleé’s article, and also of his attack. They are: “The 
quality of a society is physically lowered by the artificial preservation 
of its feeblest members ; the quality of society is lowered morally and 
intellectually by the artificial preservation of those who are least able 
to take care of themselves.” To the first proposition it is objected 
that Mr. Darwin and his “ partisans ” exaggerate the harm caused by 
philanthropy in prolonging the propagation of the weak and helpless ; 
that it applies “only to the infirm properly so called to whom philan- 
thropy is accustomed to give assistance”; that it proves, moreover, 
too much. In regard to the influence which philanthropy exercises 
upon the environment, Mr. Darwin’s argument may be turned back 
upon him, says M. Fouillée, and he proposes his theorem—i. e., “the 
normal conditions most favorable to mankind are to assume the devel- 
opment and selection of a majority of the strong, while saving only a 
' minority of the weak.” Such, in their strongest terms, are the argu- 
ments brought forward against a truly scientific philanthropy. 

Let us examine the exaggerations which the Darwinians are wont 
to indulge in. If the feeblest members of society are artificially pre- 


486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


served, can they hope to compete on equal terms with the strongest 
members, who would alone have survived ? Is it true that the strong 
and competent are called upon to help the feeble and incompetent, who, 
by the marriages of the imprudent, would succumb either to compe- 
tition, or to the action of the environment ? 

The melancholy Burton said: “A husbandman will sow none but 
the choicest seed ; he will not rear a bull or a horse except he be right 
shapen in all his parts, or permit him to cover a mare except he be 
well assured of his breed.” He inquires: “ Quanto id diligentius in 
procreandis liberis observandum? And how careful, then, should we 
be in the begetting of our children!” Says Mr. Darwin, man scans 
with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses and cat- 
tle before he matches them, but, when he comes to his own marriage, 
he rarely, or never, takes any such care. By giving the feeble a bet- 
ter chance to propagate their kind, philanthropy is only filling the 
world with the “infirm so called, to whom philanthropy is accustomed 
to give assistance,” as well as keeping out the vigorous, who, it is 
assumed, will give assistance to the feeble members.* The harsh re- 
sult springing from a misguided benevolence is seen in another way. 
If we take care of the feeble and helpless, the diseases that appear in 
their race must be met by new remedies; and new causes of death 
have arisen from our philanthropic anxiety to suppress former causes 
of mortality in the feeble. To save and keep alive the weak to-day 
from injurious influences is to save and keep alive their descendants 
from totally different influences to-morrow. We suffer from diseases 
which were quite unknown to our ancestors, of the last century even. 
The inflammatory and febrile disorders from which they suffered have 
given place to disorders distinctly American. The neuroses, or nerv- 
ous diseases, are doubtless intensified by the restless activity which 
characterizes the social, political, and industrial pursuits of our people ; 
and cerebral difficulties of many forms which appear as types of nerv- 
vous diathesis developed by our climate and institutions have now 
become functional.+ 

It is difficult, therefore, to exaggerate the harm caused by the arti- 
ficial preservation of the feeblest upon the physical status of future 
generations. The great harm consists in still further separating classes, 
and thus creating great inequalities of condition in every society. The 
artificial preservation of the feeblest is the artificial widening of those 
lines which Nature draws between one person and another ; it gives 
rise to those natural differences among men which, as Mr. Galton has 

* “Descent of Man,” 1880, p. 617; vide p. 188. 

+ Compendium Tenth Census, part ii, p. 1665: “The tendency to insanity among the 
foreign . . . may be accounted for, etc., by the change of climate and of habits of life ; 
by increased anxiety and effort to advance in social respectability, by home-sickness, and 
in general by removal of props which sustain a man who does not emigrate.” Even the 


same tendency is noticed with native-born who move, “especially from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific coast.” 


SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 487 


shown, are greater than many ever suspect. From Rousseau’s dis- 
course on the Origin and Grounds of Inequality among Men, down to 
the writings of Henry George, this condition in society is looked upon 
as the root of all our social evils. The philosophy of common social- 
ism aims at equality in all things, but fails of realization because men 
are born unequal in everything. To make out a case against Mr. 
Darwin and his “ partisans,” M. Fouillée claims they insist that no 
deformed or weakly child deserves to survive, but they say, “ Woe 
to the weak!” and “the Spartan method of disposing of feeble chil- 
dren will be that of the perfect sociology.” Such an accusation and 
its utter absurdity deserve hardly passing reproof. Mr. Darwin ex- 
pressly argues that, if it were intentionally to neglect the weak and 
helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an over- 
whelming present evil. What Mr. Spencer claims, and what is claimed 
in behalf of scientific philanthropy, is simply to regulate, by healthy 
and moral modes, the increase of the improvident on the. means of 
subsistence ; and this the true philanthropist will do by teaching the 
laws of health, by right physical education, and by wise sanitary 
measures. So insalutary are the conditions of the environment of the 
poor in the cities, that only by fitting themselves to unfavorable con- 
ditions is life worth living. This civic population suffer from zymotic 
diseases due to overcrowding ; their drinking-waters, laden with the 
germs of parasites and fevers, if they do not beget febrile disorders, 
generate diseases of the liver and spleen; while goitre and thyroid 
from limestone waters, and pellagra and ophthalmia show themselves 
at the first favorable opportunity. Poverty always tends to be sickly, 
because it is continually exposed to the attacks of unhealthy influences. 
The surroundings during confinement exercise a potent influence upon 
fetal nutrition. The Greeks were solicitous in having the female 
surrounded by symmetrical works of art, but in the upper rooms of 
the tenement there is no place for the Lares and Penates. 
Philanthropy does not have to deal alone with poverty and im- 
providence and its attendant evils. To be born rich and feeble is as 
bad a fate as to be born poor and capable. There is akind of material 
success which, when it destroys men’s finer moral and intellectual fac- 
ulties, is a greater curse than the worst kind of hardship. “The chief 
advantage of poverty as a sanitary or hygienic force,” says Dr. Beard, 
“is that in some natures it inspires the wish and supplies the capacity 
to escape from it, and in the long struggle we acquire the power and 
the ambition for something higher and nobler than wealth; the im- 
pulse of the rebound sends us farther than we had dreamed.” Baron 
Niebuhr was the first to observe that the wealthy Roman families 
were short-lived, and perished from the effects of luxury and ease ; 
and the same has been done by Mr. Freeman in English history. The 
Cesars, the Valois, the Bourbons, and the English lords, either from 
vice, idleness, or impotence, were doomed to family extinction. The 


488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


trials and dangers of childbirth, sterility, incapacity, and nervous dis- 
orders, are the coming events which cast their shadows “in the depths 
of folly and degeneracy.” Mr. Galton regrets that he is unable to 
decide how far men and women who are prodigies of genius are infer- 
tile. It would seem, in answer, that where parents have undermined 
their vitality and their health, by mental or physical overwork, where 
their activities and powers have been attained at the expense of their 
physical system, like the most highly cultivated types of vegetable 
growths, they will beget no germinating seed. 

The arguments brought by M. Fouillée against the second part of 
Mr. Spencer’s proposition are of two kinds—the one proposing an al- 
truistic test for benevolent action, the other holding that the law of 
mental and moral heredity is much “more vague and loose than the 
law of physical heredity.” Let us examine, briefly, the first objection 
and see what it is worth. Suppose, for example, a man commits a 
crime, or violates any established law of society ; he is punished, either 
lightly or severely, according to the nature of his act. Conversely, 
when the intemperate are well aware that hard drinking will cause 
suffering, and the dlasé wight knows that his profligacy will produce 
sickness and disorders, these trangressions are treated with excessive 
leniency. Paradoxical, then, is the doctrine, held overtly, that the indi- 
vidual who hurts others shall be treated rigorously, but that the indi- 
vidual who hurts himself shall be treated forbearingly. Hence the 
best specific for vice and crime is the sharp suffering which flows iney- 
itably from vice and crime. Take, also, that distribution of money, 
“prompted,” says Mr. Spencer, “ by misinterpretation of the saying 
that charity covers a multitude of sins.” The ignoble action of Evag- 
rius, a Pagan, when he gave his three hundred pieces of gold to the 
bishop, must be condemned, for he demanded and received a promis- 
sory note to be paid in the other world. Take, again, those ostenta- 
tious donations by which the donor invites not only present approba- 
tion, but bids for posthumous fame and honor ; and it is not strange 
that many eleemosynary institutions intended to perpetuate the bounty 
of their founders are admired as monuments to personal pride. The 
elaborate study of Mr. Bain has shown that the love of applause, the 
feeling of praise, the desire to win the respect of our fellows, even the 
fear to merit their condemnation, spring from the instinct of sympa- 
thy. Indeed, sympathy itself is founded upon the instinct of self- 
preservation ; seen alike in that feeling which impels the members of 
a community to band together for protection, or in that altruism 
which prompts the strong to help the weak in their burdens. At an 
. early day clover and stramonium were scattered in the fields; and 
our modern knowledge of poisons, even the invention of dynamite, is 
due primarily to the instinct of sympathy, though often strangely dis- 
torted by fear, malice, or love. 

The second part of M. Fouillée’s objection is directed toward re- 


SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 489 


futing the theorem that the artificial preservation of those least able 
to take care of themselves will result in mental and moral deteriora- 
tion by the operation of heredity. He claims that these biological 
laws are pushed too far ; that Mr. Spencer’s conclusions are still more 
inadmissible than those of his relative to physical deterioration of 
society. “If any one denies,” Mr. Spencer urges, “that children 
bear likenesses to their progenitors in character and capacity, if he 
holds that men, whose parents and grand-parents were habitual crimi- 
nals, have tendencies as good as those of men whose parents and 
grand-parents were industrious and upright, he may consistently hold 
that it matters not from what families in a society the successive gen- 
erations descend. He may think it just as well if the most active 
and capable and prudent and conscientious people die without issue, 
while many children are left by the reckless and dishonest.” M. 
Fouillée does not attempt to refute this conclusion, but denies that it 
bears against philanthropy itself. Mr. Darwin has brought facts for- 
ward to prove that our moral qualities are directly due to our ances- 
tors ; that, for instance, kleptomania or a propensity to lie seemed to 
run in noble families for several generations, and so could hardly be 
imputed to any coincidence. The same is equally true of the inherit- 
ance of that moral quality called character, which, says M. Ribot, 
“whether individual or national, is the very complex result of physi- 
ological and psychological laws.” The bold and vigorous traits of 
Puritan character were transmitted to their descendants ; they began 
with this advantage over the other races that emigrated here ; hence 
the fineness and purity of their mental and moral fiber evolved, of 
necessity, more swiftly leaders in peace and in war.* 

On the other hand, it is argued by M. Fouillée that “the two ele- 
ments which Mr. Spencer and Mr. Darwin have overlooked—education 
and just legislation—must be reinstated in the problem. He contends 
that education abrogates the law of heredity ; that good character 
will result from good education. It has never been satisfactorily ex- 
plained why education should be the only cure for crime, poverty, and 
misery. Huxley says, “If I am a knave or a fool, teaching me to 
read and write will not make me less of either one or the other, unless 
somebody shows me how to put my reading and writing to good pur- 
poses.”+ The zealous educationist is too apt to forget that the weak 
and vicious man is fighting single-handed for the mastery over per- 
haps a score of évil-minded ancestors. We can make education com- 
pulsory, but we can not compel the conscience. To suppose that 
education will supply those inherited faculties of moral intuition that 


* Vide “ Data of Ethics,” 1883, pp. 191, 192; also Mr. Spencer’s “ American Ad- 
dress.” 

+ That rough moralist, Jack Cade, when he learned that the clerk of Chatham had 
been setting boys copies, said, “ Here’s a villain!” Also vide “Study of Sociology,” 
chapter xv. 


490 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


are missing—‘ certain emotions responding to right and wrong ”— 
is parallel with the supposition that the individual may be born again 
by a kind of mental baptism. The true effect of intellectual train- 
ing is to clothe heredity with renewed power, giving the children 
a moral vantage over the parent, and enabling them to leave to their 
descendants a much further development of the faculties thus fos- 
tered, and a still higher power in producing beneficial variations which 
are a blessing to the race. : 
It now becomes necessary to inquire, What is the public duty of 
relief? It will not be disputed that the function of government is to 
maintain the equal rights of all its citizens ; it owes them in the first 
place justice. When the state undertakes to appropriate annually 
from the tax-payers millions of dollars for the support of the incapa- 
bles, it is taking money from the former in no wise for the main- 
tenance of their rights. The more the state does for the improvident 
the less it does for the provident. It is conceded that the right of 
government to educate the illiterate and to check the vicious is a 
just one; because it is a duty society owes to itself. The State 
is under no moral duty to take care of the least of its citizens ; but 
somehow our doctrine of political equality has evolved the social- 
istic idea of economic equality. Stuart Mill put state aid in this 
way : The laborer out of work says it is the duty of society to find 
work for him ; but surely it is his duty as a member of that society to 
find work for every other unemployed man.* As an organized busi- 
ness, with paid executive officers, numerous employés, and bureaus of 
distribution, modern philanthropy has become a thriving profession. 
Asylums have been built to keep pace with the increase of the insane ; 
hospitals are founded to meet the constant wants of imbeciles ; and 
almshouses are being erected to accommodate the number of paupers. 
In this State twenty-five years ago there was one pauper to every one 
hundred and thirty people, now there is one to every thirty! The 
charities of the city of New York are something enormous, whether 
we consider the money spent or the two hundred and fifty charitable 
organizations. The poor in New York can be born in a public hos- 
pital, educated in a public school, clothed and fed in a public reforma- 
tory, and doctored in a public dispensary ; if they die, it is at public 
expense they are buried. In a single phrase, metropolitan charity has 
fully provided for every want from the cradle to the grave. 

In the report of the State Board of Charities, the committee say : 


The pauper, the insane, the deaf-mute, and the blind, appeal to charity ; but 
these juvenile offenders excite both pity for their own condition, and solicitude 
for their potential influence for evil in society. Some of them show evidence of 
congenital deformities and defects. . . . It is from the ranks of these that the 
Communists and Nihilists of the fature may be recruited. Whatever may be 


* See further, “ Political Economy,” vol, ii, pp. 590, 591. 
4 The Fifteenth Report of the State Board of Charities, p. 157. 


SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 491 


the theory of punishment for persons of mature years, there can be but one 
_ opinion with reference to the duty of the State to these, its wards and weaker 
members.*. — 


The Department of Charities and Corrections in New York city is 
controlled by three commissioners, who have under their charge some 
six hundred employés and about twelve thousand dependents. As is 
justly complained of in the above official report (see pp. 289-291), 
the appointment of the commissioners is part and parcel of muni- 
cipal patronage, and it is declared that the whole tendency of the sys- 
tem is to encourage the increase of pauperism and crime. It is esti- 
mated that over seven millions of money are spent annually by public 
and private organized charity in New York city alone; yet improvi- 
dence and dependence remain exactly as the year before. The re- 
port of the public charities of that city is a startling document ; it 
shows how much misery is due toa lavish, unsystematic, and misap- 
plied benevolence. In speaking of the money expended by out-door 
relief societies, to the number of sixty-six, the report says : 


Thus we have an aggregate of $546,832 spent in this kind of charity in New 
York city during the year 1880 ; $157,610 of this sum being public money, while 
about 525,155 cases are reported as having received oneform or another of chari- 
table relief. . . . The foregoing figures, whether we regard them from a financial 
or humanitarian view, are sufficient to convince us that so important a business as 
the administration of charity in New York city requires to be carried on on busi- 
ness principles, if the great evils of wasted funds and corrupted and pauperized 
citizens are to be avoided. Some system is required to enable these various so- 
cieties to work in harmony. . .. That there is not some such system in New 
York is a matter of regret . . . to most thoughtful persons who have practical 
experience, especially as almost all other large cities in this country and in Eng- 
land have proved the value of associated work in diminishing pauperism and 
poverty in their midst.t 


In the interesting report for 1884, the Committee on Out-door 
Relief say of Kings County, New York, as follows: 


Until 1879 public out-door relief was given by the county to the amount of 
$100,000, or more yearly; it was then cut off in the middle of winter, with- 
out warning, without any substitute being provided, and the result was—nothing. 
In fact, except for the saving of money, and the stopping of political corruption 


* The proletaires, though short-lived, intemperate, improvident, and decimated by fever 
and disease, nevertheless remain the same, continually receiving scores of their own chil- 
dren as recruits to their ranks, It is among the children of this class that the Children’s 
Aid Society has accomplished its work in New York ; and according to the report of Mr. 
Brace, the secretary, for 1883, among the many thousand children sent to the West, 
with few exceptions, they have 'grown up to have an honorable standing in the com- 
munity. It goes to show that hereditary taints may be in part ameliorated by the soften- 
ing influences of a congenial environment. 

+ The Fifteenth Report of the State Board of Charities, 1882—’83, p. 322. ‘ Compen- 
dium Tenth Census,” p. 1665, stated only thirteen out-door poor returns for Boston—a 
very comfortable income for each for amount of money spent. 


492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


carried on by means of relief, and the cessation of the spectacle of hundreds of 
people with baskets of provisions furnished by the public, it would have been 
impossible to discover that relief had been stopped. (See pages 8 and 9 of re- 
port for 1884.) 


The Poor-Law Commission of 1834 * demonstrated beyond contro- 
versy the pernicious effects of out-door relief, and it has never been 
satisfactorily ascertained why the system that was half a century ago 
condemned and abandoned in England should work with beneficial 
results in this country. It was with the express purpose of correcting 
these well-known abuses that the Charity Organization Society was 
established last year in New York city. Its purpose is, as set forth in 
the official circular, to enlist the co-operation of the charitable societies 
of the city in establishing a central exchange ; to aid the deserving 
poor in securing employment ; and to relieve actual want. Secondly, 
it will disburse the funds of the giver in a systematic manner so as 
to prevent imposture. In the past, fraudulent begging was as well 
organized as the relief sought, and it was often found that the same 
person was getting aid from half a dozen different societies at one 
time.+ 

From the statements already mentioned, it follows that modern 
Philanthropy has been a great waste of money, effort, and sympathy— 
has been the means of diffusing habits of improvidence, idleness, and 
servility in the poorer classes. To aid the good-for-nothings to mul- 
tiply, says Mr. Spencer, is the same as maliciously providing for our 
descendants a multitude of enemies. There is, however, a peculiar 
tendency among certain sociologists to exaggerate the present evils of 
society, either overlooking or neglecting those of the past and future. 
The novelist, the /ittérateur, and the doctrinaire find plenty of facts 
at hand to prove the enormous increase of human wretchedness, 
When social evils are prominently before the people, these persons 
either rush off to the Legislature to have a new law passed, or they 
get together a score of individuals and form a new charitable Associa- 
tion. There is a blind and unthinking faith in the paternal functions of 
the State ; as if the social structure was founded upon the régime of 
status, instead of contract, express or implied. All modern relief has 
proceeded upon the ground that it is the duty of those who have sup- 
ported themselves to support others, and the good citizen is obliged to 
shoulder the burdens of the good-for-nothing in addition to his own, 
If Quashie is idlé or incapable of work, the State may say, on the basis 
of status, “I will feed and clothe you until you find work.” Still better 


* Poor-Law Commissioners’ Report, p. 280. 

+ Reference is here made to the circular lately issued. The society intends to 
study the advisability of a system of loans, a bureau of legal relief, the formation of 
wood-yards to encourage the able-bodied, the labor markets of the United States, and the 
cost of transportation. The regret expressed on page 322, State Charities Report, is now, 
in a measure, met, 


SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 493 


it would be to give him employment instead of taking care of him. All 
modern philanthropic legislation has relied upon palliatives ; it has 
undoubtedly ameliorated the near effects of poverty, but unquestiona- 
bly it has failed to remove its remote causes. We must believe that 
these social evils of pauperism and crime are incurable, or that the 
treatment of them is wrong and pernicious. 


The latter conclusion leads us all the more to the firm belief that 
Philanthropy should be established upon a definite and exact scientific 
basis. In his address before the Academy, in 1880, Victor Sardou said 
that sympathy impelled men to apply a remedy before they ascertained 
the cause of the disease—to trust in the efficacy of panaceas, rather 
than in the vis medicatrix. 'This he called sentimental Philanthropy. 
The conflict between the sentimental and scientific methods in social 
science has come from the intrusion of what may be called the sym- 
pathetic Bias—that is, the former class allow their emotions to pre- 
dominate over their judgments, while the latter subordinate their 
feelings of sympathy to their faculty of reason. The sentimentalist 
employs in sociology the empiric method ; in ethics he builds upon 
intuition ; in political economy he favors the principle of co-operation. 
The innumerable Reforms, Leagues, and Associations are evidences of 
the unscientific nature of the remedy administered for deep-seated 
evils. Therefore, all measures of public relief must depend for their 
success on the correctness and certainty with which the laws of men- 
tal and biological science are applied ; and the legist must likewise . 
depend, not on short-lived and hastily-contrived plans for relief, but 
on the logical precision with which he draws his conclusions from 
these scientific studies to shape the course of his present and future 
policy. M. Fouillée declares that the aim of philanthropy will be to 
establish among the social classes solidarité—union between the rich 
and thejfpoor. In the terms of evolution, our modern Philanthropy 
will produce a state of social eguilibrium—“a state of human nature 
and social organization such that the individual has no desires but 
those which may be satisfied without exceeding his proper sphere of 
action, while society maintains no restraints but those which the indi- 
vidual voluntarily respects.” * Unhappiness will be the result of imper- 
fect adjustment of faculties to their functions and conditions, while hap- 
piness will consist in the due exercise of all the faculties consistent with 
the similar excrcise of the like faculties of others. Without one word 
of displeasure to those tender-hearted philanthropists who have com- 
mitted grievous errors by short-sighted plans, let us speak with pleas- 
ure of the labors of Arkwright, Stephenson, Whitney, Bessemer, Sie- 
mens, and others—scientific philanthropists, who have been all the 
time “ weaving the web of concord among nations.” The spirit that 
animated Faust to dig and drain vast territories has led these practical 


* “ First Principles,” p. 512. 


494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


men to cautiously work out the application of the inventions and dis- 
coveries in science to art and industry. The difference between the 
Humanitarian, who is looking at things as they should be, and the 
sociologist, who deals with things as they are, represents accurately 
the distance between the Ideal and the Real. The true philanthropist 
will take that golden mean,—a man who, while maintaining the just 
equipoise between the emotional, non-discursive side, and his intellect- 
ual and analytic nature, will give wide range to his finer sympathies, 
‘so uniting philanthropic energy with philosophic calm.” 


wes 
wee 


THE WORLD’S GEYSER-REGIONS. 
By A. C. PEALE, M.D. 


HERMAL springs, or those whose mean annual temperature ex- 
ceeds that of the locality in which they are found, are almost 
universal in their distribution. This definition, of course, includes 
more than the springs usually called warm or hot, for, if the tempera- 
ture exceeds, no matter in how small a degree, the mean temperature 
of the place in which it rises, it is truly a thermal spring. There 
will, of course, be a variation according to geographical position. Thus 
a spring which has a temperature of only a few degrees above the 
freezing-point would be a thermal spring in Siberia, where the ground 
is frozen constantly to the depth of six hundred and thirty feet, thaw- 
ing out only a few feet in summer, and where the mean annual tem- 
perature is about 124° Fahr. ; whereas, in the West Indies, or in the 
Eastern Archipelago, it would be a cold spring. Warm and hot springs 
are also widely distributed. With the exception of Australia, no con- 
tinent is without them, and even here they may be said to exist in a 
fossil state, for sinters and siliceous deposits are found in New South 
Wales, in a basaltic and trachytic region, indicating the former presence 
of hot springs, and possibly of geysers. Of course, hot springs are less 
widely spread than those which are simply warm, being found mainly 
in districts which have been affected by volcanic action, or where the 
rocks, from which they flow, have been subjected to disturbances such 
as occur in mountain elevations. Latitude, however, has no effect, for 
we find them equally hot in the Arctic regions and under the equator. 
They are found in the frozen fields of Siberia and on the islands of 
Alaska, while the Andes have boiling springs from one end to the 
other. Venezuela and Patagonia, at the extremes of South America, 
both have their hot springs. When we come to geysers, we find them 
still more limited in their occurrence, and yet even they are confined 
to no particular quarter of the globe, for each continent appears to 
have its geyser-region. North America has the geysers of the Yellow- 


THE WORLD'S GEYSER-REGIONS. 495- 


stone National Park ; Asia, a geyser-region in Thibet ; while the Ice- 
land geysers may be considered as belonging to Europe, and the New 
Zealand field to-Australasia. Africa and South America seem to be 


| 


SOUTHERN GEYSER. AREAS 
—( MAIN AREAS.) — 
— OF ICELAND — 
Scale of Miles | 


Fie. 1. 


496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


left out, and yet the comparatively unimportant geyser area of the 
Azores can perhaps be considered the African representative, while in 
the boiling lake of Dominica, and the water-volcano of Guatemala, 
_ Central and South America may be said to have geysers on a grand 
scale. 

The difference between geysers and ordinary hot springs is not 
readily explained, nor always recognized, although the difference 
between a quiet hot spring and a geyser in active eruption is very 
marked. However, these are the extremes, and between the two 
there is every grade of action. Some geysers at times appear as quiet 
springs, and others are constantly in active ebullition. A geyser may 
be defined to be a periodically eruptive or intermittent hot spring, from 
which the water is projected into the air in a fountain-like column. 
The word Aot in this definition is italicized because springs containing 
a large amount of gas may simulate geysers, as in the case of the Kane 
geyser-well in Pennsylvania, which spouts regularly, and the artesian 
well at Rank Herkany, in Hungary, which is fourteen hundred and 
fifty-seven feet deep, and spouts at regular intervals to the height of 
one hundred feet.. Nordenskidld discovered an intermittent cold 
geyser-like spring spouting through the ice-field of Greenland about 
thirty miles from the coast. Almost all the constantly boiling springs 
have periods of increased activity, and those which spout only a few feet 
into the air have been classed as pseudo geysers. ‘There are several 
localities of the latter in the United States, particularly in California, 
and Nevada. The geysers of California belong to this class, as do 
also the mud-voleanoes of Southern California, although some of the 
latter throw columns of water to the height of twenty feet, and are true 
geysers. Besides the Yellowstone National Park, the Haukadal area in 
Iceland, and the Taupo region of New Zealand, which are the geyser- 
regions par excellence of the world, there are a number of places where 
a few individual geysers are known, besides the Thibet area and that 
of the Azores. In Mexico, at Aguas Calientes, near San Luis Potosi, 
there is a geyser which spouts to the height of ten or twelve feet. 
The Volcan de Agua, or water-volcano, of Guatemala, and the boiling 
lake of Dominica have already been referred to. The latter has been 
known since 1777. It is a seething caldron of unknown depth, meas- 
uring two hundred by more than one hundred yards, situated in the 
Grand Soufriére of Dominica, at an elevation of twenty-four hundred 
feet above sea-level. It is sometimes quiet, with a temperature of 
96° Fahr., and at others is in active ebullition, with a temperature above 
the boiling-point, the water being thrown in jets into the air with a 
noise like the discharge of artillery. At Atami, in Japan, there are 
intermittent springs which spout about six times daily, although not 
with any exact regularity. An immense volume of steam and slightly 
sulphureted water is ejected. Geysers are found in Batachian, one 
of the Moluccas, and at Nolok on Celebes there is a bowl-shaped spring 


THE WORLD'S GEYSER-REGIONS. 497 


seventy-five feet in diameter by twenty feet in depth that has erup- 
tions reaching the height of fifty feet. There are other localities on 
the same island, and in Java also are several localities, some of which 
have mud-geysers that spout twenty or thirty feet. The springs of 
Savu-Savu on Vanua Levu, in the Feejee Islands, are pseudo geysers. 


Fig. 2.—THe ERUPTION OF THE GEYSERS IN ICELAND, AS SEEN BY HENDERSON IN JULY, 1814. 


The latter were owned by an old woman who was captured by a chief 

in 1863, and cooked in her own springs. Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, 

referring to this, says: “ She was past seventy, and must have been 

very tough and smoke-dried, but as in her younger days she had 

been a regular Joan of Arc, leading her tribe to battle, and herself 
VOL, XXV.—32 


498 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


fighting hand to hand with a hatchet, he determined to eat ber. So 
he had her cooked with the sixteen men, and made a great feast, and 
then to spite the people, before leaving the district, he attempted to 
choke up all of the springs, in which amiable effort he partially suc- 
ceeded. These springs were also a favorite place for depositing all super- 
fluous babes, especially girls, who never got much of awelcome. They 
were popped in alive, like so many lobsters, and treated with quite as 
little ceremony.” Next to the Iceland geysers, which we rank below 
those of New Zealand and the Yellowstone Park, the most important 
are probably those of Thibet, although our knowledge of them is very 
meager. ‘They are in Great Thibet, in the province of Chamnamring, 
called Chang, near Lake Namcho, or Tengri Nur, and were discovered - 
by T. G. Montgomerie, who described them in the “Journal of the 
Geographical Society of London.” ‘There are six localities in the re- 
gion, of which the most important are Chutang Chaka, Peting Chuja, 
and Naisum Chuja. At the latter, the highest temperature recorded 
was 183° Fahr., and the boiling-point of water was 1833° Fahr. The 
first locality had fifteen hot springs, whose waters had a temperature 
of 166° Fahr., the boiling-point here being 186° Fahr. Peting Chuja 
is the principal geyser area, and a dozen columns of hot water are de- 
scribed as issuing from a large stony plateau and rising to a height 
of forty or fifty feet, producing so much steam that the sky was dark- 
ened, and so much noise that the travelers could not hear one another 
speaking. Similar jets were also noticed, rising to about the same 
height from the middle of the adjacent river, Lakii chu. The stony 
plateau or platform spoken of is undoubtedly a platform or mound of 
siliceous sinter, so common to geyser areas. 

The Azores mark one of the volcanic centers of the Atlantic Ocean 
ridge, on which also Iceland lies. The Island of San Miguel, or St. 
Michael’s, has hot springs in all parts, but especially in two places at 
the West End, in the valley of Furnas. This valley is almost circular, 
about twelve miles in circumference, and surrounded by volcanic mount- 
ains. Through it flows the Ribeira Quinta, or Warm River. The springs 
are of high temperature, and include some that spout to a height of 
twelve feet. They are at one end of the valley, surrounded by de- 
posits of siliceous sinter, which forms rims eight to ten inches in 
height around the individual springs. The “ Great Caldeira,” or Boil- 
ing Fountain, is the principal geyser. 

The very name, geyser, testifies to Iceland’s historical precedence 
as the land of geysers. The earliest writings in relation to the island 
are silent in regard to them, the first mention made being by Saxo 
Grammaticus, who wrote in the twelfth century. Are Frode does not 
refer to them in the “Icelandic Annals,” a. p. 1070-75, although he 
lived near their present locality. If they broke forth subsequent to 
that period, it is surprising that not the least notice should be taken 
of their appearance. It must be remembered, however, that, in all but 


20 


Scale of Miles; 


MAP OF 


NEW ZEA LAND, 
GEYSER &HOT SPRINGS AREAS 


40 


& 


Oo 


CP Rotoahira 


Witt. 
SaT ONGARIRO 
“ni*(Voloano 6500 feck) 


BAS 

= 
ee 
= 


500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


highly civilized nations, physical events that do not have an immediate 
effect upon their worldly interests are received with indifference or 
apathy. Pliny, we know, gives a circumstantial account of the erup- 
tion of Vesuvius, a.p. 79, but does not mention the destruction of 
Herculaneum and Pompeii. It is probable that the Iceland geysers 
originated in prehistoric times. Geyser, geysar, geiser, or geisir, as it 
is variously spelled, is an old Icelandic word, meaning gusher, or rager, 
and is derived from the verb geysa, or gjosa, to gush, to rage, or to 
burst forth, to be impelled. In Iceland, in native usage, it is a proper 
name, being applied not only to the Great Geyser, but also to another 
fountain at Reykium. The word, however, has become an appellative 
or common name for the whole class of boiling fountains that spout 
hot water intermittently, just as the term volcano is derived from the 
name of one of the vents in the Lipari Islands. 

The geysers of New Zealand are found on the North Island, scat- 
tered through the area which extends from Tongariro (a semi-active 
volcanic cone), in about the center of the island, to the Bay of Plenty. 
They have long been known to the natives, who have no traditions as 
to their age, but from time immemorial have used the quiet hot springs 
to warm their huts and to cook their food. Every hut has its boiler 
close to the door ; bread is baked on large slabs of stone, placed over 
the hottest portions of the ground ; and on others, not quite so hot, 
the lazy recline, wrapped in blankets, enjoying Vulcan’s heat. In 
these respects the Maoris have the advantage over our North Ameri- 
can Indians, who have always avoided the Yellowstone region on ac- 
count of their superstitious fears. 

The first white man who ever visited what is now the Yellowstone 
Park was undoubtedly John Colter, who was a member of Lewis and 
Clarke’s celebrated expedition, and returned to the Upper Missouri 
country in 1807, and passed around Yellowstone Lake, or, as it was 
then called, Lake Eustis. His tales of the region were so wonderful ~ 
that it was derisively called “Colter’s Hell.” As far back as 1844, 
James Bridger and Robert Meldrum, two noted Western trappers and 
guides, were said to have described some of the springs and geysers of 
the region, but their stories were so marvelous that they were not be- 
lieved. The first printed description ever published was probably that 
given in a Mormon paper, called “The Wasp,” published at Nauvoo, 
Illinois, in 1847. The unknown writer of this article undoubtedly vis- 
ited the Lower Geyser Basin of Firehole River. Authentic information 
of the region was also derived from a prospecting party who visited the 
Lower Geyser Basin in 1863, under the leadership of Captain W. W. 
De Lacey. In 1869 Messrs. Cook and David E. Folsom, with another 
prospecting party, visited what is now the park, and the latter wrote 
an account of its wonders which was published in the “ Western, or 
Lakeside Monthly,” for July, 1870, where it was wrongly credited 
to Mr. Cook. The Washburn expedition of 1870 followed, the results 


THE WORLDS GHEYSER-REGIONS. 5o1 


of which were published in “Scribner’s ” and in the “Overland Month- 
ly,” attracting universal.attention. In 1871 Dr. F. V. Hayden, the 
‘father of the Yellowstone National Park,’ made his first exploration, 
and published the first sczentific account of its phenomena. Since then 
it has become known all over the world. Thousands of tourists have 
visited it, and the bibliography of the park includes a list of nearly one 
hundred publications in relation to it. Space here will not permit a de- 


Fie. 4—Lower Terraces or Tr TARATA OR WHITE TERRACE GEYSER. 


tailed description of the park, nor is it necessary, but a comparison of 
some of its features with those of New Zealand and Iceland may be of 
interest. Without having seen each one of the three regions, it is, of 
course, difficult to make a complete comparison, and certainly it is im- 
possible to be dogmatic. Still, Nature works according to laws that 
are the same in all parts of the globe, and a view of any one of the 
localities will, to a great extent, help to explain phenomena observed 
in either or both of the others. The comparison can be the more 


502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


readily made when the American locality is the one actually observed, 
as the others have long been known, and quite thoroughly studied 
and described. The maps of the three great geyser-regions present 
the best comparative view of them. Expressed in figures, the areas 
within which the springs are included are as follow : 


Square miles 
BE Fhe b 8b nih dale who ib eae CRM Yo Rilore woh whey Meld min bi Kaudnk house 5,000 
PO OG ods cca ss Sh mde Roe oe wes a kee kates leas eek bee 2,500 
Teuewenne National Park occ sg cisely Vine eek ew Mice eke as 8,578 


In the southern Iceland region, which includes the Haukadal lo- 
eality, there are about six areas or groups of hot springs, which are 
from forty to fifty miles apart. In New Zealand there are some ten 
groups, the greatest distance between them being about fifteen miles. 
In the Yellowstone National Park, there are from thirty to forty lo- 
calities or groups, some quite close together, and others sixteen miles 
apart. In Iceland only three of the areas have geysers of note. In 
the Yellowstone Park eight, at least, have good spouters, and New 
Zealand has fully as many localities. The following table compares 
some of these groups. It should be premised, however, that the indi- 
vidual groups included under the Yellowstone Park are not a portion 
of the thirty or forty localities just enumerated, but subdivisions of 
some of them. The Upper Geyser Basin and the Lower Geyser Basin 
of Firehole River are really comparable with the Haukadal area, and 
yet the first two comprise respectively 2,560 acres and 19,200 acres. 


j ‘Aol tx Number = 
GROUP. Locality. palsrath — 
Geyser area of Haukadal......... FQUAOE ci Sei ae wae we 20 100 
Geyser area of Reykium......... OV hae wing Sanco 50 100 
Siliceous plateau at Orakeikorako..| New Zealand ............ 1 76 
Te Tarata, and east side of Roto- 

MANBING ES oad ak co Kee ania s _ RTS ER SEE ge 6} 85 
Castle Group Mound ............ Yellowstone National Park. 34 15 
Giantess Green o/cb aa ska kaa oe ~ x 18 55 
Grand Grae cn Geeks de cesman ees i - * 30 70 
Fountain Group sicic ds vanee cata e. 9 i . 15 17 


In the number of springs and noted geysers, the Yellowstone 
National Park and New Zealand far exceed Iceland, in which “ The 
Great Geyser ” and Strokhr are the only two prominent spouters. As 
to the number of springs in New Zealand, there are no definite data, but 
they appear to be numerous. In the Yellowstone Park, over two thou- 
sand springs have been enumerated and mapped, and among them are 
seventy-one geysers, of which twenty are known to spout to a height 
of not less than fifty feet. Of course, in each of the three countries, 
there are hot springs outside of the areas as here indicated ; and, if 
these are taken into account, the American localities will exceed the 
others, especially if the California and Nevada springs are counted. 


THE WORLD'S GEYSER-REGIONS. 503 


However, leaving the latter out of account, we find that in the adjacent 
country both north and south of the park there are springs on the 
same north and south line with the geyser-basins of Firehole River ; 
and, if they are considered as a part of the same system, the length 
of the line of thermal activity is about two hundred miles. 

As to the heights to which the geysers throw the columns of 
water, there is probably but little difference between the three regions, 
although the Yellowstone Park has, perhaps, a greater number which 
erupt regularly to a height of one hundred feet or more. The records 
of the New Zealand geysers are, however, somewhat deficient as to 
data on this point. The following table presents some comparisons as 
to this : 


NAME OF GEYSER. Location. Mie 
Feet. 

Great Geyser. . Ska Cala 6 Th eka bee ot MODINE as ae sia 5 0's 212* 
TR OS ans hi ib 4c o0 ba 8 ee nae Pace ae t Te SEN Rly on he's wom & 0 162 
Geyser at Reykium Seca ue eb aest ama aren rh GE so, | RS 40 
Wey Oe SONU So see oa 8 ie elec ec atest New Zealand............ 106 

-‘Te Puia-nui, OMT ROMRUUS bono we nas nes ces «b's 3 eae ans Ae ws 0.64 100+ 
Crow's Nest, near Tanpo. . 2... 2... ....00%...; = ace Cae aie «eis 50 
Principal geyser at Orakeikorako............. 3 pu Oe Pee oe 30 
Principal geyser on White Island............. 4 Ee eee k's satin es 100 
Te Tarata, at Rotomahana .............+.... % yt Ae ooh Wk dan, 3 50 
PI ces cathe cA ese keen ss Fey 0's Yellowstone National Park. 800 
Oe NSP ae Serene eS Te ar eet 250 
INE os ok, Paik V5 PONS ND ehb hunt ne 00 », 219 
I yan bare yee e ae Obey cee RR EE SS ho #0 " es . 200 
MINE Co Oe beck hs He do kk o Ok ws oe 0% ‘ ” + 200 
Rn Gn sie ek Cao hae ee ep heiee Mae 3 * 1 200 
Se ON caus clk pas ic keh Mereees ces oi se 6 93 150 
NE Fo iss Sire ebet hth as laws kapwe'e, - Sg “ _ 114 
TE Bag oo soo ea 0k VR ARAN OSs ca ba oees' wi 2 : 100 
TRE ORORONNN a's Gi oe sno C's a ERS Sala del oe: " ¥ ad 100 
PRIORY Og didee G.bcee's Cowboy ecee ees ccs 5 * 1 100 
ee re ee ee Maia bE ie ee 6 9 om o 80 
NS ob ig ba Ao Sue nase nab a aes eine « bi . 75 
WI 0 to5 ods bees co aks bihew oie aes " rs = 75 
Pelican Creek mud-volcano..............+.6. * . . 75 
sk sais eho SAN RAR Eee aial.6 66 % - % 70 
NS d's 5c hoki co cdmeba ahs = os 5's 6 ” 85 2 60 
ai 89 bs 6 eee Ma ee ee od ba cee . se be 50 
SR, Solas materi eg peeanien merarie " ° 50 
I aiid 6 vn n a oie SHG Ys a Snee ce oO’ e - - 30 


This list might easily be increased, but it includes all the principal 
geysers. The bulk of the water in the New Zealand springs is so 
great that in most cases the columns during eruption do not attain 
great heights. 


* Three hundred and sixty feet is mentioned by Olafson and Povelson, but is proba- 
bly an estimate. 
+ A height of two hundred feet has also been recorded for one of the New Zealand 


geysers. 
¢ These are two new geysers discovered in 1883 by Mr. Arnold Hagues, division of 


the United States Geological Survey. 


504 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


One point which attracts attention, when the maps of these three 
regions are compared, is, that in each the hot springs appear to be as- 
sociated with lakes. In Iceland there are six, in New Zealand fifteen, 
and in the Yellowstone Park four. All are of considerable size—Lake 
Taupo, in New Zealand, is twenty-five miles long by twenty wide ; 
Yellowstone Lake measures twenty miles in length, by an average 
width of about eight miles. In Iceland, Hvitarvatn is nearly ten miles 
by eighteen ; and Thingvallavatn has a length of about twenty miles, 
and a greatest width of ten or twelve miles. It is interesting in this 
connection to note that the Thibet geysers occur near a lake. An- 
other point of resemblance is in the character of the deposits, which 
are alike in appearance, structure, and chemical composition, with the 
exception, perhaps, of some of the minor constituents. Silica is the 
predominant element in them, and is derived from the prevailing 
rocks. In the following table are some comparisons on these points : 


Grains of Percentage Percentage 
LOCALITY. avalon of | deposits from | Character of rocks, of silica 
water. waters, in rocks. 
‘ . : : Palagonite and 41°28 
ER Se Ug 21°70 to 37°80/84°43 to 98°00 phonolite pie 49-3 
: : , : Rhyolite and : 
New Zealand......... 11°48 to 43-95]77'85 to 94-20) } Blyolle and 70-0 
é - : f Obsidian and s re 
Yellowstone Park..... 784 to 53°76 7300 to 92°64] } es { 64°60 to 77-90 


The waters of New Zealand contain a much larger percentage of 
sodium chloride (common salt) than is found in those of the Yellow- 
stone Park, or in the springs of Iceland. 

The springs and geysers of New Zealand can be grouped in three 
parallel lines, and a similar linear arrangement is seen in the Yellow- 
stone Park, and appears to be analogous to the linear arrangement so 
frequently noted in the case of volcanoes. 

The plateau upon which the Iceland geysers is situated is surround- 
ed on three sides with glaciers. In the Yellowstone Park, glaciers are 
things of the past ; to-day only the erratic bowlders and scratches 
in the Yellowstone Valley testify to their former presence. In New 
Zealand the atmosphere is humid, and favorable to a growth of vegeta- 
tion not found in either of the other regions. In New Zealand there 
are springs of greater size than those of either Iceland or the Yellow- 
stone Park. In neither of the latter is there a hot lake like Rotoma- 
homa, which is a mile wide by a mile and a quarter in length, and has 
an average temperature of '78° Fahr. The largest springs at present in 
the park are the Grand Prismatic spring, measuring two hundred and 
fifty by three hundred and fifty feet, and the small hot lake in the 
Lower Firehole Basin, which is one thousand feet long by seven hun- 
dred and fifty feet in width. In the past, however, the whole Lower 


THE WORLDS GHEYSER-REGIONS. 505 - 


Basin was covered by a lake, which possibly may have been a hot lake. 
In our American region, siliceous cones surmounting broad sloping 
mounds seem to predominate. Although New Zealand has a number 
of cones or chimneys, the large basins are more numerous. The pool 
of Te Tarata measures eighty by sixty feet, and the basin of Otaka- 
puarangi is fifty feet in diameter. The springs in Iceland are com- 
paratively small, as a rule, and chimney-like forms are not numerous. 


7 
t eee / Fi 2) ze yor d. Ganon. » af 
Pa & WH S7 . aR 
w E ‘ammoth % WW Ke 5, Ss 
ESPEINGS» | Nv * yd Buty 
: “ SA} yw” 50.8% Co 
QUADRANT MT: We, less © oda Lutte 
MTWASHBUBNE ° JX “, 
JO546 = 2 
A +Hot Sprunys ‘Cia Bore 
MT HOLMES 
| 1, Pes 
Sprig | & 


’ Ie chs 


sy pet Apaings 


+ AS 


S 
g 
y 


Y 
wey Atay 
fo 
pper Geys er >t i ANGFORD 
Dasin' ‘DOANE 


prev ENSO! 


Fig. 5.—Marp oF YELLOWsTONE NATIONAL PARK, SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION oF HoT SprRINGs 
AND GEyseERs. (Scale, ten miles to the inch.) 


506 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


At Reikum the geysers have no deposits, and the “ Great Geyser ” at 
Haukadal is situated on the summit of a broad and rather geritly slop- 
ing mound. Some of these differences will be rendered more apparent 
when placed in a tabular form : 


NAME OF GEYSER. Location. Size at top. | Size at base, | “eight of 
Great Geyser.........| Iceland... .....000. 56 feet diameter|101 yards by 
75 yards...|12 feet. 
PU MAMIE oibic go's hac cog] NOW DORIONE A 6k OE oe es 100 feet diam- 
Cer vecaay 15 feet. 
Crow's Nest... . 6.555 * we Peg 6 feet diameter.|20 feet diam- 
eter.gs ki 6 or 7 feet. 
POM 25 ok kee oes * Merete ay Ae era rere tertye SUM mma rdee, 20 feet. 
MI DAOD ss os adiccck ob cast ROROMMODE Par Sea bases Shes 18 feet cir- 
cumference.) 3 feet. 
Fiat Cone... st beck k ss a4 . (55 feet diameter|....... .... 20 feet. 
Steep Cone.;........ . ..|55 feet diameter|............ 25 feet. 
Bee-Hive.......:.. 4. sep * ../8 feet x 4 feet.;20 feet cir- 
cumference.| 3 feet. 
RR a so es aks cc ” . ../8 feet diameter.|24 x 25 feet..|10 feet. 
Old Faithful ......... < ” . -|20 by 54 feet. . .|145 x 215 feet./11 feet. 
COR ee eS * ve . .|20 feet diameter,120 feet cir- 
cumference.|12 feet. 
White Dome......... . “ pees ¢ aR RE ewes 25 feet. 


The Flat and Steep cones have on their summits springs or basins 
of eight or nine feet diameter, and rims eight or nine inches in height. 
. The cone of the Giant rises from a platform that is four feet high, 
and has a circumference of three hundred and forty-two yards. The 
Castle is on a platform that measures seventy-five by one hundred feet, 
and is three feet high, and the entire mass (platform and cone) is on 
the summit of a mound that is composed of deposits forty feet in 
thickness and covers three and a half acres. 

It is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to say with certainty what 
the relative age of these three regions is ; still, there are several reasons 
which seem to indicate that Iceland is the youngest and the Yellow- 
stone Park the oldest, with New Zealand occupying the intermediate 
position. The first reason is based on a comparison of the volcanic 
condition of the three regions. Iceland is still in a state of volcanic 
activity. It has had eruptions as late as 1860 and 1875. There are 
twenty volcanoes on the island, and Hecla, which is only forty miles 
from the Haukadal geysers, has had twenty-two eruptions since 1004 
or 1005, the date of the earliest record concerning it. In New Zea- 
land the volcanoes adjacent to the geyser areas have sunk into the 
solfataric stage, and the natives have no traditions of any activity in 
them. In the Yellowstone National Park it is hard to say positively 
where the ancient volcanoes stand, although Mount Washburn has been 
thought to be a volcanic crater, and recently Mr. Arnold Hague has 
stated that Mount Sheridan may be a crater much modified by glacial 
action. 


THE WORLD'S GEYSER-REGIONS 


es) 
D 
8 
a 
¥ 
a 
: 
E 
a) 
y 
£ 
- 
bp 
& 
; 
¢ 
o 
wi 
5 
=) 
va 
a 
I 
a 
E 


508 |THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Secondly, when the deposits are compared, we find, as just stated, 
that the chimney-like form is most prominent in the Yellowstone re- 
gion, while New Zealand, in that respect also, is intermediate between 
the park and Iceland. This more chimney-like form in the Yellow- 
stone geysers has been explained by the statement that they contain 
more silica in solution, but, as already stated in the analysis already 
made, the percentage is usually smaller; the one exception is in a 
spring containing 53°76 grains of silica to the gallon of water, and it 
is a spring that has no conical mound. It has also been suggested 
that the dry air of our region may have some effect in this direc- 
tion. We have no data at hand on this point ; but the simpler and, 
to our mind, more reasonable cause is the greater age of our Ameri- 
can region. Many of our geysers are secondary in their origin. 
Thus Old Faithful is a geyser that has broken out on the summit 
of a mound that had gradually closed up and become extinct. We 
can not compare the actual thicknesses of the sediments or deposi- 
tions of the three regions, and, even if we could, the comparison 
would be apt to mislead us, as the rate of deposition in each region 
and among individual springs must be variable. A great antiquity, 
however, can certainly be accorded to all three of them. I will con- 
clude these comparisons with a table of their elevations, including 
with them some of the other localities mentioned in this article : 

Elevation in feet above 


sea-level. 
Savu Savu, in Feejee Islands............seeeccceccrscececseecees 9 
Hankadal geysers in Iceland... .......eeececeeseee eerste evceees 400 
New Zealand geysers ...... ccc... ccccccesnscesecsccesvcccveseess 1,000 to 1,300 
Boiling Lake of Dominica, West Indies... ..........-eeee eevee eeee 2,400 
Geysers of Yellowstone National Park ...........2eeeeeeeeeeceerss 6,000 to 8,000 
Geyser-region of Thibet .........2-ccecceeccececcccscerseecs . 15,000 to 16,000 


264 
a all 


REPARATION TO INNOCENT CONVICTS. 


By Dr. HEINRICH JAQUES, 


OF THR AUSTRIAN CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES. 


EGISLATIVE problems are, like books, subject to vicissitudes. 
Solutions of the particular questions involved in single cases 

may seem adequate to satisfy deeply-felt wants of the public; yet 
it may happen that the attention of the latter is—to the scorn of 
the previous scientific work of years—first suddenly called to the 
problems by some unexpected, exciting event. It may equally well 
happen that a single sensational: event may bring into current discus- 
sion some legislative question hitherto wholly unconsidered by science. 
The interest of all students is then turned fora short time to this 
point ; its discussion occupies the saloons, fills the columns of the jour- 


REPARATION TO INNOCENT CONVICTS. 509 


nals, and is echoed from the chairs of the learned ; but, after a brief 
period of agitation, the current interest in the subject declines, other 
events awaken sympathy or antipathy, and the want which the solution 
of the question seemed destined to meet, appears to have sunk into 
abeyance. A third condition is also possible and not rare ; it is that 
science and investigation—even bee-busy German science and investi- 
gation—may for years overlook the speculative problem and the real 
need, 

The subject which now engages our attention, and the collateral one 
of indemnification for unjust or unjustified arrests, have not been spared 
fatalities of this kind. Under the passionate excitement aroused by 
the judicial murder of Jean Calas, in France, to which Voltaire gave 
a world-wide notoriety, public attention was turned with feverish 
anxiety to the question of indemnifying persons who had suffered 
under judicial sentence for offenses of which they had been found to 
be innocent, although the subject had never yet been made a matter 
of scientific consideration. ‘The Academy of Chalons-sur-Marne made 
its celebrated offer of prizes for the solution of the question. The sub- 
ject had a place in the memorable portfolio of the deputies to the States- 
General of 1789 ; and Louis XVI himself and his statesmen, a Necker 
and a Pastoret, had it on their programmes. Excessively crude and ill- 
considered attempts were made to solve it. Two of the prize-writers, 
Brissot de Warville and Philippon de la Madeleine, proposed decora- 
tions, especial rewards, and national honors for persons who had suf- 
fered under unjust condemnation, as if the bearing of a wrong and 
the rendering of a service stood on the same level ; as if the award of 
distinctions and elevation in rank could be made adequate equivalents 
for injuries inflicted by the mistakes of the state’s agents. The vision- 
ary mood of the French people subsided, the excitement passed away ; 
and, although the question has never since been lost sight of in the 
criminal literature of the country, it has not yet been solved. Napo- 
leon III of his own initiative issued pardons in several cases in which 
no right of appeal had been recognized in legislation. In Italy, a 
mark was made by Filangieri’s efforts to introduce reforms, and legis- 
lative recognition of the right to indemnity was secured for the first 
time in the laws of Leopold II of Tuscany, and of Naples ; but the 
question was overlooked in the codification of the laws of the new — 
kingdom, and the noble efforts of Carrara and Lucchini to secure con- 
sideration of it have remained to this day without practical result. 
In England, except for Jeremy Bentham, juridical literature is, so far 
as we know, silent on the subject. Those acts of Parliament which 
have awarded indemnities in cases of peculiar hardship, as in those of 
the German preacher Hessel and of Bewicke, have advisedly left out 
of sight the point of principle, which Lord Grey warned his country- 
men was entirely sentimental and unapproachable. The cantonal 
legislation of Switzerland, which Geyer has recently elucidated in a 


510 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


number of valuable expositions, is, in respect to our question, far in 
advance of that of the whole continent. In Germany, Heinze brought 
the problem in its wider aspects under discussion about ten years ago, 
and the German Juristentag began a searching investigation of it. 
But so remote was the subject then for the otherwise far-sighted legal 
world of Germany, that the Juristentag had to speak three times upon 
it, at Hanover, Nuremberg, and Salzburg, before it could arrive at a 
communis opinio. This ten years’ work would have gone without 
result, had not a number of striking cases of unjust condemnation 
recently grieved the public sense of right, led to the introduction of 
motions in the German Reichstag and the Austrian Reichsrath, and 
called out a considerable literature of pamphlets and essays by Geyer, 
Jaques, Schwarze, Lilienthal, List, Kronecker, Gernerth, Bar, Bahr, 
Jacobi, and the anonymous author of the admirable little treatise, 
“ Gerichtsaal.” If, on the other hand, we review the German litera- 
ture—including discussions of principles and text-books—on criminal 
process up to the papers that were prepared for the Juristentag of 
1874, we shall find it wholly silent with respect to our question. This 
silence is easily understood, in view of what we have said. For the 
monographic division and subdivision to which legal science, after pre- 
mature and futile efforts to give it philosophical comprehension, was 
subjected, with the object of sounding it in detail and mastering the 
concrete material, involved the laying aside of those problems which 
had to be solved rather by a simultaneous and uniform review than by 
any special legal study. To this class of problems belongs our ques- 
tion, which appears to partake at once of the nature of public and 
private right ; to it, to cite a pair of related examples, belong the test- 
ing of the constitutionality of laws by the courts, which enters at the 
same time into the administrative and the judicial domain; and the 
question of the distinctions between civil and criminal injuries, the 
scientific solution of which is deduced from both private and criminal 
law. To it belongs also the question of the responsibility of the state 
for the faults of its officers, the solution of which again presumes a 
weighing of factors of private and public law, and this solution science 
has not until very recently troubled itself to advance. 

These changes of aspect and alternatives, by reason of which the 
cause of reproach exists, that, except in Switzerland, the right of inno- 
cent convicts to indemnification has not till the present time received 
legislative recognition in any European state, have their deeper causes 
in closest connection with the course of civilizational and political de- 
velopment. So long as the right of the whole public was embodied in 
the absolute lord’s will—so long as the principle prevailed of that lex 
regia transmitted from the Roman law which said, “ Princeps legibus 
solutus est””—so long could there not be the remotest suggestion of the 
right to an indemnity based upon the fact of an unjust condemnation, 
or of an appeal by the individual against the state. How could a claim 


REPARATION TO INNOCENT CONVICTS. 511 


be established against the state, which could not offend, or against its 
agents, who as such could do. no wrong? Even in a much later stage 
of development, at the epoch when the germs of the modern legal state 
began to strike root in the public consciousness—at the epoch when 
there no longer existed any hesitation in affirming that the state could 
justly carry out its action toward individuals only according to consti- 
tutional and legal forms, and that, on the other hand, the individual 
must be given valid security and effective protection in his constitu- 
tional rights and liberties—even at this epoch the ground was not pre- 
pared for the admission of claims for damages in cases of injurious 
misjudgments by the officers of justice. It could indeed be remarked 
on this point that the state organs could injure and wrong the indi- 
vidual if they designedly or carelessly failed to regard constitutional 
rules as toward him. But if there could be in this case consideration 
of claims for damages, did they not have to rest upon two principles 
that stood in inseparable connection with the traditional categories of 
the Roman civil law, which has prevailed even in public life until very 
recently? First, upon the fact that a wrong, of design or negligence, 
is in question ; and, second, upon the other fact that the injured person 
has to look for the bearer of the responsibility in the matter, not to 
the state, a juristic impersonation incapable of wrong, but to the indi- 
vidual author of the injury himself, in the present case to the judge, 
who has not fully discharged his official duty in the particular case, 
but has rather violated it. Then arose the further advanced idea, only 
corresponding with the gradual growth of strength in the civic feeling 
and with the more deep-reaching demands of freedom, that the state 
itself ought to make amends for injuries to civil rights by its officers, 
and that this duty of indemnification was imposed upon it, when, al- 
though still only objectively infringing upon the sphere of individual 
rights, it should be found doing wrong and inflicting injury, and that 
independently of and wholly uninfluenced by the consideration of 
whether or not a subjective injury existed in consequence of its 
act. 

Yet another most important advance had to be made to give full 
clearness to the position in public law of the individual as toward the 
state, and sharply to describe the circle of competence of the public as 
well as of individuals toward one another. It was to secure an ac- 
knowledgment resting upon economical and social as well as upon 
ethical-principles, that all the burdens that are laid upon individuals 
must be laid with perfect impartiality ; and that if the state would be 
a law-regulated state, a kingdom of justice in the true sense of the 
word, it should not oblige any individual to make a greater sacrifice 
for it than all the others. 

Not till this principle was recognized was a solid basis gained for 
the legal right of an innocent convict to demand an indemnity from 
the state. It must now be plain to every one, and as clear as the sun- 


512 THH POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


light, that the same rule should prevail with respect to the burden of 
justice which the state imposes upon individuals as with respect to 
the burden of taxation or of military service. As the state exacts a 
universal military obligation which no individual has a right to evade, 
so, inversely, the individual who enjoys the knowledge of his own 
innocence has the right to require that the law, to which every one 
without exception has to submit unconditionally without resistance 
and without objection, shall commit no offense toward him. If, how- 
_ever, by a casual concatenation of circumstances, or through érro- 
neous suspicions, or by means of false evidence, more suffering or a 
greater sacrifice is imposed upon one individual than all the others 
have to bear, it becomes the unavoidable obligation of the state to 
make amends to him for the excessive burden he has to carry. The 
duty is an obligation in the strongest sense of the word, and not in the 
remotest degree a mere matter of equity or of humanity or of favor. 
For why does this individual have, at the price of his freedom, his 
honor, his social position, his power to make money, his health and 
ability to work, of pain and care, and perhaps of misery to his family, 
to appear and make a sacrifice of himself that the judicial department 
of the state may exercise its function? Why must he suffer for the 
mistakes, even if they are unavoidable mistakes, of the state organs? 
If any one is assessed too highly by some mistake in taxation, even 
though the error may be in fact pardonable and perhaps unavoidable, 
does not the financial department consider itself obliged to return to 
him the whole amount of the excess of the levy, with interest? And 
if another person has been obliged without any real ground of justice 
to make a gratuitous sacrifice of his best goods to the judicial admin- 
istration of the state, is not the state unavoidably pledged to make to 
him as adequate a reparation for the wrong as is possible? All the 
analogies of private law, which have been adduced in rebuttal of the 
state’s obligation, fail in the application. The maxim “gui suo jure 
utiter, neminem ledit” (“he who exercises his own right is respon- 
sible for no one’s injury”) does not apply, for the prosecuting state 
can exercise suum jure (its right) only against one who has been de- 
linquent, but no right, rather a wrong, toward a guiltless person. In- 
applicable also is the maxim, “casus nocet domino” (“damage from 
accident falls upon the lord”), for if by a false generalization the error 
of. judicial organs is designated as a casus (an accident), as force 
majeure (superior force), the dominus (or lord), upon whom the burden 
of the casws (or accident) follows, is no other than the state itself. 
Futile and confusing to clear judgment is also the introduction of other 
apparently closer-lying analogies of private law, as, for example, of 
the right of condemnation for railroad and mining enterprises, insur- 
ance against violence, and the like. For the legal claim we are speak- 
ing of here rests on a basis of public right, on the just limitation of the 
right and duty of the state as the incorporation of the whole public 


REPARATION TO INNOCENT CONVICTS. 513° 


as toward the individual, and vice versa ; it has, besides, its own inde- 
pendent bases, and the other cases are essentially not competent to sus- 
tain it. — | 

Respecting the provisions of a law embodying the principle we 
have been trying to elucidate, but little more can be said than to refer 
to the bill which has been approved by the Austrian Chamber of 
Deputies, and whose passage in the Upper Legislative House is antici- 
pated. The easiest accessibility to the courts for the parties, an obliga- 
tory stipulation for the gratuitous representation of poor suitors in 
establishing their claim, an official preliminary investigation, public 
oral pleadings according to the rules of civil process, the free exami- 
nation of witnesses, the designation of the amount of indemnity after 
an open judicial estimation, inquiry into every kind of injury that may 
have been suffered, and a system of procedure corresponding with 
these conditions, are obvious points. To these may be added the lapse 
of the privilege of making the claim after a properly defined inter- 
val (one year in the Austrian bill), and in cases where the condemned 
person has voluntarily filled out his sentence. Extreme care should, 
however, be taken to give a precise definition to the latter limitation ; 
for it would be wholly unjustifiable to punish the thoughtlessness or 
ordinary negligence of an uneducated or imperfectly informed person, 
in failing to produce the evidence in his favor, with the loss of the 
right of appeal. But gross negligence may be considered in concrete 
cases to have been designed. 

We have thought it proper to limit our discussion in this place to 
the question of the indemnification of persons who have been unjustly 
condemned, and have advisedly left out of view the question, closely 
connected with it in principle, of damages to those who have been 
subjected to causeless prosecutions. It is well to be satisfied for the 
time with securing the more important object as a beginning, without 
imperiling it by complicating it with other conditions. The principle 
of the matter is carried with the first part, while the second part of 
our problem may be left to mature itself and pass its course of scien- 
tific discussion. In the mean time we, who have labored for ten years 
in this cause, will regard the result we expect soon to obtain as only 
a step—as an installment—and will be encouraged by our success to 
strive for the attainment of the other object.—Translated for the 
Popular Science Monthly from the Deutsche Rundschau. 


VOL. XxvV.—33 


514 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 
By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 


XXXII. 


INCE the publication of my last paper, I have been told, by a lady 

to whom the readers of “ Knowledge” are much indebted, that in 

the fatherland of potatoes, as well as in their adopted country, they 

are always boiled or steamed in their jackets ; that American cooks, 

like those of Ireland, would consider it an outrage to cut off the pro- 

tecting skin of the potato before cooking it ; that they are more com- 

monly mashed there than here, and that the mashing is done by rapid- 

ly removing the skins, throwing the stripped potato into a supplement- 

ary saucepan or other vessel, in which they may be kept hot until the 
preparation is completed. 

Returning to the subject at the point where I left, it I must en- 
deavor to describe the effect of cooking on gluten. It is usually de- 
scribed as “ partly soluble in hot water.” My own examination of this 
substance suggests that “partially soluble” is a better description 
than “ partly soluble” (Miller) or “ very slightly soluble ” (Lehmann). 
This difference is not merely a verbal quibble, but very real and prac- 
tical in reference to the rationale of its cookery. A partly soluble 
substance is one which is composed of soluble and also of insoluble 
constituents, which, as already stated, is strictly the case with gluten in 
reference to the solvent action of hot alcohol. A very slightly soluble 
substance is one that dissolves completely but demands a very large 
quantity of the solvent. I find that the action of hot water on gluten, 
as applied in cookery, is to effect what may be described as a partial 
solution, that is, effecting a loosening of the bonds of solidity, but not 
going so far as to render it completely fluid. 

It appears to be a sort of hydration similar to that which is effect- 
ed by hot water on starch, but less decided. 

To illustrate this, wash some flour in cold water so as to separate 
the gluten in the manner described in No. 29 ; then boil some flour as 
in making ordinary bill-sticker’s paste, and wash this in cold water. 
The gluten will come out with difficulty, and when separated will be 
softer and less tenacious than the cold-washed specimen. This differ- 
ence remains until some of the water it contains is driven out, for 
which reason I regard it as hydrated, though I am not prepared to say 
that the hydration is of a truly chemical character, not a definite com- 
pound of gluten and water, but rather a mechanical combination—a 
loosening of solidity by a molecular intermingling of water. 

The importance of this in the cookery of grain-food is very great, 
as anybody who aspires to the honor of becoming a martyr to science 
may prove by simply making a meal on raw wheat, masticating the 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 515 


grains until reduced to small pills of gluten, and then swallowing 
these. Mild indigestion or acute spasms will follow, according to the 
quantity taken and the digestive energies of the experimenter. Raw 
flour will act similarly but less decidedly. 

Bread-making is the most important, as well as a typical example, 
of the cookery of grain-food. The grinding of the grain is the first 
process of such cookery ; it vastly increases the area exposed to the 
subsequent actions. 

The next stage is that of surrounding each grain of the flour with 
a thin film of water.. This is done in making the dough by careful 
admixture of a modicum of water and kneading in order to squeeze 
the water well between all the particles. The effect of insufficient en- 
veloping in water is sometimes seen in a loaf containing a white pow- 
dery kernel of unmixed flour. 

If nothing more than this were done, and such simple dough were 
baked, the starch-granules would be duly broken up and hydrated, the 
gluten also hydrated, but, at the same time, the particles of flour 
would be so cemented together as to form a mass so hard and tough 
when baked that no ordinary human teeth could crush it. Among all 
our modern triumphs of applied science none can be named that is 
more refined and elegant than the old device by which this difficulty 
is overcome in the every-day business of making bread. Who invent- 
ed it, and when, I do not know, but perhaps Mr. Clodd can tell us. 
Its discovery was certainly very far anterior to any knowledge of the 
chemical principles involved in its application. 

The problem has a very difficult aspect. Here are millions of par- 
ticles, each of which has to be moistened on its surface, but each when 
thus moistened becomes remarkably adhesive, and therefore sticks fast 
to all its surrounding neighbors. We require, without suppressing 
this adhesiveness, to interpose a barrier that shall sunder these mill- 
ions of particles from each other so delicately as neither to separate 
them completely, nor allow them to completely adhere. 

It is evident that if the operation that supplies each particle with 
its film of moisture can simultaneously supply it with a partial atmos- 
phere of gaseous matter, the difficult and delicate problem will be ef- 
fectively solved. It is thus solved in making bread. 

As already explained, the seed which is broken up into flour con- 
tains diastase as well as starch, and this diastase, when aided by moist- 
ure and moderate warmth, converts the starch into dextrine and sugar. 
This action commences when the dough is made, and this alone would 
only increase the adhesiveness of the mass, if it went no further ; but 
the sugar thus produced may, by the aid of a suitable ferment, be con- 
verted into alcohol. As the composition of alcohol corresponds to that 
of sugar, minus carbonic acid, the evolution of carbonic-acid gas is an 
essential part of this conversion, 

With these facts before us, their practical application in bread- 


516 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


making is easily understood. To the water with which the flour is to 
be moistened some yeast is added, and the yeast-cells, which are very 
much smaller than the grains of flour, are diffused throughout the 
water. The flour is moistened with this liquid, which only demands 
a temperature of about 70° Fahr. to act with considerable energy on 
every granule of flour that it touches. Instead, then, of the passive, 
lumpy, tenacious dough produced by moistening the flour with mere 
water, a lively “sponge,” as the baker calls it, is produced, which 
“rises” or grows in bulk by the evolution and interposition of millions 
of invisibly small bubbles of gas. This sponge is mixed with more 
flour and water, and kneaded and kneaded again to effect a complete 
and equal diffusion of the gas-bubbles, and finally the porous mass of 
dough is placed in an oven previously raised to a temperature of about 
450°. 

The baker’s old-fashioned method of testing the temperature of his 
oven is instructive. He throws flour on the floor. If it blackens with- 
out taking fire, the heat is considered sufficient. It might be supposed 
that this is too high a temperature, as the object is to cook the flour, 
not to burn it. But we must remember that the flour which has been 
prepared for baking is mixed with water, and the evaporation of this 
water will materially lower the temperature of the dough itself. Be- 
sides this, we must bear in mind that another object is to be attained. 
A hard shell or crust has to be formed, which will so incase and sup- 
port the lump of dough as to prevent it from subsiding when the fur- 
ther evolution of carbonic-acid gas shall cease, which will be the case 
some time before the cooking of the mass is completed. It will hap- 
pen when the temperature reaches the point at which the yeast-cells 
can no longer germinate, which temperature is considerably below the 
boiling-point of water. 

In spite of this high outside temperature, that of the inner part of 
the loaf is kept down a little above 212° by the evaporation of the 
water contained in the bread ; the escape of this vapor and the expan- 
sion of the carbonic-acid bubbles by heat increasing the porosity of 
the loaf. 

The outside being heated considerably above the temperature of 
the inner part, this variation produces the differences between the 
crust and the crumb. The action of the high temperature in directly 
converting some of the starch into dextrin will be understood from 
what I have already stated, and also the partial conversion of this dex- 
trin into caramel, which was described in Nos. 13 and 14 of this series. 
Thus we have in the crust an excess of dextrin as compared with the 
crumb, and the addition of a variable quantity of caramel. In lightly 
baked bread, with a crust of uniform pale-yellowish color, the con- 
version of the dextrin into caramel has barely commenced, and the 
gummy character of the dextrin coating is well displayed. Some 
such bread, especially the long staves of life common in France, ap- 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY, 517 


pear as though they had been varnished, and their crust is partially 
soluble in water. 

This explains the apparent paradox that hard crust, or dry toast, 
is more easily digested than the soft crumb of bread ; the cookery of 
the crumb not having been carried beyond the mere hydration of the 
gluten and the starch, and such degree of dextrin formation as was 
due to the action of the diastase of the grain during the preliminary 
period of “ rising.” 

Everybody has, of course, heard of “ aérated bread,” and most have 
tasted it. Several methods have been devised, some patented, for ef- 
fecting an evolution of gas in the dough without having recourse to 
the fermentation above described. One of these is that of adding a 
little hydrochloric acid to the water used in moistening the flour, and 
mixing bicarbonate of soda in powder with the flour (to every four 
pounds of flour one half ounce bicarbonate, and four and a half fluid 
drachms of hydrochloric acid of 1:16 specific gravity). These com- 
bine and form sodium chloride, common salt, with evolution of car- 
bonic acid. The salt thus formed takes the place of that usually 
added in ordinary bread-making, and the carbonic-acid gas evolved 
acts like that given off in fermentation ; but the rapidity of the action 
of\the acid and carbonate presents a difficulty. The bread must be 
quickly made, as the action is soon completed. It does not go on 
steadily increasing and stopping just at the right moment, as in the 
case of fermentation. , 

I remember the first introduction of this about half a century ago, 
and the anticipations which accompanied it. London was agitated by 
the bread-reform movement, and bakers were alarmed. <A large estab- 
lishment was opened in Oxford Street, and much amusement created 
by an opposition placard display in some of the neighboring bakers’ 
shops, “‘ Bread sold here with the gin in it.” This, of course, was 
fallacious, as the alcohol produced by the panary fermentation is 
driven off by the heat of the oven. Other methods similar in prin- 
ciple have been adopted, such as adding ammonia carbonate with the 
soda carbonate. The ammonia salt is volatile itself, besides evolving 
carbonic acid by its union with the acid. 

In spite of the great amount of ingenuity expended upon the 
manufacture of such unfermented bread and the efforts to bring it 
into use, but little progress has been made. The general verdict ap- 
pears to be that the unfermented bread is not so “sweet,” that it 
lacks some element of flavor, is “chippy” or tasteless as compared 
with good old-fashioned wheaten bread, free from alum or other adul- 
teration. My theory of this difference is that it is due to the absence 
of those changes which take place while the sponge or dough is rising, 
when, if I am right, the diastase of the grain is operating, as in ger- 
mination, to produce a certain quantity of dextrin and sugar, and pos- 
sibly acting also on the gluten. Deficiency of dextrin is, I think, the 


518 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


chief cause of the chippy character of aérated bread. It must be re- 
membered that this stage is protracted over several hours, during 
which the temperature most favorable to germination is steadily main- 
tained. Other and very interesting phenomena connected with bread- 
making will be treated in my next. 


XXXIIT. 


The practical importance of the fermentation described in my last 
is strikingly shown by the fact that, in the course of sponge-rising, 
dough-rising, and baking, a loaf becomes about four times as large as 
the original mixture of flour, water, etc., of which it was made; or, 
otherwise stated, an ordinary loaf is made up of one part of solid 
bread to more than three parts of air-bubbles or pores. French rolls, 
and some other kinds of fancy bread, are still more gaseous. 

So far I have only named the flour, water, salt, and yeast. These, 
with a little sugar or milk added according to taste and custom, are 
the ingredients of home-made bread, but “ baker’s bread” is common- 
ly, though not necessarily, somewhat more complex. There is the 
material technically known as “fruit,” and another which bears the 
equivocal name of “ stuff,” or “rocky.” The fruit are potatoes. The 
quantity of these prescribed in Knight’s “Guide to Trade” is one 
peck to the sack of flour. This proportion is so small (about three 
per cent by weight) that, if not exceeded, it can not be regarded as 
a fraudulent adulteration, for the additional cost involved in the boil- 
ing, skinning, and general preparing of the small addition exceeds 
the saving in the price of raw material. The fruit, therefore, is not 
added merely because it is cheaper than flour, as many people sup- 
pose. 

The instructions concerning its use given in the work above named 
clearly indicate that the potato-flour is used to assist fermentation. 
These instructions prescibe that the peck of potatoes shall be boiled 
in their skins, mashed in the “seasoning-tub,” then mixed with two 
or three quarts of water, the same quantity of patent yeast, and three 
or four pounds of flour. The mixture is left to stand for six or twelve 
hours, when it will have become what is called a ferment. After 
straining through a sieve, to separate the skins of the fruit, it is mixed 
with the sack of flour, water, ete. | 

It is evident from this that it would not pay to add such a quantity 
in such a manner as a mere adulterant. The baker uses it for improv- 
ing the bread, from his point of view. | 

The stuff or rocky consists, according to Tomlinson, of one part of 
alum to three parts of common salt. The same authority tells us that 
the bakers buy this at 2d. per packet, containing one pound in each, 
and that they believe it to be ground alum. They buy it thus for 
immediate use, being subject to a heavy fine if they keep alum on the 
premises. The quantity of the mixture ordinarily tsed is eight ounces 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 519 


to each sack of flour weighing two hundred and eighty pounds, so that 
the proportion of alum is but two ounces to two hundred and eighty 
pounds.As one sack of flour is (with water) made into eighty loaves 
weighing four pounds each, the quantity of alum in one pound of 
bread amounts to ;4, of an ounce. 

The rationale of the action of this small quantity of alum is still 
a chemical puzzle. That it has an appreciable effect in improving the 
appearance of the bread is unquestionable, and it may actually improve 
the quality of bread made from inferior flour. 

One of the baker’s technical tests of quality is the manner in which 
the loaves of a batch separate from each other. That they should 
break evenly and present a somewhat silky rather than a lumpy fract- 
ure, is a matter of trade estimation. When the fracture is rough and 
lumpy, one loaf pulling away some of the just belongings of its neigh- 
bor, the feelings of the orthodox baker are much wounded. The 
alum is said to prevent this impropriety, while an excess of salt ag- 
gravates it. 

It appears to be a fact that this small quantity of alum whitens the 
bread. In this, as in so many other cases of adulteration, there are 
two guilty parties—the buyer who demands impossible or unnatural 
appearances, and the manufacturer or vender who supplies the foolish 
demand. The judging of bread by its whiteness is a mistake which 
has led to much mischief, against which the recent agitation for “ whole 
meal” is, I think, an extreme reaction. 

If the husk, which is demanded by the whole-meal agitators, were 
as digestible as the inner flqur, they would unquestionably be right, 
but it is easy to show that it is not, and that in some cases the passage 
of the undigested particles may produce mischievous irritation in the 
intestinal canal. My own opinion on this subject (it still remains in 
the region of opinion rather than of science) is that a middle course 
is the right one, viz., that bread should be made of moderately dressed 
or “seconds” flour rather than overdressed “firsts,” or undressed 
“ thirds,” i. e., unsifted whole-meal flour. 

Such seconds flour does not fairly produce white bread, and con- 
gsumers are unwise in demanding whiteness. In my household we 
make our own bread, but occasionally, when the demand exceeds 
ordinary supply, a loaf or two is bought from the baker. I find that, 
with corresponding or identical flour, the baker’s bread is whiter than 
the home-made, and correspondingly inferior. I may say, colorless 
in flavor, it lacks the characteristic of wheaten sweetness. There are, 
however, exceptions to this, as certain bakers are now doing a great 
business in supplying what they call “home-made” or “ farm-house”’ 
bread. It is darker in color than ordinary bread, but is sold neverthe- 
less at a higher price, and I find that it has the flavor of the bread 
made in my own kitchen. When their customers become more intel- 
ligent, all the bakers will doubtless cease to incur the expense of buy- 


520 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ing packets of “stuff ” or “rocky,” or any other bleaching abomina- 
tion. 

Liebig asserts that in certain cases the use of lime-water improves 
the quality of bread. Tomlinson says that, “in the time of bad har- 
vests, when the wheat is damaged, the flour may be considerably im- 
proved, without any injurious result whatever, by the addition of from 
twenty to forty grains of carbonate of magnesia to every pound of 
flour.” It is also stated that chalk has been used for the same pur- 
pose. These would all act in nearly the same manner by neutralizing 
any acid that might already exist or be generated in the course of 
fermentation. 

When gluten is kept in a moist state it slowly loses its soft, elastic, 
and insoluble condition ; if kept in water for a few days, it gradually 
runs down into a turbid, slimy solution, which does not form dough 
when mixed with starch. The gluten of imperfectly ripened wheat, 
or of flour or wheat that has been badly kept in the midst of humid 
surroundings, appears to have fallen partially into this condition, the 
gluten being an actively hygroscopic substance. 

Liebig’s experiments show that flour in which the gluten has under- 
gone this partial change may have its original qualities restored by 
mixing one hundred parts of flour with twenty-six or twenty-seven 
parts of saturated lime-water and a sufficiency of ordinary water to 
work it into dough. I suspect that the action of the alum is of a 
similar kind, though this does not satisfactorily account for the bleach- 
ing. 
The action of sulphate of copper, which has been used in Belgium 
and other places for improving the appearance and sponginess of 
loaves, is still more mysterious than that of alum. Kuhlmann found 
that a single grain in a four-pound loaf produced a marked alteration 
in the appearance of the bread. Fortunately, this adulteration, if per- 
petrated to a mischievous extent, may be easily detected by acidulat- 
ing the crumb, and then moistening with a solution of ferrocyanide 
of potassium. The brown color thus produced betrays the presence 
of copper. The detection of alum is difficult. 

I should add that the ancient method of effecting the fermentation 
of bread, and which I understand is still employed to some extent in 
France, differs somewhat from the ordinary modern practice described 
in my last. When flour made into dough is kept for some time mod- 
erately warm, it undergoes spontaneous fermentation, formerly de- 
scribed as “ panary fermentation,” and supposed to be of a different 
nature from the fermentation which produces yeast. 

Dough in this condition is called Jeaven, and when kneaded with 
fresh flour and water its fermentation is communicated to the whole 
lump ; hence the ancient metaphors. In practice the leaven was ob- 
tained by setting aside some of the dough of a previous batch, and 
adding this when its fermentation reached its maximum activity. One 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 521- 


reason why the modern method has superseded this appears to be that 
the leaven is liable to proceed onward beyond the first stage of fermen- 
tation, or that producing alcohol, and run into the acetous, or vinegar- 
forming fermentation, producing sour bread. Another reason may 
be that the potato mixture above described, which is but another kind 
of leaven, is more effectual and convenient. 

Dr. Dauglish’s method (patented in 1856, 1857, and 1858) is based 
on the fact that water under pressure absorbs and holds in solution a 
large quantity of carbonic-acid gas, which escapes when the pressure 
is diminished, as in uncorking soda-water, etc. Dr. Dauglish places 
the flour in a strong, air-tight iron vessel, then forces water saturated 
with carbonic acid under high pressure into this; kneading-knives 
mix the dough by their rotation. When the mixture is completed, a 
trap at the lower part of the globular iron vessel is opened. The 
pressure of the confined carbonic acid above forces the dough through 
this in a cylindrical jet or flat ribbon as required, and this squirted 
cylinder or ribbon is fashioned by suitable cutters, etc., into loaves. 
The compressed gas expands, and the loaves are smartly baked before 
the expansive energy of the gas is exhausted. 

The difference between new and stale bread is familiar enough, but 
the nature of the difference is by no means so commonly understood. 
It is generally supposed to be a simple result of mere drying. That 
this is not a true explanation may be easily proved by repeating the 
experiments of Boussingault, who placed a very stale loaf (six days 
old) in an oven for an hour, during which time it was, of course, be- 
ing further dried ; but, nevertheless, it came out as a new loaf. He 
found that during the six days, while becoming stale, it only lost one 
per cent of its weight by drying, and that during the one hour in the 
oven it lost three and one half per cent in becoming new, and appar- 
ently more moist. By using an air-tight case instead of an ordinary 
oven, he repeated the experiment several times in succession on the 
same piece of bread, making it alternately stale and new, each time. 

For this experiment the oven should be but moderately heated— 
130° to 150° is sufficient. I am fond of hot rolls for breakfast, and fre- 
quently have them @ la Boussingault, by treating stale bread-crusts in 
this manner. My wife tells me that when the crusts have been long 
neglected, and are thin, the Boussingault hot rolls are improved by 
dipping the crust in water before putting it into the oven. This is 
not necessary in experimenting with a whole loaf or a thick piece of 
stale bread. 

The crumb of bread, whether new or stale, contains about forty- 
five per cent of water. Miller says, “The difference in properties be- 
tween the two depends simply upon difference in molecular arrange- 
ment.” 

This “ molecular arrangement” is the customary modern method 
of explaining a multitude of similar physical and chemical problems, 


522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


or, as I would rather say, of evading them under the cover of a con- 
ventional phrase. 

I am making a few experiments which promise to afford an ex- 
planation of the changes above described, without invoking the aid of 
any invisible atoms or molecules, or anything else beyond the reach 
of our simple senses, and will communicate the results in my next 
paper.— Knowledge. 


MY MONKEYS. 
By M. J. FISCHER. 


ae HAVE never bought any trained monkeys, but, in my experiments 

in domesticating wild ones, have always treated my animals with 
the greatest care, and chosen moral rather than physical means of dis- 
cipline. The relations between the monkey and his master ought to 
be friendly, and, when the first causes for fear and motives to anger 
have been suppressed, there will remain on the animal’s part only feel- 
ings of respect. He will recognize his inferiority to man, and will 
respect him without fear. These lively and nervous animals, abruptly 
torn from their native wilds, to be shut up and treated in an unnatural 
manner, preserve in captivity their good-humor and intelligence to a 
remarkable degree. 

The monkeys I have kept have been both of New World and Old 
World species. The last are the more intelligent. 

In April, 1873, I received a young male of rhesus (Macacus ery- 
throcus, or rhesus), well tamed, and weighing about three pounds and 
three quarters, but coming to me with a cold and in a very thin and 
dejected condition. His hair was lusterless, short, and all off in spots, 
while his tail was quite bare. He had, although a male, received the 
name of. Molly, and answered to it readily. I did not change it. I 
gave him a cage large enough for him to turn around in freely, and to 
afford ample room for all the manifestations of his sanguine and nerv- 
ous temperament. A few days after he came, I allowed him a brief 
promenade in the room. Without disturbing anything, he posted 
himself at a window, whence he could look at the passers-by. His 
conduct was so rational that I determined to extend his promenade, 
and shut him up only while I was away. This liberty, the constant 
intercourse with persons who caressed him as much as he would let 
them instead of teasing him, the quiet of his surroundings, and the 
removal of every feared and exciting object, exercised a decisive and 
favorable influence on his mental and physical development. 

His attachment to me was extreme. He was near me all day, and 
followed me around like a faithful dog. When I hid away from him 
or shut a door in his face, he would cry and try to open the door with 


MY MONKEYS. 523 


his hands, succeeding at last by throwing his whole weight upon the 
latch. In May my house was painted and whitewashed, and a scaf- 
folding was built around it to facilitate the work. The top of the 
highest timber became Molly’s favorite place. It was some four feet 
above the roof ; Molly was accustomed to sun himself upon it, and 
from it he watched attentively all who passed. He would never move 
from it as long as he could see me. But, as soon as I set foot out of 
the grove where I used to work, he would set up a plaintive cry, and 
slide down the timbers to hunt me up, and would not stop his whining 
till he had found me, an event which he marked by repeated grunts of 
joy. 

He gave me a proof of the susceptibility of the character of his 
species the very day he came. Perching himself on my wife’s shoul- 
ders, he amused himself with disarranging her hair. Tired of this, my 
wife tried to push him away, at first pleasantly, then roughly. The 
last movement cost her a bite on the hand, and in return for this she 
struck Molly sharply on the cheek, when the monkey ran to his cage 
in great anger. From that day the inclination he had formed toward 
my wife was turned to a violent hatred, which he continued to mani- 
fest till the end of his days. All his affection was turned toward me, 
and it was really admirable. No dog ever showed so exclusive an 
attachment to me as this monkey, a fact the more singular because the 
animal had come from a wild life, and not, like the dog, from trained 
ancestors. Molly never refused morsels from the hand of other per- 
sons than myself ; but, accepting the gift from them, he would scratch 
or bite the hand that offered it. 

He was greatly frightened at a gun that I shot off one day at some 
sparrows. He hid at once in the straw of his cage, and never left it 
till the gun was hung up again. After that I had only to touch the 
stock, to make him hide again, when nothing could be seen in the 
straw, except a pair of sharp eyes watching all my motions. Just a 
touch of my finger or of a cane upon the cock of the gun was enough 
to deprive him of all quiet. I used to carry on my watch-chain a little 
pistol, on which a percussion-cap would make a tolerably loud report. 
The monkey had not yet found this out, and, sitting on my knees, 
would amuse itself with licking the silver barrel. One day in his pres- 
ence I put a percussion-cap on the nipple of the pistol. The monkey 
observed my movements with great attention, but without seeming 
disturbed by them. But when the cock, being raised, made two clicks, 
Molly dropped his eyebrows, while he continued sitting quietly. When 
the explosion took place, his fright was unbounded. Crying loudly, 
and full of anguish, he fell from my knees, ran across several rooms, 
leaped out of the window, clung to a water-pipe, slid down to the street 
and hid himself in a ditch in a neighboring garden. His nervousness 
lasted a long while, and I had to take off my watch-chain to appease 
it. From that day he was in such fear of the little pistol that to take 


524 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


hold of the chain was enough to make him disappear in the straw. 
But he very soon learned by experience that the source of the detona- 
tion was not in the chain but in the pistol, and could easily distinguish 
it from the other appendages of the chain, of which he was not afraid 
at all. Sitting on the straw in his cage, he would attentively watch 
my movements while I was handling these appendages. The closer 
my fingers approached the formidable object, the greater became his 
anxiety, and with his eyes riveted upon the instrument and with tense 
ears, he would dance continuously in the cage, all ready to go under 
the straw. He would assure himself beforehand, for greater security, 
that the cage-door was well shut ; and one day, when the bolt had not 
been pushed in, he leaped out from the cage, which did not seem safe 
enough for him, and went and hid himself under the bed in the next 
room. As I gradually removed my hand from the pistol, I would 
receive chuckles of approbation ; and, with his lips pushed forward and 
the muscles of his ear moving by jerks, he would manifest a very great 
joy. | 
The conclusion is forced by these facts, that monkeys by experi- 
ence become more prudent and more cunning. Carrying experiments 
of this kind further, I have observed that the monkey can recognize 
the object of its fear even in a picture, manifesting a faculty which 
is largely wanting in little children and savages. I one day received 
an armorer’s illustrated catalogue. It had among other objects a 
drawing of a revolver of the natural size, an arm which the rhesus 
had never yet seen. I gave the catalogue to my pet, and he, after the 
manner of many monkeys, began to turn the leaves. But, as soon as he 
got to the picture of the revolver, he dropped the catalogue, groaned 
lustily and made faces, and at once ran to hide himself in the straw, 
which he would not leave till the pamphlet was taken away. 

The last fact proves the superiority of simian intelligence over that 
of the other mammals, I disagree on this point from Perty, who says, 
“ A small number of animals, among which is the elephant, recognize 
drawings of objects that are familiar to them.” I must avow that my 
investigations on this subject, upon the few elephants living in Europe, 
have given me negative results. I do not know of any domestic ani- 
mal that can distinguish a picture. It is useless to show dogs faithful 
drawings of the dog, or of game ; the result is nearly always the same. 
The animals will smell the paper, examining the substance, not the pict- 
ure, and, once convinced there is nothing in it to exercise their teeth 
upon, they resignedly abstain from any more profound investigation. 
Monkeys, at least Old World monkeys, act differently. 

The rhesus, a baboon (Jnwus ecaudatus), three Java monkeys (Ma- 
cacus cynomolgus), and a sajou (Cebus hypoleucus) were drawn in 
crayon for an illustrated magazine in pictures having a striking resem- 
blance to the originals. I gave each monkey his portrait. The rhesus 
and the Java monkeys recognized the pictures at once, and acted pre- 


MY MONKEYS. 525 


cisely as if they were before a looking-glass. The rhesus grinned, 
then laughed, and at last turned his back to the picture, uttering 
grunts of satisfaction, as if he expected to be scratched. The Java 
monkeys stared at the picture ; with the skin of their foreheads drawn 
back, their lips pushed out and constantly moving, they regarded it 
from a distance and close up, to find out what it was. The other spe- 
cies likewise recognized the nature of the pictures, but without exhib- 
iting as strong excitement as the two species mentioned. The least 
intelligent of the number was the sajou, which, examining the portrait 
from the head down and moaning, stretched its hand toward it, trying 
to tear it with his nails. Evidently it did not recognize the portrait 
either as one of itself or of another monkey, while it took in pictured 
insects very well, and was frightened at the sight of the painting or 
drawing of a viper. Notwithstanding these examples, I was careful 
not to generalize so as to extend to a whole species the faculties of a 
few individuals belonging to it. Among monkeys, as with man and 
other animals, there are individuals of extensive and individuals of very 
limited gifts in the same species. None of the many monkeys could 
distinguish pictures of landscapes or houses, in respect to which they 
were precisely like savages. 

Only a few dogs give any signs of intelligence before their image 
in a glass. Some just distinguish it and remain quite indifferent ; oth- 
ers growl or bark, but they seldom try to determine whether a second 
individual really exists. I have remarked the same of cats, and Blan- 
chard’s cat in Paris, that dashed furiously at a looking-glass, is a unique 
example. 

The rhesus looked into the mirror with a joyous air, stretched out 
his ears, drew up the skin of his forehead and his eyebrows, puckered 
his lips, grinned and laughed, and turned his posterior to the glass. 
This gesture is general among some kinds of monkeys. I had already 
described it as a peculiarity of a mandrill, when Darwin, having read 
my article, sent me a letter on the subject, asking me what significance 
I attached to it. I answered him that, according to my experiments, 
the gesture was a mark of simian politeness. Once in position, the 
monkey expects to be scratched, just as when we extend our hand to 
another person we expect to receive his. Darwin verified my observa- 
tion, and compared the gesture with certain forms of salutation among 
savages, such as those by feeling the belly or rubbing noses. My rhe- 
sus, not succeeding in getting scratched by his image, turned around 
and passed his hand behind the glass to feel for it. I took the oppor- 
tunity to pinch him sharply behind the glass, when he became very 
angry, not at me, but at the image. His face turned red, his ears were 
extended, and his jaws gaped open repeatedly. The gaping was so 
irresistible that he could not stop it, not even to chew or swallow. It 
is a sign of great anger and violent nervous disturbance, It occurs 
very frequently with the pavions, almost regularly, and the animal is 


526; THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


often so overcome by its paroxysm that it can neither defend itself nor 
attack. Another sign of anger is given by shaking violently with the 
four hands the bars of the cage, the grating, or some support. This 
habit, born of the forest, is evidently intended to frighten enemies 
with noise. Molly never failed to exercise it when, after having been 
teased by any one, he heard him laugh. The cage was fastened to the 
table, and both were fastened to the wall. As long as the cage was 
loose, Molly would shake it. As soon as it was fixed, he tried to shake 
it, and, failing, did not do so again till time and use having worn upon 
the nails, the cage gained a little play, when he seized his opportunity 
and the racket was renewed. I then put in a piece of India-rubber to 
muffle the sound, and the monkey stopped his shaking. He did not 
care to see the cage move, but to make a noise. This habit is, how- 
ever, not always a sign of anger. Some monkeys practice it under the 
influence of ennui or impatience, or when they wish to attract atten- 
tion, and, in the lack of any other resource, the rhesus would hunt up 
in his straw a dry bread-crust, a nut-shell, a bone, or anything hard 
that he could strike against his cage-bars. 

To express a desire, my monkey utters a prolonged “Oh!” or 
sounds the interjection in two syllables, with the second a fifth higher 
than the first. The tone rises according to the intensity of the desire. 
Thus, when I was talking with another person of the favorite eatables 
of the rhesus (such as milk, apples, potatoes, and rice), the monkey, 
although I was not speaking to him, underlined those well-known 
words with chuckles of approbation, and pushed his of’s through his 
lips, which were puckered out as if he were whistling. His attitude 
was the same when I gave the order from my room to have his meal 
brought in. The rhesus would at once fix his eyes on the door by 
which the anticipated feast was to come in; and this, no matter what 
might be the time of the day or night. The behavior was, then, not 
influenced by the periodicity of the want, which determines regular 
actions with many other animals, and was independent of the person 
who pronounced the words. I might cite thousands of cases observed 
on my premises, by hundreds of persons, that prove superabundantly 
that monkeys fully comprehend the relations of certain words and the 
objects corresponding to them. | 

The rhesus knew, besides, the names of all the animals that lived 
in the same room with him but in different cages—some sixty or sev- 
enty in number. If I pronounced the name of any of them, without 
giving any sign of voice or look, he would put his head through 
the hole in the cage, and turn it significantly toward the animal in 
question. 

This monkey’s fear of snakes was extreme, and extended to every- 
thing that had any resemblance to them. The same feeling is com- 
mon to all monkeys. A very fine mandrill of my pets having a habit 
of prying about, I found no better way of restricting his investiga- 


MY MONKEYS. 527 


tions, which were sometimes annoying, than to put snake-skins under 
the objects I wished him to respect. The device succeeded admira- 
bly. It was to the same mandrill I once showed a prospectus of Sem- 
per’s “ Journey to the Philippine Islands,” in which there was a picture 
of a holuthuria. At the unexpected view of this sea-horn, the man- 
drill made a jump and struck the ground with his hands, while his 
hair stood out and his body trembled from head to foot. The rhesus 
gave me a yet more striking example of this horror. I had received 
a large python, which I had brought into the room every day for a 
warm bath. After nine days, I had only to call out, “Bring in the 
serpent,” for the monkey to disappear under the straw. Long after 
the serpent had been restored to health and the baths had been dis- 
continued, the repetition of the order would set Molly a-trembling at 
any time. 

Perty says that dogs are the only animals capable of reading hu- 
man physiognomy ; but one has only to possess monkeys and be ac- 
quainted with them to know that they too can read it better than chil- 
dren can. I except New World monkeys, which have little or none of 
the faculty. [had a little female Java macacus, of an exceedingly pleas- 
ant and timid nature. I had only to raise my voice in speaking to her, 
to arrest all her motions. When I returned into the room, she would 
follow me with her eyes, trying to read the expression of my face, and 
endeavoring to gain my sympathy by a low murmuring, going away 
or coming up to me according to the play of my features. If she saw 
me smile she would make a sound of gladness, clasp my knees and 
press against me, with murmuring lips and eyes gazing into mine. 
But, at the first frown or hard look, the macacus would drop down 
erying and run away. The rhesus responded in a somewhat similar 
manner to my expressions. 

Monkeys have a passion for cleanliness. Once on your knees, they 
will pick you from head to foot, not letting a wrinkle escape, and all 
with the most serious air. My rhesus could not endure badly dressed 
persons. He was always ready to defend me, and to spring upon any 
one who would touch me with the tip of his finger. He had no respect 
for children, but acted as if he took them to be large monkeys, and 
would sometimes attack them when they were too saucy. Some of 
the other monkeys, however, seemed to be quite fond of them. The 
rhesus appreciated the inferiority of my servants to myself, and would 
become angry at any one of them when I reprimanded him, his anger 
being modulated according to my tone, and sometimes leading him to 
acts. He co-operated in all my gestures when I acted as if I were 
beating a man or a dog, but if it were another monkey that was threat- 
ened he took its side. The feeling of compassion is not strange to 
monkeys. They will defend and protect threatened individuals, some- 
times offering their own bodies as a shield. They extend their com- 
miseration to animals of another species. The rhesus became furious 


528 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


when he saw the ferret, in the course of his training-lessons, biting 
_ rats, and, taking him by the tail, bit him to save the rat. 

The rhesus slept at first perched on the bars of his cage, but soon 
learned to accustom himself to easier positions. He could cover him- 
self up with the quilt, and would finish by drawing it over his head 
with his teeth. He often had lively dreams. I could see him grin, 
and hear him utter low but distinct sounds of comfort, of desire, and 
sometimes of fright. In the latter case he would always awake, jump 
to the highest stick, and cast frightened looks around. 

His obedience was complete, and was never wrecked except upon 
the rock of gluttony. If I left any delicacy on the table, he would 
never touch it when I was looking on ; but, after my back was turned, 
nothing of it could be found. I could not contend with this fault 
except by stratagem ; but to put a stuffed snake-skin by the side of 
the coveted object was always enough to secure its protection. 

The feeling of the right of property is common to all monkeys. I 
gave a red quilt to a Java macacus and a blue one to another macacus. 
Each one was jealous of his own garment, and the least infringe- 
ment by one on the proprietary rights of the other was followed by 
a battle. 

Perty says that monkeys can untie knots, but can not tie them. Is 
this a mark of inferiority ? Monkeys, like other animals, have for » 
most of their actions a determined object. My rhesus was obliged, to 
get honey, to open the closet and, to be at liberty, to untie the rope. 
He did both. But why should he shut the door, or tie the rope again? 
Do we not have to teach children and boors to shut doors? 

Monkeys can estimate weights. I gave the rhesus full eggs and 
empty shells, between which there was no difference to the eye. At 
first he bit both alike, but he soon learned to throw the empty shells 
away without biting them. I continued the egg experiments by fill- 
ing the egg-shells with iron filings, lead, sawdust, and sand. After 
several trials, he never could be deceived except by eggs of the same 
density as normal’ones. This faculty is not, however, equally pos- 
sessed by all monkeys. 

It can not be denied that monkeys have some, but a weak, notion 
of number. My rhesus was accustomed to get a certain number of 
carrots, or apples, or potatoes, and, if his ration fell short, he would 
always take notice of the deficiency. If he got only three apples when 
he was expecting four, he would not move from the grating till the 
fourth apple was brought him. Music had but little effect upon him ; 
but the sound of a hunting-horn would send him under the straw, 
and cause him to scratch his ears as he would do when one was driv- 
ing a nail near him. Nothing delighted him more than to have a 
lighted cigar or pipe in his mouth. He would fill his cheek-pouches 
with the smoke and send it out through his nostrils like any expert 
at the cigarette. 


MY MONKEYS. 529 


The anecdotes about the propensity of monkeys to imitate man are 
much exaggerated. They have a physical structure like his, and mental 
qualities in some respects not wholly dissimilar from his, and naturally 
make gestures like those of men; and that is the most of truth there 
is in those stories. 

Monkeys have a language, as among themselves, that is easily 
understood by individuals of the same species. Individuals of different 
species, if not too far remote, can after a time learn to understand 
each other; but if the species are very different, like those of the 
Old and the New World, the effort is tantamount to that of learning a 
new language, and frequently requires several years. As the thoughts 
of monkeys are excessively limited in extent and their wants relate 
solely to food and the struggle for existence, their language is but little 
varied, and is composed chiefly of vowels pronounced with different 
intonations and accompanied by different expressions of the figure, 
the most common of which are laughing and grinning, and which each 
species performs in its own peculiar fashion, The expressions of anger 
are also characteristic, and vary with the species. 

My rhesus, together with a large mandrill and a Cynopithecus niger 
of unusual size, ate at my table, and received all the dishes that I had. 
The rhesus preferred roast fowl and roast mutton to all other meats, 
and also liked eggs, raw or cooked. His weakness for eggs once cost 
me a considerable sum, which I had to pay to a neighbor for one hun- 
dred and fifty eggs of high-bred fowls which my pet had destroyed. 
He ate all kinds of seeds, and liked much to vary his food. Among 
vegetables he preferred asparagus, and had a strong appetite for 
fruits, to gratify which he made my own and my neighbors’ orchards 
suffer. 

His ordinary drink was milk and half a glass of Bordeaux, which 
he took in his hand as a man would have done, without spilling a drop. 
I sometimes gave him tea, chocolate, cocoa, coffee, beer, and white 
Tokay wine. He frequently abused the last drink, and learned to go 
into a room where a bottle of it was kept. He would then get drunk 
—dead-drunk—like any man, and my servant would find him and call 
to me to help put him into the cage. But, even in this condition, he 
never failed to have a degree of respect for me, though he would resist 
being moved, as the street-toper resists the policeman. Put in the 
cage, he would sleep off his draught stupidly, and then be sick for 
two or three days, obstinately refusing to eat anything, but never to 
drink.— Translated for the Popular’Science Monthly from the Revue 
Scientifique. 


VOL. xxv.—34 


530 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


THE SALT-DEPOSITS OF WESTERN NEW YORK. 
By FREDERIC G, MATHER. 


YOMING County, in the State of New York, is bounded on the 

southeast by the wonderful gorge that has made famous the 
mighty leaps of the Genesee River at Portage. A few miles to the 
north is the plateau which holds the crystal waters of Silver Lake ; 
while still farther to the north and west rise the head-waters of Oatka 
Creek, which flows in a northeasterly direction through the county of 
Genesee, and empties into the river of that name just before it comes 
to Rochester. The Oatka was formerly called Allen’s Creek, after a 
resolute pioneer. The valley and the county were named Wyoming, 
from a striking similarity to the valley in Pennsylvania which once 
received the murderous visit of the savage, and which has been im- 
mortalized in the verse of Campbell. Warsaw, the shire-town of 
Wyoming, most romantically situated near the source of the creek, 
was called by the Indians “ Chi-nose-heh-geh,” or “on the side of the 
valley.” The village of to-day numbers but twenty-five hundred in- 
habitants, although the region all about has been settled nearly one 
hundred years, and although a prominent railroad skirts the valley on 
either edge. All about is a most excellent farming-land, second only 
to the Genesee Valley. The butter and cheese are of the best quality, 
and they find a ready sale in Buffalo or in Rochester, either metropolis 
being less than fifty miles away. This valley, hitherto so peaceful, is 
now the center of a business activity that bids fair to be permanent, 
and that will reduce by one the number of staple articles for which 
the United States has hitherto depended upon foreign countries. 

Over forty years ago extensive surveys were made from Oswego 
to Niagara, and salt-springs were found in many places. In the hol- 
lows toward Lake Ontario the brine was discovered in such quanti- 
ties as to make unnecessary any additional salting of the cattle that 
were pastured in the vicinity. It was also discovered that salt might 
be found at the south of this belt, but not without considerable boring. 
No one, however, suspected that the valley would yield salt as far up 
as Warsaw. Therefore, when the Vacuum Oil Company, of Roches- 
ter, commenced to bore for oil at Wyoming, just north of Warsaw, the 
enterprise was thought to be only a natural extension of the oil-fields 
of Pennsylvania, which lie fifty miles or so to the southward. The 
man who directed the boring had’been a boy in the Wyoming Valley, 
and he had enough faith in the existence of oil to lease the neighbor- 
ing farms for ninety-nine years, with the agreement that he would put 
down a test-well ; that, if successful, a well should go down on every 
man’s farm ; and that the owner of the farm should have one eighth of 
the product in every case. Oil was not found, but brine came up in 
sufficient quantities to show that the salt was there. The treasure was 


THE SALT-DEPOSITS OF WESTERN NEW YORK. 531° 


allowed to remain undisturbed until two years ago, when a well was 
sunk in Warsaw to a depth of thirteen hundred feet, where a bed of 
salt eighty-five feet thick was encountered. From this bed the War- 
saw Salt Company has been drawing one hundred and fifty barrels of 
brine daily for the past year. Two miles below this is the well of the 
Crystal Salt Company, which, starting with a daily yield of fifty barrels, 
has now reached several hundred. On the eastern slope of the valley 
extensive works have been erected by Dr. Guionlock, who has had thir- 
teen years’ experience with the salt product at Goderich, in the Prov- 
ince of Ontario, and who prefers the Warsaw product to the other. 
Across the valley, on the western slope, is the well of another Warsaw 
company. In short, there are, within a radius of three miles of War- 
saw, seven wells already down and three more in process of digging, 
the output of which when completed will be three thousand barrels 
daily, the output at Syracuse being but five thousand barrels daily. 

The unexpected treasures found at Warsaw have added hundreds 
to its population, have increased real estate fifty per cent, and have 
secured a new railroad, the “Oatka Valley,” in addition to the Roches- 
ter and Pittsburg, and the New York, Lake Erie and Western, and the 
Lehigh Valley, which are already there. The newly-laid tracks of the 
New York, Lackawanna and Western are only a dozen miles away. 
The hill-sides are covered with hard-wood timber, which can be con- 
verted into barrels. With this bright outlook it would not be strange 
if the people of Warsaw should picture to themselves a future laby- 
rinth of salt-mines that might rival that of Austrian Galicia, with its 
saline church dedicated to St. Anthony. Even at this stage of the 
enterprise the men of Warsaw are said to keep one of their number 
on guard at the arrival of every train, lest some prospector should 
stray as far down the valley as Wyoming, Pavilion, Covington, or Le 
Roy, or even over the ridge to Greigsville. If they have their own 
way, no other spot aside from Warsaw will share in the benefits of the 
discovery ; and from his elevated post on the magnificent soldiers’ mon- 
ument the stone sentinel will gaze defiantly on the surrounding towns. 
In such a case the poet sang of the sentinel as well as of Kosciusko : 

‘“‘ Warsaw’s last champion from her heights surveyed, 
Wide o’er the fields, a waste of ruin laid.” 

But are the men of Warsaw to have, what they naturally desire, 
a monopoly of the newsalt production? It is evident that the aver- 
age depth of the salt-bed thereabout is eighty feet, and that the 
depth of boring required to reach the bed becomes less as the pros- 
pector travels north. This southerly dip has given hopes to the 
dwellers about Rochester that the bed will be found much nearer the 
surface at that point—a fact that would lead to cheaper production, 
even if the thickness of the bed were less. - Then, too, the dwellers 
east and west of the meridian line, upon which are located most of 
the wells bored thus far, are confident that salt will be found many 


532 _ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


miles away from the said line, and they have started “ pointers,” after 
the manner of the oil-country, to mark the limits of the territory. 
The geologists affirm that all the salt of Syracuse, Warsaw, Saginaw, 
and evenof Wisconsin and Iowa, belongs to the Onondaga salt-group, 
and that it was deposited all over this extensive tract in a chain of land- 
locked lakes fed by occasional overflows from the ocean, and deposit- 
ing their saline contents by evaporation. A similar process is now 
going on at the Runn of Cutch, of which Sir Charles Lyell says: 
“That successive layers of salt might be thrown down, one upon 
another, over thousands of square miles in such a region, is undeni- 
able. The supply of water from the ocean would be as inexhaustible 
as the supply of heat from the sun for its evaporation.” ‘This theory 
will explain why the dip of the salt-strata of Western New York, added 
to the natural rise of the ground, makes a boring of fifteen hundred 
feet necessary at Warsaw, while at Salina a depth of only. two hun- 
dred feet is required. 

In this fact of the strata coming nearer the surface to the north- 
ward of them lies the danger to the hopes of the people of Warsaw. 
In many other respects they are warranted in believing that they have 
a bonanza. The “pointers” that have been already sunk and the 
unsuccessful experiments that have been made in former years show 
that the beds of rock-salt do not extend farther north than Caledonia, 
in Livingston County, nor farther south than Castile, in Wyoming 
County. The narrow strip within which the beds are confined runs 
from Onondaga County, on the east, through the counties of Cayuga, 
Seneca, Yates, Ontario, Livingston, and Wyoming, to Erie on the west. 

The claim that the sign “ Warsaw salt ” represents a superior arti- 
cle appears to be well-founded—the brine having been analyzed with 
flattering results by Dr. Lattimore, of Rochester, and Dr. Englehart, 
State chemist, of Syracuse. The latter reports the specific gravity to 
be 1:205. The analysis of 100 parts is as follows: Sulphate of lime, 
257 ; chloride of calcium, ‘068 ; chloride of magnesium, °005 ; chloride 
of sodium, 26°300 ; pure water, '73'°370. The exceptionally small pro- 
portion of the chlorides of calcium and magnesium will be noted, as 
well as the large proportion of pure salt which the recent superin- 
tendent of the Syracuse salt-springs declares entitles the Warsaw 
brine to rank as 100 to 66 for the Syracuse brine. An analysis of the 
manufactured article shows the following results : 


Warsaw salt, No.1. | Warsaw salt, No. 2. 
MolubIO ts ier es os i ied. Boles tiie. Pisebeens 0°104 0013 
PRMORIIOS c's p's kbd baie dU EE Mi ee 1°500 0°753 
PRTASO OF FN io, ava k ax ke beaimnaened &6 1464 0°955 
camortde '6f ‘Calclam (05s Fe i PO a8 0°136 0°089 
Chloride of magnesium...........csceseeeececs 0-298 0°118 
WE EE ain ok bin + acts 8s uae ae dane uae oe 96°498 98:072 


TORR Marte: oi ons os bie ee cea a eRe ideke 100°000 100°000 


THE SALT-DEPOSITS OF WESTERN NEW YORK. 533 


It is stated that the superior strength of the Warsaw brine makes 
it possible for one ton of coal to produce more salt, by sixty-four 
cents’ worth, than can be produced from the Syracuse brine. This fact, 
together with the falling off in the Syracuse output, has called marked 
attention to the Warsaw wells. 

The product of salt from the Michigan wells is over 15,000,000 
bushels annually, on which the profit is large because the fuel consists 
of slabs and sawdust, a mere nothing. An eminent authority—Dr. 
Mitchell—states that there are three sources of the salt-supply in 
Michigan: 1. In the coal-measures and in the white and porous 
Parma sandstone, which serves as a reservoir. 2. The “ Michigan Salt- 
Group,” which lies between the carboniferous limestone and the sand- 
stones at the base of the carboniferous system. This group consists 
of various shales, magnesian limestone, and beds of pure gypsum. The 
material of the reservoir is Napoleon limestone. The depth of boring 
is 600 to 700 feet, and the total area of the territory is about 17,000 
square miles. 3. The “Onondaga” or Salina Salt-Group, which lies 
500 feet below the Michigan Salt-Group, and in which alone are found 
the beds of rock-salt. The most important well is that at Marine 
City, on the St. Clair River, the total depth being 1,633 feet, and the 
thickness of the salt-beds 115 feet. The well at Muskegon, on 
Lake Michigan, is 2,000 feet deep, and the thickness of the salt-beds 
is 50 feet. Other important wells are operated at Bay City and at 
Manistee. 

Similar beds are found in the Province of Ontario, at Goderich, 
Huron County. They are in the Salina formation also, the depth 
averaging about 1,000 feet, and the thickness of the salt about 30 
feet. Exceptionally deep wells have been driven to a depth of 1,600 
feet through six layers of salt aggregating 125 feet in thickness. The 
salt area of Canada is estimated at 2,000 square miles, and the proba- 
ble quantity of sait still in the beds is called 200,000,000,000 tons, 
The Canadian salt is superior to the Michigan salt in regard to 
the absence of the earthy chlorides, as the following analysis will 
show : 


Goderich Salt. ge ee re ster 
ents GP MOOD: oa a 55s.6 66.4 + deed Sb awe eee te © 0°989 0°317 
Serer OF. GAMMUUR. coc cope ce sb aGese Gene's en's 07134 0°356 
Chloride of magnesium ........ccc.e cece eeses 07124 0°141 
cn ss ol, sacle pg RR SR Wp we 6 was 0°037 0-000 
NE nas a cath Knees pe kesh eneneaeane oh 1°396 8°344 
PERT AT. so ica iba kas bis s ww aes DW cheb a eee os 0-016 0-000 
PURE BOLL 50's écsece Pe At Pe er Ne etbaen 97°304 95°842 

eee Gitte 23.020. A 100-000 100-000 


The salt-beds of Michigan underlie each other like a nest of saf#- 
eers—the oldest being in the old dolomite limestones in the ancient 


534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Devonian ocean. Here alone we have the beds of pure rock-salt. <As 
we come nearer the surface, the presence of the earthy chlorides is 
more marked, and the product is less valuable, because, by reason of 
its attracting more moisture from the air, it is rendered unfit for the 
dairy or the table unless it goes through a process of purification. 
The conclusion that we must reach, therefore, is, that the deeper the 
boring goes, the purer the salt will be, whether it is in Michigan or 
in New York. Following out the logical deduction of this conclusion, 
we must admit that while the outcroppings of salt toward the northern 
edge of the New York field might offer superior inducements in the 
way of securing the brine, yet the brine when secured would be so 
much weaker and more impure that the decreased cost of producing 
it would be more than offset. In other words, the brine that is reached 
at a depth of two hundred feet north of the Warsaw Valley offers no 
superior advantages to that which for many years has been reached 
at a similar depth on the reservation of the Onondaga Salt-Springs. 
In deep boring and pure salt lie the best hopes of the Warsaw 
product. 

The relative value of brine from the various salt-producing locali- 
ties is shown by the following table, which gives the number of gal- 
lons of brine required to make one bushel of salt : 


ET IS Oe ee Pe ere PE PE ay men reer 300 to 350 
Boone Lick, Missouri ..........scsececserecsccccccessccrecs 450 
SAMOORURD, POONAIVRII 6 oie ae Leet eke phen e Sale 0 wiesiea 300 
WARMER OIE SCO CaN a OA we Ge ee ow oe De be wh ols Neo ewes 213 
Ricwart'e, Mianhento ie io ies hse Ss bis 0 5s OE Se sdek el er ans 180 
ih Cait rine 6 Ontaries 5 sic 6X oil's oie olka vilb's daliasie @ va Siv W's aia'ni 120 
CRE, CONG: «. o.k nn san éGh a mints vhs RO EES 08 69 4:05 Cee ee ack 95 
e000 FAVOR, AYURUSOR oc ose ¢ ind sa ches ocd acces hone tenes as 80 
FANG WHA, WONG VCO. ooo i pc ewe ceva Ve sesbbetuNaudese ots 75 
Mouton, New Forks, esse. iis se RC OTE eg ee 70 to 50 
Maskingum, Ohio, 0.6 s06a Gey Fee scdee hs tae dee eey hist ye 50 
Qnondaga, Now: V omkeis'se saids 2 cess rc oe So.g sea eieire 6g © Said aie ole 45 to 30 
Saginaw, Michigan isis cccaeos «cccessies shen antsgevanceeeris 80 to 25 
CHSRTIL, CUEAIIG orca cdc coaches 0040.0 6 cn eewk be kk ee oa ce 22 
Wortaw, New FOr. ies ccccveecsncecscucsscacavbvctsccnnes 20 


Not only is it claimed that the Warsaw salt is superior to any 
other for the packing of meats and the uses of the dairy, but also that 
it is the sole product in the United States from which soda-ash can be 
manufactured. This article is used for bleaching, dyeing, soap-mak- 
ing, and several other processes. Hitherto it has been imported to 
the value of millions of dollars yearly, because no brine of sufficient 
strength could be found in the United States. Attempts to use the 
brine of Canada and Ohio have utterly failed. At last the brine of 
Syracuse was tried, and it was found that by being chemically treated 
and salted it would serve the purpose. Large amounts of capital are 
already invested in the strengthening of the Syracuse brine ; but it is 


THE SALT-DEPOSITS OF WESTERN NEW YORK. 535° 


found that the Warsaw brine is strong enough to be used without any 
chemical treatment. Large investments, therefore, are making, in the 
Wyoming Valley, for the manufacture of soda-ash ; and the success 
of these manufacturers will make the United States independent of 
every other country in regard to this commodity. Of course, the salt- 
men of Warsaw are as clear-cut protectionists as are their fellow- 
workers of Syracuse or Saginaw. The duty on foreign salt is eight 
cents per hundred, or twenty-two cents for a barrel of two hundred 
and eighty pounds. They argue that salt having dropped from one 
dollar and eighty cents a barrel in 1860, to seventy cents in 1882, the 
saving of one dollar and ten cents on a barrel has been an aggregate 
of seven million dollars to the people of the United States. To re- 
move the tariff, they affirm, would be to raise the price, to shut down 
home industries, and to allow foreigners to make the money that 
should be kept in this country. 

The outward appearance of a salt-well in the Wyoming Valley 
does not differ materially from that of a well in the “oil-country.” 
We see the same derrick, of spruce or hemlock ; the ponderous wood- 
en walking-beam, half out-of-doors ; the “ bit,” the “ auger-stem,” and 
all the other appliances for boring, together with the “ pull-wheel ” 
that hoists the whole apparatus from the hole; the forge hard by ; 
the “sand-reel ” that lowers the pump for clearing away the pulver- 
ized rock; and the “fishing-tools” and all other tools for clearing 
the well of bits of broken apparatus. A short distance from the der- 
rick is a covered shanty which contains the engine, while the boiler is 
still farther away, and generally in the open air. With such an appa- 
ratus, the cost of boring is from seventy-five cents to one dollar per 
foot for operating expenses. The workmen serve in gangs—two for 
each twenty-four hours—and the wages are one dollar and fifty cents 
per day. The drill first strikes through thirty feet of heavy clay ; 
then fifteen feet of slate or Marcellus shale ; then one hunded and fifty 
feet of corniferous limestone ; then fifty feet of hydraulic limestone ; 
then about twelve hundred feet of saline shales, at the bottom of 
which is a stratum of salt averaging eighty feet in thickness. Still 
below this are the Niagara limestone and other members of the Niag- 
ara group. 

The stratum of salt having been once pierced, a saturated solution 
of the saline matter frequently rises in the boring to within eighty 
feet of the surface. This, however, can not always be depended upon 
—and here center the increased difficulty and expense. When a few 
dozen feet have noe drilled, a six or an eight inch iron pipe is insert- 
ed as a “casing.” Inside of this a two-inch pipe—also of iron—is 
placed. The “casing-head” has two openings—one for the entrance 
of pure water from a neighboring spring into the larger pipe, at the 
lower end of which it becomes saturated with saline matter ; the other 
at the end of the smaller pipe, to allow the expulsion of the brine. Of 


536 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY. 


course, the wells become foul or leaky at times, and then resort is had 
to torpedoes of nitro-glycerine, which are sent down to the bottom of 
the “casing,” and after them is sent an iron weight which secures 
the explosion. The rusting of the “casing” is the great enemy of 
the salt-worker ; and, when his engine can not lift the mass of rusted 
iron, a “knife” cuts the rusted metal, and the engine tears it away 
piecemeal. But the salt-wells are exempt from any danger of taking 
fire ; and it is never necessary, as in the case of oil-wells, to shoot off 
the “ casing-head ” with a cannon-ball. 

After the brine has once reached the surface it is forced into large 
reservoirs, whence it is drawn off through “string” after “string” of 
“covers,” until solar evaporation has left the coarser grades of salt. 
The “covers” or vats are usually sixteen by eighteen feet, and the 
product of each one per year is estimated at one hundred and fifty 
bushels ; while the product at Syracuse is only about half that quan- 
tity. It is also claimed that the slope of the valley at Warsaw is 
peculiarly adapted to rapid evaporation by the sun. When the finer 
grades of salt are wanted, the brine is led from the reservoirs to an 
evaporating-pan, where a gentle heat is applied. Similar treatment 
in another pan completes the process, and the residuum of salt is raked 
upon a shelf at the side of the evaporator. After a slight draining it 
is taken to the bins, where a more thorough draining is allowed for a 
space of two or three weeks. The heat is applied to the evaporating- 
pans through steam-pipes, in the same manner that has betn found 
most economical both at Saginaw and Syracuse. At Saginaw the fuel 
costs next to nothing, as it is the refuse of the lumber-mills ; and the 
exhaust steam of the mills is also used for the pipes of the evaporat- 
ing-pans. At Syracuse and at Warsaw the expense for fuel is greater, 
Warsaw using anthracite coal-dust, or “culm,” at an expense of one 
dollar and sixty-five cents per ton. Whence, then, does Warsaw derive 
its hope for successful competition against Syracuse and Saginaw ? 
The ever-ready answer is, that the strength of brine at Syracuse is 
sixty-six to one hundred at Warsaw—a difference that makes the cost 
of fuel twenty cents per barrel for Syracuse as against eight cents 
for Warsaw. In regard to the Saginaw brine, also, it is claimed that 
its residuum after evaporation is ninety-seven per cent of pure salt ; 
while that of the Warsaw brine is one hundred—a difference which, 
if sustained, would amply cover the increased cost of fuel at Warsaw. 
The salt-men of Warsaw, too, have the greatest confidence that their 
borings for natural gas will result in giving them a fuel even cheaper 
than culm. The Warsaw men also declare that their own enterprises 
are on private land ; and that they, therefore, have an advantage of 
the salt on the Syracuse reservations, every bushel of which must pay 
half a cent per bushel to the State. And they do not fail to call atten- 
tion to the fact that the duty was one cent per bushel before the bor- 
ings at Warsaw had proved a success. In short, they see no reason 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 537 


why Warsaw should not furnish a large share of the six million bar- 
rels of home-made salt that. are required every year, even if Syracuse 
gives a million and a half and Saginaw three and a quarter millions 
toward the product. 


6b» 
i .. 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 
By THOMAS FOSTER. 
CARE OF OTHERS AS A DUTY. 


ENTER now on a portion of my subject where I shall seem less 

at issue with those who repeat with their lips, and fancy they 
hold in their hearts (though they never think of following in their 
lives), certain rules of conduct in which due care of self is treated as 
objectionable and evil is spoken of as not to be resisted but encour- 
aged. I shall still be at issue with those who assert, apparently with- 
out thinking—certainly without alleging any reasons—that conduct 
and duty are not matters for scientific discussion at all, that they have 
no scientific aspect, and that such considerations as the progress and 
improvement of life, the increase of the fullness and happiness of life, 
and so forth, have no bearing whatever, and should have none, on our 
opinion as to what.is right or wrong. But we may very well afford 
to disregard objections having so little relation to actual facts. Every 
one really guides his conduct in large part by such considerations as 
many thus allege to have no proper bearing on conduct ; nor can any 
one draw a line beyond which such considerations must not operate : 
when any one has tried to do so, and perhaps imagines he has suc- 
ceeded, then I shall simply meet his objection with the remark that 
he need consider what I have said and what I may hereafter say as 
only applying to such parts of conduct as he has admitted to be within 
the range of scientific discussion. 

Let us take, now, the doctrine that while due care of self comes to 
each man, and indeed to every creature having life, as essentially first, 
yet due care of others—though second to due care of self—is as abso- 
lutely essential. The two are interdependent—and that to such de- 
gree that neither can exist without the other. The great difference 
in the treatment which science has to extend to the two forms of duty 
—the egoistic and the alfruistic—resides in this, that whereas in in- 
sisting on egoistic duties science is really insisting on what every 
normally-constituted man is already apt to attend to, in insisting on 
altruistic duties science is insisting on duties wofully neglected, despite 
the fervor with which they are verbally enjoined. Many reject ego- 
istic duties in words, who look so carefully after their own interests 
in action that those who inculcate due care of self as a duty are 
ashamed to have to admit such utter selfishness as among the results 


538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. 


(the unwholesome fruits, as it were) of the process of development 
which conduct, like all things else, has undergone, is undergoing, and 
will ever continue to undergo. The truth is, that the careful study of 
what may be rightly sought and claimed for self is no unworthy prep- 
aration for due thought and care of others.* 

Let us briefly trace the development of altruism. 

In many of the lower forms of animal life, the acts which tend to 
race-maintenance are altruistic. The parent is sacrificed wholly or 
partially in the production of progeny. Nor even in the higher forms 
of life does this form of sacrifice disappear, though the very beginning 
of new existences may involve egoistic rather than altruistic relations. 
Unconsciously at first, but consciously afterward, and later still by 
definite actions to that end directed, the mother of each new member 
of even the human race divine sacrifices herself for her offspring. 
We may be said to imbibe altruism with our mothers’ milk. Every 
act by which in babyhood our life was fostered was a practical exem- 
plification of the doctrine that care of others is essential to the mainte- 
nance and progress of the race. To altruism each one of us owes life 
itself, and the human race owes its existence as certainly to altruism, 
though such altruism was secondary to egoism in its influence. 

And note here, in passing, how development of conduct is related 
to this early altruistic care of the individual life. As certainly as a 
want of due care of self leads to the diminution of altruism, by causing 
those who are not duly egoistic to disappear from the scene of life 
and leave no successors or few, so does want of due care of others, in 
the nourishment and rearing of offspring, lead inevitably to the dimi- 
nution and eventual disappearance of types not sufficiently altruistic. 
The careless, unloving mother is unconsciously doing her part in elimi- 
nating selfishness from the world (the process, however slow, is a sure 
one), for the child she neglects shares her nature, and must thrive less 
than a child of happier nature nursed and cared for by a more loving 
mother. In whatever degree individual instances may seem to tell 
against this process of evolution, in the average of many cases and 
through many generations the law must certainly tell. 

Nor is this law limited to the influence of the parent who has most 
to do with the earlier years of life. Throughout childhood and in 
greater or less degree to the hour and even beyond the hour when 
each man and each woman begins to take part in the duties of life, 
and in most cases in the actual struggle for life, development depends 
on cares which will be well bestowed by unselfish parents, and so tend 
to increase the amount and fullness of unselfish life, while the selfish 
will neglect them, and so unconsciously help to eliminate (in the long 
run) the more selfish natures. It must be so if there is any truth in 


* Even the doctrine so many preach but so few practice, “Care for others as for 
self,” would be somewhat unsatisfactory if our care of self was insufficient ; it ought, 
then, to run, “ Neglect the rights of others as you are careless of your own.” 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 539 


the doctrine of heredity, and the doctrine is not only true but is uni- 
versally recognized : it is searcely more clearly and certainly recog- 
nized now than it was by those who in old times made the pregnant 
proverb, full of old-world wisdom and experience, “The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Fathers 
and mothers who are selfish by nature rear with less care offspring 
who as certainly inherit their:nature as the young of beasts of prey 
inherit the carnivorous tastes of those to whom they owe their lives. 
Hence, fortunately for the race—seeing how many egoistic tendencies 
are apt to be fostered in the struggle for life—a constant tendency to 
the elimination of the more selfish natures. 

To this may be added the consideration that the ill-reared and 
unduly egoistic are less likely than those of more generous and altru- 
istic nature to be found pleasing by those of the opposite sex, less 
likely therefore to marry, so that (speaking always of the average not 
of individual cases) there is yet another factor opposing the increase 
in number of the unduly egoistic. 

Thus do we recognize on the one hand that within families a due 
degree of altruism is essential to the development of life and life’s 
fullness, while on the other hand undue egoism tends directly in more 
ways than one to diminish happiness. 

The best proof that such influence is exerted is found in the cir- 
cumstance that in every advancing community the young are cared 
for with constantly-increasing care. Among savage races offspring 
receive few altruistic attentions. They are not reared in the full sense 
of the word. Almost from the beginning of their lives they have to 
take part in the struggle for life. In civilized communities they are 
cared for during many years, and they are better, more thoroughly, and 
more wisely, cared for, the more such communities advance. All this 
indicates and enables us to measure the development of altruism, so 
far as the family is concerned. 

And that care of others in this case (i. e., within the family) is not 
only essential to the development of life and its fullness, but also to 
the happiness of self, will be clear if we consider the matter with the 
least attention. For the altruistic nature shown in the care of children 
is inherited by children and developed in them by such care. Hence, 
as Mr. Spencer well notes, there results such conduct on the part of 
children as “ makes parenthood a blessing.” Of the parent of children 
inheriting such natures and so reared, it may be said that, even in our 
days (to which the saying of the Hebrew Psalmist was not, I suppose, 
intended originally to apply), the man is blessed that hath his quiver 
full of them.* On the contrary, where the parents and therefore 
probably the children are of selfish nature, and the example set the 
children is unduly egoistic, parenthood is no blessing, and may well 


* So only that it be not so full as to give the little arrows but a narrow space to turn 
in; for so can not the young idea be daily taught to shoot. 


540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


become a source of misery. What happens in this case? asks the — 
philosopher whose treatment of the scientific aspect of duty we are 
following. “ First the domestic irritations must be relatively great ; 
for the actions of selfish children to one another and to their parents 
cause daily aggressions and squabbles. Second, when adult, such 
children are more likely than others to dissatisfy employers, alienate 
friends, and compromise the family by misbehavior, or even by crime. 
Third, beyond the sorrows thus brought on them, the parents of such 
children have eventually to bear the sorrows of neglected old age. 
The cruelty shown in extreme degrees by savages who leave the de- 
crepit to starve is shown in a measure by all unsympathetic sons and 
daughters to their unsympathetic fathers and mothers ; and these, in 
their latter days, suffer from transmitted callousness in proportion as 
they have been callous in the treatment of those around. Browning’s 
versified story ‘ Halbert and Hob’ typifies this truth.” 

We turn next from altruism in the family to altruism as an essen- 
tial part of social conduct. 

The relations within a family present on a small scale a picture of 
the relations among the members of a race or nation, as these in turn 
present a miniature of the relations between the different races and 
nations which form the human family. As men rise in the scale of 
being, they pass from the sense of duty within the family to the sense 
of duty between man and man throughout society, and thence— 
though as yet this development is very limited—to the sense of right 
between different races and nations. We have seen that undue care 
of self is self-injurious and eventually must be self-destructive in the 
family. There is a corresponding law for undue care of self in social 
relations, as there is (however persistently at present the vast major- 
ity of men overlook or fail to see the fact) for undue regard of self 
among the nations. We may mistakenly regard undue care of self in 
the body social as cleverness, aptitude for business, and so on ; and we 
may mistakenly regard national selfishness as patriotism : but the pro- 
cess of evolution is as certainly working toward the elimination of one 
as of the other form of undue egoism. 

The main condition of social welfare and of social progress is 
that the union which society implies shall work for the benefit of 
those associated. If the balance of effects resulting from association 
be evil, the body social must inevitably dissolve in the long run. 

Now, by laws of greater or less severity the members of a race or 
nation may be compelled to recognize each others’ claims. Or such 
recognition may be assured by the fear of retaliation if the claims of 
others are neglected. In such cases, however, the gain to each, or the 
egoistic advantage of association, is small. Enforced recognition of 
altruistic rights is in itself disagreeable. The more disagreeable it is 
the oftener will cases arise where the laws haye to be called into oper- 
ation (and their operation is by our supposition painful), or where 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. $41 - 


retaliatory action is aroused, with waste of energy and disagreeable 
effects on either side. A society so restrained is held together by but 
weak bands, and is ill fitted to support itself against external enemies. 
- Internal co-operation for the benefit of the community can not be 
active under such circumstances. The products of labor are insecure. 
Moreover, whatever has to be done in the way of self-protection or of 
the safeguarding of property is so much withdrawn from the advance- 
ment of the general interests of the body social. 

We have only to consider the condition of any European country, 
our own included, in the good old times which so many ignorant per- - 
sons regret as a sort of golden age, to see how unsatisfactory must be 
the state of anation in which only a stern code of laws, or the dread of 
retaliation, protects each against the undue egoism of his fellows. In- 
ternal wrong-doing and the necessity for constant struggle to resist such 
wrong-doing made each nation unstable. Our good old England was 
invaded and conquered over and over again in consequence of insta- 
bility so produced. From long before the invasions by Saxon hordes 
under pirate chieftains to long after the invasion by Normans under 
the bastard descendant of the pirate chief Rollo, England was made 
wretched and miserable by constant contests, having their origin inva- 
riably in that undue egoism which we now call rapine and plunder. 
None—not even the most powerful—were secure. The castles we 
find so picturesque and romantic, the battles which seem glorious, the 
chivalry in which we see so much splendor, all tell us of a state of 
barbarism, of abject misery for the majority, of magnificent dis- 
comfort for the powerful. In the unsafety of those days, however, 
resided the certainty that the undue egoism of “the good old times” 
would by a natural process of evolution be eliminated. It is not yet 
fully eliminated ; probably centuries will elapse before it is even in 
great part got rid of ; but it is manifestly much reduced. We still 
have laws to protect us against wrong-doing, but the worst wrong- 
doers—those who of yore were the principal component parts of the 
body politic—no longer exist in the same way as of old. A much 
larger proportion of the social body recognize regard for others as a 
duty ; no inconsiderable proportion recognize it as a pleasure ; and, 
what is of more importance still, men recognize the advantage of en- 
couraging these changed tendencies, ~ 

These changes have come on so gradually that few consider how 
important they really are. It is not too much to say that a large pro- 
portion of the Englishmen of our day would find life not worth living 
if the old state of things were restored ; if, for instance, life and prop- 
erty and reputation became as insecure now as in the days of the 
Plantagenets, the Tudors, or even the Stuarts. 

And here it may be noticed that those who neglect the considera- 
tion that they form part of the social body and refrain from the tak- 
ing due part in maintaining a healthy social state suffer from the 


542 THH POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


defective arrangements which they permit to remain uncorrected. We 
see this in very marked degree in America, though it can be recog- 
nized clearly—far too clearly—in our own country. There the best 
men keep out of politics for a reason which rightly understood should 
make all the best men take most anxious interest in politics. Be- 
cause in America offices are too often filled by mere adventurers, be- 
cause bribery and corruption are rife, and because fraudulent conduct 
is common among politicians, therefore should it be held the duty of 
every right-minded American to do his best to enforce the wholesome 
changes so obviously required—as they might be enforced if so many 
of the best Americans were duly altruistic. But asa matter of fact the 
very circumstance which should arouse all the best in America to vig- 
orous action is made the chief reason for withdrawing from public 
duties. 

In our own country the same undue egoism shows itself in another 
and a scarcely less mischievous form. The individual members of the 
community find relief in the thought that social duties may be handed 
over to government. It seems easier to talk laws into existence for 
getting things done than to do them. The laws are easily passed, 
but the doing of what is necessary passes in a great number of cases 
into the hands of men not nearly so much interested in the doing of it 
as those who passed the laws appointing them to the work—nay, often 
by the very nature of the laws so passed, interested rather in delaying 
than in pushing on the work. 

As Mr. Spencer well puts it, the man who thus shirks the duties 
which he owes to the community of which he forms part, who plumes 
himself on his wisdom in minding his own business, “is blind to the 
fact that his own business is made possible only by maintenance of a 
healthy social state, and that he loses all round by defective govern- 
mental arrangements. When there are many like minded with him- 
self—when, as a consequence, offices come to be filled by political 
adventurers, and opinion is swayed by demagogues—when bribery 
vitiates the administration of the law and makes fraudulent state 
transactions habitual; heavy penalties fall on the community at large, 
and among others on those who have thus done everything for self 
and nothing for society. Their investments are insecure ; recovery 
of their debts is difficult ; and even their lives are less safe than they 
would otherwise have been. So that on such altruistic actions as are 
implied, firstly in being just, secondly in seeing justice done between 
others, and thirdly in upholding and improving the agencies by which 
justice is administered, depend, in large measure, the egoistic satisfac- 
tions of each.” 

Apart from dangers directly affecting life and property, those re- 
sulting from undue egoism in business relations show the necessity of 
just altruism for the welfare and happiness of the social body, Not 
only is it well for each to recognize the rights of others, but each is 


THE MYSTIC PROPERTIES OF NUMBERS. 543 


interested in securing due recognition of altruistic rights by his fel- 
lows. ‘The evils resulting from business frauds affect the welfare of 
the community. Lo quote the illustrative cases cited by Mr. Spencer, 
“The larger the number of a shopkeeper’s bills left unpaid by some 
customers, the higher must be the prices which other customers pay ; 
the more manufacturers lose by defective raw materials or by careless- 
ness of workmen, the more must they charge for their fabrics to buy- 
ers. The less trustworthy people are, the higher rises the rate of in- 
terest, the larger becomes the amount of capital hoarded, the greater 
are the impediments to industry ; the further traders and people in 
general go beyond their means, and hypothecate the property of 
others in speculation, the more: serious are those commercial panics 
which bring disasters on multitudes and injuriously affect all.”— 
Knowledge. 


THE MYSTIC PROPERTIES OF NUMBERS. 
By ETIENNE DE LA ROCHE (1538). 


NE of the earliest French mathematical books is the arithmetic 
of Etienne de la Roche, in which, the title-page states, are given 
tables of different accounts, with their canons, calculated by Gilles 
Huguetan, native of Lyons: “in which may easily be found the ac- 
counts all made, as well of purchases as of sales, of all kinds of mer- 
chandise. And, principally, of goods which are sold or bought by 
measure, as by the ell, by the cane, by the toise, by the palm, by the 
foot, and the like. By weight, as by the pound, by the quintal, by the 
thousand-weight, by the load, by the half-pound and the ounce, by the 
piece, by the number, by the dozen, by the gross, by the hundred, and 
by the thousand. With two tables of use to booksellers, in selling and 
buying paper, together with a table of expense, showing, at so mucha 
day, how much one spends by the year and the month, and at so much 
a month how much it comes to by the year and the day, and at so 
much a year how much one spends in a month and how much it comes 
to for each day. 

“Further, tables of the fineness of gold and silver, showing, ac- 
cording as the coin contains of alloy or fine metal, how much it is 
worth in the weight of fine gold or of fine silver. 

“Sold at Lyons, at the sign of the Sphere, by Gilles and Jaques 
Huguetan Brothers, 1538.” 

We give the first chapter of this curious work, which treats of the 
first twelve numbers, their properties and perfections. Our modern 
works, while they are less unsophisticated, are certainly far less amus- 
ing in expounding the beginnings of arithmetic : 


“Number, according to Euclid, at the beginning of the seventh 


544, THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


book : Est multitudo ex unitatibus composita (is multitude composed 
of units). And, again, in the third part of his first book he says: 
Seriem numero et in infinitum posse procedere ut quocumque nu- 
mero dato dari potest major unitatem addendo. (A seriesin number 
may go on to infinity, so that any given number may be made larger 
by adding unity.) And in this way number is an aggregation or col- 
lection of one or many units. And to proceed in infinitum by the ad- 
dition of one. From which it appears that unity is not number ; but, 
on the contrary, is the root and foundation of numbers. Even as 
Boéthius says in his arithmetic. Nevertheless, one is higher and more 
perfect than all the numbers that are. For in it are united potentially 
the property and perfection of all numbers. And without it nothing 
can have being. And Euclid, at the beginning of the seventh book, 
says: Unitas est qua una quacumque res una dicitur (Unity is that 
by which any one thing is called one). And the logicians say that one 
is one of the six transcendent principles. For it comprehends all things 
that have being. Then, again, it has all the property of number. For 
it is perfect, like six, it is lineal, square, cube, solid, square root, cube 
root, root of root. And because it is of so great dignity and excel- 


lence, the Creator has chosen it for his essence ; for he is one only 


God, creator of all the world. A good law, to wit: the Christian law, 
divided into ten commandments. And a good faith : to wit, the Catho- 
lic faith, divided into twelve articles. And so many other dignities 
and perfections. 

“Two is a number of so great pre-eminence and utility that God 
has kept it in mind in many of his works. For first, he created light 
and darkness. Then he created two great lights, to wit, the sun and 
the moon. The sun, to light the day; and the moon, to light the night. 
Then he created all beasts in two sexes, to wit, masculine and femi- 
nine ; and made for them several double members, to wit, two eyes, 
two ears, two nostrils, two arms, two hands, two legs, two feet and 
many others of utility to the human body. And then, as many pas- 
sions as the human body suffers, such as joy and sadness, hope and 
fear, hunger and thirst, heat and cold, drinking and eating, sleeping 
and waking, health and sickness, living and dying, and all relative 
qualities are also constituted in duplicity, as creator and creature, 
parent and son, creating and created, producing and produced, ab- 
stract and concrete, ete. And also all opposites, as kindness and mal- 
ice, virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, wisdom and foolishness, 
truth and falsehood, etc. And we think that after unity more things 
are found constituted by two than by any superior number. 

“Three is the most worthy and most perfect, after one, that is 
among the numbers. Thus, as says almost every one’s maxim, Omne 
trinum perfectum (Every trine is perfect), And the perfection does 
not proceed by the composition of it, as it does of six. But by the 
great and high mysteries that are found in this number. And first, it 


es a ae 


THE MYSTIC PROPERTIES OF NUMBERS. Sag. 


has pleased God, the Creator, to be trine in persons. To wit, Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost. It has pleased him to create three hierarchies ; 
and in each hierarchy three orders of angels. There are three things 
in Jesus Christ, to wit: deity, the soul, and humanity. The priest 
makes three parts of the precious body of Jesus Christ in the mass, 
Three holy orders sing the mass, to wit: the priest, the deacon, and 
the sub-deacon. Three times are sung the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus; 
and the Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata in the mass. By three nails was 
fastened the Blessed Redeemer Jesus Christ on the cross. There are 
three degrees of penitence, to wit: contrition, confession, and satis- 
faction. There are three parts of satisfaction, to wit: fasting, alms, 
and prayer. There are three divine virtues, to wit: faith, hope, and 
charity. There are three enemies of the soul, to wit: the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. Man sins in three ways, to wit: with heart, with 
word, and with deed. Man may offend three things, to wit: God, 
himself, and his neighbor. God has disposed all things by number, by 
weight, and by measure. Tria erant in archa ; s.c.g. Virga; manna 
et lex Mosayca (there were three things in the ark: the rod, the 
manna, and the Mosaic law). Three places are deputed for man after 
his death, to wit: paradise, purgatory, and hell. Three vows do the 
minor friars vow when they make profession, to wit: poverty, obedi- 
ence, and chastity. There are three natural principles, to wit: form, 
matter, and privation; or, potentia (power); objectum (object); et 
actus (and act). There are three souls, to wit : vegetative, sensitive, 
and rational. There are three powers in the rational soul, to wit: 
will, memory, and understanding. Bodies have three dimensions, to 
wit: length, breadth, and thickness. The world is divided into three 
parts, to wit: into Asia, Europe, and Africa. And thus appears the 
excellence and magnificence of this worthy number three. 

“Four is the first square number, and is of great esteem and neces- 
sity. And first, God, the Creator, has created four elements, to wit: 
fire, air, water, and earth. Whence proceed four qualities, to wit: 
warmth, frigidity, dryness, and moisture. From which arise four 
humors, to wit: blood, bile, phlegm, and melancholy ; by which are 
caused four complexions, to wit: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and 
melancholic. There are four seasons in the year, to wit: spring, sum- 
mer, autumn, and winter. And four quarters in the sky and the world, 
to wit: eastern, western, northern, and southern. And to each quar- 
ter one principal wind, to wit: the morning or east-wind, the traverse 
or west-wind, the north-wind or transmontane, and the sea or south- 
wind. And, according to the philosophers, there are four causes in all 
things, to wit: the efficient, formal, material, and final causes. There 
are four cardinal virtues, to wit: prudence, temperance, strength, and 
justice. The glorified body in paradise has four endowments, to wit : 
brightness, subtilty, agility, and impassibility. There are four evan- 
gelists to certify the faith of Jesus Christ. And four principal doctors 

VOL. xxv.—35 


546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of the Church to corroborate the faith, to wit : St. Augustine, Gregory, 
Hieronymus, and St. Ambrose. 

“Five is a number of great convenience and utility; for, first, the 
Creator created five simple bodies, to wit: the sky, fire, air, water, and 
earth. And never have more of regular bodies that have equal bases 
been found. Then, for our use, the Creator has given us five natural 
senses, to wit: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. And five fin- 
gers on the hand, and five toes on the foot. And to redeem us has 
suffered five wounds on the cross, and in all the surface of the earth 
there are five zones, according to Sacrobosco in his sphere. 

“Six is the first and most worthy of the perfect numbers. Because 
in its composition three aliquot parts put together make their whole : 
as 8, 2, and 1, which are its 4, its 4, and its 4. Which put together 
amount to 6, which is their whole. There is another perfection, be- 
cause it is a circular number. For, in making a circle with a compass, 
the circumference of the circle contains just six times the span of the 
compass ; as when one should put one of the feet of the said compass 
on the circumference of the said circle, and should turn the said com- 
pass to six times on the said circumference. At the sixth time the 
said foot of the compass would return to its first point. And because 
it returns always in itself. Et semperidem ipse est (and it is always 
the same). There is also another perfection, because there are six 
transcendent principles, to wit: one, good, true, thing, something, 
and being. And for these great perfections and dignities, the Cre- 
ator regards it in his works, for he created everything in six days. 
Therefore ought it to be named the very perfect among the perfect 
numbers. So has St. Augustine said in the thirtieth chapter of the 
second book ‘De Civitate Dei.’ 

“Seven is a number of great prerogative and singularity, as St. 
Augustine says in the thirty-first chapter of the aforesaid book. Be- 
cause of its composition which is triple, for first it is composed of 1 
and of 6, which are of so great perfection as is said above. Or of 3 
and 4, which are of so great dignity and estimation. Or of 2 and 5, 
which are of so great utility and commodity. And because in its com- 
position it contains so many numbers worthy, perfect, and of great 
excellence. God, the Creator, regards it in his most admirable works. 
For he has created seven planets, seven metals, seven colors, and 
seven tastes. And when he had created everything in six days, he 
rested on the seventh, which is a thing of great mystery. There are, 
therefore, seven days in the week. There are seven principal virtues, 
to. wit: three divine, and four cardinal. There are seven other virtues 
against the seven mortal sins. There are seven works of bodily mercy 
and seven works of spiritual mercy. There are seven sacraments. 
There are seven orders in the holy church. There are seven ages of 
man. There are seven windows through which the ordinary senses 
are exercised: the two eyes, the two ears, the two nostrils, and the 


SKETCH OF PROFESSOR FELIPE POEY. 547° 


mouth. There are seven days between the setting in of a disease and 
the critical day. There are seven climates in the habitable earth. 

“ Right is the first cube number, and there are also eight beatitudes. 

“Nine is the second square number, and there are also nine orders 
of angels and the kyrie eleison is sung nine times in the mass. 

“Ten, according to some, is a perfect number, not in its composi- 
tion like six, but because it contains inclosed in itself all the simple 
numbers and all the properties, as of even and odd, perfect and im- 
perfect, and it is the beginning of all numbers composed of tens, and 
also for the foundation of our law. God gave to Moses the ten com- 
mandments of the law, and ordered men to give to God the tithe, 
which is one tenth of his gain or his labor. 

* Eleven is the first compound odd number. 

“Twelve is a number of great pre-eminence and utility. And, 
although it is an excessively imperfect number, it is nevertheless of 
great utility. For it can, first, be divided into more parts than any 
number below it. For it can be evenly divided by 6, which is its $; 
by 4, which is its 4; by 3, which is its }; and by 2, which is its 4. 
And because the blessed Redeemer Jesus Christ wished to observe 
the said number in choosing twelve apostles to found and form the 
Holy Catholic Faith. Who for the foundation of the same composed 
the twelve articles of the faith. And in imitation of them the lords 
of the cathedral churches constitute twelve perpetuals to listen con- 
tinually to the service of God the Creator; twelve choralists to sing 
the hymns of God and the saints. Likewise, on account of the con- 
venience of this number, the good governors of cities commonly choose 
twelve counselors to attend to the regulation of the public good. So 
the astrological philosophers of the ancient times, experimenting and 
considering the celestial natures and influences, divided the whole sky 
into twelve equal parts which were called the twelve signs. And they 
attributed to each a peculiar influence by subtile commixtion, and 
established twelve months in the year for greater convenience. And 
this is enough of the property of the numbers in particular.— Zrans- 
lated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. 


eile dias 
—— 


SKETCH OF PROFESSOR FELIPE POEY. 
By Prorgssor DAVID S. JORDAN. 


Xs H, but you must see Don Felipe—he knows all about fishes!” is 

‘the first advice which the naturalist receives when he begins 
to make collections of fishes in the markets of Havana, The writer 
once had occasion to make such a collection, and he found soon that, 
among fishermen and fish-mongers, the phrase “amigo de Don Felipe” 
was ever a passport to honest dealing and to a real desire to aid him in 


548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


his work. For every fisherman in Havana knows “Don Felipe,” and 
looks upon him as a personal friend. Each one regards the fame which 
Don Felipe’s studies of the fishes is vaguely understood to have brought 
him in that little-known world outside of Havana as in some sort 
reflected on himself. The writer was told, by a dealer in the Pesca- 
deria Grande, that for twenty years Don Felipe Poey was there in the 
markets every day, when at noon the fishes came in from the boats, 
and that he knew more about the fishes of Cuba than even the fishermen 
themselves. And, now that Don Felipe no longer visits the markets, 
he is not forgotten there, and many a rare specimen still finds its way 
from the Pescaderia to Don Felipe’s study in the Calle San Nicolas, 

Freire Pory y Auoy was born in Havana, May 26,1799. His father 
was French, his mother Spanish, but Poey early renounced his French 
citizenship for that of Cuba. His education was received in Havana, 
and after studying law he became, in 1823, an advocate in that city. 
But his tastes lay in the direction of natural history, and for this he 
gradually abandoned his practice asa lawyer. Very early he had made 
discoveries of mollusks, insects, and especially of fishes, which were 
new to science. In 1826 he sailed for Paris, taking with him eighty- 
five drawings of Cuban fishes and a collection of thirty-five species, 
preserved in a barrel of brandy. These drawings and specimens he 
placed at the service of Cuvier and Valenciennes, who were then 
beginning the publication of their work on the “ Natural History of 
the Fishes.” The notes and drawings of Poey proved of much service 
to the great ichthyologists. A few new species were based on them, 
and Poey had the satisfaction of finding his own name and observa- 
tions cited by Cuvier and Valenciennes even more frequently than 
those of his famous predecessor, Don Antonio Parra,* who had pub- 
lished, in 1787, the first account of the “Fishes of Cuba.” A set of 
duplicates of these notes and drawings is still retained by Professor 
Poey. While in Paris, Poey was one of the original members who 
founded the Entomological Society of France. 

On returning to Havana in 1833, Poey gave himself still more fully 
to the study of natural history, and greater practice gave to his draw- 
ings and notes more exactness and value. With the appearance of the 
successive volumes of the “ Histoire Naturelle des Poissons,” he at- 
tempted to identify the fishes of his market, as well as to study their 
osteology and general anatomy. Animals other than fishes he also 
tried to study, but in most groups he found the literature in so scat- 
tered and unsatisfactory a condition that he rarely ventured to publish 
the results of his observations. Among the fishes, however, thanks to 
the general work of Cuvier and Valenciennes, and later to that of Dr. 
Giinther, he felt himself on comparatively firm ground, and ventured 
to name as new those which he could not identify. Among the land- 


* “YY tuve el honor de ser citado por 61 (Cuvier) y por su colaborador Valenciennes, 
mis frecuentemente que D. Antonio Parra.” —Poey. 


SKETCH OF PROFESSOR FELIPE POEY. — 549- 


snails, too, Poey and his associate, Dr. Gundlach, were able to act 
with certainty, as all the species then known were included in the 
“ Monographium Heliceorum Viventium” of Dr. Ludwig Pfeiffer. 
In the year 1842 Poey was appointed to the professorship of Com- 
parative Anatomy and Zodlogy in the Royal University of Havana, 
which chair he still holds, after forty-two years. 
3 The University of Havana occupies an ancient monastery building 
in the heart of the city. Like most similar edifices in Cuba and Spain, 
it is a low building around a hollow paved court, and its whitewashed, 
time-stained walls have an air of great antiquity. The university has 
now some twelve hundred students, the great majority of whom are in 
those departments which lead toward wealth, or social or political pre- 
ferment, as law, medicine, and pharmacy. Comparatively few pur- 
sue literary or philosophical studies, and still fewer are interested in the 
biological sciences. In the department of botany there are now but 
two students, and the number in zodlogy is probably not much greater. 

Although Professor Poey is evidently held in very high respect in 
the university, in which he has long been dean of the faculty of science, 
I can not imagine that he ever received much help or sympathy in his 
scientific work from that quarter, or indeed from any other in Cuba. 
His friends and countrymen are doubtless glad to be of assistance to 
so amiable a gentleman as the Sefior Don Felipe, but for the claims of 
science the people of Cuba, as a class, care very little. 

The university library contains but little which could be of help in 
Professor Poey’s zoélogical studies. He has therefore been compelled 
to gather a private library of ichthyology. This library has with 
time become very rich and valuable, many of his co-workers in the 
study of fishes, notably Dr. Bleeher, having presented him with com- 
plete series of their published works. 

The museum of the university occupies two little rooms, the one 
devoted chiefly to Cuban minerals, the other containing mostly mam- 
mals, birds, and fishes mounted by Poey himself in the earlier days of 
his professorship. The number of these is not great, nor have many 
additions been made during the last twenty years. Of late the types 
of the new species described by Professor Poey have been, after being 
fully studied by him and represented in life-size drawings, mostly sent 
to other museums, notably to the United States National Museum, to 
the Museum of Comparative Zodlogy and to the Museum of Madrid. 
Duplicates have been rarely retained in Havana, the cost of keeping 
up a permanent collection being too great. As a result of this, Pro- 
fessor Poey’s work has sometimes suffered from lack of means of com- 
paring specimens taken at different times. There is no zodlogical 
laboratory in Cuba except the private study of Professor Poey, and 
here, for want of room and for other reasons, drawings have, to a great 
extent, taken the place of specimens. 

The publication of the observations of Professor Poey on the 


550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


animals of Cuba was begun in 1851, in a series of papers entitled 
“Memorias sobre la Historia Natural de la Isla de Cuba.” These 
papers were issued at intervals from 1851 to 1860, and together form 
two octavo volumes of about 450 pages each. The first volume con- 
tains chiefly descriptions of mollusks and insects. The second volume 
is devoted mainly to the fishes. 

As is natural in the exploration of a new field, these volumes are 
largely occupied with the description of new species. They give some 
evidence of the disadvantages arising from solitary work, without the 
aid of the association and criticism of others, and without the broader 
knowledge of the relations of groups which comes from the study of 
more than one fauna. On the other hand, Professor Poey enjoyed the 
great advantage of having an almost exhaustless supply of material, 
for there are few ports where fishes are brought in in such quantities, 
or in such profusion of variety, as in the markets of Havana. 

The “ Memorias” were at once recognized as the most important 
work on the fishes of Cuba, and, as was said long ago by Professor 
Cope, this work is a sine gua non in the study of the ichthyology of 
tropical America. 

The nomenclature and grouping of the species in the “ Conspectus 
Piscium Cubensium,” contained in the “ Memorias,” was in 1862 the 
subject of a critical paper by Dr. Theodore Gill.* This article, and sub- 
sequent ones by the same author, exerted much influence on Poey’s 
work. He was always ready to profit by the suggestions and advice 
of other writers, especially of those more favorably situated than he 
in regard to libraries and museums, and from Professor Gill’s papers 
he drew clearer views of the relations of forms, and of the connection 
of the Cuban fauna with that of other regions, On the other hand, 
he was led to adopt, against his own judgment in many instances, that 
minute subdivision of genera which has been a fashion in American 
ichthyology, and which has been in some quarters a reproach to 
American science. 

In 1868 the results of the revision of his classification were em- 
bodied in a second catalogue of the Cuban fishes, entitled “Synopsis 
Piscium Cubensium.” This forms the concluding chapter of a series 
of papers, entitled “Repertorio Fisico-natural de la Isla de Cuba,” 
which embody the results of a general scientific survey of the island. 
Of this survey Professor Poey was director. In 1875 the entire list 
of species was again revised, and the third and best catalogue of Cuban 
fishes was published under the title of “ Enumeratio Piscium Cuben- 
sium.” Besides these larger works, many shorter papers by Poey 
occur in the “Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences” of 
Philadelphia, the “ Annals of the New York Lyceum,” and the “ Anales 
de la Sociedad de Historia Natural de Madrid.” He is also the author 


* “ Remarks on the Genera and other Groups of Cuban Fishes,” “ Proceedings of the 
Academy of Natural Sciences,” Philadelphia, 1862, pp. 235, e¢ seg. 


SKETCH OF PROFESSOR FELIPE POEY. 551. 


of a “ Geography of Cuba,” and of a “Treatise on Mineralogy,” used 
in the Havana schools. A number of poems from bis pen have like- 
wise been published, but these I have not seen. 

The great work of Poey’s life is the still unpublished “ Ictiologia 
Cubana.” ‘This is to contain a detailed account of each of the fishes 
of Cuba. It is to be composed, according to a statement of Poey, pub- 
lished in a Havana paper, “of a thick volume of text, Spanish folio, and 
of an atlas of ten volumes larger folio (eighteen by thirteen inches). 
The plates are made with a light indication of the colors, which are de- 
scribed in the text. All are original, drawn from nature by the author. 
. . . The text contains the scientific name of each species, the com- 
mon name, the complete synonymy, a description of the colors, dis- 
tinctive peculiarities, relations of the varieties, comparisons, critical 
observations, and the history of the fish. It contains, moreover, the 
characters of classes, sub-classes, orders, families, genera, and species. 
The total number of plates in the Atlas is 1,040. These show 758 
species of Cuban fishes, represented by 1,300 individuals in all stages 
of growth. All except the sharks are drawn of life-size. 

“These 758 species, together with 24 mentioned at the end of the 
work, make up 782 species of Cuban fishes. Of these, 105 are doubt- 
ful, and therefore are left without specific names. I hold them in 
suspense till I can receive further data from the study of other speci- 
mens. ‘There are, therefore, 677 species well determined, of which 
more than half have been first made known by me. Not more than a 
dozen species in the list have not been examined by me. These are 
inserted on the authority of writers who claim to have received their 
specimens from Cuba, and who appear to be worthy of confidence. 

“The preparation of the text has cost me an immense amount of 
time and labor, by the preparatory studies which it has required. In 
the determination of the species it is rarely that a single one has not 
occupied me for an entire week. I have wished to make known the 
certain as certain, and the doubtful as doubtful, so that I shall declare 
nothing to be new unless it is so in reality.” 

The manuscripts of this great work are now in duplicate. One 
copy is retained by Professor Poey ; the other has been purchased by 
the Spanish Government for $5,000. It is expected and earnestly 
hoped by Professor Poey and his friends that the Government will 
soon order its publication, but, unfortunately, there seems to be no 
certainty of this. 

The manuscripts and drawings of the “ Ictiologia Cubana ” were 
placed on exhibition by the Spanish Government in the Exposition of 
Amsterdam in 1883. In testimonial of their worth, Professor Poey 
has received from King William III the decoration of the order of the 
“Lion Néerlandais.” Before this, as the most distinguished of Span- 
ish naturalists, he had received from the King of Spain the title of 
**Encomendador de la Orden de Isabella la Catélica.” 


552 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY. 


Among the manuscripts of Professor Poey, with the title of “Co- 
rona Poeyana,” is a list which he is sometimes fond of contemplating, 
of the species of animals which were first made known by him. This 
list is a long one, longer perhaps than that of any other zodlogist of 
our times who has confined his studies to a single fauna. 

It isa fashion in some quarters to decry the work of the describer 
of new fauna. All honest study has its equal place, and, till the pio- 
neer work of exact determination of species is performed, there is lit- 
tle opportunity for the embryologist or the anatomist. It is of little 
use to record the structure or the development of an animal while the 
animal itself remains unknown. 

There is no characteristic of Professor Poey’s work more striking 
than his entire lack of prejudice, or, in other words, his teachableness, 
A certain zodlogist was once described to me by Dr. Kirtland as “a 
little man who couldn’t be told anything.” His character was in this 
regard just the reverse of that of Professor Poey. Among all the emi- 
nent zodlogists of our time, I know of none so ready to learn, whatever 
the source from which information may come. He has no theories 
which he is not ready to set aside when a better suggestion appears. 
Unlike some other systematic writers, he exhibits no preference for his 
own names or subdivisions, but is as ready, if the evidence seems to 
require it, to smother one of his own species or genera as those of an- 
other. ; 

His work shows no sign of falling off in quality. The clearness of 
his judgment and the accuracy of his memory seem unimpaired. It 
is difficult in conversing with him to realize that he was born in the 
last century, and that in his earlier studies he was a cotemporary of 
Cuvier and Valenciennes, and of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Most men are 
older at fifty than Poey at eighty-five. 

Poey was married in 1825 to Maria de Jésus Aguirre. He has had 
six children. Two of his daughters still reside with him at Havana, 
and their skillful hands have been of great service to him in the prepa- 
ration of his drawings and manuscripts. 

Poey is rather above the medium height, well-formed, and in his 
younger days he was remarkably active and vigorous. Even yet, 
time rests lightly on his shoulders. His complexion is fair, and his 
hair and eyes are not dark. He has dittle of the appearance of a Span- 
iard or indeed of any especial nationality. As he himself has said, 
“Comme naturaliste, je ne suis pas espagnol: je suis cosmopolite.” 
He is of a happy temperament and has a peculiarly genial and cheery 
smile. Simple, direct, unaffected, but possessed of a quiet dignity, he 
is certainly one of the most delightful men I have ever met. Of all 
men I have known, he has best learned the art of growing old. 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


553. 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


SCIENCE AND THE TEMPERANCE 
REFORM. 

HE Legislature of the State of New 

York has passed a law providing 
for the instruction of “all pupils in all 
schools supported by public money, or 
under State control, in physiology and 
hygiene, with special reference to the 
effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants, 
and narcotics upon the human system.” 
Other States have passed similar enact- 
ments, so that there seems to be some- 
thing like a general movement appeal- 
ing to this new form of influence for the 
promotion of the cardinal objects of the 
temperance reform. That movement has 
relations with various sciences, not only 
with physiology, but also with sociology, 
and perhaps some reference to its his- 
tory will help us to judge of - prom- 
ise of the new measure. 

The bad effects that flow from the 
excessive use of spirituous liquors, and 
the evils of drunkenness, have been 
recognized and deplored in all times. 
While every literature has its poetry in 
praise of the cheering influence of wine, 
so it has its proverbs showing the evil 
consequences of devotion to the intox- 
icating cup. But the first organized 
movement to check the excessive use of 
intoxicating liquors belongs not only to 
modern but to very recent times. The 
temperance reform was inaugurated but 
a little over half a century ago. Nu- 
merous societies were formed, with 
wide affiliations, to act upon public 
opinion in the most efficient and persist- 
ent manner. There rapidly grew up 
a copious and varied temperance lit- 
erature, consisting of explanations of 
the injurious action of alcoholic liquors, 
of vivid delineations of the results of 
the inebriating habit, of statistics of 
the criminality and pauperism that flow 
from it, of its enormous cost to the 


community at large, of impassioned 
appeals in sermons and lectures, and of 
poetry and fiction all combined, for the 
promotion of the philanthropic objects 
of the temperance associations. 

The characteristic of the temperance 
movement at this early stage was the 
directness of its personal appeals to in- 
fluence voluntary action. Individuals 
were plied with facts and arguments, 
and on grounds of self-respect and so- 
cial obligation to abstain from the habit 
which had its root in the selfish appe- 
tites, and bore the fruits of suffering to 
the victim, calamity to the family, and 
grave detriment to society. To give 
the utmost support to voluntary action, 
the pledge was introduced, which of- 
fered the advantage of an explicit writ- 
ten committal, and a public avowal of 
the purpose of the individual to abstain 
from spirituous liquors. In short, the 
policy was to influence persons, by ev- 
ery consideration that could be urged, 
to the practice of restraint and temper- 
ance in the use of alcoholic beverages. 
The movement was pushed with fervor 
and zeal, and every expedient resorted 
to, to gain the result. The pledge in 
favor of the temperate use of spirituous 
liquors was changed to a pledge against 
all use of them, on the ground that mod- 
eration, by the laws of human appetite, 
rapidly passes to excess. 

Among the means of influence, Sci- 


| ence was, of course, called upon to give 


its evidence. Prize essays by distin- 
guished medical men on the physiologi- 
cal effects of alcohol were multiplied, 
and tracts stating the results were sown 
like autumn leaves through the com- 
munity. One of the most eminent of 
the reformers, Mr. E. C. Delavan, after 
laboring long, and devoting great weaith 
to the promotion of the reform without 
the full results which he had anticipat- 


554 


ed, acknowledged his discouragement 
to a sagacious friend, who suggested to 
him that there was asure way in which 
the cause might be made to succeed. 
‘‘Tt has been shown,” said he, ‘‘ that the 
use of alcohol is very injurious to the 
human stomach. Men care for their 
stomachs more than for anything else. 
Prove to them that alcoholic liquors 
impair and destroy the digestive organs, 
and your case is won and that work 
done.” Mr. Delavan, accordingly, had 
prepared a series of colossal lithograph 
plates, showing the progressive influ- 
ence of alcohol upon the coats of the 
stomach, from the first congestion that 
follows moderate indulgence in the 
stimulant, onward through the stages 
of inflammation and disorganization to 
the final ulcerated condition shown by 
the post-mortem of habitual drunkards. 
The enterprise was pushed with great 
vigor. Hundreds of thousands of dol- 
lars were spent in the manufacture of 
these stomach -charts, and they were 
hung up conspicuously in the halls of 
court-houses, on the walls of public in- 
stitutions, and in all places where they 
could be observed by everybody. That 
these illustrations did good service there 
can be no doubt, although able medical 
men denied their strict accuracy. One 
effect was to concentrate so much at- 
tention upon the stomach that all other 
parts of the human system were neg- 
lected, and this made necessary new 
scientific expositions, showing that the 
peculiar and most injurious effect of in- 
gested alcohol is upon the nervous sys- 
tem and the brain. 

But, while great good was undoubt- 
edly accomplished by the means adopt- 
ed, and, indeed, all the good that could 
be expected from them, the results were 
still unsatisfactory—that is, the evil of 
intemperance was not swept from the 
country as the sanguine reformers had 
anticipated. The movement was driven 
as a crusade having a definite end. At- 
tention was so concentrated upon the 
evils of intemperance that they came to 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


be gonsidered as almost the only evils 
with which mankind are afflicted. Fer- 
vor of feeling grew into heated and pas- 
sionate partisanship, with impatience of 
tardy results. There was but little rec- 
ognition of anything like natural laws 
in the case, and no admission of the 
great truth that radical changes in the 
conduct of human nature must proceed 
slowly and are limited by many condi- 
tions. There grew up a conviction that 
the temperance movement as thus pros- 
ecuted had proved a failure. Men had 
been instructed, persuaded, and de- 
nounced, until it was felt that these 
agencies had accomplished everything 
of which they were capable, and it was 
resolved to push on to more stringent 
measures. If men could not be induced 
to abstain voluntarily from the use of 
intoxicants, then they must be com- 
pelled to abstain. Government must 
be appealed to, to force the results 
which moral influence had failed to se- 
cure. If men would not stop drinking, 
they must be deprived of the means of 
drinking, and so it was determined to 
strike at the trade in alcoholic liquors, 
and to outlaw it by prohibitory legisla- 
tion. 

The temperance question was thus 
launched into politics, a change of great 
import, as it was the virtua] abandon- 
ment of the policy hitherto pursued. 
Moral influences were, of course, not 
openly repudiated, but it remains true 
that they no longer characterized the 
temperance movement. The faith in 
them had departed, and its place was 
taken by the new faith in the efficacy 
of political action. We called atten- 
tion last month to the overshadowing 
influence of the great superstition that 
political agencies are omnipotent for 
the accomplishment of social ends. 

In the face of notorious facts, and 
in the teeth of all experience, we cling 
to the notion that government can do 
everything; so that now it is widely be- 
lieved that a reformation of social hab- 
its, involving the strongest appetites, 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


which it has been impossible to bring 
about by the most vigorous, prolonged, 
and comprehensive moral movement of 
modern times, can still be brought about 
through the passage of enactments by 
political majorities. 

How far this change went may be 
further illustrated. In the first stage of 
the temperance movement the wrong 
to be righted was on the part of the 
individual who indulged in drinking- 
habits. The practice was denounced 
because held to be intrinsically immor- 
al, self-destructive, and vicious in all its 
influences. The turpitude and wicked- 
ness of the case consisted in the act of 
indulgence. But, with the change of 
tactics on the part of the reformers, 
the point of assault was shifted: the 
pressure was virtually taken off the 
party that committed the wrong act, 
and applied to the commercial transac- 
tion that preceded it. The liquor-trade 
was denounced as the real root of the 
evil of intemperance, and the men who 
sold alcoholic spirits were held to be the 
culpable offenders and the criminals who 
deserved to be dealt with by punish- 
ment like other criminals. Yet the sale 
of liquors, like the sale of anything else, 
is a compound transaction—a seller im- 
plies a buyer—and they are both volun- 
tary parties to the proceeding. If that 
proceeding is wrong, both are to be con- 
demned—certainly the one who makes 
the demand as much as he who supplies 
it; and, ifthe partnership transaction is 
criminal, it is difficult to see why both 
should not be punished alike. But, in 
the new aspect of the case, he who 
drinks is virtually relieved from con- 
demnation, while those who sell him 
the beverage become the objects of con- 
centrated reprobation, to be punished 
with the full severity of the law. This 
fundamental change in the policy of the 
temperance movement, involving as it 
does the virtual abandonment of those 
agencies which are most proper to in- 
fluence conduct, and which were clearly 
vindicated in their beneficent working, 


555 


can hardly be regarded as a step for- 
ward in the legitimate development of 
the temperance movement. 

It is in the light of such experiences 
that we are to consider the measure 
now brought forward for the further 
promotion of abstinence from intoxi- 
cating liquors. 

This measure is a partial reversion 
to the older method, and may be char- 
acterized as politico-educational, with 
special relation to the scientific aspect 
of the subject. It is proposed to give 
instruction in relation to the physio- 
logical effects of alcohol, and thus, as 
has been said, ‘‘ to play the school-house 
against the saloon.” It may be well 
to do this, but it will be wise not to 
expect too much fromit. Itis a very 
crude measure, and has been born of 
temperance zeal rather than any intelli- 
gent appreciation of the subject. 

In the first place, the action of al- 
cohol and the narcotics upon the human 
system opens one of the obscurest, and 
we may add, the most unsettled, of all 
questions. But little, in fact, is known 
of the modus operandi of these agents 
upon the nervous system, where they 
take such special and disastrous effect. 
School-teachers can not explain it— 
doctors can not explain it; no two will 
agree about it. The theories of the be- 
havior of alcohol in the human system 
have undergone change after change 
within a generation, and we are proba- 
bly but little nearer the final solution of 
the problem than when the first experi- 
ments were made upon cats and dogs 
to solve it. 

In the next place, the amount of 
physiology that is or that can be taught 
in common schools, and by all the teach- 
ers under State control, is grossly in- 
sufficient to make intelligible what is 
known of the physiological effects of 
alcohol. The crude smattering of phys- 
iology got in such schools under ordi- 
nary teaching is absolutely worthless 
as a preparation for understanding the 
subtile influence of narcotic agents upon 


556 


the nervous constituents and the nervy- 
ous mechanism. What is taught will 
not be science, which must explain 
things, only sham science; will not be 
real knowledge or anything understood, 
but only the words of a lesson. 

No doubt something will be gained 
by calling attention to the subject, but 
the question is, if the method proposed 
is the best that could be adopted. We 
doubt if the appeal to science through 


such teachers as we have, and such | 


books as most of those that are now 
appearing, to meet the new emergency, 
is the best way of securing the end de- 
sired. What is wanted is to make the 
deepest and most indelible impression 
upon the minds of youth in regard to 
the bad effects of indulgence in alcoholic 
beverages. But the attempt to expound 
the physiology of the subject is not 
the best way to accomplish this object. 
The evils of intemperance are evils 
which openly appear in conduct. The 
incontestable facts of the injurious in- 
fluence of drinking are direct, palpable, 
conspicuous, observed by everybody, 
and open to no question. Science can 
not make them more clear, or add viv- 
idness to the painful facts which are 
seen by all. Good may come, as we 
have said, but it is a question if more 
good would not come from the dog- 
matic statement of facts, that are free 
from doubt and obscurity, and that are 
based upon unquestionable and estab- 
lished experience. The subject in its 
scientific aspects is beyond the grasp of 
pupils in common schools, but maxims 
and rules can be stamped upon their 
minds in a way that will exert a salu- 
tary and permanent influence. And if 
it is desired to teach the young to think 
upon the subject, then let the victims of 
alcoholic indulgence be taken as odject- 
lessons, in which what the pupil sees 
himself becomes the basis of the opin- 
ions he forms. Every community is 
full of examples of the effects of drink- 
ing, and these effects are seen in all 
possible degrees, Let the scholars be 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


directed to observe for themselves, and 
see how much truth they can find out 
on all sides of the subject; the exercise 
will at any rate be an excellent means 
of mental improvement and practical 
education. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


GEOLOGICAL ExcurRSIONS, OR THE RUDIMENTS 
or GEOLOGY FoR YounG Learners. By 
ALEXANDER WINCHELL, LL. D. Chica- 
go: §.C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 234. Price, 
$1.50. 

In his experience as a teacher of geology, 
and interested in extending a knowledge of 
this interesting and important subject in 
the common schools and among the people, 
the author of this work found himself con- 
fronted with this formidable difficulty, that 
“in most of our colleges, no knowledge what- 
ever of the subject is required for entrance, 
and there is no course where geology is a 
prerequisite; and since geology is not re- 
quired for entrance into college, it has ceased 
to be taught in the schools—as if geology 
had no uses, if not demanded as a prepara- 
tion for college.” As our higher education- 
al system, therefore, virtually works against 
the recognition of this science, the difficulty 
must be met by preparing the necessary 
rudimentary books for introduction into the 
schools, on the ground of the importance 
of this kind of knowledge, and with no 
reference to the influence of the colleges. 
Dr. Winchell says: “As geology is not 
taught in the schools, and as nineteen 
twentieths of our teachers have not stud- 
ied it in college, there is almost no prepa- 
ration among teachers of primary or sec- 
ondary grades to induct a pupil into an 
elementary knowledge of the subject. The 
only hope of early reform seems to lie in 
furnishing teachers with a text-book so 
framed as to be capable of successful use 
by a teacher without previous acquaintance 
with the subject. Certainly, no such text- 
books exist; for though there are several 
which might be employed by teachers 
thoroughly disciplined by previous study, 
the large majority of our teachers are not 
so disciplined. These text-books, moreover, 
are too much conformed to the dogmatic 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


or didactic method—telling about things 
which are far away, or, if near at hand, are 
not identifiable by the aid of the book. 
Due discrimination is not observed between 
those conceptions of the subject which are 
abstract, and beyond the reach of the young 
pupil or older novices, and those which can 
be attained through accessible concrete illus- 
trations.” 

The method of these “Excursions” is 
practical, and implies the observation and 
study of geological phenomena as they lie all 
about us among the most obtrusive and no- 
ticeable of the objects which we daily en- 
counter. The author, moreover, informs us 
that a large part of the “ Excursions” has 
been used while yet in manuscript, in actual 
trials by actual teachers. This is unquestion- 
ably the true method in scientific education, 
because it makes the mental acquisitions 
real, and the adoption and extension of this 
plan of study is unquestionably the great 
desideratum of the time. 


Bratn-EXHAUSTION, WITH SOME PRELIMINARY 
CONSIDERATIONS ON CEREBRAL DyNaMIcs. 
By J. Leonarp Cornine, M. D. New 
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 235. 


INTERESTING and valuable as are the 
investigations that have been made upon 
questions of muscular dynamics, Dr. Corn- 
ing believes that the economical questions 
involved in normal and morbid intellection 
constitute a field of physiological research 
that transcends all others in importance. 
With the growing demands made in the pres- 
ent conditions of society upon the thinking 
apparatus come factors to exert a prejudi- 
cial influence upon the cerebral mechanism ; 
and these have never beeh more numerous 
than now, as is proved by the alarming in- 
crease of brain disorders during the last 
few years. Dr. Corning haz endeavored to 
consider a group of symptoms, associated 
with these disorders, from as scientific a 
point of view as possible. The opinions he 
expresses have been formed from direct 
clinical observation, and from inferences 
derived from physiology and experimental 
pathology. In a chapter of “ Preliminary 
Considerations” he discusses the relation of 
the law of the convertibility of forces to 
the dynamics of the healthy and the mor- 
bid brain; the emotions of the healthy and 
morbid mind, and memory in its healthy 


557 


and morbid relations. In the two following 
chapters are considered the clinics and pa- 
thology, and the causation of brain-exhaus- 
tion; account being taken in the latter 
chapter of predisposing and exciting causes, 
false educational conceptions and methods, 
the effects of tobacco and alcoholic excesses, 
and “mental hygienics.” The last chapter 
is devoted to the principles of treatment. 
Rest is prescribed as the most wholesome 
and efficient remedy. Drugs are objected to, 
but coca is prescribed as an excellent reme- 
dy against worry, and one which, besides 
exercising an invigorating effect upon the 
cerebral centers, “imparts an indescribable 
sensation of satisfaction.” A special treat- 
ment by electrization of the sympathetic 
nerve, with simultaneous bilateral compres- 
sion of the carotids, is described. 


Mernops or Histortcat Srupy. By Her- 
BERT B, Apams, Ph.D. Baltimore; N. 
Murray. Pp. 137. Price, 50 cents. 
Tus treatise constitutes the opening 

double number of the second series of the 

“Johns Hopkins University Studies” in 

historical and political science, and includes 

papers describing improved and special 
methods of historical study that have been 
introduced at the university, and at other 
institutions in the United States and Eu- 
rope. The main principle of the training at 
Johns Hopkins is to encourage independent 
thought and research. Little attention is 
given to text-books and mere phraseology, 
but all stress is laid upon clear and original 
statements of fact and opinion, whether the 
student’s own or a consulted author’s. At 
Smith College the study is pursued by four 
classes in regular gradation, with liberal use 
of collateral literary works and _ historical 
romances as aids to the lectures and formal 
treatises. In another paper are given ex- 
positions of four new methods of histori- 
cal study, viz., the topical, comparative, co- 
operative, and seminary or laboratory meth- 
ods. In the first method the study is begun 
with and enlarged from some special topic, 
preferably from one which is nearest and 
most familiar. In the comparative method, 
like phases of history are studied con- 
nectedly. In the co-operative method, each 
student makes a thorough study of a single 
branch of the subject, and the work of all 


558 


is so co-ordinated in the class that each 
member may, to some extent, reap the bene- 
fit of the labors of his companions. The 
seminary method is adapted from the old 
scholastic methods of the ecclesiastical and 
philosophical seminaries, and has been ap- 
plied in numerous German and some Amer- 
ican institutions. 


Tue BIBLE ANALYZED IN TweENTYy LECTURES. 
By Joun R. Ketso, A.M. New York: 
° pgragieus ” office, Pp. 833. Price, 
We believe that the Bible should be 
subject to criticism and investigation, in 
all its aspects, like any other book; and 
that the criticism should be searching and 
fearless. Still, there are proprieties to be 
observed, even by a critic who does not 
believe the book the product of divine in- 
spiration. It is a very ancient book, em- 
bodying unique historical records and tra- 
ditions of the earliest times of civilization, 
the genuineness of which is newly illustrat- 
ed by every new excavation in the ruined 
cities of the East; prophetic books and 
poems which, regarded in the literary as- 
pect alone, are worthy to be ranked with 
the world’s masterpieces ; and religious dec- 
,arations and moral precepts which have 
been built into the foundations of modern 
manners. These things should entitle it to 
respectful treatment, even at the hands of 
anenemy. Mr. Kelso has not given it such 
treatment, but has made it the object of 
persistent ribald, indecent, blasphemous as- 
saults, the very violence of which obscures 
whatever of force his argument might have 
had he presented it in a becoming style. 


By R. Hr. 
G. P. Put- 


Tue Boox or THE BEGINNINGS. 
BER Newton. New York: 
nam’s Sons. Pp. 310. 

In this little book Mr. Newton gives a 
study of Genesis, with an introduction to 
the Pentateuch, conducted according to 
the canons of free, independent investiga- 
tion. The study is based upon the lectures 
which the author, a well-known Episcopal 
clergyman, had begun to deliver to his 
Bible-class, but which he discontinued at 
the request of his bishop. The singular 
position in which he was put by this event 
made it seem due, he says, “alike to my 
people and myself, that the public should be 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


enabled to judge of the real nature of the 
lectures which had called forth such a very 
unusual if not unprecedented episcopal in- 
terruption of a presbyter in the course of 
his parochial ministrations.” Mr. Newton 
accepts to the full the results of what is 
called the “new criticism” with regard to 
the mode of composition, the time, and the 
authorship of the five Mosaic books; and 
while he presents these clearly and in all 
their force, he does it in the spirit and 
with the manner of one who accepts, as he 
avows that he does, the religious teachings 
of the Bible as authoritative. 


Tue Ovrskirts or Puysicat Science. Es- 
SAYS, PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
By T. Netson Date. Boston: Lee & 
Shepard, Pp. 187. Price, $1.25. 

Tue studies contained in this book seem 
to be products of a mind much exercised 
about the relations of religion and modern 
science, Its author has read widely, and 
is evidently in much sympathy with the 
study of natural science, for which he de- 
clares he had an early fondness, while he 
possesses strong religious convictions, and 
strives with sincerity to bring the two orders 
of thought into unity and harmony. The 
second part, on “Scientific Studies: their 
Place and Use in Education,” presents a 
very fair résumé of the educational claims 
of the sciences, but the author is still in 
agreement with the classicists, holding that 
there is nothing like “the humanities’ for 
the cultivation of the mind. 


Home anp Scnoot Trarninc. * By Mrs. H. 
E. G. Arry. Philadelphia: J. B. Lip- 
pincott & Co. Pp. 192. 

Tue author of this plea for home instruc- 
tion has made it under the feeling that the 
subject has at no time received the attention 
it demands, but that we are coming to neg- 
lect it more and more. We are apt to leave 
the whole matter of the training of our chil- 
dren to the schools, in utter forgetfulness 
of the fact that the specially important 
phase of it—that which forms a symmetri- 
cal character—is ostensibly ignored in many 
of them, and that “ the most abiding portion 
of the child’s mental seed-sowing has already 
taken root and given its tints to the soil be- 
fore the period for entering the school-room 
arrives.” The oversight of “ this first lush 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


growth of the young mind” is the one thing 
that seems especially given into the hands 
of the parents, and it is treated by the au- 
thor as a duty that should be peremptorily 
observed from the very moment of birth. 
The subject is handled in all its aspects as 
by one who is well qualified to do it, and the 
presentment, both in matter and manner, is 
admirable. 


LEcTURES ON THE ScIENCE AND ART OF 
EpvcaTIoNn, WITH OTHER Lectures. By 
- JosepH Payne. New York: E. L. Kel- 
logg & Co. Pp. 256. Price, $1. - 
Dr. JosepH Payne was for many years 
a distinguished and most successful prac- 
tical teacher in England, and, retiring from 
his profession late in life, he continued to 
devote himself to the subject with great 
assiduity, and became at this period the 
first Professor of the Science and Art of 
Education in the College of Preceptors in 
London. Dr. Payne was well versed in the 
history of education, and familiar with the 
most advanced methods of teaching, and the 
lectures contained in this volume are the 
ripe results of wide knowledge and critical 
experience. The book is full of valuable 
suggestions and wise practical observations, 
and will be found very useful to inquiring 
teachers. 


A History or TUsERcULosis. 
Satrter, M. D. Cincinnati: Robert 
Clarke & Co. Pp. 191. Price, $1.25. 
Tue first five chapters of this book con- 

sist of a translation of the first part of a 

work on “Studies of Tuberculosis,” by Dr. 

Arnold Spina, of Vienna, who is a vigor- 

ous opponent of the theories of Koch. 

These chapters present the results obtained 

from long series of inoculation, inhalation, 

and feeding experiments, the first of which 
date back to 1789, bringing the history of 
the subject up to March, 1882, when Robert 

Koch published his investigations, In the 

next chapter Dr. Sattler presents a review 

of the steps by which Koch arrived at the 

conclusion that tuberculosis is caused by a 

specific micro-organism. Koch’s announce- 

ments set many investigators at work upon 
tuberculosis and other diseases supposed to 
be infectious, and many additional discov- 
eries have been published. There are those 
also who deny many of the discoveries 


By Eric E. 


559 © 


claimed, and even the existence of the 
Bacillus tuberculosis. After giving some 
account of the controversy, Dr. Sattler says 
in conclusion ;: “‘ Whether Koch has been too 
sanguine in the one direction, or Spina has 
gone too far in the other, it is not for us to 
decide. The great number of scientific men 
engaged throughout the civilized world in 
repeating these experiments, and in study- 
ing their results, will soon sift out the 
truth of the matter, and bring the question 
to a final and authoritative decision.” 


Briocen: A SpEcULATION ON THE ORIGIN AND 
Nartore or Lire. By Professor Exuior 
Covers. Second edition. Boston: Estes 
& Lauriat. Pp. 66. Price, 75 cents, 
Tue substance of this disquisition was 

delivered as a lecture before the Philosophi- 

cal Society of Washington, and now appears 
with the trimmings—dedication, mottoes, 
preface, introduction and appendix—form- 
ing altogether a very lively little treatise 
on biological mysticisms. Professor Coues 
seems to have got tired of working under 
the restraints of observation, analysis, and 
induction at the mere phenomena of life, 
as is the work-a-day habit of science, and 
so he determined to break away and have 
a spree of speculation, and see what might 
come of it. He makes a rally for the re- 
lief and rescue of the old but declining 
doctrine of the “ vital principle,” or “ vital 
force,” which he denominates “* Biogen,” and 
which he insists is a thing, and a very real 
thing, “‘ possessed of sensible qualities and 
attributes which may be investigated by 
proper scientific methods, and by scientific 
experimentation, quite as readily as any 
other of the so-called ‘imponderables’ of 

Nature. It is as open to examination as 

luminiferous ether, and its properties if not 

its substance may be studied as we may 
study light, heat, or electricity ; it is there- 
fore not only a proper object of science, but 

a proper subject of philosophy.” However 

this may be, it is certain that the doctrine of 

the “vital principle” was made the most of 
in times of ignorance before anything was 
known of the laws of life. The “vital 

principle” explained everything in the mid- 

dle ages, and we observe that the publishers 

of this brochure, doubtless aware of the fit- 
ness of things, have printed it in medieval 


type. 


560 


Tur Lanv-Laws. (‘The English Citizen” 
Series.) By Freperick Potiock, Bar- 
rister-at-Law, M. A., etc. London: Mac- 
millan & Co, Pp. 215. Price, $1. 
Tae land-laws of England, which form 

the subject of this book, must not be mis- 
taken for the land-laws of the United King- 
dom. Scotland has a distinct legal system 
of her own, with a distinct history; Irish 
land-law, on the other hand, is nothing but 
imported English law, with certain modifica- 
tions, the most important of which have 
been made too recently, and are too much 
involved with political questions, to be prof- 
itably treated in connection with English 
institutions. The aim of the author is to 
make the principles and the leading feat- 
ures of the English law of real property in- 
telligible to a reader who is without legal 
training, but is willing to take some little 
pains to understand. “ Almost every pos- 
sible kind of ownership and almost every 
possible relation of owners and occupiers of 
land to the state and to one another have 
at one time or another existed in England, 
and left a more or less conspicuous mark in 
the composite structure of the English law 
of real property.” The customary German- 
ic law, which the Angles and Saxons brought 
to England, is first taken up; the changes 
resulting from the Norman conquest are 
next described ; and then follows an account 
of the legislation through which the mod- 
ern law has developed. A chapter is de- 
voted to the relation between landlord and 
tenant, and the book concludes with an ex- 
amination of some modern reforms and pros- 
pects. Several special points are discussed 
in an appendix. 


Tue Destrective INFLUENCE OF THE TARIFF 
UPON MANUFACTURES AND COMMERCE, AND 
THE FIGURES AND FACTS RELATING THERE- 
To. By J. Scnornnor. New York: G. 
P, Putnam’s Sons, 

Tue contents of this little volume first 
appeared in communications to the New 
York “Evening Post,” and they are now 
collected and published by the Putnams 
for the New York Free-Trade Club. The 
author of this book seems to believe that 
the way to develop trade is not to fetter it, 
and he proves abundantly by copious and 
varied statistics that the effect of legisla- 
tive restrictions and congressional control 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of manufactures and commerce is injurious 
in proportion to the interference—is de- 
structive rather than properly protective: 
There is a good deal of excellent sense in 
this book, and, although it deals chiefly in 
facts of the statistical kind, it contains many 
reflections and suggestions that are well 


worth attention, as, for example, the follow- 
ing: 

The curse of American politics, log-rolling, is 
also the cause of the absurdities of our “ well-bal- 
anced tariff."’ It gave us a system of taxation that 
grinds every one, does cruel injury to a whole nation 
of working-people, and good to no one except a few 
monopolists and tax-gatherers ; and it may safely be 
asserted that the corruption of our politics is largely 
due to protection, and to the mania for government 
aid and subsidies engendered thereby. Self-reliance 
and independence are lost where large profits are 
more the results of legislative grants extended to 
industrial enterprises than of unassisted work. The 
lobbyist seeks, and frequently finds, an open door 
to executive departments, and it is doubtful whether 
a civil service can be thoroughly reformed that is 
constantly exposed to the persistent efforts of the 
briber. Worse, however, than this corrupting in- 
fluence upon the civil service is the effect upon 
legislation and the legislator. The lobbyist, the 
advocate of special laws, is the greatest enemy of 
free institutions. When a people loses confidence 
in its representatives, when, rightly or wrongly, 
the latter are held in suspicion of being the tools of 
private interests, then the calamity is irreparable. 
The briber of an officer of the Government does mo- 
mentary harm, while unjust laws tax generations 
with unjust burdens, that are the more galling the 
more people become conscious of the methods by 
which were obtained the industrial preferences 
and the privilege of taxing the masses for the bene- 
fit of the few. . 


Poxitics: An Introduction to the Study of 
Comparative Constitutional Law. By 
Wititiam W. Crane, and Brernarp Mo- 
ses, Ph. D., Professor of History and 
Political Economy in the University of 
California, New York: G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons. Pp. 305. Price, $1.50. 


Tus book opens with a description of 
the structure of a nation and of the nature 
of sovereignty. The basis of every political 
community is affirmed to be physical force, 
and the importance of political instinct is 
insisted upon. Political heritage is illus- 
trated by the history of the English colonies 
in America. The means by which the will of 
a sovereign is expressed are next taken up, 
the tendency of power in the United States 
and in some European federations is noted, 
and a chapter is devoted to political parties. 


LIITERARY NOTICES. 


Hovse-Drainace. By Witrram Pact Ger- 
HARD. New York: Durham House-Drain- 
age Company. Pp.44. Sanirary Drary- 
AGE oF TeNEMENT-HovusEs. By WIu1L- 
1AM Paci Geruarp. Hartford, Conn.: 
Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company. 


Pp. 40. 

In the former work, the essential feat- 
ures of any thorough system of house-drain- 
age are laid down to be: Extension of all 
soil and waste pipes through and above the 
roof ; provision of a fresh-air inlet in the 
drain at the foot of the soil and waste pipe 
systems ; the trapping of the main drain out- 
side of the fresh-air inlet, to exclude the 
sewer-gases from the house; provision of 
each fixture, as near as possible to it, witha 
suitable trap; and provision of vent-pipes 
to such traps under fixtures as are liable to 
be emptied by siphonage. In the second 
pamphlet, the principles of thorough sani- 
tary drainage are applied to the tenement- 
houses of working-men. 


AnnuaL Report or THE Connecticut AGRI- 
CULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION FOR 1883. 
S. W. Johnson, Director. New Haven: 
Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor. Pp. 120. 
Tue Board of Control of this institution 
report that the people of the State use the 
station more and more each year, and that 
the problem becomes more difficult how best 
to do the varied work asked for. To pro- 
vide additional force, Dr. E. H. Jenkins has 
been appointed vice-director. Two hundred 
and nineteen analyses: of fertilizers have 
been performed, fifteen of milk, three of 
butter, with negative results as to adultera- 
tions, and twenty of fodders. In connec- 
tion with the last is given a table showing 
the average composition of American fod- 
ders and feeding-stuffs, compiled from all 
analyses that could be secured up to the 
Ist of September last. The chief seed-ex- 
aminations were on onion-seed. 


Te GractaL Bounpary ry Ouro, Inprana, 
AnD Kentucky. By Professor G. Frep- 
ERICK Wrieut. Cleveland, Ohio: West- 
ern Reserve Historical Society. Pp. 86. 
Tue author began, ten years ago, in- 

vestigations concerning the kames of the 

- Merrimac Valley in Eastern Massachusetts. 

Continuing along the line, he has now traced 

the boundary of the glaciated area from the 

Atlantic Ocean to the southern part of Illi- 


VoL. xxv.—36 


561 - 


nois, In the present pamphlet, the bound- 
ary is described in detail through the sev- 
eral counties and townships of Ohio, with 
local maps, and as to its general features 
through Kentucky—so far as it reaches that 
State—and Indiana. 


Reav AND Imacrnary Errects or InTEMPER- 
ance. By G. Toomann. New York: 
The United States Brewers’ Association. 
Pp. 167. 

Tue brewers have at last entered upon 
an active defense of their calling, against 
the assaults of the prohibitionists and the 
temperance orators, and in this pamphlet 
present their case and an appeal to facts 
and statistics. They claim that the argu- 
ments that have been hurled against fer- 
mented liquors are largely the offspring of 
the imagination, and do not rest on any solid 
foundation, or on what can be proved; and 
they publish counter statements and statis- 
ties favoring their own side. Leaving dis- 
tilled liquors to take care of themselves, if 
they can, they contend that the beverages 
in which they are interested are wholesome, 
and are not instigators of crime, and that 
the use of them serves as a foil and a check 
to indulgence in stronger liquors ; therefore 
it ought not to be discouraged. 


Mrneratocy. By J. H. Corus, F. G. 8. 
Systematic and Descriptive Mineralogy. 
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Vol. 
Il, pp. 329. Price, $1.25. 

THE present volume of Mr. Collins’s 

“ Mineralogy ” is intended to accompany and 

supplement the first volume, which was pub-. 

lished in 1878; and, like that, was written 
for the use of “practical working miners, 
quarrymen, and field geologists,” as well as 
of students. The accounts are very brief, 
but they are clear, and illustrated with dis— 
tinct drawings of the crystals, and include 
notices of all the minerals that had been de- 
scribed up to the time of the author’s leav- 
ing England for Rio Tinto, Spain, in 1881. 


Report or THE New York State Survey FoR 
1883. James T. Garpiner, Director. Al- 
bany: Van Benthuysen Printing-House. 
Pp. 182, with Six Maps. 

Tue work of the survey was continned 
through last year in accordance with the 
matured plan on which it has all the time 


562 


been prosecuted, and which is calculated, 
when completed, to produce an accurate 
and connected system of measurements over 
every part of the State. The survey of the 
Tonawanda and Oak-Orchard Swamps has 
formed a prominent part of it. We learn 
from the report that the rainfall in West- 
ern New York steadily increased from 1830 
to 1880, and that the greatest average rain- 
fall known for a similar period—38°73 inches 
—was reached during the years from 1868 
to 1881, inclusive. The summer flow of the 
streams has, however, greatly diminished 
during the last fifty years. 


Tue Tracutne or Drawinc IN GRAMMAR- 
Scnoots. A Paper on the Educational 
Features of the Subject. By Watrer S. 
Perry. Boston: The Prang Education- 
al Company. Pp. 26. 

THIS essay was read as a paper before 
the department of Industrial Education at 
the last meeting of the American Educa- 
tional Association. It considers the appli- 
cations of drawing under three heads: as in 
industrial construction ; in representing the 
appearance of objects and of nature; and 
in ornamentation. Of these, in the public 
schools, the first, the application in construc- 
tion, is the most important. “It forms pre- 
eminently the educational and the practical 
side, and yet it is the one which has usually 
been ignored, while the picturesque and 
decorative sides have been given undue im- 
portance.” It is dwelt upon at length, while 
the application to representation is treated 
as complementary to it, and that to decora- 
tion as essential to the completeness of the 
course of instruction. 


THe AMERICAN University. When shall it 
be? Where shall it be? What shall 
itbe? By Joun W. Burasss, Ph. D., of 
Columbia College. Boston: Ginn, Heath, 
& Co. Pp. 22. Price, 15 cents. 

In the author’s view, the reply to the 
first question should consist of three condi- 
tions. The university shall be when there 
exists in the nation the surplus of wealth 
to support it, the body of scholars to form 
its faculties, and the body of students quali- 
fied by previous training and acquirements 
to profit by university work. These con- 
ditions are believed to exist now in the Unit- 
ed States. The place for the university 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


should be at or near a center of wealth, ed- 
ucation, and refinement, and that exists. 
The university should not be an institution 
of the State, but must be a private institu- 
tion, supported by private donations, and di- 
rected by an association of private persons. 


ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION. A Consid- 
eration of the Principal Executive De- 
partments of the United States Govern- 
ment, in Relation to Administration. By 
LL. B. Washington: William H. Mor- 
rison, Pp. 108. 

ImpeRFECTIONS in the workings of the 
administrative departments of our Govern- 
ment being recognized, the author of this 
essay seeks a permanent remedy for them 
by going to the principles on which depart- 
mental organization should rest. He finds 
that administration of the laws applied to 
the conduct of public affairs may be evil, by 
defect of the laws: first, where the admin- 
istrative organization is in false relation with 
the administrative object ; second, when, 
though the legal relation be perfect, the pro- 
cesses of administration are faulty; third, 
when both defects exist. The subject is 
considered prominently in the former as- 
pect. The first-named defect is declared to 
exist seriously in the Treasury and Interior 
Departments, and a plan for reorganizing 
them is sketched. 


Ancient Eeypr In THE Licut or MopERN 
Discoveries. By ProfessorH.S. Oszorn, 
LL. D. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & 
Co. Pp. 232, with Map. 

Most good works on ancient Egypt are 
costly, and the knowledge of the subject is 
growing so fast that even a very recent 
book is likely to require to be added to or 
modified within a short time after it is pub- 
lished. Professor Osborn has endeavored 
to put what is really known of the history 
in such a brief form as to embody it ina 
really accessible book; to sift out what is 
conjectural and obsolete; and to include the 
results of the latest researches up to the 
time of his writing. - He has been a diligent 
student of the monuments and inscriptions 
in the European museums and in their na- 
tive land, has kept himself abreast of the lit- 
erature of the subject, and has endeavored 
to present the results of matured studies, 
The work of later years is mentioned, in- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


cluding the discovery of the royal mummies 
near Thebes, and the excavations of M. Na- 
ville at Pithom-Succoth, or the latest that 
had been done till excavations were begun 
at Zoan last March. Dr. Osborn’s style is 
not always happy, and his references to the 
work of later investigators are frequently 
not so clear as the reader would desire them 
to be. 


BmareraL AsyMMETRY oF Frnction. By 
G. Srantey Hatz and E. M. Harrwe xt. 


Pp. 17. 

Tue subject relates to supposed differ- 
- ences, essential or casual, in the power of 
similar organs on the different sides of the 
body; as, between the right and left eyes, 
ears, arms, or legs, or the right and left 
sides of internal organs. Numerous observa- 
tions by different investigators are noticed 
briefly, and then the present authors de- 
scribe their own experiments. From them 
they draw the conclusions that every devi- 
ation from perfect bilateral symmetry of 
form or function is to be accounted for with- 
out recourse to occult causes of any sort; 
that the key to the entire bilateral problem 
which shall reveal a common principle for 
all the various paired organs is to be sought 
in the study of bilateral muscle tension, the 
only act of will; and that the solution of 
this problem, when reached, will probably 
shed light on the nature of consciousness. 


Tue Rairoap aS AN ELEMENT In Epvca- 
tion. An Address before the State 
Teachers’ Association of Texas. By 
Professor AtexanpER Hoge, M. A. 
Louisville: Printed for the Author. 
Tuts brief pamphict is filled with a great 

deal of interesting railroad information, its 

predominant idea being that railroads are 

a great factor of civilization, and help on 

the work of general amelioration and im- 

provement in many ways. There is a brief 

sketch of the course of inventions that pre- 
pared for railroad constructions, some ex- 
amination of the public influence of trans- 
continental railway systems, some defense 
of railroads against charges of monopoly, 
some account of the great “breakwaters ” 
of the world, and finally an argument in 
favor of the construction of such a work at 

Galveston, in Texas, that shall give it deep- 

er water and improve it as a seaport. 


563 


A Manvat or Psycnorocicat Mepicine 
AND ALLIizeD Nervous Diseases. By 
Epwarp ©, Many. With Phototype 
Plates and other. Illustrations. Phila- 
delphia: P, Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp, 
699. Price, $5. 


THis comprehensive treatise aims to 
“present the subject of insanity and allied 
nervous diseases in a scientific, clinical, and 
forensic light, and in so concise a form as 
to be available for the student and general 
practitioner.” It is therefore addressed to 
the profession as a manual of medical prac- 
tice, and a systematic text-book of medical 
education. Physicians must, therefore, be 
the best judges of its adaptation to their 
wants, but the work bears evidence through- 
out of matured knowledge, wide experi- 
ence, and assiduous, painstaking labor. 
But while the work is thus designed for 
the uses of medical men, such is the pro- 
found interest and great importance of the 
questions which it discusses, that in many 
aspects it will be found instructive and 
valuable to general readers who are con- 
cerned with the great question of the con- 
ditions and causes of insanity, and the 
hygienic precautions that are needed for the 
maintenance of soundness and integrity of 
mind. Dr. Mann is evidently no extremist 
and no alarmist, but he recognizes that 
mental derangement in various forms is 
undoubtedly on the increase, and that its 
extension can be checked only by the widest 
diffusion of knowledge upon the subject, 
and some corresponding improvement in 
those habits of life which are promotive of 
mental deterioration. Dr. Mann emphasizes 
in his preface a most important fact, which 
is too gencrally overlooked, when he points 
out the long interval of time that may 
elapse between the slight initial perversions 
of cerebral activity and the distant conse- 
quences that often result from them. It is 
too commonly thought that if pupils leave 
school without becoming lunatics outright, 
all the talk about mental over- exertion 
amounts to nothing, yet we have here to do 
with causes and effects that work slowly, 
and require time for their full disclosure. 
Dr. Mann says: 


A very important point relating to the preven- 
tion of mental disorders and the modern nervous 
diseases is, that the growth of mental function is 
as gradual as that of bodily power, and that brain- 
tissue degenerations and mental diseases may be 


564 


separated by long intervals of time from the too 
premature and intense stimulation of the brain in 
school-children which causes these nervous diseases. 
We meet with the preponderance of nervous dis- 
eases in the refined and cultivated classes, where, 
by premature and stimulating processes of educa- 
tion, there has been forced an elaboration of brain- 
structure, hastening the functional activity of the 
brain, with no due regard to the law of evolutional 
precedence. Normal growth and development will 
give us healthy minds, while a structurally degraded 
centric nervous system, or an altered quality of 
blood, and secondary disturbance of nerve-function, 
will antagonize healthy mental manifestation. If 
we have want of sleep, a defective generation of 
nerve-force, an unstable condition of the nerve- 
centers, an incomplete development of any part 
concerned in mental action, all of which Dr. Blan- 
ford, of England, has ably shown to be causes of 
mental disease, we can not expect healthy mental 
function. Alcoho] and opium are to-day responsi- 
ble for much deterioration of brain. Dipsomania 
and the opium-habit being on the increase among 
Americans, there is a greatly increased nervousness 
and an increasing inherited disposition to the differ- 
ent neuroses; and the condition known as cerebral 
hyperemia, an increase in the quantity of the blood 
within the capillaries of the brain, or rather one 
form of it, of vaso-motor origin, resulting from 
overwork and mental strain, is greatly on the in- 
crease, 


Tue TrReaTMENT OF WOUNDS AS BASED ON 
Evoturionary Laws. By C, Pirrrecp 
MircuetL, Member of the Royal College 
of Surgeons. New York: J. H. Vail & 
Co. Pp. 29. Price, 50 cents. 


WE recently called attention to the lec- 
tures of Dr. Hughlings Jackson, before the 
Royal College of Physicians in London, on 
the bearings of the law of evolution upon 
diseases of the nervous system, and in the 
monograph before us the principle of evo- 
lution is followed out in another field of medi- 
cal practice. The author published a short 
essay in 1882, in “The New York Medical 
Journal,” in which he “ endeavored to find 
in the Spencerian doctrine of evolution the 
foundation of a satisfactory theory to guide 
us in the treatment of such wounds as are 
inflicted in the more common operations of 
surgery.” The present pamphlet is a fur- 
ther extension of that view. We can only 
say here that the case is very strongly pre- 
sented, and will repay the attention of those 
medical students of a philosophical turn of 
mind who care for those deeper elucidations 
and explanations of the living organism 
which the development theory is now so suc- 
cessfullf affording. 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


TruTHs AND Unrrutus or Evotution. By 
Jonn B. Drury, D.D. New York: A. 
a F, Randolph & Co. Pp. 140. Price, 
Tis volume consists of the Vedder 

Lectures delivered in April, 1883, before 

the students of the theological seminary 

and Rutgers College at New Brunswick. 

As might be expected, the author’s interest 

in the doctrine of evolution depends entirely 

upon its relation to theology. He recognizes 
that there is some truth in it, which consists 
in that part that he can conform to the re- 
quirements of his theology. He will take 
evolution as a plausible hypothesis, not yet 

established as a truth, and which may be a 

help to scientific progress even if erroneous. 

He will accept it under theistic interpreta- 

tion, or as ‘many Christians hold in con- 

junction with their faith in God and the 

Bible.” 

Dr. Drury examines the definitions of 
evolution, and, finding them unsatisfactory, 
remarks: “If I were to formulate a defini- 
tion of evolution, such as the present con- 
dition of our knowledge warrants, it would 
be this: ‘ Evolution is that hypothesis 
which supposes the process by which the 
present diversity in nature has been reached 
to have been one of progression ; the more 
complex and better endowed proceeding in 
accordance with laws imperfectly known out 
of simpler and lower forms.’ ” 

Undoubtedly the laws will become more 
perfectly known, and then this germ of a 
definition will grow into greater complete- 
ness. Dr. Drury’s book, though emanating 
from a mind in a state of anxious transi- 
tion, and beset on all sides with difficulties, 
is, nevertheless, readable and instructive. 


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 


Inebriate Automatism. By T. D. Crothers, 
M.D. Hartford, Conn. Pp. 9. 

Filtrations of Saline Solutions through Sand. By 
William Ripley Nichols. Boston. Pp. 12. 

Earthquake Measurement. By J. A, Ewing, 
B.Sc. Tokio wd Tokio Daigaku. Pp. 
with Twenty-four lates. 

The Eastern Pioneer of Western Civilization and 
the Recognition her Efforts receive. By C.8. Eby. 
Tokio, Japan. Pp. 52. 

The Sufficiency of Terrestrial Rotation for the 
Deflection of Streams. By O, K. Gilbert. Pp. 5. 

Osteology of Sab ei Alcyon. aden W. Shufeldt, 
U. 8. Army. Pp. 15, with Plate 

. The Subsidence peeery of Earthquakes. By 
Samuel Kneeland. Boston. Pp. 8 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


Bleck Eh on the Exhibits at the Orystal Palace 
Exhibition of 1882. By ent Srinting- J. 
Sprague. Washington: Gover t Printing-Of- 
fice. Pp. 169, with Plates. = 
Pe cy mee ee ‘at Hitachi. By I. i 
Sasaki. Tokio, Japan: Tokio Daigaku. ‘ 
7, with Eleven Plates. 
Chicago Manual Training School, First Annual 
Catalogue. Pp. 16. 
Evolution and the Positive As of Modern 
ee” By W. D. Le Sueur. Ottawa, Canada: 
A. 8. Woodburn. 
The Offices of Electricity in the Human Body. 
By H. B. Philbrook. New York. Pp. 81. 
Washington High-School; Fig hate of the Courses 
PP. ot and Zodlogy. By Edward 8. Burgess. 


Wages and Tariffs. By E. J. seen 
York: Wilcox & O'Donnell. Pp. 4 

“The American Monthly,” June, ae Chicago, 
Til. : American Magazine Publishing Company. ep 
100. 85 cents, $4 4 year. 

State Mineralogist, California, Third Annual 
Report. Sacramento: James J. Ayres. Pp. 110. 

Silver-Lead Deposits of Eureka, Nevada. Ab- 
stract of report by Joseph Story Curtis. Washing- 
ton : Government Printing-Office. Pp. 24, with Map 
and Plates. 

The Conventional Lies of Civilization. From the 
$05 gi of Max Nordau. Chicago: L.Schick. Pp. 

Society for Ethical Culture, Chi 

nual Report of the Relief Works. 
Stern & Pp. 40. 

Tokio Daigaku. Calendar for 1882-83. Tokio, 
Japan: Z. P. Maruya & Co. Pp. 142. 

Notes on the Volcanic Rocks of the Great Basin. 
By Arnold Hague and Joseph P. Iddings. Pp. 12. 

Volcanic Sand at Unalashka, Alaska. By J. 8. 
Diller. Pp. 4. 

Arithmetical Aids. In box. Boston: Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co. 20 cents. 

Eleventh Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, 1883. 
Report of Board of Commissioners, W. W. Peabody, 
President. Pp. 312. ‘ 

Naphthaline as an Insecticide, ete. By Dr. 
Thomas Taylor. Washington. Pp. 6, 

Fibrine and Bacteria. By Thomas Taylor. 
Washington. Pp. 5. 

“ American Psychological Journal,” 

Edited by Joseph Parrish, M.D. Philsdctonia, hes 
Blakiston, Son & Co. 1833. Pp. 450. $2 year. 

Alabama Weather Service, May, 1884. Mont- 
gomery, Ala. Pp. 9. 

Taxation in the United States, 1789-1816. By 
Henry Carter Adams, Ph. D. Baltimore: N. Mur- 
ray. Pp. 80. 50 cents. 

Criminal Responsibility of the Insane. 
pheus Everts, M.D. College Hill, Ohio. Pp. 22 


Meteorology and Soil Temperatures at Mouuhted 
Farm. By D. P. Penhallow. New York: ** The 
Pp. 41, with Plates. 

The Urine in Disease. By ©. F. Taylor, M. D. 
Philadelphia: ‘‘ The Medical World.” 

Testing Machines. By Arthur VY. Py cael New 
York: D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 190. 50 cen 

Symbolic Algebra. By Professor Wilken ‘Cain. 
New York: D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 131. 50 cents. 

List of Water-Works. Compiled by J. J. R. 
Cross. New York. Pp. 8 


The Diet Question: Giving the Reason Why. 
By Susanna W. Dodds. M.D. New York: Fowles 
& Wells Company. Pp. 99. 25 cents. 

The Hollanders in Nova Zembla. By Daniel 
Van Pelt. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 4 
120, $1.25. 


New 


o. First An- 
Jhicago : Max 


ng Or- 


Cottages; or. Hints on Economical Building. 
Compiled and edited by A. W. Brunner. New 


565. 


York: William T. Comstock. Pp, 54, with Twen- 
ty-two Plates. $1. 


Discoveries of America to the Year 1525, By 
Arthur James Weise. New York: G. P, Putnam’s 
Sons. . Pp. 380, with Map. 50. 


Tokology : A Book for Every Woman. By Alice 
B. Stockham, M.D, Chicago: Sanitary Publishing 
Company. Pp. 277. $2. 

The Essentials of Anatomy, Physiolo, and 
Hygiene. By Roger 8. Tracy, Ai. D mere York : 
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 299 

Observations on Vitality of Seeds of Weeds, and 
Certain Diseases of Grasses. Massachusetts State 
Experiment Station, Amherst. Pp. 12. 

Manual of the Mosses of North America. ea 
Leo Lesquereux and Thomas P. James. Boston 
5. E. Cassino & Co. Pp. 447, with Six Plates. 

The Laws of Health. By Joseph C. Hutchison, 
M.D. New York: Clark & Maynard. Pp. 223. 


Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest. 


Economy. vi John Croumbie Brown, LL. D. 
Edinburgh : ee & Boyd; Montreal: Dawson 
Brothers. Pp. 228. 


U.S Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Report 
for 1881. Washington: Government Printing-Of- 
fice. Pp. 1,146. 

La Fabula de los Caribes (The Fable of the Ca- 
shin’ <n uan Ignacio de Armas. Havana: Fran- 
bafiez. . 81, 

 WeidoR’s Mystical Marriage. By Adolf Wil- 
brandt. Translated by Clara Bell. New York: 
William 8. Gottsberger. Pp. 240. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


The American Association.—The Phila- 
delphia meeting of the American Associa- 
tion will begin September 4th, under the 
presidency of Professor J. P. Lesley. The 
sectional Vice-Presidents are: A. Mathe- 
matics and Astronomy, H. T. Eddy, of Cin- 
cinnati; B. Physics, John Trowbridge, of 
Cambridge; C. Chemistry, John W. Lang- 
ley, of Ann Arbor; D. Mechanical Science, 
R. H. Thurston, of Hoboken; E. Geology 
and Geography, N. H. Winchell, of Minne- 
apolis. Biology, E. D. Cope, of Philadel- 
phia; F. Histology and Microscopy, T. G. 
Wormley, of Philadelphia ; H. Anthropolo- 
gy, E. 8. Morse, of Salem; I. Economic Sci- 
ence and Statistics, J. Eaton, of Washington. 
The Permanent Secretary is Professor F. W. 
Putnam, of Cambridge; General Secretary, 
Alfred Springer, of Cincinnati; Assistant 
General Secretary, E. S. Holden, of Madi- 
son, Wisconsin; Treasurer, William Lilly, 
of Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania. The Brit- 
ish Association has invited the members of 
the American Association to join in the 
meeting at Montreal, and the American As- 
sociation and the local committee of Phila- 
delphia have invited the members of the 
British Association and their companions 


566 


to take part in the Philadelphia mecting. 
Receptions will be given at the Academy 
of Music and the Academy of Fine Arts; a 
garden-party at Haverford College; and a 
microscopical exhibition at the Academy of 
Natural Sciences, Botanical excursions will 
be organized, and a special meeting for bot- 
anists held by the botanical section of the 
Academy of Natural Sciences; and other 
interesting visits and excursions will be 
made. The address of Professor Young, 
as retiring President of the Association, 
will be delivered on the evening of the 4th, 
at the Academy of Music, and will be fol- 
lowed by a reception to members of the 
Association and their invited guests. The 
headquarters of the Association will be at 
the Academy of Music, Broad Street. 


Sir John Lubbock on Classical and Sei- 
entific Edueation.—Sir John Lubbock spoke, 
at a recent dinner of the British University 
College Club, in reference to the great ad- 


vance that had been made in this age in edu- 


cation. A commission of inquiry, appointed 
in 1861, mentioned as a great practical evil 
of the English schools that too little time 
was devoted to modern languages, and 
science was practically excluded altogether. 
A similar commission in 1864 gave substan- 
tially the same verdict. A third royal com- 
mission, in 1875, declared that the practical 
omission of these subjects from the train- 
ing of the middle and upper classes was lit- 
tle less than a national misfortune. Still, 
though no doubt some progress had been 
gained, too little attention was given to 
these subjects. The time in the schools 
was at present allotted somewhat on the 
average as follows: To science, not more 
than two hours a week were given; to mod- 
ern languages, three hours; and to geog- 
raphy, arithmetic, and mathematics, four 
hours, leaving thirty hours for Latin and 
Greek. Now, suppose that six hours were 
devoted to arithmetic and mathematics, six 
to science, six to modern languages and 
history, and six to geography, there would 
still be more than twenty hours for Latin 
and Greek, and if a boy could not learn 
Latin and Greek in twenty hours a week, 
spread over ten years, he would certainly 
never learn them at all. Sir John Lub- 
bock was far from undervaluing Latin, 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


and indeed it seemed to him well worth 
considering whether the present system of 
learning it was really wise, and whether our 
sons ought not to be taught to speak it 
as well as to read it. He then spoke 
of the particular importance of the know]l- 
edge of modern languages and science in 
England. Englishmen have the most varied 
enterprises all over the globe, more than 
half the shipping on the high seas, and for- 
eign investments returning them $350,000,- 
000 a year. The management of these gi- 
gantic undertakings ought to be intrusted 


-to those who could speak the language of 


the country in which they were carried on. 
Many a promising concern had been brought 
to ruin because it had been impossible to 
find properly qualified Englishmen to take 
care of it, and because it had consequently 
been intrusted to foreigners. He did not 
undervalue and would not neglect the clas- 
sics. All he asked was that science and 
modern languages should have their fair 
share of attention, for, as Dr. Carpenter had 
well observed, there was one side of our na- 
ture which science was the only means of 
cultivating. 


The Weather, Health, and Crime,— 
Mr. §. A. Hill has recently published, in 
“ Nature,” an analysis of the effects of the 
weather upon the death-rate and crime in 
India, particularly in the Northwest Proy- 
inces and Oude. The whole number of 
deaths varies enormously from year to year. 
Thus it was 1,914,499 in 1879, and 987,190 
in 1880, showing a difference of nearly a 
million in two successive years. The aver- 
age yearly rate is about a million and a half. 
Taking the two years of extremes cited, in 
1879 the monsoon rains were unusually 
heavy, while in 1880 they were extremely 
scanty, and apprehensions of famine were 
entertained. The year 1877 was also dry 
and healthy. The first rough generalization 
suggested by Mr. Hill’s tables is, that dry 
years are healthy and wet ones unhealthy. 
It would, nevertheless, be wrong to infer 
that in India mortality is due to rain, for 
the figures for the several months show that, 
as a rule, the month in which fewest deaths 
occur is July, which happens to be just 
the rainiest month of the twelve. Rain is, 
no doubt, one of the indirect causes of death ; 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


but it operates by inducing malaria, which 
does not come with it but after it. Mere 
rise in temperature, as shown by monthly 
means, appears to have comparatively little 
effect. The variations in the diurnal range 
have a much greater effect, while the change 
in the death-rate, due to varying humidity, 
is even less than that due to temperature 
changes. The relation between the death- 
rate and the movement of the wind is in- 
verse. In October and November, when 
malarial diseases prevail, the air is almost 
absolutely still, and a little wind would prob- 
ably go a good ways toward dissipating 
malaria. The deaths by small-pox are fewer 
in the months when the general mortality 
attains its maximum. The meteorological 
causes favorable to the spread of this dis- 
ease appear to be heat, drought, and possi- 
bly also an unusually high wind-velocity. 
The maximum mortality from cholera usual- 
ly occurs in the rainy season. Whatever 
may ultimately prove to be the nature of the 
disease, there can be little doubt that in the 
Northwest Provinces it is, to a great extent, 
dependent upon heat and moisture. Crimes 


by violence seem to be proportional in fre- | 


quency to the tendency to prickly heat, an 
excruciating condition of the skin induced 
by a high temperature combined with moist- 
ure. 


The Morality of Happiness.—If any 
proof of the truth of your remark, that 
“there can be no manner of doubt that 
rules of conduct are regarded by an im- 
mense number of persons as essentially 
associated with religious doctrines,” were 
needed, it may be found in the fact that 
many people will but half-heartedly admit 
that a man may be capable of good con- 
duct if he does not profess their own pecul- 
iar creed, but will stoutly deny that such 
conduct is possible to him who professes 
no creed at all. The reason for this posi- 
tion is, I think, not far to seek. That con- 
duct conduces to happiness is, perhaps, 
more conclusively insisted upon in the Bi- 
ble than in any other book that is equally 
read; and those who regard the Bible as 
the inspired fount of their theology can not 
admit that a man may by his life prove this 
and yet not give his adhesion to their own 
or some kindred doctrine which they insist 


567 


is built upon biblical teaching. But that 
this proposition — ‘Conduct conduces to 
happiness ’”’—is true, most people, indeed, I 
should say, all people, may prove to them- 
selves by a little thoughtful introspection. 
Who, without any reference whatever to 
religious sentiments, has not felt the pangs 
of remorse, when suffering from a sense of 
wrong-doing? Who has not felt a thrill of 
the most real and satisfying pleasure when, 
by the exercise of self-denial, he has con- 
ferred some benefit on a fellow-creature— 
thus receiving from his own conscience the 
direct assurance that the proposition is 
true? Yet conscience existed before the 
Bible, and before the Bible must have been 
susceptible of the same emotions that influ- 
ence it now. It so happened that the Jews — 
made the discovery, some centuries ago, that 
“conduct conduces to happiness,” and in- 
sisted upon it in their literature; and it 
further happened that upon Jewish litera- 
ture the whole fabric of Christian theology 
was built up; but the truth and proof of 
the proposition are matters of purely world- 
ly wisdom, the outcome of experience, and 
have nothing whatever to do with theologi- 
cal dogmas.— A. McD., in Knowledge. 


Flat-foot.—Flat-foot is an acquired de- 
formity, characterized by a flattening or fall- 
ing down of the inner longitudinal arch of 
the foot, a structure on whieh depend the 
form of the foot, the distribution of the 
weight of the body over it, and the grace 
and ease of walking connected with the ris- 
ing forward on the toes. Its cause may be 
found in any condition that disturbs the nat- 
ural equilibrium between the weight trans- 
mitted to the arch and the power of the 
fibrous and muscular structures to sustain 
the pressure. It comes on about puberty, 
or between puberty and full manhood, par- 
ticularly in persons exposed to long stand- 
ing, carrying heavy weights, or other modes 
of straining the arch, and in those whose 
tissues are weak at that point. Besides the 
deformity and the loss of elasticity in the - 
step and of all ease and grace in walking, 
it causes great pain, which, naturally, is 
always worse after standing or walking, es- 
pecially after going up-stairs or up-hill, and 
at night than in the morning. In very severe 
cases the heel becomes raised, giving the 


568 


foot what Professor Ongston has called a 
canoe-shape. The success of any treatment 
of the deformity depends largely upon the 
age and extent of the affliction and the abil- 
ity of the patient. to conform to the sur- 
geon’s directions. It includes prolonged 
rest, the avoidance of standing still, the ex- 
hibition of tonics, the adaptation of boots 
to the requirements of the case, with the 
application of devices to raise and support 
the arch or bring the other parts of the foot 
into proper position, with, sometimes, surgi- 
cal operations. Professor Ongston, availing 
himself of the advantages of Listerism, has 
ventured, with success, upon the bold opera- 
tion of rearranging the bones of the foot 
in their proper position and plugging them 
together with ivory pegs. 


The True and False in Mesmerism.— 
The physiologist, says the “Saturday Re- 
view,” holds that some of the phenomena 
of mesmerism are genuine and comparable 
to certain natural states, but that none ex- 
ist to justify the supposition of any unknown 
force or effluence, most mesmeric mani- 
festations of a certain sort being entirely 
due to individual or collusive fraud. For 
most of the facts alleged are of such a 
nature that it is infinitely more probable 
that all connected with them, both actors 
and reporters, are deliberate impostors, than 
that they themselves should be true. The 
careful study of the alleged phenomena by 
those who are alone qualified to report on 
them has over and over again negatived all 
shadow of evidence that a person in the 
state called hypnotism, somnambulism, or 
mesmerism, has any power whatever of 
being influenced in any way by another to 
perform specific actions, all possibility of 
previous hints or impressions being ex- 
cluded, while demonstrably apart from all 
methods of communication by the senses. 
That in many cases the mind may act ab- 
normally most are aware, and spontaneous 
counterparts are found in disease to the 
real phenomena of hypnotism. Artificial 
somnambulism, indeed, is practically un- 
distinguishable from the somnambulism 
which is called disease; and it is mainly 
true to regard the psychological fields of 
these phenomena as identical. In this state 
the brain acts, as it were, fitfully; some 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of its functions sleep while others wake, 
and in various combinations the actions of 
the senses are heightened or lowered, or 
apparently for a time abolished. But in 
no instance of this artificial somnambulism 
that has been admitted to be genuine has 
there been any justification for supposing 
a special effluence from the operator; and 
innumerable counter - experiments have 
been made on hypnotic subjects who have 
promptly fallen into this condition from 
merely believing that some force was being 
exerted, Every hypnotic phenomenon can 
be more or less obviously referred to mor- 
bid conditions of the nervous system and 
to abnormal reaction or response to sug- 
gestions and other stimuli from without. 
Illustrations of this are not far to seck. 
We know that lunatics, out of harmony as 
they are with their own environment, often 
imagine themselves to be other people, 
especially kings and queens, So do the 
subjects of hypnotism at the suggestion of 
external surroundings; in the one case the 
morbid condition is temporary, in the other 
often permanent. The explanation, then, 
of the phenomena in question, is to be 
sought not in the person of the mesmerizer 
or operator, or in any unknown force, but 
in the subject “mesmerized.” The common 
element of mesmerism and spiritualism, and 
it is indeed a large one, is really fraud and 
fraud alone. Of what remains, the genuine 
fact of hypnotism, it must be repeated, that 
it is amply recognized by scientific observ- 
ers, 


Nickel-Plating in the United States,— 
“ Nickel-plating,” says Mr, William H. Wahl, 
in a paper read before the Chemical Sec- 
tion of the Franklin Institute last Novem- 
ber, “is an American industry, in the sense 
that it was first practiced on a commercial 
scale in the United States, and here re- 
ceived that practical demonstration of its 
usefulness that has since made it the most 
successful and most widely practiced branch 
of the art of electro-plating.” It first came 
into prominence about ten years ago, and 
has developed into an industry of great 
magnitude, and acquired a popularity which 
is easily accounted for by any one acquainted 
with the use and the excellence of nickel- 
plated articles, Its growth has been favored 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


by the success which Mr. Joseph Wharton has 
attained in the production of metallic nickel 
of suitable purity at a reasonable price. Mr. 
Wharton was one of the first to work the 
metal successfully, and exhibited at Vienna, 
in 1873, samples of axles and axle-bearings, 
and at Philadelphia, in 1876, a remarkable 
series of objects of wrought-nickel. He pro- 
duced in his works, between 1876 and the 
close of 1882, 1,466,765 pounds of the metal, 
the principal source of supply of which was 
from the ores at Lancaster Gap, Pennsylva- 
nia, The earliest practical process for nickel- 
plating in the United States was patented by 
Isaac Adams, Jr., in 1869. He devised a 
bath of the double sulphate of nickel and 


ammonium and the double chloride of nick- | 


el and ammonium, with anodes of metallic 
nickel, in which iron was combined, to ob- 
viate the bad effects of copper and arsenic 
impurities. The extensive application of 
this process was facilitated by the produc- 
tion of nickel of improved qualities of puri- 
ty, and the introduction of dynamos for pro- 
ducing the electric currents, they taking the 
place of the expensive galvanic battery. 
Edward Weston, in 1878, prepared a solu- 
tion containing boric acid, with the double 
sulphate of nickel and ammonium, the su- 
periority of which is generally recognized. 
The deposited metal is almost silver-white, 
dense, homogeneous, and tenacious, while 
the solution maintains a uniform, excellent 
working quality. -Among other solutions 
which have been introduced, one prepared 
by adding ammonia and water to the sul- 
phate of nickel, is recommended by Pro- 
fessor Béttger, and is said to be well suited 
for the purposes of amateurs, because of its 
giving good results with a platinum anode, 
Compositions containing sulphate of nickel 
and ammonium and sulphate of ammonium 
are recommended for coating several differ- 
ent metals. Where the double sulphate of 
nickel and ammonium is used, the bath 
should be maintained as nearly neutral as 
possible; but it may be either slightly acid 
or slightly alkaline. The strength of the 
current should be carefully regulated ac- 
cording to the surface of the articles in the 
bath, or the work will be apt to “burn,” 
when the metal is precipitated as a dark- 
gray or black deposit. To obviate this dif- 
ficulty, a plate of nickel presenting consid- 


569° 


erable surface is suspended from the rods 
by which the objects to be plated are held 
in the bath, to divert the surplus of the cur- 
rent from them. Other things being equal, 
the slower the rate of deposition, the more 
adherent and tenacious the coating of depos- 
ited metal will be. Success in plating de- 
pends very largely upon the perfect cleans- 
ing of the articles before they are immersed 
in the bath; and this is more important in 
ease of plating with nickel than with other 
metals, for which the solutions are general- 
ly more alkaline. As nickel-plated articles 
can not be burnished on account of the hard- 
ness of the deposited metal, they should be 
thoroughly polished before being exposed 
to the bath. A good coating of nickel prop- 
erly laid on preserves great durability. 


A People who can not make Fire.—The 
Papuans of the Maclay coast of New Guinea 
are represented by the Russian explorer, 
Dr. Miklucho Maclay, as being in the most 
primitive stage. They are wholly unac- 
quainted with metals, and make their weap- 
ons of stone, bones, and wood. They do 
not know how to start a fire, though fire is 
in use among them. When the traveler 
asked them how they made a fire, they 
could not understand his question, but they 
regarded it as very amusing, and answered 
that when a person’s fire went out he got 
some of a neighbor, and, if all the fires in 
the village should go out, they would get it 
from the next village. Some of the natives 
represented that their fathers and grand- 
fathers had told them that they remembered 
a time, or had heard from their ancestors 
that there was a time, when fire was not 
known, and everything was eaten raw. The 
natives of the southern coast of New Guinea, 
having no iron, shave themselves now with 
a piece of glass. Formerly they shaved with 
flint, which they could sharpen quite well, 
and used with considerable dexterity. 


The Art of Early Rising.—The proper 
time to rise, says the “Lancet,” is when 
sleep ends. Dozing should not be allowed. 
True sleep is the aggregate of sleeps, or 
is a state consisting in the sleeping or 
rest of all the several parts of the organ- 
ism. Sometimes one and at other times 
another part of the body, as a whole, may 


§79 


be the least fatigued, and so the first to 
awake, or the most exhausted, and there- 
fore the most difficult to arouse, The secret 
of good sleep is, the physiological condi- 
tions of rest being established, so to work 
and weary the several parts of the organism 
as to give them a proportionally equal need 
of rest at the same moment; and, to wake 
early and feel ready to rise, a fair and equal 
start of the sleepers should be secured; and 
the wise self-manager should not allow a 
drowsy feeling of the consciousness or 
weary senses, or an exhausted muscular 
system, to beguile him into the folly of go- 
ing to sleep again when once he has been 
aroused. After a very few days of self- 
discipline, the man who resolves not to 
doze, that is, not to allow some sleepy part 
of his body to keep him in bed after his 
brain has once awakened, will find himself, 
without knowing why, an early riser. 


Reafforesting of Ireland.—At the sug- 
gestion of Dr. Lyon, M. P. for Dublin, Mr. 
D. Howitz, Forest Conservator of Denmark, 
has made an examination of the resources 
and the need of Ireland for forest cultiva- 
tion, and his observations and conclusions 
have been embodied in a parliamentary re- 
port. He has found that “swamps and 
morasses are created in Ireland from the 
want of trecs to drink up the superfluous 
moisture, Irish rivers inundate the dis- 
tricts they traverse because there are no 
forests on the mountain-tops to arrest and 
retain the autumn and spring rains. In 
summer there is a dearth of water because 
the trees are gone which would have served, 
each, asa reservoir. . . . Irish agriculture, 
by its system of straight drains, which Mr. 
Howitz entirely disapproves, has acted as if 
water were poison instead of nutriment. 
In the past by felling the mountain-woods, 
and in the present by planting no successors, 
it has done worse by tapping the supply at 
its source. Irish fruitfulness is gradually 
being drained and washed away into the 
lakes and seas, and no preparation has been 
made to replenish it.” Yet the island pre- 
sents the especial conditions for rendering 
forestry easy and beneficial. Five million 
of its twenty million acres are waste, and 
might be planted with a reasonable certainty 
of profit; and these lands would grow valu- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE. MONTHLY. 


able timber, instead of the commoner and 
cheaper kinds. The list of available trees 
includes thirty-six conifers, thirty-eight de- 
ciduous and hard-wood species, and eight 
sorts of bushes. Mr. Howitz has drawn up 
from personal inspection a scheme for plant- 
ing a hundred thousand acres every year for 
the next thirty years. By the end of that 
time a plantation, he estimates, will come to 
full productive capacity, besides having al- 
ready given incidental returns from brush- 
wood and saplings, The cost per acre, at 
the end of thirty years, will have been, at 
the highest, £20, or $100; while the lowest 
annual profits are computed, at present 
prices, at one pound, or five dollars per 
acre; and asthe demand for timber is all 
the time rising, and the area of supply nar- 
rowing, they are likely to be higher. 


The Training of a Medicine-Man.—The 
medicine-man among the Indians of French 
Guiana, who is called the piaye, is priest, 
doctor, wizard, and mountebank, chiefly the 
last, all in one. He prepares himself for his 
office by going through a course of special 
training, full of terrible experiences, to 
which he submits willingly for the sake 
of the advantages he expects to gain. The 
candidate, who is supposed to have had 
some kind of a call to the office, must ob- 
ligate himself to submit, without ‘flinching, 
to all the processes of discipline that are to 
be imposed upon him. Except for a little 
instruction in the concoction of poisons, the 
discipline has no reference to the medical 
art. For six months he is put upon a diet 
of manioc, which he must feed himself with 
his feet, using his hands only to guide his 
feet to his mouth; then he is allowed dried 
fish, to be taken in the same way, and to- 
baceo, of which he must swallow the juice. 
Having survived this for a year, he is “ex- 
amined” by being held under water till he 
is almost strangled, and then made imme- 
diately to walk over red-hot coals, deliber- 
ately. Another year of the former regimen 
is given him to prepare for his second ex- 
amination, when he is tied up in a bag full 
of red ants, previously well shaken to a 
pitch of savage excitement. He is next 
treated to a most ingeniously devised ap- 
plication of wasp-stings, and to a trial of 
snake-bites, against which he is permitted 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


to fortify himself with antidotes. He may 
also be hung to a flexible rod by hooks 
stuck in his ribs, or-by his thumbs and 
toes, and kept awake for a week at a time. 
After this course, he is permitted to assist 
his master by beating the drum around the 
sick man’s hammock, and howling to drive 
away the evil spirits. His final trial is the 
drinking of a decoction of carrion and to- 
bacco-juice, after which he is regarded as 
fully qualified to work upon the fears of 
the tribe, and extort from them all the ser- 
vice and tithes and tribute, and levy all the 
black-mail his victims can be forced to pay. 
As for medical treatment, there is none of 
it, not even the herb-doctoring; and this 
constitutes the chief advantage of the sys- 
tem. 


Treatment for Inebriate Patients,—At 
the last meeting of the American Social 
Science Association, T. D. Crothers, M. D., 
read a paper in which he stated that, by a 
strange shifting of events, insanity, which 
was supposed to be a spiritual affection un- 
til a comparatively recent date, is now stud- 
ied as a physical disorder; while, inebriety, 
which was regarded as a disease twenty 
centuries ago, is still invested with the su- 
perstition of a spiritual origin. If it were 
a moral disorder, it would diminish with the 
growth of morality and intelligence, but, not- 
withstanding the advance in these direc- 
tions, it is rapidly increasing. The reve- 
nue returns for twenty years bring out this 
fact clearly. In 1862 the revenue collected 
from liquors was six millions; in 1882 it 
had reached eighty-six millions, an increase 
far beyond that of the population ; yet this 
does not indicate the enormous increase in 
sales by the local dealer, of which there are 
no records. The law assumes the correct- 
ness of the theological theory of inebriety, 
which affirms it to be a vice. The remedy, 
of course, is punishment by fine and im- 
prisonment, which never cures or prevents 
drinking, but, on the contrary, weakens and 
enfeebles the victim, rendering him less cura- 
ble. Very much in the same way, the pun- 
ishment of insanity and witchcraft always 
made its victim worse. The hygienic influ- 
ences of jails and prisons are wanting in 
every respect, and adverse to any general 
healthy growth of body and mind, Theonly 


572 


compensation to the inebriate is the removal 
of alcohol, and the state, in doing this, 
most terribly unfits him, and makes him 
more helpless for the future. The heredi- 
tary nature of many cases of inebriety is 
well established. It is estimated that over 
sixty per cent of all inebriates inherit a de- 
fective brain and nerve organization. Mod- 
erate drinking always leaves an impress on 
the next generation. In heredity from in- 
ebriety there is transmitted a special nerve 
defect, which, from certain exciting causes, 
will always devclop into inebriety, or one of 
its family group of disorders—consump- 
tion, insanity, pauperism, criminality, ete. 
Another form of injury that is obscure, but 
equally prominent as a cause of inebriety, 
is mental shock, that is, the effect of sudden 
grief, alarm, loss, sorrow, or other depress- 
ing emotion, which brings on a form of 
nervous derangement that finds relief in 
the narcotic effect of alcohol. Children 
from inebriate, insane, or defective parents 
require a special education. It is a fact 
beyond all doubt that the education of to- 
day, applied irrespective of the natural ca- 
pacity of the person, and along unphysio- 
logical lines, literally destroys and unfits a 
large class for healthy and rational living. 
Probably the largest class of inebriates in 
this country is without means of support. 
Dr. Crothers recommends that this class 
should come under legal recognition, and be 
committed to workhouse hospitals located 
in the country. These hospitals should be 
training-schools, in which medical care, oc- 
cupation, and physical and mental training 
could be applied for years, or until the in- 
mates had so far recovered as to be able to 
become good citizens and self-supporting. 


Old-World Origin of the American In- 
dians.—M. Dabry de Thiersant, a French 
author, has published a book on the “ Ori- 
gin of the Indians of the New World and 
of their Civilization,” in which he asserts 
that “everything authorizes the supposition 
that the New World was peopled, at an 
epoch difficult to determine, by colonies of 
the Mongolian race, coming over by way of 
Behring’s Strait or of the Aleutian Islands.” 
They were followed by the immigration of 
another race which played an important 
part in the development of American civili- 


572 


zation, an Aryo-Turanian race, from Scythia. 
The author describes the probable steps of 
these immigrations, and assigns the part the 
Aryans took in the construction of the an- 
cient civilization of the country, in plausi- 
ble conjectures, which, however ingeniously 
drawn and stated, lack the essential quality 
of being known facts. He might, however, 
have had some substantial foundations on 
which to rest his hypotheses, had not the 
Spanish conquerors taken the pains to de- 
stroy all the monuments and records they 
could place their hands upon. 


The Mask-Dances of New Ireland.— 
Herr Weisser, who has recently been cruis- 
ing in the South Sea Islands, has commu- 
nicated to Dr. Bastian some interesting facts 
respecting the use of masks by the savages 
of New Ireland and some of the’ neighbor- 
ing islands. A kind of feast of masks takes 
place once a year, in the early days of May, 
and is made an occasion when hostile tribes 
meet each other in peace for that day only 
—and, possibly, for finding pretexts for 
another year’s hostilities. Tribes that are 
neighbors are constantly at war with each 
other, and hardly a weck passes but some 
person of one of the tribes is killed and 
eaten by members of another. Such is the 
course of life through the year, till the fes- 
tival of peace and masks. During this time 
the brave carves out, adorns, and paints 
his mask according to his own notion, and 
generally with considerable artistic skill. 
Hence the masks in a large tribe will ex- 
hibit a great variety of patterns. Great care 
is taken that no one shall see the mask, for 
it is very important that the identity of the 
owner shall be concealed. When the work 
is finished, the owner puts his mark on it, 
and takes it to the mask-house. When the 
time comes for the parade of the masks, the 
champions put them on, having arrayed 
themselves for the occasion in red shirts 
of bark, and skirts reaching to their knees. 
They then go out armed to the neighboring 
tribes, giving notice of their approach by 
the blowing of conchs and the beating of 
their wooden drums. When the hostile tribe 
is reached, the mask-dance is executed with 
a set of extraordinary movements, and then 
they all fall to eating together, not without 
some restraint, for instances of treachery 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


have been known in which poison was con- 
cealed in tempting looking sago- cakes. 
Peace lasts till night, when the masks are 
inspected, compared, criticised, and jeered 
at with every manifestation of contempt. 
The last part of the proceedings excites 
mutual anger, and furnishes the occasion 
for the next year’s hostilities. 


Why we walk in Cireles.—The reason 
that, when lost or not able to see, we walk 
in a circle, is still undetermined. Mr. 
George H. Darwin believes that it is be- 
cause we are right or left legged, our “leg- 
gedness” being generally the converse of 
our “handedness,” and that therefore right- 
handed men, being left-legged, are most apt 
to deviate to the right, and left-handed men 
to the left. Himself and Mr. Galton and 
others, making personal experiments in 
walking blindfolded, found themselves de- 
scribing circles not more than fifty yards 
in diameter, to the right. Of eight school- 
boys, six, who were totally right-handed, 
strode longer from left to right than from 
right to left, hopped on the left leg, and 
rose in jumping from that leg; one boy 
pursued the opposite course; and the last 
walked irregularly, with no average differ- 
ence between his strides. Walking on a 
match for straightness, the left-legged boys 
all diverged to the right, the seventh boy to 
the left, and the eighth won the prize, 
Measurements of Mr. Darwin’s own stride, 
and of the strides of his friends, showed 
the same connection between divergence 
and comparative length of stride. Mr, 
Thomas Hawksley believes that the reason 
for the divergence is to be found in differ- 
ences in the length of the legs, not enough 
to affect the visible step, but sufficient to 
reveal itself in a considerable walk. 


Siberian Superstitions.—A Russian of- 
ficer, who has spent several months in that 
region, has given a curious picture of the 
Yarchans, or the people of Yarkino, in 
Northern Siberia, who, while in the organi- 
zation of their communal life they conform 
quite closely to the Russian system, have so 
little communication with the world that 
they still remain almost in a primitive con- 
dition, and the grossest superstitions prevail 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


among them. When the moon is eclipsed, 
they think it is bewitched ; they regard green 
trees as living and having souls; and they 
consider sickness a kind of foreign, baleful 
element that has intruded itself into the or- 
ganism. Sleep is conceived to be some- 
thing apart and independent of the body, 
and the idea of disturbing sleep is incom- 
prehensible to them. They think that, if 
a man has sleep, he will keep on sleeping in 
spite of all that can be done, but that, when 
sleep has left him, the slightest movement 
will arouse him. They believe in spirits of 
the wood, and of the tree, fire, house, and 
bath, not with the abstract, half-belief of 
the Russian peasant, but with a full con- 
fidence in their existence as practical reali- 
ties. “I am convinced,” says the Russian 
officer, “ that the Yarchan peasant is accus- 
tomed to begin nothing without previous 
incantations and mysterious manipulations. 
Father Wood-Spirit is besought not to drive 
away the squirrels during the hunt; the 
spirit of the bath is asked for permission to 


go into the bathing-place; and the Yarchan | 


is not willing to go to his bath alone for fear 
of being troubled by the spirit. So permis- 
sion is asked of the wood-spirit before fell- 


ing a tree. All petitions of this kind are | 


accompanied with peculiar symbolical for- 
mulas. Incantations are in use for the gun, 
in behalf of the cattle, against diseases, and 
for every occupation of the day and hour. 
Of course, there is little room for rational 
medicine among such a people, and incan- 
tations, holy water, and amulets are chicfly 
relied upon to meet the effects of bewitch- 
ing. A wizard’s cap was formerly set up 
on the road leading to Yarkino, to prevent 
the entrance of plagues and witches. The 
town clerk had it taken away, and the whole 
community complained of the act to the offi- 
cial board. A wood-fire—that is, a fire that 
has been kindled by rubbing two sticks to- 
gether—plays an important part as a pro- 
phylactic against infections and all kinds of 
disease. When an epidemic breaks out, the 
use of matches is forbidden, all fires are 
extinguished, and a new wood-fire is kindled 
in the street, whence all the household fires 
must be replenished. If, while this is go- 
ing on, any fire is lit by means of matches 
or flints, the procedure is vitiated, and has 
to be gone over again from the beginning. 


573 


Virchow on the Origin of Bronze.— 
At the recent meeting of the German An- 
thropological Society in Treves, Profes- 
sor Virchow spoke on the origin of the 
bronze age. Some archzologists supposed 
that the composition of the bronze alloy 
was discovered at different places and in 
different times independently of one an- 
other; but against this view was the fact 
that the composition of the bronze found 
everywhere, from the Caucasus to the Pil- 
lars of Hercules, is identical—nine parts of 
copper to one of tin. Considering the ques- 
tion of original discovery, the speaker did 
not regard the evidence in favor of the claim 
of the Pheenicians as strong enough to jus- 
tify the ascription of the honor to them, 
though they may have been active as spread- 
ers of bronze. Hochstetter’s theory that 
the metal was the property of the whole 
Aryan race, and had been their common 
possession before they left their Asiatic 
home, was opposed by geographical and 
archzological considerations. Nevertheless, 
Professor Virchow believed that the civili- 
zation of Central Europe was the develop- 
ment of Aryan influence. 


The Ideal Zoélogieal Garden.—Mr. The- 
odore Link protests, in “ The American Nat- 
uralist,” against the usual arrangement of 
zodlogical gardens. As distinguished from 
menageries, or “shows,” the object of zoé- 
logical gardens, according to the constitu- 
tions and by-laws of most of them, is the 
study and dissemination of a knowledge of 
the natural habits of the animal kingdom. 
To fulfill this definition, the gardens should 
furnish opportunities for the study, “and 
these the disappointed zodlogist seeks in 
vain. In fact, in this respect, the zodlogi- 
cal garden of to-day affords but few more 
advantages than any of those traveling 
shows that come here every season... . 
I have simply found that an animal, as 
closely confined as most of them are in zo- 
ological gardens, retains none of its natural 
habits; it only exists—a mere automaton ; 
and even this existence is seemingly under 
protest. Therefore this aforesaid ‘ study and 
dissemination of a knowledge, etc.,’ is ‘a de- 
lusion and a snare.’” In the zodlogical 
gardens, as he conceives it, “the foremost 
condition will be the rational construction 


574 


of inclosures—not cages—liberal in extent, 
and in strict accordance with the respective 
habits and instincts of the animals to be 
confined. Cages can not well be avoided by 
traveling menageries ; in zodlogical gardens 
they are inexcusable.” In the landscape feat- 
ures of a zoélogical garden, the aim should 
be to unite beauty withuse. The surround- 
ings should imitate, as near as the climate 
permits, the scenic characteristics of the 
homes of the various specimens. ‘This 
would be a pleasant delusion to both visitor 
and animal. These widely different styles of 
scenery should, of course, be blended into a 
harmonious and well-balanced composition 
by a very guarded and gradual transition, 
thus affording delightful surprises at every 
step.” 


The One Hundred Cataracts of the Igua- 
zu (South America),— One of the most 
remarkable systems of waterfalls in the 
world is described by Herr Gustav Nieder- 
lein, who last year made an exploration of 
the Paran& River into the Argentine prov- 
ince of Misiones. The falls are called 
the One Hundred Cataracts of the Iguazu, 
a stream which at that point defines the 
boundary between the Argentine Republic 
and Brazil. The river, which is about three 
miles wide at a short distance above, falls 
from the Albert Archipelago in a three- 
quadrant arc, which is compared with that 
of the Victoria Falls, a descent of about one 
hundred and seventy feet. The falls ap- 
pear in three divisions, called the Brazilian, 


Island, and Argentine Falls, or as Herr Nie- 


derlein prefers to style them, the Emperor 
Dom Pedro, the Emperor William, and 
the General Roca falls. The first excel in 
grandeur, the last in beauty, while the Em- 
peror William falls, less extensive, and 
situated between the other two, impinge 
upon the handsomely wooded Emperor 
William's Island. The Dom Pedro Fall 
plunges a sheer depth of forty or fifty metres 
into a narrowly contracted basin, whence 
flows the Brazilian arm of the Iguazu, into 
which farther down the island-cataracts pour 
their masses. The bow-shaped Argentine 
Fall is broken into two stages, the upper 
one of which is divided by the interposi- 
tion of a rocky mass into two minor bows, 
so that it is really a kind of triple fall. 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


This triple cataract feeds the smaller Ar- 
gentine arm of the river, which joins the 
Brazilian arm farther on. Not far from 
these falls the stream receives from the Ar- 
gentine side the two Bosetti Falls, which, 
issuing from side-clefts, throw their water- 
masses over a ledge, about fifty feet high, 
upon a rocky platform, whence they imme- 
diately plunge into the Iguazu. Still below 
these are fourteen smaller falls, and, final- 
ly, the Prince Bismarck Cataract, which 
falls with a descent broken into two falls, 
about one hundred and twenty-five feet into 
a gulf fringed with the primitive sub-tropi- 
cal forest. About ten miles below this, the 
Iguazu, now about six hundred and sixty 
feet wide, unites with the Parana. 


The Southern Andes and Patagonia,— 
Dr. Karl Martin, of Jena, has recently pub- 
lished a description of the Patagonian wil- 
derness and the lower Andes, from his own 
observations. The Andes do not stretch in 
a continuous chain to Cape Horn, asis often 
supposed, but are broken south of Central 
Chili by several interruptions. Down to the 
volcano of Villarica, in south latitude 39°, 
they are a solid range ; but below that peak 
the mountains fail far below the sixteen thou- 
sand feet which it attains. From its south- 
ern slope the Shoshuenco River, the chief af- 
fluent of the Valdivia, penetrates the mount- 
ains through a pass of only about thirteen 
hundred feet above the sea, receiving its 
water from a lake which is separated only 
by a low ridge from the waters of the 
Limai, a stream flowing into the Atlantic. 
The mountain standing between this and 
the next pass of three thousand feet in 
height is 8,700 feet high, while south of it 
are lower mountains, between which a num- 
ber of little known but not very elevated 
passes lead into the Patagonian highland. 
A view from the hills surrounding the city 
of Osoruo shows a number of considerable 
mountains with no connecting ridge between 
them, and, in the south, a chain of three 
peaks. One of these peaks, the shapely 
cone of the voleano of Osoruo, rises from 
between two lakes, into one of which flows 
from the east the Puella, a stream whose 
source is in the glacier of the Tronador, 
ten thousand feet high. Near it and sepa- 
rated by a pass of only twenty-nine hun- 


NOTES. 


dred feet high, flows the Rio Frio from an- 
other glacier, into the Nahuelhuapi Lake, 
the largest lake in Patagonia, from which 
the Limai, the principal river of the country, 
flows to the Atlantic Ocean. The chain of 
the Andes is again broken at this point by 
a deep gorge; and the passes continue to 
diminish in height as we gosouth, The idea 
that the Patagonian Andes form a continu- 
ous marked boundary to the table-land of 
the country is a mistaken one. The line is 
frequently broken by ravines that reach far 
back into the interior; and Captain Simp- 
son, of the Chilian marine, has found the 
sources of two of the principal western 
rivers not far from the center of the 
country. At other points the sea makes 
extensive cuts into the land, forming deep 
bays and fiords, between which the land 
pushes out its sharply serrated peninsulas, 
Archipelagoes, in which Simpson has count- 
ed more than a thousand islands, lie before 
and within the bays. The largest of the 
islands is Chiloe; a few of them are level, 
but most of them are mountainous and 
steep, while all are thickly wooded. The 
coast-lines are sharply indented, and the 
slopes in the neighborhood of the Straits 
a Magellan, those of Cape Froward, Tierra 

el Fuego, and Cape Horn, with whose cinct- 
ure of evergreen beeches the verdant man- 
tle of the Patagonian wilderness descends 
to the sea, are very rugged. 


Effect of Sewage on. River-Water.— 
Franz Hulna has examined the water of 
the river Oder above Breslau, in its course 
through the city, and for fourteen kilo- 
metres, or about ten miles, below the town, 
to determine the effect of sewage upon 
its purity. From the point where the 
water-supply of Breslau is pumped up to a 
little above the town, the water undergoes 
a slight but appreciable deterioration, but 
after filtration is quite suitable for domestic 
uses. In passing through the city a con- 
tinuous change for the worse takes place, 
which is manifested by the increase of oxi- 
dizable matter and of chlorine, and by a 
hundred-fold augmentation of ammonia and 
albuminoid ammonia. Microscopic exami- 
nation disclosed the abundant presence of 
organisms of putrefaction. Farther down 
was observed a gradual process of self-puri- 


575, 


fication by contact with oxygen, along with 
the co-operation of vegetable and animal 
life in the stream. At fourteen kilometres 
below the city the influence of sewage could 
not be detected, either by the chemical or 
the microscopic examination; but the water 
was of the same composition as at the sup- 
ply-station above. 


_ NOTES. 


At the June mecting of the Iowa Acade- 
my of Science, the president, A. R. Fulton, 
exhibited specimens of native copper, found 
in the drift of Iowa, which were in all re- 
spects similar to the native copper of the 
Lake Superior region. In his accompanying 
paper, Mr. Fulton accounted for their occur- 
rence in this situation by saying that the 
Lake Superior region was undoubtedly their 
original home, and that they had been trans- 
ported by the ice-stream of the Glacial 
epoch, which apparently at some time had 
flowed in a southwesterly direction. The 
occasional finding of fragments of the com- 
mon sulphate of lead in the drift, southwest 
from the lead-region about Dubuque, would 
indicate the same movement. 


Proressor Moerra, formerly director of 
the observatory at Santiago, Chili, died at 
Dresden, Saxony, April 2d, in the fifty-ninth 
year of his age. He was born near Cassel, 
and educated at Marburg. He went to Chili, 
where our Gilliss was making observations 
on the solar parallax, in 1850, and eventu- 
ally participated in the observations. When 
Gilliss returned home in 1852, the Chilian 
Government put him in charge of the ob- 
servatory. He also held a professorship in 
the university. He returned to Europe in 
1865, chargea with a commission by the Goy- 
ernment to purchase a telescope, but did not 
go back to Chili on account of his health. 
His observations are embodied partly in the 
** Annales de la Universidad de Chile” and 
partly in the “‘ Astronomische Nachrichten.” 


M. J. P. L. Grrarpry, a French chemist of 
considerable distinction, died early in June, 
in the eighty-third year of hisage. He was 
for thirty years Professor of Chemistry ap- 
plied to the Arts in Rouen, where he made 
special researches in fertilizers, and intro- 
duced improvements into the processes of the 
manufactures carried on there that proved 
to be of great importance. He was after- 
ward a dean of the Faculty of Lille, and rec- 
tor of the Academy at Clermont. He pub- 
lished some considerable works, the most 
important of which was his “ Lessons in Ele- 
mentary Chemistry ” in five volumes. 


576 


Dr. Ler, of England, asserts that car- 
bolic acid is the best substance for disinfect- 
ing the air, because, when combined with 
water and boiled, it evaporates with the 
steam in a constant ratio, so that the steam 
contains the same relative quantity of the 
acid as the water from which it is evapo- 
rated. Consequently, the acid can be evenly 
distributed to the air in a constant and ex- 
actly regulated proportion, a property which 
no other equally efficient disinfectant pos- 
sesses in so perfect a degree. 


Mr. Coartes Warkins Merririezp, F. R. 
§., whose especial field was in mathematics 
and the exact scienees, died at Hove, Eng- 
land, January Ist, aged fifty-six years. He 
was for many years Honorary Secretary of 
the Royal Institute of Naval Architects. He 
became Vice-Principal of the South Ken- 
sington School of Naval Architecture and 
Marine Engineering in 1867, and was after- 
ward made principal of that institution ; and 
was Vice-President of the Mechanical Section 
of the British Association in 1875, and Presi- 
dent of the same in the following year. He 
made the report of the Association on the 
stability and propulsion of sea-going ships 
in 1869; was President and Treasurer of 
the London Mathematical Society; and was 
* oien and editor of mathematical text- 

ooks. 


Accorp1né to the estimates of botanists, 
trees are capable of very long life. De Can- 
dolle gave the age of an elm at 335 years. 
The age of some palms has been set down 
at from 600 to 700 years; that of an olive- 
tree, at 700 years ; of a plane-tree, at 720; of 
a cedar, at 800; of an oak, at 1,500; ofa 
yew, at 2,880; of a taxodium, at 4,000; and 
of a baobab-tree, at 5,000 years. 


An electric light has been put in the 
lighthouse on Razza Island, at the entrance 
to the harbor of Riode Janeiro. It has an 
intensity of 120,000 carcels, or sixty times 
that of the best oil-lamp. It is visible by 
its reflection in the sky, so visible as to at- 
tract the attention of those who were not 
aware of its existence, for a distance of thir- 
ty-five miles, or three miles and a half be- 
yond the farthest point at which it can be 
seen by direct vision, and for a mile farther 
out to those who know where to look for it. 


TRAVELERS have sometimes told of swarms 
of lepidopterous insects appearing on vessels 
at sea at certain distances from the coast of 
South America, and have supposed that they 
were brought from the pampas by the south- 
west wind, called the pampero, Dr. Fromont, 
of Brussels, has given an account of a swarm 
consisting of several varieties of insects that 
made their appearance when the wind was 
blowing against the coast, and had to be ac- 
counted for in some other way. On looking 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


into the hold, there were found, among the 
bananas and other fruits with which the ves- 
sel was loaded, many remains of chrysalises 
and chrysalises ready to burst; and it was 
obvious that the insects had been developed 
in the cargo. Larve of coleopterous insects 
are also believed to be packed with the dried 
meat that is shipped from Buenos Ayres, and 
to give rise, in due time, to other unpleasant 
appearances. 


M. Nerepot has received a gold medal 
from the Natural Science Society of Moscow, 
for his account of a flint-implement factory 
found by him in the Vetlouga district, gov- 
ernment of Kostroma, the first establishment 
of the kind of which remains have been dis- 
covered in Russia. He has collected six 
thousand specimens of cut flints and other 
objects of the stone age, including articles 
in bone and clay. They are all remarkably 
primitive in character and form, and none 
polished. 


Specimens of paper and pasteboard made 
from the old moss of the Scandinavian bogs 
have been offered in the markets. The 
pasteboard is as hard as wood, and is easily 
painted and polished; and it is believed to 
have, for certain purposes, advantages over 
wood, of which it has the best qualities 
without the faults. It does not split or 
warp. Under the hydraulic press it acquires 
a consistency and a resisting power much 
superior to what can be given to pasteboard 
of straw. 


Sir Josern Fayrer, President of the Brit- 
ish Medical Society, is authority for the sto- 
ry that in nearly every Himalayan village 
the native baby is placed in a trough into 
which a stream of water is constantly trick- 
ling. This falling upon the vertex of the 
cranium induces sleep, in which children will 
lie in their troughs for hours, while their 
mothers are at their work. 


An Assyrian record of a transit of Venus 
in the sixteenth century B. c. has been de- 
ciphered by Professor A. H. Sayee. 


Tur Harvard students have now had the 
direction of Dr. D. H. Sargent in their phys- 
ical training, and the use of the Hemenway 
Gymnasium, over four years. The averages 
of the relative development and strength of 
the ten strongest students using the gymna- 
sium each year, computed from Dr, Sargent’s 
elaborate tests and measurements, show a 
rapid advance during this period: 


Develop- | Total 
Age. Weight. ment, | strength, 
Kilos 
See 21°6 72°2 528°7 | 655°2 
1881 . 2.0000 21-1 73°9 533°T | 676°9 
TPES accacegies 20°9 69°4 526°9 | 84's 
1888 :... Secce 21:1 71°8 583°2 | 898"4 
1686... ssncce 21°6 70°8 541°4 | 1018 0 


J. PETER LESLEY. 


THE 


POP UPAR: SCIEN OF 
MONTHLY. 


SEPTEMBER, 1884. 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE: 


ITS SPIRIT, ITS AIM, AND ITS METHODS.* 
By JOSIAH PARSONS COOKE. 


ASSUME that most of those whom I address are teachers, and 

that you have been drawn here by a desire to be instructed in the 
best methods of teaching physical science. It has therefore seemed 
to me that I might render a real service, in this introductory address, 
by giving the results of my own experience and reflection on this sub- 
ject ; and my thoughts have been recently especially directed to this 
topic by the discussion in regard to the requisites for admission, which 
during the past year have actively engaged the attention of the faculty 
of this college. 

At the very outset of this discussion we must be careful to make a 
clear distinction between instruction and education—between the ac- 
quisition of knowledge and the cultivation of the faculties of the 
mind. Our knowledge should be as broad as possible, but, in the 
short space of human life, it is not, as a rule, practicable to cultivate, 
for effective usefulness, the intellectual powers in more than one 
direction. 

Let me illustrate what I mean from that department of knowledge 
which is at once the most fundamental and the most essential. I refer 
to the study of language. No person can be regarded as thoroughly 
‘educated who has not the power of speaking and writing his mother- 
tongue accurately, elegantly, and forcibly; and scholars of the present 
day must also command, to a considerable extent, both the French 


* An address delivered at the opening of the Summer School of Chemistry at Harvard 
College, July 7, 1884. 
VOL. XXV.—37 


578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


and the German languages. These three languages, at least, are the 
necessary tools of the American scholar, whatever may be the special 
field of his scholarship, and his end is gained if he has acquired thor- 
ough command of these tools. But if he goes further, and studies the 
philology of these languages, their structure, their derivation, their 
literature, the study may occupy a lifetime, and be made the basis of 
severe intellectual training. More frequently, and as most scholars 
think more effectually, such linguistic training is obtained by the 
study of the ancient languages, especially the Latin and the Greek, and 
no one questions the value and efficiency of this form of mental disci- 
pline. But obviously such a preparation is not necessary for the use 
of the modern languages as tools, or in order to acquire a knowledge 
of ancient history, of the modes of ancient life, or the results of an- 
cient thought. In recent discussions a great deal has been said about 
the value of classical learning, and it has been argued that no man 
could be regarded as thoroughly educated who had never heard of 
Homer or Virgil, of Marathon or Cannez, of the Acropolis of Athens 
or the Forum of Rome. Certainly not. But all this knowledge can 
be acquired without spending six years in learning to read the Latin 
and Greek authors in the original, or in writing Latin hexameters or 
Greek iambics. The discipline acquired by this long study is un- 
doubtedly of the highest value, but its value depends upon the intel- 
lectual training, which is the essential result, and not upon the knowl- 
edge of ancient life and thought, which is merely an incident. 

Now, this same distinction, which I have endeavored to illustrate 
on familiar ground, must not be forgotten in considering the relations 
of physical science to education. Physical science may also be studied 
from two wholly different points of view: First, to acquire a knowl- 
edge of facts and principles, which are among the most important 
factors of modern life ; secondly, as a means of developing and train- 
ing some of the most important intellectual faculties of the mind—for 
example, the powers of observation, of conception, and of inductive 
reasoning, 

The experimental sciences must often be studied chiefly from the 
first point of view. If no man can be regarded as thoroughly edu- 
cated who is ignorant of the outlines of Roman and Greek history ; 
one who knows nothing of the principles of the steam-engine, or 
of the electric telegraph, is certainly equally deficient. I do not 
question that in most of our high-schools the physical sciences must 
be taught, for the most part, as funds of useful knowledge, and in 
regard to such teaching I have only a few remarks to make. As- 
suming that information is the end to be attained, the best method 
of securing the desired result is to present the facts in such a way 
as will interest the scholar, and thus secure the retention of these 
facts by his memory. I think it a very serious mistake to at- ~ 
tempt to teach such subjects by memoriter recitations from a text- 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 599. 


book, however well prepared. This method at once makes the subject 
a task ; and, if in addition the preparation for an examination is the 
great end in view, it is wonderful how small is the residuum after the 
work is done. Such subjects can always be made intensely interesting 
if presented by lectures, with the requisite illustrations, and I do not 
believe that the cramming process required to pass an examination 
adds much to the knowledge previously gained. Many teachers, find- 
ing that the parrot-like learning of a text-book is unprofitable, attempt 
to make the exercise more valuable by means of problems—usually 
simple arithmetical problems—depending upon principles of physics 
or chemistry. And there can be no doubt that such problems do 
serve to enforce the principles they illustrate ; but I am afraid they 
also more frequently, by disgusting the student, stand in the way of 
the acquisition of the desired knowledge. 

It must not be forgotten, in studying the results of science, that 
the facts are never fully learned unless the learner is made to under- 
stand the evidence on which the facts rest. The child who reads in 
his physical geography that the world revolves on its axis, learns 
what to him is a mere form of words, until he connects this astronomi- 
cal fact with his own observation that the sun rises in the east and 
sets in the west ; and so the scholar who reads that water is composed 
of oxygen and hydrogen has acquired no real knowledge until he has 
seen the evidence on which this fundamental conclusion rests. Let,. 
then, the sciences be taught as they have been in schools, as important 
parts of useful knowledge, but let them so be taught as to engage the 
interest of the scholar, and to direct his attention to the phenomena 
of Nature. 

All this, however, is not scientific culture, in the sense in which I 
have constantly used the term, and does not afford any special train- 
ing for the intellectual faculties. For myself, I do not desire any 
study of natural history, chemistry, or physics from this point of view 
as a preparation for college ; simply because, with the large apparatus 
of the university, all these subjects can be presented more effectively, 
and be made more interesting, than is possible in the schools. What 
I desire to see accomplished by our schools is a training in physical 
science, comparable in extent and efficiency with that which they now 
accomplish in the ancient languages. And this brings me to another 
topic, namely, scientific culture as a system of mental training. 

Before attempting to state in what scientific culture consists, we 
shall do well, even at the expense of some repetition, to show that 
what often passes for scientific culture is far different from the sys- 
tem of education which we have so constantly advocated. The acqui- 
sition of scientific knowledge, however extensive, does not in itself 
constitute scientific culture, nor is the power of reproducing such 
knowledge, at a competitive examination, any test of real scientific 
power. Nevertheless, the examination papers which have been pub- 


580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


lished by the universities of England and of this country show that 
this is the sole test of scientific scholarship on which most of these uni- 
versities rely, in awarding their highest honors to students in physical 
science. The power of so mastering a subject as to be able to repro- 
duce any portion of it with accuracy, completeness, and elegance, at a 
written examination, is the normal result of literary, not of scientific, 
culture, and the power is of the same order, whether the subject- 
matter be philology, literature, art, or science. Indeed, scientific are, 
as a rule, much less adapted than literary subjects to the cultivation 
of this power. Moreover, it is also true that scholars, having attained 
to a very high degree of scholarship, may not possess this power of 
stating clearly and concisely the knowledge they actually possess. 
We have all of us known eminent men, possessing in a very high 
degree the power of investigating Nature, who have been wholly 
unable to state clearly the knowledge they have themselves discov- 
ered. Great harm has been done to the cause of scientific culture 
by attempting to adapt the well-tried methods of literary schol- 
arship to scientific subjects: for, as I have said in another place, 
competitive examinations are no test of real attainment in physical 
science. | 

Let me not be understood as disparaging the retentive memory 
and power of concentration which enable the student to reproduce 
acquired information with accuracy, rapidity, and elegance. This is 
a power of the very highest order, and is the result of the cultivation 
to a high degree of many of the noblest faculties of the mind. All I 
wish to enforce is, that success in such examinations is no indication 
of scientific culture, properly so called. 

What, then, are the tests of true scientific scholarship? The an- 
swer can be made perfectly plain and intelligible. The real test is the 
power to study and interpret natural phenomena. As in classical 
scholarship the true test of attainment is the power to interpret the 
delicate shades of meaning expressed by the classical authors, so in 
science the true test is the power to read and interpret Nature ; and 
this last power, like the other, can as a rule only be acquired by care- 
ful and systematic training. As some men have a remarkable facility 
for acquiring languages, so also there are men who seem to be born 
investigators of Nature ; but by most men such powers can only be ac- 
quired through a careful training and exercise of the faculties of the 
mind, on which success depends. No man would be regarded as a 
classical scholar, however broad and extended his knowledge, if that 
knowledge had been acquired solely by reading English translations of 
the classical authors, however excellent. So, no man can be regarded 
as a scientific scholar whose knowledge of Nature has been solely de- 
rived from books. In either case the real scholar must have been to 
the fountain-head and drawn his knowledge from the original sources. 
In order, then, to discover how scientific culture must be gained, we 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 581 


must consider the conditions on which the successful study and inter- 
pretation of Nature depend. 

Of the powers of the mind called into exercise in the investigation 
of Nature, the most obvious and fundamental is the power of observa- 
tion. By power of observation is not meant simply the ability to see, 
to hear, to taste, or to smell with delicacy, but the power of so con- 
centrating the attention on what we observe as to form a definite and 
lasting impression on the mind. There are undoubtedly great differ- 
ences among men in the acuteness of their sensations, but successful 
observation depends far less upon the acuteness of the senses than on 
the faculty of the mind which clearly distinguishes and remembers 
what is seen and heard. We say of a man that he walks through the 
world with his eyes shut, meaning that, although the objects around 
him produce their normal impression on the retina of his eye, he pays 
no attention to what he sees. The power of the naturalist to distin- 
guish slight differences of form or feature in natural objects is simply 
the result of a habit, acquired through long experience, of paying atten- 
tion to what he sees, and the want of this power in students who have 
been trained solely by literary studies is most marked. 

An assistant who was at the time conducting a class in miner- 
alogy, once said to me: “What amIto do? One of my class can 
not see the difference between this piece of blend and this piece of 
quartz ” (showing me two specimens which bore a certain superficial 
resemblance in color and general aspect). My answer was, “ Let him 
look until he can see the difference.” And, after a while, he did see 
the difference. The difficulty was not lack of vision, but want of atten- 
tion. 

The power of observation, then, is simply the power of fixing the 
attention upon our sensations, and this power of fixing the attention 
is the one essential condition of scholarship in all departments of learn- 
ing. It is a power which ought to be cultivated at an early age, 
and in a system of scientific culture the sciences of mineralogy and 
botany afford the best field for its culture, and I should therefore place 
them among the earliest studies of a scientific course. Minerals and — 
plants may be profitably studied in the youngest classes of our second- 
ary schools, but they should be studied solely from specimens, which 
the scholar should examine until he can distinguish all the character- 
istics of form, feature, or structure. Iam told that in many of our 
secondary schools both mineralogy and botany are studied with great 
success and interest in the manner I have indicated. But a mistake is 
frequently made in attempting to do too much. With mineralogy or 
botany as classificatory sciences, our secondary schools should have 
nothing to do. The distinction between many, even of the common- 
est, species of minerals or plants depends upon delicate distinctions 
which are quite beyond the grasp of young minds, and the study of 
botany frequently loses all its value, through the ambition of the teacher 


582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


to embrace so much of systematic botany as will enable scholars “ to 
analyze plants.” 

If a child, twelve or fourteen years of age, is made to observe 
the characteristic qualities of a few common minerals so as to enable 
it to recognize them in the rocks, and is likewise led to examine the 
structure of a few familiar flowers, not only will a new power have 
been acquired, but a new interest will have been added to life. 

Of course, the faculty of observation thus early exercised in child- 
hood only attains the highest degree of development after long experi- 
ence and continued practice. The acuteness which practice gives is 
frequently very remarkable, and rude men often surprise us by the 
extent to which their power of observation has been cultivated in cer- 
tain special directions. The sailor who recognizes the outlines of to 
him a well-known coast, where the ordinary traveler sees nothing but 
a bank of clouds, or the miner who recognizes in the rock indications 
of valuable ores, are illustrations which may give a clearer conception 
of the nature of the power we have been attempting to describe. 

Naturally following the power of observation in the order of edu- 
cation is the power of conception with the cognate power of abstrac- 
tion ; that is, the power of forming in the mind distinct and accurate 
images of objects, and relations, which have been previously appre- 
hended either by direct observation, or through description ; and also 
the power of confining the attention to certain features which these 
images may present to the exclusion of all others. This is a power 
which depends very greatly on the imagination and is capable of being 
cultivated to a very high degree. There is no study which is so well 
suited to the training both of the powers of conception and of abstrac- 
tion as the study of geometry. 

To this end the study of geometry should be begun at an early 
period in school-life, and it should be studied at first not as a series of 
propositions logically connected, but as a description of the properties 
and relations of lines, surfaces, and solids—what has sometimes been 
called “the science of form.” A text-book prepared on this idea by 
Mr. G. A. Hill forms an admirable introduction to the study. 

I esteem very highly the system of geometry of Euclid, either in 
its original form or as it has been modified by modern writers, as a 
means of developing the logical faculty. The completeness of the 
proof of the successive propositions and their mutual dependence by 
means of which, as on a series of steps, we mount from simple axiomatic 
truths to the most complex relations, furnish an admirable discipline 
for the reasoning power; but too often the whole value of this dis- 
cipline is lost by the failure of the pupil to form a clear conception of 
the very relations about which he is reasoning, and the study becomes 
an exercise of the memory and nothing more. Often have I seen a 
conscientious and faithful student draw an excellent figure, and write 
out an accurate demonstration, without noticing that the two were not 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 583° 


mated ; and in arecent meeting of teachers of our best secondary schools 
it was gravely asserted that solid geometry was the most difficult study 
with which the teachers had to deal. In solid geometry, however, the 
reasoning is no more difficult than in plane geometry, but the concep- 
tions are far more complex, and, if the teacher insisted that the pupil 
should not take a single step until his conceptions were perfectly clear, 
all the difficulties would disappear. Of this I am fully persuaded, for 
I have had to encounter the same difficulties over and over again in 
teaching crystallography. In beginning the study of geometry, of 
course the power of conception should be helped in every possible 
way. Let your pupil find out by actual measurement that the sum of 
the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles, and he will easily 
discover the proof of the proposition himself. So also, if he actually 
divides with his knife a triangular prism made from a potato or an 
apple into three triangular pyramids, he will find no difficulty in fol- 
lowing the reasoning on which the measurement of the solid contents 
of a sphere depends. Let me assure teachers that the study of geom- 
etry, taught as I have indicated, is a most valuable introduction to the 
study of science. But, as it has been usually taught as a preparation 
for college, it is almost worthless in this respect, however valuable it 
may be as a logical training. 

I consider practice in free-hand drawing from natural objects a 
most valuable means of training both the power of observation and 
the power of conception, besides giving a skill in delineation which 
is of the greatest importance to the scientific student. Accuracy 
of drawing requires accuracy in observation, and also the ability to 
seize upon those features of the object which are the most promi- 
nent and characteristic. Hence, in a course of scientific training, the 
importance of practice in drawing can hardly be exaggerated, and it 
should be made one of the most important objects of school-work from 
an early period. 

To the scientific student the powers of observation and conception 
are not sought as ends in themselves, but as means of studying Na- 
ture. The precise portions of this wide field to which the attention 
of the student shall be directed will be determined by many circum- 
stances, and it is not our purpose in this address to lay down a plan 
of study. To most students the natural history subjects offer the 
most attractive field; but all, I think will admit, that the experi- 
mental sciences should form a considerable portion, at least, of the 
course of all scientific students, whatever specialty may subsequently 
be chosen. That on which I desire particularly to dwell is the spirit 
in which all these studies should be pursued ; and I can best illustrate 
what I mean by confining my remarks to that subject in which I am 
most interested, and in regard to which I have the greatest experience. 

In a course of scientific study, chemistry can not be dissociated from 
physics, and the two sciences ought to be studied to a great extent in 


584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


connection with each other. Not only does the philosophy of chem- 
istry rest upon physical conceptions ; but, moreover, chemical methods 
involve physical principles. There is, however, a distinction to be 
made ; for, while some of the departments of physics are best studied 
as a preparation for chemistry, there are other subjects which are best 
deferred until the student has some knowledge of chemical facts. 
Among the preliminary subjects we should mention elementary me- 
chanics, including hydrostatics and pneumatics, and also thermoties ; 
while electricity, acoustics, and optics, including the large subject of 
radiant energy, may well be deferred until after the study of chemistry. 

In the study both of chemistry and physics there are of course two 
definite objects to be kept in view: In the first place, a knowledge 
of the facts of the science is to be acquired ; in the second place, the 
student must learn by experience how these facts have been discovered. 
It would be obvious, from a moment’s reflection, that a knowledge of 
the cireumstances under which the facts of Nature are revealed to the 
student is essential to a complete apprehension of the facts themselves. 
The child who is taught that the earth moves in an elliptical orbit 
around the sun in one year does not in the least grasp the wonderful 
fact thus stated, and will not come to realize it until he connects the 
statement with the nightly precession of the stars in the heavens. And 
it is just such a connection as this which the teacher must seek to 
establish in all scientific teaching. In experimental science such a 
connection is most readily established in the mind of the student by 
means of a series of well-arranged experiments, which each one repeats 
for himself at the laboratory table. Obviously, however, it is impos- 
sible, in a limited course of teaching, to go over the whole ground of 
chemistry or physics in this way, or even over that small portion of 
the ground with which the average scientific student can expect to 
become acquainted. Nor is this necessary ; for, after one has realized 
the connection between phenomena and conclusion in a number of 
instances, the mind will fully comprehend that a similar connection 
exists in other cases, and will understand the limitations with which 
scientific conclusions are to be received. 

Hence, it seems to me that, in teaching chemistry or physics, it is 
best to combine a course of lectures which should give a broad view 
of the whole ground with a course of laboratory instruction, which 
must necessarily be more or less restricted. Experimental lectures 
are, I am convinced, much the best way of presenting these subjects 
as systematic portions of knowledge. It is not necessary that the 
lectures should be formal, but it is all-important that they should be 
given in such a way that the interest of the student should be awakened, 
and that they should be fully illustrated by specimens and experiments. 
What we read in a book does not make one half the impression that 
is produced by the words of a living teacher, nor can we realize the 
facts unless we see the phenomena described. There is undoubtedly, 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 585. 


however, an advantage to be gained in subsequently reviewing the 
subject as presented ina good text-book, and such a book may be of 
great usé in preparation for an examination. But how far examina- 
tions are of value in enforcing the acquisition of knowledge of an ex- 
perimental science is a question on which I feel a grave doubt. Cer- 
tainly their value is very small if, as is too frequently the case, they 
lead the student to defer all effort to make his own the knowledge 
presented in the lectures, until a final cram. 

The management of lectures, text-books, and examinations, will 
not, however, offer nearly so great difficulties to the teacher as the 
management of the parallel experimental course of laboratory teach- 
ing. In the last the methods are less well tried and demand of the 
teacher a very considerable amount of invention and experimental 
skill. To follow mechanically any text-book would result in a loss of 
the proper spirit with which the course should be conducted and which 
constitutes its chief value. No experiments are so good as those which 
have been devised by the teacher, or, still better, by the pupils them- 
selves. A mere repetition of a process, according to a definite descrip- 
tion, has no more value than a repetition of a form of words in an 
ordinary school recitation. The teacher must make sure that the stu- 
dent fully understands what he is about, and comprehends all the con- 
nections between observations and conclusions which it is his affn to 
establish. Moreover, he must constantly encourage his students to 
think and work for themselves, and direct them in the methods of in- 
ductive reasoning. The failure of an experiment may be made most 
instructive if the student is led to discover the cause of the failure. 
A leak in his apparatus may be turned to a similar profit if the student 
is shown how to discover the leak, by carefully eliminating one part 
after another until the weak point is made evident. 

The direction of an experimental laboratory is no easy task. The 
teacher must make each man’s work his own, and follow his processes 
of thought as well as his experiments with the most careful attention. 
With large classes much time can be saved by going through each 
process on the lecture-room table and giving the directions to the class 
as a whole ; but this does not supersede the personal attention and in- 
struction which each student requires at the laboratory table. More- 
over, in laboratory teaching the teacher must rely, as we have said, on 
his own resources, and but few aids can be given. There are books, 
however, sehich will help the teacher to prepare himself for his work, 
and I am happy to say that a book entitled “The New Physics,” 
prepared by my colleague, Professor Trowbridge, is now being printed, 
which I hope will greatly promote the laboratory teaching of phys- 
ics. Nicholl’s abridgment of Eliot and Storer’s “ Manual” has long 
served a similar valuable purpose in chemistry, and there are many 
excellent works on “Qualitative Analysis,” a study which is admirably 
adapted to develop the power of inductive reasoning. 


586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


There is, however, a danger with all laboratory manuals, which 
must be sedulously avoided, and the danger is generally greater the 
more precise the descriptions. They are apt to induce mechanical 
habits which are fatal to the true spirit of laboratory teaching. Not 
long ago I asked a student, who was working in our elementary labo- 
ratory, what he was doing. He answered that he was doing No, 24, 
and immediately went for his book to see what No. 24 was. I fear 
that a great deal of laboratory work is done in a way which this anec- 
dote illustrates, and, if so, it is a mere waste of time. 

When teaching qualitative analysis it was always with me a con- 
stant struggle to prevent just such a result, and many of the excellent 
tables which have been prepared to facilitate analysis simply encour- 
age the evil practice. It is an error to which college students, with 
their exclusively literary preparation, are especially liable, and I have 
no question that the proper conduct of our laboratories would be 
made much easier if the students came with a previous scientific 
training. 

Thus far I have dealt solely with generalities, and my object has 
been not so much to give definite directions as to make suggestions 
which might lead to better systems of teaching. The details of these 
systems may vary widely, and yet all may lead to the desired result if 
only“the true spirit of scientific teaching is preserved, and a teacher’s 
own system is generally the best system for him. This leads me to 
explain my own system of teaching chemistry—which presents some 
novelties that may be of interest, and, although it has been worked out 
in detail in the revised edition of the “‘ New Chemistry,” just published, 
still a few words of explanation may be of value at this time in setting 
forth its salient points. 

Chemistry has been usually defined as the science which treats of 
the composition of bodies, and in most text-books the aim has been to 
develop the scheme of the chemical elements, and to show that, by 
combining these elements, all natural and artificial substances may be 
prepared. In the larger text-books, which aim to cover the whole 
ground and to describe all known substances, such a method is both 
natural and necessary. But, as an educational system, this mode of 
presenting the subject is, as a rule, profitless and uninteresting. The 
student becomes lost amid details which he can only very imperfectly 
grasp, and the great principles of the science, as well as their relations 
to cognate departments of knowledge, are lost sight of. Moreover, 
the system is unphilosophical, because it presents the conclusions of 
chemistry before the observations on which they are based. Any 
one who has attempted to teach chemistry from the ordinary element- 
ary text-books must have experienced the truth of what I have said. 

A student learns a lesson about sodium and the various salts of this 
metal, and, after glibly reciting the words of the text-book, how much 
raore does he know of the real relations of these bodies than he did 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 587 


before? Thus. Chloride of sodium symbol, NaCl. Crystallizes in 
cubes. Soluble in water. Solubility only slightly increased by heat. 
Generally obtained by evaporation of sea-water in pans. Also found 
in beds in certain geological basins from which it is extracted by min- 
ing. When acted upon by sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid is evolved 
and sodic sulphate is formed, according to the following reaction, 
and soon. I have known a student to recite all this and a great deal 
more, without ever dreaming that he had been eating chloride of sodi- 
um on his food, three times a day at least, since he was born. 

Now, the rational system of teaching chemistry is first to present 
to the scholar’s mind the phenomena of Nature with which the science 
deals. Lead him to observe these phenomena for himself ; then show 
him how the conclusions which together constitute that system of 
knowledge we call chemistry have been deduced from these funda- 
mental facts. My plan is to develop this system in the lecture-room 
in as much detail as the time allotted will permit ; to illustrate all the 
points by experiment, and in addition to explain more in detail care- 
fully selected fundamental experiments, which the student subse- 
quently repeats in the laboratory himself. Thus I make the lecture- 
room instruction and the laboratory demonstration go hand in hand as 
complementary parts of a single course of teaching. 

To begin with the subject-matter of chemistry. In the broad 
fields of Nature what portion does this science cover? Natural phe- 
nomena may obviously be divided into two great classes: First, those 
changes which do not involve a transformation of substance ; and, 
secondly, those changes whose very essence consists in the change of 
one or more substances into other substances having distinctive prop- 
erties. The science of physics deals with the phenomena of the first 
class ; the science of chemistry with those of the last. Any phenom- 
enon of Nature which involves a change of substance is a chemical 
change, and in every chemical change one or more substances, called 
the factors, are converted into another substance or into other sub- 
stances called the products. The first point to be made in teaching 
chemistry is, that a student should realize this statement, and a num- 
ber of experiments should be shown in the lecture-room and repeated 
in the laboratory illustrating what is meant by a chemical change. 

Here, of course, arises a difficulty in finding examples which shall 
be at once simple and conclusive, for in almost all natural phenomena 
there is a certain indefiniteness which obscures the simple process. 
The familiar phenomena of combustion are most striking examples of 
this fact, and men were not able to penetrate the mist which obscured 
them until within a hundred years. To find chemical processes whose 
course is obvious to an unpracticed observer, we are obliged to resort 
to unfamiliar phenomena. 

A very simple example of a chemical process is a mixture of sul- 
phur and zinc in atomic proportions, which, when lighted with a 


588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


match, is rapidly converted into white sulphide of zinc, with appear- 
ance of flame. Another example, a mixture of sulphur and fine iron- 
filings, which, when moistened with a little water, rapidly changes 
into a black sulphide of iron, Then some copper filings, which, when 
heated on a saucer in the open air, slowly change into black oxide of 
copper. Then a bit of phosphorus, burned in dry air under a glass 
bell, yielding a white oxide. Next, some zinc, dissolved in diluted sul- 
phuric acid, yielding hydrogen gas and sulphate of zinc. Then, a solu- 
tion of chloride of barium added to a solution of sulphate of soda, 
giving a precipitate of sulphate of baryta, and leaving in solution 
common salt, which can be recovered by evaporating the filtrate. 

In all these examples the student should be made to see and handle 
all the factors and all the products of each process, and the experi- 
ments should be selected so that he may become familiar with the dif- 
ferent conditions under which substances appear, and with various 
kinds of chemical processes. He should also be made clearly to dis- 
tinguish between the essential features of the process and the different 
accessories, which may be more or less accidental—such, for example, 
as the water used in determining the combination of iron and sulphur, 
or the flame which accompanies combustion. 

After a clear conception has been gained of a chemical process, 
with its definite factors and definite products, we are prepared for the 
next important step. Every chemical process obeys three fundamental 
laws : 

The Law of Conservation of Mass, 
The Law of Definite Proportions. 
The Law of Definite Volumes. 

According to the first law, the sum of the weights of the products 
of a chemical process is always equal to the sum of the weights of the 
factors. This law must now be illustrated by experiments, and ap- 
proximate quantitative determinations should be introduced thus early 
into the course of study. All that is required for this purpose is a 
common pair of scales, capable of weighing two or three hundred 
grammes, and turning with a decigramme. We use in our laboratory 
some platform-scales, made by the Fairbanks Company, which are in- 
expensive, and serve a very useful purpose. 

A very satisfactory illustration of the law of conservation of mass 
can be obtained by inserting in a glass flask a mixture of copper fil- 
ings and sulphur in atomic proportions. The glass flask is first bal- 
anced in the scale-pan ; then removed and gently heated until the 
ignition which spreads through the mass shows that chemical combina- 
tion has taken place. The flask is lastly allowed to cool, and on re- 
weighing is found not to have altered in weight. 

For a second experiment, a bit of phosphorus may, with the aid of 
some simple contrivance, be burned inside a tightly corked glass flask, 
of sufficient volume to afford the requisite supply of oxygen. Of course, 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 589 


on reweighing the flask, after the chemical change has taken place, 
and the bottom of the flask covered with the white oxide formed, there 
will be no change of weight, and this experiment may be made to en- 
force the truth that, in this example of combustion at least, the chemi- 
cal process is attended with no loss of material. Open now the flask, 
and air will rush in to supply the partial vacuum, proving that in the 
process of combustion a portion of the material of the air has united 
to form the white product. 

Make now a third experiment as an application of the general prin- 
ciple which has been illustrated by the previous experiments. Burn 
some finely divided iron (iron reduced by hydrogen) on a scale-pan, 
and show that the process is attended by an increase of weight. What 
does this mean? Why, that some material has united with the iron to 
form the new product. Whence has this material come? Obvious- 
ly from the air, for it could come from nowhere else. And thus, 
besides illustrating the first of the above laws, this experiment may 
be made to furnish an instructive lesson in regard to the relations of 
the oxygen of the atmosphere to chemical processes. 

The second law declares that in every chemical process the weights 
of the several factors and products bear a definite proportion to each 
other. This law must next be made familiar by experimental illustra- 
tions. A weighed amount of oxide of silver is placed in a glass tube 
connected with a pneumatic trough. The tube is gently heated until 
the oxide is decomposed and the oxygen gas collected in a glass bottle 
of sufficient size. The metallic silver remaining in the tube is now re- 
weighed, and the volume of the oxygen gas in the bottle measured, and 
from the volume of the gas its weight is deduced. The measurement 
is easily made by simply marking with a gummed label the level at 
which the water stands in the bottle. If, now, the bottle is removed 
from the pneumatic trough and the weight of water found which fills 
the bottle to the same height, the weight of the water in grammes will 
give the volume of the gas in cubic centimetres, and, knowing the 
weight of a cubic centimetre of oxygen, we easily calculate the weight 
of this gas resulting from the chemical process. We have now the 
weights of the oxide of silver, the silver, and the oxygen, the one fac- 
tor and the two products of the chemical process, and, by comparing 
the results of different students making the same experiment, the con- 
stancy of the proportion will be made evident to the class. 

For a second illustration of the same law, the solution of zine in 
dilute sulphuric acid, yielding sulphate of zinc and hydrogen gas, may 
be selected, and the weight of the hydrogen, estimated as in the pre- 
vious example, shown to sustain a definite relation to the weight of the 
zine dissolved. 

Again, silver may be dissolved in nitric acid, and the weight of the 
nitrate of silver obtained shown to sustain a definite relation to the 
weight of the metal. 


590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Or, still further, as an experiment of a wholly different class, a 
known weight of chloride of barium may be dissolved in water, and, 
after precipitation with sulphuric acid, the baric sulphate collected by 
filtration and weighed, when the definite relation between the weight of 
the precipitate and the weight of the chloride of barium will appear. 

For a last experiment let the student neutralize a weighed amount 
of dilute hydrochloric acid with aqua ammonia, noting approximately 
the amount of ammonia required. Let him now evaporate the solu- 
tion on a water-bath, and weigh the resulting saline product; taking 
next the same quantity of hydrochloric acid as before, and, having 
added twice the previous quantity of ammonia, let him obtain and 
weigh the resulting sal-ammoniac as before. <A third time let him 
begin with half the quantity of hydrochloric acid, and, adding as much 
ammonia as in the first case, again repeat the process. It is obvious 
what the result of these experiments must be, but, without telling the 
student what he is to expect, it will be a good exercise to ask him to 
draw his own inferences from the results. Of course, he must pre- 
viously have so far been made acquainted with the properties of hydro- 
chloric acid and ammonia as to know that the excess of either would 
escape when the saline solution was evaporated over a water-bath. But 
with this limited knowledge he will be able to deduce the law of definite 
proportions from the experimental results thus simply obtained. 

The third of the fundamental laws of chemistry stated above (gen- 
erally known as the law of Gay-Lussac) declares that, when two or 
more of the factors or products of a chemical process are aériform, the 
volumes of these gaseous substances bear to each other a very simple 
ratio. Here, again, numerous experiments may be contrived to illus- 
trate the law. Water, when decomposed by electricity, yields hydro- 
gen and oxygen gases whose volumes bear to each other the ratio of 
two to one. When hydrochloric-acid gas is decomposed by sodium 
amalgam, the volume of the original gas bears to that of the residual 
hydrogen the ratio also of two to one. When ammonia is decomposed 
by chlorine, the volume of the resulting nitrogen gas is one third of 
that of the chlorine gas employed. 

Having illustrated these three general laws, attention should be 
directed to the fact that the nature of a chemical process and the laws 
which it obeys are results of observation and involve no theory what- 
soever. On these facts the science of chemistry is built. The modern 
system of chemistry, however, assumes what is known as the molecu- 
lar theory, and by means of this theory attempts to explain all these 
facts and show their relation to each other. Here the distinction be- 
tween fact and theory must be insisted upon, and also the value of 
theory for classifying facts and directing observation. | 

A molecule is now defined, and, if the student has not studied phys- 
ics sufficiently to become acquainted with the outlines of the kinetic 
theory of gases, this theory must be developed sufficiently to give the 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. — vet 


student a knowledge of the three great laws of Mariotte, of Charles, 
and of Avogadro. He must be made to understand how molecules are 
defined by the-physicist, and how their relative weights may be in- 
ferred by a comparison of vapor densities. He should then be made 
to compare the relative molecular weights, deduced by physical means, 
with the definite proportions he has observed in chemical processes. 
He will thus himself be led to the conclusion that these definite pro- 
portions are the proportions of the molecular weights, and that the 
constancy of the law arises from the fact that in every chemical pro- 
cess the action takes place between molecules, and that the products of 
the process are new molecules, preserving always, of course, their defi- 
nite relative weights. The student will thus be brought to the chemi- 
eal conception of the molecule as the smallest mass of any substance 
in which the qualities inhere, and he will come to regard a chemical 
process as always taking place between molecules. 

Thus far nothing has been said about the composition of matter. 
A chemical process has been defined simply as certain factors yielding 
certain products, but nothing has been determined about the relations 
of these several substances except in so far as they are defined by the 
three laws illustrated above. But now it must be shown that a study 
of different chemical processes compels us to conclude that in some 
cases two or more substances unite to form a compound, while in other 
cases a compound is broken up into simpler parts. Thus, when copper 
filings are heated in the air, it is evident that the material of the cop- 
per has united with that portion of the air we call oxygen to form the 
black product we call oxide of copper ; and again, when oxide of silver 
is heated, it is evident that the resulting silver and oxygen gas were 
formerly portions of the material of the oxide. So, when water is de- 
composed by electricity, the conditions of the experiment show that 
the resulting oxygen and hydrogen gases must have come from the 
material of the water, and could have come from nothing else. 

Experiments should now be multiplied until the student has a per- 
fectly clear idea of the nature of the evidence on which our knowledge 
of the composition of bodies depends. The decomposition of chlorate 
of potash by heat, yielding chloride of potassium and oxygen gas ; 
the decomposition of nitrate of ammonium by heat, yielding nitrous 
oxide and water ; the decomposition of this resulting nitrous oxide, 
when the gas is passed over heated metallic copper ; and, lastly, the de- 
composition already referred to, of water by electricity, are all strik- 
ing experiments by which the evidence of chemical composition may 
be enforced. 

The distinction between elementary and compound substances hav- 
ing been clearly defined by the course of reasoning already given in 
outline, the next aim should be to lead the student to comprehend how 
substances are analyzed and their composition expressed in percents. 
The reduction of oxide of copper by hydrogen gives readily the data 


592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


for determining the composition of water, which is thus shown to con- 
tain in one hundred parts 11°11 per cent of hydrogen and 88°89 per 
cent of oxygen. 

Another substance whose analysis can be very readily made by the 
student is carbonate of magnesia. By igniting pure carbonate of mag- 
nesia in a crucible (not of course the “magnesia alba” of the shops), 
the proportions of carbonic acid and magnesia can be readily deter- 
mined. Then, by burning magnesium ribbon, and weighing the prod- 
uct, the student easily finds the relative weight of magnesium and 
oxygen in the oxide. And, lastly, the proportion of carbon and oxygen 
in carbonic dioxide is easily deduced from the burning of a weighed 
amount of carbon. Here the result may be expressed either in per- 
cents of oxide of magnesium and carbonic dioxide, or else in percents 
of the elementary substances, carbon, magnesium, and oxygen. 

After making a few analyses like these, the student will be pre- 
pared to comprehend the actual position of the science. All known 
substances have been analyzed, and the results tabulated, so that it is 
unnecessary to repeat the work except in special cases. 

The teacher is now prepared to take a very important step in the 
development of the subject. If the molecule is simply a small par- 
ticle of a substance in which the qualities of the substance inhere, then 
it follows, of course, that the composition of the molecule is the same 
as the composition of the substance. The percentage results of the 
analysis of water, or of carbonate of magnesia, indicate the composition 
of a molecule of water or a molecule of carbonate of magnesia. Thus, 
11°11 per cent of every molecule of water consists of hydrogen, while 
88°89 per cent consists of oxygen. Hence it follows that, in a chemical 
process, the molecules must be divided, and these elementary parts of 
molecules which analysis reveals are the atoms of chemistry. More- 
over, as we know the weights of the molecules, both by physical and 
chemical means, chemical analysis now gives us the weights of the 
atoms. We have no time to dwell on the details of this reasoning, 
but the general course to be followed will be evident, and it must be 
enforced by numerous examples. 

Assuming that the student fully comprehends the distinction be- 
tween molecules and atoms—that is, between the physically smallest 
particles and the chemically smallest particles—he is prepared to mas- 
ter the symbolical nomenclature of chemistry, with a very few words 
of explanation. The initial letters of the Latin names are selected to 
represent the atoms of the seventy known elementary substances, and 
these letters stand for the definite atomic weights which are tabulated 
in all chemical text-books, The symbols of the atoms are simply 
grouped together to form the symbols of the molecules of the various 
substances ; the number of atoms of each kind entering into the 
composition of the molecule being indicated by a subscript numeral. 
Lastly, in order to represent chemical processes, the symbols of the 


SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 593° 


molecules of the factors are written on one side and the symbols of 
the molecules of the products are written on the other side of an equa- 
tion, the number of molecules of each substance involved being indi- 
cated by numerical coefficients. 

The atomic symbols, as we have seen, stand for definite weights. 
In the same way, the molecular symbols stand for definite weights, 
which are the sums of the weights of the atoms of which each consists, 
and in every chemical equatien the weights of the molecules repre- 
sented on one side must necessarily equal the weights of the molecules 
represented. on the other. The chemical process consists merely in the 
breaking up of certain molecules, and the rearrangement of the same 
constituent atoms to form new molecules. Again, as the molecular 
symbols represent definite weights, the equation also indicates that a 
definite proportion by weight is preserved between the several factors 
and products of the process represented. 

Again, since every molecular symbol represents the same volume 
when the substance is in an aériform condition, it follows that the 
relative gas volumes are proportional to the number of molecules of 
the aériform substances involved in the reaction. Thus it is that these 
chemical equations or reactions are a constant declaration of the three 
great fundamental laws of chemistry. 

In order to enforce the above principles, a great number of exam- 
ples should now be given which should be so selected as to illustrate 
familiar and important chemical processes, including the all-important 
phenomena of combustion. In each case, the student, having made 
the experiment, should write the equation or reaction which represents 
the process, and should be made to solve a sufficient number of 
stochio-metrical problems, involving both weights and volumes, to 
give him a complete mastery of the subject. Such questions as these 
will test the completeness of his knowledge : 

Why is the symbol of water H,O? What information does the 
symbol CO, give in regard to carbonic-dioxide gas? Write the re- 
action of hydrochloric acid on sodic carbonate, and state what infor- 
mation the equation gives in regard to the process which it represents. 

Of course, such questions may be greatly multiplied, and I cite 
these three only to call attention to the features of the method of 
instruction I have been endeavoring to illustrate. 

But, besides teaching the general principles of chemical science, it 
is important to give the student a more or less extended knowledge of 
chemical facts and processes—especially such as play an important 
part in daily life, or in the arts—and such knowledge can readily be 
given in this connection. Beyond this I do not deem it desirable to 
go in an elementary course of instruction. The way, however, is now 
opened to the most advanced fields of the science. A comparison of 
symbols and reactions leads at once to the doctrine of quantivalence, 
and to the results of modern structural chemistry, which this doctrine 

VOL, xxv.—38 


594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


involves. Among these results there is of course much that is fanci- 
ful, but there is also a very large substratum of established truth ; and 
if the student thoroughly comprehends the symbolical language of 
chemistry, and understands the facts it actually represents, he will be 
able to realize, so far as is now possible, the truths which underlie the 
conventional forms. 

The study of the structure of molecules naturally leads to the 
study of their stability, and of the conditions which determine chemi- 
cal changes, and thus opens the recently explored field of thermo- 
chemistry. To be able to predict the order and results of possible 
conditions of association of materials, or of chemical changes under all 
circumstances, is now the highest aim of our science, and we have 
already made very considerable progress toward this end. But I 
have detained you too long, and I must refer to the “‘ New Chemistry ” 
for a fuller exposition of this subject. My object has been gained if 
I have been able to make clear to you that it is possible to present the 
science of chemistry as a systematic body of truths independent of 
the mass of details with which the science is usually encumbered, and 
make the study a most valuable means of training the power of induct- 
ive reasoning, and thus securing the great end of scientific culture. 


> em 
—S 


THE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER SYSTEM. 
By LESTER F. WARD, A. M. 


HE Missouri River, as is well known, is the larger of the two 
great branches which unite to form the Lower Mississippi, dis- 
charging at its mouth 120,000 cubic feet of water per second, while 
the Upper Mississippi discharges only 105,000 cubic feet per second. 
It is therefore itself properly the Upper Mississippi. The perpetually 
turbid character of its waters is a familiar fact to the ordinary reader, 
even if he has never seen them. 

It is proposed to state a few facts, derived from a season’s personal 
observation in the valley of the Upper Missouri and of its nearly equal 
tributary, the Yellowstone, which may account for this condition, and 
serve to explain the peculiar form of erosion that characterizes this 
river system, 

The upper portion of these rivers, where they flow through mount- 
ain-gorges, form deep cajions, and leap over wild cascades, is, of course, 
more interesting than their lower portions, where the flow, though 
rapid, is tolerably uniform through valleys of considerable width and 
among low sand-bars and islands of their own creation. As a conse- 
quence of this, we find that it is this upper portion that has received 
the chief attention by writers and explorers, who hasten through the 


THE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER SYSTEM. 595° 


duller parts of the country and make only a meager record of them. 
Another reason for this has been that it is in the region of country 
about the sources of these rivers that the most profitable mining and 
agricultural enterprises have been conducted, and large and thriving 
settlements, even cities, have grown up there, unaided by railroad con- 
nections, and communicating with the civilized world by overland 
routes—not along the river-valley, but across the country from the 
south, uniting this region with the Salt Lake Basin. It is thus that 
Helena, Bozeman, Virginia City, and, to a large extent, Fort Benton, 
now a thriving town, have come into existence, cut off, as it were, on 
the east, with the great valleys through which the waters of this re- 
gion are led back to the inhabited parts of the country in a condition 
akin to unexplored. This was especially the case with the Yellow- 
stone Valley prior to the construction of the Northern Pacific Rail- 
road. 

The Yellowstone, from its rapid current of about three miles per 
hour, its frequent sand-bars, shoals, rapids, and other obstructions, is 
scarcely navigable at all ; while the Upper Missouri, though navigable 
with great difficulty in high water as far as Fort Benton, or even to 
its Great Falls, forty miles above that point, a i a sad history 
of wrecks, disasters, and failures. 

The Yellowstone and Upper Missouri Rivers flow in an easterly 
direction, nearly parallel to each other and at a distance of about one 
hundred miles apart, at least for the lower half of their course. Above 
the Musselshell, which stretches nearly across the intervening space, 
the country is more or less mountainous, the fall of the water is more 
rapid, the bottom usually gravelly or rocky, the valleys narrow, and 
the water clear except in times of flood. Below the Musselshell of 
the Missouri and the Big Horn of the Yellowstone, nearly opposite, 
this Mesopotamian region consists of an elevated plain wholly desti- 
tude of arborescent vegetation. Its elevation, though not sufficient 
to be called mountainous, is considerable, and is formed by several 
distinct rises or terraces. The summit is a level plain, and contains 
large lakes or marshes in which wild-geese and other water-fowls in 
immense numbers breed and rear their young. From this plateau long 
valleys, sometimes of considerable width, descend to the rivers, carrying 
streams of water which, in some cases, persist throughout the year. 
The highest part, or divide proper, between the rivers is not central 
but is nearer the Missouri, which has rugged banks on its south side, 
with some of the features of the Dakota Bad Lands. Toward the 
Yellowstone the slope is gradual, and the terraces become lower and 
lower until the river-valley proper is reached. The right bank of the 
Yellowstone for most of this distance is similar to the right bank of 
the Missouri, and toward its mouth the country lying south of the 
river is not to be distinguished from the true Bad Lands of the Little 
Missouri adjacent to it. On the other hand, whatever wide flats or 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


596 


*"NAISXG UIAIY TMAOSSIPT widdQ—'] ‘ON AVADVIG 


THE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER SYSTEM. 597 


low country the Missouri here possesses are generally to be found on 
the north or left bank of that river (see Diagram No. I). 

Without attempting a description of those strange and interesting 
mauvaises terres, which are the favorite theme of popular writers, I 
shall endeavor to give some idea of the process by which the valleys 
of these rivers have been formed and of the action of the rivers within 
their present bed. It is quite evident that the entire configuration of 
the land-surface of the region has been the result of erosion, and dis- 
tinct breaks or even low cliffs sometimes occur, showing the edges of 
the horizontal strata. At intervals of from five to ten miles small 
streams or creeks fall into the river, often entirely dry in summer, 
sometimes containing a small quantity of perfectly transparent water, 
but so charged with alkali as to whiten the pebbles over which it flows, 
and to render its use by man or beast almost impossible. These 
creeks, locally denominated coulées—a name given them by the early 
French explorers—have excavated valleys of different lengths and 
widths, and between these occur narrow plains, or even mere ridges. 
Of the immense volume of solid earth and rock that has been brought 
down by the process of eroding these terraces, creek-valleys, etc., only 
a minute fraction has been retained, but this has been deposited near 
the river, forming an alluvial bottom of varying width. This alluvial 
deposit it is the function of the river perpetually to wear away, while 
at the same time laying down new matter, with which it is constantly 
charged, to take its place. The result is, that throughout the lower 
portions of these rivers, and also in the Missouri Valley below their 
junction, the bed of the river is perpetually shifting its position in 
the general valley. When we contemplate the entire history of the 
river, the valley must be regarded as due to this process, and its great 
width relatively to that of the stream itself can only thus be accounted 
for. But, if we contemplate it only at a given time, as the present, 
the valley appears to consist of two quite distinct parts, viz., the river- 
bed and the valley proper, raised above it and gradually sloping back 
on one or both sides to the foot of the first terrace. If, in time of 
low water, we compare these two parts, the latter will appear to be 
stable, while the former will clearly show that it is unstable. There 
was probably never a time in the river’s history when these two dis- 
tinct features did not exist much as now, though no one can say how 
many times the river may have worn away the stable portion of its 
valley on one side while it was forming anew on the other, and 
afterward receded and carried off the last-formed valley, leaving its 
previous bed to be again filled up until it has regained all the aspect 
of permanence which it previously possessed. This crossing and re- 
crossing by the river-bed of the general valley, proceeding simultane- 
ously with the work of lateral erosion, have gradually lowered the 
valley to its present position and are still lowering it, In a certain 
sense this applies to all rivers and river-valleys, but nowhere perhaps 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


598 


‘AETIVA UIAIY 10 NVIG—']] ‘ON KVUDVIG 


— M4; VWWiji7 
a iY Wi WH iy, 
~—S y Yi 
= ‘4 ty }j i Yj / 
SS } /, TATE j 
ES Ui js V/ 
DO N\7/ 
N\\ WN 
\ 


| 


\ A I) 
AWA Y 


A 
Will My 


Y 


THE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER SYSTEM. 599 


on the globe does there exist a better example from which to study 
these principles of surface erosion than in the Upper Missouri River 
system. ‘This will be best seen when we consider a little more y sony 
the proper bed of the river. 

For two or three months of each year, between March and June, 
the river is high, and this state of high water is tolerably uniform 
from year to year, so as to be ina manner normal. Supplied chiefly 
from melting snows at greater and greater altitudes as the season ad- 
vances, it persists with only slight fluctuations until the supply is ex- 
hausted, when the water slowly falls to its low-water mark, where it 
remains the rest of the year with only a small amount of variation, 
because the rainfall is so light. There thus exist two distinct and 
somewhat uniform conditions of the water, each occupying its regular 
part of the year. Owing to this regularity of high water, the maxi- 
mum bed of the river produced by it is somewhat uniform and clearly 
marked, while it also bears a tolerably uniform relation to the deeper 
channel represented by the low-water state. Examined in time of low 
water, this river-bed seems to be three or four times as wide as the 
river itself. The stream, then, usually flows in serpentine curves 
which cross and recross the bed. The bed itself is also crooked much 
as is the channel, only its curves are as much longer as it is wider. 
The whole valley is usually also winding with much more ample 
curves, and the river-bed crosses and recrosses it in a manner similar 
to that in which the channel crosses and recrosses the bed. The river 
itself generally hugs one of the banks of the bed, but it is always at a 
curve, or bend, such as will tend to wear the bed on the convex side 
and thus render it more crooked. The distance traversed by the chan- 
nel in crossing from one side of the bed to the other is small, compared 
with the distance traversed while in close contact with the bank of the 
river-bed, which it is perpetually extending into the general valley. 
The reason why it does not constantly grow wider is, that on the 
abandoned side the surface is being constantly raised by deposits of 
material which the water, more sluggish on this side, can no longer 
hold. As the river shifts its position in the valley, a strip of land of 
varying width is formed each year to be gradually assimilated to the 
permanent valley (see Diagram No. II). 

If, now, we take the more general view and regard the entire valley 
as one homogeneous product, we can better study the process by which 
it has been formed. Beginning with the channel of the river we shall 
find that, except where crossing the bed, its cross-section presents a 
figure approaching more or less closely to a right-angled triangle with 
the right angle at the bottom, or deepest place. One side will then be 
formed by a steep wall or bank, which may become perpendicular 
above the surface of the water, but is not usually so below. The other 
side of the triangle represents the general bottom of the river, which 
gradually grows more shallow toward the remote side of the river-bed. 


600 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


At the deepest point, fresh erosion or corrosion is taking place, while 
the steep bank adjacent is being rapidly worn away (see Diagram 
No, II). 

The features to be described can only be satisfactorily observed in 
time of low water. The bank above the river on the deep side is then 
generally very high, often rising perpendicularly twenty feet or more 
above the surface of the water. This high bank, thus exposed to the 
view of the navigator in the river, affords a most excellent opportu- 
nity of studying the manner in which the material composing the gen- 
eral valley has been deposited, the various agencies that combined to 
form the deposit, and the approximate time required for the accumula- 
tion of a given thickness of this alluvium. 

These walls of loose earth are always very conspicuously stratified, 
the layers having various thicknesses and different colors. As many 
as a dozen distinct strata can usually be seen, often very definitely 
marked off from one another. The color of these layers enables the 
observer to determine, with considerable certainty in any case, whether 
it was due to a wash from the neighboring hills, whose color can be 
directly compared, or to a deposit from the river itself, brought in 
time of flood from points higher up, or, as is often the case, from vege- 
table. mold which long immunity from disturbance has allowed to 
accumulate. Some idea of the time occupied in the total deposit may 
be formed from the presence of forests of cottonwood (Populus moni- 
lifera, Ait.) which line the river. These trees are sometimes of great 
size, measuring three or four feet in diameter, and, although the cot- 
tonwood is a rapidly growing tree, there can be no doubt that many 
of the trees are two or three hundred years old. But the mere pres- 
ence of these forests standing upon the surface of the latest stratum 
of the general valley is by no means the only time-measure we have. 
A careful observer, though merely walking among them, might per- 
ceive that some of them have their bases buried to some little depth 
with alluvial earth or vegetable mold. This fact, which would escape 
any one who was not specially looking for evidences of it, becomes 
striking when the edges of the strata are viewed from the river. 

As the river wears away the previously formed deposits of its 
valley, it at length approaches the portion that has bad time to become 
covered with these forests. Undaunted, it attacks this portion also, 
and begins the work of felling the trees. Their roots are laid bare, 
the solid earth on which they have stood for ages is swept away, and 
one after another these ancient giants succumb to the rapacity of the 
waters, and fall powerless into the raging current. Every step in the 
process by which this result is accomplished may be seen by watching 
these eroded banks while floating down the stream. The river, as it 
passes one of these doomed forests, is choked with snags, through 
which the surging waters roar, and among which it is extremely difli- 
cult and often dangerous to guide a boat. These snags are of all 


THE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER SYSTEM. 601- 


Dracram No, Il].—Cross Section or Rrver VALuey. 


~% 
> 
x F 
S 
8 
3 
3 
8 
Hii 
Fresh Sand-bark 
Seedling Willows 
Salix longifolia 
Salix cordata 
Cottonwood. | 
~*~ 
S 
s | 
: ths 


602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ages, from the old “sawyers” that have bowed before the current 
with rhythmic regularity perhaps for centuries, to the freshly-felled 
monarchs still bearing their green leaves of the season. 

But the fact of chief interest is the presence of trees on the brink 
of these eroded walls, whose still living and healthy trunks are laid 
bare to a depth of several feet below the present surface of the 
ground. In some cases the subterranean portion occupies as many as 
four or five feet of the base of the trunk, descending through a num- 
ber of distinct strata. But even at much greater depth there are 
frequent and unmistakable relics of ancient forests long since de- 
stroyed, or, as it were, buried alive. At depths of ten or twelve feet 
below the present surface, old stumps, with roots and remains of trunks, 
are brought to light by the inroads of the river. The trees which 
these represented must have been buried deeper and deeper, in the 
same manner as existing ones are proved to be undergoing burial, until, 
unable longer to perform the functions of circulation, they died, and 
all decayed except these deeply buried parts. Sometimes even these 
are gone, and naught remains beyond a reddish stain against the ver- 
tical wall to mark the spot where once there flourished upon the then 
surface of the valley a large and healthy tree (see Diagram No. IV). 

The method thus far described of studying the mode of formation 
of the river-valley is that of analysis—the observation of the action 
of the water in disintegrating it. But we may also employ the method 
of synthesis, and study the manifest process of valley-building which 
takes place simultaneously. The river is always loading up on one 
side, and unloading on the other. The deepest part of the river near 
the high banks, as it sweeps round the great bends, is also the swiftest. 
The current grows slower and slower in the direction of the opposite 
shore, and at the same time the water grows more and more shallow, 
until at last a sand-bar is reached gradually rising out of it. If this 
proves to be the mainland, the case is simple, and we will first consider 
this simple case. This sand-bar was formed at the last period of high 
water in the spring and early summer. It therefore consists of sand 
only, without vegetation. It may have a width of fifty or a hundred 
feet when it ceases, and a distinct rise occurs, with a little terrace of 
sand, thickly covered with seedling willows, all belonging to one species 
(Salix longifolia, Muhl.), and bearing no other vegetation. The sand 
is still damp, being saturated with water from the river. This land is 
two years old. A short distance farther back another similar terrace 
is reached, bearing a thicket of this same willow, but it is now two to 
four feet high, and fruit-bearing. The land is here three years old, 
Another remove brings us to a third terrace, having larger willows and 
some other vegetation, such as is not injured by periodical floods flow- 
ing over it. This four-year-old soil is darker in color and firmer. It 
may complete the river-bed proper, or there may be still another ter- 
race. As we recede from the river, these old river-bed marks become 


603 - 


THE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER SYSTEM. 


"UNV, UAAIY AO NOMOAG Aasodxy—'A] ‘ON NVADVIG 


t l lL i" if i i L 1 i i 1 A I L i i if mi m EE: j L 1. 1 i 


= a : Lh. i A A. ak L i i L L L 1 1 yy L i L. i aa i i i i. 


i 1 
= ee ee a eS ——— OSS aS 


RAE On I I I 1 fe I T T T 
eee —— = —=s m, 
SS oe eee == — == = oon 
== == Se eS Se 
= = SUS ars oO =>: = 


uy 
Ley TAy 
rae 
LASIPy, 


604 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


gradually obliterated, and the valley seems to slope away with a gentle 
upward curve to the foot of the lowest hills. As soon as we are fairly 
out of the present river-bed the little willow gives way entirely to a 
large one (Salix cordata, Marshall), popularly known as the diamond 
willow. This species often grows very dense and in large clumps, 
forming an almost impenetrable thicket. It monopolizes the soil, and 
renders approach to the river difficult. It is at a point still more remote 
that the growth of cottonwoods begins, and these may form a belt 
half a mile to a mile in width. From the outer edge of these cotton- 
wood-forests the plain commences, and stretches back, not only across 
the remainder of the valley, but far away in an uninterrupted sea of 
grass, until another river system is reached (see Diagram No. III). 

Such, in its general outline, may be conceived to be the normal 
character of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers after they pass the 
mountainous part of their course and enter the portion where wide 
valleys prevail. But there are, of course, many deviations from this 
normal type. The fires may have destroyed the cottonwoods and wil- 
lows that line the river and occupy most of its bed, and an unbroken 
plain may extend down to the sand-bars upon its banks. These sand- 
bars may form islands around which quite brisk currents flow even in 
the dry season. Sometimes, as at Spread-Eagle Bar, on the Missouri, 
a number of such bars occur, with shallow currents between them, 
wearing them away along clean-cut faces, and shifting their position 
from place to place, giving great width to theriver. Large islands 
are often formed, which have accidentally escaped the denuding pro- 
cess, and, being beyond the reach of fires, become covered by a heavy 
growth of timber. Sometimes the bed of the river lies between two 
similar high banks, more or less central in the valley, showing that, 
instead of continuing to approach the bluffs on one side, its erosive 
action has from some cause been arrested or reversed, In such cases 
there is occasionally found a nearly equal current against each bank, 
but usually, even here, the main channel is snug against one of 
the walls, which it is rapidly carrying away, while the opposite wall 
has an ancient or obsolete appearance, with shoals or bars at its base. 
Of course, the entire configuration of the country is modified by the 
occurrence at short intervals of tributary streams with their valleys. 
These streams, in spring, contain considerable water ; but, throughout 
the summer and autumn, most of them are perfectly dry, at least at 
their point of junction with the river, whatever water they receive 
from rains or springs being evaporated in their passage across the 
arid plains. One is greatly astonished to find no water, or only a 
rivulet, at the mouths of what are called rivers, and which drain hun- 
dreds of square miles of country. 

But the Missouri and Yellowstone themselves never go dry. They 
are large and rapid streams at the dryest seasons of the year, and their 
turbid waters surge past like a resistless tide. They wear down their 


AIMS OF THE STUDY OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 605 - 


valleys by slowly crossing and recrossing them, like a turner’s chisel. 
Once at their limit on a given side, they may be imagined to halt and 
turn back. The form of the bottom is changed and the point of great- 
est activity transferred from one side to the other; the sand-bars are 
first removed, and then the willow-belt is carried away ; next they 
attack the forest of cottonwoods, and mercilessly sacrifice these ; still 
undaunted, they invade the higher parts of the valley, wear away 
wide stretches of plain, and slowly march up to the foot of the ad- 
jacent hills and mountains, which they also attack and undermine, 
until, checked by the increasing quantity of débris, and driven back 
by the very magnitude of their own trophies, they beat a retreat, only 
to repeat for the thousandth time the process which we have thus has- 
tily sketched. 


yo» 
ae 


AIMS OF THE STUDY OF ANTHROPOLOGY.* 
By Prorzsson WILLIAM H. FLOWER, F.R.8. 


«yy? of the great difficulties with regard to making anthropology 
a special subject of study, and devoting a special organization 
to its promotion, is the multifarious nature of the branches of knowl- 
edge comprehended under the title. This very ambition, which en- 
deavors to include such an extensive range of knowledge, ramifying 
in all directions, illustrating and receiving light from so many other 
sciences, appears often to overleap itself and give a looseness and in- 
definiteness to the aims of the individual or the institution proposing 
to cultivate it. 

The old term ethnology has a far more limited and definite mean- 
ing. It is the study of the different peoples or races who compose 
the varied population of the world, including their physical charac- 
ters, their intellectual and moral development, their languages, social 
customs, opinions, and beliefs ; their origin, history, migrations, and 
present geographical distribution, and their relations to each other. 
These subjects may be treated of under two aspects: first, by a con- 
sideration of the general laws by which the modifications in all these 
characters are determined and regulated—this is called general eth- 
nology ; secondly, by the study and description of the races them- 
selves, as distinguished from each other by the special manifestations 
of these characters in them. To this the term special ethnology, or, 
more often, ethnography, is applied. 

Ethnology thus treats of the resemblances and differences of the 
modifications of the human species in their relations to each other, but 
anthropology, as now understood, has a far wider scope, It treats of 


* From the President’s address, delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Anthro- 
pological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, January 22, 1884, 


606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


mankind as a whole. It investigates his origin and his relations to 
the rest of the universe. It invokes the aid of the sciences of zodlogy, 
comparative anatomy, and physiology ; and the wider the range of 
knowledge met with in other regions of natural structure, and the 
more abundant the terms of comparison known, the less risk there will 
be of error in attempting to estimate the distinctions and resemblances 
between man and his nearest allies, and fixing his place in the zodlogi- 
cal scale. Here we are drawn into contact with an immense domain 
of knowledge, including a study of all the laws which modify the 
conditions under which organic bodies are manifested, which at first 
sight seem to have little bearing upon the particular study of man. 

Furthermore, it is not only with man’s bodily structure and its re- 
lations to that of the lower animals that we have to deal ; the moral 
and intellectual side of his nature finds its rudiments in them also, and 
the difficult study of comparative psychology, now attracting much 
attention; is an important factor in any complete system of anthro- 
pology. | 

In endeavoring to investigate the origin of mankind as a whole, 
geology must lend its assistance to determine the comparative ages of 
the strata in which the evidences of his existence are found; but 
researches into his early history soon trench upon totally different 
branches of knowledge. In tracing the progress of the race from its 
most primitive condition, the characteristics of its physical structure 
and relations with the lower animals are soon left behind, and it is 
upon evidence of a kind peculiar to the human species, and by which 
man is so pre-eminently distinguished from all other living beings, 
that our conclusions mainly rest. The study of the works of our ear- 
liest known forefathers, “ prehistoric archxology,” as it is commonly 
called, although one of the most recently developed branches of knowl- 
edge, is now almost a science by itself, and one which is receiving a 
great amount of attention in all parts of the civilized world. It in- 
vestigates the origin of all human culture, endeavors to trace to their 
common beginning the sources of all our arts, customs, and history. 
The difficulty is what to include and where to stop ; as, though the 
term “ prehistoric” may roughly indicate an artificial line between 
the province of the anthropologist and that which more legitimately 
belongs to the archeologist, the antiquary, and the historian, that the 
studies of the one pass insensibly into those of the other is an evident 
and necessary proposition. Knowledge of the origin and develop- 
ment of particular existing customs throws immense light upon their 
real nature and importance ; and, conversely, it is often only from a 
profound acquaintance with the present or comparatively modern 
manifestations of culture that we are able to interpret the slight 
indications afforded us by the scanty remains of primitive civili- 
zation. 

Even the more limited subject of ethnology must be approached 


AIMS OF THE STUDY OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 607 - 


from many sides, and requires for its cultivation knowledge derived 
from sciences so diverse, and requiring such different mental attributes 
and systems of training, as scarcely ever to be found combined in one 
individual. This will become perfectly evident when we consider the 
various factors or elements which constitute the differential characters 
of the groups or races into which mankind is divided. The most im- 
portant of these are: 

1. Structural or anatomical characters, derived from diversities of 
stature, proportions of different parts of the body, complexion, feat- 
ures, color and character of the hair, form of the skull and other 
bones, and the hitherto little-studied anatomy of the nervous, muscu- 
lar, vascular, and other systems. The modifications in these structures 
in the different varieties of man are so slight and subtile, and so vari- 
ously combined, that their due appreciation, and the discrimination 
of what in them is essential or important, and what incidental or 
merely superficial, require a long and careful training, superadded to 
a preliminary knowledge of the general anatomy of man and the 
higher animals. The study of physical or zodlogical ethnology, though 
it lies at the basis of that of race, is thus necessarily limited to a com- 
paratively few original investigators. 

2. The mental and moral characters by which different races are 
distinguished are still more difficult to fathom and to describe and de- 
fine, and, although the subject of much vague statement, as there are 
few people who do not consider themselves competent to give an 
opinion about them, they have hitherto been rarely approached by any 
strictly scientific method of inquiry. 

8. Laneuacre.—The same difficulties are met with in the study of 
language as in that of physical peculiarities, in the discrimination 
between the fundamental and essential and the mere accidental and 
superficial resemblances ; and in proportion as these difficulties are 
successfully overcome will the results of the study become valuable 
instead of misleading. Though the science of language is an essen- 
tial part of ethnology, and one which generally absorbs almost the 
entire energies of any one who cultivates it, its place in discriminating 
racial affinities is unquestionably below that of physical characters. 
Used, however, with due caution, it is a powerful aid to our investi- 
gations, and, in the difficulties with which the subject is surrounded, 
one which we can by no means afford to do without. 

4, The same may be said of social customs, including habitations, 
dress, arms, food, as well as ceremonies, beliefs, and laws, in them- 
selves fascinating subjects of study, placed here in the fourth rank, 
not as possessing any want of interest, but as contributing compara- 
tively little to our knowledge of the natural classification and affinities 
of the racial divisions of man. When we see identical and most 
strange customs, such as particular modes of mutilation of the body, 
showing themselves among races the most diverse in character and 


608 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


remote geographically, we can not help coming to the conclusion that 
these customs have either been communicated in some hitherto unex- 
plained manner, or are the outcome of some common element of hu- 
manity, in either of which cases they tell nothing of the special rela- 
tions or affinities of the races which practice them. 

This subject of ethnography, or the discrimination and description 
of race characteristics, is perhaps the most practically important of 
the various branches of anthropology. Its importance to those who 
have to rule—and there are few of us now who are not called upon to 
bear our share of the responsibility of government—can scarcely be 
overestimated in an empire like this, the population of which is 
composed of examples of almost every diversity under which the 
human body can manifest itself. The physical characteristics of 
race, so strongly marked in many cases, are probably always asso- 
ciated with equally or more diverse characteristics of temper and in- 
tellect. In fact, even when the physical divergences are weakly 
shown, as in the case of the different races which contribute to make 
up the home portion of the empire, the mental and moral character- 
istics are still most strongly marked. As it behooves the wise physi- 
cian not only to study the particular kind of disease under which his 
patient is suffering, and then to administer the approved remedies for 
such disease, but also to take into careful account the peculiar idiosyn- 
crasy and inherited tendencies of the individual, which so greatly 
modify both the course of the disease and the action of remedies, so 
it is absolutely necessary for the statesman who would govern success- 
fully, not to look upon human nature in the abstract and endeavor 
to apply universal rules, but to consider the special moral, intellectual, 
and social capabilities, wants, and aspirations of each particular race 
with which he has to deal. A form of government under which one 
race would live happily and prosperously would to another be the 
cause of unendurable misery. No greater mistake could be made, 
for instance, than to apply to the case of the Egyptian fellah the 
remedies which may be desirable to remove the difficulties and dis- 
advantages under which the Birmingham artisan may labor in his 
struggle through life. It is not only that their education, training, 
and circumstances are dissimilar, but that their very mental constitu- 
tion is totally distinct. And when we have to do with people still 
more widely removed from ourselves—African negroes, American In- 
dians, Australian or Pacific islanders—it seems almost impossible to 
find any common ground of union or modus vivendi ; the mere con- 
tact of the races generally ends in the extermination of one of them, 
If such disastrous consequences can not be altogether averted, we have 
it still in our power to do much to mitigate their evils. 

All these questions, then, should be carefully studied by those 
who have any share in the government of people of races alien to 
themselves. A knowledge of their special characters and relations 


WHERE AND HOW WE REMEMBER. 609 - 


to one another has a more practicable object than the mere gratifica- 
tion of scientific curiosity ; it is a knowledge upon which the happi- 
ness and prosperity, or the reverse, of millions of our fellow-creatures 
may depend. 


= 
+> 


WHERE AND HOW WE REMEMBER. 
By M. ALLEN STARR, M. D. 


5 ine you examine the brain of a dog, or an ape, or a man, you will 
see that it is made up of two kinds of substance, gray and white. 
The gray substance, which is formed of round bodies of nervous 
matter called nerve-cells, is spread out in a thin layer over the entire 
surface of the brain. The white substance constitutes the center 
and body of the organ, and consists of white threads or nerve-fibers 
which pass in various directions through the brain and end in the cells 
of the gray matter. It is the office of the white fibers to convey mes- 
sages ; it is the office of the gray cells to dispatch them, or to receive 
and register them. | 
If a brain be properly torn apart, it can be shown that many of the 
white threads are collected into bundles. These bundles, each of 
which contains many thousand threads, can be separated from one 
another and followed to their terminations. It will then be found 
that each bundle, or tract, as it is called, connects some one organ of 
the body with some one region of the gray matter on the surface of 
the brain. For example, one tract joins the muscles of one half of 
the body with the lateral part of the opposite half of the brain ; an- 
other ascends from the surface of the body, being made up of many 
fibers, each of which comes from one little area of skin, and this tract 
ends in the surface of the brain just behind the first one; another 
bundle comes from the eye and goes to the posterior part of the brain. 
So too the ear, the nose, the tongue, send in their bundles, and each of 
these goes to a definite and separate region of the surface. And thus, 
as every part of the body is connected by its own tract with its own 
part of the gray matter, we can imagine upon the surface of the brain 
a map of the entire body laid out, and can say, as Meynert does, that 
the surface of the body is projected upon the surface of the brain. 
Each of the little white threads, like an electric wire in a cable, is 
insulated from every other by a sheath. It is therefore impossible for 
a message sent from one end of the thread to leave it; the message 
must go to the other end of the thread. Therefore, an irritation set 
up in any organ of the body is always transmitted to that part of the 
brain with which the organ is joined, and can not reach any other part 
directly, although it may do so indirectly, by means of association 
fibers which join the different regions with one another. The anat- 
VOL. xxv.—39 


610 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


omy of the brain, thus studied, gives a clear indication that the differ- 
ent regions of its surface govern different organs of the body, and 
that each region has a distinct function to perform. 

It is an admitted fact that an irritation set up at one end of a sen- 
sory nerve and sent to the brain produces a change of state in the gray 
cells which receive it. ‘That change of state is known to us as the con- 
scious perception of a sensation. The conscious perception does not 
occur in the organ irritated, nor in the nerve which carries the irrita- 
tion. It occurs in the brain. The perception of an object seen does 
not take place in the eye, nor in the optic nerve, but in the posterior 
part of the brain where the tract from the eye terminates in gray cells. 
In like manner each sensation is consciously perceived in that part of 
the brain with which the sensory organ is connected whose irritation 
produced the sensation. 

Being perceived, the sensation is in some way registered and pre- 
served, so that when a second similar irritation is sent inward we not 
only perceive it, but recognize it as a matter of former experience. 
But, independently of a second perception, we have evidence that the 
first is preserved in the fact that we can call it up to consciousness by 
a voluntary effort, and make it, by means of memory, an object of 
thought. In both these processes the same part of the brain is in 
action which originally perceived the sensation. But, as sensations are 
perceived in various regions, it becomes evident that memories are 
stored up in various regions. If this is so, our various kinds of mem- 
ory must be independent of each other, and one may be lost while oth- 
ers remain. We shall soon see that this is the fact. 

If you lay bare the brain of a dog, and carefully cut out all the 
posterior part of both halves or hemispheres, you will find, when 
the dog recovers from the operation, that it is totally and permanent- 
ly blind. It can smell, and hear, and taste. It can run about, and 
can perceive sensations of all kinds except those of sight. If from 
the brains of other dogs you cut out other parts, but leave the poste- 
rior part untouched, sight will not be affected in any case. These 
physiological experiments show that perceptions of sight occur in the 
posterior parts of the brain, the parts to which we have already traced 
the white threads from the eye. 

If, instead of cutting out the whole of the posterior part of the 
brain, you select the central portion of the posterior part, leaving a 
ring of tissue about it uninjured, the result is more interesting. (See 
Fig. 1, A,.) After a few days, when the wound is healed, you will find 
that the dog’s hearing, smell, taste, motion, and general sensation are 
in no way affected. The animal runs about the room, and, unlike the 
first dog, either avoids or jumps over any obstacle which may be put 
in his way. He can therefore see the obstacle. But the sight of other 
dogs, or of men, whom he used to recognize with signs of pleasure or 
dislike, no longer affects him at all. However hungry or thirsty he 


WHERE AND HOW WHE REMEMBER. 611 


may be, he no longer looks for his food and water in their usual places, 
and when they are put before him he does not seem to know them as 
food and water until his nose is put into them, when he recognizes 
them by other senses than sight. The sight of the whip, which used to 
make him run into a corner, does not frighten him any more, though he 
jumps when he hears it snap. He used to give his paw when the hand 
was held out for it. Now he will not do so until the word paw is 
spoken, when he holds it up as before. The dog is not blind, but he 
has lost the power of recognizing objects formerly recognized by sight. 
He has been deprived, by the operation, of his sight-memory pictures, 
or sight-imaging power. He has been put back, as far as one sense is 
concerned, into the condition in which he was when born—that is, des- 
titute of knowledge acquired by sight-perception. He acts just like a 
puppy ; for he soon begins to smell and lick objects in an inquiring 
way, and to run to and examine curiously things with which he was 
formerly familiar. He sees these things, he learns again to know them; 
in a word, he begins at once to lay in a new store of memory-pictures. 
It is only necessary to put his nose into water a few times ; after that 
he looks for and finds it when he is thirsty. Then he begins to know 
his master. The whip soon becomes again a dreaded object. And in 
the course of two or three months he has gained a new set of mem- 
ories and recognizes objects just as before the operation. 

In the first dog, the entire posterior part.of the brain was removed, 
and the dog was made permanently blind. In the second dog, a por- 
tion of this part of the brain was cut out, and the dog was deprived of 
his sight-memory. He was, however, able to recover. And, if by suc- 
cessive operations the experiment be repeated on the same dog, it will 
be found that recovery is always possible until the entire posterior 
part of the brain is removed, when, like the first dog, he becomes per- 
manently blind. The recovery then was possible because around the 
area cut out there was left a ring of gray matter which was in connec- 
tion with the eye; and in this ring of gray matter, which formerly 
contained no memory-pictures, the new memory-pictures were stored. 
All the posterior part of the brain in the dog is, therefore, a potential 
area for sight-memories. The actual area of sight-memories occupies 
only a part of the potential area. If the actual area is cut out, but a 
part of the potential area remains, the dog is temporarily deprived of 
sight-memory, but can recover. If the potential area is entirely ex- 
tirpated, the dog remains blind, and can never regain his memories. 
The distinction between actual and potential memory is important, as 
we shall see when we come to similar phenomena in man. 

The experiments just described were first made by Hermann Munk, 
Professor of Physiology in the University of Berlin, and they have 
been confirmed by many other experimenters. What has thus been 
proved of the location of perception by sight, and of sight-memories 
in the posterior part of the brain, has also been proved of other senses 


612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


and their memories. The perception of sounds and sound-memories 
are destroyed when the lower lateral part of the brain (the temporal 
region) is injured, but are not affected as long as this region remains 
intact. When the anterior portion of this region is destroyed, the 
animal becomes deaf to. sounds of a low pitch ; when the posterior 
portion is injured, high notes are no longer heard. If the region is en- 
tirely extirpated, the animal is totally and permanently deaf. If it is 
only partly extirpated, the animal loses all memory of words or com- 
mands formerly recognized, attaches no meaning to the cry of its pup- 
pies, to the snap of the whip, or to its master’s whistle. The percep- 
tion of touch and its memories are destroyed when the upper lateral 
portion of the brain is injured (the parietal region). Voluntary mo- 
tion is suspended when the antero-lateral portion is destroyed. If the 
destruction of this part is complete, the paralysis is permanent ; if 
not, recovery is possible. In all these regions the distinction between 
actual and potential obtains: if the actual area only is cut out, the 
acquisitions already gained are lost; but, as long as some of the 
potential area remains, the power to acquire is present and recovery 
is possible. 


Fie. 1, 
BRAIN OF A Doge. DIAGRAM OF MUNK. 
A. Visual area ; potential area of sight-memories. 
A,. Visual area; actual area of sight-memories before operation. 
B. Auditory area and potential area of sound-memories. B,. Actual sound-memories. 
0. Area governing motion and sensation in hind-leg of the opposite side. 
D. Area governing motion and sensation in fore-leg of the opposite side. 
#. Area governing motion and sensation in head of the Ne te side. 
¥, G. Area governing motion of the muscles of the eye and ear respectively of the opposite side. 
H, Z. Area governing motion and sensation in neck and body of the opposite side. 


Thus, by experiment, a number of regions are mapped out on the 
surface of the brain and the function of each is determined. When 
the results of the physiologists are compared with those of the anato- 
mists, they are found to agree. The area of the brain which the physi- 
ologist has shown to govern sight has been shown by the anatomist 


WHERE AND HOW WE REMEMBER, 613. 


to be connected by means of insulated white nerve-fibers with the eye. 
The area which, one says, governs touch, the other says is connected 
with the skin. The area which one proves to be concerned with vol- 
untary movements, the other finds to be joined to the muscles. Thus 
the two independent lines of evidence unite-in indicating that each 
region of the brain has its own work to do, its own memories to pre- 
serve. 7 

While the anatomical evidence in favor of the localization of 
memories is as strong in the case of man as it is in that of the dog 
or ape, the physiological evidence is wanting. Physiologists lament 
that they can not experiment upon man, and psychologists are slow to 
admit that these experiments throw any light upon man’s mind and its 
action. Just here, however, the study of disease comes in to help out 
our knowledge. Disease may be regarded as an experiment of Nature 
to satisfy both physiologists and psychologists, and its results are the 
more satisfactory, since man is an animal who can describe his sensa- 
tions during the experiment, as no other animal can. The nature and 
value of the evidence for the localization of memories to be derived 
from the study of disease will be clear after the blood-supply of the 
brain in man is understood. Every artery divides and subdivides as 
it passes outward from the great central artery of the body—the aorta 
—so that the vascular system may be likened to a tree, with trunk, 
boughs, branches, and twigs. Each terminal division of an artery sup- 
plies with blood a little cone-shaped mass of brain, the base of the cone 
being the gray surface of the brain, and its apex being the point of 
entrance of the little artery. In the brain the terminal branches of 
the arteries do not run into each other, as in some organs, so that each 
little cone, like the leaf on the tree, is independent of adjacent cones 
and hangs upon its own arterialtwig. Now, it is evident that any- 
thing which plugs up the artery is going to cut off the blood, and 
therefore the nutriment from the little cone of brain, and then the lit- 
tle cone will wither and die. The larger the artery plugged, the greater 
the surface of brain destroyed. This is the process of disease known 
as embolism or thrombosis. But such a destruction of brain-tissue 
in man corresponds to the artificial destruction of brain-tissue in the 
dogs experimented upon, with this advantage in the case of man, that 
the shock of the operation is avoided. The experiments of Nature and 
of the physiologist are therefore parallel. The only difference is in 
the order of the observation. The physiologist cuts out a definite part 
and observes the result. The pathologist observes the result of Nature’s 
experiment by watching the symptoms of his patient, and, after the pa- 
tient’s death, he can ascertain the position of the part diseased. Now, 
if the old theory be true, according to which the brain acts as a whole, 
and its various parts do not possess distinct mental functions, a limited 
area of disease in one part may impair the mental powers but will not 
produce a loss of one function. If, on the contrary, the new theory 


614 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


be true—the one to which the anatomical arrangement and the physio- 
logical experiments point—that each part of the brain has its own work 
to do, a limited area of disease will interfere with the work of the part 
diseased—will produce a loss or impairment of one function, and will 
not affect all the powers. 

The following instance shows that pathology supports anatomy 
and physiology, and that the localization of functions and memories is 
no longer a matter of question among scientists : 

Not long ago a man was brought into Bellevue Hospital, in this 
city, suffering from fever, headache, delirium, and stupor, which had 
developed after a blow upon the head. In addition to these symptoms, 
he had a paralysis of the muscles on the back of the fore-arm, so that 
he could not raise his left hand. The general symptoms indicated the 
presence of an abscess in the brain. To the surgeon, familiar with the 
anatomy and with the physiological experiments upon animals, the 
paralysis of the arm-muscles indicated that the abscess was situated in 
that part of the brain whose function it was to raise the hand. He 
therefore sawed through the skull over the supposed site of the ab- 
scess, and, although the hole which he made was only large enough to 
admit his little finger, the abscess was found lying just beneath it, and 
was emptied. 

Such a case shows that the study of localization may aid in saving 
life. The following cases of loss of a definite kind of memory, occur- 
ring suddenly, and accompanied by symptoms which indicated the sit- 
uation of the disease in the brain, remind one very forcibly of the 
physiological experiments described, and afford positive proof that 
powers of sensation and memory, as well as the power of motion, may 
depend upon the integrity of definite regions of the brain : 

An intelligent gentleman, while playing billiards, suddenly became 
aware of the fact that he could see but one half of the ball at which 
he was aiming. He had become blind in the right half of both eyes, 
Soon after, on attempting to read, he found, much to his surprise, that 
he could not read. He could see the letters and words, but they con- 
veyed no meaning to his mind, and appeared to him as so many forms 
—just as a set of Chinese letters do to us. He had lost the power to 
recognize written and printed language. Singularly enough, he could 
write as well as ever, but it was impossible for him to read what he 
had just written. The memory of the motion involved in producing a 
letter remained, the memory of its appearance was gone. The memory 
of the motion served to take the place to some degree of the lost mem- 
ory-pictures, for, when asked to read a word, he would bring up his 
hand to the page and with his finger trace the form of the letter, and 
then name it. It was evident that the only means he had of recalling 
a letter was by going through the motion necessary to write it—in 
other words, by calling into play his motor-memories. As he was 
more accustomed to trace written than printed letters, it took him a 


WHERE AND HOW WH REMEMBER, 615 


longer time to recall by tracing printed than written words. But this 
was not his only defect of memory. He found that many objects for- 
merly perfectly familiar were no longer recognized by sight: He was 
well acquainted with the streets of Paris, but on going out he now looked 
at the houses and streets as at those of a new, unknown city, and he 
was unable to find his way about. The loss of memory did not consist 
simply in a failure to recognize objects seen, it involved his power to 
call up to his mind objects formerly well remembered, places well 
known, faces, scenes of his childhood, ete. The blindness in the right 
half of both eyes indicated that the disease was situated in the poste- 
rior part of the left half of the brain, for this has been found diseased 
in nearly thirty cases of similar defects in vision in which an examina- 
tion of the brain was made. The loss of memory of objects seen in- 
dicated that in that part of the brain in which the perception by sight 
occurs were located nerve-cells whose integrity was necessary to the 
existence of the sight-memories lost. The case demonstrated conclu- 
sively that sight-memories lie in the posterior part of the brain. The 
mental vigor of this man was good. His other faculties, his other per- 
ceptions and memories, were not affected. He was not paralyzed ; 
but, as far as reading was concerned, he had been put back into the 
exact condition in which he was when as a boy he began to learn to 
read. And when the writer saw him last, in the wards of Charcot’s 
great hospital in Paris, he was studying away at his alphabet like a 
school-boy of six years.* 

This is not an isolated case. In the same hospital, at the same 
time, was another gentleman who had been remarkable for the excel- 
lence of his memory. It had always been possible for him to ac- 
quire easily, and he had only to read a passage carefully in order to 
remember it verbatim. He also had considerable talent in sketching, 
and was in the habit of drawing any figure or view which pleased his 
eye. His memory of music, or of things heard, was less active and 
reliable than his visual memory. One day he suddenly noticed a 
peculiar change in his power of mental action, which alarmed him 
very much, He found that everything about him seemed strange and 
unfamiliar. His visual memory was entirely gone, so that he no 
longer recognized objects or faces, and could not call up to his mind 
the forms or colors of well-known things. The town in which he lived 
seemed an unknown place. He looked at its streets, its houses, its 
statues with curiosity, as at those of a strange city. The same was 
true of Paris, to which he came for medical advice, and where to his 
surprise he could not find his way about. At the same time he lost 
the power to sketch, being unable to remember the object to be drawn 
long enough to draw it, and being unable to recall the appearance of 
lines and shading in a picture. He found that he could not recall the 
faces of his wife and children, and when they came to him he only 


* This case was fully reported by Charcot, in the “ Progrés Médicale,” May, 1883. 


616 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


recognized them by the sound of their voices. He even forgot his 
own appearance, and, being in a large public gallery, and seeing, as he 
supposed, some one in a doorway barring his passage, he stepped for- 
ward to ask the stranger to let him pass, when by the motions he real- 
ized that it was his own figure seen in a large mirror. This loss of 
visual memory extended to memories of his childhood as well as to those 
acquired recently. It interfered much with his power of reading. In 
reading a book or in adding a column of figures it was necessary for 
him to have recourse to movements of articulation of his tongue and 
lips in order to understand what he read or in order to add. While 
formerly he could remember easily what he read, he now was obliged 
to read aloud anything he desired to commit to memory, and thus to 
learn it by impressing his auditory memory. An interesting detail of 
the affection was the fact that in his dreams he no longer saw objects, 
but merely heard sounds or words.* 

Thus he had been deprived entirely of one class of memories, while 
all others were still at his command. As a consequence, there had 
come about a complete change in his character, which can easily be 
understood when one considers how largely one’s thinking is made up 
of the comparison of one set of memories with another, and how fre- 
quently the whole circuit of one’s thoughts and actions centers about 
one group of memories. This man was an artist, and in a moment all 
the powers, the result of long study and labor, which enabled him to 
perform and enjoy his life-work, were taken away. In this case, as 
in the first one related, the disease must have been situated in that 
part of the brain where visual memories are stored, viz., in the poste- 
rior part. 

Such a loss of visual memories may be temporary, as is well illus- 
trated by the case of a city district messenger-boy, who found on 
several occasions that he suddenly lost his way and could not recog- 
nize streets with which he was usually familiar, so that he was obliged 
to ask a policeman to take him to his home ; where, however, in the 
course of a few hours he recovered his memory of places and of faces 
which he had lost. In this case, which may be regarded as one form 
of epilepsy, the loss of memory can be explained by the hypothesis 
that a spasm of the arteries occurred in the posterior part of the brain, 
just as such a spasm in those of the face gives rise to a sudden pallor. 

Visual memories are not the only ones to be temporarily or per- 
manently lost. There is another class of cases whose study gives 
unmistakable evidence of the localization of memories in that part of 
the brain in which the original perception occurred. It has been 
stated that the auditory nerve sends a tract to the lower lateral portion 
of the brain (the temporal region), and that destruction of this region 
in animals gives rise to deafness. When this part is injured by dis- 
ease in man, a peculiar condition is observed, known as word-deafness. 


* This case is reported in the “ Progrés Médicale,” July 18, 1883. 


WHERE AND HOW WE REMEMBER. 617 


This can be readily explained by a review of what occurs in answer- 
ing a simple question. When you answer a question, the following 
processes have taken place: 1. You have heard the words of the 
question. 2. The words have been recognized as known words, and 
have awakened a corresponding concept. 3. The concept has started 
a train of thought which has led you to a conclusion. 4. You have 
formulated your conclusion in words. 5. You have voluntarily set in 
motion a mechanism consisting of your throat, lips, and tongue, to 
speak the words. 6. This mechanism has responded to the effort, and 
has produced the sound of your reply. Now, any one of these pro- 
cesses may be interfered with, in which case you will not answer the 
question. If you are deaf, you may not hear it. If it is spoken ina 
language which you do not understand, the words will fail to be 
recognized, as the sounds will not awaken any memory or concept. 
But the words addressed to a child are at first mere sounds to him, 
and it is only by repeated reiteration of the word in connection with 
the object or act indicated by it that the child has acquired a knowl- 
edge of its meaning. If these acquired bits of knowledge stored up 
in the memory in childhood are blotted out, the meaning of the word 
will be lost, and the effect will be the same as if the word had never 
been learned, or as if it were spoken in an unknown language. This 
is the condition known as word-deafness, or loss of memory of the 
sound and meaning of words. It is not an uncommon form of brain- 
disease, and the symptom and the location of the disease have been 
connected in so many cases that it is now possible to state that in 
right-handed persons such a condition is due to disease of the left 
temporal region, and in left-handed persons to disease in the right 
temporal region. But such a defect will not only prevent one from 
recognizing a word when spoken, it will blot out the memory of 
words, and the power of recalling the words which you desire to use. 
Therefore you will be unable to answer the question, not only because 
you do not understand it, but because, if you did understand it—as 
you might be made to do by appropriate gestures—you could not find 
words in which to reply. Here, then, another special class of memo- 
ries, to the exclusion of all others, is blotted out by a localized disease. 
But let us follow the process a little further. Suppose you have 
heard the question, and understood its import, and the concept awak- 
ened has set in motion a train of thought which has led you to a 
proper conclusion, since it is to be supposed that you are neither an 
idiot nor insane, both of which conditions might interfere with this 
part of the process ; and suppose that your conclusion is formulated 
in words in your mind. You have still to speak the words before 
your reply is heard. We will pass by a paralysis of the muscles of 
the throat or tongue, which would, of course, prevent your speaking, 
and consider the process of setting in action the voluntary centers 
which govern speech. You have learned to speak by repeated efforts, 


618 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


at first with imperfect success, later with proper regulation of the 
tone and effort necessary ; which, when acquired, is remembered, so 
that the words are now clearly pronounced, But this learning to talk 
is simply the acquiring of memories of definite combinations of mus- 
cular action; in a word, of motor-memories, Other examples of motor- 
memories are the memory of the motions made in playing a musical 
instrument, swinging Indian clubs, writing, or using various imple- 
ments of trade. These are all distinct memories, and any one of them 
alone can be blotted out by disease. But, if the memory of the mo- 
tions necessary to pronounce the words of your reply is affected, it is 
evident that you will be as powerless to answer the question as though 
you did not understand it. If this is the case, the disease will be in 
a different part of the brain from that affected in the first case. It 
will lie above and in front of the temporal region, in what is known 
as the third frontal convolution of the brain. This, too, is established 
by hundreds of examinations of persons who died with loss of speech. 

It thus becomes evident from the study of brain-disease that our 
visual memories, our auditory memories, our memories of motion, and 
our memories of speech may each be lost while other memories are 
unaffected ; and further, that a loss of any one of these memories is 
always due to disease in its own appropriate part of the brain, 

One other set of facts remains which confirms in a remarkable 
manner the theory of the localization of functions. It is well known 
that organs which are constantly used grow in strength by use. The 
blacksmith’s arm is the favorite example. It is no less true that an 
organ which is not used withers away. If one carries his arm in a 
sling for several weeks, it grows thin. Now, asensory organ, like the 
eye, is simply a mechanism for the reception and transmission to its 
corresponding part of the brain of appropriate impulses. Suppose the 
organ to be destroyed. It is evident that the part of the brain with 
which it is joined is no longer called into action ; it is no longer used, 
and the result is that it withers. If from a new-born animal you re- 
move an eye, the tract to the posterior part of the brain and that part 
of the brain will never be called into use, and hence they never de- 
velop to anormal size. If a child is born blind, or loses his sight in 
infancy, the same is true ; so that, when in old age he dies, the posterior 
part of his brain will be found small and shrunken. It is probable 
that the examination of the brain of a deaf and dumb person would 
show an atrophy of the speech-centers, although this has not yet been 
investigated. It is known that if a limb be amputated and the individ- 
ual lives for twenty years or more, the part of the brain which for- 
merly governed the movements of that limb, and which received sen- 
sations from it, will be found shrunken and withered. So that from 
this class of facts important evidence is derived regarding the parts 
of the brain which preside over various functions and which preserve 
their appropriate memories. 


WHERE AND HOW WE REMEMBER. 619 - 


If, now, we take models of four brains, and on the first mark out 
the location of the various areas connected with the various sensory 
organs as determined by the anatomical connection of the white nerve- 
threads ; on the second mark out the location of the various areas which 
physiologists have shown to govern various sensory organs; on the 
third mark out the various areas whose disease produces disturbance 
of action in the various sensory organs, and loss of memories of per- 
ceptions by those organs ; and on the fourth mark out the various areas 
which wither after disease of the various sensory organs—we shall 
find that upon all four brains the areas belonging to any one organ 
coincide. We may therefore conclude that each class of sensations 


ae 
Ya 
Cr. hy 


~ 


cr (1 a Erne 
oS 


Z 


~ 


Fic. 2.—OvtTirne of Human Bram, Srpz-View. (After Ecker.) 

1. Area of sight and its memories. 

2. Area of hearing and its memories. 

8. Area of motion and its memories, he Blam pce eg. 

4. Area of touch and its memories, } jower one ize, face. 

5 Area of motor speech-memories. 

The areas of motion and general sensation coincide to some extent. 
and each class of memories has its own definite area of the gray mat- 
ter on the surface of the brain. Memories of objects seen are located 
in the posterior part in the occipital region. Memories of sounds 
heard are located in the lower lateral part in the temporal region. 
Memories of motions in the limbs, and of touch in those limbs, are 
located side by side in the central lateral region, Memories of speech 


620 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


are located in the frontal region. It is therefore a mistake to speak of 
memory as a single faculty of the mind. It is really an assemblage of 
distinct memories which we possess, each kind of memory being as 
different from the others both in its nature and in its location as are 
the different organs of sense through which the original perception 
came. These various memories are associated with each other, and 
this association is secured by means of fibers passing between and 
joining these different areas. It is also a mistake to give memory as 
a whole a location in one place as the phrenologists do. Our various 
memories are scattered over the brain in different regions, being dis- 
tributed at the time of the perception of the sensation remembered in 
accordance with the anatomical connection of the percipient organ. 
It is, finally, a mistake to speak of a good memory or a bad memory. 
The degree of power to remember differs in our various kinds of mem- 
ory. One man can remember things seen; another can remember 
things heard ; a third is skillful in the performance of certain motions, 
and may be said to possess a good motor-memory. A fourth acquires 
languages readily. So each of us has a stronger and a weaker kind 
of memory, and it is important to recognize this, in order to train and 
educate the weaker memory up to the level of the stronger one. The 
memories which we possess are our actual memories. But around 
these are areas of gray matter still unoccupied by memory-pictures, 
and in these potential areas new memories can be stored up. The act- 
ual area is always extending, the potential area is diminishing, as we 
acquire new facts. The wider and more varied our knowledge, the 
greater the actual area of any one memory, and the more complete our 
command over our inherent brain-power. 


THE ASTRONOMY OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES. 
By G. MULLER FRAUENSTEIN. 


i, Noes geographical ideas of the lower races, as well as those of civil- 
ized people, are of both ethnological and psychological interest, 
and it ismy purpose to devote a few lines to the little-worked field which 
here presents itself to view. The special subject of my essay will be 
the ideas concerning the earth and the world formed by primitive 
peoples, especially the ideas of the form of our planet and of the most 
important sidereal phenomena ; and among primitive peoples I shall, 
for the purpose of this review, include such half-civilized nations as 
the Toltecs and Aztecs, and the ancient Peruvians. 

Men form different notions of the sky and the earth according to 
their different points of view. The first appearance of the earth is 
that of an unbounded surface, and the constructive mind forms a cor- 


THE ASTRONOMY OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES. 621- 


responding picture of that part of it which is within its vision. Isl- 
anders regard their groups as their world, and finish out the picture 
with fantastic conceptions of the ocean-regions beyond. Highlanders, 
who, like the ancient Greeks, also see the sea-shore, figure their earth 
as a cup or a hollowed surface into which the waters run together. 
The Grecian view held its ground till the Crusades, unaltered even as 
to its particulars, and is still entertained by the lazzaroni of Naples. 
People who live in high mountain-regions, and never look upon exten- 
sive plains, regard the earth as a sublime range, a massive dome in 
which peak towers above peak, as the Caucasians do, or as a lofty cone, 
like the Thibetans. On conceptions like these stand those religious 
systems which place the seat of the gods, the first home of the human 
race, or the abode of the dead, among lofty mountains, The Hindoos 
called Meru, the Thracians Olympus, the residence of the gods. East 
African tribes, such as the Masais, the Wakamba, the Wakwasi, and 
the Gallas, say that their gods dwell in Kilimanjaro or Kenia, or a 
third equally lofty mountain of their regions. And the Indians of the 
American prairies believe that the happy hunting-grounds of their 
departed are to be found in the Rocky Mountains. 

The conceptions that are formed of the regions of the earth lying 
outside of vision are equally diversified. In classical antiquity, the 
earth was imagined to be surrounded by the sea, Oceanus; or the 
heavenly vault to rest upon mountain-ranges or isolated peaks. The 
Caroline-Islanders represent the region beyond the Marianne Archi- 
pelago, and north of their home, as one in which the sky gradually ap- 
proaches the earth, and finally rests upon it, but not so closely but 
what a space is left that aman can creep through. To the Esqui- 
maux of Greenland the sky seems to be a steep, high mountain in 
the north, around which the stars revolve, while the earth rests upon 
props that would have decayed, crumbled, and disappeared long ago, 
if it had not been for the mummery of witches. 

From this we may pass to a wider view, which attempts to form 
an idea of the back side of the earth. The Kamchatkadales conceive 
that the earth is flat, and that its under side forms a lower world, un- 
der which is another land ; or as, according to Steller, they expressed 
it, the earth is the reverse of a sky under which is still another world ; 
so that they consider the world as a vessel of three stories. The con- 
ception of the earth as a flat surface lies at the foundation of most of 
these myths ; but there are a few of them that rest on better ideas. 
According to Newbold, some of the Malays regard the earth as round, 
like an egg. ‘The Chippewas and Winnebagoes, according to Lawson, 
and the Duphlas of Assam, regard the earth as a square, with four 
corners ; but the imagination of that shape is exceptional. 

What holds the visible world together, and what supports the 
earth in it, are also questions that have occurred to primitive men ; 
and their attempts to solve these questions also carry with them efforts 


622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


to account for particular phenomena of the earth’s surface, and such 
convulsions as earthquakes. Some have tried to compare the earth 
with an egg in a vessel of water, or with the yolk in the egg ; and cos- 
mologies involving this idea are widely spread in Southern Asia, Poly- 
nesia, and Melanesia. The Tonga-Islanders say that a god they call 
Maui carries the earth on his back, and whenever he moves, to turn 
the other side, or falls asleep, there is an earthquake ; and the people 
were accustomed to beat the ground, with a great cry, to make Maui 
be quiet. The Khasias, in Assam, say that everything would be de- 
stroyed by earthquakes if God did not hold the earth in his hands, 
The priestly philosophy of the Hawaiians figured the earth as a great 
mass which the earth-shaker, or earthquake-god, laid upon the central 
fire. The earth on its side supported the sky by means of two or four 
pillars. The heaven of the Maories and the Soma of the Vedas are 
also supported by pillars. The manner in which the sky was in the 
beginning lifted up on these pillars is carefully described in the Poly- 
nesian myth, which relates that the gods Maui and Rua together held 
the sky on their knees, then lifted it upon their backs, and then on 
their hands. Other stories relate that, while the sky was resting on 
the broad leaves of the teva-plant, Rua raised it a little higher up by 
putting sticks under it, and then the stalwart Maui put his hands to 
it. In Celebes an earthquake is fabled to take place whenever Eber, 
who is supposed to be the earth-bearer, rubs himself against a tree 
and shakes his load. The world-bearing frog of the Mongol lamas, 
the world-ox of the Moslems, and the gigantic Omophore of the Mani- 
chean cosmogony, are all creatures that carry the world on their back 
or head, and shake it whenever they stretch themselves or turn around. 
A similar part is performed in European mythologies by the Scandi- 
navian Loki, who is bound with iron chains in his subterranean cave ; 
by Prometheus, trying to break his chains ; and by the Lettish Dreb- 
kuls. A branch of the Yuma Indians in Colorado are in dread of an 
evil spirit that is sleeping on Mount Avicome, and causes a slight 
earthquake when he moves uneasily, and a dangerous one when he 
turns clear over, The Caribs were accustomed to say, when there was 
an earthquake, that Mother Earth was dancing. The Iroquois, ac- 
cording to the testimony of many travelers, conceived the earth as an 
island in the sea, resting on the back of a huge tortoise. Floods oc- 
curred whenever the tortoise sank under the water, earthquakes when 
it shook itself or changed its position, The Hindoos imagined an 
earth-bearing elephant, standing on the tortoise, and attributed terres- 
trial convulsions to his motions. The Duphlas of Assam imagined 
four elephants supporting the four corners of the earth, which had to 
suffer when either of its bearers became uneasy. 

According to the Kamchatkadales, earthquakes originate when the 
dogs of the earthquake-god, who travels in a sleigh under the ground, 
shake the fleas in the snow from themselves. The Siberian hunting 


THE ASTRONOMY OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES. 623. 


races perceive in the bones of the mammoth, so often found in their 
country, evidences of the real existence of underground monsters, 
whose movements may give rise to earthquakes. According to Liy- 
ingstone, the natives of Magomoro relate that once when an earth- 
quake occurred, by which rocks were thrown down from the mountains, 
the wise men of the country got together, and concluded that a star 
had fallen into the sea, and the consequent swelling of the waves had 
caused commotions over the whole earth. 

Most of the astronomical conceptions of our Polynesian, African, 
and American brothers are childishly simple and crude enough, but at 
the same time curious. A very odd belief is that of the Namaqua 
Hottentots that the sun is a piece of bright bacon, which the people 
who go in ships draw up in the evening by enchantment, and let down 
again after they have cut a piece off from it. The Polynesians say 
that the god Maui holds the sun and regulates his course by means of 
arope. In the beginning he hurt the star in catching it and deprived 
it of half its light, and since then the days have been longer and cooler, 
and men have been able to work in peace. The Japanese myths fable 
eight hundred thousand gods holding the sun with a rope, while it is 
all the time trying to get back into the cave out of which they have 
drawn it by means of a trick. The Society-Islanders have a story that 
the sun goes into the sea at night; it plunges in and is extinguished 
with a great hissing that can be heard away off in the west. And this 
recalls a story that is mentioned by Strabo. According to Bock, the 
Dyaks have a myth that the sun and the moon were made by the 
Almighty out of a peculiar clay which is found on the earth, but is 
very rare and costly, the vessels made from which, called guji blanga, 
are holy and protect against evil spirits. The settling of the sun’s 
red disk upon the mountain-tops and its final descent behind the hills 
engaged the attention of dwellers in the regions where the phenomena 
assumed that character ; and the Karens of Burmah and the mountain 
tribes of America spoke of the sun going down into a deep cleft in 
the rocks. 

In passing over to the numerous myths in which the sun is re- 
garded as a living being, we meet the belief of the Navajos that it is 
newly set in the sky every morning by a woman. Next, we come to 
a great number of stories that personify the sun, although they may 
not make a god of it, and represent its setting as a process of being 
swallowed by some monster. Sometimes it is a hero, sometimes it is 
a virgin, which is thus swallowed and afterward released or rejected, 
as in the Greek stories of Perseus and Andromeda and Hercules and 
Hesione, the old Norse story of Eireck and the Dragon, and the Teu- 
tonic myths of Little Red Riding-hood and the Wolf and of the Seven 
Little Goats. 

Without going into the discussion of sun-worship, of which so 
much has been written, we may refer to the wide diffusion of the 


624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


practice in insular and continental Australasia, Northern Asia, and 
Central America. 

Curious are the forms under which many people have figured the 
sun and moon. ‘The simplest are the disk-forms, with or without 
rays, which are of frequent occurrence. On a temple of Palenque, 
while the sun has this form, the moon is represented as a shell-shaped 
vase or a spiral shell filled with water, out of which a hare is creeping. 
Squier found similar representations painted on the rocks in Nicara- 
gua. In pictures ascribed to the Toltecs, the four great Mexican gods 
are bearing the eye-dotted sky on their shoulders and arms, while the 
sun-god and the moon-god are indicated under the symbols of the 
tiger and the hare—a form of representation that has extensively 
spread in North America. In the ancient Kami religion of the Jap- — 
anese, the moon was worshiped as a fox. The Caffres and the Esqui- 
maux ascribed an independent life to these planets, the latter people 
holding that they were human beings who had ascended to heaven, 
and conceiving the Moon to be the younger brother of the female 
Sun. In Peru the Moon-mother was both sister and wife of the Sun, 
like Osiris and Isis in Egypt. In the Lithuanian folk-songs the Moon 
takes the Sun to wife, and the Morning-Star is their daughter. The 
red Mintiras of the Malay Peninsula regard both Sun and Moon as 
women. In Southern Australia, among the Mbokobis in South Amer- 
ica, and in the old Slavic sagas, the Moon is a man, and to the Kha- 
sias of Northwestern India he is the son-in-law of the Sun, By the 
Hurons the Moon is called the creator of the earth and grandmother 
of the Sun ; in the myths of the Ottawas it is an old woman with a 
pleasant white face—the sister of the Day-Star. The Chiquitos call 
the Moon their mother, and the Navajos make it a rider on a mule. 
Where the planets are worshiped, preference in honors is generally 
accorded to the brighter and more conspicuous star of day. But the 
Botocudos of Brazil give the higher place to the Moon, and derive most 
of the phenomena of nature from it; and in Central America and 
Hayti are also people who hold the Moon in no less honor. Curiously, 
these people find their counterparts among tribes of Western, South- 
ern, and Central Africa, who rejoice with dancing and feasts at each 
appearance of the new moon, and expect an improvement of their 
condition from its beneficent influence ; and they are not so far re- 
moved from the superstitious women of civilized Europe and America 
who wait for the increase of the moon to change their dwelling, to 
cut their hair, to be married, and to baptize their children. <A belief 
existed among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, the Natchez of the 
Mississippi, and the Appalachians of Florida, that the sun was the radi- 
ant abode of dead chiefs and braves. To the Esquimaux of Labrador 
belongs the honor of having discovered that the moon was the para- 
dise for the good, while the wicked were consigned to a hole in the 
earth ; although some of the South American Indians and the Poly- 


THE ASTRONOMY OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES. 62; 


nesians of Tokelau may be nearly abreast of them in the compe- 
tition. | 

The facts we have adduced abundantly illustrate the various in- 
terest with which primitive peoples regard the two principal stars of 
the earthly sky. They have also their theories, or rather their myths, 
respecting the periodical changes to which the appearance of these 
bodies is subject. The phases of the moon are particularly the sub- 
ject of much concern. In the belief of the Hottentots, the living 
being we call Moon suffers from a chronic headache, in consequence 
of which it becomes greatly reduced in appearance by laying its hand 
on its head. The Caffres bring the Sun into play in accounting for 
the phenomena, and say that she pursues the Moon and reduces him, 
but that he is cunning enough to escape, and then recovers his strength. 
More curious still is the part the waning moon plays in the eyes of 
some Polynesians, who say that it is eaten from by departed spirits. 
Another extremely materialistic explanation is found in some Green- 
land stories to the effect that the Moon pursues his sister the Sun in 
love. When he has become exhausted and thin, he goes seal-hunting, 
and disappears from the sky. In time he reappears, well fed, fat, and 
shining, as the full moon. 

Purely fanciful and obscure are the myths in which animals are 
found in confidential relations with the moon. The Dakota Indians 
have a fiction of mice that periodically attack the moon to satisfy 
their hunger, and eat of its substance. An old Slavic saga makes the 
ruler of the night the husband of the Sun, who faithlessly gives his 
heart to the Morning-Star. In punishment for this offense, he is cleft 
through the middle, and must exhibit himself periodically in this 
plight as a warning example. The Hos, in Northeastern India, also 
fable the moon split in two and growing together again. In some 
of the stories these love-attacks become very violent, and then the 
aggressive party is made to receive a kind of retributive justice ; and 
we accordingly have the spots that are to be seen upon the moon ex- 
plained by saying that they are the marks which the vexed solar beauty 
has made upon her pursuer in defending herself against his importuni- 
ties. Thus, according to Mr. D. Hooker, the Khasias in Northwestern 
India say that the Moon, an over-ardent son-in-law of the Sun, burns 
with love for her at each new change, while she, in her aversion, throws 
ashes into his face, which stick upon it as dark spots. The Esquimaux 
have two opposite, yet fundamentally harmonious, explanations. One 
is that the Sun smuts the face of her younger brother, whose atten- 
tions have become troublesome ; the other, given by Bastian, that her 
heart warms toward her lover during his periods of darkness, and the 
spots are the marks left by her sooty hand caressing his face. 

A variety of sagas of another kind discover living beings, not in 
the whole moon, but only in the dark points of its surface. The Hin- 
doos fancy a hare in it, or a deer; the Japanese, a rabbit. According 

VOL, xxv.—40 


626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


to one of the Namaqua legends, the hare has scratched the moon, 
and the marks remain, but the animal itself has broken away, and is 
now continually fleeing before the planet. Who, in the face of such 
stories, can be oblivious of the general connection between the moon 
and the hunting goddess, and its personification in identity with her, 
which figure in the fables of classical antiquity ? 

A most remarkable fact is the agreement of peoples who have 
never had anything to do with one another—of South African tribes 
and the Northern Europeans, the Samoa-Islanders and the ancient 
Peruvians—in the belief that the spots in the moon represent a creat- 
ure of our own species. The story of the man in the moon, which 
may be traced in Europe for some hundred years back, and appears in 
the old Norse myths, and which still charms our children, prevails in 
many different versions. The Raratongans recognize in it a departed 
chief ; the Ossetes of the Caucasus, a demon, which they regard with 
an idolatrous fear; the Namaquas, a higher being, to whom they at- 
tach great importance ; the Pottawattamie Indians, an old woman ; the 
people of Timor, a spinster ; the Mangaians, a busy housewife ; and 
the ancient Peruvians, a courtesan. The Siamese see in it, now a hare, 
and now a married couple, who cultivate the fields and accumulate 
heaps of rice. 

There remain to be considered the impressions that eclipses of the 
sun and moon make upon primitive peoples. A large number of their 
explanations represent the planets as a man and a woman, and some- 
times bring in a child to help in producing the phenomena. The 
Jesuit Le Jeune was told by an Algonquin, in Canada, that the Sun 
and Moon were man and wife who had a child. When the father took 
up the little one to caress it, there was an eclipse of the sun ; when the 
mother held it in her arms, an eclipse of the moon. According to the 
Mintiras of Malacea, the Sun and Moon are two women, of whom the 
former eats her children, while the Moon hides hers, although she is 
pledged to eat them too. Enraged at this breach of faith, the Sun 
chases the Moon around, swallowing her own star at each dawn, while 
the Moon brings hers out as soon as her pursuer is far enough away. 
At times, the enemies approach so nearly that the Sun can strike the 
Moon, and then there is an eclipse. The Hos of India have the same 
story, with the variation that the Moon, in punishment, is cut in two 
by the Sun, and has to grow together again. Notwithstanding the 
frequent recurrence of eclipses, with nothing particularly bad happen- 
ing after them, most primitive peoples aasociate with them an omen 
of some great danger to the earth or the moon. The Greenlanders 
have a personal apprehension in the matter, and believe that the Moon 
rummages their houses for skins or victuals, and destroys those per- 
sons who have not observed due sobriety. The South American Chi- 
quitos try to help the darkened star against a dog that has worried it 
till its light has been colored red, and extinguished by its streaming 


SORGHUM AS A SOURCE OF SUGAR. 627 


blood ; and they shoot arrows into the sky to drive away the dog. 
Charlevoix gives a similar account of the Guarani, except that with 
them a tiger takes the place of the dog; and in the language of the 
Tupis the literal translation of the word for an eclipse is, “'The jaguar 
has eaten the sun.” So, in Asia, the Tunguses believe an evil spirit 
has swallowed the earth’s satellites, and they try to frighten it away 
by shots at the darkened disk. In Sumatra and Malacca the fear is 
aroused that a great snake will swallow the sun or the moon; and the 
Nagas of Assam set up a great drum-beating, as if in battle, to frighten 
away the devouring monster. Among the American tribes are some 
who believe that eclipses are a warning of the approaching disap- 
pearance of the sun and the fall of the moon at the end of the world. 
The Pottawattamies tell of a demon in the shape of an old woman, sit- 
ting in the moon weaving a basket, on the completion of which the 
world will be destroyed. A dog contends with the woman, tearing 
the basket to pieces every-once in a while, and then an eclipse of the 
moon takes place ; others imagine that the Moon is hungry, sick, or 
dying at these times ; while the Alfuras of Ceram think he is asleep, 
and make a great uproar to awake him. 

These superstitions are not so remote as they may seem at first 
sight from the impressions which the heavenly phenomena make upon 
many persons who consider themselves civilized. Circles may be found 
in nearly every nation upon whom the appearance of anything unusual 
in the sky carries an apprehension that something dreadful is about 
to happen ; and by whom even the most ordinary phenomena are in- 
vested with occult influence upon things that we know have no con- 
nection with them ; and it is only. two or three centuries since the dire 
portents of comets and eclipses were prayed against in all the churches, 
In strange contrast with the impressiveness of the peoples whose names 
we have mentioned so often, and with the lingering European super- 
stitions, stands the indifference of the stolid African tribes mentioned 
by Cameron and Paul Richard, who paid no attention to the eclipse, 
or thought it was only caused by passing clouds.— Translated for the 
Popular Science Monthly from Das Ausland. 


— 


SORGHUM AS A SOURCE OF SUGAR. 
By HENRY B. PARSONS. 


ft ages important part which sugar plays in our national and domes- 
tic affairs is, probably, not fully appreciated, except by those 
who have given the subject special study. Accustomed as we have 
become to hearing of the enormous: output of our mines, it is at first 
somewhat difficult to realize that, in 1881, the people of the United 
States paid for foreign sugar, and imposts thereon, over fifty-seven 


628 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY. 


million dollars more than the value of all the gold and silver bullion 
produced in the same year. 

In the year 1882 our imports of sugar and molasses amounted to 
nearly one and one fifth million tons, costing one hundred and fifty 
million dollars, nearly one third of which sum was paid as import 
taxes. There is no other article, or class of articles, upon which our 
Government levies duty which yields a revenue equal to that obtained 
from foreign sugar. 

This useful staple furnishes nearly one fourth (24°3 per cent) of 
the amount received for import duties, and more than one seventh 
(14°6 per cent) of the total income of the nation. 

That the demand for sugar is increasing much more rapidly than 
our population, is shown by the increased consumption per capita. 
The value of the sugar used in 1882 was fully one sixth greater than 
the amount in 1881. In 1790 to 1799 the average annual consumption 
of sugar per person was 9°65 pounds, while in 1882 the amount was 
not far from fifty-five pounds. 

In order to obtain the sugar that we need, we find it necessary to 
buy of nearly every tropical and sub-tropical country. By far the 
greatest amount (forty per cent) comes from Cuba. Next in order 
are the Spanish possessions (three and a half per cent), Porto Rico 
(two and a half per cent), the Sandwich Islands and the Dutch East 
Indies (each one per cent), while twenty-seven other countries unite 
to furnish nearly forty per cent. It will be seen that there remains 
only about twelve per cent for home production. This is strictly true, 
for, to quote a recent authority, “ From the statistics it appears that, 
during the past twenty years, the United States have produced less 
than thirteen per cent of their sugar-supply, and little more than 
twenty-one per cent of the molasses consumed.” 

If, therefore, our Cuban sugar-supply were suddenly arrested by 
insurrection or international complications, we might for a season be 
in an exceedingly embarrassing position. Possibly some other country 
would ultimately come to our relief ; but it is very probable that, for 
a time, there would be a scarcity of sugar, which would result in un- 
usually high prices. Such a condition of things would surely direct 
the thoughts of consumers and eapitalists alike to our very inadequate 
provisions for the manufacture of sugarin Louisiana and adjacent 
Southern States, and the fact would be evident that we could not ex- 
tend the domestic production of sugar from the cane to approximate 
our demands. The reason lies in the fact that the sugar-cane is essen- 
tially a tropical plant, and is seldom or never thoroughly ripened in 
our semi-tropical Southern States. Early frosts compel the planters to 
harvest the canes while yet considerably short of maturity, and conse- 
quently before the development of as large a percentage of sugar as 
is reached in warmer climates. 

This climatic disadvantage is so serious as to confine the profitable 


ae ee ee ee ee re 


SORGHUM AS A SOURCE OF SUGAR. 629 


manufacture of sugar from the sugar-cane, in this country, to a very 
limited area, and to especially favorable seasons. This fact is empha- 
sized and proved by reference to statistics which show that the 
amount of sugar produced in Louisiana in one year is frequently 
nearly twice as great as that obtained the next season. 

Obviously, if it is desirable to produce our own sugar, the tropical 
sugar-cane can not be regarded as the chief source of supply, and we 
must place our dependence upon some plant better adapted to our 
varied soils and limited rainfall. 

The sugar-beet has much to commend it; it is successfully raised 
in France, Germany, and Austria, and furnishes, at the present time, 
thirty per cent of the sugar consumed by civilized nations. But the 
sugar-beet requires special soil, special fertilizers, skillful cultivation, 
and, above all, an abundance of rain, which must come at just the 
right time to be of the greatest service. These conditions are well 
understood in Europe, and the tracts of country where beets may be 
profitably grown for sugar are known as “ beet-sugar belts ” upon the 
agricultural maps. Investigation has shown that the American beet- 
sugar belt is confined to a comparatively small portion of certain 
Northern and Middle States. It is possible that an important fraction 
of our sugar may yet be obtained from this source ; but it is doubtful 
whether we should entertain hopes that this may ever be our chief 
dependence. 

If, then, this country is to produce its own sugar, it is evident that 
some plant must be selected which, in one or more varieties, is adapted 
to our widely varied conditions. It must mature in the temperate 
Northern States as well as in the more genial climate of Southern Cali- 
fornia and the States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. It must be 
easily cultivated—a plant of rapid growth, which, when mature, does 
not deteriorate until the season of severe frosts, thus insuring a long 
“working period,” in which it may be converted into marketable 
sugar and molasses. Above all, it must furnis) a juice rich in sugar, 
while containing a minimum of impurities. 

It is claimed, by those who have given this sugar problem a very 
considerable amount of study, that in the better varieties of sorghum 
many or all of the above conditions are satisfied, and that, with intel- 
ligent culture and manufacturing methods, this country may not only 
produce all its own sugar, but may do its share toward supplying the 
ever-increasing demand abroad. These claims, if well supported, are 
deserving of careful study by all who desire to see the agricultural 
and manufacturing resources of this country more fully developed 
than at present. 

The sorghum-plant (Sorghum saccharatum) belongs to the great 
family of grasses (Graminacee), and it may be termed a second-cousin 
to the tropical sugar-cane (Saccharum officinarum) on the one hand, 
and ordinary Indian corn (Zea mays) on the other. In some of its 


630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


varieties it looks not unlike broom-corn (Sorghum vulgare), to which 
it is also related. 

There are many modifications, or so-called “sub-varieties,” of 
sorghum, which differ greatly in height, size, weight, and general 
appearance. Some varieties mature in Minnesota in about one hun- 
dred days from planting (as the Early Amber), while other varieties 
are only ripened to perfection in the Southern States (as the Honduras). 
Although there are more than one hundred real or imaginary “ sub- 
varieties” of sorghum within the limits of the United States, it is 
probably safe to say that the question of profitable sugar-production 
may be determined from experiments made with a few typical varie- 
ties, originally known as Chinese and African. 

The first Chinese sorghum was imported into this country in 1853, 
from the noted house of Vilmorin, in France. In 1857 the African 
varieties, some sixteen in number, were brought to this country from 
Natal by an English merchant, named Leonard Wray. “To these 
African varieties the general name imphees was given, while to the 
variety from China the name Chinese sugar-cane was given.” So-called 
hybrids have been extensively advertised, yet the weight of evidence 
is against hybridization of the different sorghums, and the new varie- 
ties are probably the products of mixed seed. 

During the progress of the civil war, sorghum played no unim- 
portant part in helping to supply a portion of the deficiency in our im- 
ports of sugar. In many of the Western States, notably Ohio and 
Illinois, great amounts of sorghum-molasses were made by the farmers 
with crude and inexpensive apparatus. Usually the sirup had a pecul- 
iar, sharp taste, due to imperfect purification of the juice, the use of 
lime for this purpose not being generally understood. As a rule, also, 
the canes were crushed while still unripe, and consequently not con- 
taining the maximum amount of sugar. In spite of these unfavorable 
conditions, the reports that sugar had crystallized from these sirups 
were not infrequent. 2 

At the close of the war many who had made sorghum-sirup again 
preferred to buy foreign sugar and molasses. The introduction of 
glucose-sirups may also have been instrumental in diverting attention 
from sorghum, and, for ten or more years, comparatively little was 
heard of the new sugar-plant. 

About the year 1876 it was again brought into public notice through 
very favorable results, obtained by farmers in the Northwestern States, 
in the production of sirup from the variety known as Minnesota Early 
Amber. 

So many and frequent were the requests that this plant be inves- 
tigated, that General William G. Le Duc, a Minnesota man, upon his 
accession to the office of Commissioner of Agriculture, in 1877, deter- 
mined that the possibilities of this sugar-plant should be accurately 
ascertained for the benefit of all who were concerned. 


SORGHUM AS A SOURCE OF SUGAR. 631 - 


Accordingly, in 1878, the work was commenced by Professor Peter 
Collier, Chemist of the Agricultural Department, at Washington, and 
his investigations were continued through the years 1879 to 1882, in- 
clusive. 

One of the principal objects of this work was the determination of 
the precise quality of sorghum-juices at different periods in the devel- 
opment of the plant, in order to show at what stage the greatest 
amount of available sugar was present in the juice. It was shown, by 
thousands of analyses, that fully-matured plants yielded the greatest 
amount of sugar, and that the period during which this amount was 
maintained was full three months for some of the varieties which 
matured most rapidly. 

It was shown that some kinds of sorghum matured quickly, and 
were well adapted to the short, hot summer season of the Northern 
States, while other varieties ripened more slowly, and were best adapted 
for cultivation in the Southern States. 

It was demonstrated also that, when mature, the best of the differ- 
ent varieties were practically identical as regards the percentage of 
available sugar in the juice. 

The amount of crystallizable sugar in the juice of mature sorghum 
varies between fourteen ‘and sixteen per cent ; there are also present 
about one to two per cent of uncrystallizable sugar (“glucose”), and 
two to three per cent of other solids, part of which are removed from 
the juice by the purifying processes employed in sugar-making. When 
well purified, sorghum, cane, and beet sugar are identical in composi- 
tion and properties. 

Among other valuable data obtained during these investigations, 
were recorded the length of time, after seeding, before the plant reached 
maturity ; the length of the period during which the juice contained a 
profitable amount of available sugar (i. e., the “ working period”) ; 
the height, weight, and percentage of eine for the stalks of each 
variety of sorghum at each stage in its development ; and numerous 
other facts of importance to the practical sugar-maker. 

The utilization of waste, or by-products, was carefully considered. 
It was shown that sorghum-seed is very similar in composition and 
food-value to common Indian corn, and that the yield of twenty or 
more bushels per acre will nearly or quite repay the farmer the cost of 
cultivation. This seed has been successfully used for fattening cattle 
and swine. 

It was shown that the apparently worthless skimmings obtained in 
the clarification of the juice had a value as fertilizing material, and 
that from the washings of the tanks and evaporators a considerable 
amount of pure alcohol or vinegar could be produced at small cost. 

The crushed canes (“begasse”), after the removal of the juice, 
make paper-stock of excellent quality and medium length of fiber. 
This begasse may be preserved as food for cattle by the method known 


632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


as ensilage, or may be burned under the boilers, thus furnishing heat, 
and ashes valuable for fertilizing purposes. 

But of greater value were the practical results obtained by Dr. 
Collier, with small and inexpensive apparatus, whereby he showed 
what could actually be done in the production of sugar and sirup from 
sorghum. ‘These results were of more real importance than were the 
pretentious attempts made in Washington under the direction of a 
“ practical sugar-boiler” from the West Indies, inasmuch as the latter 
experiments were made with improper and poorly-finished apparatus, 
and with sorghum not fully matured. 

These experiments were also vitiated by the incompetence of the 
sugar-boiler, whose methods were those adapted to sugar-cane, and not 
varied to suit the different conditions presented when working with 
sorghum. 

The smaller practical experiments conducted by Dr. Collier have 
been described in detail by himself, and, with perfect fairness, he has 
narrated not only successes but failures. All who are accustomed to 
manufacturing operations are aware that, notwithstanding the appar- 
ent simplicity of any new problem, the development of a practical 
working process involves a large amount of patient investigation, fre- 
quent experiments, and a not inconsiderable number of partial or 
seeming failures before complete success can be attained. But when 
such a process is thoroughly elaborated, and all its difficulties are 
appreciated and overcome, the details of manufacture may be safely 
intrusted to men of ordinary intelligence. 

In November, 1881, the National Academy of Sciences appointed 
a special committee which was intrusted with a detailed investigation 
of the scientific processes, the analytical results, and the practical ex- 
periments and conclusions presented by Professor Collier. 

All the members of this committee were men of the highest scien- 
tific ability, men whose reputation is world-wide, and whose conclu- 
sions must carry conviction. To quote from a recent number of 
“Science ”; ‘‘That the work has been well done is sufficiently guaran- 
teed by the names of the committee. They were Professor William 
H. Brewer, Ph. D., of the Sheffield Scientific School ; Professor Charles 
F. Chandler, of Columbia College ; Professor 8. W. Johnson, M. A., 
of the Sheffield Scientific School ; Professor B. Silliman, M. A., M. D., 
of Yale College ; Professor J. Lawrence Smith, M. D., late of the Uni- 
versity of Louisville ; and also, not of the Academy, Gideon E. Moore, 
Ph. D., of New York. Professor C. A. Goessmann, of the Massachu- 
setts Agricultural College, was also a member of and acted with the | 
committee until September 15, 1882, when he resigned.” 

The fairness and ability of the committee being unquestioned, it is 
germane, in this inquiry, to consider what their scrutiny of Dr. Col- 
lier’s work has revealed as to the chances that sorghum may yet prove 
a valuable source of sugar. The following is taken from their report : 


SORGHUM AS A SOURCE OF SUGAR. 633 


The spirit of scientific investigation which has led the Department of Agri- 
culture through its chemical and agronomic researches to results of such impor- 
tance toward developing a new industry of national value has been liberally fos- 
tered by the General Government, and to some extent also by certain of the 
States. The fruits of this policy are already beginning to show themselves in 
the decided success which has attended the production of sugar from sorghum 
on a commercial scale in the few cases in which the rules of good practice, 
evolved especially by the researches made at the laboratory of the Department 
of Agriculture, have been intelligently followed. Sufficiently full returns from 
the crop of 1882 have already come to hand to convince us that the industry is 
probably destined to be a commercial success. 


The opinions of men so conservative as are the members of this 
committee can not be lightly set aside or ridiculed as visionary. That 
their predictions have, in a measure, been realized, will appear from 
the returns from the crop of 1883. From a recent work upon sorghum, 
by Professor Peter Collier, we extract the following : 


Sorghum-Sugar produced in 1883. 


According to the statement of the President of the Mississippi Valley Cane- 
Growers’ Association, there were produced at the Champaign (Illinois) Sorghum- 
Sugar Works, from 145 acres, 1,435 tons of cane; and from 2,400 tons of cane 
there were obtained 160,000 pounds of sugar and 40,000 gallons of molasses. 

The season is described as being the most unfavorable for thirty years. 

At Hutchinson, Kansas, some 200,000 pounds of sugar, besides a large quan- 
tity of molasses. 

At Sterling, Kansas, some 200,000 pounds of sugar, besides the molasses. 

At Dundee, Kansas, 10,000 pounds of sugar, though their product was mainly 
sirup, of which 50,000 gallons were made. 

At Kinsley, Kansas, 10,000 pounds of sugar, and a large quantity of sirup. 

At Lawrence, Kansas, some 10,000 pounds of sugar. 

At Rio Grande, New Jersey, 282,711 pounds of sugar and 55,000 gallons of 
molasses—a large portion of their cane failing to ripen, owing to the unusual 
season. 

The Secretary of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture reports the follow- 
ing summary of the year 1883 for Kansas: 


MUREOS TIRAIER WR BOLT a inns 5 nice op ovine nen biens «3 102,042 
Acres manufactured into sirup...............cceeees 48,271 
FOVOR WHATIEO TOK TOPs Vn sk bce c tcc csecessecess 53,771 
Tons of cane manufactured. .....0.0.. .ec ccc cece 447,859 
Gallons of sirup made................. ti CEs 4,684,023 
Waluo:of mictp Gees iid od Wis 04 Mais cei we Sw ei Kin $2,058,127 60 


The entire number of counties reporting was eighty-one, and of these— 


82 grew from 50to 500 acres. 
20 * 500 to 1,000 “ 
10 " 1,000 to 2,000“ 
10 " 2,000 to 3,000 * 

5 as 8,000 to 4,000 * 

+ ms 4,000 to 8,000 “ 


a 


634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Ten counties produced over 100,000 gallons of sirup each, and two counties 
produced over $100,000 worth of sirup each, while seventeen counties produced 
each over $30,000 worth of sirup. 

The value of sirup averaged from each acre $42.65, without counting the 
product of seed. The yield averaged 9°3 tons of cane per acre. 


For the first years of a new industry such returns can not be con- 
sidered other than decidedly promising. That the probabilities are 
strongly in favor of the ultimate success of sorghum as a source of 
sugar can hardly be doubted; but that the growth of such a vast 
industry must be gradual, and may at times be checked by the failures 
of untrained experimenters, is to be expected. It should be borne in 
mind, however, that one successful trial, resulting in the production of 
sugar in paying amounts, is of more value in estimating the possibili- 
ties of this new industry than are many failures. The development of 
any great industry is necessarily slow ; especially is this true when 
manufacturers are not guided by previous experience with closely- 
related crude materials. The perfection of the manufacturing pro- 
cesses for beet-sugar is an illustration of this point. 

It may be interesting, in this connection, to trace briefly the history 
of beet-sugar in France. 

In 1747 Margraff presented a memoir to the Berlin Academy of 
Sciences, describing the methods whereby he had prepared sugar from 
beets, and urging the importance of his discovery. Little came of 
this investigation until half a century had elapsed, when Karl Franz 
Achard, a former pupil of Margraff, again drew attention to the mat- 
ter. In 1799 he read a paper before the Institute of France, in which 
he described his methods and results. He exhibited samples of beet- 
sugar, and made such an impression that the French Institute appointed 
a commission, consisting of eminent men of science, to repeat Achard’s 
work, They found about six per cent of sugar in beets, and thought 
that refined sugar could be produced for about eighteen cents per 
pound, or for less, if improved manufacturing methods were adopted. 

MM. Barruel and Isnard were the first to produce beet-sugar on 
the commercial scale ; they obtained only one and a half per cent of 
inferior sugar, at a cost of thirty cents per pound. 

In 1811 M. Drappiez, of Lille, made beet-sugar at a cost of eighty 
cents a pound. Even this result, which would seem a disastrous fail- 
ure to most observers, was sufficiently encouraging to justify the fa- 
mous decree of Napoleon “ that 32,000 hectares (79,040 acres) shall be 
planted in beets ; that six experimental schools to give instruction in 
the manufacture of beet-sugar shall be established, and that 1,000,000 
francs [$200,000] shall be appropriated from the budgets for this pur- 
pose, and for the experiments in producing indigo.” ‘The importa- 
tion of sugar and indigo from England and her colonies was pro- 
hibited.” 


SORGHUM AS A SOURCE OF SUGAR. 635 


With the aid of this liberal appropriation, and of numerous sub- 
stantial gratuities to individuals, the development of this industry was 
still slow. In 1826 only 1,500 tons of beet-sugar were produced in 
France, but after that time the increase was more rapid, and we find 
France producing 420,396 tons of beet-sugar in 1879. 

From small and inauspicious beginnings the beet-sugar industry 
has slowly grown, until it is securely established in France, Belgium, 
Austria,and Germany. At present, three eighths of the sugar used by 
civilized nations is produced by the sugar-beet. In like manner, the 
production of sugar from sorghum may not attain great proportions 
until some years have passed, but the plant is richer in sugar and is 
much more easily cultivated and handled than is the sugar-beet. The 
production of sorghum-sugar at a profit is less problematical than was. 
the successful manufacture of beet-sugar when Napoleon issued the 
decree which laid the foundations of the beet-sugar industry in 
France. 

The results of recent investigations of sorghum in the hands of 
other experimenters, as well as the immense amount of work done at 
Washington, have been rendered available, for the general reader and 
those interested in scientific and practical details, by a recent book 
written by Dr. Collier.* In this work, of over five hundred pages, a 
great number of scientific and economic problems are discussed, and 
our present definite knowledge of various points, formerly disputed, is 
clearly stated. The chemical changes occurring in the plant during 
its development have been recorded with an exactness suited to delight 
the student of vegetable physiology, while the practical sugar-maker 
need not look in vain for the latest information as to machinery and 
manufacturing processes. Farmers wishing to grow sorghum are told 
what varieties are most likely to succeed in Northern and what other 
varieties in Southern latitudes, and the best methods of planting, fer- 
tilizing, and securing the crop are carefully described. 

In fact, this work has been well done, and its completeness is 
creditable alike to the thoroughness and the ability of the author. It 
is fortunate for this industry and for the country that these investiga- 
tions have been prosecuted by a chemist so competent, and it is to be 
hoped that Congress may see fit to continue this work under the direc- 
tion of Dr. Collier. 

In view of the fact that the special committee of the National 
Academy has reported as its opinion, based on facts thus far presented, 
that the production of sugar from sorghum is likely to prove a com- 
mercial success, this country can well afford to expend liberal amounts 
of money for a continuation of these investigations, and for a practical 
demonstration of the cost of manufacturing sugar on the large scale. 


* “Sorghum : Its Cultivation and Manufacture economically considered as a Source 
of Sugar, Sirup, and Fodder.” By Peter Collier, Ph. D., late Chemist of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. 


636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


If, as a result of several seasons’ practical operations, it shall be clearly 
shown that sugar can be profitably made from sorghum, an industry 
will speedily be established which will furnish employment for much 
labor and capital, and will add large sums to the wealth of this na- 
tion. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 


By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 
XXXIV. 


ESPECTING the rationale of the change that takes place in 

reheating stale bread, thereby renewing it and making it appear 

moist by actually driving away some of its moisture, the results of my 
investigations are as follow : 

I find that, as bread becomes stale, its porosity appears to increase, 
and that, when renewed by reheating, it returns to its original appar- 
ently smaller degree of porosity. That this change can be only appar- 
ent is evident from the facts that the total quantity of solid material 
in the loaf remains the same, and its total dimensions are retained 
more or less completely by the rigidity of the crust. I say “more or 
less,” because this depends upon the thickness and hardness of the 
crust, and also upon the completeness of its surrounding. Lightly- 
baked loaves shrink a little in dimensions in becoming stale, and partly 
regain the loss on reheating, but this difference only exaggerates the 
apparent paradox of varying porosity, as the diminished bulk of a 
given quantity of material displays increased porosity, and the increase 
of total dimensions accompanies the diminished porosity. 

A reconciliation of this paradox may be obtained by careful exami- 
nation of the structure of the crumb. This will show that the larger 
or decidedly visible pores are cells having walls of somewhat silky 
appearance. This silky luster and structure is, I] have no doubt, due 
to a varnish of dextrin, the gummy nature of which I have already 
described. Now look a little more closely at this inner surface of the 
big blow-holes with the aid of a hand-lens of moderate power. It is 
not a continuous varnish of gum, but a net-work or agglomeration of 
gummy fibers and particles, barely touching each other. 

My theory of the change that takes place as the bread becomes 
stale is that these fibers and particles gradually approach each other 
either by shrinkage or adhesive attraction, and thus consolidate and 
harden the walls of each of the millions of visible pores, i. e., the solid 
material of which the loaf is made up. In doing so they naturally 
increase the dimensions of these visible pores, while the invisible inter- 
stices or spaces between the minute fibers of the cell-walls are dimin- 
ished by the approximation or adhesion of these fibers to each other. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 637 


This adhesion is probably aided by an oozing out or efflorescence 
of the vapor held by the fibers, and its condensation on their surfaces. 
This point, be it understood, is merely hypothetical, as the efflorescence 
is not visible. 

When the stale bread is again heated, a general expansion occurs 
by the conversion of liquid water into aqueous vapor, every grain 
of water thus converted expanding to seventeen hundred times its 
former bulk. As this happens throughout, i. e., upon the surface of 
every one of the countless fibers or particles, there must be a general 
elbowing in the crowd, breaking up the recent adhesion between these 
fibers and drawing them all apart in the directions of least resistance, 
i. e., toward the open spaces of the larger and visible pores, producing 
that apparent diminution of porosity that I have observed as the visi- 
ble characteristic of the change. 

This explanation of the change may be further demonstrated by 
cutting a loaf through the middle from top to bottom, and exposing 
the cut surfaces. In this case the bread becomes unequally stale, more 
so near the cut surface than within. The unequal pull due to the 
greater adhesive approximation of the fibers and small particles causes 
a rupture of the exposed surface of the crumb, which becomes cracked 
or fissured without any perceptible alteration of the size of the visible 
pores. If the two broken faces be now accurately placed together, the 
halves thus closely joined, firmly tied together, and placed for an hour 
in the oven, it will be seen on separating them that the chasms are con- 
siderably closed, though not quite healed. Careful examination of the 
structure of the inside, by breaking out a portion of the crumb, will 
reveal that loosening of the structure which I have described. 

I should add that, in quoting the figures given by Boussingault in 
my last, I inadvertently omitted to reduce them from the French to 
the English thermometric scale: 130° to 150° centigrade is equal to 
266° to 302° Fahr., which is considerably below the temperature re- 
quired for starting the original baking. 

“Popped corn” is a peculiar example of starch-cookery. Here a 
certain degree of porosity is given to an originally close-compacted 
structure of starch by the simple operation of explosive violence due 
to the sudden conversion into vapor of the water naturally associated 
with the starch. ‘The operation is too rapid for the production of much 
dextrin. 

As most of my readers doubtless know, peas, beans, lentils, and 
other seeds of leguminous plants are more nutritious, theoretically, 
than the seeds of grasses, such as wheat, barley, oats, maize, ete. I 
was glad to see at the Health Exhibition a fine series of the South 
Kensington cases displaying in the simplest and most demonstrative 
manner the proximate analyses of the chief materials of animal and 
vegetable food. I refer to them now because they do not receive the 
attention they deserve. On the opening day there was, out of all the 


638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


crowd, only one other besides myself bestowing any attention upon 
them. I soon learned in conversation with him that he is a reader of 
“Knowledge.” These cases show one pound of wheat, oats, potatoes, 
peas, etc., etc., on trays ; by the side of these are bottles, containing 
the quantity of water in the one pound, and other trays, with the other 
constituents of the same quantity, the starch, gluten, casein, the niin- 
eral matter, etc., thus displaying at a glance the nutritive value of each 
so far as chemical analysis can display it. Those Irishmen and others, 
who think I have been too hard upon the potato, will do well to take 
its nutritive measure thus, and compare it with that of other vegetable 
foods. 

They will see that all the leguminous seeds, the ground-nuts, etc., 
have their nitrogenous constituents displayed under the name of 
“casein.” The use of this term is rather confusing. In many modern 
books it does not appear at all in connection with the vegetable king- 
dom, but is replaced by “legumin.” Liebig regarded this nitrogenous 
constituent of the leguminous seeds, almonds, etc., as identical with 
the casein of milk, and it was a pupil and friend of Liebig’s—the late 
prince consort—who devised and originally supervised this graphic 
method of displaying the chemistry of food.* 

I will not here discuss the vexed question of whether the analyses 
of Liebig, ‘identifying legumin with casein, or rather those of Du- 
mas and Cahours, who state that the vegetable casein is not of the same 
composition as animal casein, are correct. 

The following figures display my justification for thus lightly treat- 
ing the discussion : 


Casein. Legumin. Legumin. Legumin. 
Oprhnett 625 oi 583g dN ak 53°7 50°50 55°05 56°24 
FAV OTOOO Ca cs kas Chain pwelete 7°2 6°78 7°59 797 
NIGMORED yes vs pews ou cus 16°6 18°17 15°89 15°83 
Oxygen a; ; ; : OF - 
Sulphur Meee e a phe eee te 22°5 24°55 | 21°47 19°96 


The first column shows the results of Dumas for animal casein ; the 
second those of Dumas and Cahours for legumin ; the third those of 
Jones for the same ; and the fourth those of Rochleder ; all as quoted 
by Lehmann. Here it will be seen that the differences upon which 
Dumas and Cahours base their supposed refutation of the identity of 
the animal with the vegetable principle are much smaller than the dif- 
ferences betwen the results of different analyses of the latter. These 


* Shortly after the close of the Great Exhibition of 1851, when the South Kensington 
Museum was only in embryo, I had occasion to call at the “ boilers,” and there found the 
prince hard at work giving instructions for the arrangement and labeling of these ana- 
lyzed food-products and the similarly displayed materials of industry, such as whalebone, 
ivory, etc. I then, by inquiry, learned how much time and labor he was devoting, not 
only to the general business of the collection, but also to its minor details. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 639 


differences, I suspect, are all due to the difficulty of isolating the sub- 
stances in question, especially of the vegetable substance, which is so 
intimately mixed with the starch, etc., in its natural condition that com- 
plete separation is of questionable possibility. 

This will be understood by the following description of the method 
of separation as given by Miller (“ Elements of Chemistry,” Vol. III) : 
“ Legumin is usually extracted from peas or from almonds, by digest- 
ing the pulp of the crushed seeds in warm water for two or three 
hours. The undissolved portion is strained off by means of linen, and 
the turbid liquid allowed to deposit the starch which it holds in sus- 
pension ; it is then filtered and mixed with dilute acetic acid. A 
white flocculent precipitate is thus formed, which must be collected on 
a filter and washed.” 

This is but a mechanical process, and its liability to variation in 
result will be learned by anybody who will repeat it, or who has sepa- 
rated the gluten of flour by similar treatment. 

Practically regarded in relation to our present subject, casein and 
legumin may be considered as the same. Their nutritive values are 
equal and exceptionally high, supposing they can be digested and as- 
similated. One is the most difficult of digestion of all the nutritive 
constituents of vegetable food, and the other enjoys the same distinc- 
tion among those of animal food. Both primarily exist in a soluble 
form ; both are rendered solid and insoluble in water by the action of 
acids ; both are precipitated as a curd by rennet, and both are rendered 
soluble after precipitation or are retained in their original soluble form 
by the action of alkalies. They nearly resemble in flavor, and John 
Chinaman makes actual cheese from peas and beans. 

These facts, coupled with what I have already said concerning 
cheese and its cookery, will doubtless lead my readers to expect some- 
thing concerning pease-pudding and potash in my next. 


pov as 
‘*¢ Pease-pudding hot, pease-pudding cold, 
Pease-pudding in the pot, nine days old.” 

I leave to Mr. Clodd the historical problem of determining whether 
this notable couplet is of Semitic, Aryan, Neolithic, or Paleolithic 
origin. Regarded from my point of view it expresses a culinary and 
chemical principle of some importance, and indicates an ancient practice 
that is worthy of revival. 

I have lately made some experiments on the ensilage of human 
food, whereby the cellular tissue of the vegetable may be gradually 
subjected to that breaking up of fiber described in No. 28. One of 
the curious achievements of chemical metamorphoses that is often 
quoted as a matter for wonderment is that of converting old rags into 
sugar by treating them with acid. The wonderment of this is dimin- 
ished, and its interest increased, when we remember that the cellulose 


640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


or woody fiber of which the rags are composed has the same composi- 
tion as starch, and thus its conversion into sugar corresponds to the 
every-day proceedings described in No. 30. All that I have read and 
seen in connection with the recent ensilage experiments on cattle-fod- 
der indicates that it is a process of slow vegetable cookery, a digesting 
or maceration of fibrous vegetables in their own juices which loosens 
the fiber, renders it softer and more digestible, and not only does this, 
but, to some extent, converts it into dextrin and sugar. 

I hereby recommend those gentlemen who have ensilage-pits and 
are sufficiently enterprising to try bold experiments, to water the fod- 
der, as it is being packed down, with dilute hydrochloric acid or acetic 
acid, which, if Iam not deluded by plausible theory, will materially 
increase the sugar-forming action of the ensilage. The acid, if not 
over-supplied, will find ammonia and other bases with which to neu- 
tralize itself. 

Such ensilage will correspond to that which occurs when we gather 
Jersey or other superlatively fine pears in autumn as soon as they are 
full grown. They are then hard, woody, and acid, quite unfit for food, 
but by simply storing them for a month, or two, or three, they become 
lusciously soft and sweet, the woody fibers are converted into sugar, 
the acid neutralized, and all this by simply fulfilling the conditions of 
ensilage, viz., close packing of the fiber, exclusion of air by the thick 
rind of the fruit, plus the other condition which I have just suggested, 
viz., the diffusion of acid among the well-packed fibers of the ensilage 
material. | 

In my experiments on the ensilage of human food I have encount- 
ered the same difficulty as that which has troubled graziers in their 
experiments, viz., that small-scale results do not fairly represent those 
obtained with large quantities. There is, besides this, another element 
of imperfection in my experiments respecting which I am bound to be 
candid to my readers, viz., that the idea of thus extending the prin- 
ciple was suggested in the course of writing this series, and, therefore, 
a sufficient time has not yet elapsed to enable me (with much other 
occupation) to do practical justice to the investigation. 

I find that oatmeal-porridge is greatly improved by being made 
some days before it is required, then stored in a closed jar, brought 
forth and heated for use. The change effected is just that which 
theoretically may be expected, viz., a softening of the fibrous material, 
and a sweetening due to the formation of sugar. This sweetening I 
observed many years ago in some gruel that was partly eaten one 
night and left standing until next morning, when I thought it tasted 
sweeter, but, to be assured of this, I had it warmed again two nights 
afterward, so that it might be tasted under the same conditions of 
temperature, palate, etc., as at first. The sweetness was still more dis- 
tinct, but the experiment was carried no further. 

I have lately learned that my ensilage notion is not absolutely new. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 641 


A friend who read my Cantor lectures tells me that he has long been 
accustomed to have seven dishes of porridge in his larder, correspond- 
ing to the days of the week, so that next Monday’s breakfast was 
cooked the Monday before, and so on, each being warmed again on 
the day fixed for its final execution, and each being thus seven days 
old. He finds the result more digestible than newly-made porridge. 
The classical nine days’ old pease-pudding is a similar anticipation, 
and I find, rather curiously, that nine days is about the limit to which 
it may be practically kept before mildew—moldiness—is sufficiently 
established to spoil the pudding. I have not yet tried a barrel full of 
pease-pudding or moistened pease-meal, closely covered and power- 
fully pressed down, but hope to do so. 

Besides these we have a notable example of ensilage in sour-kraut 
—a foreign luxury that John Bull, with his usual blindness, denounces, 
as a matter of course. ‘Horrid stuff,” “beastly mess,” and such-like 
expressions, I hear whenever I name it to certain persons. Who are 
these persons? Simply Englishmen and Englishwomen who have 
never seen, never tasted, and know nothing whatever of what they 
denounce so violently, in spite of the fact that it is a staple article of 
food among millions of highly-intelligent people. Common sense (to 
say nothing of that highest result of true scientific training, the faculty 
of suspending judgment until the arrival of knowledge) should sug- 
gest that some degree of investigation should precede the denuncia- 
tion. , 

In the cases of the sour-kraut and the ripening pear there is acid at 
work upon the fiber, which, as I have before stated, assists in the con- 
version of such indigestible fiber into soluble and digestible dextrin 
and sugar; but the demand for the solution of the vegetable casein 
or legumin, which has such high nutritive value and is so abundant in 
peas, etc., is of the opposite kind. Acids solidify and harden casein, 
alkalies soften and dissolve it. Therefore the chemical agent suggested 
as a suitable aid in the ensilage or slow cookery, or the boiling or rapid 
cookery, of leguminous food is such an alkali as may be wholesome 
and compatible with the demands for nutrition. 

Now, the analyses of peas, beans, and lentils, etc., show a deficiency 
of potash salts as compared with the quantity of nitrogenous nutriment 
they contain ; therefore I propose, as in the case of cheese-food, that 
‘we should add this potash in the convenient and safe form of bicar- 
bonate, not merely add it to the water in which the vegetables may 
be boiled, and which water is thrown away (as in the common prac- 
tice of adding soda when boiling greens), but add the potash to the 
actual pease-porridge, pease-pudding, lentil-soup, etc., and treat it as a 
part of the food as well as an adjunct to the cookery. This is espe- 
cially required when we use dried peas, dried beans of any kind, such 
as haricots, dried lentils, ete. 

I find that taking the ordinary yellow split-peas and boiling them 


VoL, xxv.—41 


642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


in a weak solution of bicarbonate of potash for two or three hours, a 
partial solution of the casein is effected, producing pease-pudding, or 
pease-porridge, or purée (according to the quantity of water used), 
which is softer and more gelid than that which is obtained by simi- 
larly boiling without the potash. The undissolved portion evidently 
consists of the fibrous tissue of the peas, the gelatinous or dissolved 
portion being the starch, with more or less of casein. I say “more or 
less,” because, at present, I have not been able to determine whether 
or not the casein is all rendered soluble. The flavor of the clear pea- 
soup, which I obtained by filtering through flannel, shows that some 
of the casein is dissolved ; this is further demonstrated by adding an 
acid to the clear solution, which at once precipitates the dissolved 
casein. The filtered pea-soup sets to a stiff jelly on cooling, and 
promises to be a special food of some value, but, for the reasons above 
stated, Iam not yet able to speak positively as to its practical value. 
The experience of any one person is not sufficient for this, the question 
being, not whether it contains nutritive material—this is unquestion- 
able—but whether it is easily digested and assimilated. As we all 
know, a food of this kind may “agree” with some persons and not 
with others—i. e., it may be digested and assimilated with ease or 
with difficulty according to personal idiosyncrasies. ‘The cheesy char- 
acter of the abundant precipitate, which I obtain by acidulating this 
solution, is very interesting and instructive, regarded from a chemical 
point of view. The solubility of the casein is increased by soaking 
the peas for some hours, or, better still, a few days, in the solution of 
bicarbonate of potash. 

Another question is opened by these experiments, viz.: What is 
the character and the value of the fibrous solid matter remaining be- 
hind after filtering out the clear pea-soup? Has the alkali acted in 
an opposite manner to the acid in the ripening pear? Is it merely a 
fibrous refuse only fit for pig-food, or is it deserving of further atten- 
tion in the kitchen? Should it be treated with dilute acid—say a 
little vinegar—to break up the fiber, and thereby be made into good 
porridge ? Other questions crop up here, as they have been cropping 
continually since I committed myself to the writing of these papers, 
and so abundantly that, if I could afford to set up a special laboratory, 
and endow it with a staff of assistants, there would be some years’ 
work for myself and staff before I could answer them exhaustively, 
and doubtless the answers would suggest new questions, and so on 
ad infinitum. I state this in apology for the merely suggestive 
crudity of many of the ideas that I throw out in the course of these 
papers. 

Before leaving the subject of peas, I must here repeat a practical 
suggestion that I published in “The Birmingham Journal” about 
twenty years ago, viz., that the water in which green peas are boiled 
should not be thrown away. It contains much of the saline constitu- 


HYGIENE FOR SMOKERS. 643 


ents of the peas, some soluble casein, and has a fine flavor, the very 
essence of the peas. If to this, as it comes from the saucepan, be 
added a little stock, or some Liebig’s extract, a delicious soup is at 
once produced, requiring nothing more than ordinary seasoning. 
With care, it may form a clear soup such as just now is in fashion 
among the fastidious ; but, prepared however roughly, it is a very 
economical, wholesome, and appetizing soup, and costs a minimum of 
trouble. 

I must here add a few words in advocacy of the further adoption 
in this country of the French practice of using, as potage, the water 
in which vegetables generally (excepting potatoes) have been boiled. 
When we boil cabbages, turnips, carrots, etc., we dissolve out of them 
a very large proportion of their saline constituents—salts which are 
absolutely necessary for the maintenance of health; salts, without 
which we become victims of gout, rheumatism, lumbago, neuralgia, 
gravel, and all the ills that human flesh, with a lithic-acid diathesis, is 
heir to, i. e., about the most painful series of all its inheritances. The 
potash of these salts existing therein, in combination with organic 
acids, is separated from these acids by organic combustion, and is 
then and there presented to the baneful lithic acid of the blood and 
tissues, the stony torture-particles of which it converts into soluble 
lithate of potash, and thus enables them to be carried out of the 
system. 

I know not which of the fathers of the Church invented fast-days 
and soup maigre, but could almost suppose that he was a scientific 
monk, a profound alchemist, like Basil Valentine, who, in his seekings 
for the aurum potabile, the elixir of life, had learned the beneficent 
action of organic potash salts on the blood, and therefore used the 
authority of the Church to enforce their frequent use among the 
faithful.— Knowledge. 


HYGIENE FOR SMOKERS. 
By Dr. FELIX BREMONT. 


Spee article is not intended for school-boys desiring to enjoy their 
cigarettes out of the sight of their tutor, nor for children who 
try to play the man by taking up one of his faults. It is addressed 
to smokers, but does not purpose to increase the number of them. — Its 
design is to indicate what precautions may be taken to diminish as far 
as possible the inconveniences of smokers’ glandular irritation ; but it 
affirms the reality of these inconveniences, and declares it impossible 
to remove them completely. 

The first hygienic principle relative to tobacco is, then, Do not smoke 
at all; don’t smoke at any age. More than one old smoker will agree 


644 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


with me that it would have been good for him if he had never lit a 
cigar ; for he suffers now if he can not smoke a half-dozen of them in 
the course of the day. The habit of smoking creates a factitious want 
that is, perhaps, more imperative than real wants, and which is a con- 
stant trouble to those who feel it. When I have a pressing engage- 
ment after dinner, I cut my meal short so as to have time to smoke a 
cigar ; and there is to me nothing to suggest doubt in the story re- 
lated by Philibert Audebrand of Father Schoéne, director of Louis Phi- 
lippe’s park of Monceaux, who loved two things—his plants and his 
pipe. From morning till night he lived in the garden, and from morn- 
ing till night he carried a short pipe in his mouth, which he would not 
take out for any one. “It may pass before me,” said Louis Philippe 
to him one day “but to smoke so in the presence of the queen and 
the princesses!” “Sire,” replied Schoéne, “it is stronger than I am. 
If your majesty is not satisfied with my service, I shall have to present 
my account ; I shall probably die with vexation over the matter, but | 
it will be with my pipe between my teeth.” 

Do not enroll yourselves, then, beardless readers, in the battalions 
of Nicotia, Initiation into her mysteries has painful accompaniments, 
and her fervent worship brings troubles of another character. To- 
bacco is smoked in cigars, cigarettes, and pipes. Placed in contact 
with the mouth, the cigar, which can not escape some chewing, colors 
the saliva and charges it with the toxic principles of the tobacco—ele- 
ments, principally nicotine, that should be carefully rejected. A per- 
son smoking only a simple light cigar may, perhaps, see the end of it 
without spitting, but, if he consumes any number of them, he must 
spit frequently. This exercise is less indispensable when a cigar-holder 
is used, and the adoption of such a mouth-piece is recommended by hy- 
giene as a means of avoiding the direct contact of the mouth with the 
tobacco, and considerably diminishing the inconveniences of smoking, 
Cigar-holders are made of amber, shell, glass, bone, cherry, birch, lilac, 
jasmin, maple, and cane. Holders made from the last wood are the 
best, because they are generally longer than the others, whereby the 
smoke may become cooled, and because, being very cheap, they can 
be frequently renewed. Other inconveniences, involving questions of 
cleanliness, are avoided by the use of the cigar-holder. Too many 
hands touch the tobacco while it is being manufactured into a cigar 
for one to be able to say it has not been soiled, and cases of its 
having been the vehicle for conveying contagious disease are not 
unknown. 

Havana cigars are the: best, but how to get them? ‘The coat does 
not make the monk, nor does the label make a real Havana. We read 
in the “ Journal d’Hygiéne” that cigars are bought at very cheap prices 
at various places in Europe, and then shipped to Havana, where they 
are boxed and labeled and sent back to Europe. According to M. 
Cardon, the matter is arranged more expeditiously at Hamburg and 


HYGIENE FOR SMOKERS. 645 


Frankfort, where cabbage-leaf cigars are sold as real Havanas under 
the government stamp, which they have acquired the right to bear by 
being sent out to meet vessels coming in from Cuba, whose arrival in 
the Baltic or in the Channel has been signalized. The cigars go through 
the custom-house, get the government mark, and are worth ten times 
as much as they were before their little excursion. It is a good hygi- 
enic precaution to choose dry cigars. The nicotine, being volatile, 
gradually escapes during the drying process, and the smoker conse- 
quently absorbs less of it. ‘The absorption is also less when the smok- 
ing is done slowly; but, if one smokes fresh cigars fast and without 
spitting, his mouth and nervous system become so saturated with the 
narcotic ingredients of the smoke that, according to Professor John- 
ston, every kind of pipe becomes insipid to him. 

Tobacco rolled up in a thin, combustible substance, which is burned 
with it, forms a cigarette. Many doctors regard this as the most dan- 
gerous form in which tobacco can be smoked. Dr. Barré recently in- 
vited smokers of cigarettes, in the journal “ Le Peuple Francais,” to ob- 
serve if they did not, after having smoked ten or a dozen of them, feel 
a pressure on the left side, with palpitation of the heart. The more we 
advance in the practice of medicine, he added, and the more we ques- 
tion our fellow-doctors, “the more we are convinced that the abuse of 
the cigarette is one of the most frequent causes of diseases of the heart.” 
As for myself, I have never observed the troubles noticed by Dr. Barré ; 
- but I have remarked others, particularly inflammatory angina and 
laryngitis. The irritation of the back part of the mouth and respira- 
tory channels probably arises from the habit, common with smokers, of 
swallowing the smoke. This is a noxious practice, and must be avoided. 
In some countries cigarettes are rolled in corn or plantain leaves ; in 
France, we roll them in paper. A great many persons think that the 
mischievous effects of the cigarette are due to this envelope. I owe it 
to the truth to say that the accusation has not been established. If the 
use of the cigarette is really more injurious than that of the cigar, it is 
probably because, in cigarette-smoking, we have to use tobacco that is 
more moist, and consequently more charged with nicotine. The ques- 
tion respecting the envelope is not yet solved. The makers of cigarette- 
paper certainly take great care to fill the public with the idea of danger 
attending the use of paper of bad quality. They all offer the smoker 
superior papers, of pure fiber. The more refined offer coal-tar paper, 
to prevent chest-irritation ; ferruginous paper, as a guard against ane- 
mia; and even pepsin-paper, to facilitate digestion. It is all smoked, 
and that is the end of it. Use any paper you please, gentlemen ; the 
important thing for hygiene is, that you do not use too much. The 
same recommendation is addressed to the ladies—for there are ladies 
who smoke ; the Society of Public Medicine was occupied with them 
in 1880. MM. Decaisne, Delaunay, Thévenot, Bouley, Brouardel, 
and Goyard said some very interesting things on the occasion ; but, 


646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


after a brilliant oratorical display, “richer in arguments than in ob- 
served facts,” the society wisely concluded that “it was not necessary 
to conclude anything.” ‘That is my position on this vexed question of 
cigarette-paper. 

Larouse says that, although it is admitted as a principle that only 
the cigar is in good taste in the street, the pipe is, in the privacy of 
home, the relaxation of persons in the highest social classes as well as 
of the masses. The observation is just. All great smokers use the 
pipe. The poor smoke a modest clay pipe ; the rich a meerschaum set 
with silver and amber, carved and engraved like a precious stone ; 
poor and rich, consuming much tobacco, burn it in an incombustible 
bowl with a tube attached ; whatever it may be, it is still a pipe, and, 
if it costs more, it is no better than the cheaper one, but rather the 
contrary. If all pipes were equally durable, they might be classed, 
according to their merit, as follows: 1. Soft earthen pipe; 2. Meer- 
schaum ; 3. Hard age pipe, white or colored; 4. Wooden pipe ; 
5. Porcelain pipe ; 6. Metallic pipe. 

The white earthen pipe, porous and permeable to “liquids, is put 
first, because it is a good absorber of nicotine ; the metallic pipe is put 
last, because it allows all the noxious prodects formed during the com- 
bustion of the tobacco to reach the mouth of the smoker. ‘The meer- 
schaum, which immediately follows the clay pipe, deserves its place 
only on condition that it is not too old. If it is seasoned, it is as bad 
as a wooden or porcelain pipe. The seasoning, of which poets have 
sung, may be full of charms for the amateur; to the hygienist, it 
simply indicates that the pipe has had its day, and is now saturated 
with tobacco-juice ; and that it must be replaced by another one, or be 
passed through the fire to purify it, as is done in the coffee-houses of 
Holland. Every old pipe, browned with long use, leaves on the lips and 
tongue an acrid and strong-smelling liquid which irritates the tissues 
and corrodes the mucous secretions. When it has reached this condi- 
tion, the finest meerschaum is no better than the meanest scorch-throat. 
Independently of the substance, the form of the pipe has an influence on 
the proportion of noxious ingredients which tobacco-smoke contains, 
Turkish and Indian pipes, in which tobacco is burned slowly, discharg- 
ing its smoke through a liquid, arrest a large proportion of the poison- 
ous ingredients. The bowl of the German pipe retains the greater part 
of the oily products ; the Dutch and English clay pipes retain less. The 
metallic pipes of Thibet, becoming heated, carry to the mouth not only 
brown liquids saturated with nicotine, but also a smoke hot enough to 
burn the tongue. The pipe should, then, be long, and, in order that 
the smoker may become convinced of this, I submit to him these lines 
by Dr. Buisson, taken from his article on “The Lips,” in the “ Dic- 
tionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales”: “It is not with- 
out reason that the popular tongue has energetically described by 
the name bréle-gueule (scorch-throat) the pipe with a short stem. 


HOW THE DODDER BECAME A PARASITE. 647 


Not only is this stem impregnated with the empyreumatic matter 
with which old pipes become browned in seasoning, but it is heated 
to such a degree as to subject the lips to a local elevation of tempera- 
ture, a kind of chronic burning, which causes a thickening of the 
epithelial layer in the same manner as the contact with hot bodies in- 
creases the epidermic secretion on the hands of subjects exercising 
certain professions.” It should be added that every smoker should 
have his own pipe, and not use indifferently any one that comes to 
hand. 

Whether we smoke a cigar, a cigarette, or a pipe, two hygienic 
precepts should not be lost sight of : The first relates to the atmos- 
phere, and may be formulated—it is less injurious to smoke in the 
open air than in a room, ina large room than in asmall one. Be 
careful, then, smokers, to ventilate liberally and frequently the apart- 
ments in which you smoke your tobacco. The second precept is a 
question of cleanliness. If it is good for every one to attend fre- 
quently to the washing of his mouth and teeth, the usefulness of the 
habit becomes a rigorous obligation to every one who is addicted to 
the pipe, the cigar, or the cigarette. A wet cloth passed over the 
gums and teeth in the morning may possibly be enough for persons 
who do not smoke, but the brush is indispensable for smokers. A 
simple gargle of aromatized warm water is better to neutralize the 
odor of tobacco than the best scented pellet.—TZranslated for the 
Popular Science Monthly from the Journal @ Hygiene. 


HOW THE DODDER BECAME A PARASITE. 
By JOSEPH F. JAMES. 


VER yonder in the corner of a field there grows a mass of yellow 
threads, looking at a distance like an immense spider’s web cov- 
ering a number of plants. Closer inspection reveals it to be the dod- 
der, poetically called by some the golden-thread. Though beautiful 
in the abstract, handsome in its golden color, it is yet a vile and per- 
nicious weed—one that in the flax-fields of Europe in one form, and 
in the alfalfa-fields of California in another, has done a vast deal of 
harm. Yet it is, to look at, beautiful. The flexuous stem of golden 
yellow, adorned with clusters of white, bell-shaped flowers, twining 
among and over other plants, forms a striking contrast with their 
green stems and leaves. And it is no wonder it has been sometimes 
cultivated for its beauty. Why, then, should we call it a pernicious 
weed? Look closer, and you will see that at intervals along the stem, 
where it clings closely to other plants, it has sent out bunches of little 
rootlets, which, not content with performing the office of hold-fasts, 


648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


force their way through the bark, penetrate the tissue, and take the 
matter found there into their own systems. 

Still closer examination will reveal other features. In the first 
place, there are none of the green leaves usually found on plants. 
Secondly, there is no root fastening the plant to the soil. Why is this? 
What is the reason that this plant grows and flourishes like other 
plants, and has yet neither root nor leaves? Let us see. 

What is known as parasitism in plants is not confined to any one 
family or class. Various orders have one or more genera with species 
which take their nourishment in a complete or partly elaborated form 
from other plants. Sometimes they are perfect parasites, and take 
everything they need from other vegetable forms. Sometimes, as in 
the mistletoe, they take the partially made sap, and complete its trans- 
formation within their own tissue ; while in still other instances only 
a very little of the sap is taken, and the other nourishment is absorbed 
from the soil by the roots proper. 

Our dodder is an example of a perfect parasite. All the material 
necessary for its growth it takes ready made from the plants upon 
which it grows. As the purpose of leaves in all plants is to prepare 
from the crude materials in the air and soil the matter necessary for 
its growth, and as the dodder finds and appropriates this material 
already made, the absence of leaves is at once accounted for. There 
was no need for them, and they ceased to be. 

The want of a root is another matter. When the seed of the dod- 
der is examined, it is found that there is simply a coiled embryo, with 
very little albumen. The usual seed-leaves are absent ; so that, for 
its first growth, it must depend entirely upon the albumen in the seed. 
When this seed first germinates, a little rootlet penetrates the ground. 
Owing to the deficiency of food, it only exists long enough to enable 
its stem to grow till it reaches some plant upon which it can fasten. 
When this is accomplished, the young plant will grow rapidly, and 
soon sever its connection with the ground ; but, if not able to reach 
some support, it dies entirely. 

In order to comprehend the reasons for the peculiarities of the dod- 
der, and understand how it came to assume its habit of complete para- 
sitism, it will be necessary to notice the probable rise and progress of 
the habit. We can do this by looking at some of those plants which 
are not yet such complete pensioners on the bounty of others. For it 
very seldom happens that all the steps leading from a normal to an 
out-of-the-way mode of living are lost. Some few will remain, to in- 
dicate the line along which the plant has proceeded. Imperfect adap- 
tations point surely the path leading to perfect development. 

The modes of living of the dodder and the Indian pipe may be con- 
sidered as the two extremes of one line of development. The first is 
a complete parasite, and the second has gone so far as to become a 
saprophyte. The central point from which sprang the two branches 


HOW THE DODDER BECAME A PARASITE. 649 


is probably represented in certain species of Gerardia. Here is found 
the first indication of the parasitic habit. While the roots are attached 
to those of other plants, its green leaves are well developed, and it 
takes only the crude material into its system and there elaborates it ; 
and at the same time it absorbs matter by means of the other roots 
with which it is provided. 

The mistletoe comes second. In this plant we find the root absorb- 
ing nourishment from the branch on which it has located ; the stem 
provided with green leaves, to which it can bring the sap to a proper 
state for assimilation, but no connection with the soil. The next step 
would be for the plant to loose its connection with earth or branch, 
take the fully elaborated sap, and by gradual stages lose all its foliage 
organs. Then the fully formed parasitic dodder results. 

Proceeding in the opposite direction we find the beech-drop, a 
plant which lives in the rich mold of beech-woods, taking part of its 
food from the decaying leaves, and part from the roots of the beech- 
trees which it penetrates with its own rootlets. This plant is entirely 
destitute of green leaves, is of a brownish color, and may be consid- 
ered one step on the road taken by the Indian pipe. 

The Indian pipe, again, is a little plant which lives in the débris 
of forests, finding its food in the mass of decaying vegetable mold. 
While it is not probable that its roots are connected with those of the 
trees under which it grows, it is certain that the rich matter there 
found contains the constituents it requires for its growth. It, like the 
dodder, is destitute of green leaves, and for the same reason, namely, 
because it finds its food already prepared for it and has only to absorb 
it. But it differs in taking the food from the dead and decayed mat- 
ter, instead of from the living. Plants of this kind are known as 
saprophytes, and are most common among the fungi. Here, then, 
in the saprophytic Indian pipe we have one end of a line of habit 
of living which has its other end in the perfect parasitism of the 
dodder. 

In attempting to trace the origin of any particular habit peculiar 
to any one species, it is always necessary to examine the near relatives 
and see in what respects they resemble and in what ones they differ 
from the plant under consideration. The dodder belongs to the Con- 
volvulacee, or the morning-glory family, and one of the most striking 
features of this family is found in their habits of twining. But what 
a vast difference there is in appearance between the morning-glory, 
with its large leaves, its root, and its conspicuous flowers, and the dod- 
der, with its yellow stem, complete absence of green leaves, and lack of 
root! How is the change to arise which will bring the dodder to its 
present condition ? 

Evolutionists acknowledge that all changes in either plants or ani- 
mals are the results of changes in conditions or surroundings. When 
once a change has occurred which is beneficial in a certain way, the 


650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


probability is, that the plant or animal will continue to develop in that 
direction till it diverges widely from the original form. The struggle 
for existence will cause all the imperfect forms to be killed off, and 
only those will survive which are best suited to the altered conditions 
of life. Once let an organism begin to vary in any one direction, 
and there is no telling where or when it will stop. This much is 
certain, that it never ceases until the best results possible have been 
attained. 

The chief characteristic, then, of the convolvulus family is the 
climbing habit. The origin of this habit is found in the fact that 
sunlight and air are two things needful for a plant’s proper growth 
and development. In situations where these two things are found in 
limited quantities, plants with climbing habits and animals with arbo- 
real instincts will abound. In Brazil, for instance, where immense 
tracts are covered with a dense forest-growth, it is noticed that all 
forms of animal life have become adapted to residence in trees. Many 
of them live there entirely. Monkeys seldom leave the tree-tops. Liz- 
ards and snakes and insects are there, and even man himself is often 
found living among the branches. So, too, plants form immensely 
long stems, reaching in many cases to the tops of trees a hundred feet 
high. The extraordinary development of climbing powers has been 
gradually acquired in the course of ages. In times and places where 
vegetation was not dense, and where the struggle for light was not 
great, plants of erect habit succeeded well. ‘Then it was a conflict to 
see which could grow tallest. But when a weak plant found that, by 
taking hold of its tall and erect neighbor and by clinging to it, it could 
reach the sunlight much easier and by an expenditure of much less 
material than by growing erect itself, it was a great step on the road. 
This habit, being transmitted from one generation to the next, kept on 
improving. Less and less rigid, more and more flexuous stems ensued, 
and the delicate climbing vines of modern times are the results of this 
necessity of reaching sunlight with as little waste of material as pos- 
sible. 

There are many methods adopted by plants to climb. While some 
of them reach upward by means of tendrils developed at the ends of 
stems or leaves, others twist their petioles round the support, and still 
others twine their stems round other stems that may come in their 
way. ‘This last is the method adopted by those of the Convolvulaceee 
which climb at all. For even in this family there are some species 
which are erect in growth. The Calystegia spithamea is one of 
them. Others do not grow up into the air, but trail along the ground 
or over low plants, and thus secure their due share of sunlight. Oth- 
ers, again, climb freely, and this is the case with the dodder. 

The climbing bitter-sweet is said to sometimes strangle the trees 
upon which it grows. The constriction caused by its growing stem is 
so great as to cut off the supply of sap from the roots, and cause the 


HOW THE DODDER BECAME A PARASITE. 651 


death of the tree which has supported it. The original ancestor of 
the dodder was a plant with a well-developed root, green stem and 
leaves, and a twining habit. If its clasping killed the stem which 
supported it, the effect would be disastrous, for then it would not ac- 
complish the purpose of its climbing. If the twining stem sank into 
the supporting one, it might cause decay along the line. This decay- 
ing would tend to develop rootlets from the side of the climber. The 
rootlets, used at first merely to assist in climbing, might and must 
have become modified so as to penetrate the bark to the tissue be- 
neath. A minute absorption of the sap from this would be an assist- 
ance. Gradual increase of the amount absorbed would lead to gradual 
increase in the number of rootlets. And, this continuing, less and less 
need would be felt for the leaves. As needless organs are sure to de- 
generate, the leaves would become smaller and smaller, lose more and 
more of their green color, and finally become the yellow scales and 
bracts they now are. 

Along with the loss of the leaves would go the root. Becoming 
less necessary, it would get smaller, until finally it would retain only 
enough of its original character to give the plantlet a start in life, 
and transmit its qualities to its progeny. Of course, all these changes 
would be made slowly ; but they would come surely. If each suc- 
ceeding generation of rooting stemmed plants throve better in any 
way, perfected seed in any greater abundance, or were enabled to 
crowd out competitors in the struggle for life, we may be sure that 
the descendants of the favored plants would inherit these good traits, 
and would send more and more rootlets into the enveloped stem, until 
at last the habit would become firmly fixed. Thus would be formed a 
leafless, rootless parasite, so well adapted to hold its own that it would 
probably exterminate some of the less favored forms. 

The commencement of the habit of sending rootlets into stems 
has been observed in occasional specimens of the convolvulus. Let 
but this habit grow and be improved upon, as it surely will be if it 
is found beneficial, and from this small beginning we can look for 
just such a development as has been found in the dodder. It can not 
be said that there is always an upward progress in Nature. Degener- 
ate forms exist and thrive as wellas regenerate ones. The truth is, 
that when a plant or an animal can fill a vacant space in the world 
better by going backward than by going forward, the retreat is sound- 
ed. Progress or retrogression, it isthe same. The direction best suited 
to Nature’s needs is the one taken; so that, while on the one hand 
there may be a wonderfully complex organism, perfectly fitted for the 
struggle for life, on the other hand there may be a very degenerate 
one equally fitted into its place. 


652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


SUN-KINKS. 
Bx T. O’CONOR SLOANE, Pu. D. 


7 a recent journal of this city an article descriptive of a railroad 
accident appeared, under the heading, “ Derailed by a Sun-Kink.” 
The title doubtless puzzled many readers. ‘The term indicates that 
the rails were thrown out of line by expansion, due to the heat of the 
sun. Few accidents are attributed to this cause, though it may be re- 
sponsible for more than are supposed. It will be interesting to deter- 
mine a few maxima of distortion that can be thus produced. 

The expansion of metals under the influence of heat is very slight. 
A mile of iron rails, for an elevation of temperature of 100° Fahr., only 
expands two feet eight and one half inches. This is so little as to be 
readily taken up by the one hundred and seventy-six joints that exist 
in that length of rails. If the rails were laid in very cold weather, in 
solid contact with each other, then, on a warm, sunny day, a consider- 
able disalignment could be produced. To find the maximum for the 
mile of rails, we must suppose that the line breaks in the middle, and 
bulges out like a flattened letter V. In this condition of things, the 
broken line of rail, with the original line for base, would form an equi- 
lateral triangle. The altitude of the triangle may be calculated by the 
familiar rule of the reverse of the hypotenuse. It will be found equal 
to nearly ninety feet. The result, though deduced by the simplest of 
calculations, is an astonishing one. It is enough to account for any 
number of “sun-kinks.” The books are very prolific of instances of 
expansion by heat, and always speak of the expansion of rails. They 
do not, however, allude to the geometrical element of danger; they 
concern themselves only with the physical one. 

It is obvious that a mile of rails would never expand in this way. 
Disturbances of alignment would be confined to smaller sections. The 
calculation shows a maximum that would never be attained. The con- 
ditions might be fulfilled by four rails. For the given elevation of 
temperature they would expand about eight tenths of an inch, with a 
lateral displacement of over two feet. For an expansion through 50° 
Fahr., the displacement would be eighteen inches. 

Two rails would act in accordance with the supposition most read- 
ily. Their total expansion, for 100° Fahr., is four tenths of an inch, 
and the bulge due to such expansion would be twelve inches. For 
half the number of degrees it would be nine inches. This shows how 
very small a rise of temperature might produce a spreading sufficient 
to throw a train from the track. The smaller figures are as impressive 
as the ninety feet, when it is recollected that four inches displacement 
of the rails might produce a catastrophe. 

The distortion might be confined to a single rail ; and, from what 


NATIONAL HEALTH AND WORK. 653 


has been said, it is clear how seriously the small fraction of an inch of 
expansion could affect it. It is an application of the old law of the 
elbow-joint press reversed, the working pressure taking the place of 
the resistance. The work is done at a great disadvantage, but the 
power is almost limitless. 

A very good instance of “sun-kink” could be seen some years ago 
on the wooden bridge leading from the elevated railroad station at 
One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, in this city, toward Ninth Ave- 
nue. A gas-pipe of wrought-iron was laid on the floor of the structure. 
As if to render it more susceptible to the rays of the sun, it was painted 
of dark color. On cold or cloudy days it lay in its normal position. 
On sunny days, the writer has frequently seen it bowed outward nearly 
or quite a foot out of line. The surface of the foot-planks under this 
part of it became worn by the daily friction. Finally, an arrange- 
ment of bends was introduced that operated as an expansion-joint, 
and now no bowing takes place. 

Even 50° Fahr. seems a large rise in temperature. But it must be 
remembered that the temperature of rails, or similar objects, is affected 
by the radiant heat of the sun as well as by the atmospheric tempera- 
ture. The latter is only the initial factor. The sun’s rays could easily 
raise their absolute temperature above 100° Fahr. 


_— ss 
wey 


NATIONAL HEALTH AND WORK.* 
By Sm JAMES PAGET, F.RB.S. 


A was very difficult to select, from the vast number of subjects relat- 
ing to health and to education, one of which I could fitly speak to- 
day. On general education I could not venture to speak ; and, believing 
that I should have to address a large and various audience, I thought 
it would be best to choose a subject by which I might urge one of the 
chief objects of this Exhibition, and one which I know that you, sir, 
have always had in view, namely, that the public themselves should 
consider, much more than they do, the utility and the means of main- 
taining their ownhealth. Ihave, therefore, chosen the relation between 
the national health and work ; especially as it may be shown in a few 
of the many examples of the quantity of work which is lost to the 
nation, either through sickness or through deaths occurring before the 
close of what may fairly be reckoned as the working-time of life. I 
think it may be made clear that this loss is so great, that the consider- 
ation of it should add largely to the motives by which all people may 
be urged to the remedy of whatever unwholesome conditions they may 
live in.’ It is a subject which is often in the minds of the real students 


#* Address delivered at the International Health Exhibition, London, June 17, 1884. 


654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of the public health, but the public itself is far too little occupied 
with it. , 

I shall speak only of national health. In consideration of his own 
self, a man may be deemed healthy who lives idle, comfortably, and 
long ; who enjoys every day of his life, and satisfies every natural ap- 
petite without consequent distress. And when such a one dies of old 
age, with a timely, uniform, and painless decay of every part, he may 
be deemed to have been completely healthy. And yet it is possible that 
he may have enjoyed his own health in the midst of a poor, unhealthy, 
and unhappy nation, to which he has done no good whatever. 

If we could find a nation composed of people such as this man, we 
might be bound to speak of them as healthy ; but we should be right 
in calling the whole nation utterly unsound, and might safely prophesy 
its complete stagnation, or its quick decline and fall. 

It is not health such as this—idle, selfish, unproductive—that we 
want to promote either in the individual or in the multitude. Com- 
fortable idleness, such as that of some vagrants and fine gentlemen, 
is a despicable result of good health; it is what no thorough man 
would ever wish for. In view of the national health and welfare, the 
pattern healthy man is one who lives long and vigorously ; who in 
every part of his life, wherever and whatever it may be, does the 
largest amount of the best work that he can, and, when he dies, leaves 
healthy offspring. And we may regard that as the healthiest nation 
which produces, for the longest time, and in proportion to its popula- 
tion, the largest number of such men as this, and which, in proportion 
to its natural and accumulated resources, can show the largest amount 
and greatest variety of good work. 

Here let me insert, as an interpretation clause, that in all this and 
what is to follow the word “man” means also “‘ woman,” and “he” 
means also “she”; and that, when I speak of work, I mean not only 
manual or other muscular work, but work of whatever kind that can 
be regarded as a healthy part of the whole economy of the national 
life. And I shall take it for granted that a large portion of all na- 
tional welfare is dependent on the work which the population can con- 
stantly be doing ; or, if I may so express it, that the greater part of 
the national wealth is the income from the work which is the out- 
come of the national health. 

It is a common expression that we do not know the value of a thing 
till we ‘have lost it; and this may be applied to the losses of work 
which are due to losses of national health. There are very few cases 
in which these can be estimated with any appearance of accuracy ; but 
Iam helped to the best within our present reach by Mr. Sutton, the 
Actuary to the Registry of Friendly Societies. In his office are the 
returns, for many years past, of the sickness and mortality among the 
members of a very large number of these societies ; and, among other 
things, there is recorded the number of days which each member, when 


NATIONAL HEALTH AND WORK. 655 


“off work” on account of sickness, receives money from his society. 
Hence Mr. Sutton can estimate, and this he has been so good as to do 
for me, the average number of days’ sickness and consequent loss of 
work among several hundred thousands of the workmen and others 
who are members of these societies. From the entire mass of these 
returns, he deduces that the average number of days’ sickness, per 
member per annum, is very nearly one and a half week; and this 
agrees, generally, with the estimates made in other societies by Mr. 
Neison and others. But the averages thus obtained include the cases 
of members of all ages, and among them many cases of chronic sick- 
ness and inability to work during old age. In order, therefore, to get 
a better idea of the actual annual loss of work through sickness, he 
has calculated the average annual number of days’ sickness of each 
person during what may be deemed the normal working-time of life ; 
that is, between fifteen and sixty-five years of age. This he has done 
among the members of the large group of friendly societies known as 
the Manchester Unity of Odd-Fellows ; and then, on the fair assump- 
tion that the rates of sickness of the whole population during the 
working years of life would not be far different, he has calculated the 
following tables, showing the average annual rates of sickness of each 
person enumerated in the census of 1881, as living between the ages of 
fifteen and sixty-five : 


Number of males: 
Census of i881 
(England and 
Wales). 


Weeks’ sickness per 
annum, according 
to the experience 
of the Manchester 
Unity. 


Average sickness 
per individual 
per annum (in 
weeks). 


Bay ii ao ie es 030 008 ec 1,268,269 844,428 “666 
20 to 25 1,112,854 820,183 “737 
eg Sa ae a ate Sg aren Se 3,239,432 8,224,134 "995 
G0 Os chin cs detain chee 1,755,819 4,803,760 2°736 
All ages from 15 to 65..... 7,375,874 9,692,505 1°314 
Weeks’ sickness per Se vianiiine ‘danke 
AGES. Number of females: borat ny etter oar eae 
Census of 1881. of the M ae ekeat pee ag Foc gun (in 
Unity. ree 

ROM Pca det bvecbes emekeurs 1,278,963 851,701 *666 
POO BOS BOE ee Ca HERS 1,215,872 896,685 “137 
NE See per oer ee 3,494,782 8,476,146 "995 
EEE BBE ES 1,951,713 5,368,229 2°751 
All ages from 15 to 65..... 7,941,330 10,592,761 1°334 


Briefly, it appears from these tables that the average time of sick- 
ness among males during the working years is 1314 weeks—that is, a 
small fraction more than nine days in each year—and that among 


females it is a small fraction more. 


The result is, that among males 


6:6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


there is a loss of 9,692,505 weeks’ work in every year, and among 
females a loss of 10,592,761 weeks. ‘Thus we may believe that our 
whole population between fifteen and sixty-five years old do, in each 
year, 20,000,000 weeks’ work less than they might do if it were not 
for sickness. The estimate is so large that it must, on first thoughts, 
seem improbable ; but on fair consideration I believe it will not seem 
so. For the members of the Manchester Unity who are in the work- 
ing-time of life, the reckoning is certainly true, and it is founded on 
the experience of between 300,000 and 400,000 members. In respect 
of health they may represent the whole population, at least, as well as 
any group that could be taken. They are not very strictly selected— 
they are not picked lives; yet they are such as are able, when they 
are in health, to earn good wages or good salaries, and, as their pru- 
dence in joining this association shows, they are comparatively thrifty 
and careful persons. They do not, at all events, include many of the 
habitual drunkards, the cripples or utterly invalids, or those who, 
through natural feebleness or early disease, or mere profligacy, can 
not earn enough to become members or maintain themselves in mem- 
bership. Neither do they include many of the insane, or imbecile and 
idiotic, of whom there are, in our population, nearly 70,000, doing no 
work, and losing not less than 3,500,000 weeks’ work in the year. 

It would be tedious to tell the grounds on which the estimate may 
be deemed too high, for just as many and as good could be told on 
which it might be deemed too low. And it is rather more than con- 
firmed by some estimates of the annual sickness in other and very dif- 
ferent groups of persons. 

In the army, at home, the average number of days’ sickness in each 
year is, for each soldier, about seventeen ; and, as the number of the 
troops in the United Kingdom is more than 80,000, we have here a 
loss of about 200,000 weeks’ service in each year. 

In the navy, on the home stations, the average number of days’ 
sickness in each year has been in the last five years for each man 
nearly sixteen ; so that for the total of about 20,000 men there is a 
loss of 45,000 weeks’ service in each year. | 

The amount of sickness in the services thus appears much higher 
than in the friendly societies. This is due, in great part, to the fact 
that a soldier or a sailor is often put off duty a day or two for much 
less illness than that for which a civilian would “go on his club.” 
Still, the one estimate may confirm the other ; for the sickness in the 
army and navy is that of picked men, who were selected for the ser- 
vices as being of sound constitution, and who are in what should be 
the best working years of life: and, if it includes many cases of sick- 
ness for only a day or two, it excludes nearly all cases of more than a 
few months, such as make up a heavy proportion of the average sick- 
ness in the friendly societies and in the general population. 

And I may add that the estimate from these societies, that nine 


NATIONAL HEALTH AND WORK. —_ 657 


days in the year may justly be thought a fair estimate of the working- 
time lost by sickness, is confirmed by the records of sickness among 
the 10,000 members of the metropolitan police force ; for among these, 
including cases of long illness such as are also in the societies, the 
average is more than nine days in the year. 

I think, then, that we can not escape from the reasons to believe 
that we lose in England and Wales, every year, in consequence of sick- 
ness, 20,000,000 weeks’ work ; or, say, as much work as 20,000,000 
healthy people would do in a week. 

The number is not easily grasped by the mind. It is equal to about 
one-fortieth part of the work done in each year by the whole popula- 
tion between fifteen and sixty-five years old. Or, try to think of it in 
money. Rather more than half of it is lost by those whom the Regis- 
trar-General names the domestic, the agricultural, and the industrial 
classes. These are more than 7,500,000 in number, and they lose about 
11,000,000 weeks ; say, for easy reckoning, at £1 a week; and here 
is a loss of £11,000,000 sterling from what should be the annual wealth 
of the country. For the other classes, who are estimated as losing the 
other 9,000,000 weeks’ work, it would be hard and unfair to make a 
guess in any known coin; for these include our great merchants, our 
judges and lawyers, and medical men, our statesmen and chief legis- 
lators ; they include our poets and writers of all kinds, musicians, paint- 
ers, and philosophers ; and our princes, who certainly do more for the 
wealth and welfare of the country than can be told in money. 

Before I speak of any other losses of work or of wealth due to sick- 
ness, permit me, as in parentheses, to point out to you how very im- 
perfectly these losses are told, or even suggested by our bills of mor- 
tality. These, on which almost alone we have to rely for knowing the 
national health—these tell the losses of life, and more than misery 
enough they tell of ; but to estimate rightly the misery of sickness, 
and the losses of all but life that are due to it, we need a far more 
complete record than these can give. 

Take, for example, such a disease as typhoid fever—that which Mr. 
Huxley has rightly called the scourge and the disgrace of our country. 
It has of late destroyed, in England and Wales, among persons in the 
working-time of life, nearly 4,000 in the year. Its mortality is about 
fifteen per cent, so that, if in any year 4,000 die of it, about 23,000 
recover from it.. Of these, the average length of illness is, on the au- 
thority of Dr. Broadbent, about ten weeks. Here, therefore, from 
one disease alone, and that preventable, we have an annual loss of 
230,000 weeks’ work, without reckoning what is lost with those who 
die. And the same may be said of nearly all the diseases that are 
most prominent in the bills of mortality. The record of deaths, sad 
as it is, tells but a small part of the losses of happiness and welfare 
that are due to sickness. It is as if in a great war we should have 
a regular return of the numbers killed, but none of the numbers 

VOL, xxv.—42 


658 ‘ann POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


wounded, ehiotih these, more than the killed, may determine the issue 
of the war: 

Let me now tell of another loss of work and of money through 
sickness and early death. In all the estimates I have yet referred to, 
no account is taken of those who are ill or die before they are fifteen 
years old. They are not reckoned as in the working-time of life, 
though in some classes many thousands of them are. (In the domestic, 
agricultural, and industrial classes of the Registrar-General nearly half 
a million of them are included.) And yet the losses of work due to 
sickness among children must be very large. Consider the time which 
might be spent in good productive work, if it were not spent in taking 
taking care of them while they are ill. Consider, too, the number of 
those who, through disease in childhood, are made more susceptible of 
disease in later life, or are crippled, or in some way permanently dam- 
aged ; such as those who become deaf in scarlet fever, or deformed in 
scrofula or rickets, or feeble and constantly invalid, so that they are 
never fit for more than half-work, or for work which is only half well 
done. ‘These losses can not be counted, but they must be large; and 
there are others more nearly within reckoning; the losses, namely, 
which are due to the deaths of those who die young. If they had 
lived to work, their earnings would have been more than sufficient to 
repay it; but they have died, and their cost is gone without return. 
The mortality of children under fifteen in 1882 was nearly a quarter 
of a million; what have they cost? If you say only £8 a piece, there 
are more than £2,000,000 sterling thus lost every year. But they have 
cost mucb more than this, and much more still is lost by the loss of the 
work they might have lived to do. 

It is, indeed, held, I believe, by some that these things should not 
be counted as losses ; that we have a surplus of population, and that 
really the deaths of children, though they may be the subjects of a 
sentimental sorrow, can not reasonably be regretted. I can not bring 
myself to admit that such a thing should even be argued. I have 
lived long in the work of a profession which holds that wherever there 
is human life it must be preserved ; made happy, if that can be ; but, 
in any case, if possible, preserved ; and no argument of expediency 
shall ever make me believe that this is wrong. Indeed, I am rather 
ashamed—even for the purpose I have in view—to use so low an argu- 
ment as that of expediency in favor of the saving of health and of 
life. I am ashamed of making money appear as a motive for doing 
things for which sufficient motives might be found in charity and 
sympathy, and the happiness of using useful knowledge ; but it seems 
certain that these are not yet enough for all that should be done for 
the promotion of the national health ; therefore, it seems well to add 
to them any motives that are not dishonorable ; and so I add this, 
that we lose largely not only in happiness but in wealth by the deaths 
of these poor children. 


NATIONAL HEALTH AND WORK.. 659 


I will add only one more illustration of these losses, which is al- 
ways suggested by looking at tables of mortality. The deaths of per- 
sons between twenty-five and forty-five years old, that is during what 
may be deemed the twenty best working years of life, are annually 
between 60,000 and 70,000; in 1882 they were 66,000, Think, now, 
of the work lost by these deaths ; and of how much of it might have 
been saved by better sanitary provisions. If one looks at the causes 
of their deaths, it is certain that many might have been prevented, or, 
at least, deferred. Say that they might have lived an average of two 
years more ; and we should have had inthis year and last an increase 
of work equivalent to that of at least 6,000,000 weeks ; as much, in 
other words, as 6,000,000 people could do in one week. 

More instances of losses of work by sickness and premature death 
might easily be given, but not easily listened to in this huge hall. 
Let these suffice to show something of our enormous annual loss, not 
only of personal and domestic happiness—that is past imagining— 
but of national power and wealth. Surely we ought to strive more 
against it. 

But, some may ask, can these things be prevented? are they not 
inevitable consequences of the manner of life in which we choose or 
are compelled to live? No; certainly they are not. No one who 
lives among the sick can doubt that avery large proportion of the 
sickness and the loss of work which he sees might have been prevent- 
ed; or can doubt that, in every succeeding generation, a larger propor- 
tion still may be averted, if only all men will strive that it may be so. 

Let me enumerate some of the chief sources of the waste as they 
appear to one’s self in practice. 

Of the infectious fevers, small-pox might be rendered nearly 
harmless by complete and careful vaccination. Typhus and typhoid, 
scarlet fever and measles might, with proper guards against infection, 
be confined within very narrow limits. So, probably, might whooping- 
cough and diphtheria. 

Of the special diseases of artisans there are very few of which the 
causes might not be almost wholly set aside. Of the accidents to 
which they are especially liable, the greater part, by far, are due to 
carelessness. 

Of the diseases due to bad food and mere filth ; to intemperance ; 
to immorality—in so far as these are self-induced—they might, by 
self-control and virtue, be excluded. And with these, scrofula, rick- 
ets, scurvy, and all the wide-spread defects related to them, these 
might be greatly diminished. 

It can only be a guess, but I am sure it is not a reckless one, if I 
say that of all the losses of work of which I have spoken, of all the 
millions of weeks sadly spent and sadly wasted, a fourth part might 
have been saved, and that, henceforth, if people will have it so, a still 
larger proportion may be saved. 


660 THH POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


We may become the more sure of what may be done by looking 
at what has been done already. Let me show some of it; it will be 
a relief to see something of the brighter side of this picture. 

In a remarkable paper lately read before the Statistical Society, 
Dr. Longstaff says, “ One of the most striking facts of the day, from 
the statistician’s point of view, is the remarkably low death-rate that 
has prevailed in this country during the last eight years.” In these 
years the annual death-rate has been less than in the previous eight 
years in the proportion of two deaths to every 1,000 persons living. 
The average number of deaths has been 50,000 less in the last than in 
the previous eight years. Doubtless many things have contributed to 
this grand result, and it is not possible to say how much is due to each 
of them ; but it would be unreasonable to doubt that the chief good 
influence has been in all the improved means for the care of health 
which recent years have produced. This is made nearly certain by 
the fact that the largest gains of life have been in the diminution of 
the deaths from fever, and of the deaths in children under fifteen 
years old ; for these are the very classes on which good sanitary meas- 
ures would have most influence. 

The annual number of deaths from typhus, typhoid, and the un- 
named fevers, has been about 11,000 less than it was about twenty 
years ago. The annual number of deaths of children under five years 
old has been about 22,000 less than it was; and that of children be- 
tween five and fifteen has been upward of 8,000 less. 

These are large results, and, though they tell only of deaths, yet 
they bear on the chief subject I have brought before you—the work- 
ing power of the nation ; for, however much we might assign to im- 
proved methods of medical treatment of fever, yet the diminished num- 
ber of deaths means a very large diminution in the total number of 
cases. The deaths during the working years of life were 6,500 less ; 
and, this being so, we may hold that, if the average mortality was, 
say, twenty-five per cent, the diminution in the total number of cases 
must have been at least 25,000; and if we may believe, as before, 
that each of these involved ten weeks of sickness, we have, in these 
fevers alone, a clear saving of 185,000 weeks’ work in every year. 

And so with the diminution of the mortality among children, there 
must have been a greater diminution in the number of costly and 
work-wasting illnesses, and a large saving of money that would other- 
wise have been sunk. And not only so: but many of the children 
saved in the last eight years will become bread-winners or care-keep- 
ers ; and who can tell what some of them will become; or what the 
world would have lost if it had lost all of them ? 

Let me add only one more reckoning. In a paper last year, at the 
Statistical Society, Mr. Noel Humphreys showed that “if the English 
death-rate should continue at the low average of the five years 
1876-’80, the mean duration of male life in this country would be 


NATIONAL HEALTH AND WORK. 66% 


increased by two years, and that of female life by no less than 3°4 
years as compared with the English life-table.” And he showed fur- 
ther that “among males seventy per cent and among females sixty- 
five per cent of this increased life would be lived between the ages of 
twenty and sixty years, or during the most useful period.” 

I should like to be able to tell the value in working-power of such 
an addition to our lives. It is equal to an addition of more than four 
per cent to the annual value of all the industry, mental and material, 
of the country. 

But some will say—admitting that it is desirable, seeing how keen 
the struggle for maintenance already is, Can more than this be done? 
and the answer may be and must be, Much more. In this, as in every 
case of the kind, every fruit of knowledge brings us within reach of 
something better. While men are exercising the knowledge they pos- 
sess, they may be always gaining more. This Exhibition has scores 
of things which are better helps to national health than those of the 
same kind which we had twenty years ago, and with which the gains 
already made were won. If I were not in near official relation with 
the jurors, I would name some of them: there are truly splendid works 
among them. 

But do not let me seem to disparage the past in praising the pres- 
ent. It is difficult to speak with gratitude enough of what has been 
done, even though we may see, now, ways to the yet better. 

Any one, who has studied the sources of disease during the last 
thirty years, can tell how and where it has diminished. There is less 
from intemperance, less from immorality ; we have better, cheaper, 
and more various food ; far more and cheaper clothing ; far more and 
healthier recreations. We have, on the whole, better houses, and bet- 
ter drains ; better water and air; and better ways of using them. 
The care and skill with which the sick are treated in hospitals, infirm- 
aries, and even private houses, are far greater than they were; the 
improvement and extension of nursing are more than can be described ; 
the care which the rich bestow on the poor, whom they visit in their 
own homes, is every day saving health and life ; and, even more ef- 
fectual than any of these, is the work done by the medical officers of 
health, and all the sanitary authorities now active and influential in 
every part of the kingdom. 

Good as all this work has been, we may be sure it may become 
better. The forces which have impelled it may still be relied on. 
We need not fear that charity will become cool, or philanthropy inac- 
’ tive, or that the hatred of evil will become indifference. Science will 
not cease to search for knowledge, or to make it useful when she can ; 
we shall not see less than we do now, and here, of the good results of 
enterprise and rivalry, and of the sense of duty and the sorrow of 
shame that there should be evil in the land. 

What more, then, it may be asked, is wanted? I answer, that 


662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


which I have tried to stir: a larger and more practical recognition of 
the value and happiness of good national health ; a wider study and 
practice of all the methods of promoting it ; or, at least, a more ready 
and liberal help to those who are striving to promote it. In one sen- 
tence, we want the complete fulfillment of the design of this Exhibition, 
with all the means toward health and knowledge that are shown in it, 
and with its hand-books, lectures, conferences, and the verdicts of 
its juries. 

We want more ambition for health. I should like to see a personal 
ambition for renown in health as keen as is that for bravery, or for 
beauty, or for success in our athletic games and field-sports. I wish 
there were such an ambition for the most perfect national health as 
there is for national renown for war, or in art or commerce. And let 
me end soon by briefly saying what I think such health should be. 

I spoke of the pattern healthy man as one who can do his work 
vigorously wherever and whatever it may be. It is this union of 
strength with a comparative indifference to the external conditions of 
life, and a ready self-adjustment to their changes, which is a distinct- 
ive characteristic of the best health. He should not be deemed thor- 
oughly healthy who is made better or worse, more or less fit for work, 
by every change of weather or of food; nor he who, in order that he 
may do his work, is bound to exact rules of living. It is good to 
observe rules, and to some they are absolutely necessary, but it is 
better to need none but those of moderation, and, observing these, to 
be able and willing to live and work hard in the widest variations of 
food, air, clothing, and all the other sustenances of life. 

And this, which is a sign of the best personal health, is essential to 
the best national health. For in a great nation, distributed among its 
people, there should be powers suited to the greatest possible variety 
of work. No form or depth of knowledge should be beyond the 
attainment of some among them; no art should be beyond its reach ; 
it should be excellent in every form of work. And, that its various 
powers may have free exercise and influence in the world, it must 
have, besides, distributed among its people, abilities to live healthily 
wherever work must be or can be done. 

Herein is the essential bond between health and education ; herein 
is one of the motives for the combination of the two within the pur- 
pose of this Exhibition ; I do not know whether health or knowledge 
contributes most to the prosperity of a nation; but no nation can 
prosper which does not equally promote both ; they should be deemed 
twin forces, for either of them without the other has only half the 
power for good that it should have. _ 

It is said, whether as fact or fable, that the pursuit of science and 
of all the higher learning followed on the first exercise of the human- 
ity which spared the lives of sick and weakly children ; for that these 
children being allowed to live, though unfit for war and self-main- 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 663 


tenance, became thinkers and inventors. But learning is not now 
dependent on invalids; minds are not the better now for having to 
work in feeble bodies; each nation needs, for its full international 
influence, both health and knowledge, and such various and variable 
health, that there should be few places on earth or water in which 
some of its people can not live, and multiply, and be prosperous. 

If, therefore, we or any other people are to continue ambitious for 
the extension of that higher mental power of which we boast, or for 
the success of the bold spirit of enterprise with which we seek to 
replenish the earth and subdue it; if we desire that the lessons of 
Christianity and of true civilization should be spread over the world, 
we must strive for an abundance of this national health—tough, 
pliant, and elastic—ready and fit for any good work anywhere.—Jour- 
nal of the Society of Arts. 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 
By THOMAS FOSTER. 
CARE. OF OTHERS AS A DUTY.—(CONTINUED.) 


ieee we recognize the necessity of a more thorough altruism than 
that which merely considers the rights of others. That a com- 
munity should progress as it ought, each member of the body social 
should feel that it is a part of his personal duty to consider the well- 
being of the rest. The weakness and the want of skill, the ill-health 
and the imperfect education of his fellows, are injurious to him and to 
all. In such degree as weakness or want of skill affects the productive 
power of some members of the community, the comfort and happiness 
of the stronger and more skillful are affected. The weak and inefii- 
cient members, who can not provide for themselves, must be provided 
for somehow. ‘The trouble to the community which would arise from 
any plan for leaving the weak and unskillful unprovided for would 
be much more serious than the loss arising from the efforts made to 
help them. But these efforts being so much deducted from the gen- 
eral efforts of the stronger and more skillful members of the body 
social must be counted as loss. So that it is the interest of all to see 
that there may be as few weak and unskillful persons in the commu- 
nity as possible. 

In like manner the sickness of our fellows is a matter in which we 
are interested. Apart from the necessity of restoring the sick to such 
health and strength as may fit them to take their part in the work of 
the community,-the illness of others may bring illness to ourselves. 
Fever and pestilence, though they may first attack the weak, presently 
extend their attacks to those who had been strong. If even a man 


664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


should feel no anxiety on his own account, those dear to him, those 
dependent on him, or those on whom perhaps he is in greater or less 
degree dependent, may succumb to such attacks. Considering all the 
evils, near and remote, which may follow from an epidemic, we recog- 
nize the necessity of adopting all such altruistic measures as may avail 
to diminish the chance of such diseases arising, or to limit their range 
of action when they have once found footing. No doubt egoistic con- 
siderations here seem to suggest altruistic duties ; but these altruistic 
duties can not be properly undertaken or discharged unless they have 
become habitual and are referred to a real care and regard for others 
independently of consequences, more or less remote, to self. Apart 
from which, the discharge of such altruistic duties will be more satis- 
fying and more pleasant if they are spontaneously undertaken. 

Similar considerations apply to education in all its various forms. 
In other words, we must consider the mental as well as bodily weak- 
nesses, and the mental as well as bodily diseases, of our fellow-citizens. 
Where those around us are stupid and unintelligent, where they at- 
tempt no improvements, where they have little inventive capacity and 
little readiness to use even such as they have, we suffer along with 
them. The mere stupidity of the great mass of most communities 
with regard to the system of government they consent to be ruled by 
may mean most serious injury and discomfort to all, foolish and intel- 
ligent alike. Those who see what is needed, or at. least the direction 
in which improvement may reasonably be sought, yet remain silent in 
the belief that it is no business of theirs, are as unintelligent as those 
who stupidly assent to what—without thinking—they suppose to be 
good for them and to be provided for by those who know better than 
themselves ; though often, when traced to their source, the measures 
in vogue are found to be of no better origin than the body itself which 
submits to them. 

A low standard of intelligence in the community affects the wel- 
fare of all, in many different ways. Wrong ideas about the relation 
of the nation to other nations may seem unimportant in the case of 
persons who take no direct part in political matters. But in reality a 
very notable influence is exerted by the community generally on the 
conduct of those who have charge of political affairs. Wrong counsels 
in the cabinet may be advanced or right counsels hampered by stupid- 
ity in the country at large. Statesmen themselves are not always so 
wise or often so firm that they are not influenced by prevalent ideas ; 
and so far as mere numbers are concerned prevalent ideas are likely to 
be foolish ideas. Fortunately, mere numbers may not suffice to give 
weight to prevalent stupidity. Many of the unwise are influenced by 
the observed fact that such and such men conduct affairs successfully, 
and so are led to support the wiser sort, not through sound judgment 
on their own part, but from that kind of sense which leads the igno- 
rant to defer to the judgment of the better-informed. But this does 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 665. 


not prevent the average intelligence of the community from being a 
matter of great moment even in political matters—supposed to be 
guided always by the wisest, despite the true saying that the world is 
governed with but a small amount of wisdom. What I have here said 
has no relation to the action of kings, princes, and the like, who in 
English-speaking communities can not now injuriously influence politi- 
cal relations except through the weakness or folly of statesmen. Yet 
the argument might be strengthened by calling attention to the way 
in which, even within the last thirty years, our own country has suf- 
fered in this special direction, statesmen weakly or foolishly yielding 
to public pressure by which the unwise counsels of princes have been 
supported. A hundred years ago our country saw in still more marked 
way how the average want of intelligence of the many, supporting the 
stupidity of a king (of alien race, in that case), may go near to wreck 
the fortunes of a great race. We may hope, however, that no such 
trouble is in store for us hereafter as afflicted the British people when 
a foolish people insanely strengthened the hands of a mad king. 

In social matters a low standard of general intelligence is a serious 
evil, which a wise altruism will endeavor to diminish. “TZ do not 
mean,” I may here say with Mr. Herbert Spencer, “such altruism as 
taxes rate-payers that children’s minds may be filled with dates and 
names and gossip about kings and narratives of battles and other use- 
less information, no amount of which will make them capable workers 
or good citizens ; but I mean such altruism as helps to spread a know!l- 
edge of the nature of things, and to cultivate the power of applying 
that knowledge.” 

It is hardly necessary to multiply examples. We are confronted 
at every step by the harmful effects of prevalent want of intelligence. 
The fire which is intended to warm your room is so stupidly placed 
that it sends the better part of the heat up the chimney and creates 
cold draughts round your legs. Equally obnoxious to the understand- 
ing is the window by which you seek to ventilate yourroom. Itisa 
struggle to open it, a struggle to close it, unless when your head is in 
the way, when it generally descends in effective guillotine-fashion. 
The carpeting of your room is an absurdity, the papering (apart from 
any question of beauty) a monstrosity. The gaseliers are so ingen- 
iously arranged that you get a minimum of light and a maximum of 
heat and foul air. The chair you sit on seems intended to make you 
uncomfortable ; as you draw it up to the table you find that the sense- 
less people who plan furniture have provided sharp corners just where 
your knees are most likely to be caught. If you wish to lie down or 
to recline on a sofa, you find the head of the sofa so ingeniously 
padded that, while too sloped for reclining, it is not sloped enough for 
you to lie on it comfortably.* Your child, running in for a kiss from 


* I fear Mr. Foster refers to that abomination of desolation, the Alexandra sofa, which 
certainly for hideousness and utter unfitness for all the uses of a sofa is a marvel of 


666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. |, 


papa, stumbles over a footstool so carefully colored like the carpet that 
it did not catch his eyes but his feet ; and, falling, is hurt severely by 
a sharp projection on chair, sofa, table-leg, fender, scuttle, or what 
not, where no sharp projections are wanted, and none ever should be. 
In numberless ways miseries, individually small, but effectively dimin- 
ishing happiness, result from general want of intelligence. “ Unpunc- 
tuality and want of system,” again, as Mr. Herbert Spencer points out, 
“are perpetual sources of annoyance. The unskillfulness of the cook 
causes frequent vexation and occasional indigestion. Lack of fore- 
thought in a house-maid leads to a fall over a bucket in a dark passage ; 
and inattention to a message, or forgetfulness in delivering it, entails 
failure in an important engagement.” 

It is thus the interest of each one of us, and being also for the good 
of all becomes the duty of each, to be altruistic in regard to the mental 
progress of the community—“ we benefit egoistically by such altruism 
as aids in raising the average intelligence.” 

But we are equally interested in the improvement of the moral 
feeling pervading the social body. The happiness of the whole com- 
munity is diminished by the prevalence of unconscientious ways. In 
small matters as in large the principle prevails. We are all interested 
in helping to teach men the duty of considering the rights and claims 
of others. From the man who hustles others off the pavement or oc- 
eupies an unfair share of what should be general conversation, to the 
man who swindles by gross aggressions or serious breach of contract, 
the products of a state of low average morality diminish the happiness 
of the community. The aggregate of discomfort wrought by paltry 
offenses is serious though each separate offense may produce but slight 
mischief. Moreover, offenses paltry in themselves may produce very 
serious results. The disobedience of a nurse in some small matter 
(such as taking her charge to this or that place) may lead to accident 
affecting life or limb, or to disease ending in permanent injury or in 
death. In other ways, mischievous results of greater or less impor- 
tance are brought about by defective moral sense in small matters, 
while, when we consider the effects of want of conscientiousness in 
business, we recognize still more clearly how much we are all con- 
cerned in the moral improvement of the community. “ Yesterday,” 
says Mr. Herbert Spencer, “the illness of a child due to foul gases led 
to the discovery of a drain that had become choked because it was ill- 
made by a dishonest builder under supervision of a careless or bribed 
surveyor. ‘To-day workmen employed to rectify it occasion cost and 


inconvenience by dawdling, and their low standard of work, deter- 
idiotic absurdity. Nine tenths of our sofa and arm-chair patterns, however, are “ too 
absurd for any use,” as they say in America. Among my own pet abominations I may 
mention nearly all the methods (save the mark!) for curtaining windows, the ridiculous 
ways in which looking-glasses are swung, the preposterously unscientific forms of ink- 
stands, and some others gue nunc perscribere longum.—R. P. 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 667 


mined by the unionist principle that the better workers must not dis- 
credit the worse by exceeding them in efficiency, he may trace to the 
immoral belief” (well put!) “that the unworthy should fare as well 
as the worthy. To-morrow it turns out that business for the plumber 
has been provided by damage which the brick-layers have done.” And 
so daily and hourly do we feel that the moral imperfections of the 
community are fit subjects for such altruistic efforts as may help to 
raise the average morality. 

While we thus recognize that our well-being depends so greatly 
on the well-being of others—their health and bodily capacities, their 
sense and knowledge, and their moral qualities—that due regard for 
others is essential to the happiness of self, we see further that each 
member of the body social gains directly by the possession and ex- 
ercise of such qualities as lead or enable him to help his fellows. 
Among the proverbs which present in brief the ideas of a race as to 
what is good and bad, are many which imply that regard for the in- 
terest and welfare of others is bad policy. Such proverbs can not be 
regarded as expressing “the wisdom of many” by “the wit of one,” 
for experience proves abundantly that the policy of hardness and in- 
difference is unwise and short-sigoted. Even mere material suecess— 
which does not always mean happiness—is not advanced in the long- 
run by disregard of others. The man of business gains in unnum- 
_ bered ways by consideration for the rights and interests of his fellow- 
workers, and loses in as many by selfish disregard for them. Nay, 
even in the trivial affairs of ordinary life, at home and abroad, the 
kindly and considerate gain constantly, while the careless and indif- 
ferent as constantly suffer. It is, however, when we consider happi- 
ness as distinguished from mere material success, and the general 
balance of comfort and enjoyment as distinguished from the effects 
of individual actions, that we see how much men gain by sympathetic 
and kindly.conduct. We see even first-rate abilities and untiring 
energy beaten easily in the race of life by the kindliness which makes 
friends of all around and leads to opportunities which the hard and 
ungenial fail to obtain. But when we rightly apprehend the nature 
of life, and what makes life worth living, we find the chief gain of the 
kindly, not in these material opportunities, but in the pleasanter ways 
along which their life’s work leads them. Compare two men, toward 
the evening of life, of whom both perhaps have achieved a fair amount 
of material success in life, but one of hard, unkindly manners, the other 
genial and sympathetic ; one alone in life’s struggle, the other with 
“troops of friends” from first to last. Who can doubt, as he com- 
pares the worn and weary look of one with the bright and cheerful 
aspect of the other, that regard for others counts for something toward 
the welfare and the happiness of self ? 

Care for others helps so surely in life’s struggle that it would be 
good policy for the naturally hard man to benefit others for purely 


668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


selfish motives, and still better policy to cultivate kindliness and con- 
sideration as qualities sure to be fruitful of profit. The kindly nature 
which leads to spontaneous good-will toward others, independently of 
any consideration of gain to self, is even more profitable than culti- 
vated kindliness.. Those are lucky who possess such a nature—lucky 
rather than deserving of special credit, seeing that a sympathetic 
nature is born in a man, not made by culture. Yet the will has much 
to do with the development of kindliness ; and many, by sensible re- 
flection and constant watchfulness over the undue promptings of self, 
have trained themselves to a kindliness and geniality of manner such 
as they were not naturally gifted with, and this without any direct 
reference to self-interest, but as a matter of right and justice to their 
fellows. Such men deserve much credit for their care in correcting 
inherent tendencies to undue care of self. The increased happiness of 
their lives (in so far at least as happiness depends on conduct) is their 
reward, 

Among the good effects of kindly regard for others we may note 
the reflected happiness derived from those around. Men vary with 
their company, and undoubtedly the man of sympathetic temperament 
whose presence is a pleasure to others finds others much pleasanter in 
their relations with him than they would be were he of hard, ungenial 
nature. The wife and children of the kindly man are a constant 
pleasure to him, where the wife and children of the sour-tempered, 
ungenial husband and father are apt to grow gloomy and quarrelsome. 
His friends and relatives are kindlier than those of the harsh and self- 
ish. Abroad, he sees few faces which do not reflect something of his 
own brightness and cheerfulness. As Mr. Herbert Spencer well says : 
“Such a one is practically surrounded by a world of better people 
than one who is less attractive: if we contrast the state of a man 
possessing all the material means to happiness, but isolated by his 
absolute egoism, with the state of an altruistic man relatively poor in 
means but rich in friends, we may see that various gratifications not to 
be purchased by money come in abundance to the last, and are inac- 
cessible to the first.” 

But in yet other ways do we find illustrated by the effects of due 
care for others the saying, “ To him that hath shall be given, and from 
him that hath not shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.” 

Not only has the hard and ungenial man fewer gratifications, but 
those which he has he enjoys less than the man who cares for the 
wants and wishes of others. The one loses the power of enjoyment 
through his over-anxiety for self-gratification, the other unconsciously 
pursues—through his kindliness of character—the very course which 
a wise and thoughtful consideration of the plan best qualified to secure 
self-gratification would suggest. The one, while caring unduly for 
himself, is exhausting and satiating his power to care for any form of 
pleasure, the other while ministering to the enjoyments of others is 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 669 


fostering his own capacity for enjoyment. Here again, if one wished 
to suggest a course of action by which a man who suffered from life- 
weariness might again know the charm of happiness, one could advise 
no better course than to minister systematically to the enjoyments of 
those around. The very tide of life is made fuller thus, even as the 
tide of thought is made fuller by turning from mere reflection to a 
interchange of ideas and thoughts with those around. While there is 
work to be done in the way of increasing others’ happiness, no man— 
not even the most jaded and satiated—need ask himself the sickly 
question, “Is life worth living ?” 

Especially is this so when the tide of life is ebbing. Mr. Spencer’s 
words on this point are worthy of careful study, by those in particular 
who know of him only as the teacher of some hard, unsympathetic 
system of Gradgrindian philosophy, for they afford an apt example of 
his kindly and lovable teaching : 

“Tt is in maturity and old age that we especially see how, as 
egoistic pleasures grow faint, altruistic actions come in to revive them 
in new forms. The contrast between the child’s delight in the novel- 
ties daily revealed and the indifference which comes as the world 
around grows familiar, until in adult life there remain comparatively 
few things that are greatly enjoyed, draws from all the reflection that 
as years go by pleasures pall. And, to those who think, it becomes 
clear that only through sympathy can pleasures be indirectly gained 
from things that have ceased to yield pleasures directly. In the grati- 
fications derived by parents from the gratifications of their offspring, 
this is conspicuously shown. ‘Trite as is the remark that men live 
afresh in their children, it is needful here to set it down as remind- 
ing us of the way in which, as the egoistic satisfactions in life fade, 
altruism renews them while it transfigures them.” 

But not only does altruism increase the pleasures of life; the ex- 
ercise of the altruistic qualities is in itself pleasurable. The state of 
mind when kindly actions are performed affords pleasure. It directly 
increases happiness, and thus (like other pleasures) enhances physical 
well-being. It is true that a sympathetic nature suffers where a hard 
and callous nature would feel no pain. Undue altruism has no doubt 
its bad effects, nor can it be denied that even such altruistic feelings 
as are desirable for the social well-being cause, at times, some degrees 
of suffering ; but the exercise of the altruistic qualities is in the main 
pleasurable, and it can not be doubted that altruistic emotions give 
more pleasure than sorrow. When we sorrow for a friend’s grief we 
experience pain and undergo such depression of the vital functions as 
always accompanies pain; but in the long-run the joy felt in sym- 
pathy with the joys of others surpasses the sorrow occasioned by 
their troubles. 

Then, too, it must be remembered that those pleasures which we 
derive from the arts owe a large part of their value to altruistic emo- 


670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tions. Consider the pleasure given by a painting representing a scene 
which moves our sympathies, or the delight with which we read some 
work of fiction in which kindly emotions are dealt with, and it will be 
seen how large a portion of our esthetic gratifications depend on our 
sympathy with others. The hard and selfish care little for art and 
nothing for fiction. How should we bear to lose the pleasures which 
painting and sculpture, music and fiction, afford us? How even 
should we bear to change the pleasures given by the kindly and sym- 
pathetic art of to-day for the harsher effects of the arts of harder 
times when only deeds of conquest or ceremonial observances were 
represented in paintings and sculptures, suggested in musical strains, 
or recited in story or in song? What material gains, what sensual 
gratifications, what power, wealth, or fame, would make up (to us) for 
the pleasure we derive from the higher emotions? and how largely do 
these depend on the sympathies by which men are moved to loving 
care for the well-being of their fellows ! 

It remains lastly to be noticed that as there howl be thought for 
others, and for the just rights and interests of others in the family, in 
the society with which we are directly associated, and within the race 
or nation, so there should be a wider altruism having regard to the 
rights of other races and nations. Hitherto men have scarcely at all 
recognized this duty. Very gradually the sense of altruistic duty 
passed beyond the family to the community of families, and thence 
still widening to the nation formed of such communities. Men learned 
that as personal selfishness is in the long-run opposed to the true inter- 
ests of self, so family selfishness is only a degree less pernicious. The 
selfishness of parochialism was in turn seen to be mischievous, though 
it is still prevalent enough. But the selfishness of what is called pa- 
triotism—though it is as unlike true patriotism as personal selfishness 
is unlike due and wise self-regard—still remains as a virtue in the 
minds of most men, though characterized by inherent defects akin 
to those which belong to personal, family, and parochial selfishness, 
Men fail, indeed, to recognize any selfishness in undue care for what 
is called a man’s own country—though with but vague and indefinite 
meaning. Nay, a blind love of country is regarded as something so 
directly the converse of selfishness, that Sir Walter Scott speaks of 
the absence of this sort of patriotism as simple selfishness. After 
asking if the man lives with soul so dead as never to have said to 
himself, “‘ This is my own, my native land?” he goes on to say that such 
aman, a “ wretch concentered all in self,” can be swelled by no min- 
strel music, and is bound to go unmourned and unsung to an unhon- 
ored grave. The idea that patriotism could under any circumstances 
be exaggerated, and become but a widened form of selfishness, would 
doubtless have outraged utterly Scott’s sense of the fitness of things. 
Yet viewing matters from the outside, and, as far as possible, inde- 
pendently of inbred ideas, there is nothing except its wider range to 


THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION. 67. 


distinguish the selfishness of exaggerated patriotism from personal or 
family selfishness. . 

That patriotic selfishness is mischievous in its effects would scarcely 
need showing if men were not so ready as they are to be deaf to the 
teachings of experience. The well-being of other nations is in the 
same sense essential to the well-being of our own nation as the well- 
being of other members of the body social is essential to our own 
personal well-being. The misfortunes of any nation with which our 
own has relations are misfortunes to our own nation, however they 
may be brought about, whether by internal misgovernment, by the 
attacks of other nations, or by our own warlike measures. There can 
be no doubt, for example, that the loss incurred by Germany, the vic- 
tor, was only less than the loss incurred by France, the conquered, in 
the disastrous Franco-German War. Other nations suffered greatly, 
but Germany more, and France most of all. In the war with Russia, 
in 185455, all Europe suffered. In the American civil war not only 
all the United States but the whole world incurred loss. It is easy for 
nations to blind themselves, nay, most nations are naturally blind, to 
the losses suffered by each through the misfortunes of others. But 
there can be no doubt about the actual facts. The British race 
would have been taught the lesson long since, if the lesson could 
veach the average national mind through experience—for we are 
suffering, have long been suffering, and long must suffer, from the 
energetic efforts of our “imperial” race to get the better of other 
races. Directly and indirectly, in loss of blood and material, in 
the paralysis of trade as well as in increased expenditure, our peo- 
ple has to pay for its imperial instincts, just as the man of over- 
bearing, hard, and selfish nature has to pay in many ways for the 
gratification of his instincts imperious. There are the same reasons, 
based on material profit, for inculcating just and considerate dealings 
between peoples as there are for encouraging just and considerate deal- 
ings between man and man. But at present nations delight in pro- 
claiming themselves selfish and overbearing ; the more brutal instincts 
which remain dominant in nations after they have begun to die out in 
individuals are upheld as virtues, much as in old times many races 
regarded the more brutal qualities of humanity as chief among the 
virtues.—Hnowledge. 


tl, ty i 
voy 


THE PROBLEM OF ‘POPULATION. 
By CHARLES MORRIS. 


Ae passing through the open galleries of that busy ant-hill called a 
city, with its endless ebb and flow of human beings, intent on their 
various pursuits of business or pleasure, and succeeding each other in 
a seemingly endless procession of busy life, there is apt to rise forcibly 


672 THH POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


before our minds the vital questions of human fecundity, and of the 
ability of the earth to sustain its increasing multitude of human inhab- 
itants. But in reading the statistics of this subject our interest in it 
redoubles. When we find men in all nations and in all ages pressing 
sharply on the means of subsistence, the loss by famine quickly re- 
placed by new food for famine, the ravages of war and pestilence rap- 
idly obliterated by new-growing populations, and apparently nothing 
but the pressure of sheer want and misery able to limit human fecun- 
dity, we may well question if this is to be the continued destiny of 
mankind, and if there is no possible limit to population within this 
sharp boundary of distress. 

Nearly a century has elapsed since Malthus published his disheart- 
ening researches on this subject, and his conclusions yet remain only 
in part refuted. If it really be, as he declares, that population tends 
to increase in a geometrical ratio, while the food-supply increases only 
in an arithmetical ratio, his conclusion, that population has a constant 
tendency to run ahead of subsistence, seems inevitable. Fortunately, 
however, his hypothesis, so far, has been proved only by arguments, 
not by irrefutable facts. ‘The numbers of mankind, it is true, have 
frequently passed the boundary which divides want from plenty. But 
the other requirement of the Malthusian doctrine was not, in those 
cases, attained. Food-production has never yet reached its limit, and 
the suffering so far caused by want of food might have been entirely 
obviated had the earth been fully cultivated. It may, however, be 
claimed by disciples of Malthus that this fact has nothing to do with 
the question, and that, when the utmost food-production has been 
attained, population will still press beyond it to the starvation limit. 
This argument we venture to dispute. The attainment of a great 
food-production introduces certain conditions into the problem which 
may give it an entirely different aspect. Such excessive production 
will require, for instance, a marked advance in human intelligence, 
and the replacement of much of the muscular labor of mankind by an 
active mental labor. It is our purpose to consider what effect this 
changed condition of the human race will have upon the increase of 
population. It is easy to point to modern instances in which the rapid 
increase of population has been checked without special exercise of 
the starvation influence. The population of France, for instance, has 
been almost stationary for many years, its increase being much below 
the corresponding increase of wealth in that country. Thus France 
furnishes a practical argument against the Malthusian hypothesis, and 
shows that the growth of population may decline from other causes 
than vice, misery, and disease. 

There exist, in fact, three separate checks to the increase of popu- 
lation. These may be here classed as the physical, the mental, and 
the physiological. The first and second of these have been fully con- 
sidered by writers on political economy. The third has been barely 


THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION. 673 


glanced at. And yet this third may contain the true solution of the 
difficult problem, and through its active operation the geometrical 
inerease of Malthus may, perhaps, be succeeded by a stationary condi- 
tion of human population. 

By the physical check we mean the effect of all the forces which 
act from outside upon the individual—such agencies as war, famine, 
pestilence, exposure, climatic changes, and all similar destructive influ- 
ences. The mental check refers to influences proceeding from the 
mind of the individual. It is what is usually called the prudential 
check, through which individuals wisely decline to bring into the 
world children who must be exposed to inevitable misery, or govern- 
ments restrain injudicious marriages by enactments looking to the 
same end. The physiological check is also internal in its origin, but 
not voluntary. It consists of that limit to human fecundity which is 
caused by employment of the organic forces in other directions. 

Of these three checks to population the second only is fully under 
the control of the individual himself. The physical check largely 
arises from the action of other individuals, such as the war-making 
powers. It also largely flows from the hostile energies of Nature, 
and may, in this direction, be partly set aside by individual effort, 
through attention to the laws of health, and prudent avoidance of 
injurious conditions. The physiological check is beyond the reach of 
the will. It is a natural effect of human development, needs no forced 
restraint from marriage for its operation, and is consistent with. the 
most natural and desirable of human relations. 

Of the three checks to population here named, we will, in this 
paper, consider only the physiological. The others have been written 
upon so abundantly that there is little new to be said concerning them. 
It will suffice here to remark that the physical check—that which acts 
through the agency of famine, violence, disease, and similar influences 
—has ruled almost supreme in the past ages of the world, and is-still 
vigorously active upon the great mass of mankind. The prudential 
check, which acts through forced desistance from marriage and _ child- 
bearing, is now actively effective in several of the more advanced 
European nations, probably most fully in France, and has gone far 
toward negativing the action of the Malthusian law. The physiologi- - 
cal check, which we have here to consider, has also been somewhat 
effective in the past, but its highest influences are only now com- 
ing into play, and it promises to become an efficient and desirable 
agent in hindering the undue increase of human population in the 
future. 

The principle to which we here allude has been very greatly neg- 
lected by writers on the subject of population, Those who have 
dealt with it have done so only cursorily, and have failed to consider 
it in all its bearings. It is therefore a problem that is open to further 
investigation. And in entering upon this inquiry it is necessary to 

VOL, xxv.—43 


. 674 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


begin with some thoughts upon organic physiology in its general rela- 
tions, as preliminary to the special results desired. 

The animal frame is a material organism which is kept in activity 
by certain energies. These energies are constantly exhausted and con- 
stantly renewed, but their vigor at any fixed period is limited, and can 
not be indefinitely increased. The force received from without is vari- 
ously employed within the organism. It acts successively as muscular, 
nervous, temperature, and reproductive energy. But being limited in 
quantity, if it be employed by any of these organic agencies, its use by 
the others is restricted or prevented. Much of the energy received is 
used up in alimentary processes—the pursuit, seizure, mastication, and 
digestion of food. Only the excess over this is available for the other 
organic necessities. And, if this excess force be exhaustively employed 
. by any one of the bodily agencies, it becomes unavailable for the 
others. 

The fact here briefly stated is one which might be illustrated by 
numerous instances drawn from the lower animal world. A very i inter- 
esting example of its influence may be perceived i in the organic condi- 
tions of the ants, and, to a lesser extent, in other insect tribes. Ants, 
though possessed of all the organic force agencies, do not employ them 
all in any one individual. The males and the fully developed females 
exhaust all their life-force in reproduction, with little display of mus- 
cular and none of mental vigor. The remaining members of the tribe, 
divided into workers and soldiers, devote all their life-force to museu- 
lar and mental labor. They are, functionally, females, but their organic 
energies are entirely withdrawn from the reproductive agencies, and 
devoted to other life-purposes. Of these two classes the workers appear 
to have the highest mental development. The soldiers understand 
the whole business of fighting, but beyond that they seem incapable, 
and take no part in the nest-building, the food-gathering, or any other 
of the ant-industries. Indeed, they are too dull or too proud to even 
feed themselves. They would starve unless fed by the workers or 
slaves. And in the occasional ant-migrations the soldiers are carried 
bodily by the workers, neither resisting nor aiding in the labor neces- 
sary to move their high dignities, In the workers the exercise of mus- 
cular force seems to be accompanied by a considerable employment of 
mental energy, since they perform many actions which appear to indi- 
cate an advanced intelligence. 

This illustration from the ants might be extended to the bees, and 
to some other insects. We might also describe the very curious and 
diversified separation of function in the members of the Siphonopho- 
ree, or compound polyps. But there is no occasion to multiply illus- 
trations. If we ascend to the higher animals we find no such division 
of function, And yet circumstances largely govern the extent to 
which the organic force is applied in any one direction. But we must 
make here a distinction which facts yet to be described render very 


THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION. 675 


evident. The exertion of muscular force, unless exhaustively em- 
ployed, seems not injurious to the reproductive functions. Mental 
exertion, on the contrary, seems to restrict reproductive energy, even 
when not employed exhaustively. 

But the animals below man do not employ mentality to any great 
extent. Their principal exertion is muscular, and this hinders repro- 
duction only in case of the whole vigor of the animal being exhausted. 
If, for instance, the food-supplies of any animal tribe be diminished, 
or its numbers increased, a greater exercise of agility is required to 
satisfy its appetite. And if it depend on cunning or shrewdness to 
obtain food, its mental faculties must become very actively exercised. 
If these efforts become exhaustive, reproduction is necessarily restrict- 
ed ; while the young born under such circumstances are apt to be con- 
stitutionally weak, and unable to bear the strain of an excessive effort 
in food-getting. There is thus in this effect a strong check on popu- 
lation from strictly physiological causes. 

The conclusion here reached applies equally to the lower orders of 
mankind. A diminution of food-supply must have an effect upon 
savages similar to its influence upon the lower animals. Excessive 
muscular exertion, extensive migratory movements, warlike efforts, 
and exercise of mental vigor in food-getting, which become more 
physically exhaustive the greater the difficulty in obtaining food, must 
act to greatly restrict reproductive energy, and to enfeeble the children 
who may be born during such an exhausted condition of their parents. 
The lack of sufficient nutriment is a correlative agency under the same 
conditions. 

The physiological check, therefore, in this phase of its action, tends 
to prevent the Malthusian law from being other than an abstract pos- 
sibility. Decrease in food-supply causes a decrease in food-consum- 
ers, through the exhaustion of organic energy in other directions than 
that of reproduction. And the new generation of consumers is con- 
stitutionally enfeebled, and unsuited to bear the sharp struggle of life, 
so that the population becomes diminished during the continuance of 
such conditions. 

But the physiological check, in this form of its application, 
brings mankind too near the starvation limit to be at all desirable. 
There is, however, another mode in which it exercises itself, yielding 
far more promising results. For there is reason to believe that active 
mental labor is far more exhaustive of reproductive energy than is 
equally vigorous muscular exertion. Just what is the organic cause of 
this we shall not attempt to guess. It is possible that the brain, in its 
action, may exhaust some material necessary to germ-formation—per- 
haps phosphorus, which seems to be an element both of the sperm- 
cells and of the brain. But it is the visible results, rather than the 
organic causes, with which we are just now concerned. 

It is an undoubted fact that the families of the poor are, as a rule, 


676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


larger than those of the rich. And it is equally certain that brain- 
workers have, ordinarily, smaller families than muscle-workers. The 
industrial classes of our day do not perform exhaustive labor. Nor 
are they usually in the habit of strong mental exercise. The physical 
labor they perform seems to have no limiting effect upon their pro- 
creative powers. ‘The families of day-laborers are usually above the 
average in number, And it has been observed that the pioneer in- 
habitants of a new country are very prolific. While physical assault 
upon Nature is the rule, with food abundant and easily obtained, the 
physiological check upon increase does not seem to strongly operate. 
When this first severe duty is over, and men settle down to a mental 
assault upon Nature, their fecundity considerably decreases. The ex- 
tensive families of the pioneer settlers of this country are being re- 
placed by the small families of the active brain-workers among their 
posterity. | 

As to whether animals that depend mainly on shrewdness are less 
prolific than those that trust chiefly to strength and agility, we have 
not sufficient facts at hand to decide. Among the lower human races 
there is a marked chastity and infertility in the hunter and pastoral as 
compared with the agricultural tribes. But the former pass lives of 
much greater mental. excitement than the latter. The steady, regular 
labor of the agriculturist is replaced in the nomad by rapid variations 
from excessive exertion to extreme inactivity, while a constant exer- 
cise of cunning and shrewdness is necessary in the rapidly fluctuating 
perils and difficulties of the nomadic life. 

As to the relations existing between the various classes in civilized 
nations, it may be mentioned that the population of country districts 
appears, as a rule, to be more prolific than that of cities. Until within 
a recent period there was hardly one of the large cities of Europe that 
kept up its population by the natural increase of its inhabitants. Their 
increasing numbers were due to continual supplies from the rural dis- 
tricts. The much greater mental activity of civic populations as com- 
pared with those of the country is, at least, significant in this connec- 
tion. If, again, we consider the higher classes in civilized nations, it 


-.. at once appears that there is a constant tendency to decrease of popu- 


‘ lation in these classes, and a necessity of frequent replacement from 
' the lower grades of society. Thus there has been, in every century, a 
rapid thinning out of the families in the British peerage. An inces- 
sant creation of new peers has taken place, and yet they have hardly 
kept up their numbers, while very few of the original noble families 
have an existing representative. The same thing appears in the his- 
tory of ancient Rome. The early noble families were almost extinct 
in the time of Claudian. Those created in the reigns of Cesar and 
Augustus were nearly exhausted at the period of Tacitus. Malthus 
says that, in the town of Berne, of 487 wealthy families, 379 became 
extinct in two centuries. In 1623 the sovereign council was composed 


THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION. 677 


of members of 112 different families, of which only 58 were in exist- 
ence in a century and a half afterward. 

If we consider special cases of noted men, the great generals of the 
world, the commanding statesmen, the distinguished scientists, the 
celebrated authors—all, in fact, who have become distinguished for 
superior mental ability—an almost universal result appears : they have 
either left no descendants, or their families were very small. And, 
for that matter, we need but to look at evidences everywhere sur- 
rounding us. We think it will be found to be a general rule that per- 
sons constantly exercised in mental labor haye few or no children; 
those of less active minds have larger families ; while the largest fami- 
lies belong to those who do not trouble themselves to think at all. 

There is abundant reason to believe, then, that such a physiological 
check to population really exists ; and, in its operation, it is not diffi- 
cult to perceive a rich promise for the future of the human race. For 
it is in no sense, in its superior phase, a starvation check. Nor does it 
need any of the violent repression of natural desires exercised in the 
prudential check. At first sight, it appears as if its tendency must be 
to constantly place the cultured at a disadvantage in numbers as com- 
pared with the dull and ignorant. But this disadvantage is more than 
counterbalanced by the progress of education and the brain-incite- 
ments of modern civilization. Thus, the class of brain-workers is 
being continually recruited, despite its lack of fecundity, and we can 
see indications of an immense future augmentation of this class of the 
population at the expense of the unthinking, and consequently of a 
new barrier to the progress of population, whose efficacy is now but 
beginning to appear. 

It is a process which must in time do away with the “starvation 
check” to population, and replace it with a new and far more desirable 
limiting principle. For when nerve-energy largely replaces muscular 
energy, and advanced education greatly increases the percentage of 
the cultured, there may be a corresponding decrease in the birth-rate, 
through the operation of the causes just considered. And, as human 
want decreases and comfort advances, the developed needs of man- 
kind must extend the prudential check on early marriage, which is so \o 
active now in the middle classes. In this another limiting force will... ‘See 
be brought to bear upon the increase of population. eee 

Thus, as the sum of human wealth increases, through the exercise &: 
of intelligence in industrial operations, it will necessarily be divided 
among a population not increasing in an equal ratio. The average 
wealth of all classes of the community must increase in consequence, 
the necessary amount of active muscular labor be reduced, and more 
time be given for rest, enjoyment, or indulgence in mental culture. 

The more rapidly that wealth accumulates in proportion to popula- 
tion, and, the more vigorously that culture forces its way downward 
through the community, the greater must be the effect of the pruden- 


678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tial and physiological checks to increase of population ; the final result, 
perhaps, being one in which the birth-rate and death-rate shall become 
closely allied, and a virtually stationary condition of population ensue. 

We have here indications of a rich promise for the future of the 
human race. If the numbers of mankind become thus checked, while 
wealth continues to grow, and culture, with its advanced needs, be- 
comes a general possession, the standard of desire must rise, until 
absolute want may no longer mean, as now, physical misery and 
starvation, but may mean the deprivation of what would now be con- 
sidered luxuries beyond the reach of the poor. In such a case the 
population of the earth could never sink, as now, to press upon the 
sharp edge of absolute destitution. It would be too far above this 
limit to sway so far downward, and misery from want of food might 
become an obsolete tradition of the past. 


<i ln 
oe , 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 
| I. 


HE first lightning-conductor was erected by Benjamin Franklin 

upon his own house in Philadelphia in 1752. The invention is, 
therefore, now a little more than one hundred and thirty years old. 
Franklin was led to the investigations which resulted in its construc- 
tion by the fortuitous circumstance that, about six years previously, 
he had been present at a lecture on electricity delivered in Boston by 
Dr. Spence.* In the same year—that is, in 1746—he received a pres- 
ent from Peter Collinson, a member of the Royal Society in London, 
who was also the agent of the Library Company in Philadelphia, of 
one of the London electric tubes, and an account of some experiments 
that had recently been made by Dr. Watson, Martin Folkes, Lord 
Charles Cavendish, Dr. Bevis, and others of their contemporaries, 
The idea had already suggested itself to these investigators that the 
luminous gleam which was elicited from glass tubes when they were 
rubbed in dark cellars, in performance of the frequently repeated and 
fashionable experiment of the day, might possibly be of a kindred 
nature to the lightning of the thunder-storm. In a book describing 
some “ physico-mechanical experiments” that he had made, published 
in London in 1709, Francis Hawksbee remarked that the luminous 
flash and crackling sounds produced by rubbing amber were similar 
to lightning and thunder. In 1720 Stephen Gray, the pensioner of 
the Charterhouse, so celebrated for his electrical investigations, boldly 
and uncompromisingly affirmed that, “if great things might be com- 


* It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that, in this lecture, the experiments were made 
by the primitive instrumentality of a glass rod and silk pocket-handkerchief. 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 679° 


pared with small,” the light and sound called forth when glass rods 
were rubbed were of the same nature as lightning and thunder, 
Franklin, from the time when the electrical experiments came under 
his notice, enthusiastically adopted this view. In a letter written to a 
friend in 1749, he very clearly expressed his reasons for this belief, 
In this communication he insisted upon the facts that the electric 
spark gives light like lightning ; that the luminous discharge follows 
a similar crooked track; that this discharge is swift in its motion, is 
conducted by metals, is accompanied by an explosion when it escapes, 
rends bodies that it passes through, destroys animal life, melts metals, 
sets fire to inflammable substances, and causes a smell of sulphur—all 
of which attributes seemed to him to point to the identity of the phe- 
nomena. He also observed that the electric discharge was attracted 
by points, and stated that he was bent upon ascertaining whether light- 
ning had not the same tendency. In the autumn of the following year 
he wrote to Mr. Collinson to say that he had satisfied himself in this 
particular ; that he was entirely convinced of the identity of the so- 
called electricity with lightning ; that he believed the damage done by 
lightning descending from the clouds to the earth might be altogether 
prevented by placing iron rods, with sharp points, upon the summits 
of buildings ; that he intended to test experimentally the soundness 
of his belief in that matter ; and that he hoped other persons would 
assist him in his labors by following his example. This was virtually 
the definite forecast of the conductor which Franklin attached to his 
house in 1752. 

In the mean time the suggestion that buildings might be protected 
from lightning by the use of iron rods with sharp points was incident- 
ally communicated by Mr. Collinson to the editor of the “ Gentleman’s 
Magazine” in London, who, at once perceiving the practical impor- 
tance of the hint, offered to print an account of Franklin’s views in the 
form of a pamphlet. This offer was accepted, and, in the month of 
May, 1751, a pamphlet was published in London, entitled “ New Ex- 
periments and Observations on Electricity made at Philadelphia, in 
America, by Benjamin Franklin.” The pamphlet was not very warm- 
ly received in England, but it was enthusiastically weleomed and ap- 
preciated in France. Count de Buffon had it translated into French, 
and the translation appeared in Paris within four months of the publi- 
cation of the original pamphlet in England. It was soon afterward 
translated into German, Italian, and Latin. The attention of scientific 
men in Paris was quickly drawn to the method of defense proposed by 
Franklin, and M. Dalibard, a man of some wealth, undertook to erect 
the apparatus at his country residence at Marly-la-Ville, some eighteen 
miles from Paris. The situation of the house was considered to be 
eminently favorable for the purpose, as the building stood some four 
hundred feet above the sea. A lofty wooden scaffold, supporting an 
iron rod an inch in diameter and eighty feet long, was erected in the 


680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. 


garden. ‘The rod was finished at the top by a sharp point of bronzed 
steel, and it terminated at the bottom, five feet above the ground, in 
a smaller horizontal rod, which ran to a table in a kind of sentry-box, 
furnished with electrical apparatus. On May 10th, when M. Dalibard 
was himself absent in Paris, the apparatus having been left tempo- 
rarily in the charge of an old dragoon named Coiffier, a violent storm 
drifted over the place, and the old dragoon, who was duly instructed 
for the emergency, went into the sentry-box and presented a metal 
key, partly covered with silk, to the termination of the rod, and saw a 
stream of fire burst forth between the rod and the key. The old man 
sent for the Prior of Marly, who dwelt close by, to witness and con- 
firm his observation, and then started on horseback to Paris, to carry 
to his master the news of what had occurred. Three days afterward, 
that is, on May 13, 1752, M. Dalibard communicated his own account 
of the incident to a meeting of the Académie des Sciences, and an- 
nounced that Franklin’s views of the identity of the fire of the storm- 
cloud with that of the electrical spark had been thus definitely estab- 
lished. 

Before the success of M. Dalibard’s experiment could be reported 
in America, however, Franklin had secured his own proof of the iden- 
tity by the memorable experiment with the kite, so well known to the 
scientific world. He was anxiously waiting for the erection of the first 
steeple in Philadelphia for the opportunity which this would afford 
him for the support of a lofty iron rod, when the happy idea occurred 
to him to try, in the mean time, upon some suitable occasion, whether 
he could not contrive to hold up a lightning-conductor toward a storm- 
cloud by means of a kite. On the evening of July 4th, that is, fifty-two 
days after the experiment of M. Dalibard, his kite was raised during a 
thunder-storm, and, with the help of his son, he drew electric sparks 
from the rain-saturated string, as the two stood in the shelter of an 
old cow-shed in the outskirts of Philadelphia. He held the kite by a 
silken cord that was attached to a key at the bottom of the string, and 
with this arrangement he charged and discharged an ordinary Leyden- 
jar several times in succession. Franklin at first not unnaturally con- 
ceived that he had actually drawn the lightning down from the storm- 
cloud. He was, however, no doubt mistaken in this. The storm-cloud 
had inductively excited the neighboring surface of the earth, and what 
Franklin saw was the electric stream escaping out through the wet 
string toward the storm-cloud to relieve the tension set up by this in- 
duction. It was in the summer of the same year, after the perform- 
ance of this world-renowned experiment with the kite, that Franklin 
attached to his house a lightning-conductor, which was composed of 
an iron rod, having a sharp steel point projecting seven or eight feet 
above the roof, and with its lower end plunged about five feet into the 

ground. | 

As a matter of course, the new doctrine of Franklin and his allies 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 681. 


was not received without considerable opposition. A sharp shock of 
an earthquake having been experienced in Massachusetts in 1755, this 
was forthwith attributed to the evil influences of Franklin’s lightning- 
rods, A Boston clergyman preached against them in 1770 as “impious 
contrivances to prevent the execution of the wrath of Heaven.” Even 
as late as 1826, an engineer in the employment of the British Govern- 
ment recommended that all lightning-rods should be removed from 
public buildings as dangerous expedients, and in 1838 the Governor- 
General and Council of the East India Company ordered that all 
lightning-rods should be removed from public buildings, arsenals, and 
powder-magazines throughout India, and only became reconciled to 
their restoration after a large magazine and corning-house, not fur- 
nished with a conductor, had been blown up during a storm. 

Franklin was so much in earnest in reference to his invention that 
‘he sent a friend at his own charge through the principal towns of the 
New England Colonies to make known the powers and virtues of the 
lightning-rod. In the “ Poor Richard” for 1758, a kind of almanac 
or manual which he was at that time publishing, he gave specific in- 
structions for the erection of his rods. ‘The second conductor which 
he himself constructed was placed upon the house of Mr. West, a 
wealthy merchant of Philadelphia. A few months after this had been 
erected a storm burst over the town, and a flash of lightning was seen 
to strike the point of the conductor, and to spread itself out as a sheet 
of flame at its base. It was afterward found that about two inches 
and a half of the brass point had been dissipated into the air, and that 
immediately beneath the metal was melted into the form of an irreg- 
ular blunt cap. The house, nevertheless, was quite uninjured. The 
sheet of flame seen at the base of the conductor Franklin correctly 
ascribed to the ground having been very dry, and to there not having 
been a sufficiently capacious earth contact under those circumstances. 
He nevertheless shrewdly, and quite justifiably, assumed that in this 
case Nature had itself pronounced an unmistakable verdict in favor of 
his invention. 

The controversy concerning the efficacy of lightning-rods continued 
to agitate the councils of scientific men, notwithstanding this mem- 
orable demonstration of their efficiency ; but, upon the whole, the new 
doctrines made their way into the confidence of the intelligent classes 
of the community. The most important circumstance in -connection 
with the early fortunes of the invention, perhaps, was the admirable 
series of reports and instructions which were issued by the French 
Government between the years 1823 and 1867, and to which Mr. An- 
derson now once again, and not superfluously, draws public attention 
in his recent pamphlet entitled “ Information about Lightning-Con- 
ductors issued by the Academy of Sciences of France.” The first of 
these reports was drawn up in 1823 by Gay-Lussac, the discoverer of the 
law of the expansibility of gases, the companion of Humboldt, and the 


682 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


distinguished meteorologist who first ascended four miles and a half 
into the air in a balloon. The second and the third were prepared in 
1854, and in 1867, by M. Pouillet, the director of the Conservatoire des 
Arts et Métiers in Paris, and the author of a well-known work on the 
elements of experimental physics and meteorology, which has been 
translated into many languages. These reports, although drawn up 
by an individual, were the results of the deliberations and experiments 
of a considerable number of scientific men, acting as a commission, 
and comprising among them such distinguished names as those of Pois- 
son, Fresnel, Becquerel, Duhamel, Fizeau, and Regnault. In the first 
of these reports, that, namely, of Gay-Lussac, which was adopted by 
the Academy of Sciences on April 23, 1823, it was premised as a kind 
of axiom that there are no bodies which do not offer some resistance 
to the transmission of electricity, and that conductors of small diame- 
ter offer more resistance than those which are of the same composition 
and of larger size. The electrical state was conceived in these inves- 
tigations as consisting of some kind of matter—as depending upon 
molecules which are mutually repulsive, and which therefore tend to 
separate and disperse themselves through space, and which are only 
retained upon the surface of solid bodies by the pressure of the atmos- 
phere. When the electric matter escapes, it seeks the earth under its 
tendency to diffuse itself over the most capacious conductors it can 
find, selecting the most perfect of them that are within its reach, but 
dividing itself in proportion to their individual capacities of accom- 
modation, when several conductors of unequal power are open to its 
transmission. A storm-cloud, hovering above in the air, attracts to- 
ward the nearer part of the terrestrial surface an electrical matter of a 
contrary nature to its own, and drives back into the ground an electri- 
cal matter of the same nature as its own, Each prominent part of the 
ground is therefore, for the time, in a state of electrical tension during 
the presence of a neighboring storm-cloud, and becomes a center of 
attraction toward which the lightning inclines. When the prominent 
object is in good connection with the ground, its electrical matter may 
shoot forth toward that of the cloud, and make a path between it and 
the cloud. If the prominent body projects as a sharp point toward the 
cloud, the escape of the electric matter from it to the cloud becomes 
very rapid, and the lightning strikes to it from the cloud, from a 
greater distance. It was further conceived that a good conductor pro- 
tected from any violent discharge a circular space whose radius was 
twice the height of the rod. An iron bar three quarters of an inch 
square was taken to be of sufficient dimensions for the construction of 
a conductor, because no instance had been known of arod a little in 
excess of half an inch in diameter having ever been fused or raised to 
a red heat by lightning. Even small rods or wires that were dispersed 
by the passage of lightning had served to convey it to the ground, and 
had protected surrounding objects from single strokes. Trees were 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 683 


recognized as dangerous to animals taking shelter near their trunks, 
because they do not convey a lightning-discharge with sufficient ra- 
pidity to the ground, and because they are worse conductors them- 
selves than animal bodies. But the discharge will not in any case 
leave a good conductor, well connected with the ground, to strike a 
living animal placed near its course. The terminal rod of a conductor 
was ordered to be two and a half inches square at its base, and to 
taper to a height of twenty or thirty feet above the building, with a 
needle of platinum, or of copper and silver alloy, at its top. The base 
of the rod was to be plunged into the ground, and then led away from 
the building for fifteen feet, being finally turned down into a hole or 
well fifteen feet deep, and then divided into root-like ramifications, the 
whole being well packed round with charcoal to protect the metal from 
rust. In a dry soil the earth contact was to be twice the length of the 
one which was deemed sufficient in a wet one. It was above all things 
insisted upon that too great precautions could not be taken to give the 
lightning a ready passage into the ground, as it was chiefly upon the 
freedom of this passage that the efficacy of the conductor must depend. 
A conductor with insufficient earth contact was stigmatized as being 
not only inefficacious, but dangerous, because it would attract the light- 
ning without being able to convey it to the ground. 

It was further asserted in this most comprehensive and notable 
report that an experience of fifty years had proved buildings to be 
effectually protected when good conductors were placed on them. In 
the United States a number of conductors had been known to have 
been struck, but in not more than two of these cases had the build- 
ings themselves suffered any damage. It was generally assumed, from 
the data then at command, that buildings which were protected by 
lightning-rods were not more likely to have the discharge brought 
down in their neighborhood on account of the presence of the rods, 
and it was also held that, even if they were open to such a liability, 
this could be of no practicable moment, because the power of a con- 
ductor to attract the lightning more frequently would, of necessity, 
also involve the capacity to convey it more freely to the ground. 
Points were spoken of as undoubtedly tending to neutralize the ten- 
sion of a charged cloud. Dr. Rittenhouse was referred to as having 
observed in Philadelphia that the points of lightning-conductors were 
frequently blunted by fusion without the houses to which they were 
attached having been in any way injured. 

The views advocated in this early code of instructions have been 
dwelt upon it some detail, in order that it may be seen how effectively 
this document laid down the broad principles of defense which are 
acted upon even at the present day. This instruction, after it had 
been stamped with the approval of the Academy of Sciences, became 
a sort of popular manual under the weight of this sanction. The 
Government gave force to the instruction by providing that it should 


684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


have effect in reference to all public buildings and churches. The re- 
port also became the chief authority on the subject in most foreign 
lands. It likewise served the useful purpose of weakening the oppo- 
sition, which still endeavored to maintain that disastrous explosions 
were caused by conductors, and furnished clear and precise rules for 
construction that were intelligible to ordinary workmen. 

In the year 1854 iron was much more generally used in buildings 
than it had been at an earlier date, and some additional. knowledge of 
the conditions and laws of electrical action had been acquired. The 
Academy, on this account, thought it well to request the Section of 
Physics to reconsider the lightning-rod instruction of 1823. This led 
to the first report, which was prepared by M. Pouillet, adopted by the 
Academy of Sciences on March 5, 1855, and immediately afterward 
issued by the Government as an additional instruction. In this docu- 
ment it was held that the large masses of iron employed in buildings 
certainly serve to attract the lightning. If two buildings of an equal 
size were similarly placed, the one being exclusively of stone and 
wood, and the other having large masses of metal in its construction, 
the lightning would certainly strike the latter and avoid the former, 
just as, when a ball of metal and a ball of wood are presented to- 
gether toward a charged prime conductor of an electrical machine, it 
is always the former, and never the latter, which receives the spark. 
A dry soil, it was pointed out, does not attract the lightning. But, if, 
under such a soil, there occur at some depth large masses of metal, or 
accumulations of water, the lightning would explode through the dry 
earth, splitting it up as a coat of varnish is pierced by an electric spark. 
The line of lightning-discharge is always marked out for it before- 
hand, in conformity with the law of electric tension, beginning at the 
same instant at both the extremities of the track. The objects which 
are most liable to strokes of lightning are good conductors that pro- 
ject farthest over toward the clouds. 

In the report of 1855 the occasion was used to draw attention to 
some instructive instances of the mechanical effects of lightning-dis- 
charges which had taken place upon the open sea. In 1827 the packet- 
boat New York, not at the time carrying a conductor, was struck dur- 
ing its passage across the ocean, and a leaden pipe, three inches in 
diameter and one inch thick, was fused where the discharge escaped 
into the sea. A chain of iron wire, one quarter of an inch in diame- 
ter and one hundred and thirty feet long, having been then hoisted up 
on one of the masts and trailed in the sea, was struck by a second dis- 
charge, and scattered into molten molecules and broken fragments, 
the bridge being set on fire, although at the time covered by a sheet 
of hail and a deluge of rain. The Jupiter, in the North Sea fleet, in 
1854, carrying a chain of several ‘strands of fortieth-of-an-inch brass 
wire, two hundred and sixty feet long, hung from the mainmast-head, 
and trailing seven feet into the sea, was struck, and had the chain 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 685. 


scattered into thousands of fragments, without any damage being done 
to the vessel itself. A Turkish ship cruising near at the time, with a 
chain from the masthead which did not reach into the sea, had a hole 
like that which would have been made by a cannon-shot pierced 
through the hull near the water-line. The inference was drawn from 
these cases that chains, and especially small chains, were not trust- 
worthy for the purpose of conducting discharges of lightning. The 
mechanical violence sustained was perceived to be due to the circum- 
stance that the conductors provided were of a bad principle of con- 
struction. They were at the least from nine to ten times too small. 
Conductors provided by engineering art are intended to be struck, but 
struck in such a manner as to govern the lightning, and to render the 
heaviest strokes harmless. No case had been known of a continuous 
iron rod, three quarters of an inch in diameter, or with a sectional 
area of one and a quarter square inch, having been structurally in- 
jured. The cases alluded to were held to demonstrate that conductors 
must have a sufficient size and thickness of metal, and must be con- 
tinuous and without defect from end to end. It was definitely settled 
that, in accordance with these requirements, a square iron rod used as 
a defense against lightning should have, at least, a diameter of nine 
sixteenths of an inch, and that a round rod should have a diameter of 
ten sixteenths of an inch. 

Some modification was also made in this instruction in reference to 
air-terminals. It was considered that a blunt point, fashioned like 
the apex of a cone subtending an angle of thirty degrees, would be less 
liable to fusion than a sharper and more attenuated point, and that 
therefore it should be adopted for the upper terminal, although it 
might, perhaps, not exert altogether so satisfactory a neutralizing in- 
fluence. The area protected by a conductor was now considered not 
to be so definite and certain as it was previously held to be. It was 
recognized that it would be less in the case of a building with a 
metal roof, for instance, than in other circumstances. The earth con- 
tact, it was remarked, could not be looked upon as efficacious unless it 
were made, through the instrumentality of sheets of water, at least as 
large as the area of the storm-cloud, and access to such sheets must 
be secured by boring both in the direction of the surface moisture 
and in that of the deeper soil. Chains of red copper with a square 
section of three eighths of an inch, and weighing a pound and three 
quarters per yard, were recommended for ships. Such were the princi- 
pal suggestions of a practical kind that were submitted in this report. 
In all other particulars the provisions of the earlier instructions were 
substantially approved and confirmed. There was, however, one inci- 
dental remark contained in this excellent report which is deserving 
of the highest commendation and approval on account of its practical 
wisdom. This emphasized the necessity for continued and minute 
observation and study of the effects of thunder-storms, with a view 


* 


686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


alike to ascertain what it is that lightning spares, as well as what it 
strikes. It is of the utmost importance, for the advance of man’s 
knowledge in this branch of physical investigation, that all instances 
of injury from lightning should be immediately examined and tested, 
and that all facts ascertained should be accurately described and placed 
upon record. 

In the year 1866 the Minister of War in France became doubtful 
in regard to the measures which were then taken to secure powder- 
magazines against accident from lightning, and in consequence once 
again brought the matter formally under the consideration of the 
Academy of Sciences. It was this action of the minister which led 
to the third report, also drawn up by M. Pouillet, adopted by the 
Academy in the beginning of 1867, and shortly afterward issued un- 
der the authority of the French Government. In this report the best 
method of making joints in a conductor by overlapping, riveting, and 
soldering the contiguous ends, was pointed out, and it was urged that 
the underground continuation of the rod should be carried on to an 
adequately moist place, even if miles had to be traversed for the pur- 
pose. ‘The increase in the number of air-terminals and the connecting 
them together were deemed of more consequence than the increasing 
the height of a smaller number. Secondary terminals were advised 
for every additional length of thirty-three yards of roof. The expan- 
sion of rods by heat was provided for by inserting free semicircular 
bands of red copper at suitable intervals, four inches of addition to 
the length being allowed for in every hundred yards of rod. 

The example set by France in the preparation of these reports was 
followed for the first time in England by the appointment of a Naval 
Commission in 1839 to inquire into the protection of the vessels of the 
Royal Navy. This commission was formed in consequence of the pub- 
lic attention which had been drawn to the matter by Snow Harris, who 
stated that, within the forty years that ended in 1832, two hundred and 
fifty vessels had been more or less seriously injured by lightning. The 
commission somewhat haltingly reported that there was no harm in 
lightning-conductors, and that it thought the system of protection might 
be tried. Snow Harris thereupon introduced the plan of nailing a dou- 
ble set of overlapping strips of copper along the masts. After the adop- 
tion of this method the conductors were struck by lightning in several 
instances, but in no case did the vessels suffer any damage. This ex- 
cellent system was only superseded in the end by the natural result 
of the introduction of iron vessels, which made the ships themselves 
efficient conductors in virtue of the principle of their construction. 
The original idea of Snow Harris was, indeed, to bring the general 
structure requiring defense as nearly as possible into the same non- 
resisting state that it would have if entirely composed of metal. He 
was knighted for his services in 1847, and in 1855 was employed to 
design the protection of the then new Houses of Parliament at West- 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 687 


minster, which he carried out by a modification of the plan that he 
had matured for the protection of the vessels of the Royal Navy. 
Two-inch tubes of copper, connected by solid screw plugs and coup- 
ling pieces, were affixed to all the more elevated portions of the build- 
ing. The sum of £2,314 provided for the execution of this work was 
memorable as being the first grant made by the English Parliament 
for the protection of a public building against lightning. 

About ten years after the erection of the lightning-conductors upon 
the Houses of Parliament at Westminster, it was found to be desirable 
to provide a similar protection for the magnificent old Hétel de Ville 
at Brussels, in consequence of some damage having occurred to the 
principal tower of the building during a thunderstorm. The commu- 
nal administration of the city had recourse to the Académie Royale 
des Sciences for advice in the emergency, and a commission, consist- 
ing of M. Duprez, M. Liagre, and Professor Melsens, was appointed to 
give a careful consideration to the matter. Professor Melsens visited 
Plymouth and London, to consult with Sir W. Snow Harris, and to ex- 
amine the plan of defense which had been adopted for the Houses of 
Parliament. Shortly afterward the commission at Brussels submitted 
to the communal administration the famous plan of lightning-defense 
which has since been carried out at the Hétel de Ville, and which has 
been described in the minutest detail in an illustrated work entitled 
“Description détaillée des Paratonnerers établis sur l’Hétel de Ville 
de Bruxelles,” and printed in 1865, in explanation of his views, by 
Professor Melsens himself. 

Professor Melsens’s method of defense differs in one important par- 
ticular from the measures which had been recommended in the Paris 
instructions, and which have been most generally adopted in England. 
He had for some time been inclined to advocate the use of numerous 
rods of small size, rather than one dominant rod of more ample dimen- 
sions, whenever large buildings with numerous projecting pinnacles 
and gables were concerned. His view virtually is that the aim in such 
cases should be to throw a sort of metallic net broadcast over the build- 
ing, with salient points carried up into the air at all projecting parts 
of the structure, and with numerous rootlets plunging down into the - 
conducting mass of the earth beneath; and he contrived an experi- 
ment which he was in the habit of exhibiting to his visitors at the 
laboratory in ’Ecole de Médecine Vétérinaire de l’Etat, which cer- 
tainly went very far to justify the position he had taken up. He pre- 
pared a spherical case or cage of stout iron wire, and, having inclosed 
a small bird in this cage, he passed electric shocks through it from a 
battery of fifteen very large Leyden-jars, without causing either injury 
or inconvenience to the bird. <A couple of little feathered pensioners 
were maintained at the laboratory for the performance of this experi- 
ment, and were subjected to the ordeal a considerable number of times, 
and there is no doubt could be subjected to it for any number of times, 


688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


without the remotest chance that they would ever be touched by the 
terrific discharges that were flashed through the walls of their prison- 
cell in such close propinquity to them, What happened in the case of 
the birds in this experiment assuredly would happen also in the case 
of any building that was encaged in metallic rods in a similar way. 
_ No demonstration of a mere physical fact could possibly be more abso- 
lute or more complete. 

The Hotel de Ville at Brussels is a large medieval building, inclos- 
ing in its center an open quadrangular court, and surmounted in the 
middle of its principal face by an elaborately pinnacled tower, 297 
feet high, with a gilt statue of St. Michael at the top, standing upon 
a prostrate dragon and flourishing a drawn sword above his head. 
There are four galleries on the spire beneath the statue, and there are 
also six spire-crowned subordinate turrets, and three parapeted gables 
projecting above the roof from other parts of the building. The 
statue of the saint is reared upon a lead-covered cupola or platform, 
and Professor Melsens determined that the point of its sword should 
serve as the culminant point of his system of lightning-rods; but he 
also took the precaution of very largely re-enforcing this highest termi- 
nal by surrounding the base of the lead-covered platform at the feet 
of the statue with a chevaua-de-frise of outwardly and upwardly 
branching rods, constituting a radiant circle of tufted points or 
aigrettes. There were altogether forty-eight of these points project- 
ing round the feet of the statue to a distance of eight feet in all direc- 
tions. From these radiating aigrettes, and from the statue standing 
above, a series of eight iron rods were carried down along the face of 
the tower and the slope of the roof, through an entire length of 310 
feet, to the interior court-yard. But as these rods descended along the 
perpendicular face of the building they were joined by other similar 
rods from the various subordinate turrets, pinnacles, gables, and ridges, 
which all had their own systems of terminal points rising up toward 
the sky. There were altogether 426 points projecting up from the 
building. An observer looking down from one of the elevated gal- 
leries of the spire took in at a glance quite a little forest of spikes 
bristling up into the air, which were all in direct metallic contact with 
the main stems of the conductors. 

An even more ample provision was made for the connection this 
system of conductors with the ground. The vertical rods were first 
collected into an iron box fixed about a yard above the ground in the 
inner court, and filled with molten zinc so as to unite the whole into 
one continuous block of metal. From the hollow, of this box twenty- 
four iron rods, two fifths of an inch in diameter, issued, and of these 
a third part was carried to an iron cylinder sunk in a well, another 
third was connected with the iron water-mains of the town, and the 
remaining third was put into communication in a similar way with the 
gas-mains. Professor Melsens estimated that the earth contact which 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 689 


was established by this threefold distribution amounted altogether to 
333,000 square yards of conducting communication. Iron rods were 
used in preference to copper in this construction on account of the 
cost which would have been entailed if copper had been employed for 
so extensive a work, and also because Professor Melsens had satisfied 
himself that iron has more tenacity and power of cohesion than cop- 
per when exposed to the disintegrating strain of powerful discharges 
of electricity. He devised a very pretty experimental proof of this, 
in which the discharge of a large battery of Leyden-jars was passed 
through a fine wire of equal dimensions throughout, but of which one 
half was composed of copper and the other half of iron. The iron 
portion was converted into a beaded, but still unbroken, strand by the 
discharge, but the copper part was scattered into a black impalpable 
powder. It is scarcely too much to say that the Hdétel de Ville at 
Brussels at the present day, with its lofty aigrette-defended tower, its 
forest of points, its net-work of rods, and its widely ramifying earth- 
roots, is, as far as danger from lightning is concerned, one of the best 
protected buildings in the world. It may safely be affirmed that it is 
quite as hard for the lightning to get mischievously at this building, 
as it is for the discharge of the Leyden battery to get at Professor 
Melsens’s birds when they are inclosed in their iron cage.* In the 
heaviest of storms Professor Melsens travels about within the meshes 
of his system of conductors, to investigate their behavior, with the 
most perfect sang-froid and confidence. In 1866 Professor Melsens 
examined with great care the transmitting capacity of his system of 
conductors at the Hotel de Ville, and in this final investigation he em- 
ployed all the various means that are now at the command of science. 
He used continuous currents, instantaneous discharges, sparks from 
the electrical machine, from powerful batteries,.and from a large 
Ruhmkorff coil, and with all he found that the conductibility of his 
system was practically perfect. | 

One of the grdunds upon which Professor Melsens adopts his sys- 
tem of multiple rods is the circumstance that an electrical discharge 
diffuses itself through all the branches of a multifold conductor in 
proportion to the resistance which is offered by each part, and that it 
does not all concentrate itself into the shortest and most open path. 
He has devised some very ingenious experiments for proving this po- 
sition, and has been able to show the sixty-thousandth part of a dis- 
charge passing by a very narrow and roundabout path, when a broad 
and direct one was open, and traversed by the larger proportions of 
the discharge. He brought this part of his subject under the notice 
of the Academy of Sciences of Belgium in a special note, which was 
printed in their “ Bulletins ” in 1875.—Zdinburgh Review. 


* M. de Fonvielle says of this plan of defense that Professor Melsens does not leave 
the lightning a gap that it can get through. 
you. xxv.— 44 


690 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


CHINESE CORONERS’ INQUESTS. 


HE method of conducting coroners’ inquests in China seems 
admirably adapted to facilitate the escape of criminals. The 
feeling of the country is abhorrent to dissections, and magistrates, con- 
sequently, find the prosecution of their inquiries attended with great 
embarrassments, unless the case is of the plainest character. The law- 
makers, however, have always, from the earliest times, recognized the 
importance of human life by directing that an inquest be made in 
every case of sudden death. .A number of books have been prepared, 
containing the instructions needed by the magistrate in the perform- 
ance of this part of his duties. The best known of these collections 
was published in the thirteenth century, by the direction of the officers 
of the Bureau of Penalties, and is a kind of official manual for the in- 
quiring magistrate. It is called the “Se Yen Luh,” or treatise on the 
redress of wrongs. Init is expounded the whole system of legal medicine 
in use among the Chinese. <A few extracts from it will be of interest. 

The first advice given in the “Se Yen Luh” is that the magistrate 
must be sure he has a dead body before he issues his order for the 
inquest. ‘The reason given to make this advice seem pertinent is 
hardly less curious than the advice itself. ‘It sometimes happens,” 
says the manual, “that unscrupulous sharpers demand an inquest on an 
imaginary deceased for the sole purpose of extorting money from the 
person they will denounce as the author of the death; and the latter, 
in fear of falling into the claws of the law, readily pays all that is 
required of him, in order to arrest the process.” ‘The officer then, 
having assured himself that there is a real case, goes to the spot, tak- 
ing with him a good provision of onions, red pepper, white plums, and 
Vinegar, articles that he will almost certainly have use for. If death 
has taken place recently, the first step is to examine the top of the 
head, behind the ears, the throat, and other vital pafts, for marks of a 
sharp instrument. If this examination does not reveal the cause of 
death, the friends and neighbors of the deceased are questioned. An 
attentive examination is then made of the wounds. 

“A sure means of fixing the date of a wound may be found by 
noticing the color of the bone that has been attacked. If the wound 
is recent and slight, the bone will be red ; if old and severe, the color 
will be dark blue. It is, however, necessary to be assured that the 
color is real, and has not been applied so as to square with the deposi- 
tion of the relatives. A red color may be given to a bone by staining 
it with a composition of saffron, pine-wood, black plums, alum, and 
boiling vinegar ; and green alum or gall-nuts mixed with vinegar will 
give a dark-blue or black tint; but the counterfeit is generally be- 
trayed by the absence of luster. A false wound may also be made on 
a body with bamboo-coals, but such wounds are always of little depth 


CHINESE CORONERS’ INQUESTS. 691 


and soft. If birch-bark has been used for the burning, the flesh is 
black and soft, and the edges of the wound are livid. Burning with 
paper produces a wound like a fist-blow ; but a red and burned spot 
may be remarked around the wound, while the flesh within appears 
yellowish and tumefied, but without consistence. A true wound can 
also be recognized by the clear color of the surrounding flesh. The 
edges of the wound resemble a kind of rainbow, something like rain 
‘geen at a distance, like clouds with a vague and indistinct aspect.” 
After having thus defined the characteristics of a wound, and the 
means of exposing every kind of deception, the manual passes to the 
consideration of the motives for crime. ‘“ Murders,” it says, “are rarely 
premeditated ; they are sometimes the consequence of intoxication. 
The magistrate,” it continues, “should remember that the relatives of 
a wounded man may have an interest in dispatching him, so that they 
may demand a more considerable indemnity from the murderer. He 
must also inform himself, in the case of a man who was severely 
wounded in a brawl, whether he was honestly taken care of. In case 
of death, examine the body carefully from head to foot ; see whether 
the ears have been pulled and torn, whether the nostrils have been 
hurt, whether the lips are open or closed, count the teeth, inspect the 
cheeks, carefully feel the limbs to the finger-nails and toe-nails. If 
the coroner can not find a visible mark of a wound, he should pour on 
the part vinegar with its dregs, and then put a piece of oiled, trans- 
parent cloth between the sun and the body, and look carefully. If 
nothing appears, let him make another trial, with powdered white 
plums added to the vinegar. If this, too, fails, he should prepare a 
cake of white plums, red pepper, onions, salt, and vinegar, and apply 
it boiling hot on the part of the body where the wound ought to be. 
An attentive examination having been madé of the body, and the 
marks of wounds on the skin, their shape, size, and position having 
been noted, death should be attributed to the wound that is found in 
the most vulnerable spot.” 
It is one of the curious features of this system that, if the death is 
‘due to a blow on the lower part of the abdomen, a clew to it may be 
obtained from the state of the roots of the teeth in men and of the 
gums in women. When the inquest is held over a body in so ad- 
vanced a state of decomposition that nothing is left of it but the bones, 
a clear day is chosen, and the bones, after having been exposed to the 
vapor of hot vinegar, are examined through a red and transparent 
cloth. The blood having been coagulated in the wounded parts of the 
bones, they will be brought out, and the marks—red, dark blue, or 
black, as the case may be—will be made visible. A long and dark 
mark indicates a blow made by the arm ; a round mark, a blow of the 
fist ; a smaller mark, a kick. Extravasation of blood in the bone indi- 
cates a wound made before death. If doubts exist as to the identity 
of the remains, a son or grandson of the deceased is required to shed 


692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


some of his blood upon it. If there is relationship, the blood will 
penetrate the bone, otherwise it will not. This kind of test may be 
compared with the ancient custom of barbarous people based upon the 
belief that the blood of relatives poured into the same vessel will mix, 
while that of strangers will remain separate. A like custom also is 
used in China to prove in court contested relationships ; but the officer 
must be particularly careful that no salt or vinegar is put into the 
vessel, lest those substances should promote a mixture of the blood. 
It is believed to have been shown by experiment that men slain with 
a knife die with the mouth and eyes open and the hands closed, and 
that their skin and muscles are drawn up. If the victim has been de- 
capitated, the muscles are tense, the skin is flabby, and the shoulders 
are drawn up. ‘These features are not found when the decapitation 
has taken place after death. It is very important to discriminate be- 
tween the effects of wounds made before or after death, for accom- 
plished murderers seek to give their crime the appearance of a suicide. 

The general aspect of the body is relied upon to give an evident 
indication of the state of mind in which a suicide was committed. If 
the teeth are clinched and the eyes are partly open, the act was done 
in a fit of violent passion ; if the eyes are shut, the mouth open, and 
the teeth not clinched, the case was one of suppressed anger. If fear 
of punishment induced the suicide, the eyes and the mouth will be — 
closed, and the body will have an air of repose, “for the unfortunate 
one regarded death as the end of his journey, as the term of rest that 
should disengage him from the responsibilities of life.” The hands 
of a suicide continue soft for some time, and after a day or two the skin 
draws up—symptoms that are not observed in cases of murder. 

In case of strangulation, which is very frequent, it is the officer’s 
duty to inform himself with especial particularity respecting the exact 
position of the body, the signs on the neck, the existence or absence of 
the mark of the rope, the expression of the face, and a thousand other 
details. 

The directions to be observed in cases of drowning are, on the 
whole, sensible, but the habit of generalizing here also leads to some 
strange conclusions. Thus, it has been discovered that bodies require a 
longer time to come to the surface of the water in the winter and the 
beginning of the spring than at other seasons. 

With no aid from dissection, the inquests in cases of poison are, of 
course, very incomplete. The most usual test is to introduce into the 
mouth a silver needle that has been dipped in a decoction of Gle- 
ditschia sinensis. If, after a certain time, the needle receives a 
blackish tint that. resists washing, poisoning is concluded to have been 
the cause of death. Sometimes a handful of rice is put into the mouth 
of the deceased and then given to a fowl, and the effect upon the bird 
of eating it is noticed.— Zranslated for the Popular Science Monthly 
JSrom the Revue Scientifique. 


SKETCH OF PROFESSOR J. P. LESLEY. 693 , 


SKETCH OF PROFESSOR J. P. LESLEY. 


gi Mein subject of this sketch, Professor J. P. Lesiey, this year Presi- 
dent of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
ence, was born in Philadelphia, September 17, 1819. He is of Scotch 
extraction, his grandfather, Peter Lesley, having emigrated from 
Aberdeenshire in Scotland. From his sixth to his twelfth year he was 
under the instruction of William Tucker, and showed a marked pre- 
dilection for mathematics and geography. His father, a cabinet-maker, 
was an accurate draughtsman and an intelligent lover of architecture, 
and that he was in advance of his age in the matter of education is 
shown by the fact that he placed the pencil in his children’s hands 
before they could write, and daily exercised them during the dinner- 
hour in the precise use of language for describing places and things, 
while obliging them to test the accuracy of their descriptions by draw- 
ings and sketches, which he mercilessly criticised. A good foundation 
was thus laid for those logical, linguistic, and artistic pursuits which 
young Lesley followed up throughout his academical years, and at the 
University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1838. The 
" acquisition of French and German, music, painting, and the construc- 
tion of toy machinery of all kinds in his father’s workshop, were his 
recreations out of school-hours, and led him afterward into the ardent 
study of the classical and Oriental languages, and finally to that of the 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, those fossils of comparative philology, while 
occupied with the mechanical problems of geology, to which subject 
his life has been mainly devoted. From 1839 to 1841 Mr. Lesley was 
engaged on the Geological Survey of the State of Pennsylvania, under 
Professor Henry D. Rogers. Early interested in religious subjects, 
in the autumn of 1841 he entered the theological seminary at Prince- 
ton, New Jersey, and in 1844 was licensed as a minister by the Pres- 
bytery of Philadelphia. He devoted himself for a year or two to 
religious teaching among the German population of Pennsylvania, and 
in 1847 became the regular pastor of a Congregational church in Mil- 
- ton, Massachusetts ; but his theological views soon underwent such 
expansion that he left the pulpit and settled in Philadelphia, to devote 
himself to work in the field of science. He was married, in 1849, to 
Miss Susan Lyman, of Northampton, Massachusetts. 

In the spring of 1844 he sailed for Europe, and walked with knap- 
sack and blouse through the western and southern provinces of France, 
through Savoy, Switzerland, and Germany to Halle, where he attended 
the lectures of Tholuck, Erdmann, Leo, and Ulrici, and returned home 
in the spring of 1845. In 1863 he was sent by the President of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad to examine the methods of hardening the sur- 
face of rails, and to report on the success of Bessemer’s invention. In 


694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the course of this journey he visited all the iron-works where flasks 
had been erected in England, Belgium, the south and west of France, 
and in Austria. In the autumn of 1866 he sailed for Brest, by the 
order of his physician, and, traveling through Italy, returned to per- 
form his duties as United States Commissioner at the opening of the 
Paris Exposition of 1867. After struggling with a painful illness 
three months, he walked through the Vosges Mountains, and remained 
the rest of the season at Vevay in Switzerland, and then went to 
Egypt as the guest of Charles Hale, the United States consul-general 
at that time, with whom he went up the river to the first cataract in 
one of the viceroy’s yachts, returning to Italy, England, and the 
United States in the spring of 1868, but abstaining from all serious 
business until the end of that year. 

His health slowly improved, but four years elapsed before he could 
do an ordinary day’s work; and it has been his habit ever since to 
seek relaxation from business, when too long continued, by short trips 
to Europe. Such were made in 1872, 1874, 1876, 1878, 1880, 1882, 
and 1884, in each case remaining abroad only two or three weeks. 

In 1872 Mr. Lesley was appointed Professor of Geology and Dean 
of the Faculty to the newly established scientific department of the 
University of Pennsylvania, and in 1874 he was made chief geologist 
of Pennsylvania under a new act providing for a complete geological 
resurvey of that State. He had, in 1842, constructed the State geo- 
logical map and sections for Pennsylvania, and in 1846-’47 revised 
them and prepared the drawings and a large part of the text of the 
subsequently published report on the geology of that State. His work 
as a geologist has been more especially devoted to the coal formations 
of North America, and he is regarded as a chief authority on all ques- 
tions connected therewith. His “ Manual of Coal and its Topography ” 
(1856) is esteemed alike for its classification of the Appalachian coal 
strata and for its illustrations of topographical geology. Most of Pro- 
fessor Lesley’s personal field-work remains unpublished, such as his 
elaborate survey of the Cape Breton coal-fields in 1862~638 ; his topo- 
graphical and geological survey of the Broad Top coal-field, which 
occupied two years; his contoured map of the Kishkaminitas and 
Loyalhanna country in Western Pennsylvania, ordered by the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company, which also occupied two years ; his survey 
of the Tennessee coal-fields west of Knoxville, ete. 

Abstracts from his reports of surveys of the iron-ore deposits of 
Huntingdon and Centre Counties, and of Cumberland and Franklin 
Counties, Pennsylvania ; of the titaniferous iron-ore range of North 
Carolina ; of the Embreeville district in East Tennessee ; of the ge- 
ology of Tazewell, Russell, and Wise Counties in Virginia; of coal, 
iron, and petroleum districts in Western Pennsylvania ; and of the sur- 
face petroleums of the Sandy River country in Kentucky—were pub- 
lished, with maps and woodcuts, in the “‘ Proceedings of the American 


SKETCH OF PROFESSOR J. P. LESLEY. 695. 


Philosophical Society ” under various dates. During the last ten years 
his official duties as director of the State survey, involving the pub- 
lication of about seventy volumes of reports, have prevented in a 
great measure his personal work as a geologist, and he has published 
nothing over his own name except prefaces and notes to these reports. 
But a large number of his geological papers, as above referred to, to- 
gether with various essays on philological and antiquarian subjects, will 
be found in the “ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.” 

Professor Lesley was for several years Secretary to the American 
Iron Association, and he has also for many years been Secretary and 
Librarian of the American Philosophical Society. Although a hard 
worker in science, he is a man of varied intellectual accomplishments, 
of a philosophical bent of mind, and interested in many of those higher 
questions which are agitating the mind of the age. In 1865 he gave 
a series of lectures before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which was 
afterward published (1868) under the title of “ Man’s Origin and Des- 
tiny as seen from the Platform of the Sciences.” After being out of 
print for several years, a new edition of this work was called for, 
and it was revised and reissued, with six additional chapters, in 1881. 

The book abounds in evidence of the author’s independence and 
originality, and of his varied and extensive erudition. It is but just 
to say, however, that it was not intended as an elaborate or system- 
atic treatise, and it is thus characterized by the author himself: “The 
author never contemplated anything beyond a general sketch of the 
present bearings of science upon the vexed question of the origin 
and early history of man. But the question has many subdivisions. 
He intended the several lectures to be separate sketches of those sub- 
divisions of the field of discussion—mere introductions to their proper 
study. His views are stated, therefore, in round terms. Nothing is 
closely reasoned out. Much is left to the logical instinct, and more to 
the literary education, of the reader. Reference is everywhere made 
to sources of information within easy reach of all. Even the style of an 
essay has been avoided. The book is merely a series of familiar con- 
versations upon the current topics of interest in the scientific world.” 
This spirited book was noticed in Volume XX of “The Popular Sci- 
ence Monthly,” and the following estimate was given of it: ‘‘ We have 
gone through Mr. Lesley’s book with interest and profit—pleased with 
its brilliant and forcible passages, which are frequent ; instructed by 
its learning and its abounding facts, and stimulated by its incisive 
observations and its forcible arguments. But the work is strongly 
stamped with the author’s individuality, and its supplementary chap- 
ters especially, fresh and breezy as they are, contain various opinions 
to which we find it impossible to subscribe. But, notwithstanding its 
faults, the work is original, helpful, and invigorating, and those who 
are concerned to note the drift of modern inquiry will be sure to find 
it serviceable.” 


696 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH, 
Messrs. Editors : 
HILE this discussion about the great 
ascendency given the study of the 
classics in all of our institutions of learning 
is going on, we beg to offer the following 
facts: Ifere we have the great University 
of Michigan, the pride of the State, with its 
fourteen hundred students, and schools of 
literature, science, and the arts, dentistry, 
law, pharmacy, music, medicine, political and 
sanitary science, and one can graduate and 
take the coveted degree of A. B., receive 
the commendation of his teachers, then study 
in a post-graduate course and receive the 
degrees of A. M. and Ph. D., and be an edu- 
cated fool so far as knowing anything of 
elocution is concerned, or having acquired 
any knowledge of the structure and compo- 
sition of his own body or of the laws of 
health. 

To the credit of the university, it may be 
said that many courses of study are offered 
and a wide latitude given for choice; but, 
while four years of study in Latin and two in 
Greek are required in the preparatory schools 
and about one and a half year each in Latin 
and Greek in the university, nothing is re- 
quired in the fitting schools or university in 
either elocution or physiology and hygiene, 
and there is absolutely no provision made 
in any department for teaching the former, 
and nothing in the latter is required or of- 
fered candidates for the degree of A. B. 
worthy of the name. It still seems to be con- 
sidered of vastly more importance to have a 
smattering of Latin and Greek than to know 
anything about one’s own body and how to 
care for it, or to speak well our own tongue. 

OBSERVER. 
Ann Arsor, Micuican, May 23, 1884. 


THE QUALIFICATIONS OF LEGISLATORS. 
Messrs. Editors: 

AFTER reading what Herbert Spencer says 
of the “ Sins of Legislators,” Iam impressed 
with the idea that it would be a step in the 
right direction to make it a necessary quali- 
fication for a member of Congress or State 
Legislature that he shall pass a satisfactory 
examination before some university board, 
and get a certificate showing his attainments 
in the studies of political economy and civil 
government. This would at least compel 
candidates for those positions to devote some 
time to the study of those branches—a thing 
they now seldom do. I sce no reason why 
they should not be compelled to prepare 


themselves for their work as much as com- 
mon-school teachers do now. 
J. G. Matcoim. 
TOPEKA, Kansas, July 1, 1884. 


“AN EXPERIMENT IN PROHIBITION” 
FROM ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW. 
Messrs. Editors: 

Tue May number of “The Popular Sci- 
ence Monthly ” contained an article entitled 
“An Experiment in Prohibition,” some of 
the statements in which were so one-sided 


; and inaccurate that they can not be allowed 


to pass without challenge. Among those 
statements were assertions that in the State 
of Vermont the prohibitory law is “an ab- 
solute dead letter”; that the returns of the 
United States revenue officers show that 
there are in that State four hundred and 
forty-six places where intoxicating liquors are 
sold; that “in the city of Burlington there 
are about threescore places where liquor is 
sold; and in Rutland, St. Albans, and all the 
larger towns, a proportional number, and 
in every village in the State, with the excep- 
tion of a few inconsiderable hamlets, at 
least one such place”; that “a large pro- 
portion of the dram-shops are located upon 
the principal streets and there is no conceal- 
ment or attempted concealment of the ille- 
gal traffic conducted within them”; and 
that prosecutions of liquor-sellers, on whom 
persons arrested for intoxication have dis- 
closed, are “very common,” but are con- 
fined to “ the lowest class of liquor-dealers ” 
and are “invariably for a first offense.” 

Two of these statements contradict each 
other. If prosecutions, though only for first 
offenses and of the lowest class of liquor- 
dealers, are “ very common,” it can not be 
correct to say that the law is an absolute 
dead letter. Most certainly it is not an ab- 
solute dead letter. 

The statement of the number of places 
in Vermont where intoxicating liquors are 
sold was obtained from a newspaper com- 
pilation, from the returns of the United 
States Collector of Internal Revenue for the 
year ending April, 1888. The same returns 
show that, of the 446 persons paying the 
United States tax as dealers in intoxicating 
liquors, about three hundred were druggists, 
who must use, and keep, and sell, alcohol 
and spirits for purposes recognized as legiti- 
mate. While some of these undoubtedly 
sell liquors to a greater or less extent for 
other than “medicinal, mechanical, and 
chemical pnrposes,” their shops can not, as 
a class, be called “‘dram-shops ”—and many 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


of them guard their sales rigidly. The 446 
also include the large manufacturing and 
wholesale druggists, dealing in alcohol and 
spirits in large amounts in their trade, yet 
who are so far from being keepers of “ dram- 
shops,” that not only do they not sell spirits 
to be drunk on the spot, but no one not in 
the trade, high or low, can obtain alcohol 
or liquor from them in any quantity, large 
or small, for individual use, or even for 
cooking or other family purposes. The 446 
include the hotels, some of which have no 
bars, and are careful how they sell to any 
but their guests. It is to be remembered 
also that the man who opened a saloon, 
sold whisky on the sly, and was visited by 
the United States revenue officer and com- 
pelled to take out a license, was included 
among the 446, although his alcoholic stock 
in trade may have been seized next day by 
the sheriff, and himself sent to the house 
of correction. These deductions would re- 
duce the number of “ dram-shops,” properly 
so called, to a smaller number in proportion 
to population than in any other civilized 
community of equal numbers, with the pos- 
sible exception of the State of Maine. 

But if all concerns paying the United 
States tax were to be called dram-shops, 
then it is to be noted that the number is 
much smaller in Vermont in proportion to 
population than in any State which licenses 
the sale of liquors. Thus in Massachusetts, 
which has a “rigid license law,” 8,476 per- 
sons held United States licenses to sell liquor 
last year, being one to every 202 of the popu- 
lation. In Connecticut 3,357 persons paid 
the United States tax, being one to every 
187 of the population. In Vermont it ap- 
pears that 446 paid the United States tax, 
being one to 744! In other words, more 
than three times as many persons were sell- 
ing liquor in Massachusetts, and four times 
as many in Connecticut, in proportion to 
population, as in Vermont! And, could the 
amount of liquors sold where the dealer is 
free to advertise his business and sell all 
he can be compared with the amount sold 
where the traffic is under the ban of a pro- 
hibitory law, it would doubtless be found 
that each United States license in Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, New York, or any 
other non-prohibitory State, represents a 
vastly greater sale of liquors than in Ver- 
mont. 

It is to be noted, further, that the num- 
ber of persons paying the United States tax 
in Vermont shows a noticeable decrease in 
the last ten years, the number returned for 
the year 1873 being 684. Here appears to be 
a decrease of some thirty-five per cent in ten 
years. During the same period the number 
of United States licenses issued in Maine in- 
creased by 78; in Massachusetts, by 208 ; in 
Connecticut, by 573; in Rhode Island, by 436. 
Something, evidently, is checking the liquor- 


697 


traffic in Vermont to a considerable extent, 
and the universal and strong opposition to 
the law, on the part of those who consider 
it to be for their interest to have more 
rather than less intoxicating drinks con- 
sumed, shows clearly that they attribute a 
good part of the restriction to the prohibi- 
tory law. 

The number of places where liquor is 
sold in Burlington is overstated. The num- 
ber in April, 1883, was not threescore, but 49. 

It is not the fact that in every village 
there is at least one such place. Many Ver- 
mont villages have no such place, and have 
not had for twenty years. In more than 
half of the towns of Vermont, the United 
States revenue collectors could not find, in 
the year ending April 12, 1883, any one 
selling liquor. There are 240 towns in Ver- 
mont, and in 127 of these no drug-store, 
hotel, or dram-shop was found that could be 
required to pay the United States tax. The 
statement that there is no concealment or 
attempted concealment of such illegal traffic 
as is conducted in the State could hardly be 
made wider of the truth. As a general 
thing, the traffic is everywhere concealed 
from public view. No placard, sign, adver- 
tisement, or open bar attracts men to drink, 
The liquors kept for sale are kept under 
lock and key, or in dark rooms or cellars; 
and even then seizures are frequent and 
fines numerous, and often ruinous to the 
business, and prosecutions are by no means 
confined to first offenses, or to liquor-dealers 
of the lowest class. The law is one which 
enables the citizens of any town to do 
what they choose as regards illegal traffic in 
liquor. If they choose, they can banish it. 
If they do not care to banish it, they can 
restrict it, if they will, to almost any extent. 
In point of fact, in Vermont, as a whole, 
the law exercises a steady and increasing 
pressure upon the illegal traffic, and makes 
it a very risky and disreputable business. - 
To this extent the law is no failure. 

Prohibition has been for over thirty 
years the settled policy of Vermont. The 
law has been changed by successive Legis- 
latures only to perfect and strengthen it, 
As the State is admitted to be “a moral and 
God-fearing community,” and its people are 
not considered specially lacking in intelli- 
gence, the fair inference from such extraor- 
dinary support and popularity would seem 
to be that the prohibitory system must have 
merits for a community like that of Ver- 
mont, and that it must have measurably an- 
swered its purpose. It is idle to say that 
this support and popularity are factitious. 
Bubbles do not last for generations. It 
might be possible, with effort enough, to 
manufacture a sudden sentiment for such a 
system, that might last for a year or two. 
But it is safe to say that a measure like 
this, which stands firm year after year, and 


698 


decade after decade, against the bitter op- 
position of an elsewhere powerful interest, 
among a not particularly visionary people, 
among a people, in fact, of more than the 
average independence of judgment and prac- 
tical hard common sense, must amount to 
something. This inference I assert to be a 
correct one. The people of Vermont have 
sustained the prohibitory law for over thirty 
years, and will continue to sustain it—not as 
a lovely theory or a “barren ideality,” not 
as a panacea for all social evils, not as ne- 
cessarily the best thing for all States and all 
communities, in their existing conditions ; 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


but as the system which is better for them 
than any other they know of; as a system 
which in spite of the hindrances, defects, 
and perversities which largely obstruct all 
moral effort and must be expected, especial- 
ly, to hinder an effort to curb the gratifica- 
tion of an appetite as general and powerful 
as that for strong drink, does practically, 
here in Vermont, restrict the liquor-traffic 
to a greater extent, and so proves itself a 
better ally to moral effort to resist intem- 
perance than any other method of restriction 
they have ever tried, or seen tried elsewhere. 
GEORGE GRENVILLE BENEDICT. 


EDITOR’S TABLE, 


MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SCIEN- 
TIFIC ASSOCIATION. 


HE thirty - third meeting of the 
American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science will take place 
this year at Philadelphia, beginning on 
Thursday, the 4th of September, un- 
der the presidency of Professor J. P. 
Lesley, Chief of the Geological Survey 
of Pennsylvania. In order to allow 
an interchange of courtesies between 
the American and the British Associa- 


tions, the latter of which meets the 


previous week in Montreal, the Ameri- 
can meeting is put at a later date than 
usual. The Council of the British As- 
sociation has invited the fellows of the 
American Association to join in the 
meeting at Montreal on the footing of 
honorary members; and the American 
Association and the local committee of 
Philadelphia have invited the members 
of the British Association and their 
relatives who may be with them to take 
part in the Philadelphia meeting. In- 
vitations have been sent to the leading 
scientific societies abroad, asking them 
to send delegations to the Philadelphia 
meeting, so that it is expected to be 
largely international in its character, 
and it is likely that steps will be taken 
to form an International Scientific As- 
sociation. An International Electrical 
Exhibition, under the auspices of the 
Franklin Institute, will be open at the 


same time, and the American Institute 
of Mining Engineers and the Pennsy]- 
vania State Agricultural Society will 
hold sessions at Philadelphia during 
the same week. On various accounts, 
therefore, the occasion will be one of 
unusual interest, and the meeting will 
probably be fully attended, while the 
large local committee of Philadelphia 
may be trusted to make every arrange- 
ment possible to conduce to the pleas- 
ure and profit of the visitors. 


THE BRITISH ASSOCIA TION—INTERNA- 
TIONAL SCIENCE. 

Tue British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science holds its fifty- 
fourth annual meeting this year at 
Montreal, commencing on the 27th of 
August under the presidency of Pro- 
fessor Lord Rayleigh, of the Universi- 
ty of Cambridge. This is, perhaps, the 
largest and most powerful scientific so- 
ciety in the world, and its coming from 
Europe to America is a new departure 
in its history, of such considerable sig- 
nificance that we may profitably give 
some attention to it. 

The British Association was estab- 
lished in 1831, over half a century ago, 
and held its first meeting in the city of 
York. It came into existence in obe- 
dience to a growing demand for what 
may be termed scientific expansion, or 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


a desire to increase the cultivation and 
augment the influence of science by 
bringing larger portions of the commu- 
nity within reach of scientific facilities, 
and making more familiar the inter- 
course of men devoted to scientific la- 
bors. Numerous societies already ex- 
isted for the promotion of research, both 
special and general, but they were local 
in their operations, while their members 
met their fellow-workers in different 
cities but rarely, and multitudes of edu- 
cated people were not brought within 
the circle of scientific influence. Yet 
the number of these societies attested 
that the work of scientific investigation 
had taken deep root. Scientific knowl- 
edge had become greatly extended, and 
this led, by the inevitable course ot 
things, to the necessity of more efficient 
and comprehensive organization for its 
further increase and diffusion. With 
the growing sense of the general im- 
portance, and the augmenting influ- 
ence of science in society, there was a 
strengthening desire to share its work 
and its advantages, and this naturally 
led to association upon a new basis, 
better adapted to the new conditions. 
The British Association, instead of tak- 
ing root in one locality, was constituted 
as a migratory body that should hold 
its annual sessions, of a week’s duration, 
successively in the different cities of the 
United Kingdom. It was announced at 
the first meeting that, while contemplat- 
ing no interference with the ground oc- 
cupied by other institutions, its objects 
shall be “to give a stronger impulse 
and a more systematic direction to sci- 
entific inquiry—to promote the inter- 
course of those who cultivate science 
in different parts of the British Empire, 
with one another and with foreign phi- 
losophers—to obtain a more general 
attention to the objects of science, and a 
removal of any disadvantages of a pub- 
lic kind which impede its progress.” 
These objects of the Association have 
been well fulfilled in its history. It 
has been a power in England for the 


699 


accomplishment of the purposes des- 
ignated. It has attracted multitudes 
of capable men to devote themselves 
to scientific pursuits. It has systema- 
tized and promoted observation and 
research in various fields, and has lent 
efficient pecuniary assistance to many 
workers who were without the means 
for investigation. Its career has been 
coincident with the highest scientific 
activity in all civilized countries, and it 
has lent its powerful co-operation in 
bringing out many of the grand scien- 
tific results that will make the last half- 
century memorable in scientific histo- 
ry. The British Association has, more- 
over, been administered trom the be- 
ginning in a liberal spirit and with en- 
larged views. While mainly devoted 
to the extension and the improvement 
of scientific knowledge, it has never 
been afraid to express its sympathy with 
the popular aspects of scientific ques- 
tions, and it has wisely lent its influence 
for the encouragement and general pro- 
motion of scientific education. Per- 
haps no higher testimony could be af- 
forded of the excellence of its plan, the 
value of its labors, and its adaptation to 
the requirements of the period, than the 
fact that it has been successfully imi- 
tated both in the United States and in 
different Continental countries. 

The coming of this body across the 
Atlantic to hold one of its annual ses- 
sions in Montreal, while quite in ac- 
cordance with its established policy 
of enlarging the field of scientific in- 
fluence, is such a signal stroke of ex- 
pansion as fitly to make an epoch in its 
beneficent career. It does not, indeed, 
overpass the limits of the British Em- 
pire, but it migrates to a new continent, 
and if not to a foreign, at least to a 
distant and a different people. It seems 
to us, therefore, that, to reach the high- 
est utility of the occasion, it should be 
be made subservient to the more sys- 
tematic organization of international 
agencies for the promotion of science. 
While in itself but a transient event, it 


700 


is nevertheless a fitting opportunity to 
initiate something permanent, that shall 
mark the stage at which we have arrived 
in the growth of what may be called 
the international scientific conscious- 
ness of the world. Something, indeed, 
has already been accomplished in this 
important direction. That large divis- 
ion of the students of Nature, the medi- 
cal profession, has entered into exten- 
sive co-operation on an international 
scale for the advancement of its inter- 
ests. The International Medical Con- 
gress meets once in three years, each 
time in a new country, and all who 
have participated in its proceedings 
testify to the reality, the extent, and 
the value of the results attained. There 
is no reason why similar advantages 
may not be derived from an interna- 
tional association of scientists devoted 
to the promotion of the general objects 
which they have in view. We are glad 
to observe, as remarked above in refer- 
ring to the American Association, that 
steps are being taken to organize such 
a body on an international basis. It 
will be but a further and natural devel- 
opment of the policy of the British and 
American Associations within their re- 
spective countries. There is a large 
field of labor that would especially be- 
long to such a body, for hitherto science 
has been to no small degree hampered 
and impeded by the disagreements and 
conflicts that have arisen out of its lim- 
ited and national pursuit. An interna- 
tional congress of scientists would be the 
proper body to promote the adoption 
of common standards of time, of meas- 
urements of all kinds, of biological and 
geological nomenclatures, of common 
systems of recording observations and 
statistics, and the policy of scientific un- 
dertakings which require international 
co-operation, and it would have many 
things to do which there is no associa- 
tion at present entitled to undertake. 
The same important advantages of in- 
creased personal intercourse among the 
cultivators of science, to which the ex- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


isting associations have been tributary 
in their respective countries, would then 
be secured on a still wider scale. Noth- 
ing is more important than the bring- 
ing of scicntific men, who are separated 
by distance and rarely see each other, 
into personal contact and acquaintance, 
to gain that intimate understanding of 
each other which can only come from 
personal discussion; and this is the more 
necessary where men are habitually 
separated by the differences of nation- 
ality. There are many reasons why 
such an organization should be estab- 
lished; the time has come for it, and 
the present is an especially favorable 
time for carrying it out. The large at- 
tendance of foreign scientists at Mont- 
real is to be followed by the meeting 
of the American Association in Phila- 
delphia, and many of the foreign savants 
will be present at that meeting. The 
circumstances are auspicious for taking 
this new step which, if taken, will un- 
doubtedly be productive of lasting and 
world-wide advantage in this great field 
of labor. 

But we must not lose sight of the 
loftier lesson that is so happily illus- 
trated in the coming of this most pow- 
erful of scientific organizations to the 
New World, and which is well calcu- 
lated to incite to further action in this 
important direction. What concerns 
us most is the exemplification it affords 
of the gathering strength of the great 
scientific movement in this age. The 
visit is made in obedience to that de- 
velopment of scientific influence by 
which it has now become the great 
leading force of civilization itself. We 
hear much of the advancement of sci- 
ence, as if it were but a movement in 
one direction; but we must not forget 
that with progress there has also been 
avast widening of the scope of scien- 
tific influence and activity. The move- 
ment is one of enlargement of ideas, 
and it is only when we regard the dif- 
ferent sciences as fusing into the most 
vital inter-connections, and reorganiz- 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


ing human knowledge, that we can be- 
gin to understand the import of the 
epoch upon which we have entered, and 
appreciate the full meaning of these 
demonstrations of enlarged operaticn in 
the scientific agencies of the period. It 
was inevitable, from the very nature of 
things, that science should overleap its 
past limitations and pass to the stage of 
international comprehensiveness; but, 
fully to comprehend this, we must re- 
member that it represents a new epoch 
of thought, and promises a new educa- 
tion for mankind. The dominant ideas 
of the past have been confining and 
restrictive. National feelings are di- 
verse and antagonizing; religions are 
hostile, and politics local and exclu- 
sive; but science is as universal as 
Nature, its devotees are one in spirit 
and in purpose, and it is undoubtedly 
the supreme unifying element of the 
modern social state. It studies phe- 
nomena of every kind, and is equally at 
home in every place. Its perpetual aim 
is the dispassionate consideration of 
facts, and the generalization of wider 
and more comprehensive truths. Es- 
chewing all narrowness and prejudice, 
by the very nature of its. discipline it 
tends to break down factitious limita- 
tions, it cultivates the spirit of large- 
mindedness, and is the great teacher of 
toleration, liberality, and catholicity. 
By leading to profounder agreements, 
by awakening broader sympathies, and 
making possible more harmonious co- 
operations in the further progress of 
civilization, the extension of science is 
full of hopeful encouragement for the 
best interests of mankind. Under its 
influence men emerge into the light of 
new intellectual relations, new oppor- 
tunities, and new responsibilities. The 
elevated sentiments by which men of 
science are more and more animated 
were thus eloquently expressed by one 
of the distinguished presidents of the 
British Association, Sir John Herschel. 
He said: “ Let selfish interests divide 
the worldly, let jealousies torment the 


701 


envious; we breathe a purer empyrean, 
The common pursuit of truth is of itself © 
a brotherhood. In these meetings we 
have a source of delight which draws us 
together, and inspires us with a sense 
of unity. That astronomers should 
congregate to talk of stars and planets ; 
chemists, of atoms; geologists, of strata, 
is natural enough; but what is there, 
equally pervading all, which causes their 
hearts to burn within them for mutual 
unbosoming? Surely the answer of 
each and all—the chemist, the astrono- 
mer, the physiologist, the electrician, 
the biologist, the geologist—all with 
one accord, and each in the language 
of his own science, would answer, not 
only the wonderful works of God, and 
the delight their disclosure affords, but 
the privilege he feels to have aided in 
the disclosure. We are further led to 
look onward through the vista of time 
with chastened assurance that Science 
has still other and nobler work to do 
than any she has yet attempted.” 


THE C LLEGE FETICH ONCE MORE. 


Tue annual season of college com- 
mencements and commemorations is 
past, and it brought with it the custom- 
ary laudations of classical study in unu- 
sual profusion. The stir of the subject 
by last year’s discussions aroused the 
friends of Latin and Greek, and they 
seized the favorable opportunities to 
expatiate with renewed unction upon 
the unrivaled educational value and im- 
portance of these immortal languages. 
Professor Jebb, the accomplished Greek 
scholar, formerly of Cambridge, but 
now of Glasgow University, was brought 
over to address the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
ciety of Harvard, in the hope, no doubt, 
that he would contribute something to 
undo the mischievous last year’s work 
of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in his 
address before the same body. Pro- 
fessor Jebb, however, gave rise to some 
disappointment by not taking the réle 
of achampion of the study of Greek, 


702 


but contented himself with drawing an 
interesting parallel between some of the 
intellectual activities of the Greeks and 
those of our own age. 

But if Professor Jebb declined to 
take up the defense of Greek, now so 
vigorously assailed as well in his own 
country as in ours, there are other able 
men who will not blink the glare of the 
controversy. Among these is Professor 
Bonamy Price, of Oxford, who, although 
a teacher of political economy, takes up 
the cudgels with great vigor for the 
classical languages. He contributes the 
leading article to the “ Princeton Re- 
view” for July, under the title of “What 
is Education?” The first part of his 
paper returns an excellent and an un- 
exceptionable answer to his question- 
title. He denounces the prevailing pro- 
pensity to ‘cram ” in unsparing terms; 
he eulogizes viva voce in teaching, and 
thus sums up: ‘The aim and task of 
education—independently of the value 
of the knowledge obtained for moral or 
or any other purposes—is to cultivate 
the powers of the understanding, to 
strengthen and enlarge them, to show 
how they are to be used in mastering 
any subject. It seeks to train the young 
pupil how to use his brain, how to de- 
termine and examine for himself the 
questions put before him, how to han- 
dle his mind as a tool, and thus to real- 
ize the very purposes for which that 
mind was given him—in a word, to 
teach him how to think.” 

As to the general means of securing 
this object the suggestions of Professor 
Pricearesound. Hesays: ‘* Now, what 
is the educational process to be adopted 
for accomplishing this great object of 
teaching a boy how to think? Not, 
certainly, to set him to read well-writ- 
ten and learned books, to store up their 
contents in his memory, and then to 
pour them out at examination. Nor 
will this great end be reached by learned 
addresses from tutors, carefully gathered 
up in notes by the pupils and then fol- 
lowed up by examinations which simply 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


test the attention and the accuracy of 
the students. This is cram—nothing 
better. . . . The answer is not difficult; 
indeed, it may be called obvious; yet 
how little is it perceived or valued at 
the present hour even in our most dis- 
tinguished institutions of education! 
Its secret lies in skillful questioning by 
the teacher, in power to make the pupil 
discover for himself the facts and truths 
to be gathered up at each place.... 
The work of the teacher is to direct the 
attention of the student to the facts ly- 
ing before him, to stimulate his inquiry 
into the relations which they bear to- 
ward each other, what difficulties they 
present, how they are to be cleared 
away by thought, what new truths they 
reveal. To make the pupil find out for 
himself the answer to be given to each 
question, as it arises, is the very essence 
of realeducation. . . . The pupil’s mind 
is ever kept thinking, putting together, 
and discovering. The knowledge won 
is in no small degree his own acquisi- 
tion, the product of his own intelli- 
gence, hisown brain. He is incessantly 
learning how to use the faculties with 
which his mind is endowed, and with 
their help, guided but not told by the 
teacher, to gather up the understanding 
of the subject to be explored.” 

But now comes the question, What 
are the studies best adapted to attain 
this ideal of education? To this Pro- 
fessor Price devotes the second part of 
his paper; and he here conspicuously 
illustrates what has been shown a thou- 
sand times before, how an elaborate clas- 
sical culture can so pervert the mind 
and bias the judgment that the most 
weighty considerations are absolutely 
unrecognized. To the broad question 
what subjects of study are best suited 
to cultivate, strengthen, and enlarge the 
powers of the understanding, Professor 
Price answers: ‘‘ For value and power 
it may safely be asserted the study of 
the Greek and Latin. languages stands 
pre-eminently the first. Greek, above 
all, has no equal in educating force; it 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


is the greatest, the most productive 
tool for developing the minds of the 
young known to man.” 

But if, now, we ask how these sov- 
ereign advantages are to be secured, 
or in what does this incomparable vir- 
tue of Greek for educational purposes 
consist, the reply is, that through the 
mastery of this language the student’s 
mind is brought into close relation with 
the minds of the greatest men, Plato 
and Aristotle, Virgil and schylus, 
Thucydides and Demosthenes, Homer 
and, ‘‘above all, Saint Paul ’’—espe- 
cially in the Epistle to the Romans. 

Professor Price’s argument here 
consists merely of fresh and vivid eu- 
logies of the old Greek masters, and 
declarations that they are wonderfully 
fitted to quicken and elevate the minds 
of students. He maintains that they are 
excellent instruments of discipline, and 
this probably but few disputs. His 
proposition is that Greek and Latin are 
*‘ pre-eminently the first ” among the in- 
strumentalities of mental development ; 
but he neither proves nor attempts to 
proveit. The idea of “‘ pre-eminence” is 
relative ; it implies superiority to some- 
thing else; and the argument, to be 
good for anything, must state the 
claims and prove the inferiority of 
that something which is assumed to be 
inferior. The acquisition of Greek 
gives a discipline in the study of lan- 
guages, and that may be the best of all 
languages for the purpose. The mas- 
tery of Greek literature gives a literary 
training, and it may be the best of all 
literatures for the purpose. But that 
is not at all the question. The question 
is as to the “‘ pre-eminence ” of language 
and literary discipline over any other 
kind of discipline. The real issue, the 
issue that has arisen in modern times, 
is between language and literature on 
the one hand and science-studies on 
the other, as instruments of mental de- 
velopment. This essential issue Pro- 
fessor Price does not take up. He 
does not even recognize the existence 


793 


of such a thing as a mental discipline 
gained by the study of science. He 
refers indeed to science, in the usual 
classical spirit, as giving useful knowl- 
edge to “the lower classes,” who have 
to work for a living. “In the lower 
classes of life, useful knowledge, knowl- 
edge that fits the learner to carry on 
some special business from which a 
livelihood is to be obtained, is the ob- 
ject most desired. ... A little boy 
may easily be made to understand how 
a plant grows, how it picks up some 
substances from the sun and air, or 
under or from the ground, how it de- 
composes these substances and extracts 
from them the parts which they can 
apply to their own growth.” Are we 
to infer from this slovenly sentence, 
equally false to the facts of science and 
the rules of grammar, that an accom- 
plished Oxford classicist holds himself 
under no obligation to write decent 
English when coupling the study of 
science with vulgar laboring people? 
Notwithstanding Professor Price ig- 
nores it, yet Greek and Latin are on 
trial before the world under indict- 
ment for the fatal deficiency of their 
educational discipline! They are ar- 
raigned as in this respect fundament- 
ally defective because they leave in 
total neglect some of the most essen- 
tial powers of the mind. What valid 
claim has a system cof mental cultiva- 
tion, in this age, which gives no more 
heed to the important faculty of ob- 
servation in the youthful mind than if 
it had no existence; which neglects 
the study of Nature, and makes no 
provision for cultivated mental inter- 
course with the most immediate ob- 
jects of human experience; which fails 
to use the great living problems of 
human interest with which intelligent 
beings are vitally concerned, as means 
for the systematic discipline of the 
reason and the judgment in prepara- 
tion for the responsible work of life? 
Here are the opportunities and the 
urgent needs, and here the possibil- 


704 


ity of that varied, methodic, and per- 
sistent exercise of the mental faculties 
which gives them their soundest and 
most symmetrical discipline. Modern 
studies have become the rivals of an- 
cient studies, and the discipline of sci- 
ence the rival of classical discipline. 
The discipline of science is superior to 
lingual and literary discipline because 
it involves all the mental processes, 
because it takes effect upon the reali- 
ties of experience, because it is a dis- 
cipline in the pursuit of truth, because 
it is a preparation for practical life- 
work, because it uses the most perfect- 
ed knowledge as its means of culture, 
and because it brings the mind into 
intimate and intelligent relation with 
the system of natural things, which it 
is the first interest as it is also the 
highest pleasure of man to understand. 


A CORRECTION. 

AN article contributed to the “ North 
American Review” for August, by Mr. 
George J. Romanes, an English author, 
opens with the following passage: “A 
few months ago I published a work en- 
titled ‘Mental Evolution in Animals,’ 
in which I attempted to trace as care- 
fully and thoroughly as I was able the 
principles which have probably been 
concerned in the development of mind 
among the lower animals. This work, 
I believe, has already been reprinted in 
America; and seeing that, under the 
existing state of matters with reference 
to copyright, an author on this side of 
the Atlantic is precluded from securing 
any pecuniary interest in the sale of his 
work upon the other side, I am free to 
allude to this book as constituting the 
basis of the present paper.” 

We read this statement with some 
surprise. Had Mr. Romanes said, ‘* The 
American people deny my ownership 
of the book that I have made and 
which they reprint, and I therefore hold 
myself absolved from recognizing any- 
body’s ownership of the reprint,” his 
position would be intelligible. But, 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


when he says he proposes to make use 
of its contents as he pleases because he 
‘¢is precluded from securing any pecun- 
iary interest in the sale of his work” in 
this country, his statement creates a 
false impression, and one which we are 
personally concerned to correct. Mr. 
Romanes contributed ‘* Animal Intelli- 
gence ’’ to the ‘‘ International Scientific 
Series,” a project which was undertaken 
expressly in the pecuniary interest of 
scientific authors; and on all sales of 
this book the stipulated royalty is placed 
to his credit, to be drawn by his English 
publishers. It was intended, as we un- 
derstand, at first to include the ‘* Men- 
tal Evolution in Animals” in the ‘‘Se- 
ries’? also; but, although this was not 
done, it is to be paid for under arrange- 
ment by the American publishers at the 
same rate. When the profits are earned 
by the sale of the volume, Mr. Romanes 
will be entitled to them by contract, 
and he thus stands upon the same prac- 
tical footing as an American author. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


OvuTLINES OF PsYCHOLOGY, WITH SPECIAL 
REFERENCE TO THE THEORY OF Epuca- 
TION. By James Sutty, author of 
“Tilusions,” ete. New York: D. Apple- 
ton & Co. Pp. 711. Price, $3. 

Mr. Sutty has brought to the prepara- 
tion of this comprehensive work unusual 
accomplishments for the task. He is well 
known as an indefatigable student of men- 
tal science, and his numerous ‘contributions 
to the leading English periodicals, on ad- 
vanced pyschological questions, give him a 
high rank both as an original: inquirer and 
an attractive and successful writer upon 
these subjects. He is the author of several 
systematic works, one of which, on “ Illu- 
sions,” prepared for the “ International Sci- 
entific Series,” has been republished in this 
country. Mr. Sully is thoroughly familiar 
with the results and methods of the modern 
English school of psychological thought, and 
he has also pursued his studies in Germany 
under the ablest masters, so that he is well 
equipped for dealing with the subject in 
the light of the most advanced views. It 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


may be added that he is no partisan and no 
extremist, but writes with care, moderation, 
and judicial fairness, taking impartial ad- 
' vantage of the best that has been gained by 
the various schools of investigation. Recog- 
nizing the importance of introspection as an 
instrument of psychological observation and 
analysis, he supplements it by the physio 
logical study of the nervous conditions and 
concomitants of mind. His general point 
of view is that of evolution, and his capaci- 
ty of handling his subject by this method 
may be inferred from the fact that he was 
chosen in conjunction with Professor Hux- 
ley to write the elaborate article on “ Evolu- 
tion” for the present edition of the “ Ency- 
clopedia Britannica.” . It may be added that 
his book is one of great clearness, and will 
prove of unusual interest to the general 
reader, while as a text-book of mental sci- 
ence it undoubtedly has merits superior to 
any other treatise now before the public. 

We pointed out editorially, not long ago, 
in an article entitled ‘The Progress of Men- 
tal Science,” the important results that have 
flowed from the widening of the method in 
mental studies by which metaphysical spec- 
ulation has been supplemented by the 
knowledge of mind, as physiologically con- 
ditioned, and we showed that the benefits of 
this change are conspicucus in the practical 
results obtained. The time has come when 
the validity of the science of mind is to 
be largely tested by such practical applica- 
tions, and we have noted with gratification 
that Mr. Sully accepts this view, and has 
constructed his treatise with reference to 
it. While the work is, of course, mainly 
a strict and systematic treatise on psycho- 
logical science, presenting its elements in 
their due proportions, yet the author 
throughout has developed its practical bear- 
ings upon the art of education. In regard 
to this feature of his work, the author 
makes the following remarks in his intro- 
duction : 


Finally, I have sought to give a practical turn 
to the exposition, by bringing out the bearings of 
the subject on the conduct and cultivation of the 
mind. With this object I have ventured to en- 
croach here and there on the territory of logic: 
wsthetics, and ethics—that is to say, the practical 
sciences which aim at the regulation of the mental 
processes. Further, I have added special sections 
in a separate type, dealing with the bearing of the 
science of education. 


VOL. xxv.—45 


7°5 


I would fain think that these practical applica- 
tions will not be without interest to all classes of 
readers ; for everybody is at least called on to edu- 
cate his own mind, and most people have something 
to do with educating the minds of others as well. 
With respect more especially to professional teach- 
ers, I trust that these portions of my volume may 
serve to establish the proposition that mental sci- 
ence is capable of supplying those truths which are 
needed for an intelligent and reflective carrying out 
of educational work. I may, perhaps, assume that 
modern pedagogics has adopted the idea that edu- 
cation is concerned not simply with instruction or 
communicating knowledge, but with the training ~ 
of faculty. And it seems a necessary corollary from 
this enlarged view of education that it should di- 
rectly connect itself with the science which exam- 
ines into the faculties, determines the manner and 
the conditions of their working, and lastly traces 
the order of their development. 

This characteristic of Mr. Sully’s work 
we hold to be of especial importance; 
for, although no great amount of space is 
given to the subject of education, yet the 
whole course of the exposition is so tribu- 
tary to it that what is stated has a high 
and peculiar value. The lessons for the 
teacher are derived immediately from the 
latest and broadest views on the subject of 
mind. The time has gone by when the old 
modes of studying this subject are satis- 
factory. That a teacher has read up a lot 
of metaphysical treatises and become famil- 
iar with their subtile dialectics and eld ter- 
minology is no evidence whatever of com- 
petency to guide the processes of mental 
development. Rather is it a disqualification, 
for a mind saturated with the antiquated 
mental philosophy is certain to be preju- 
diced against the new and better methods. 
It is indisputable that there has been a radi- 
cal change and a vast improvement in the 
study of mind, within recent years, and the 
teacher who has not benefited by that im- 
provement is fundamentally deficient in the 
preparation for his work. The author of 
this treatise has therefore done a most im- 
portant service in dealing with the subject 
of education, in connection with his broad 
presentation of the present state of knowl- 
edge upon the subject of psychological sci- 
ence. 


Tue True THEory or THE Sun. By THomas 
Bassnetr. New York: G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons. Pp. 264, with Plate. Price, $3. 
Mr. Bassnetr is the author of the “ Out- 

lines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms” 


706 


which he published some thirty years ago, 
and the substance of which he presented be- 
fore the American Association, to have its 
principle found inadequate by the commit- 
tee to whom the subject was referred. For 
this treatment and for other evidences of 
lack of appreciation which he has received 
at the hands of men of science, he is still 
grieved. He continues to press his theory, 
and now expands it and extends it to solar 
storms and their influence. It presupposes 
vortexes in the ethereal medium in connec- 
tion with the motions of the earth and the 
planets, and the exertion by the moon of dis- 
turbing influences upon the terrestrial vor- 
texes, producing electrical action and storms. 
The author believes that he has ascertained 
the law of the disturbances, and can accu- 
rately predict the occurrence of storms in 
any part of the earth. A common origin in 
similar phenomena is hypothecated for solar 
spots and the corona and for atmospheric 
changes and cyclones. Those may test the 
theory who are able to master it and wish 
to try the experiment ; four tables are given 
for computing the maximum and minimum 
epochs of solar activity and “ the passage in 
time and place of the chief disturbances 
from the equator to the poles in both hemi- 
spheres.” 


Tue ConsoLaTions oF ScreNcE; or, Contri- 
butions from Science to the Hope of Im- 
mortality, and Kindred Themes. By 
Jacos Srraus. With an Introduction 
by Hiram W. Tuomas, D.D. Chicago: 
The Colegrove Book Company. Pp. 
435. Price, $2. 

Tus work comes to us very highly com- 
mended for its admirable spirit, its master- 
ly criticism, and its exalting views, by such 
men of thought as President Porter, Rev. 
Robert Collyer, and Professor Swing, and 
we have no doubt that many people will en- 
joy it, and find themselves helped and en- 
couraged in their religious aspirations by 
the views it presents. The author has mas- 
tered the tendencies of modern science, and 
finds that the profoundest lesson to be 
drawn from them is that the most real, last- 
ing, and powerful things are invisible, and on 
the basis of all that science has revealed he 
claims to gain strong confirmation of the 
belief in a future state of existence, and the 
immortality of conscious being. But while 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


it is no doubt possible to appeal in this way 
to science for consoling encouragements in 
regard to the future and everlasting life, it 
can only be by great freedom and boldness 
of speculation that reassuring responses 
can be returned. It is not in the power of 
science to prove the truth of immortality. 
Science can only deal with the phenomena 
of time and experience, and whatever tran- 
scends these must be left to the sphere of 
faith. 


GOVERNMENT REVENUE, ESPECIALLY THE AMER- 
ICAN SYSTEM: AN ARGUMENT FOR Inprs- 
TRIAL FREEDOM AGAINST THE FALLACIES 
oF Free Trape. By Exxis H. Roserrs. 
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 
389. Price, $1.50. 

Tuis volume has a claim to the atten- 
tion of readers, first, because of the infor- 
mation which it contains on the subject of 
government revenue; next, because it isa 
hot polemic in behalf of protection, and 
against free trade, full of ingenious argu- 
ments ; and, lastly, because its contents have 
been delivered as lectures before the stu- 
dents of Cornell University and of Hamilton 
College. 

The book abounds with facts upon finan- 
cial and economical subjects, indicating the 
author’s wide and critical reading. But 
facts with him are valuable only as tribu- 
tary to theories. Accordingly, he argues 
broadly on the basis of his multitudinous 
data against the freedom of commerce, and 
in favor of the protective system, and the 
political regulation of the industries of the 
country. 

The delivery of his views before college 
classes was by no means a bad idea. Some- 
thing is, indeed, to be said in favor of limit- 
ing collegiate study to subjects which are 
settled in their principles ; and political 
economy has long been recognized as fitted 
for college study because it involved estab- 
lished truths of great public importance. 
But among these have been the principles 
of free trade, so that these institutions have 
become centers of propagandism of this 
doctrine. That the advocates of protection 
should not be satisfied with this, is only 
natural; but, instead of trying to suppress 
the objectionable teachings, they have more 
wisely attempted, as in this case, to correct 
the evil by presenting the claims of the op- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


posite system. The difficulty is, how far 
this policy can be carried. Will the author- 
ities of Cornell University permit Mr. Igna- 
tius Donnelly, author of “ Ragnarok,” to go 
before its classes and present the other side 
of the accredited geology? Mr. Donnelly’s 
case is of the same kind, and quite as strong 
as Mr. Roberts’s. 

Mr. Roberts’s theme is, “‘ The Subject of 
Revenue, especially the getting of Money 
for the Public Treasury.” It “relates to 
filling the Treasury, and not to emptying it; 
we are to find out about the income of 
states”; and this “will bring us immedi- 
ately upon the relations of government to 
the people.” We infer, from looking over 
his book, what seems to be confirmed by all 
history, that it is the great, primary, uni- 
versal business of all government to get 
money out of the people; and the question 
is, as to the easiest and most effectual way 
of accomplishing this object. Mr. Roberts 
maintains, and we think he proves, that the 
most successful way of extracting money 
from the people is not openly to demand it, 
as something honestly due to government, 
but by the indirect process of levying exac- 
tions upon commerce. Mr. Roberts shows 
that this is the ancient, the favorite, and 
most extensively employed method; and, 
if the object of government be solely to 
raise money, without regard to any other 
consideration, beyond doubt the taxation of 
commerce is the best method. But the tax- 
ation of commerce is a burden upon it, re- 
stricting its freedom, and disturbing the 
price of the commodities taxed. This con- 
sequence of the repression of foreign com- 
merce has been utilized for the regulation 
of the home industries of nations by the so- 
called protective system, which is a natural 
result of the revenue system expounded by 
Mr. Roberts, and they are accordingly both 
defended together. 

There is one feature of our author’s ar- 
gument which at this time is something of 
a curiosity. He calls this old system of re- 
striction and protection, which has been a 
favorite with kings, tyrants, and oligarchies 
from the beginning for plundering the peo- 
ple, “the American System.” Many will 
remember the brilliant passage in Daniel 
Webster's celebrated free-trade speech of 
1824 (left out of Everett’s edition of Web- 


797 


ster’s works), in which he exposed with 
merciless invective the absurdity of Henry 
Clay in calling the ancient policy of com- 
mercial restriction “the American System.” 
Yet sixty years later Mr. Roberts finds this 
designation quite as available as ever. But, 
after proclaiming “ the American System ” 
on his title-page, Mr. Roberts proceeds in 
the very first paragraph of his first chapter 
to show that the policy is as old as the Pha- 
raohs. The King of Egypt “took his trib- 
ute also from all merchants who entered his 
land.” Among the various despotic ways 
of extorting money from the Egyptian peo- 
ple, “commerce contributed its full share by 
traffic in the name of the ruler, by charges 
on traders, and the first example of an ex- 
port duty is traced to that ancient land.” 
Not only the people, but both kings and 
priests, ‘‘ were forbidden to use any article 
not produced in the country. The develop- 
ment of all classes of production was thus 
persistently fostered.” The policy, it would 
seem, might thus be properly named the 
Ezypto-American policy, but that our au- 
thor shows that it has been substantially 
adopted by all governments from the time 
of the earliest Pharaoh to President Arthur. 

Our author’s reasoning upon this subject 
reminds us of the logic prevalent among the 
American people a quarter of a century ago 
in regard to the peculiar system of protect- 
ing the negro. It was maintained that this 
is best done by his enslavement, inasmuch 
as the enslavement of man, in one form or 
another, has been practiced in all communi- 
ties and at all times, The restrictions upon 
trade and the regulation of industry by levies 
upon commerce are urged as having precisely 
this sanction, for, as Mr. Roberts says: 

“No axiom of morals, no doctrine of 
any creed, hardly any fact in science out- 
side of pure mathematics, has ever been so 
uniformly sustained by the teachings and 
practice, certainly not by such a consent of 
legislation, of mankind in all ages,” as re- 
straints upon the liberty of trade and the 
freedom of industry. 

But Mr. Roberts evidently does not rel- 
ish the idea of being ranked as an enemy 
of all freedom in the business affairs of the 
people in this country and in this age. He 
proclaims that men should be free to work 
or that they should be at liberty to produce 


708 


what they like and as they like, and only 
be manacled when they come to dispose of 
their productions. He has a great deal to 
say about “liberty of production” and ‘‘in- 
dustrial freedom.” He must therefore think 
that men, if “let alone,” and left free to ex- 
ercise the largest option in the choice and 
pursuit of vocations, will create more prop- 
erty than if hampered and meddled with by 
government. 

But why the same principle would not 
apply to the exchange of property, and why 
wealth would not be further augmented by 
the liberty of citizens to sell and buy the 
products of labor when and where they will, 
without let or hindrance, he does not explain. 
His concession of “the liberty of produc- 
tion” is, however, illusory. Commerce and 
industry are so bound up together that you 
can not fetter the former without restrict- 
ing the latter. Indeed, one of the avowed 
purposes of repressing commerce is the co- 
ercion of production. As trade is not free 
if hindered or paralyzed by legislative ac- 
tion, so production is not free if forced by 
government into artificial channels, and 
regulated by politicians rather than left to 
the open competitions of private enterprise. 


-Srx Centuries or Work AnD Waces. The 
History of English Labor. By James E, 
THOROLD Rogers, M. P. New York: G. 
P,. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 591. Price, $3. 
In the midst of the deluge of books on 

social questions—labor, wages, land, co-oper- 

ation and what not—most of them mere wild 

and worthless speculations, we turn with a 

sense of refreshing relief to this solid contri- 

bution to the subject from the point of view 
of simple historic facts. Professor Rogers 
is known as a political economist of wide ac- 
quirements and independent opinions, but 
he is so far imbued with the scientific meth- 
od as to recognize that our first need is to 
get command of the facts of experience in 

a form available for the derivation of safe 

conclusions, Some eighteen years ago he 

published the first two volumes of a com- 
prehensive ‘ History of Agriculture and 

Prices,” and the present volume is but a 

continuation of his line of studies in this 

general direction. The work is nothing less 
than a contribution to the social history of 

England, treated with reference to the con- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ditions of the laboring-classes at various 
periods, their opportunities of labor, their 
rates of wages, their social privations and 
comforts, and all with reference to the influ- 
ence of government and legislation, and the 
constitution of English society. 

The theme is a noble one, and it is han- 
dled with great instructiveness, and with a 
sustained interest from the beginning to the 
end of the volume. It should have a place 
in every library, and is one of the books 
that must be carefully consulted by all stu- 
dents of social economics. The following 
passage, from the review of the London 
“ Academy,” exemplifies the character of the 
questions dealt with in Professor Rogers’s 
work : 

It is an honest and scholarly attempt to recon- 
struct the social state of England in the thirteenth 
century, and, from that as a starting-point, to trace 
the changes in the position of the laboring-classes 
from the time when many of the peasants were 
slaves, and most of them in a condition not far re- 
moved from serfdom, to the crisis when, by reason 
of plague and famine, the laborers, ‘tas by a stroke,” 
became suddenly the masters of the situation. The 
great pestilence made labor scarce, while at the 
same time the bonds were loosened which tied the 
laborer to the land. Wages were high, and food 
remained cheap ; and, although continual attempts 
were made to reduce wages by act of Parliament, 
it may be fairly said that “the golden age of the 
English laborer’ continued until the change in ag- 
riculture caused by the commercial disturbance 
which followed the discovery of America. The flow 
of gold and silver to Europe Jed to a rise in the prices 
offered in the Continental markets for English hides 
and wool; and this turned the landlords’ attention 
from the old arable farming in common field to the 
rotation of grass and grain in the mixed husbandry 
that enabled them to meet the demand. 


Key to Norta American Birps. Second 
edition, revised to date, and entirely re- 
written. By Exxiorr E. Coves, M. D. 
Boston: Estes & Lauriat, Pp. 863. 
Price, $10.50. 

Tuis splendid and profusely illustrated 
book contains, to quote from its full title, 
a concise account of every species of living 
and fossil bird at present known from the 
continent north of the Mexican and United 
States boundary, inclusive of Greenland. 
The account is preceded by a general orni- 
thology, or outline of the structure and clas- 
sification of birds, and a field ornithology, 
or manual of collecting, preparing, and pre- 
serving birds. The whole is preceded by an 
“ Historical Preface,” in which the progress 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


of American ornithology is outlined and di- 
vided off into periods, from its beginning in 
the seventeenth century to the present time. 
The first edition of Professor Coues’s “Key” 
appeared in 1872, in an issue which was not 
stereotyped, and has been long out of print. 
It was composed upon the same general plan, 
and with the design of reaching the same 
ends, as the present edition, but had an ar- 
tificial key to assist in the reference of spe- 
cimens directly to their genera, which has 
not been found useful enough to justify its 
retention. It answered its purpose well, of 
giving such descriptions of species as would 
enable the student to identify and label 
them with no other aid than itself afforded. 


It had a useful career till the issue was ex- |: 


hausted and no more copies could be had, 
During the twenty years that elapsed before 
the present edition was ready for the press, 
American ornithology had a great develop- 
ment. The number of distinguished species 
increased to nearly nine hundred ; numer- 
ous treatises were published on the subject; 
a distinctly American school grew up, intro- 
ducing important changes in nomenclature 
and classification; and an American Orni- 
thologists’ Union was founded, with mem- 
bers in all quarters of the globe. In pre- 
paring this edition, the classification and 
nomenclature have been modified to suit the 
growth of the science; the author’s “ Field 
Ornithology,” published separately in 1874, 
has been incorporated in the volume; the 
outline of “Structure and Classification ” 
has been greatly amplified; and the descrip- 
tions of genera, species, and sub-species 
have been made much more elaborate, with- 
out loss, the author hopes, of that sharp- 
ness of definition which was the aim of the 
first edition and still having prominently in 
view the main purpose of the identification 
of specimens. The trinomial nomenclature, 
for the designation of sub-species and varie- 
ties—which “ lends itself so readily ” to the 
nicest discriminations of geographical races 
and the finest shades of variation—has been 
employed with much advantage, but not 
without a caution by the author against a 
too free use of it. The references to au- 
thorities, which were numerous in the first 
edition, have been omitted, and their place 
filled with additional notes about the habits 
and nesting of the species. The present 


799 


edition contains about four times as much 
matter as the former one, and more than 
double the number of illustrations. We 
are sorry to observe that the author has not, 
in his preliminary chapters, preserved the 
dignity of style that is becoming in scien- 
tific works, or in any serious work, but has 
allowed himself to indulge too often in sen- 
sational expressions and jokes that are not 
always new or refined, to the unnecessary 
expansion of the text, without adding to its 
lucidity or its interest. The fault is not so 
obvious in the descriptive part of the book. 


Mentau Evouvtion in Animas. By Georce 
Joun Romanes, F. R.S., author of “ Ani- 
mal Intelligence.” With a Posthumous 
Essay on “ Instinct,” by Cuartes Dar- 
win. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 
Pp. 411. Price, $2. 

In these systematic studies into the sci- 
ence of mind to which Mr. Romanes has re- 
cently appeared as an original contributor, 
the course of research breaks into three di- 
visions. In the first, ‘‘ Animal Intelligence,” 
which appeared in the “ International Scien- © 
tific Series,” the author devoted himself to 
the general data of his subject, or to the 
statement of the basal facts of compara- 
tive psychology. The book is chiefly de- 
scriptive of mental phenomena as _ ob- 
served in the lower animals, and aims at 
greater strictness than has hitherto been 
attained in determining what is trustwor- 
thy and what is doubtful among the alleged 
statements of fact in regard to mental 
manifestations among the lower creatures, 
As the volume was, however, a prepara- 
tion for the study of psychological theo- 
ries, its facts were chosen with reference 
to their bearing upon psychological prin- 
ciples to be subsequently investigated ; the 
law of evolution was accepted as the guid- 
ing principle of the investigation, but the 
elaboration of the theory was postponed 
to a separate work. It was Mr. Romanes’s 
intention to devote his second volume to the 
general discussion of evolutionary doctrine 
as displayed in mental phenomena of all 
orders; but, as he proceeded with the in- 
quiry, materials accumulated, and the sub- 
ject expanded to such proportions that it 
became necessary to divide the second part 
into two treatises—the one devoted to the 
evolution of mind in the lower animals, and 


710 


the other to the evolution of mind in man. 
The volume now before us, the second pub- 
lished, is an exposition of comparative psy- 
chology on the basis of his first volume, 
and designed to exhibit mental evolution in 
the lower grades of the animal kingdom. 
The psychology of man is therefore ex- 
pressly excluded from the volume before us, 
and the author offers, as one reason for this 
exclusion, that human psychology raises a 
class of questions with which he has no 
concern in dealing with comparative psy- 
_ chology. Prominent among these he as- 
sumes is the fundamental question whether, 
indeed, the principle of evolution is to be 
applied to the psychology of man. Although 
unqualifiedly assumed in his first volume 
and in the present as fundamentally true, 
and the sole key of interpretation in the 
lower sphere of mind, yet the author hesi- 
tates in its application to human psychology 
because Mr. Wallace differs with Mr. Dar- 
win upon this subject. The issue between 
these great naturalists is, however, to be 
met and fully considered in the final volume. 

Mr. Romanes explains in bis introduc- 
tion that, in treating of “ Mental Evolution 
in Animals,” he dismisses a class of in- 
quiries hitherto involved in psychology, but 
which pertain rather to the philosophy than 
to the science of the subject. He deals with 
the science of psychology as distinguished 
from any theory of knowledge, limiting 
himself to the study of mind as an object, 
and of mental modifications simply as phe- 
nomena. 

We can only briefly indicate the course 
of inquiry in the volume before us. Begin- 
ning with a search in the first chapter for 
‘The Criterion of Mind,” he then passes on 
in successive chapters to “ The Structure 
and Functions of Nerve-Tissue,” ‘ The 
Physical Basis of Mind,” “The Root Prin- 
ciples of Mind,” “ Consciousness,” ‘ Sensa- 
tion,” “Pleasures and Pains,” “ Percep- 
tion,” “ Imagination,” “ Instinct,” and this 
latter subject, which is the most prominent 
in the discussion, runs on from chapter elev- 
enth to chapter eighteenth. “ Reason” and 
*‘ Animal Emotions ” then come in for some 
consideration, and the volume closes with 
an appendix of thirty pages, consisting of a 
posthumous essay on “Instinct,” by Mr. 
Charles Darwin, which was written for his 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


book on “ Natural Selection,” but not in- 
cluded in it. Mr. Darwin left his psycho- 
logical manuscripts to Mr. Romanes, to be 
printed or not as he thought fit, and he has 
included the essay on “ Instinct” in his 
present disquisition on ‘‘ Mental Evolution 
in Animals.” It has been objected that 
Mr. Darwin was no psychologist; that he 
wrote on the subject long ago, and did not 
himself see fit to print what he had written ; 
and that, on the whole, it would have been 
better for Mr. Darwin’s reputation, and just 
as well for the world, if this old essay had 
not now been issued. But we think that 
Mr. Romanes was right in printing it. It 
can not seriously injure Mr. Darwin’s repu- 
tation; and, if it does not help other people 
much, it will undoubtedly have interest as 
a record of the state of Mr. Darwin’s mind 
upon that subject. If not a contribution to 
“‘ Mental Evolution in Animals,” it may pos- 
sibly help to interpret the mental evolution 
of man. 


THe Franco-AMERICAN CooKERY-BOook ; or, 
How to live well and wisely Every Day in 
the Year: containing over Two Thou- 
sand Recipes. By Férrx J. Duxiisz, 
Caterer of the New York Club, ex-Chef 
of the Union and Manhattan Clubs, 
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 
620. Price, $4. 

Tus considerable volume claims to fill a 
void in our culinary literature. It presents 
three hundred and sixty-five different dinner- 
bills of fare, one for each day in the year, 
made up with reference to the resources of 
the changing seasons, and, following each, 
concise instructions are given how to prepare 
the various dishes designated. Such a work 
can not fail to be of service, not only to pri- 
vate families, but to clubs, restaurants, and 
hotels, and it could hardly have a better pass- 
port to general use in this country than the 
name of the experienced chef which appears 
upon its title-page. Each bill of fare differs 
almost entirely from the others, while at the 
same time the selection is made with strict 
regard to the products of the season and the 
supplies afforded by markets in American 
cities, Each is calculated for eight per- 
sons, though the cook or housekeeper may 
increase or reduce it at will by observing 
the proportions with care. 

It is claimed that every dish described 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


may be prepared by a cook of ordinary in- 
telligence and even limited experience— 
probably a pretty large claim. Particular 
attention seems to have been given to the 
preparation of soups, fish, and entrées, the 
reason assigned being that these branches 
of culinary art are too generally neglected 
in English cookery-books. The staple of the 
volume is, of course, its recipes, of which 
there are over two thousand, the several re- 
cipes used for the preparation of each din- 
ner following immediately the bill of fare. 
In the index at the end of the volume every 
recipe is named, together with the number 
of the bill of fare to which it belongs. 

The use of such a work where cookery 
is carried on in a somewhat ambitious and 
systematic way, and with some reference to 
its artistic refinements, is obvious enough, 
but it might undoubtedly prove helpful 
where the culinary processes are compara- 
tively plain and simple. Perhaps it would 
be invidious to rank any one defect in ordi- 
nary cookery as worse than another, where 
they are all sufficiently conspicuous; but 
one of its most common defects is its dis- 
tressing monotony, a few dishes being re- 
peated over and over, with hardly an at- 
tempt at variation, while “canned prod- 
ucts” enable the housekeeper to be exempt 
from the resources of the seasons, and to 
maintain the dreary monotony of dishes all 
the year round. Much of this is due to in- 
difference and carelessness on the part of 
those who have kitchen operations in charge, 
and there are often dolorous complaints of 
the narrowness and poverty of the euisine, 
when the real difficulty is that the manager 
will not give sufficient thought to it. Such 
a cyclopedia of culinary variations as the 
present ought certainly to give relief in this 
respect, and, if it can not be fully carried 
out, it offers abundant suggestions from 
which a varied and attractive dietary can be 
realized, 


A CONTRIBUTION TO THE GEOLOGY OF THE 
Leap AnD Zinc Minine District or CuHEr- 

- OKEE County, Kansas. By Erasmus 
Haworrn. Oskaloosa, Iowa. Pp. 47. 


A CAREFUL special study of a particular 
ore-bearing district of limited extent, pre- 
pared as a thesis in connection with an ap- 
plication for the degree of Master of Sci- 
ence from the Kansas State University. 


711 


REPORT ON THE Corton PropucTiIon oF THE 
Srate or Georera, By R. H. Loucurines, 
Ph, D., of Berkeley, California. Pp. 184, 
with Maps, 

Wirn the special report Dr. Loughridge 
gives a description of the general agricult- 
ural features of the State. He has been 
assisted in both parts of the work by A. R. 
McCutchen, for Northwest Georgia. Geor- 
gia ranks first among the States in the acre- 
age (2,617,138) devoted to the cotton-crop, 
and second—standing next after Mississip- 
pi—in the number of bales produced. Cot- 
ton is the chief crop of the State, and oc- 
cupies thirty-four per cent of the Jand under 
cultivation, and 44°4 acres per square mile 
of all the land of the State. The average 
yield is one third of a bale per acre. The 
cost of production, exclusive of commis- 
sions, freights, etc., is about eight cents a 
pound. The subject of an “intensive ” sys- 
tem of culture has lately attracted much no- 
tice, and some enormous yields have been 
realized. The report is full of information 
bearing upon every agricultural aspect of the 
State and of its several counties. 


WHIRLWINDS, CYCLONES, AND TORNADOES. 
By Wuttram Morris Davis. Boston: 
Lee & Shepard. Pp. 90. Price, 50 
cents, 

Tuts is a condensed meteorological study 
proposing a theory of storms, which formed 
the basis of a course of lectures by the 
author at the Lowell Institute in Boston 
in 1883. It was first published in several 
numbers of “ Science,” and is now reprinted 
with slight alterations in more convenient 
form. It will be a welcome addition to our 
slender resources in this field of scientific 
literature. 


Massacnusetts Srare AGRICULTURAL Ex- 
PERIMENT Station. Bulletins Nos. 7, 8, 
and 9, Pp, 12 each. 


Butietin No. 7, March, 1884, contains 
“ Observations in regard to Insects injurious 
to the Apple,” and “ Experiments with Spe- 
cial Fertilizers in Fruit-Culture”; No. 8, 
April, “ Fodder and Fodder Analyses, and 
‘Valuation ’ and “ Analyses ” of Fertiliz- 
ers; No. 9, May, “ Notes upon Insects in- 
jurious to Farm and Garden Crops,” and 
“ Analyses of Fodder and Fertilizers.” 


712 


Synopsis or THE Fisnes or NortH AMERICA. 
By Davin 8. Jorpan and CHaruzs H. 
GixBEert. Washington: Government 
Printing-Office. Pp. 1,018. 

Tue “Synopsis” is published as Bulle- 
tin No. 16 of the United States National 
Museum. Init the authors have endeavored 
to give concise descriptions of all the spe- 
cies of fishes known to inhabit the waters 
of North America, north of the boundary 
between the United States and Mexico, The 
classification adopted is essentially based 
on the views of Professors Gill and Cope. 
The rules of nomenclature generally recog- 
nized by naturalists, and recently formulated 
by Mr. W. H. Dall, have been followed, al- 
most without deviation. Under the head of 
each species enough synonomy has been 
given to connect this work with other de- 
scriptive works, and no more; and the prin- 
cipal references are to the original descrip- 
tions of such species, to Dr. Giinther’s 
“ British Museum Catalogue,” and to other 
works in which special information is given, 
or some variant specific name is employed. 


Home Scrence, Vol. I, No. 1, May, 1884. 
New York: Selden R. Hopkins, Pp. 112. 
Price, $2.50 a year. 

A MONTHLY magazine, the general scope 
of which is indicated by the title. The pres- 
ent number contains a variety of literary, 
popular scientific, and hygienic articles by 
popular authors, a “ Health and Habit” de- 

partment by Dio Lewis, and departments of 

a “domestic” character. The magazine is 

well printed, on good paper, and looks well. 


Report TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAvy ON 
Recent IMPROVEMENTS IN ASTRONOMI- 
cAL InstruMENTS. By Simon Newcomps, 
Washington: Government Printing-Of- 
fice. Pp. 27. 

Proressor Newcoms visited the princi- 
pal observatories in Europe in 1883, for the 
purpose of taking note of the improvements 
in astronomical instruments which had been 
adopted in them, and this report embodies 
the results of his observations. Among the 
objects he describes are the great Vienna 
telescope and its mountings ; the great domes 
ut Paris and Vienna; the great Russian tele- 
scope at Pultowa, with the apparatus for 
mounting it, now making at Hamburg; re- 
flecting telescopes in France, the equatorial 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


coudé (a contrivance by the aid of which 
the eye-piece may always point to the north), 
the Strasburg meridian circle, ete. The ob- 
servations are supplemented by the author’s 
own practical conclusions, 


AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL JouRNAL, Vol. I, 
No. 1, May, 1884. Professor M. W. 
Harrineron, Editor. Detroit, Michigan: 
W. 4H. Burr & Co. Pp. 39. Price, $3 a 
year. 

Tus journal is designed to be a monthly 
review of meteorology and allied branches 
of study. It takes up the subject earnestly 
and in a manner showing that the editor has 
a proper comprehension of what such a pub- 
lication should be. 


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 


United States Bureau of Statistics. Quarterly 
Report on Imports, Exports, Immigration, and 
Navigation, January to March, 1881. Washington : 
Government Printing-Office. Pp. 88, 

Question-Book of Stimulants and Narcotics. By 
C. W. Bardeen. Syracuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. 
Pp. 40. 10 cents. 

Knickerbocker Ready Reference Guide to 1,000 
Points around New York. New York: National 
Railway Publication Company. Pp. 248. 25 cents. 

On Induction in Telephone Lines, and Methods 
for its Prevention. By Edward Blake. Sheffield 
Scientific School, New Haven, Conn. Pp. 8. 

South Side Views. By Rev. W. J. Scott. At- 
lanta, Ga.; James P. Harrison & Co. Pp. 80. 50 
cents. 

Scientific and Poetical Works of the Last of the 
Hereditary Bards and Skalds. Chicago: J. M. W. 
Jones Company. Pp. 95. 

A Judicial Revolution. By Rodmond Gibbons. 
New York. Pp. 8 

“ Paleontological Bulletin.” 
fessor E. D. Cope. Pp. 88. 

Civil-Service Reform. a Elial F, Hall, 
ple Court, New York City. Pp. 12. 

The Tertia: ee By E. D, Cope. 
Philadelphia. ‘Pp. 12 

Limits of relia and Grounds of Belief. 
Anon, . 20. 

Institutional Beginnings in a Western State. 
By Jesse Macy. Baltimore: N. Murray. Pp. 38. 

The Philosophy of Social Economy. By Stewart 
Bruce Terry. Glendale, Mo. Pp. 20, 

Abnormal Human Skulls from Stone Graves in 
Tennessee. By F. W. Putnam. Cambridge, Mass. 

. 8. 


No. 88. By Pro- 


Tem- 


Catalogue of the Albany Medical College, Albany, 
N.Y. Pp. 20. 

A New Stand (Chick’s) for Skulls. By F. W. 
Putnam. Cambridge, ; 

The Creodonta. By E. D. Cope. Pp. 30. 

The Mastodons of North America, By E. D. 
Cope. Pp. 8. 

Reasons for believing in the Contagiousness of 
Pee By W. H. Webb, M.D. Philadelphia. 

. 3B 


American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 
Report of Director, 1882-88, Washington: Govy- 
ernment Printing-Office. Pp. 13. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


Circular of Bureau of Education on Shorthand. 
Washington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 
159, with Plates, : 

Illiteracy in the United States, - Charles 
Warren, D.; and National Aid to Education, 
by J. L. M. Curry, LL.D. U.S. Bureau of Edu- 
cution, Pp, 99. 

Mississippi State Board of Health. Biennial 
Report, 1882-"83. Jackson, Miss. Pp. 204. 

Hillocks of Angular Gravel and Disturbed Strati- 
fication. By T. C. Chamberlain. Pp. 14. 

Report on the Cotton Production of the State of 
Florida. By Eugene Allen Smith, Ph. D. Tusca- 
loosa, Ala. Pp. 77, with Maps. 


Report on the Cotton Production of the State of 
Alabama. By Eugene Allen Smith, Ph.D. Tus- 
caloosa, Pp. 163, with Maps. 

Diccionario Tecnolégico (Technological Diction- 
ary). Spanish and English. No. 7. New York: 
Nestor Ponce de Leon. Pp. 48. 50 cents. 

Temperature of the Atmosphere and Earth’s 
Surface. By Professor William Ferrel, Washing- 
ton: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 69. 

Notes on the Opium Habit. By Asa P. Mey- 
lert, M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 
Pp. 8T. 40 cents. 

The University: What it should do and be, By 
a M. Clark. University of lowa, lowa City. Pp. 


The Science of Justice, etc. By Lysander Spoon- 
er. Boston: Cuppies, Upham & Co. Pp. 22. 

The Revelations of Fibrin. By Rollin R. Gregg, 
M.D. Buffalo, N. Y. Pp. 7. 

Theories of Color-Perception. By Swan M. 
Burnett, M.D. Washington, D.C, Pp.»25. 

Premiére Application 4 Paris de l’Assainisse- 
ment suivant le Systéme Wuring (First Application 
in Paris of Waring’s System of Sanitation). By Er- 
nest Pontzen. Paris. Pp. 22, with Plates. 

Geological and Natural History Survey of Min- 
nesota, 1882. By N, H. Winchell. Minneapolis, 
Pp. 220, with Maps: 


University of Minnesota. Calendar for 1883-84, 
Pp. 128. : 


Contributions to the Flora of Cincinnati. By 
Joseph F. James. Pp. 14. 
The Minnesota Valley in the Ice Age. Pp. 163 


Changes in the Currents of the Ice of the Last Gla- 
cial Epoch in Eastern Minnesota. Pp.4. By War- 
ren Upham. Salem Press, Salem, Mass. 


Neglect of Bodily Development of American 
Youth. By A. Reinhard. Syracuse, N. Y.: ©. 
W. Bardeen. Pp. 16. 


The Bearing of certain Determinations on the 
Correlation of Eastern and Western Terminal Mo- 
raines. By Professor T. C. Chamberlain. Pp. 5. 

Propertyin Land. A Passage-at-Arms between 
the Duke of Argyll and Henry George. New York: 
Funk & Wagnalls. Pp. 77. 15 cents. 


To Mexico by Palace-Car. By James W. Steele. 
Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co. Pp.96. 25 cents. 

White Elephant Chimes. Selected by P. T. Bar- 
num. Buffalo, N. Y.: Courier Office. Pp. 51. 

** Catholic”; An Essential and Exclusive Attri- 
bute ofthe True Church. By ‘Right Rev. Monsignor 
Capel, D. D. New York: Wilcox & O’Donnel Com- 
pany, and D. & J. Sadlier. Pp. 140. 50 cents. 

Modern Reproductive Graphic Processes. B 
James 8, Pettit. New York: D. Van Nostrand. 
Pp. 127. 50 cents. 


Recent Progress in Dynamo-Electric Machines. 
By Professor Sylvanus P. Thompsun. New York: 
D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 113. 50 cents. 


Stadia Surveying. By Arthur Winslow. New 
York: D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 148, 50 cents. 

Lessons in Chemistry. By William H. Greene, 
M.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. Pp, 
857. $1.25. 


743 


South Carolina: Resources and Population; In- 
stitutions and Industries. Published by the State 
Board of Agriculture, Columbia. Pp, 726. 

Systematic Mineral Kecord. By Edward M. 
Shepard. New York and Chicago: A. 8. Barnes & 
Co. Pp. 26. 

The Principles of Ventilation and Heating. B 
John 8. Billings, LL.D. New York: “The Sani- 
tary Engineer.” Pp. 216. $3. 

Commentaries on Law. By Francis Wharton, 
LL. D. Philadelphia: Kay & Brother. Pp. 856. 

The Book of Plant Descriptions and Record of 
Plant Analysis. By George C. Groff, M.D. Lewis- 
burg, Pa.: Science and Health Publishing Com- 
pany. Pp. 100, 380 cents. 

Forestry in Norway. By John Croumbie Brown, 
LL.D. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd; Montreal: 
Dawson Brothers. Pp. 227. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


Instruction of the Deaf.—Mr. Alexander 
Graham Bell addressed the Philosophical 
Society of Washington at one of its recent 
meetings on the subject of “ Fallacies con- 
cerning the Deaf, and the Influence of those 
Fallacies in preventing the Amelioration of 
their Condition.” He condemned the com- 
mon phrases “deaf and dumb” and “ deaf- 
mutes,” as expressing what is not true ; 
showing that those whom we term “ deaf- 
mutes” have no other natural defect than 
that of hearing, and that they are dumb not 
on account of lack of hearing, but of lack 
of instruction. No one teaches them to 
speak. The gesture-language which such a 
child may use is developed by him at home, 
not because it is the only form of language 
natural to one in his condition, but because 
his parents and friends neglect to use the 
English language in his presence ina clearly 
visible form, The sign-language of our in- 
stitutions is objected to as an artificial and 
conventional language, so far from being 
natural that it is not understood by deaf 
children on their entrance to an institution, 
and hearing persons can not be qualified to 
teach it till after many years. Practice in 
it hinders the acquisition of the English lan- 
guage ; makes the deaf associate together 
in adult life, and avoid the society of hear- 
ing people; and thus causes the intermar- 
riage of the deaf and the propagation of 
their physical defect. Dr. Bell holds that 
written English can be taught to deaf chil- 
dren so as to become their vernacular, and 
that, when they have been made familiar 
with it in either its written or spoken form, 
they can be taught to understand the utter- 


714. 


ances of their friends by watching the mouth. 
The requisites to the art of speech-reading 
are, an eye trained to distinguish quickly 
those movements of the vocal organs that 
are visible (independently of the meaning of 
the words uttered); a knowledge of these 
words that present the same appearance to 
the eye; and sufficient familiarity with the 
English language to enable the speech-read- 
er to judge by context which word of a ho- 
mophenous group (like-seeming) is the word 
intended by the speaker. We should, there- 
fore, teach deaf children to think in Eng- 
lish, by using English in their presence in a 
clearly visible form; teach them to speak, 
by giving them instruction in the use of 
their vocal organs ; teach them the use of 
the eye as a substitute for the ear in under- 
standing the utterances of their friends ; 
give them instruction in the ordinary 
branches of education by means of the 
English language; and banish the sign- 
language from our schools. 


Bogus American Antiques.—According 
to the sixteenth report of the Peabody Mu- 
seum, the manufacture of false American 
antiquities is becoming an industry of our 
country. The museum has been offered an 
“ancient ” child carved from stone, duly in- 
crusted with cement, said to have been dug 
up in Arkansas, the workmanship of which, 
and the presence of undecayed grass-leaves 
and yellow printing-paper in the incrusta- 
tion, showed it to be a near relative of the 
Cardiff giant. This, however, is only one 
of many fraudulent specimens that are on 
sale. Pipes, tubes, dishes, and ceremonial 
and other objects, are regularly manufact- 
ured in Philadelphia, and have found their 
way into American and foreign collections 
as genuine antiquities, dug up in such or 
such a locality. A manufacturer in Indi- 
ana gives his attention chiefly to “mound- 
builders’ pipes,” which are carved in stone 
and offered in a systematic manner to col- 
lectors. In Ohio a large business has been 
done in the so-called gorgets, cut from slate, 
and in hematite celts, In Southern Illinois, 
a few years ago, specimens of pottery were 


made till the demand fell off, so that one | 


manufacturer acknowledged that the busi- 
ness no longer paid. On the whole, says 
Professor Putnam, “the demand for ‘an- 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tiquities’ is considerable in this country, 
and we are not behind the Old World in 
keeping up the supply.” 


The Nettle as an Economical Plant.— 
The nettle, which is now only rarely culti- 
vated, was held in high honor as a useful 
plant not more than two hundred years ago. 
In a medical treatise of the fifteenth cent- 
ury, Several pages are occupied with the de- 
scription of its healing properties. It is 
said to have been turned to account for food 
during the Irish famine. In Russia, Swe- 
den, and Holland, it is mowed and made 
into fodder for cows, with profit in the in- 
crease in quantity and improvement in qual- 
ity of the milk, although the animals will 
not venture to eat it while it is green. Cords 
are made from it in Kamchatka, paper in 
France, and grass-cloth in China and India. 
It has been made into linen in various coun- 
tries, a fact of which the German name for 
muslin, WVesselluch (nettle-cloth), is a stand- 
ing testimony. When cotton came into gen- 
eral use for textile fabrics the nettle went 
out, and was nearly forgotten till attention 
was called to it anew by Professor Reuleaux 
after our Centennial Exhibition, Frau Réss- 
ler-Lade took the matter up and showed how 
easily the plant could be cultivated and how 
well adapted it was to spinning. Numerous 
persons have since engaged in the cultiva- 
tion of the native species, and of the Chi- 
nese nettle, which is considered a little su- 
perior, in Germany and other countries, A 
company has been formed in Holland for 
the cultivation of the nettle in Java, with a 
capital of about three million guilders, 


Correlations of the Seasons.—The uni- 
versal mildness of the past winter in North- 
ern Europe has caused attention to be direct- 
ed to the inquiry whether there is a corre- 
lation in character between that and other 
seasons of the year. Mild winters are by 
no means rare in that quarter of the world: 
several may be cited in the last half-cent- 
ury, particularly that of 1842-43, when 
the fields around St. Petersburg were bright 
with flowers in December and violets gath- 
ered in the woods were sold in Stockholm in 
January. Herr G. Hellman has made a 
special study of the mild winters in Berlin 
since 1720. He counts thirty-four seasons 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


since 1755 when December and January 
were warmer than the mean. The warm 
seasons come at irregular intervals, and 
do not suggest any law; seventeen of them 
came between 1755 and 1821, and seventeen 
between 1821 and 1884. In seventy-six per 
cent of these exceptional winters, the month 
of November also was warmer than usual. 
Herr Hellman asserts that the chances are 
eighty-one to nineteen that a warm Febru- 
ary will follow a warm December and Janu- 
ary, and fifty-seven to forty-three that the 
same will be the case with March. Thus, 
the chance is that a winter that begins by 
putting on a mild face in November will 
preserve the same aspect all through. In 
regard to the seasons following these ex- 
ceptional winters, Herr Hellman finds that 
a moderately mild winter is more frequently 
followed by a cold spring, and a very warm 
winter more usually by a warm spring ; and, 
in general, that the warmer the winter the 
warmer will be the ensuing spring. These 
conclusions contradict popular notions. 


Physiographie Conditions of Minnesota. 
—In a lecture on the “ Physiographic Con- 
ditions of Minnesota Agriculture,” recently 
delivered before the State Horticultural So- 
ciety, Professor C. W. Hall claimed for that 
State a nearly central position on the North 
American Continent, as fixed by lines drawn 
from Eastport to Astoria, and from Behring 
Strait to the Isthmus of Panama. Of its 
area, 83,365 square miles, 78,600 square 
miles are land, while the rest of the ter- 
ritory is occupied by some 8,000 or 10,000 
lakes ; 48,000 square miles are forest, and 
31,000 prairie. Not quite 40,000 square 
miles are drained into Hudson Bay, and 
7,689 square miles into the St. Lawrence, 
while the rest of the area of the State 
sheds its water into the Mississippi. The 
height of the land ranges from 602 feet 
above the sea, at Lake Superior, to 2,400 
feet in the highest part of the Mesabi, or 
dividing range between the water-sheds, 
and averages, for the whole State, perhaps 
about 1,200 fect. Much of Minnesota is 
covered by the drift, the various constitu- 
ents of which—granites and schists, sand- 
stones, clays, and limestones—have been 
ground up and mingled in utter confusion, 
so that the land is adapted to the greatest 


715 


diversity of crops. The average annual rain- 
fall is about 28°27 inches, or about three 
quarters of an inch less than the average for 
the whole United States, excluding Alaska. 
The average January temperature is nearly 
12° Fahr., while the July average is nearly 
71° Fahr; and the difference between the 
warmest summer day and the coldest winter 
night is about 120° Fahr. A reduction in 
the average temperature is observed of one 
degree for every 350 feet of additional ele- 
vation. As in Nebraska, a gradual increase 
in rainfall appears to be taking place as more 
of the prairie-soil is brought under the plow; 
and the streams are becoming larger, and 
springs are flowing where once water could 

not be obtained. ; . 


An Absolute Unit of Light.—An abso- 
lute standard for the measurement of the 
intensity of light has long been wanting. 
All the standards heretofore proposed are 
imperfect, because in none of them has 
it been possible to secure complete uni- 
formity in intensity and color. A satis- 
factory standard should be identical at ail 
times and in all places; should be of con- 
venient size; and should be white enough 
to be comparable with all modern lights in 
every region of the spectrum. These con- 
ditions appear to be fulfilled in the stand- 
ard proposed by M. Violle in 1881, which, 
after some improvement in processes, has 
been definitely adopted by the International 
Congress of Electricians. It is the light 
emitted by a square centimetre of melted 
platinum at the temperature of solidifica- 
tion (1,775° C., or 3,227° Fahr.). This light 
nearly resembles the incandescent electric 
light, and is constant during the whole pro- 
cess of solidification. Its value, expressed in 
one of the old standards, is 1 carcel = g4z of 
the Violle unit. 


Birds’ Tastes for Color and Musie.—Mr. 
E. E. Fish has published in the “ Bulletin ” 
of tlie Buffalo Naturalists’ Field-Club a pa- 
per on “ The Intelligence of Birds,” in which 
he ascribes to birds a keen perception of 
color and capacity to be gratified by artis- 
tic arrangements of colors, and a strong sus- 
ceptibility to musical melodies. Evidence 
of the enjoyment of color is given by the 
tasteful combinations with which many birds 


716 


adorn their nests, and by instances in which 
their choice of companions, food-fruits, etc., 
is guided by color. Many of the feathered 
tribes also “manifest real pleasure at the 
execution of simple harmonies, They en- 
joy the notes of musical instruments, but 
more especially their own songs and those 
of one another. . . . Our unmusical English 
sparrow enjoys the songs of other birds; 
on different occasions I have seen several 
of them gather about a robin as he caroled 
a pleasant song; when they came too near 
or in too large numbers, he would dart at 
them and drive them out of the tree, but 
when he commenced again to sing some of 
them were quite sure to return. <A friend 
sends me an account of a bobolink, that 
placed in a cage with some canaries exhib- 
ited great delight at their songs. He did 
not sing himself, but with a peculiar cluck 
could always set the canaries singing. Af- 
ter a while he began to learn their songs, 
note by note, and in the course of a few 
weeks mastered the entire song.” The 
goose is also fond of music, “and a lively 
air on a violin will sometimes set a whole 
flock wild with delight. On one occasion, 
at a country wedding, I was witness of a 
curious performance by one of these ani- 
mals. After dinner a lady entertained the 
guests assembled on the lawn with music 
from an accordeon, A flock of geese were 
feeding in the road just below the house, and 
with outstretched necks answered back loud 
notes of satisfaction. Soon a white gander 
commenced dancing a lively jig, keeping 
good time to the music. For several min- 
utes he kept up the performance, to the great 
delight of the company. The experiment 
was tried several times for a week or more, 
and the tones of the accordeon never failed 
to set the old gander into a lively dance.” 


Milne-Edwards’s Marine Investigations. 
—M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards has expressed 
himself well satisfied with the results of his 
deep-sea expedition in the Talisman. He 
claims to have corrected some of the sound- 
ings as given in a recent German atlas, and 
to have traced a different relief from the 
one indicated in it for the ocean-bed. He 
found the bottom of the Sargasso Sea—six 
thousand metres deep—to be of a volcanic 
character. Some of the lavas and scorie 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


in the collection the expedition has brought 
home seem to be of relatively recent origin, 
and to offer an explanation of the poverty 
of the flora of the region in which they were 
found. In a letter to the French Geograph- 
ical Society, M. Milne-Edwards speaks of 
an immense volcanic bed running parallel 
with the Andes, of which the Cape Verd 
Islands, the Canaries, and the Azores form 
the culminating peaks, and which, he con- 
jectures, may extend to Iceland. 


The Glacial Dam and Lake of the Ohio 
River.—Professor G. Frederick Wright, in 
tracing the boundary-line of the glaciated 
area through Ohio, found that it crossed 
over into Kentucky in the neighborhood of 
Cincinnati, returning, however, to the north 
side of the Ohio River at a few miles farther 
down, Examining the ground more closely, 
he found that the entire valley of the river, 
for a distance of fifty miles in this region, 
had been, for a short time during the gla- 
cial period, filled with glacial matter which 
formed a dam at least five hundred and fif- 
ty feet high. The effect of this must ne- 
cessarily have been to make a narrow lake 
corresponding in depth with the ice-barrier, 
and extending far up the Ohio and its tribu- 
taries, including the Licking in Kentucky, 
the Kanawha in West Virginia, and the Al- 
leghany and Monongahela in Pennsylvania, 
and covering the present site of Pittsburg 
to a depth of about three hundred feet. 
Evidence of the former existence of such a 
lake, in the shape of terraces marking its 
margin, has been found along these rivers, in 
one caseindependently of Professor Wright’s 
investigations. Professor J. C. White, of 
Morgantown, West Virginia, and of the 
Pennsylvania Geological Survey, says that it 
is exactly what is needed to explain the ter- 
races along the Monongahela, which extend 
from Pittsburg as far south at least as 
Fairmount, West Virginia, one hundred and 
thirty miles, and “suddenly disappear at 
an elevation of one thousand and fifty or one 
thousand and seventy-five feet above tide, or 
about two hundred and seventy-five feet 
above the river.” Professor Lesley has ob- 
served terraces along the Alleghany and its 
tributaries, at the sameabsolute level. Along 
the Great Kanawha, water-worn bowlder de- 
posits disappear at an elevation of from two 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


hundred to three hundred feet above the 
present level of the stream. A deserted riv- 
er-channel, now followed by the Chesapeake 
and Ohio Railroad, and more than two hun- 
dred feet higher than the present river, ex- 
tends from fifteen miles below Charleston 
to Huntington, at the mouth of the Guy- 
andotte, through which the Kanawha once 
flowed to the Ohio. A similar deserted 
channel, of a similar height, extends from 
near the mouth of the Big Sandy to Green- 
upsburg, Kentucky. Mr. G. H. Squier re- 
ports evidences of a terrace on the Licking 
River, near Owingsville, Bath County, Ken- 
tucky; and the fact had so impressed him 
that, before knowing of Professor Wright’s 
discoveries, he had come to the conclusion 
that some such barrier as is supposed must 
have existed. 


Value of Brain - Weighings. — Recent 
statements about the weight of Turge- 
nief’s brain, which was extraordinarily 
heavy, have provoked questions as to the 
value of such data. Mr. Nikiforoff has 
published an article on the subject. The 
suggestion is raised that the significance of 
the weight of the brain is not absolute, 
but should depend upon the proportion 
the brain bears to the dimensions of the 
whole body, and to the weight of the in- 
dividual. Byron died at the age of thirty- 
six, and the great geometrician Gauss at 
seventy-eight years of age. The brains of 
the two should, therefore not be compared. 
It is equally important to know what was 
the cause of death, for protracted discase 
and old age exhaust the brain. To define 
the real degree of development of the brain, 
it is, therefore, necessary to have a knowl- 
edge of the condition of the whole body, and, 
as this is usually lacking, the mere record of 
weights possesses little significance. 


The Boring Power of Mollusks.—Pro- 
fessor F. H. Storer suggests, in a note to 
Professor Dana, that the shell and rock- 
boring mollusks owe their excavating pow- 
er in large part to chemical actions which 
they induce. Having observed how readily 
saline compounds are decomposed by way 
of osmose when put in contact with moist- 
ened membranes, and particularly with liv- 


717 


plants, and how plant-roots actually decom- 
pose mineral substances, he conceives it 
probable that mollusks also do their bor- 
ing by means of chlorhydrice acid formed 
through the decomposition of sea-salt by 
certain of their tissues. The boring has 
usually been regarded as a kind of drilling 
performed by the tooth-like processes at- 
tached to the proboscis of the mollusk. 
Professor Storer does not deny that the 
teeth may aid in the process of removing 
the softened shell, but believes that an acid 
solvent acting upon the shell is primarily 
operative ; and he proposes the question as 
a fit subject of experimentation. 


Sir Bartle Frere.—Sir Henry Bartle Ed- © 
ward Frere, Bart., a distinguished officer in 
the English colonial service, and a promoter 
of geographical exploration, died at his 
home in Wimbledon, England, on the 29% 
of May. He was born in 1815, and spent 
his earlier years in the Indian civil service, 
where he became Governor of Bombay, and 
member of the Council of India. In 1872 
he was deputed on a special mission, con- 
nected with the suppression of the slave- 
trade, to Zanzibar, where he was able to 
render efficient aid to African exploration. 
His interest in this work began in 1865, 
when he helped to raise means to start 
Livingstone on his last expedition, and gave 
him an official letter to the Sultan of Zan- 
zibar. At Zanzibar, in 1872, he superin- 
tended the departure of Cameron’s expe- 
dition for the relief of Livingstone. He 
was an active member of the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society from 1867, and furnished 
many papers to it, and was President of the 
Geographical Section of the British Associ- 
ation in 1869. In 1877 he was appointed 
Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, and 
High Commissioner for South Africa. He 
was prominent in the transactions that led 
to the war with the Zooloos. He was, says 
Sir Richard Temple, “ a born geographer.” 


The Fleuss Breathing Apparatus and 
Safety-Lamp.—The Fleuss apparatus for 
breathing under water and in irrespirable 
gases, which was described in Vol. XVI, 
page 717 (March, 1880), of “The Popular 
Science Monthly,” has acquired a consider- 


ing membranes, like those in the rootlets of | able use and has proved efficient in prac- 


718 . 


tice. Mr. Fleuss has also, in conjunction 
with Mr, Foster, produced a safety mining- 
lamp which depends for its vitality on prin- 
ciples similar to those of the breathing ap- 
paratus, and is equally useful and safe un- 
der water and in the most dangerous gases. 
It is essentially a lime-light, ignited by the 
burning of methylated spirits instead of 
hydrogen gas, and securely guarded against 
contact wlth the outer air. It will burn for 
four hours equally well under water, in car- 
bonic acid, or in fire-damp, and it can not 
get hotter than boiling water. Its useful- 
ness, says “Iron,” “we have seen demon- 
strated by a diver at the Fisheries Exhibi- 
tion, who, equipped with the breathing ap- 
paratus, and having a Fleuss lamp, remained 
for long periods under water, both man and 
lamp being wholly cut off from the outer 
atmosphere during the periods of immer- 
sion. In like manner we have seen the re- 
spiratory apparatus put to the test by a man 
equipped with it remaining for some time 
in an air-tight iron chamber filled with 
dense smoke and noxious vapors. But 
above and beyond this is the experience 
which has been gained from its use in 
actual practice, notably in the case of the 
flooding of the Severn Tunnel, as regards 
subaqueous work, and in the cases of the 
Seaham and Killingworth collieries with re- 
spect to coal-mine accidents.” In the case 
of the explosion at the Lycet collieries, in 
which several lives were lost, an early ex- 
ploration, which in ordinary circumstances 
would have been impossible, was safely 
effected by means of the Fleuss apparatus, 


The Army-Worm.—Several caterpillars 
have been popularly but inaccurately called 
the army-worm ; but, according to the re- 
cently published pamphlet by Professor Ri- 
ley on the subject, the real worm which is 
so destructive to growing grass and grain is 
the Leucania unipunctata, a species that 
has a very wide range on this eontinent. 
The worm is the larva of a moth about an 
inch and a half in wing-expansion, and of a 
reddish-gray color, which lays its eggs in 
wild or cultivated grass, or in grain, along 
the inner base of the terminal blades, where 
they are yet doubled, or between the stalk 
and its surrounding sheath, or even in the 
cut straw of old stacks, or in corn-stalks. 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


The larve feed for a time after hatching in 
the fold of the leaf, which they so resemble 
in color as usually to escape observation, 
They are stationary in habit so long as they 
have sufficient feed, but take up the march 
when their pasture is exhausted ; and in those 
seasons when they have been multiplied to 
excess they constitute a veritable army 
marching in solid rank. Their occasional 
sudden appearance in vast numbers over 
large stretches of territory is one of the 
phenomenal features of their life; but it 
is not so wonderful a fact, after all. They 
are nearly always with us in greater or less 
numbers, and if the season is a dry one they 
multiply prodigiously. An immense crop 
of moths is accordingly produced, and then, 
each one of them laying seven or eight hun- 
dred eggs, stock the fields and pastures in 
profusion, depositing the eggs for the im- 
mense host which is to appear in the follow- 
ing year. In confirmation of this view, ex- 
aminations of the weather records show that 
the years preceding army-worm years have 
been universally characterized by drought. 
Three broods of them may be produced in 
a year. Their natural enemies are not less 
than fourteen species of birds, a metapo- 
dious bug, and numerous parasites. The 
usually applied remedies look to the whole- 
sale destruction of the worms or the eggs. 
Among them are burning the old grass, pref- 
erably as late as possible in the spring; 
digging a ditch to serve as a trap into which 
they will fall on their march, after which 
they may be destroyed in various ways— 
mashing them in the field with heavy rollers, 
and dragging a rope across the field to crush 
them. Thin tillage is also a preventive, by 
causing the worms to be exposed to the sun. 


What destroyed Casamicciola ?—Pro- 
fessor Palmieri, of the Mount Vesuvius 
Observatory, believes that the destruction 
of Casamicciola, in Ischia, was not the im- 
mediate effect of the earthquake, but was 
caused by a caving in of the ground under 
the city, which might, perhaps, have been 
precipitated by an earthquake-shock. The 
trachytic rocks on which the town is built 
rest upon a bed of clay, in which extensive 
galleries have been dug in the course of 
centuries, while the clay has been mined 
for industrial purposes. As early as 1837, 


NOTES. 


an engineer, Alessandro Giordano, called 
attention to the danger of extending these 
excavations farther toward the city. Add 
to this the action of the carbonic waters of 
the thermal springs in hollowing out caverns 
in the trachytic rocks, and we have probable 
a condition of the subsoil and underlying 
formations extremely perilous to the stabil- 
ity of the foundations of the town, and one 
under which just such a disaster as has 
overtaken it might be readily conceivable. 


M. Wrostewsx1 has been investigating 
the boiling-points of air, oxygen, nitrogen, 
and carbonic oxide, at the ordinary press- 
ure of the atmosphere, and fixes them as 
follows: Oxygen, 299° Fahr.; atmospheric 
air, 814°; nitrogen, 315°5°; carbonic oxide, 
814:4°. Atmospheric air seems destined to 
be the refrigerant of the future, for it is 
already at hand, and will produce a degree 
of cold that is only insignificantly exceeded 
by that induced by any other substance. It 
must, of course, be first compressed and 
liquefied ; then, when it is to be used, it will 
be let loose to freeze by its evaporation, as 
is now done with other refrigerants operat- 
ing in a similar way. 


M. Gustave Hermite describes a method 
of taking phosphorescent photographs, which 
he has found to be practicable with any 
phosphorescent substance, but for which he 
prefers sulphuret of calcium, a material 
from which a luminous paint is made. This 
substance is very sensitive to light, and 
assumes a phosphorescence the intensity of 
which is proportioned to the intensity of 
the light to which it is exposed, rather than 
to the length of the exposure. A glass 
plate is painted with it, and is exposed in a 
bright light in the face of the object of 
which. a picture is desired. The picture 
appears very distinct when the plate is 
taken into the dark. It may be revived 
afterward by breathing upon the plate, and 
then passing a hot flat-iron over it. Sul- 
phuret of calcium becomes phosphorescent 
under the influence of heat (300° C.) as 
well as of light. 


M. E. L. Trovvetor has concluded, from 
observations on the planet Saturn for sev- 
eral years, that his rings are not fixed but 
very variable; and that the hypothesis that 


“719° 


they are composed of multitudes of cor- 
puscles or minute satellites, revolving in. 
independent orbits, is very probable, and 
affords the best explanation of the phe- 
nomena. 


NOTES. 


Dr. Austin Frnt is quoted in the seven- 
teenth report of the Peabody Museum as au- 
thority for the statement that the metates, 
or grinding-stones, used in Nicaragua, are 
obtained from the old burial-mounds. Dr. 
Flint informs us that this is true, so far 
as the northwestern departments of Costa 
Rica are concerned, but that the idea of the 
same being the case in Nicaragua is an er- 
ror, arising from an inaccuracy of his own 
expression incidentally committed in writ- 
ing hurriedly on another subject. The me- 
tates in universal use in Nicaragua are made 
there now, and are much inferior to those 
found .in the mounds; and, being of much 
less value, they are gradually being bought 
in Costa Mica. 


Tue biological class at the University of 
Cambridge has outgrown the capacity of any 
lecture-room to accommodate it, and at the 
last term numbered two hundred in the ele- 
mentary department alone. A considerable 
number of graduates remain at the univer- 
sity engaged in biological research, and the 
museums are continually being enriched 
with specimens presented by recent gradu- 
ates who are traveling on scientific expedi- 
tions. 


GeneRAL Sir Epwarp Sasrne, for ten 
years President of the Royal Society, and for 
twenty years General Secretary of the British 
Association, recently died at Richmond, Eng- 
land, aged ninety-four years. After serving 
on the English side in the war which we call 
the War of 1812, he became officially engaged 
in scientific work, and served his govern- 
ment and the scientific associations for twen- 
ty years in astronomical and magnetic in- 
vestigations, in the course of which he was 
connected with severai Arctic and marine 
expeditions, He was elected General Secre- 
tary of the British Association in 1839, For- 
eign Secretary of the Royal Society in 1846, 
and Vice-President and Treasurer of the 
same in 1850; and was President of the 
Royal Society from 1861 to 1871. Our pres- 
ent conception of the exact figure of the 
earth is said to be mainly due to his inves- 
tigations, A portrait and sketch of General 
Sabine were published in the second number 
of Vol. Il of “ The Popular Science Monthly.” 


M. Pasteur, in consideration of his re- 
searches in hydrophobia, has been awarded 
a gold medal by the French Société Centrale 
pour [ Amélioration des Races des Chiens. 


720 


Tur London Sanitary Protective Associa- 
tion, at the close of its second year, had five 
hundred and thirty-three members. During 
the year it had secured the inspection of 
three hundred and sixty-two houses, with 
the discovery and correction of many serious 
errors:in sanitary arrangements. Six per 
cent of these houses had their drains choked 
up so that the foul water from the sinks 
simply soaked into the ground ; in thirty-two 
per cent of them the soil-pipes were leaking, 
and sewer-gas could escape into the house ; 
in thirty-seven per cent the overflow-pipes 
from cisterns passed direct into the drains 
or soil-pipes, admitting sewer-gas into the 
water of the cistern and into the house; and 
in three fourths of the houses waste-pipes 
from baths and sinks led direct into the 
drainor soil pipes instead of, as they should, 
direct into the open air. Professor Huxley 
resigned the presidency of this society, and 
was succeeded by the Duke of Argyll. 


Mr. Harotp Parmer, an English health 
inspector, has reported an infectious form of 
pneumonia in his district. A man was at- 
tacked with symptoms suggesting that septic 
poison and bad sanitary conditions might 
be around, and examination confirmed the 
opinion. Three other persons were seized 
with the disease, and two of the patients, in- 
cluding the medical attendant, died. Other 
similar cases have been observed, in one of 
which inflammation of the lungs and death 
followed a single visit to a house where the 
disease was prevailing. 


Dre. A. J. C. Gesrts, Professor of Natu- 
ral Sciences, ete., in Japan, died recently at 
Yokohama, aged forty years. He was in- 
vited by the Japanese Government, in 1868, 
from a professorship at Utrecht, to fill a 
similar position in the new medical school 
at Nagasaki. He afterward became a mem- 
ber of the health department at Tokio, and 
established chemical laboratories at Kioto 
and Yokohama. He contributed to the two 
learned societies of Japan, published a Jap- 
anese pharmacopeeia, and began a colossal 
work on the “ Products of Nature in Japan 
and China.” 


RatLroap-cars are indicated by Judge 
Lawrence Johnson, of Holly Springs, Mis- 
sissippi, as vehicles by which destructive 
moths are carried from one part of the coun- 
try to another. In traveling last year he 
was often struck by the numbers of Aletie 
on the trains; and he observes that there 
was a sort of coincidence last season be- 
tween lines of railroad and abundance of 
cotton-worms. 


Mr. W. A. Fornes, Prosector of the Lon- 
don Zodlogical Society, died on an expedi- 
tion up the Niger, January 11th, of dysen- 
tery at less than thirty years of age. He was 
a well-known writer on zodlogical subjects. 
He contributed a memoir on the petrels to 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the reports of the Challenger Expedition, and 
edited the collected papers of Professor Gar- 
rod, his predecessor as prosector. 


Tue Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins 
University announce, as a special feature 
of the university course of instruction in 
physics for 1884—’85, a series of eighteen 
lectures, to be delivered by Sir William 
Thomson, in October, on “ Molecular Dy- 
namics.” The programme also includes 
lectures by Professor Rowland, on “ Elec- 
tricity and Magnetism”; by Associate Pro- 
fessor Craig, on “ Analytic Mechanics,” 
“Hydrodynamics,” and “ Partial Differen- 
tial Equations”; and by Dr. Franklin, on 
“Problems in Mechanics,” with general 
lectures by Dr. Kimbail. 


Henry Warts, F. R. §., editor of the 
“ Dictionary of Chemistry,” died of syncope, 
from failure of the heart’s action, June 30th, 
in the seventieth year of his age. He was 
graduated Bachelor of Arts in the Univer- 
sity of London in 1841, and was Demon- 
strator of Anatomy in University College, 
London, under Professors Fownes and Will- 
iamson, from 1846 to 1857. He translated 
and supplemented Gmelin’s “ Handbook of 
Chemistry,” composing a work of eighteen 
volumes. Having begun a new edition of 
Ure’s “ Dictionary of Chemistry and Min- 
eralogy” in 1858, he soon found that, to 
bring it up with the times, the book would 
have to be rewritten. Calling in the aid of 
other students, he produced his great work 
in five volumes, in 1868. Three supple- 
ments were added to it, in 1872, 1875, and 
187981. He also brought out three edi- 
tions of Fownes’s “ Manual of Chemistry,” 
and had a fourth ready. 


AvpnonsE LAVALLEE, a distinguished 
French student of trees, and writer upon 
them, died at his home in Segrez, on the 
3d of May, in the fiftieth year of his age, 
His collection of trees and shrubs is the 
richest and most complete arboretum ever 
established. In preparing the catalogue of 
it some years ago, he introduced consider- 
able reforms in nomenclature and synony- 
my, which he elaborated in the second edi- 
tion of the work, Among his works was 
the “ Arboretum Segrezianum,” intended to 
furnish descriptions of the rarest plants of 
his collections, richly illustrated with steel- 
plate engravings, and an illustrated folio on 
large-flowered clematises. He was about to 
publish a similar work on Crategus, or the 
thorn. He was President of the Central 
Horticultural Society of France. 


M. E. Bereman has observed that formic 
and acetic acid occur in the protoplasm of 
all the plants he examined for them, being 
found in the colorless cells and in the green 
tissues; and he considers it probable that 
several other acids of the fatty series are 
equally diffused in the vegetable kingdom. 


i 


SSS 
SS 


SS 


SS 


Ss 


: 


My 


LORD RAYLEIGH, 


THE 


POPULAR SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


OCTOBER, 1884. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN ANOMALIES. 


By FRANCIS J. SHEPHERD, M. D. 


Baton since the study of human anatomy has attracted any atten- 

tion, variations in the arrangement of the different structures 
of the body have been noticed. For many centuries, the signification 
of these variations was not understood ; and evenas lately as 1840, Dr. 
Knox, of Edinburgh, who had the courage to state his conviction that 
they connected man with the lower animals, was looked upon, even by 
members of his own profession, as one prompted by the evil-one. In 
early times, when great prejudice existed against the dissection of 
human bodies, and animals, such as monkeys, dogs, cats, etc., were 
frequently used as substitutes, the similarity of some of their muscles 
to those which occasionally occurred in man as anomalies, forced the 
anatomists to remark on them as being curious coincidences, though 
in their published works they drew no conclusions from their occur- 
rence bearing on the origin of man. 

In the view of our present knowledge of the animal kingdom and 
its development, and with the acceptance of the great principle of 
evolution, the explanation of these variations is simple enough, viz., 
that they point to the fact that man has descended from some lower 
form, and “is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common 
progenitor” (Darwin). 

Again, many structures which in man are merely rudiments and 
quite useless, nay, sometimes a source of danger, are seen fully per- 
fected in some of the lower animals, and in them fulfill a definite pur- 
pose. The existence of such rudimentary organs (or, as Haeckel calls 
them, “worthless primeval heirlooms”) as the ear-muscles, the ap- 
pendix vermiformis in the intestines, the thyroid gland, the remnant 

VoL. xxv.—46 


722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of the third eyelid, the rudimentary tail-bones, and many others, is 
not satisfactorily accounted for on the theory of the plan of general 
unity ; but if we look upon them as parts which have become func- 
tionless and atrophied from want of use, and by heredity have been 
transmitted from generation to generation, a bright light is thrown on 
the reason of their existence. In the present paper I do not intend 
to dwell on the significance of rudimentary organs which exist normal- 
ly in man, but shall confine myself to those structures which occur as 
variations. 

I might here mention that some parts, as for instance certain mus- 
cles of the thumb, occur in man, but not in the lower animals ; these 
we may take as indications of the advance of man to a still higher 
development. . 

To the study of embryology we owe much in elucidating many 
morphological problems, and removing others from the domain of 
theory. By our knowledge of this most intricate subject the signifi- 
cance of many variations and rudimentary organs is made plain. 

It has been well said that “the development of the individual is 
the compressed development of the race in the process of compression ; 
some features are suppressed or modified, and others are thrown into 
relief.” In the development of the embryo we see the history of the 
race, but the higher the form the more quickly does the embryo pass 
through those stages and transformations which are the equivalent 
of what is persistent in types below. In lower forms these stages are 
much less rapid, and in fact are true metamorphoses. The changes 
occurring in the development of the common frog will furnish a fa- 
miliar example of this latter statement. The more we know of em- 
bryology, the more the truth of the saying that “development means 
descent” is apparent. 

It may not be generally known that no two individuals have ex- 
actly the same anatomical structure, and that nearly every one has 
in him some bony prominence, supernumerary muscle, or abnormal 
blood-vessel, which tells the tale of his descent. During the past nine 
years I have been teaching anatomy, and nearly three hundred sub- 
jects have been dissected under my immediate supervision ; in these 
I have carefully noted the variations occurring, with the result of find- 
ing that scarcely one body is perfectly normal in every part—nay, 
many are very abnormal, having as many as thirty to forty variations 
in their bones, muscles, or arteries. I have found variations to occur 
more frequently in negro and Indian subjects than in those of Euro- 
pean descent. When a variation in a bone, muscle, or blood-vessel is 
found, the first question asked is, What is its morphology? and it is 
the exception not to be able to make it out ; if one fails, it is concluded 
that our knowledge is deficient, and that the variation has a history, 
if we could only discover it. 

_Many variations are explained when an appeal is made to compara- 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN ANOMALIES. 723 


tive anatomy, a science which is as yet very incomplete, but which is 
rapidly enlarging its boundaries. Some animals we know by their 
fossil remains, and in these merely their bony structure can be stud- 
ied ; all the soft parts are, of course, lost forever, and can only be ap- 
proximately restored by our knowledge of allied existing types of the 
same animals. With these few preliminary remarks I shall proceed 
to describe, as simply as possible, some anomalies I have myself met 
with, and the significance of which I shall endeavor to make clear. 

Ossrous Systrem.—In a skull in my possession, whose lowness of 
type is manifested by the narrow forehead, prominent supraorbital 
ridges, wide arches of bone to inclose the large masticatory muscles, 
the acute facial angle, prognathous jaws, and well-marked bony promi- 
nences, are two remarkable variations : ; 

1. An Epihyal Bone.—In all human beings there is near the ear- 
opening a bony spine, generally about half an inch long, and which is 
called, from its resemblance to an ancient pen, the styloid process ; 
the lower end of this is connected with the hyoid or tongue bone of 
the neck by a fibrous cord. Now, in this skull, the styloid process is 
not connected with the little tongue-bone by a fibrous cord, but the 


Milfs 
tty / 
iy / 

4 
y 


SSE 


WAIL IY ile, 
y iif 4 ; Yi 


(fh 


Fre. 1. 


724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


styloid process is itself prolonged down to the tongue-bone and artic- 
ulated with it in the fresh state. It is quite a large bone, three 
and a half inches long (see Fig. 1, A). This arrangement is seen in 
many of the lower animals, and in them the bone, which is a very 
important one, is called the epihyal bone. 

2. At the base of the skull on the left side, behind the mastoid 
process, the prominent nipple-shaped process behind the ear, is a stout, 
bony spur, more than three quarters of an inch long, which has a 
downward direction, and articulates with the first bone of the ver- 
tebral column (see Fig. 1, 2). This process is rarely seen in the 
human being, and is the only one I have met with, but it is quite the 
normal condition in most graminivorous and carnivorous animals, 
being especially well marked in the horse, pig, sheep, and goat. In 
them it is an important part, and gives attachment to strong muscles 
which move the head on the trunk. It is called the para-mastoid 
process, from its proximity to the mastoid. 

SUPERNUMERARY Rips.—I suppose every one is aware that the 
vertebral column, or backbone, is composed of many separate bones, 
some of which carry ribs. The backbone is made up of thirty-three 
bones, seven in the neck, twelve in the trunk, five in the loins; below 
this we have a bone called the sacrum, which consists of five vertebree 
fused together ; and lower down still four small bones which represent 
the tail-bones, called, when taken together, the coccyx, from their 


P y 


Fia. 2.—C C, cervical ribs ; T, transvers process of seventh cervical vertebra. 


supposed resemblance to a cuckoo’s beak. Now, each trunk, or dorsal 
vertebra, has two ribs connected with it, one on each side; so there 
are altogether twenty-four ribs, twelve on each side ; but sometimes 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN ANOMALIES, 725 


there are more, and, when this occurs, the extra ribs are carried by 
the neck (cervical) or loin (lumbar) vertebra. I have specimens in 
my collection of both varieties, cervical and lumbar (see Fig. 2, C). 
These supernumerary ribs do not occur very frequently ; still, every 
anatomist has observed them. Their occurrence becomes more intel- 
ligible when we know that in crocodiles, birds, and the three-toed 
sloth, neck or cervical ribs exist normally ; that in crocodiles, alligators, 
and some other animals, loin or lumbar ribs are never absent ; and that 
in man traces of them exist in the muscles of the abdomen. In the 
human embryo, in an early stage, a rib is always seen connected with 
the seventh neck-vertebra, but before the fifth year of life it becomes 
blended with the ordinary transverse process (Fig. 2, 7’) ; occasionally, 
however, this rudiment goes on developing, till it becomes a more or 
less perfect cervical rib (see Fig. 2, C). 

SuPRA-CONDYLOID Procxss.—It is not uncommon to find, in the 
humerus or arm-bone of man, a hook-like process on the inner side of 
the lower end, having a downward direction; this, with a band of liga- 
ment which connects its tip with the humerus lower down, forms a 
foramen or opening through which pass the great artery and nerve of 
the arm (see Fig. 3,4, B).. This foramen is found in about three per 


Fig. 3.—A, the supracondyloid process of the human Fie. 4—Bones or Fore-tims or Cat. §, 


humerus; B, the ligament which completes the fora- the supracondyloid foramen, with ves- 
men. (After Struthers.) = — — passing through. (After 
ruthers. 


cent of recent skeletons, but much more commonly in the skeletons of 
ancient races. In very many bodies a trace of this foramen is seen, 
represented by a very small bony prominence, or only by a band of 


726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


fibrous tissue. In many of the lower animals it is the normal condi- 
tion. It is seen in nearly all the carnivora, except the plantigrades 
(though it has been found in the cave-bear) ; it is also seen in monk- 
eys, lemurs, and sloths. In these it is generally completed by bone, 
though in some by bone and ligament asin man. In the animals above 
mentioned it serves the purpose of protecting the great nerve and ves- 
sel of the fore-limb from pressure during flexion, and it also affords a 
more direct course by which these structures can supply the parts be- 
low (see Fig. 4). In man when this arrangement occurs, owing to 
the altered position of the limb, the nerve and blood-vessel are actu- 
ally dragged out of their course to pass through this opening; so in 
him it serves no useful purpose. ‘This variation is, as was first pointed 
out by Professor Struthers, well known to affect certain families. The 
only reasonable explanation of the occurrence of this structure ap- 
pears to be that of revegsion to the type of some mammalian ancestor 
in which this part was functional, or in other words served a definite 
purpose (Struthers). | 

Tuirp Trocuanrer.—The third trochanter of the thigh-bone 
occurs about as frequently as the supra-condyloid process. On the 
upper part of the thigh-bone there are two prominences called the 
greater and less trochanter ; a third prominence (trochanter tertius) 
sometimes occurs ; it is situated a little below the great prominence, and 
gives attachment to the large muscle of the buttock (gluteus mazi- 
mus). According to Fiirst, in forty skeletons of Swedes examined by 
him in the Caroline Institute in Stockholm, fifteen possessed this pro- 
cess, and, in six skeletons of Laplanders, four had a third trochanter. I 
have seen it in only about one per cent of the skeletons I have exam- 
ined. In many of the lower animals this process is enormously devel- 
oped ; it is very prominent in the horse and rhinoceros, and in many 
others it exists in a slighter degree. 

One more example from the osseous system, and I shall pass to the 
softer structures. In the human wrist are eight small bones called car- 
pals, and arranged in two rows ; occasionally between the two rows we 
have a ninth bone called the os centrale. This os centrale is always 
present in the higher apes and some of the rodents. We also find 
that in every human feetus at an early period a rudiment of this bone 
exists, but it has entirely disappeared by the fourth month of fetal life. 

CircuLaTory System.—Every naturalist now admits that the vari- 
ous stages of development of an animal, as well as its specialized parts, 
are often found to correspond with permanent conditions of animals 
lower in the scale. A good illustration of this is seen in the develop- 
ment of the human heart and blood-vessels. In the early stages of 
development we have a heart with a single cavity, connected with a 
vessel at each end as in ascidians ; later on the blood-vessels consist of 
a series of arches which go to the gills or branchial clefts as in fishes 
and amphibia, while the heart consists of two chambers separated by 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN ANOMALIES, 727 


valves, and is placed far forward in the neck. The gill-arches now 
partly disappear, and, though the circulation still remains single as in 
reptiles, the heart-cavities are beginning to be separated into two dis- 
tinct systems. Soon a double circulation is acquired by a complete 
separation of the heart into right and left. The right heart propels 
the venous and the left the arterial blood. At this period the condi- 
tion is identical with that of birds ; at last the true mammalian type 
of heart and blood-vessels develops and remains permanent. The 
arrangement of the great blood-vessels going to and from the heart 
varies considerably in different mammals. In man the rule is for the 
great artery, carrying the blood from the heart to the general system, 
to give off three main branches, named the innominate, left carotid, 
and left subclavian (see Fig. 5). These are distributed to the head 
and the two arms; the main vessel 
or aorta curves downward and dis- 
tributes blood to the trunk and 
lower extremities. These branches 
are now known to be derived from 
certain of the original gill-arches 


Fie. 5.—Normat Aortic ArRcH IN MAN. Fie. 6.—Gr. Arncues—the dark lines show the 
R.C, L.C., right and left carotid arteries ones which normally persist in man. 
going to the head; R. S., L. 8., right and 

eft subclavian arteries going to the arms; 
I, innominate artery. 


which persist (see Fig. 6), and when any variation in their arrange- 
ment takes place it always occurs in the line of some of these gill- 
arches ; that is, some of the arches persist which usually are obliterated. 
Nearly all the variations occurring in these large vessels in man are 
found to be the regular condition in animals lower in the scale ; for 
instance, sometimes only two branches are given off instead of three ; 
each of these, again, dividing into two, one for the head and one for 
the arm of that side (see Fig. 7, B). Thisis the usual arrangement 
in the bat, porpoise, and dolphin. The commonest variation of the 
aortic arch is where the innominate gives off the left carotid, and so 


728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


supplies both sides of the head (see Fig. 7, A), the artery supplying 
the left arm coming off as usual, This is the normal condition in apes, 
bears, dogs, and all the feline tribe. In some rare cases in man one 
branch only comes off from the aortic arch, and this, again, divides 
into the various arteries supplying the head and arms. In horses and 
other solipeds, we see this form of aortic arch (see Fig. 7, D). Again, 
the branches may all be given off separately from the arch, as is the 
arrangement in the walrus (see Fig. 7, C). 

I have three times met with rather a rare anomaly of the great 
veins going to the heart from the upper part of the body. The usual 


Fig. 7.—R. C., L. C., carotid arteries going to the head; R.S., L. S., subclavian arteries going to 
the arms; I, innominate artery. 


arrangement in man, on each side, is for the great vein of one arm and 
the corresponding side of the head to unite and form a single trunk 
(brachio-cephalic), so we have two large venous trunks, one on each 
side ; these two trunks then join to form a single large vessel, called the 
superior vena cava, which empties its blood into the right side of the 
heart (see Fig. 8, A). It occasionally happens that the great venous 
trunks formed by the veins of the arm and head of each side do not unite 
to form the superior vena cava, but each continues its downward course 
and opens separately into the heart (see Fig. 8, B). On studying the 
development of the blood-vessels, we find that in early fetal life this 
condition of affairs exists, but after a time a transverse branch forms 
between the two trunks. This branch gradually enlarges, while the 
left trunk shrivels up, and at birth is only represented by a fibrous 
cord. This anomaly of the veins we find, then, is a persistence of a 
usually transient fetal condition in man, and also that in all birds and 
many of the lower mammals it is the permanent condition. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN ANOMALIES. 729 


Muscutar Sysrem.—The muscular system of man is liable to 
many variations, nearly all of which are interesting from a morpho- 
logical point of view. 


B 
J Bee 
—. : --* 
A S = = 
u . : 
ey —].-"" 3 
s. = = Dor 
=| 7 
7 ‘\ . < IT ania Z z (ery Tm 
3 | Ti 2 r | 
= = = 2 Oi) i WALZ, = : La 
“ > <c"* iQUintigs aM) 7; _-E E 
yy Z WY" \\ Lt Hyp ee 3 = — 
ys yy ej y > nn oy \S " LUT} | VC- - 5 
S 
$s 2 &§ \s p .---V0 
VC..----- E e = = 
2 H 
= e 
"es —~y 
‘ S 
H A 


Fic. 8.—A, Norman ARRANGEMENT; B, ABNORMAL ARRANGEMENT. J. J., jugular veins from 
head; S. S., subclavian veins from arms; VY. C., vena cava ; H, heart. 

It is not uncommon to find in man useless rudiments of muscles 
which exist in a well-developed state in some of our more humble fel- 
low-creatures, and in them serve a definite purpose. 

In man the “skin-muscles” are very feebly developed compared 
with those seen in many of the lower animals. The only remnants of 
these in man are, the muscle which wrinkles the forehead (occipito- 
JSrontalis), the muscle immediately under the skin covering the side of 
the neck (platysma myoides), and the palmaris brevis, a little bundle 
of muscular fibers in the palm of the hand; not unfrequently rem- 
nants appear abnormally in other situations, as, over the breast (see 
Fig. 9), in the arm-pit, on the back, etc. The skin-muscles are well 
develeped in those of the mammalia which have loose skins, as, for 
example, the hedgehog, porcupine, and porpoise. In the hedgehog, 
when the skin-muscles contract, the animal becomes rolled up as in a 
bag of muscles. The sportive gambols of a school of porpoises are 
effected by an abundant supply of these skin-muscles ; in the horse 
the skin-muscle is called the panniculus carnosus, and every one who 
has seen a horse twitching its skin to get rid of troublesome flies will 
easily understand how serviceable it is to that animal. 

In all human beings there is a small muscle going from a hooked 
process (coracoid) on the upper end of the shoulder-blade to the inner 
side of the arm-bone about the junction of its upper and middle third. 
Sometimes this muscle is continued down to the lower end of the 
arm-bone ; or, again, it may be quite short, and attached to the bag 
of fibrous tissue covering the shoulder-joint. On referring to the 
anatomy of the lower animals, it is found that both these varieties 


730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


exist normally, but in a much more highly developed state ; they are 
especially well seen in animals which use their fore-limbs for digging, 
climbing, or swimming. In them the muscle is of large size, and 
reaches to the inner edge of the lower extremity of the arm-bone ; in 
man, when it reaches thus far, it is only rudimentary and of no use. - 


Af trae, ta 
Gj a (il Wy ZA, 


Uy 
Yu fff Ij eg 
YM EY 
ih WV Uh 
Ig Nui 


fi 


pees 


Fra. 9.—S, rectus sternalis or skin muscle, superficial to the great pectoral muscle of chest. 


Another muscle which I have seen in about three per cent of 
human subjects is a small one which goes from the breastbone to 
the upper end of the shoulder-blade. This muscle is well developed 
in animals which have no collar-bones ; it reaches its highest develop- 
ment in the horse, pig, hippopotamus, and elephant. It is also seen 
in the Guinea-pig, Norway rat, and wombat. It is quite rudimentary 
when it exists in man, and serves no useful purpose. 

In man, near the elbow-joint, and lying close together, are two 
muscles going from the upper to the lower arm ; one in front (brachi- 
alis anticus), which helps to bend the elbow, and the other to the 
outer side (supinator longus), which supinates or twists the fore-arm 
outward. Asa rule, these muscles are quite distinct, though they lie 
side by side; but in about one per cent of cases they are joined to- 
gether by muscular fibers. This is the normal arrangement in apes 
and monkeys, the union of these two muscles aiding them greatly 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN ANOMALIES. 731, 


in twisting their bodies when hanging by their fore-limbs to the 
branches of trees. Again, in apes, the muscle forming the posterior 
fold of the arm-pit is always prolonged down to the prominence on 
the back of the elbow. In the long-armed apes this muscle is espe- 
cially well developed, and serves to swing the whole arm rapidly and 
powerfully forward—a movement which is of the greatest importance 
for dexterously grasping remote branches while in the act of climbing. 
The same prolongation of this muscle is occasionally seen in man, 
though in a much less developed state, and serves to remind him of 
the arboreal habits of some of his not very remote ancestors. 

In the gorilla, orang, and chimpanzee a muscle, called the elevator 
of the collar-bone (Jevator clavicule), is always present ; this goes from 
the upper neck-bones to the collar-bone. It is found in about three 
per cent of human subjects. Other muscles, occasionally found in man | 
in a rudimentary and fragmentary condition, are ones going from the 
back of the head to the collar-bone or shoulder-blade ; they are well 
developed in many of the carnivora and ruminants. I have seen them 
of large size in the lion, deer, etc. ; in those animals they are much 
used in pulling forward the shoulder. 

In about every other human subject is a small muscle going from a 
bony spur on the front of the haunch-bones to the muscles in the ante- 
rior wall of the abdomen. This is the rudiment of the great muscle 
in the kangaroo, opossum, and other marsupial animals, which supports 
the pouch where the immature young are carried, and the bony spur 
is the rudiment of a distinct bone, called the marsupial bone, which 
always exists in these animals, and gives attachment to the muscles 
which open and shut the pouch. 

In man the short muscle of the foot which bends the toes is at- 
tached to the heel-bone, but occasionally the portion going to the fourth 
and fifth toes is separated from the portion going to the second and 
third toes, and is attached not to the heel-bone but to the tendon of 
the long flexor of the toes. In the gorilla only one slip of this short 
flexor arises from the long flexor of the toes, but in apes we have as 
a normal condition the arrangement I have endeavored to describe as 
that occasionally seen in man. 

The brain of man is distinguished from that of the gorilla and the 
higher apes by having a greater relative size and being more com- 
plex. The different fissures are not so continuous, and are frequently 
bridged over by brain-matter. In the brains of criminals, the lower 
races of mankind, and idiots, according to Benedict, the fissures are 
very confluent in character, and in some the first frontal convolution 
is divided into two portions, as in apes. In animals lower in the scale 
than man, the little brain or cerebellum is more or less uncovered by 
the posterior lobes of the cerebrum or large brain. This uncovered 
condition of the cerebellum was well seen in an idiot’s brain that I lately 
had the privilege of examining ; the fissures were also of the conflu- 


732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ent type ; the whole brain only weighed sixteen ounces. The internal 
organs in man, although not subject to great variations, still are some- 
times found abnormal. The liver may be divided into a number of 
lobes, as is seen in the gorilla. ‘This is called a degraded liver. The 
spleen is often deeply notched and multiple, as in the case in some of 
the lower animals, and the uterus is occasionally double ; an arrange- 
ment which is the normal one in the mare, raccoon, rabbit, and other 
animals. It is double in the human fetus up to the fourth month, and 
frequently a trace of this bifid condition is seen in adult life. 

I could multiply, ad infinitum, the varietions in human anatomy 
which have their corresponding normal condition in the lower animals, 
but I think I have described a sufficient number of examples to show 
how common these animal resemblances are in man. On what theory 
can we account for their existence, except that they are reversions to 
some pre-existing and lower type? This is the only logical conclusion 
to which the study of morphology leads us, and “to take any other 
view,” says Darwin, “is to admit that our own structure and that 
of all the animals around us is a mere snare laid to entrap our judg- 
ment.” | 


wy 
we we” 


MEASUREMENT OF CHARACTER. 
By FRANCIS GALTON. 


T DO not plead guilty to taking a shallow view of human nature, 
when I propose to apply, as it were, a foot-rule to its heights and 
depths. The powers of man are finite, and if finite they are not too 
large for measurement. Those persons may justly be accused of 
shallowness of view who do not discriminate a wide range of differ- 
ences, but quickly lose all sense of proportion, and rave about infinite 
heights and unfathomable depths, and use such like expressions, which 
are not true and betray their incapacity. Examiners are not, I be- 
lieve, much stricken with the sense of awe and infinitude when they 
apply their foot-rules to the intellectual performances of the candi- 
dates whom they examine ; neither do I see any reason why we should 
be awed at the thought of examining our fellow-creatures as best we 
may in respect to other faculties than intellect. On the contrary, I 
think it anomalous that the art of measuring intellectual faculties 
should have become highly developed, while that of dealing with 
other qualities should have been little practiced or even considered. 
The use of measuring man in his entirety is to be justified by 
exactly the same arguments as those by which any special examina- 
tions are justified, such as those in classics or mathematics ; namely, 
that every measurement tests, in some particulars, the adequacy of the 
previous education, and contributes to show the efficiency of the man 


MEASUREMENT OF CHARACTER. 733 


as a human machine at the time it was made. It is impossible to be 
sure of the adequacy in every respect of the rearing of a man, or of 
his total efficiency, unless he has been measured in character and 
physique, as well as in intellect. A wise man desires this knowledge 
for his own use, and for the same reason that he takes stock from 
time to time of his finances. It teaches him his position among his 
fellows, and whether he is getting on or falling back, and he shapes 
his ambitions and conduct accordingly. “ Know thyself” is an ancient 
phrase of proverbial philosophy, and I wish to discuss ways by which 
its excellent direction admits of being better followed. 

The art of measuring various human faculties now occupies the 
attention of many inquirers in this and other countries. Shelves full 
of memoirs have been written in Germany alone, on the discriminative 
powers of the various senses. New processes of inquiry are yearly 
invented, and it seems as though there was a general lightening up 
of the sky in front of the path of the anthropometric experimenter, 
which betokens the approaching dawn of a new and interesting sci- 
ence. Can we discover landmarks in character to serve as bases for 
a survey, or is it altogether too indefinite and fluctuating to admit of 
measurement? Is it liable to spontaneous changes, or to be in any 
way affected by a caprice that renders the future necessarily uncer- 
tain? Is man, with his power of choice and freedom of will, so dif- 
ferent from a conscious machine that any proposal to measure his 
moral qualities is based upon a fallacy? If so, it would be ridiculous 
to waste thought on the matter; but if our temperament and charac- 
ter are durable realities, and persistent factors of our conduct, we 
have no Proteus to deal with in either case, and our attempts to grasp 
and measure them are reasonable. 

I have taken pains, as some of my_readers may be aware, to obtain 
fresh evidence upon this question, which, in other words, is whether 
or not the actions of men are mainly governed by cause and effect. 
On the supposition that they are so governed, it is as important to us 
to learn the exact value of our faculties as it is to know the driving 
power of the engine and the quality of the machine that does our 
factory-work. If, on the other hand, the conduct of man is mainly 
the result of mysterious influences, such knowledge is of little service 
to him. He must be content to look upon himself as on a ship, afloat 
in a strong and unknown current, that may drift her in a very differ- 
ent direction to that in which her head is pointed. 

My earlier inquiries into this subject had reference to the facts of 
heredity, and I came across frequent instances in which a son, happen- 
ing to inherit somewhat exclusively the qualities of his father, had 
been found to fail with his failures, sin with his sins, surmount with 
his virtues, and generally to get through life in much the same way. 
The course of his life had, therefore, been predetermined by his in- 
born faculties, or, to continue the previous metaphor, his ship had not 


734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


drifted, but pursued the course in which her head was set until she 
arrived at her predestined port. 

The second of my inquiries was into the life-histories of twins, in 
the course of which I collected cases where the pair of twins resem- 
bled each other so closely that they behaved like one person, thought 
and spoke alike, and acted. similar parts when separated. Whatever 
spontaneous feeling the one twin may have had, the other twin at the 
very same moment must have had a spontaneous feeling of exactly 
the same kind. Such habitual coincidences, if they had no common 
cause, would be impossible ; we are therefore driven to the conclusion 
that, whenever twins think and speak alike, there is no spontaneity in 
either of them, in the popular acceptation of the word, but that they 
act mechanically and in like ways, because their mechanisms are alike. 
I need not reiterate my old arguments, and will say no more about 
the twins, except that new cases have come to my knowledge which 
corroborate former information. It follows that, if we had in our 
keeping the twin of a man, who was his “double,” we might obtain a 
trustworthy forecast of what the man would do under any new condi- 
tions, by first subjecting that twin to the same conditions and watch- 
ing his conduct. 

My third inquiry is more recent. It was a course of introspective 
search into the operations of my own mind, whenever I caught myself 
engaged in a feat of what at first sight seemed to be free-will. The 
inquiry was carried on almost continuously for three weeks, and pro- 
ceeded with, off and on, for many subsequent months. After I had 
mastered the method of observation, a vast deal of apparent mystery 
cleared away, and I ultimately reckoned the rate of occurrence of per- 
plexing cases, during the somewhat uneventful but pleasant months of 
a summer spent in the country, to be less than one aday. All the rest 
of my actions seemed clearly to lie within the province of normal cause 
and consequence. The general results of my introspective inquiry sup- 
port the views of those who hold that man is little more than a con- 
scious machine, the larger part of whose actions are predicable. As 
regards such residuum as there may be, which is not automatic, and 
which a man, however wise and well-informed, could not possibly 
foresee, I have nothing to say ; but I have found that the more care- 
fully I inquired, whether it was into hereditary similarities of conduct, 
into the life-histories of twins, or now introspectively into the pro- 
cesses of what I should have called my own free-will, the smaller seems 
the room left for the possible residuum. 

I conclude from these three inquiries that the motives of the will 
are mostly normal, and that the character which shapes our conduct is 
a definite and durable “something,” and therefore that it is reasonable 
to attempt to measure it. We must guard ourselves against suppos- 
ing that the moral faculties which we distinguish by different names, 
as courage, sociability, niggardliness, are separate entities. On the con- 


MEASUREMENT OF CHARACTER. 735 


trary, they are so intermixed that they are never singly in action, I 
tried to gain an idea of the number of the more conspicuous aspects 
of the character by counting in an appropriate dictionary the words 
used to express them. Roget’s “ Thesaurus” was selected for that 
purpose, and I examined many pages of its index here and there as 
samples of the whole, and estimated that it contained fully one thou- 
sand words expressive of character, each of which has a separate shade 
of meaning, while each shares a large part of its meaning with some of 
the rest. 

It may seem hopeless to deal accurately with so vague and wide a 
subject, but it often happens that, when we are unable to meet difficul- 
ties, we may evade them, and so it is with regard to the present diffi- 
culty. It is true that we can not define any aspect of character, but 
we can define a test that shall elicit some manifestation of character, 
and we can define the act performed in response to it. Searchings 
into the character must be conducted on the same fundamental prin- 
ciple as that which lies at the root of examinations into the intellectual 
capacity. Here there has been no preliminary attempt to map out the 
field of intellect with accuracy; but definite tests are selected by 
which the intellect is probed at places that are roughly known but not 
strictly defined, as the depth of a lake might be sounded from a boat 
rowing here and there. So it should be with respect to character. 
Definite acts in response to definite emergencies have alone to be noted. 
No accurate map of character is required to start from. 

Emergencies need not be waited for, they can be extemporized ; 
traps, as it were, can be laid. Thus, a great ruler, whose word can 
make or mar a subject’s fortune, wants a secret agent, and tests his 
character during a single interview. He contrives by a few minutes’ 
questioning, temptation, and show of displeasure, to turn his charac- 
ter inside out, exciting in turns his hopes, fear, zeal, loyalty, ambition, 
and so forth. Ordinary observers, who stand on a far lower pedestal, 
can not hope to excite the same tension and outburst of feeling in 
those whom they examine, but they can obtain good data in a more 
leisurely way. If they are unable to note a man’s conduct under great 
trials for want of opportunity, they may do it in small ones, and it is 
well that those small occasions should be such as are of frequent 
occurrence, that the statistics of men’s conduct under like conditions 
may be compared. After fixing upon some particular class of persons 
of similar age, sex, and social condition, we have to find out what com- 
mon incidents in their lives are most apt to make them betray their 
character. We may then take note, as often as we can, of what they 
do on these occasions, so as to arrive at their statistics of conduct in a 
limited number of well-defined small trials. 

One of the most notable differences between man and man lies in 
the emotional temperament. Some persons are quick and excitable ; 
others are slow and deliberate. A sudden excitement, call, touch, gest- 


736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ure, or incident of any kind evokes, in different persons, a response 
that varies in intensity, celerity, and quality. An observer watching 
children, heart and soul at their games, would soon collect enough 
material to enable him to class them according to the quantity of 
emotion that they showed. I will not attempt to describe particular 
games of children or of others, nor to suggest experiments, more or 
less comic, that might be secretly made to elicit the manifestations we 
seek, as many such will occur to ingenious persons. They exist in 
abundance, and I feel sure that, if two or three experimenters were 
to act zealously and judiciously together as secret accomplices, they 
would soon collect abundant statistics of conduct. They would grad- 
ually simplify their test conditions and extend their scope, prmier ® to 
probe character more quickly and from more of its sides. 

It is a question by no means to be decided off-hand in the nega- 
tive, whether instrumental measurements of the magnitude of the 
reflex signs of emotion in persons who desire to submit themselves to 
experiment are not feasible. The difficulty lies in the more limited 
range of tests that can be used when the freedom of movement is 
embarrassed by the necessary mechanism. ‘The exciting cause of emo- 
tion, whatever it be, a fright, a suspense, a scold, an insult, a grief, 
must be believed to be genuine, or the tests would be worthless. It is 
not possible to sham emotion thoroughly. A good actor may move 
his audience as deeply as if they were witnessing a drama of real life, 
but the best actor can not put himself into the exact frame of mind of 
a real sufferer. If he did, the reflex and automatic signs of emotion 
excited in his frame would be so numerous and violent that they would 
shatter his constitution long before he had acted a dozen tragedies. 

The reflex signs of emotion that are perhaps the most easily regis- 
tered are the palpitations of the heart. They can not be saammed or 
repressed, and they are visible. Our poet-laureate has happily and 
artistically exemplified this. He tells us that Launcelot, returning to 
court after a long illness, through which he had been nursed by Elaine, 
sent to crave an audience of the jealous queen. The messenger util- 
izes the opportunity for observing her in the following ingenious way 
like a born scientist : 

“ Low drooping till he well-nigh kissed her feet 
For loyal awe, saw with a sidelong eye 
The shadow of a piece of pointed lace 
In the queen’s shadow, vibrate on the wall, 
And parted, laughing in his courtly heart.” 


Physiological experimenters are not content to look at shadows on 
the wall, that depart and leave no mark. They obtain durable traces 
by the aid of appropriate instruments. Maret’s pretty little pneumo- 
cardiograph is very portable, but not so sure in action as the more 
bulky apparatus. It is applied tightly to the chest in front of the 
heart, by a band passing round the body. At each to-and-fro move- 


MEASUREMENT OF CHARACTER. 737 


ment, whether of the chest as a whole, or of the portion over the 
heart, it sucks in or blows out a little puff of air. A thin India-rubber 
tube connects its nozzle with a flat elastic bag under the short arm of 
a lever. The other end of the lever moves up and down in accordance 
with the part of the chest to which the pneumo-cardiograph is applied, 
and scratches light marks on a band of paper which is driven onward 
by clock-work. This little instrument can be worn under the buttoned 
coat without being noticed. I was anxious to practice myself in its 
use, and wore one during the formidable ordeal of delivering the Rede 
Lecture in the senate-house at Cambridge, a month ago (most of this 
very memoir forming part of that lecture). I had no connection es- 
tablished between my instrument and any recording apparatus, but 
wore it merely to see whether or not it proved in any way irksome. If 
I had had a table in front of me, with the recording apparatus stowed 
out of sight below, and an expert assistant near at hand to turn a stop- 
cock at appropriate moments, he could have obtained samples of my 
heart’s action without causing me any embarrassment whatever. I 
should have forgotten all about the apparatus while I was speaking. 

Instrumental observers of the reflex signs of emotion have other 
means available besides this, and the sphygmograph that measures the 
pulse. Every twitch of each separate finger even of an infant’s hand 
is registered by Dr. Warner’s ingenious little gauntlet. Every move- 
ment of each limb of man or horse is recorded by Dr. Maret. The 
apparatus of Mosso measures the degree in which the blood leaving 
the extremities rushes to the heart and head and internal organs. 
Every limb shrinks sensibly in volume from this withdrawal of the 
blood, and the shrinkage of any one of them, say the right arm, is 
measured by the fall of water in a gauge that communicates with a 
long bottleful of water, through the neck of which the arm has been 
thrust, and in which it is softly but effectually plugged. 

I should not be surprised if the remarkable success of many per- 
sons in “muscle-reading” should open out a wide field for delicate 
instrumental investigations. The poetical metaphors of ordinary lan- 
guage suggest many possibilities of measurement. Thus, when two 
persons have an “inclination” to one another, they visibly incline or 
slope together when sitting side by side, as at a dinner-table, and they 
then throw the stress of their weights on the near legs of their chairs. 
It does not require much ingenuity to arrange a pressure-gauge with 
an index and dial to indicate changes in stress, but it is difficult to de- 
vise an arrangement that shall fulfill the threefold condition of being 
effective, not attracting notice, and being applicable to ordinary fur- 
niture. I made some rude experiments, but, being busy with other 
matters, have not carried them on, as I had hoped. 

Another conspicuous way in which one person differs from another 
is in temper. Some men are easily provoked, others remain cheerful 
even when affairs go very contrary to their liking. We all know spe- 

VOL. Xxv.—47 


738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


cimens of good and bad-tempered persons, and all of us could proba- 
bly specify not a few approriate test conditions to try the temper in 
various ways, and elicit definite responses. There is no doubt that the 
temper of a dog can be tested. Many boys do it habitually, and learn 
to a nicety how much each will put up with, without growling or show- 
ing other signs of resentment. ‘They do the same to one another, and 
gauge each other’s tempers accurately. 

It is difficult to speak of tests of character without thinking of 
Benjamin Franklin’s amusing tale of the “Handsome and the De- 
formed Leg,” and there is no harm in quoting it, because, however 
grotesque, it exemplifies the principle of tests. In it he describes two 
sorts of people ; those who habitually dwell on the pleasanter circum- 
stances of the moment, and those who have no eyes but for the un- 
pleasing ones. He tells how a philosophical friend took special -pre- 
cautions to avoid those persons who, being discontented themselves, 
sour the pleasures of society, offend many people, and make themselves 
everywhere disagreeable. In order to discover a pessimist at first 
sight, he cast about for an instrument. He of course possessed a ther- 
mometer to test heat, and a barometer to tell the air-pressure, but he 
had no instrument to test the characteristic of which we are speaking. 
After much pondering he hit upon a happy idea. He chanced to have 
one remarkably handsome leg, and one that by some accident was 
crooked and deformed, and these he used for the purpose. If a stran- 
ger regarded his ugly leg more than his handsome one, he doubted 
him. If he spoke of it and took no notice of the handsome leg, the 
philosopher determined to avoid his further acquaintance. Franklin 
sums up by saying that every one has not this two-legged instrument, 
but every one with a little attention may observe the signs of a carp- 
ing and fault-finding disposition. 

This very disposition is the subject of the eighteenth “ character ” 
of Theophrastus, who describes the conduct of such men under the 
social conditions of the day, one of which is also common to our own 
time and countrymen. He says that when the weather has been very 
dry for a long time, and it at last changes, the grumbler, being unable 
to complain of the rain, complains that it did not come sooner. The 
British philosopher has frequent opportunities for applying weather 
tests to those whom he meets, and with especial fitness to such as hap- 
pen to be agriculturists. 

The points I have endeavored to impress are chiefly these: First, 
that character ought to be measured by carefully recorded acts, repre- 
sentative of the usual conduct. An ordinary generalization is nothing 
more than a muddle of vague memories of inexact observations. It is 
an easy vice to generalize. We want lists of facts, every one of which 
may be separately verified, valued, and revalued, and the whole accu- 
rately summed. It is the statistics of each man’s conduct in small, 
every-day affairs that will probably be found to give the simplest and 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 739 


most precise measure of-his character. The other chief point that I 
wish to impress is, that a practice of deliberately and methodically 
testing the character of others and of ourselves is not wholly fanciful, 
but deserves consideration and experiment.—Forinightly Review. 


| THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE.* 
By Prorgssor LORD RAYLEIGH. 


ADIES AND GENTLEMEN : It is no ordinary meeting of the 
British Association which I have now the honor of address- 

ing. For more than fifty years the Association has held its autumn 
gathering in various towns of the United Kingdom, and within those 
limits there is, I suppose, no place of importance which we have not 
visited. And now, not satisfied with past successes, we are seeking 
new worlds to conquer. When it was first proposed to visit Canada, 
there were some who viewed the project with hesitation. For my own 
part, I never quite understood the grounds of their apprehension. 
Perhaps they feared the thin edge of the wedge. When once the 
principle was admitted, there was no knowing to what it might lead. 
So rapid is the development of the British Empire, that the time might 
come when a visit to such out-of-the-way places as London or Man- 
chester could no longer be claimed as a right, but only asked for as a 
concession to the susceptibilities of the English. But, seriously, what- — 
ever objections may have at first been felt soon were outweighed by 
the consideration of the magnificent opportunities which your hos- 
pitality affords of extending the sphere of our influence and of becom- 
ing acquainted with a part of the Queen’s dominion which, associated 
with splendid memories of the past, is advancing daily by leaps and 
bounds to a position of importance such as not long ago was scarcely 
dreamed of. For myself, lam not a stranger to your shores. I re- 
member well the impression made upon me, seventeen years ago, by 
the wild rapids of the St. Lawrence, and the gloomy grandeur of the 
Saguenay. If anything impressed me more, it was the kindness with 
which I was received by yourselves, and which I doubt not will be 
again extended not merely to myself but ta all the English members 
of the Association. I am confident that those who have made up their 
minds to cross the ocean will not repent their decision, and that, apart 
altogether from scientific interests, great advantage may be expected 
from this visit. We Englishmen ought to know more than we do of 
matters relating to the colonies, and anything which tends to bring the 
various parts of the empire into closer contact can hardly be over- 


* Inaugural address of the President of the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science, delivered at Montreal, August 27, 1884. 


740 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


valued. It is pleasant to think that this Association is the means of 
furthering an object which should be dear to the hearts of all of us ; 
and I venture to say that a large proportion of the visitors to this. 
country will be astonished by what they see, and will carry home an 
impression which time will not readily efface. 

To be connected with this meeting is, to me, a great honor, but 
also a great responsibility. In one respect, especially, I feel that the 
Association might have done well to choose another president. My 
own tastes have led me to study mathematics and physics rather than 
geology and biology, to which naturally more attention turns in a new 
country, presenting as it does a fresh field for investigation. A chroni- 
cle of achievements in these departments by workers from among 
yourselves would have been suitable to the occasion, but could not 
come from me. If you would have preferred a different subject for 
this address, I hope, at least, that you will not hold me entirely re- 
sponsible. 

At annual gatherings like ours the pleasure with which friends 
meet friends again is sadly marred by the absence of those who can 
never more take their part in our proceedings. Last year my prede- 
cessor in this office had to lament the untimely loss of Spottiswoode 
and Henry Smith, dear friends of many of us, and prominent mem- 
bers of our Association. And now, again, a well-known form is miss- 
ing. For many years Sir W. Siemens has been a regular attendant at 
our meetings, and to few indeed have they been more indebted for 
success. "Whatever the occasion, in his Presidential Address of two 
years ago, or in communications to the Physical and Mechanical Sec- 
tions, he had always new and interesting ideas, put forward in lan- 
guage which a child could understand, so great a master was he 
of the art of lucid statement in his adopted tongue. Practice with 
science was his motto. Deeply engaged in industry, and conversant 
all his life with engineering operations, his opinion was never that of 
a mere theorist. On the other hand, he abhorred rule of thumb, 
striving always to master the scientific principles which underlie ra- 
tional design and invention. 

It is not necessary that I should review in detail the work of Sie- 
mens. The part which he took, during recent years, in the develop- 
ment of the dynamo-machine must be known to many of you. We 
owe to him the practical adoption of the method, first suggested by 
Wheatstone, of throwing into a shunt the coils of the field-magnets, 
by which a greatly improved steadiness of action is obtained. The 
same characteristics are observable throughout—a definite object in 
view and a well-directed perseverance in overcoming the difficulties 
by which the path is usually obstructed. 

These are, indeed, the conditions of successful invention. The 
world knows little of such things, and regards the new machine or 
the new method as the immediate outcome of a happy idea. Proba- 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. gat 


bly, if the truth were known, we should see that, in nine cases out of 
ten, success depends as much upon good judgment and perseverance 
as upon fertility of imagination. The labors of our great inventors 
are not unappreciated, but I doubt whether we adequately realize the 
enormous obligations under which we lie. It is no exaggeration to say 
that the life of such a man as Siemens is spent in the public service ; 
the advantages which he reaps for himself being as nothing in com- 
parison with those which he confers upon the community at large. 

As an example of this it will be sufficient to mention one of the 
most valuable achievements of his active life—his introduction, in 
conjunction with his brother, of the regenerative gas-furnace, by 
which an immense economy of fuel (estimated at millions of tons an- 
nually) has been effected in the manufacture of steel and glass. The 
nature of this economy is easily explained. Whatever may be the 
work to be done by the burning of fuel, a certain temperature is neces- 
sary. For example, no amount of heat in the form of boiling water 
would be of any avail for the fusion of steel. When the products of 
combustion are cooled down to the point in question, the heat which 
they still contain is useless as regards the purpose in view. The im- 
portance of this consideration depends entirely upon the working tem- 
perature. If the object be the evaporation of water or the warming 
of a house, almost all the heat may be extracted from the fuel without 
special arrangements. But it is otherwise when the temperature re- 
quired is not much below that of combustion itself, for then the 
escaping gases carry away with them the larger part of the whole heat 
developed. It was to meet this difficulty that the regenerative-furnace 
was devised. The products of combustion, before dismissal into the 
chimney, are caused to pass through piles of loosely stacked fire-brick, 
to which they give up their heat. After a time the fire-brick, upon 
which the gases first impinge, becomes nearly as hot as the furnace 
itself. By suitable valves the burned gases are then diverted through 
another stack of brick-work, which they heat up in like manner, while 
the heat stored up in the first stack is utilized to warm the unburned 
gas and air on their way to the furnace. In this way almost all the 
heat developed at a high temperature during the combustion is made 
available for the work in hand. 

As it is now several years since your presidential chair has been 
occupied by a professed physicist, it may naturally be expected that 
I should attempt some record of recent progress in that branch of 
science, if, indeed, such a term be applicable. For it is one of the 
difficulties of the task that subjects as distinct as mechanics, electricity, 
heat, optics, and acoustics, to say nothing of astronomy and meteor- 
ology, are included under physics. Any one of these may well occupy 
the life-long attention of a man of science, and to be thoroughly con- 
versant with all of them is more than can be expected of any one 
individual, and is probably incompatible with the devotion of much 


742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


time and energy to the actual advancement of knowledge. Not that 
I would complain of the association sanctioned by common parlance. 
A sound knowledge of at least the principles of general physics is 
necessary to the cultivation of any department. The predominance 
of the sense of sight as the medium of communication with the outer 
world brings with it dependence upon the science of optics ; and there 
is hardly a branch of science in which the effects of temperature have 
not (often without much success) to be reckoned with. Besides, the 
neglected border-land between two branches of knowledge is often 
that which best repays cultivation, or, to use a metaphor of Maxwell’s, 
the greatest benefits may be derived from a cross-fertilization of the 
sciences. The wealth of material is an evil only from the point of view 
of one of whom too much may be expected. Another difficulty incident 
to the task, which must be faced but can not be overcome, is that of 
estimating rightly the value, and even the correctness, of recent 
work, It is not always that which seems at first the most important 
that proves in the end to be so. The history of science teems with 
examples of discoveries which attracted little notice at the time, but 
afterward have taken root downward and borne much fruit upward. 

One of the most striking advances of recent years is in the pro- 
duction and application of electricity upon a large scale—a subject to 
which I have already had occasion to allude in connection with the 
work of Sir W. Siemens. The dynamo-machine is, indeed, founded 
upon discoveries of Faraday now more than half a century old; but 
it has required the protracted labors of many inventors to bring it to 
its present high degree of efficiency. Looking back at the matter, 
it seems strange that progress should have been so slow. I do not 
refer to details of design, the elaboration of which must always, I 
suppose, require the experience of actual work to indicate what parts 
are structurally weaker than they should be, or are exposed to 
undue wear and tear. But, with regard to the main features of the 
problem, it would almost seem as if the difficulty lay in want of faith. 
Long ago it was recognized that electricity derived from chemical 
action is (on a large scale) too expensive a source of mechanical 
power, notwithstanding the fact that (as proved by Joule in 1846) 
the conversion of electrical into mechanical work can be effected with 
great economy. From this it is an evident consequence that electricity 
may advantageously be obtained from mechanical power ; and one 
can not help thinking that, if the fact had been borne steadily in mind, 
the development of the dynamo might have been much. more rapid. 
But discoveries and inventions are apt to appear obvious when re- 
garded from the stand-point of accomplished fact, and I draw attention 
to the matter only to point the moral that we do well to push the 
attack persistently when we can be sure beforehand that the ob- 
stacles to be overcome are only difficulties of contrivance, and that we 
are not vainly fighting unawares against a law of Nature. 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 743 


_ The present development of electricity on a large scale depends, 
however, almost as much upon the incandescent lamp as upon the 
dynamo. ‘The success of these lamps demands a very perfect vacuum 
—not more than about one-millionth of the normal quantity of air 
should remain—and it is interesting to recall that, twenty years ago, 
such vacua were rare even in the laboratory of the physicist. It is 
pretty safe to say that these wonderful results would never have been 
accomplished had practical applications alone been in view. The way 
was prepared by an army of scientific men whose main object was the 
advancement of knowledge, and who could scarcely have imagined 
that the processes which they elaborated would soon be in use on a 
commercial scale and intrusted to the hands of ordinary workmen, 

When I speak in hopeful language of practical electricity, I do not 
forget the disappointment within the last year or two of many over- 
sanguine expectations, ‘The enthusiasm of the inventor and promoter 
is necessary to progress, and it seems to be almost a law of Nature 
that it should overpass the bounds marked out by reason and experi- 
ence. What is most to be regretted is the advantage taken by specu- 
lators of the often uninstructed interest felt by the public in novel 
schemes by which its imagination is fired. But, looking forward to 
the future of electric lighting, we have good ground for encourage- 
ment. Already the lighting of large passenger-ships is an assured 
- success, and one which will be highly appreciated by those travelers 
who have experienced the tedium of long winter evenings unrelieved 
by adequate illumination. Here, no doubt, the conditions are in many 
respects especially favorable. As regards space, life on board ship is 
highly concentrated ; while unity of management and the presence 
on the spot of skilled engineers obviate some of the difficulties that 
are met with under other circumstances. At present we have no ex- 
perience of a house-to-house system of illumination on a great scale 
and in competition with cheap gas; but preparations are already far 
advanced for trial on an adequate scale in London. In large institu- 
tions, such as theatres and factories, we all know that electricity is in 
successful and daily extending operation. 

When the necessary power can be obtained from the fall of water, 
instead of from the combustion of coal, the conditions of the problem 
are far more favorable. Possibly the severity of your winters may 
prove an obstacle, but it is impossible to regard your splendid river 
without the thought arising that the day may come when the vast 
powers now running to waste shall be bent into your service. Such a 
project demands, of course, the most careful consideration, but it is 
one worthy of an intelligent and enterprising community. 

The requirements of practice react in the most healthy manner 
upon scientific electricity. Just asin former days the science received 
a stimulus from the application to telegraphy, under which everything 
relating to measurement on a small scale acquired an importance and 


744, THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


development for which we might otherwise have had long to wait, so 
now the requirements of electric lighting are giving rise to a new de- 
velopment of the art of measurement upon a large scale, which can 
not fail to prove of scientific as well as practical importance. Mere 
change of scale may not at first appear a very important matter, but 
it is surprising how much modification it entails in the instruments, 
and in the processes of measurement. For instance, the resistance- 
coils on which the electrician relies in dealing with currents whose 
maximum is a fraction of an ampére, fail altogether when it becomes 
a question of hundreds, not to say thousands, of ampéres. 

The powerful currents which are now at command constitute al- 
most a new weapon in the hands of the physicist. Effects, which in 
old days were rare and difficult of observation, may now be produced 
at will on the most conspicuous scale. Consider, for a moment, Fara- 
day’s great discovery of the “magnetization of light,” which Tyndall 
likens to the Weisshorn among mountains, as high, beautiful, and 
alone. This judgment (in which I fully concur) relates to the scien- 
tific aspect of the discovery, for to the eye of sense nothing could have 
been more insignificant. It is even possible that it might have eluded 
altogether the penetration of Faraday, had he not been provided with 
a special quality of very heavy glass. At the present day these effects 
may be produced upon a scale that would have delighted their dis- 
coverer, a rotation of the plane of polarization through 180° being per- 
fectly feasible. With the aid of modern appliances, Kundt and Rént- 
gen, in Germany, and H. Becquerel, in France, have detected the 
rotation in gases and vapors, where, on account of its extreme small- 
ness, it had previously escaped notice. 

Again, the question of the magnetic saturation of iron has now an 
importance entirely beyond what it possessed at the time of Joule’s 
early observations. Then it required special arrangements purposely 
contrived to bring it into prominence. Now in every dynamo-ma- 
chine the iron of the field-magnets approaches a state of saturation, 
and the very elements of an explanation of the action require us to 
take the fact into account. It is, indeed, probable that a better 
knowledge of this subject might lead to improvements in the design 
of these machines. 

Notwithstanding the important work of Rowland and Stoletow, the 
whole theory of the behavior of soft iron under varying magnetic con- 
ditions is still somewhat obscure. Much may be hoped from the in- 
duction-balance of Hughes, by which the marvelous powers of the 
telephone are applied to the discrimination of the properties of metals, 
as regards magnetism and electric conductivity. 

The introduction of powerful alternate-current in machines by 
Siemens, Gordon, Ferranti, and others, is likely also to have a salutary 
effect in educating those so-called practical electricians whose ideas do 
not easily rise above ohms and volts. It has long been known that, 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE, 745° 


when the changes are sufficiently rapid, the phenomena are governed 
much more by induction, or electric inertia, than by mere resistance. 
On this principle much may be explained that would otherwise seem 
paradoxical. ‘To take a comparatively simple case, conceive an elec- 
tro-magnet wound with two contiguous wires, upon which acts a given 
rapidly periodic electro-motive force. If one wire only be used, a cer- 
tain amount of heat is developed in the circuit. Suppose now that the 
second wire is brought into operation in parallel—a proceeding equiv- 
alent to doubling the section of the original wire. An electrician, 
accustomed only to constant currents, would be sure to think that the 
heating effect would be doubled by the change, as much heat being 
developed in each wire separately as was at first in the single wire. 
But such a conclusion would be entirely erroneous. The total current, 
being governed practically by the self-induction of the circuit, would 
not be augmented by the accession of the second wire, and the total 
heating effect, so far from being doubled, would, in virtue of the 
superior conductivity, be halved. 

During the last few years much interest has been felt in the reduc- 
tion to an absolute standard of measurements of electro-motive force, 
current, resistance, etc., and to this end many laborious investigations 
have been undertaken. The subject is one that has engaged a good 
deal of my own attention, and I should naturally have felt inclined to 
dilate upon it, but that I feel it to be too abstruse and special to be 
dealt with in detail upon an occasion like the present. As regards re- 
sistance, I will merely remind you that the recent determinations have 
shown a so greatly improved agreement that the Conference of Elec- 
tricians assembled at Paris, in May, have felt themselves justified in 
defining the ohm, for practical use, as the resistance of a column of 
mercury of 0° C., one square millimetre in section, and 106 centi- 
metres in length—a definition differing by a little more than one per 
cent from that arrived at twenty years ago by a committee of this 
Association. 

A standard of resistance once determined upon can be embodied 
in a “resistance-coil,” and copied without much trouble, and with 
great accuracy. But, in order to complete the electrical system, a 
second standard of some kind is necessary, and this is not so easily 
embodied ina permanent form. It might conveniently consist of a 
standard galvanic cell, capable of being prepared in a definite manner, 
whose electro-motive force is once for all determined. Unfortunately, 
most of the batteries in ordinary use are, for one reason or another, 
unsuitable for this purpose, but the cell introduced by Mr. Latimer 
Clark, in which the metals are zinc in contact with saturated zinc sul- 
phate and pure mercury in contact with mercurous sulphate, appears 
to give satisfactory results. According to my measurements, the elec- 
tro-motive force of this cell is 1°435 theoretical volt. 

We may also conveniently express the second absolute electrical 


746 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


measurement necessary to the completion of the system by taking ad- 
vantage of Faraday’s law, that the quantity of metal decomposed in 
an electrolytic cell is proportional to the whole quantity of electricity 
that passes. The best metal for the purpose is silver, deposited from 
a solution of the nitrate or of the chlorate. The results recently ob- 
tained by Professor Kohlrausch and by myself are in very good agree- 
ment, and the conclusion that one ampére flowing for one hour decom- 
poses 4025 grains of silver, can hardly be in error by more than a 
thousandth part. This number being known, the silver voltameter 
gives a ready and very accurate method of measuring currents of in- 
tensity, varying from +4y ampére to four or five ampéres. 

The beautiful and mysterious phenomena attending the discharge 
of electricity in nearly vacuous spaces have been investigated, and in 
some degree explained, by De La Rue, Crookes, Schuster, Moulton, 
and the lamented Spottiswoode, as well as by various able foreign 
experimenters. In a recent research Crookes has sought the origin of 
a bright citron-colored band in the phosphorescent spectrum of certain 
earths, and, after encountering difficulties and anomalies of a most be- 
wildering kind, has succeeded in proving that it is due to yttrium, an 
element much more widely distributed than had been supposed. A 
conclusion like this is stated in a few words, but those only who have 
undergone similar experience are likely to appreciate the skill and per- 
severance of which it is the final reward. 

A remarkable observation by Hall, of Baltimore, from which it ap- 
peared that the flow of electricity in a conducting sheet was disturbed 
by magnetic force, has been the subject of much discussion. Mr. Shel- 
ford Bidwell has brought forward experiments tending to prove that 
the effect is of a secondary character, due, in the first instance, to the 
mechanical force operatisg upon the conductor of an electric current 
when situated in a powerful magnetic field. Mr. Bidwell’s view agrees 
in the main with Mr, Hall’s division of the metals into two groups 
according to the direction of the effect. 


Without doubt the most important achievement of the older gen- 
eration of scientific men has been the establishment and application of 
the great laws of thermo-dynamics, or, as it is often called, the me- 
chanical theory of heat. The first law, which asserts that heat and 
mechanical work can be transformed one into the other at a certain 
fixed rate, is now well understood by every student of physics, and 
the number expressing the mechanical equivalent of heat resulting 
from the experiments of Joule has been confirmed by the researches 
of others, and especially of Rowland. But the second law, which 
practically is even more important than the first, is only now begin- 
ning to receive the full appreciation due to it. One reason of this 
may be found in a not unnatural confusion of ideas. Words do not 
always lend themselves readily to the demands that are made upon 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 747 


them by a growing science, and I think that the almost unavoidable 
use of the word equivalent, in the statement of the first law, is partly 
responsible for the little attention that is given to the second. For 
the second law so far contradicts the usual statement of the first as 
to assert that equivalents of heat and work are not of equal value, 
While work can always be converted into heat, heat can only be con- 
verted into work under certain limitations. For every practical pur- 
pose the work is worth the most, and when we speak of equivalents 
we use the word in the same sort of special sense as that in which 
chemists speak of equivalents of gold and iron. The second law 
teaches us that the real value of heat, as a source of mechanical 
power, depends upon the temperature of the body in which it resides ; 
the hotter the body in relation to its surroundings, the more available 
the heat. 

In order to see the relations which obtain between the first and 
the second law of thermo-dynamics, it is only necessary for us to 
glance at the theory of the steam-engine. Not many years ago calcu- 
lations were plentiful, demonstrating the inefficiency of the steam- 
engine on the basis of a comparison of the work actually got out of 
the engine with the mechanical equivalent of the heat supplied to 
the boiler. Such calculations took into account only the first law of 
thermo-dynamics, which deals with the equivalents of heat and work, 
and have very little bearing upon the practical question of efficiency, 
which requires us to have regard also to the second law. According 
to that law, the fraction of the total energy which can be converted 
into work depends upon the relative temperatures of the boiler and 
condenser ; and it is, therefore, manifest that, as the temperature of 
the boiler can not be raised indefinitely, it is impossible to utilize all 
the energy which, according to the first law of thermo-dynamics, is 
resident in the coal. 

On a sounder view of the matter, the efficiency of the steam- engine 
is found to be so high that there is no great margin remaining for 
improvement. The higher initial temperature possible in the gas-en- 
gine opens out much wider possibilities, and many good judges look 
forward to a time when the steam-engine will have to give way to its 
younger rival, 

To return to the theoretical question, we may say with Sir W. 
Thomson that, though energy can not be destroyed, it ever tends to 
be dissipated, or to pass from more available to less available forms. 
No one who has grasped this principle can fail to recognize its im- 
mense importance in the system of the universe. Every change— 
chemical, thermal, or mechanical—which takes place, or can take place, 
in Nature does so at the cost of a certain amount of available energy. 
If, therefore, we wish to inquire whether or not a proposed transfor- 
mation can take place, the question to be considered is whether its 
occurrence would involve dissipation of energy. If not, the trans- 


748 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


formation is (under the circumstances of the case) absolutely excluded. 
Some years ago, in a lecture at the Royal Institution, I endeavored to 
draw the attention of chemists to the importance of the principle of 
dissipation in relation to their science, pointing out the error of the 
usual assumption that a general criterion is to be found in respect of 
the development of heat. For example, the solution of a salt in water 
is, if I may be allowed the phrase, a down-hill transformation. It in- 
volves dissipation of energy, and can therefore go forward ; but in 
many cases it is associated with the absorption rather than with the 
development of heat. I am glad to take advantage of the present 
opportunity in order to repeat my recommendation, with an emphasis 
justified by actual achievement. The foundations laid by Thomson 
now bear an edifice of no mean proportions, thanks to the labors of 
several physicists, among whom must be especially mentioned Wil- 
lard Gibbs and Helmholtz. The former has elaborated a theory of 
the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances, wide in its principles, 
and we can not doubt far-reaching in its consequences. In a series 
of masterly papers Helmholtz has developed the conception of free 
energy with very important applications to the theory of the gal- 
vanic cell. He points out that the mere tendency to solution bears in 
some cases no small proportion to the affinities more usually reckoned 
chemical, and contributes largely to the total electro-motive force. 
Also in our own country Dr. Alder Wright has published some valu- 
able experiments relating to the subject. 

From the further study of electrolysis we may expect to gain im- 
proved views as to the nature of the chemical reactions, and of the 
forces concerned in bringing them about. Iam not qualified—I wish 
I were—to speak to you on recent progress in general chemistry. 
Perhaps my feelings toward a first love may blind me, but I can not 
help thinking that the next great advance, of which we have already 
some foreshadowing, will come on this side. And if I might without 
presumption venture a word of recommendation, it would be in favor 
of a more minute study of the simpler chemical phenomena. 


Under the head of scientific mechanics it is principally in relation 
to fluid motion that advances may be looked for. In speaking upon 
this subject I must limit myself almost entirely to experimental work. 
Theoretical hydro-dynamics, however important and interesting to the 
mathematician, are eminently unsuited to oral exposition. All I can 
do to attenuate an injustice, to which theorists are pretty well accus- 
tomed, is to refer you to the admirable reports of Mr. Hicks, published 
under the auspices of this Association. 

The important and highly practical work of the late Mr. Froude 
in relation to the propulsion of ships is doubtless known to most of 
you. Recognizing the fallacy of views then widely held as to the na- 
ture of the resistance to be overcome, he showed to demonstration that, 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. ca 


in the case of fair-shaped bodies, we have to deal almost entirely with 
resistance dependent upon skin-friction, and at high speeds upon the 
generation of surface-waves by which energy is carried off. At speeds 
which are moderate in relation to the size of the ship, the resistance is 
practically dependent upon skin-friction only. Although Professor 
Stokes and other mathematicians had previously published calculations 
pointing to the same conclusion, there can be no doubt that the view 
generally entertained was very different. At the first meeting of the 
Association which I ever attended, as an intelligent listener, at Bath, 
in 1864, I well remember the surprise which greeted a statement by 
Rankine that he regarded skin-friction as the only legitimate resist- 
ance to the progress of a well-designed ship. Mr. Froude’s experi- 
ments have set the question at rest in a manner satisfactory to those 
who had little confidence in theoretical prevision. 

In speaking of an explanation as satisfactory in which skin-friction 
is accepted as the cause of resistance, I must guard myself against be- 
ing supposed to mean that the nature of skin-friction is itself well 
understood. Although its magnitude varies with the smoothness of 
_ the surface, we have no reason to think that it would disappear at any 
degree of smoothness consistent with an ultimate molecular structure. 
That it is connected with fluid viscosity is evident enough, but the 
modus operandi is still obscure. 

Some important work bearing upon the subject has recently been 
published by Professor O. Reynolds, who has investigated the flow of 
water in tubes as dependent upon the velocity of motion and upon the 
size of the bore. The laws of motion in capillary tubes, discovered 
experimentally by Poiseuille, are in complete harmony with theory. 
The resistance varies as the velocity, and depends in a direct manner 
upon the constant of viscosity. But when we come to the larger pipes 
and higher velocities with which engineers usually have to deal, the 
theory which presupposes a regularly stratified motion evidently ceases 
to be applicable, and the problem becomes essentially identical with 
that of skin-friction in relation to ship-propulsion. Professor Rey- 
nolds has traced with much success the passage from the one state of 
things to the other, and has proved the applicability under these com- 
plicated conditions of the general laws of dynamical similarity as 
adapted to viscous fluids by Professor Stokes. In spite of the difficul- 
ties which beset both the theoretical and experimental treatment, we 
may hope to attain before long to a better understanding of a subject 
which is certainly second to none in scientific as well as practical in- 
terest. 

As also closely connected with the mechanics of viscous fluids, I 
must not forget to mention an important series of experiments upon 
the friction of oiled surfaces, recently executed by Mr. Tower for the 
Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The results go far toward up- 
setting some ideas hitherto widely admitted. When the lubrication is 


750 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


adequate, the friction is found to be nearly independent of the load, 
and much smaller than is usually supposed, giving a coefficient as low 
as gs: When the layer of oil is well formed, the pressure between 
the solid surfaces is really borne by the fluid, and the work lost is 
spent in shearing, that is, in causing one stratum of the oil to glide 
over another. 

In order to maintain its position, the fluid must possess a certain 
degree of viscosity, proportionate to the pressure ; and, even when this 
condition is satisfied, it would appear to be necessary that the layer 
should be thicker on the ingoing than on the outgoing side. We may, 
I believe, expect from Professor Stokes a further elucidation of the 
processes involved. In the rhean time, it is obvious that the results al- 
ready obtained are of the utmost value, and fully justify the action of 
the institution in devoting a part of its resources to experimental work. 
We may hope, indeed, that the example thus wisely set may be fol- 
lowed by other public bodies associated with various departments of 
industry. 

I can do little more than refer to the interesting observations of 
Professor Darwin, Mr. Hunt, and M. Forel on Ripplemark, The pro- 
cesses concerned would seem to be of a rather intricate character, and 
largely dependent upon fluid viscosity. It may be noted, indeed, that 
most of the still obscure phenomena of hydro-dynamics require for 
their elucidation a better comprehension of the laws of viscous motion. 
The subject is one which offers peculiar difficulties. In some prob- 
lems in which I have lately been interested, a circulating motion pre- 
sents itself of the kind which the mathematician excludes from the 
first when he is treating of fluids destitute altogether of viscosity. 
The intensity of this motion proves, however, to be independent of 
the coefficient of viscosity, so that it can not be correctly dismissed 
from consideration as a consequence of a supposition that the viscos- 
ity is infinitely small. The apparent breach of continuity can be ex- 
plained, but it shows bow much care is needful in dealing with the 
subject, and how easy it is to fall into error. 

The nature of gaseous viscosity, as due to the diffusion of momen- 
tum, has been made clear by the theoretical and experimental researches 
of Maxwell. A flat disk moving in its own plane between two parallel 
solid surfaces is impeded by the necessity of shearing the intervening 
layers of gas, and the magnitude of the hindrance is proportional to 
the velocity of the motion and to the viscosity of the gas, so that 
under similar circumstances this effect may be taken as a measure, 
or rather definition, of the viscosity. From the dynamical theory of 
gases, to the development of which he contributed so much, Maxwell 
drew the startling conclusion that the viscosity of a gas should be in- 
dependent of its density—that within wide limits the resistance to 
the moving disk should be scarcely diminished by pumping out the 
gas, so as to form a partial vacuum. Experiment fully confirmed this 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 751 : 


theoretical anticipation—one of the most remarkable to be found in 
the whole history of science, and proved that the swinging disk was 
retarded by the gas, as much when the barometer stood at half an 
inch as when it stood at thirty inches. It was obvious, of course, that 
the law must have a limit, that at a certain point of exhaustion the gas 
must begin to lose its power; and I remember discussing with Max- 
well, soon after the publication of his experiments, the whereabout of 
the point at which the gas would cease to produce its ordinary effect. 
His apparatus, however, was quite unsuited for high degrees of ex- 
haustion, and the failure of the law was first observed by Kundt and 
Warburg, at pressures below one millimetre of mercury. Subse- 
quently the matter has been thoroughly examined by Crookes, who ex- 
tended his observations to the highest degrees of exhaustion as meas- 
ured by MacLeod’s gauge. Perhaps the most remarkable results re- 
late to hydrogen. From the atmospheric pressure of 760 millimetres 
down to about one half millimetre of mercury the viscosity is sensibly 
constant. From this point to the highest vacua, in which less than 
one-millionth of the original gas remains, the coefficient of viscosity 
drops down gradually to a small fraction of its original value. In 
these vacua Mr. Crookes regards the gas as having assumed a different 
(ultra-gaseous) condition ; but we must remember that the phenomena 
have relation to the other circumstances of the case, especially the 
dimensions of the vessel, as well as to the condition of the gas. 

Such an achievement as the prediction of Maxwell’s law of viscos- 
ity has, of course, drawn increased attention to the dynamical theory 
of gases. The success which has attended the theory in the hands of 
Clausius, Maxwell, Boltzmann, and other mathematicians, not only in 
relation to viscosity, but over a large part of the entire field of our 
knowledge of gases, proves that some of its fundamental postulates 
are in harmony with the reality of Nature. At the same time, it pre- 
sents serious difficulties ; and we can not but feel that, while the elec- 
trical and optical properties of gases remain out of relation to the 
theory, no final judgment is possible. The growth of experimental 
knowledge may be trusted to clear up many doubtful points, and a 
younger generation of theorists will bring to bear improved mathe- 
matical weapons. In the mean time we may fairly congratulate our- 
selves on the possession of a guide which has already conducted us to 
a position which could hardly otherwise have been attained. 


In optics attention has naturally centered upon the spectrum. The 
mystery attaching to the invisible rays lying beyond the red has been 
fathomed to an extent that, a few years ago, would have seemed al- 
most impossible. By the use of special photographic methods Abney 
has mapped out the peculiarities of this region with such success that 
our knowledge of it begins to be comparable with that of the parts 
visible to the eye. Equally important work has been done by Lang- 


752 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ley, using a refined invention of his own based upon the principle of 
Siemens’s pyrometer. This instrument measures the actual energy of 
the radiation, and thus expresses the effects of various parts of the 
spectrum upon a common scale, independent of the properties of the 
eye and of sensitive photographic preparations. Interesting results 
have also been obtained by Becquerel, whose method is founded upon 
a curious action of the ultra-red rays in enfeebling the light emitted 
by phosphorescent substances. One of the most startling of Langley’s 
conclusions relates to the influence of the atmosphere in modifying 
the quality of solar light. By the comparison of observations made 
through varying thicknesses of air, he shows that the atmospheric ab- 
sorption tells most upon the light of high refrangibility ; so that, to 
an eye situated outside the atmosphere, the sun would present a de- 
cidedly bluish tint. It would be interesting to compare the experi- 
mental numbers with the law of scattering of light by small particles 
given some years ago as the result of theory. The demonstration by 
Langley of the inadequacy of Cauchy’s law of dispersion to represent 
the relation between refrangibility and wave-length in the lower part 
of the spectrum must have an important bearing upon optical theory. 
The investigation of the relation of the visible and ultra-violet 
spectrum to various forms of matter has occupied the attention of a 
host of able workers, among whom none have been more successful 
than my colleagues at Cambridge, Professors Liveing and Dewar. 
The subject is too large both for the occasion and for the individual, 
and I must pass it by. But, as more closely related to optics proper, 
I can not resist recalling to your notice a beautiful application of the 
idea of Doppler to the discrimination of the origin of certain lines 
observed in the solar spectrum. If a vibrating body have a general 
motion of approach or recession, the waves emitted from it reach the 
observer with a frequency which in the first case exceeds, and in the 
second case falls short of, the real frequency of the vibrations them- 
selves. The consequence is that, if a glowing gas be in motion in the 
line of sight, the spectral lines are thereby displaced from the position 
that they would occupy were the gas at rest—a principle which, in 
the hands of Huggins and others, has led to a determination of the 
motion of certain fixed stars relatively to the solar system. “But the 
sun is itself in rotation, and thus the position of a solar spectral line 
is slightly different according as the light comes from the advancing 
or from the retreating limb. This displacement was, I believe, first 
observed by Thollon ; but what I desire now to draw attention to is 
the application of it by Cornu to determine whether a line is of solar 
or atmospheric origin. For this purpose a small image of the sun is 
thrown upon the slit of the spectroscope, and caused to vibrate two 
or three times a second, in such a manner that the light entering the 
instrument comes alternately from the advancing and retreating limbs. 
Under these circumstances a line due to absorption within the sun 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 753 


appears to tremble, as the result of slight alternately opposite displace- 
ments. But, if the seat of the absorption be in the atmosphere, it is a 
matter of indifference from what part of the sun the light originally 
proceeds, and the line maintains its position in spite of the oscillation 
of the image upon the slit of the spectroscope. In this way Cornu 
was able to make a discrimination which can only otherwise be effected 
by a difficult comparison of appearances under various solar altitudes. 

_ The instrumental weapon of investigation, the spectroscope itself, 
has made important advances. On the theoretical side, we have for 
our guidance the law that the optical power in gratings is proportional 
to the total number of lines accurately ruled, without regard to the 
degree of closeness, and in prisms that it is proportional to the thick- 
ness of glass traversed. The magnificent gratings of Rowland are a 
new power in the hands of the spectroscopist, and as triumphs of me- 
chanical art seem to be little short of perfection. In our own report 
for 1882, Mr. Mallock has described a machine, constructed by him, 
for ruling large diffraction gratings, similar in some respects to that 
of Rowland. : 

The great optical constant, the velocity of light, has been the sub- 
_ ject of three distinct investigations by Cornu, Michelson, and Forbes. 
As may be supposed, the matter is of no ordinary difficulty, and it is 
therefore not surprising that the agreement should be less decided 
than could be wished. From their observations, which were made by 
a modification of Fizeau’s method of the toothed wheel, Young and 
Forbes drew the conclusion that the velocity of light i vacuo varies 
from color to color, to such an extent that the velocity of blue light 
is nearly two per cent greater than that of red light. Such a variation 
is quite opposed to existing theoretical notions, and could only be 
accepted on the strongest evidence. Mr. Michelson, whose method 
(that of Foucault) is well suited to bring into prominence a variation 
of velocity with wave-length, informs me that he has recently re- 
peated his experiments with special reference to the point in question, 
and has arrived at the conclusion that no variation exists comparable 
with that asserted by Young and Forbes. The actual velocity differs 
little from that found from his first series of experiments, and may be 
taken to be 299,800 kilometres per second. 

It is remarkable how many of the playthings of our childhood give 
rise to questions of the deepest scientific interest. The top is or may 
be understood, but a complete comprehension of the kite and of the 
soap-bubble would carry us far beyond our present stage of knowl- 
edge. In spite of the admirable investigations of Plateau, it*still re- 
mains a mystery why soapy water stands almost alone among fluids 
as a material for bubbles. The beautiful development of color was 
long ago ascribed to the interference of light, called into play by the 
gradual thinning of the film. In accordance with this view, the tint 
is determined solely by the thickness of the film, and the refractive 

VOL. xxv.—48 


754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


index of the fluid. Some of the phenomena are, however, so curious 
as to have led excellent observers like Brewster to reject the theory 
of thin plates, and to assume the secretion of various kinds of coloring- 
matter. If the rim of a wine-glass be dipped in soapy water, and then 
held in a vertical position, horizontal bands soon begin to show at the 
top of the film, and extend themselves gradually downward. Accord- 
ing to Brewster, these bands are not formed by the “subsidence and 
gradual thinning of the film,” because they maintain their horizontal 
position when the glass is turned round its axis. The experiment is 
both easy and interesting ; but the conclusion drawn from it can not 
be accepted. The fact is, that the various parts of the film can not 
quickly alter their thickness, and hence when the glass is rotated they 
rearrange themselves in order of superficial density, the thinner parts 
floating up over or through the thicker parts. Only thus can the tend- 
ency be satisfied for the center of gravity to assume the lowest pos- 
sible position. | 

When the thickness of a film falls below a small fraction of the 
length of a wave of light, the color disappears and is replaced by an 
intense blackness. Professors Reinold and Riicker have recently made 
the remarkable observation that the whole of the black region, soon 
after its formation, is of uniform thickness, the passage from the black 
to the colored portions being exceedingly abrupt. By two independ- 
ent methods they have determined the thickness of the black film to 
lie between seven and fourteen millionths of a millimetre ; so that the 
thinnest films correspond to about one seventieth of a wave-length of 
light.. The importance of these results in regard to molecular theory 
is too obvious to be insisted upon. 


The beautiful inventions of the telephone and the phonograph, al- 
though in the main dependent upon principles long since established, 
have imparted a new interest to the study of acoustics. The former, 
apart from its uses in every-day life, has become in the hands of its 
inventor, Graham Bell, and of Hughes, an instrument of first-class sci- 
entific importance. The theory of its action is still in some respects 
obscure, as is shown by the comparative failure of the many attempts 
to improve it. In connection with some explanations that have been 
offered, we do well to remember that molecular changes in solid masses 
are inaudible in themselves, and can only be manifested to our ears 
by the generation of a to-and-fro motion of the external surface ex- 
tending over a sensible area. If the surface of a solid remains undis- 
turbed, our ears can tell us nothing of what goes on in the interior. 

In theoretical acoustics progress has been steadily maintained, and 
many phenomena, which were obscure twenty or thirty years ago, 
have since received adequate explanation. If some important practical 
questions remain unsolved, one reason is, that they have not yet been 
definitely stated. Almost everything in connection with the ordinary 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 755 


use of our senses presents peculiar difficulties to scientific investiga- 
tion. Some kinds of information with regard to their surroundings are 
of such paramount importance to successive generations of living 
beings that they have learned to interpret indications which, from a 
physical point of view, are of the slenderest character. Every day — 
we are in the habit of recognizing, without much difficulty, the quarter 
from which a sound proceeds, but by what steps we attain that end 
has not yet been satisfactorily explained. It has been proved that 
when proper precautions are taken we are unable to distinguish whether 
a pure tone (as from a vibrating tuning-fork held over a suitable reso- 
nator) comes to us from in front or from behind. This is what might 
have been expected from an @ priori point of view ; but what would 
have been expected is that with almost any other sort of sound, from 
a clap of the hands to the clearest vowel-sound, the discrimination is 
not only possible but easy and instinctive. In these cases it does not 
appear how the possession of two ears helps us, though there is some 
evidence that it does; and, even when sounds come to us from the 
right or left, the explanation of the ready discrimination which is then 
possible with pure tones is not so easy as might at first appear. We 
should be inclined to think that the sound was heard much more loudly 
with the ear that is turned toward than with the ear that is turned 
from it, and that in this way the direction was recognized. But, if 
we try the experiment, we find that, at any rate with notes near the 
middle of the musical scale, the difference of loudness is by. no means 
so very great. The wave-lengths of such notes are long enough in 
relation to the dimensions of the head to forbid the formation of any- 
thing like a sound shadow in which the averted ear might be sheltered. 


In concluding this imperfect survey of recent progress in physics, I 
must warn you emphatically that much of great importance has been 
passed over altogether. I should have liked to speak to you of those 
far-reaching speculations, especially associated with the name of Max- 
well, in which light is regarded as a disturbance in an electro-magnetic 
medium. Indeed, at one time, I had thought of taking the scientific 
work of Maxwell as the principal theme of this address. But, like 
most men of genius, Maxwell delighted in questions too obscure and 
difficult for hasty treatment, and thus much of his work could hardly 
be considered upon such an occasion as the present. His biography 
has recently been published, and should be read by all who are inter- 
ested in science and in scientific men. His many-sided character, the 
quaintness of his humor, the penetration of his intellect, his simple but 
deep religious feeling, the affection between son and father, the devo- 
tion of husband and wife, all combine to form a rare and fascinating 
picture. To estimate rightly his influence upon the present state of 
science, we must regard not only the work that he executed himself, 
important as that was, but also the ideas and the spirit which he com- 


756 THH POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


municated to others. Speaking for myself as one who in a special 
sense entered into his labors, I should find it difficult to express ade- 
quately my feeling of obligation. The impress of his thoughts may 
be recognized in much of the best work of the present time. Asa 
teacher and examiner he was well acquainted with the almost univer- 
sal tendency of uninstructed minds to elevate phrases above things: 
to refer, for example, to the principle of the conservation of energy 
for an explanation of the persistent rotation of a fly-wheel, almost in 
the style of the doctor in “Le Malade Imaginaire,” who explains the 
fact that opium sends you to sleep by its soporific virtue. Maxwell’s 
endeavor was always to keep the facts in the foreground, and to his 
influence, in conjunction with that of Thomson and Helmholtz, is 
largely due that elimination of unnecessary hypothesis which is one of 
the distinguishing characteristics of the science of the present day. 

In speaking unfavorably of superfluous hypothesis, let me not be 
misunderstood. Science is nothing without generalizations. Detached 
and ill-assorted facts are only raw material, and, in the absence of a 
theoretical solvent, have but little nutritive value. At the present 
time and in some departments, the accumulation of material is so rapid 
that there is danger of indigestion. By a fiction as remarkable as any 
to be found in law, what has once been published, even though it be 
in the Russian language, is usually spoken of as “known,” and it is 
often forgotten that the rediscovery in the library may be a more diffi- 
cult and uncertain process than the first discovery in the laboratory. 
In this matter-we are greatly dependent upon annual reports and ab- 
stracts, issued principally in Germany, without which the search for 
the discoveries of a little-known author would be well-nigh hopeless. 
Much useful work has been done in this direction in connection with our 
Association. Such critical reports as those upon hydro-dynamics, upon 
tides, and upon spectroscopy, guide the investigator to the points most 
requiring attention, and in discussing past achievements contribute in 
no small degree to future progress. But, though good work has been 
done, much yet remains to do. 

If, as is sometimes supposed, science consisted in nothing but the 
laborious accumulation of facts, it would soon come to a stand-still, 
crushed, as it were, under its own weight. The suggestion of a new 
idea, or the detection of a law, supersedes much that had previously 
been a burden upon the memory, and by introducing order and coher- 
ence facilitates the retention of the remainder in an available form. 
Those who are acquainted with the writings of the older electricians 
will understand my meaning when I instance the discovery of Ohm’s 
law as a step by which the science was rendered easier to understand 
and to remember. Two processes are thus at work side by side, the 
reception of new material and the digestion and assimilation of the 
old ; and, as both are essential, we may spare ourselves the discussion 
of their relative importance. One remark, however, should be made. 


THE RECENT PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 757 


The work which deserves, but I am afraid does not always receive, 
the most credit is that in which discovery and explanation go hand in 
hand, in which not only are new facts presented, but their relation to 
old ones is pointed out. 

In making one’s self acquainted with what has been done in any sub- 
ject, it is good policy to consult first the writers of highest general 
reputation. Although in scientific matters we should aim at independ- 
ent judgment, and not rely too much upon authority, it remains true 
that a good deal must often be taken upon trust. Occasionally an 
observation is so simple and easily repeated that it scarcely matters 
from whom it proceeds ; but as a rule it can hardly carry full weight 
when put forward by a novice whose care and judgment there has been 
opportunity of testing, and whose irresponsibility may tempt him to 
“take shots,” as it is called. ‘Those who have had experience in accu- 
rate work know how easy it would be to save time and trouble by 
omitting precautions and passing over discrepancies, and yet, even 
without dishonest intention, to convey the impression of conscientious 
attention to details. Although the most careful and experienced can 
not hope to escape occasional mistakes, the effective value of this kind 
of work depends much upon the reputation of the individual respon- 
sible for it. 

In estimating the present position and prospects of experimental 
science, there is good ground for encouragement. The multiplication 
of laboratories gives to the younger generation opportunities such as 
have never existed before, and which excite the envy of those who 
have had to learn in middle life much that now forms part of an 
undergraduate course. As to the management of such institutions 
there is room for a healthy difference of opinion. For many kinds of 
original work, especially in connection with accurate measurement, 
there is need of expensive apparatus ; and it is often difficult to per- 
suade a student to do his best with imperfect appliances when he 
knows that by other means a better result could be attained with 
greater facility. Nevertheless, it seems to me important to discourage 
too great reliance upon the instrument-maker. Much of the best 
original work has been done with the homeliest appliances ; and the 
endeavor to turn to the best account the means that may be at hand 
develops ingenuity and resource more than the most elaborate deter- 
minations with ready-made instruments. There is danger otherwise 
that the experimental education of a plodding student should be too 
mechanical and artificial, so that he is puzzled by small changes of 
apparatus much as many school-boys are puzzled by a transposition of 
the letters in a diagram of Euclid. 

From the general spread of a more scientific education, we are war- 
ranted in expecting important results. Just as there are some brilliant 
literary men with an inability, or at least a distaste practically amount- 
ing to inability, for scientific ideas, so there are a few with scientific 


758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tastes whose imaginations are never touched by merely literary stud- 
ies. To save these from intellectual stagnation during several im- 
portant years of their lives is something gained ; but the thorough- 
going advocates of scientific education aim at much more. To them 
it appears strange, and almost monstrous, that the dead languages 
should hold the place they do in general education ; and it can hardly 
be denied that their supremacy is the result of routine rather than of 
argument. I do not, myself, take up the extreme position. I doubt 
whether an exclusively scientific training would be. satisfactory ; and 
where there are plenty of time and a literary aptitude I can believe that 
Latin and Greek may make a good foundation. But it is useless to 
discuss the question upon the supposition that the majority of boys 
attain either to a knowledge of the languages or to an appreciation of 
the writings of the ancient authors. The contrary is notoriously the 
truth ; and the defenders of the existing system usually take their 
stand upon the excellence of its discipline. From this point of view 
there is something to be said. The laziest boy must exert himself a 
little in puzzling out a sentence with grammar and dictionary, while 
instruction and supervision are easy to organize and not too costly. 
But, when the case is stated plainly, few will agree that we can afford 
so entirely to disregard results. In after-life the intellectual energies 
are usually engrossed with business, and no further opportunity is 
found for attacking the difficulties which block the gateways of knowl- 
edge. Mathematics, especially, if not learned young, are likely to 
remain unlearned. I will not further insist upon the educational im- 
portance cf mathematics and science, because with respect to them I 
shall probably be supposed to be prejudiced. But of modern lan- 
guages I am ignorant enough to give value to my advocacy. I believe 
that French and German, if properly taught, which I admit they 
rarely are at present, would go far to replace Latin and Greek from a 
disciplinary point of view, while the actual value of the acquisition 
would, in the majority of cases, be incomparably greater. In half the 
time usually devoted, without success, to the classical languages, most 
boys could acquire a really serviceable knowledge of French and Ger- 
man. History and the serious study of English literature, now shame- 
fully neglected, would also find a place in such a scheme. 

There is one objection often felt to a modernized education, as to 
which a word may not be without use. Many excellent people are 
afraid of science as tending toward materialism. That such appre- 
hension should exist is not surprising, for unfortunately there are 
writers, speaking in the name of science, who have set themselves to 
foster it. It is true that among scientific men, as in other classes, 
crude views are to be met with as to the deeper things of Nature ; but 
that the life-long beliefs of Newton, of Faraday, and of Maxwell, are 
inconsistent with the scientific habit of mind, is surely a proposition 
which I need not pause to refute. It would be easy, however, to lay 


MAN’S RIGHT OVER ANIMALS. 759 


too much stress upon the opinions of even such distinguished workers 
as these. Men who devote their lives to investigation cultivate a 
love of truth for its own sake, and endeavor instinctively to clear up, 
and not, as is too often the object in business and politics, to obscure 
a difficult question. So far the opinion of a scientific worker may 
have a special value ; but I do not think that he has a claim, superior 
to that of other educated men, to assume the attitude of a prophet. 
In his heart he knows that underneath the theories that he constructs 
there lie contradictions which he can not reconcile. The higher mys- 
teries of being, if penetrable at all by human intellect, require other 
weapons than those of calculation and experiment. 

Without encroaching upon grounds appertaining to the theologian 
and the philosopher, the domain of natural science is surely broad 
enough to satisfy the wildest ambition of its devotees. In other de- 
partments of human life and interest, true progress is rather an ar- 
ticle of faith than a rational belief ; but in science a retrograde move- 
ment is, from the nature of the case, almost impossible. Increasing 
knowledge brings with it increasing power, and, great as are the tri- 
umphs of the present century, we may well believe that they are but 
a foretaste of what discovery and invention have yet in store for man- 
kind. Encouraged by the thought that our labors can not be thrown 
away, let us redouble our efforts in the noble struggle. In the Old 
World and in the New, recruits must be enlisted to fill the place of 
those whose work is done. Happy should I be if, through this visit 
of the Association, or by any words of mine, a larger measure of the 
youthful activity of the West could be drawn into this service. The 
work may be hard, and the discipline severe ; but the interest never 
fails, and great is the privilege of achievement. 


wre 


MAN’S RIGHT OVER ANIMAIS. 
By CHARLES RICHET. 


i “aareres is no such impassable gap between man and the animals 
that they can not be considered brothers in creation, and there- 
fore liable to certain reciprocal obligations. As it is our duty to be 
just and sympathetic toward men, it is equally our duty not to be 
wicked or cruel toward animals. Whoever believes that he has a 
right to cause death or suffering to innocent beasts for his own pleas- 
ure is unworthy to be called a man. ‘This precept is, however, 
limited by the consideration of what is useful to us. A dangerous or 
noxious animal may be destroyed without pity ; for, whatever may 
be our duties toward the animal, our duties toward man are greater. 
Thus, no one would think of having any mercy on the phylloxera, the 


760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


pest of the grape-vine, but all would consider it a pious duty to 
destroy that baleful insect ; and it is right to use every effort to hunt 
out the tigers and serpents of India. All the world is of one mind on 
these points. 

Besides these maleficent animals there are useful ones, which 
serve us food, or on which we call for daily help. It would be 
absurd to prevent horses from drawing carriages, or oxen from being 
yoked to plows. The suppression of animal food, which is almost 
necessary to our existence, is not a subject for serious consideration. 
But if man has the right to slay an animal to live upon its flesh, it 
does not follow that he has the right to make it suffer before killing 
it. Legitimate as it may seem to kill a sheep to make food of it, it 
would be cruel to take the animal and expose him to torture for the 
vain pleasure of watching his contortions and observing his pain. It 
is, however, this very pain and just such contortions that physicists 
who make vivisections study with curiosity ; and this leads us to the 
consideration of the question, Has man the right to make living beings 
suffer for purposes of utility or information ? 

We remark, first, that if vivisection is to be proscribed, it will be 
impossible to draw the line at any animal. If morality prohibits us 
from experimenting on the dog, we must, by the same rule, respect 
the cat, the rabbit, the fowl, the turtle, and the frog. If we prohibit 
the use of the frog, how can we permit the use of the snail, the oyster, 
and the medusa? In a little while we come to those beings the animal 
nature of which is in dispute. If we are forbiden to send an elec- 
tric current through the body of a medusa, I do not see what right 
we have to electrify bacteria. Finally, it might be made to appear a 
culpable act to put an axe into an oak, or to electrify a sensitive-plant, 
since in either case we disorganize a living being, and possibly produce 
suffering. Thus easily is the reasoning of the anti-vivisectionists re- 
duced to absurdity. 

The anti-vivisectionists, however, direct their opposition against 
the infliction of pain ; and that, they say, is acute in proportion as the 
animal is intelligent. The animals nearest in order to man are the 
ones which it is most important to spare from suffering, and there are 
gradations in the wrong. It is very wrong to make a dog suffer, but 
the matter is less a crime when it comes toarabbit. A frog and a 
crawfish are entitled to still less compassion, and, in the case of the 
meduse, bacteria, and plants, whose sensibility is less developed, the 
act is only half reprehensible. This argument yields the point that 
we have aright to experiment upon animals which do not feel suf- 
fering, or only feel it a little. Let us leave out the question of the 
inferior animals, and go straight to the strongest argument that can be 
brought forward, that which turns upon the martyrdom of the dog. 
Let us take the question, as they say, by the horns, and see if the 
physiologists have the right to make a dog suffer. 


MAN’S. RIGHT OVER ANIMALS. 761 


I love dogs for themselves ; I have as much compassion as any one 
can have for them when they are suffering ; I know by experience 
that their friendship is a precious resource in solitude ; but, however, 
much I may feel for dogs, I should never hesitate to sacrifice the dear- 
est pet among them all for the existence of a human being, even were 
the man unknown to me, or the lowest of savages. Hesitation as be- 
tween a dog and a man is not permissible. We owe aid and love to 
the beings who are nearest to us, in the degree that they are nearer, 
to a Frenchman more than to a Chinese, to a man more than to an © 
animal. We are all of the great human family, to all the individuals 
of which we owe justice and assistance, while we owe to animals 
pity and protection only when they involve no harm to our human 
brethren. 

The principal object of science, and particularly of physiological 
science, is to be useful to men. Knowledge of the laws of Nature 
alone can help us to assuage the miseries of our existence. Every 
step of progress in our knowledge leads in the end to a forward step — 
in our career. Even though we may not immediately comprehend the 
practical utility of a particular discovery, it will eventually bear a sure 
fruit. 'The innumerable and mysterious facts of the medium in which 
we live are subject to fixed laws that are only imperfectly known. All 
our efforts should tend to elucidate these laws; and science—that is, 
the investigation of the grand laws of Nature—seems to be one of 
the principal functions of human energy. A very high value should, 
therefore, be set upon everything that aids the progress of science. 

It is an erroneous view of science to expect that it shall at once give 
a result useful, palpable, and precise, or an instantaneous practical 
application. Science has nothing to do with utility ; or, rather, the 
true utilitarians are those whose hopes are in future science. They are 
forced to respect the science of to-day, even when it appears useless, 
because it is bringing us nearer to the science of to-morrow, which 
alone can effect some great alleviation to human suffering. 

Who could have conceived, when Galvani announced that, on touch- 
ing the foot of a frog with copper and zinc, he provoked contractions 
of its muscles, that this little fact would lead, by a remarkable series 
of discoveries, to the invention of the galvanic battery, electric teleg- 
raphy, and dynamic electricity ? If Galvani had not observed the feet 
of frogs, the electric-telegraph would never have existed, nor the elec- 
tric light, nor any of those marvelous machines which constitute one 
of the greatest series of forces man now has at his disposal. Yet, at 
the moment Galvani was making his discovery, would we not, at least 
apparently, have had a right to condemn his sterile and bloody experi- 
ments? What benefit could men gain from a massacre of frogs strung 
along a balcony-rail? 

Every new discovery, however trivial it may seem at first, is big 
with discoveries to come. One truth is the germ of innumerable 


762 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY. 


others. Thus we have no right to restrict the domain of science, and, 
for the sake of saving some unfortunate being a few passing suffer- 
ings, to smother in its cradle all the hope of the future. 

The science of life—that is, physiology—can not progress without 
vivisection. To interdict this practice would be to slay that study. 
The anatomical examination of the organs teaches us nothing, or 
hardly anything, respecting their functions. How could we under- 
stand the circulation of the blood, if our only resource was the ana- 
tomical study of. the heart, arteries, and veins? What idea would a 
description of the brain give of the functions of the brain? We might 
see the strange forms and complicated structure of the cerebral ap- 
paratus ; but the examination of these forms would be of no help 
toward gaining an acquaintance with their offices. The work of 
physiology is founded entirely on experiment, and the required experi- 
ments can be made only upon living beings. Sometimes these beings 
are plants, but this is only a part of physiology. Animal physiology 
requires animals. The observation of dead bodies is not useful in 
teaching the laws of life. Suppose a skillful artisan, to whom we give 
a watch to examine. In vain will he look through his lens at the 
springs, the wheels, the cogs, the jewels, and the whole machinery, so 
long as the watch is not wound up; for he can not find out from this 
whether it will go or how it goes. To learn the movement of a watch, 
it must be seen in motion. The same rule is in force for the physi- 
ologist. A dead organ tells him nothing ; he must see it living. 

There are, then, but two alternatives—either to stop physiology in 
its progressive course, to shut our books, and give up the study of the 
vital functions, or to continue the practice of experimental researches 
and vivisections, as Galen, Harvey, Haller, Magendie, and Claude Ber- 
nard did. If we think physiology is not a science, or imagine it is 
useless to man, all right. Let us be contented to observe the stars, 
and resign ourselves to ignorance of the conditions of our existence. 
But if we want to sound the mysteries of life, to penetrate to the 
causes and mechanism of the forces that rule us, then we should con-| 
tinue our efforts without allowing ourselves to be discouraged by un- 
just attacks. We may be sure of an abundant harvest ; and every 
day, af the price of a few rabbits, frogs, or dogs, will give us some 
important discovery. Thus, even if physiology (with which we in- 
clude vivisection, for they are one) does not immediately give prac- 
tical contributions to the relief of the human race, it is nevertheless a 
good thing, for the immediate result of a discovery is often nothing, 
while the discovery may perhaps bring about wonderful consequences 
in the future. 

The favorite argument of the enemies of vivisection is, that physi- 
ology is of no use in medicine. ‘ Never,” they say, “has a vivisec- 
tion or a physiological discovery gained by experiment been of any 
aid to therapeutics. Chance, not physiology, has made us acquainted 


: MAN’S RIGHT OVER ANIMALS. 763 


with the medical properties of cinchona, mercury, opium, and chloro- 
form. The great physiological discoveries, though interesting as curi- 
osities, have not. been for our good. What has come from the knowl- 
edge of the circulation of the blood? Are we any more able to cure 
affections of the spinal marrow because we know now, what we did 
not know a hundred years ago, that there are motor cords and sensi- 
tive cords in it? If mortality is less now than formerly, it is not in 
consequence of the progress of medicine, but of general hygiene. 
Now, as much as three hundred years ago, doctors are impotent to 
cure diseases, and all the improvements in modern medicine are due 
to the attentive observation of the sick, not to experiments on ani- 
mals.” ‘This reasoning finds credit with the ignorant, for it artfully 
mingles a little truth with much error. The physician is, alas! too 
often powerless to contend against the ills that are raging around us. 
But, really, we can not expect physiology to cure incurable diseases 
and make men immortal ; its mission is to discover the truth, and it is 
for the physician to apply the lessons of the new truth to the treat- 
ment of diseases. Who can say seriously that modern medicine, en- 
lightened by the great physiological discoveries of this and former 
centuries, is not superior to the medicine of the middle ages? The 
circulation of the blood was discovered by vivisection. Can we form 
a practical conception of a doctor who does not believe in the circula- 
tion of the blood? Is there a man among the members of the Society 
for the Protection of Animals that would commit himself to the care of 
such a doctor? ‘To be consistent, they should banish from therapeu- 
tics all of it that is the result of experiment, and accept only that 
which is due to chance or empiricism ; there would be very little left ! 
We should not have galvanic electricity, for all our knowledge of this 
is due to the experiments of vivisectors. We should possess, in the 
way of medicines, only a few simples, and should have to employ them 
empirically, without being permitted to obtain a clear idea of their 
dangers or their advantages. We should not have chloral, or injec- 
tions of morphine, or bromide of potassium. We should be reduced 
to prescribe decoctions of cinchona, or that old theriac compounded of 
nearly two hundred plants of different properties. 

It may be that the number of those whom modern medicine, rely- 
ing upon experiment, has cured, is not large ; but certainly the num- 
ber whom it has relieved is immense. If it can not cure disease, it can 
at least prevent pain.. Why, then, should so much account be taken 
of a few pains of animals in the face of the thousands of men we have 
saved from suffering? - We should not be indignant that a dog may 
be sacrificed every day in the thirty physiological laboratories that are 
scattered over the whole world ; for the thirty dogs that suffer bear 
no sort of proportion to the thousands of cases of pain through the 
whole civilized world which medicine abbreviates or diminishes in a 
single day. If the sick thus relieved could give their testimony and 


764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


knew how to do it, they would confound the sentimental objections 
of the anti-vivisectionists, and would declare that their own sufferings 
deserve a higher consideration than the sufferings of a few animals. 

The physiologist in his experiments is inspired by a humane senti- 
ment—by love, not only for the present, but for future generations as 
well, of mankind, for his purpose is to discover some of the truths that 
may contribute to the relief of man. The immediate consequence, the 
practical end, may often escape him, but he is not concerned with them ; 
for he long ago in his own mind identified science with the love of 
man. He has acquired a conviction that science and the love of his 
fellows are the same thing, and that every scientific conquest is a step 
in the way of social progress. I do not believe that any experimenter 
would say, on giving curare to a rabbit, or in cutting the marrow of a 
dog, or in poisoning a frog, “ This experiment is destined to help cure 
or relieve some man’s disease.” He would not think of that, but would 
say, “I am going to dissipate an obscurity, to seek out a new fact” ; 
and this scientific curiosity, the only thought that animates him, can 
be explained in no other way than as a consequence of the exalted 
ideal he has conceived of science. 

This is why we pass our days in nauseous dissecting-rooms, sur- 
rounded by groaning beings, in the midst of blood and suffering, 
bent over palpitating viscera. We love science for itself, for the 
grand results it is destined to give, and we surrender ourselves with 
passion to the disinterested investigation of the truth that is hidden 
in things, convinced that this truth will in time become the salvation 
and hope of our brethren. 

No parity can be established between the results obtained and the 
price they cost. .A few sufferings of animals while so many other ani- 
mals are suffering are as nothing in comparison with the results of a 
scientific discovery. Must we, when a great result is to be secured, 
charge up an account of the suffering or the death of a small number 
of individuals? We may suppose, for instance, that the magnificent 
work of constructing the canal across the Isthmus of Panama will cost, 
in consequence of the necessity of extensive labors in an unhealthy 
country, the lives of several hundred or even of a few thousand coolies. 
Must we, then, give up making the canal? By it we would shorten 
the route of many thousand ships. Most certainly the facility given 
to commerce, the greater wealth and prosperity that will be conferred 
on all mankind, will compensate for the death and sickness of these 
poor, obscure laborers. It is the same in war. If a general in the 
course of a battle believes it necessary to carry a redoubt, he will not 
hesitate to give the signal for the assault, even if he knows that the 
struggle will cost the lives of a thousand men. He will sacrifice a few 
squads, for the safety of the whole army, without any hesitation. By 
the same rule, a people has a right to make war in defense of its inde- 
pendence, although every war is accompanied by thousands of deaths 


MAN’S RIGHT OVER ANIMALS. 765 


and woes. The case is controlled by the consideration of a superior 
interest. ‘The freedom of a people is at stake, and the interests of a 
whole people at times exact the sacrifice of a few citizens. 

The struggle of the scientific investigator against natural forces in 
some degree resembles the struggle of a people for its liberty. Mate- 
rial laws bind us on all sides, and to secure deliverance from them it 
is necessary to become acquainted with them. It is our liberty as 
against the things it is necessary to conquer ; and it is not a dear bar- 
gain to buy this at the price of a few dogs and a few skinned frogs. 

The sentimental spirits who are so much interested in the lot of 
our victims seem to believe that there is no more important occu- 
pation for them. We must undeceive them. There are more pains 
than joys among the men on this little terrestrial globe. Instead of 
busying themselves to prevent the researches which are being pri- 
vately carried on in a few laboratories, let these charitable people 
make an effort to put down the slave-trade, of which negroes are the 
victims by thousands. Or let them endeavor to relieve the misery 
which prevails everywhere from Greenland to the land of the Hotten- 
tots. Let them try to suppress the terrible scourge of war, which has 
made a hundred thousand times more human victims than all the 
frogs, rabbits, and dogs that have been sacrificed by all the physiolo- 
gists in the world. There is a task worthy of their activity. 

We are apt, when we speak of pains and martyrdom, to exaggerate 
the sufferings of animals. ‘There is no pain unless there is conscious- 
ness and attention to the pain. The more intelligent a being is, the 
more it can suffer. Unintelligent animals are incapable of feeling in 
its fullness the sensation we call pain. We can not form an idea of 
what a frog feels when we cut one of its nerves ; probably we never 
shall know what it feels ; but it appears to me thatthe pain it feels 
then is very vague and very confused. Compared to man, whose intel- 
ligence is so clear, the inferior animals are like automatons : most of 
their acts are half involuntary. They are not deliberate acts, maturely 
reflected out, but irresistible impulsions of which the actors have im- 
perfect consciousness. ‘These animals live in a kind of dream or half 
consciousness that excludes terrible pain. Their nerves are less excit- 
able, and their brain is less susceptible of that clear perception of self 
without which pain can hardly be. 

It is not without reason that we feel little remorse in martyrizing 
an animal of low degree in the series of beings. As we descend from 
man to the plant, intelligence diminishes, consciousness becomes more 
and more confused, and therefore the sensibility to pain is more and 
more obtuse. This is only a personal opinion, and it would be impos- 
sible to give a rigorous proof of it ; but every day’s observation seems 
to confirm its reality. 

No one has a right to believe that a physiologist takes any pleasure 
in making animals suffer. For my part, I always feel a painful sensa- 


766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tion whenever it is necessary to fix a dog to the experimenting-table. 
All physiologists, whenever it is possible, try to anesthetize their vic- 
tim with chloral, morphine, chloroform, or ether. When the anestheti- 
zation is completed, the animal does not suffer, and all the experiments 
afterward made upon it are without cruelty. It is very rarely neces- 
sary to experiment upon an animal that has not been treated with an 
anesthetic ; and even in these cases it is possible, by various pro- 
cesses, to make the pain much less acute. I always endeavor to ame- 
liorate the pains of the animals I subject to experiments. Yes, I have 
caused rabbits, frogs, and dogs to suffer; but I believe that never, 
since I reached a man’s age, have I taken pleasure in inflicting suffer- 
ing upon a living being. For every animal, even the lowest, I feel 
something analogous to pity and sympathy ; and I have a right to say 
this, for there is no contradiction between such sympathy and physio- 
logical experiment.* 

Instead of developing cruelty, the practice of physiology should 
rather tend to increase in us the feeling of humanity and pity. The 
physician who has closely observed human suffering, instead of being 
hardened to it, becomes more compassionate. So the physiologists, 
who are acquainted with pain, are full of pity for suffering beings, 
and I do not hesitate to say that not one of them would be guilty of 
brutality toward an animal. It is true that they immolate dogs and 
rabbits, but that is for a superior interest ; and in their very experi- 
ments they prove their clemency by trying to save their victims from 
useless sufferings. 

In truth, if we divest ourselves of all vain sentimentality, we shall 
arrive at the conclusion that innumerable and extreme sufferings are 
already imposed by Nature upon living beings. Over the whole sur- 
face of the earth, in Borneo as in France, in the Sahara as in Lapland, 
men and animals are suffering. In the depths of all the seas, in the 
currents of all the rivers, on all the shores of all the oceans, in all the 
forests, and in all the plains, suffering and pain exist. Our object is 
‘to bring in some mitigation for all these evils, and it can not be ac- 
complished except by the aid of science, through becoming acquainted 
with the laws of life. What then, compared to such a grand result, 
are the confused groans of the unfortunate dogs we immolate from 
time to time? Indeed, we have a right to sacrifice these rare and inno- 
cent victims, for at as small a price as that we can become masters of 
living nature, and may be able to penetrate the laws of life, and to 
relieve the unfortunate of our kind.—Zranslated for the Popular Sci- 
ence Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes. 


* Tt is with great reluctance that we perform vivisections in public lectures for in- 
struction. When the question is one of scientific research, the act must be performed 
resolutely and without regard to the pain; but, whenever the purpose is to demonstrate 
before any audience a known phenomenon, the greatest reserve should be exercised in 
the employment of means that are cruel. 


FETICHISM OF THE BANTU NEGROES. 767 


FETICHISM OF THE BANTU NEGROES. 
Br MAX BUCHNER. 


HE African negroes, like all primitive peoples, are great children. 
Too much should, therefore, not be made of their mental acts. 
That wonderful system of mystic conceptions which closet theologians 
believe they can discover among them can not stand the test of serious, 
unprejudiced examination. More time and sharper acumen than many 
writers on the subject possess are needed for the formation of a valid 
idea of the religious conceptions of these people. A five-year-old girl 
playing with her doll is a better medium for studying primitive my- 
thologies than the heaviest volumes of anthropologists and ethnogra- 
phists. 

I believe that much that is said about fetich-worship rests on no 
solid foundation ; neither a kind of worship nor any serious service is 
addressed to the harmless toy we call a fetich, but only a thee: sete 
good or evil spirit is fancied to dwell within it. 

A negro, as is his habit, is sitting and thinking about nothing. 
Casually he casts his eye upon a knotted limb of strange growth that 
may bear some indistinct resemblance to a human face. Amused at 
it, he takes his knife and makes an effort to help out Nature by scratch- 
ing the nose, mouth, and eyes into plainer prominence. At last the 
thing appears so curious that he concludes he will take it home and set 
it up before his hut. It becomes his “fetich,” and grins to-day pleas- 
antly, to-morrow with a cross air, at him. To heighten the effect, he 
paints it red around the eyes, or adorns it with bright ornaments. In 
some such way as this, I believe, we may explain the origin of the first 
images of the gods, new illustrations of which we may still observe to 
be brought before us from time to time. I do not regard the process 
as a religious one, but rather as an instance of the development of the 
first idea of art. ro 

It is not, however, the pleasure of contemplating new forms that 
secures their preservation and the attention that is afterward given 
them. In the feeling of the need of some protection against evil the 
objects become associated with the events that happen to their owner, 
and endowed with a power to influence their course. Then they are 
copied, and a fixed type is established ; but the utilization of them for 
religious purposes is, in my opinion, a secondary matter. Instead of 
fetiches or idols, such objects might be called amulets or medicines. 
In the course of time great numbers of religious medicinal structures 
have been formed, all of them originating in some such way as we 
have outlined, representatives of which may be found everywhere, 
most curious figures, in the towns, in the fields, at the cross-roads, and 
in the most out-of-the way and lonesome places. If we ask what they 


768 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


are for, we shall generally receive some indefinite answer. They may 
be “for a dead man,” “to kill witches,” “battle-charms,” or “to keep 
thieves away.” Intelligent negroes will sometimes laugh in making 
such communications, as if they were ashamed at being caught indulg- 
ing in silly conceits, 

Without going into an elaborate account of African fetiches, it 
will be enough for our purpose to give a few examples that may illus- 
trate the way some of them have been developed and the purposes to 
which they are applied. The first figure represents a specimen of the 
most primitive character that may be very readily imagined to have 
originated in the way we have indicated. Between two vine-stocks 
that have been intertwined in double spirals around slender stems is 


standing, firmly set in the ground, a knotty stump that has been helped 
out into the caricature of a face. I found the original of this in a 
Luba village. Of a similar grade is Fig. 2, a round mass from a ter- 
mite’s nest, about twice the size of a man’s head, the porous fungoid 
substance of which has been set off with carved suggestions of mouth, 
nose, and eyes. This is a very common ornament of the corners of the 
manioc-fields. A fetich of a more complicated character is shown in 
Fig. 3—a little straw hut, about twenty inches high, shaped so as to 
suggest some fabulous beast. The original, which belonged to an 
Ovambo village, looked more formidable than the picture. Some dirt 
was heaped up under the middle of the tent, in which snail-shells, 
bones, and roots were found when it 
was stirred with a stick, and which 
was probably designed to represent 
the entrails of the creature. I could 

‘yw not get any explanation of the design 
je) represented in Fig. 4. We found it 
one day in a wood in Minungo-land 
—a cross-road large enough for a ten- 
pin alley, beginning near the regular path, with a kind of a gallows 
of slender sticks, and ending at a miniature hut about a yard high. 
Nothing was found in the hut besides an empty pot ; but two inter- 
linked straw rings were hanging from the cross-beam of the gallows. 
When I asked my interpreter Pedro what it was for, he replied that it 


FETICHISM OF THE BANTU NEGROES. 769 


was to catch men. I did not press him with any more questions, for I 

knew he would answer me with the first lie he could think of. 
Numerous grave-marks are characteristic of all the roads and paths 

of Angola; they are, according to the degree of civilization and the 


social importance of the deceased, either large earthern catafalques 
with towers at the corners, such as are erected by the Africo-Portu- 
guese, simple long mounds of the form everywhere used, or a little 
stone-heap. Graves of the first two classes are generally sheltered by 
a hut or roof. Graves of the last kind, which are very often the 
graves of porters that have died on the road, are frequently found 
fresh and adorned with the staff, the belt, the provision-bag, the water- 
gourd, or the cooking-pot of the dead man. The best finished cata- 
falques of earth are whitewashed and painted with pretty colored 
arabesques and flowers. Vessels in which food has been brought to 
the deceased at various times may be found scattered around the 
grave, together with burned clay figures of the most curious character. 

Sometimes the graves contain nothing but the hair and nails of the 
persons to whom they are erected ; for the man may have died on a 
journey, and have been buried among strangers. But, in order that a 
place may be provided near his home where his spirit may linger, and 
enjoy the food and drink that are regularly brought to it, one of his 
friends will cut off some of his hair and nails, and present them to the 
family to be formally buried as a symbol of the whole body, which it 
is not convenient to remove. ‘The little relics are then mourned over 
and buried just as if they were the body itself, which is, however, 
moldering far away. Such a monument was the pile of wood which 
I found near Malansh, a copy of my drawing of which is given in Fig. 
5. It may, however, be a hunter’s medicine, for that was one among 
the explanations that were given me of its purpose. Four rough- 
hewed tree-trunks served as posts to hold up the structure of logs and 
limbs and straw. In front of the structure was a carved idol, on both 

VOL, xxv.—49 


770 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


sides of which stood limbs of trees garnished with skulls and ante- 
lopes’ jaws, while near the idol lay a pot containing pieces of meat in 
a brown sauce. The corner posts and the idol were painted with 
white and red spots. 

Besides these fixed amulets are also to be reckoned in the category 

of art-works smaller toys that are worn as ornaments. Among these 
are some kinds to which superstition has attributed particular powers, 
made of antelope-horn, snail-shells, and small turtle-shells, the hollow 
parts of which are filled with a magic salve, made of coal-dust and 
palm-oil. One of the 
most potent amulets is 
the pemba, a fine, white 
clay resembling kaolin, 
which is brought from 
some distance, and 
forms an article of 
trade. It is used much 
in the same manner as 
the holy water of the 
Roman Catholics, and 
- the expression “ pem- 
ba” has a similar signifi- 
cance with our “ good- 
luck” or “blessing.” The term to “give pemba” is used to designate 
the application of the moistened substance to the arm or the breast. 
Feeble or sickly persons or beggars, who wish to accomplish an object 
with a higher personage, besmear their whole faces with it. A master, 
hunting his runaway slaves, paints with it a white ring around his right 
eye, in the belief that he will thereby be able to see more sharply. 
_ Although the negroes possess no real writing, they seem to have 
the beginning of it in the shape of tally-sticks and proprietary marks. 
Creditors and debtors are accustomed to note the number of objects 
of value, pieces of cloth, etc., on sticks ; and traveling merchants and 
porters perpetuate the number of their night-camps on their walking- 
canes, on which important events are also emphasized by larger or dif- 
ferently shaped marks. If a gourd of unusual size or beauty is grow- 
ing anywhere, the owner of it cuts a peculiar mark on it, by the aid 
of the mysterious influence attached to which he is able to keep it as 
his own. Some of the best designed proprietary marks we observed 
‘are represented in Fig. 6. 

The musical capacity of the negroes is higher than their aptitude 
for imitative art. The most complicated trumpet-signals can not be 
‘given more clearly and correctly than is done by the black soldiery of 
Angola. The melodies of these Africans are very touching and reso- 
nant. The antiphone of a large file of porters going out in the 
morning was a real treat to my otherwise little appreciative ears. It 


FETICHISM OF THE BANTU NEGROES. 771 


usually began with a lively recitative by the best-voiced man of the 
company, with which the others fell in in harmonious refrain. The 
simple, endlessly repeated text was constantly taken up anew, and 
related to a fact not very interesting in itself: “We are carrying 
Souza’s goods to Kulamushita, cloth, pearls, powder, 
and brass wire ; Souza is rich, Souza will give us good 
schnapps.” Refrain: “Yes, Souza will give us good 
schnapps.” Regular songs do not appear to exist, and 
the airs that are sung of evenings over the camp-fires 
are of the same improvised character. 

Besides his voice, the negro makes music with what- 
ever will make a noise—two sticks, old fruit-cans, iron 
articles, or stones. He also has a number of musical 
instruments that are not to be despised, the best of 
which, the mazximba, would not be unworthy to be 
called a clavier. 

Besides music and songs, the evening circles are 
enlivened with stories of adventure and occasional ani- 
mal fables, which I am not able to recall. One story, 
which was told me by a mulatto woman in Malansh, 
was evidently an adaptation of a Portuguese nurse’s 


story. In these tales the interposition of an interval 3 


between two events is expressed in a very curious man- 
ner, as, “ And now he waited a month, r-r-r-r-r-. . . 
and he waited another month, r-r-r-r-r,” each trilling 
with the tongue, which generally lasted about half a 
minute, answering for the designated interval. 

There is not much to be said about the scientific 


conceptions of the negroes. Most of our clews to their OO 
character are derived from their verbal expressions. a 
Among the heavenly bodies they distinguish the sun — 


and moon, the larger planets, and the fixed stars, the 
latter only in general, without taking consideration of 
individual stars or particular groups. The larger plan- 

ets are called wives of the moon, whence it proceeds , ozs 
that chaste Luna is regarded asa man. Little use is 
made of the rising and setting of the sun to express di- 
rection, which is usually described as “ up” or “down,” 
according to the course of the streams. 

Of minerals, the natives distinguish between stone 
and earth, and the latter as dry (sand) and moist (mud). 
Of earths, they speak of red earth, or laterite, and white or gray earth, 
alluvium. Bog-iron ore, which is abundant, is “the great stone.” Among 
the metals, copper is known ; and the word signifying copper is in some 
of the dialects applied to the moon. Their vocabulary is rich in names 
of animals and plants. Not one of the plants growing in the plains is 


Qa 
Fig. 6, 


772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


without its name, but the flora of the ravines is less well provided for. 
Separate class-names are, however, given to the broad-leaved ever- 
green vegetation of the ravines and the vegetation of the plains, as a 
whole. Swamps are called “bad brooks.” Carnivorous animals, the 
lion, the leopard, and the hyena, and night-birds, are regarded as evil 
spirits or magicians. In the stories, the lion is always spoken of as 
“Mr. Lion.” Three color-names are known, to distinguish between 
white or light colors, blue or dark ones, and red, green being consid- 
ered a variety of red. Notwithstanding this poverty of names, their 
conceptions of colors appear to be as diversified and distinct as those 
of other men. ‘They have no words for sweet and sour, but whatever 
tastes to suit them is “piquant.” They are very ingenious in the 
invention of nicknames and descriptive terms, which have generally 
some direct reference to peculiarities in the appearance, history, or 
character of the persons to whom they are applied. Some of the in- 
stances of their coinages in this category, which I met in my travels, 
were comical.—TZranslated for the Popular Setence Monthly from 
Das Ausland. 


FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION. 
By JOSIAH PARSONS COOKE. 


Pp a former article published in this “Monthly” * I endeavored to 
make prominent the essential difference between a system of edu- 
cation based on scientific culture and the generally prevailing system 
which is based on linguistic training. I maintained that there is not 
only a difference of subject-matter, but a difference of method, a differ- 
ence of spirit, and a difference of aim; and I argued that, as the condi- 
tions of success under the two modes of culture are so unlike, there 
was no danger, even with the amplest freedom, that the study of the 
physical sciences would supplant or seriously interfere with linguistic 
studies. But, although the drift of my argument was plain, the pas- 
sage referred to has been quoted in order to show that not only Greek, 
but also all linguistic study, would be neglected by the students of 
natural science as soon as it ceased to be useful in their profession ; 
and my attempt to point out a basis of agreement and co-operation 
has been made the occasion of reiterating the extreme doctrine that 
there can be no liberal education not based on the study of language. 
It has been thus assumed that scientific culture can not supply such a 
basis, and in this whole discussion the value of the study of Nature in 
education, except in so far as this study may yield a fund of useful 
knowledge, has been entirely ignored by the advocates of the old sys- 
tem. Not only has there been no recognition of the value of the study 


* November, 1883. 


FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION. 773 


of material forms and physical phenomena as a mode of liberal cult- 
ure, but it has been assumed throughout that—to use the now familiar 
form of words—“no sense for conduct” and “no sense for beauty” 
can be acquired except through that special type of linguistic training 
that has so long limited elementary education. Those who demand a 
place for science-culture certainly have not shown the same contemptu- 
ous spirit ; and I venture to suggest that, if classical students were as 
familiar with the methods of natural science as are the students of Na- 
ture with philological and archeological study, they would be more 
charitable to those who differ with them on this subject. 

There are, of course, two distinct elements in a liberal education : 
the one the acquisition of useful knowledge, the other a training or 
culture of the intellectual faculties. The first should be made as broad 
as possible, the second in the present state of knowledge must unfor- 
tunately be greatly restricted. While in the passage referred to I have 
claimed that, in a system of education based upon science, languages 
should be studied simply as tools, Mr. Matthew Arnold, in a lecture 
which he has recently repeatedly delivered in this country, and whose 
text was the phrases I have already quoted, has claimed that, although 
scholars must use the results of science as so much literary material, 
they need have nothing to do with its methods. In my view, both 
positions are essentially sound. It has been said that the Greek de- 
partments in our colleges could do without the scientific students much 
better than scientific scholars could do without Greek, and this remark 
admits of an evident rejoinder. Certainly in this age no professional 
man can afford to be ignorant of the results of science, and he will 
constantly be led into error if he does not know something of its 
methods. It is perfectly well known that very few of the investiga- 
tors, who have coined the scientific terms derived from the Greek, so 
often referred to, could read a page of Herodotus or Homer in the 
original ; and it is equally true that Mr. Matthew Arnold, and his com- 
peer, Lord Tennyson, who have shown such large knowledge of the 
results of science, could not interpret the complex relations in which 
the simplest phenomena of Nature are presented to the observer. ‘The 
greater number of the students of Nature can only know the beauties 
of Greek literature as they are feebly presented in translations, and so 
the greater number of literary students can only know of the wonders 
of Nature as they are inadequately described in popular works on sci- 
ence. If it requires years of study to enable a student to master the 
meaning of a Greek sentence, can we expect that in less time a student 
shall be able to unravel the intricacies of natural phenomena? It has 
been said that no Greek scholarship is possible for a student who be- 
gins the study of that language in college. Is it supposed that scien- 
tific scholarship is any more possible under such conditions ? 

In order to teach successfully the results of science to college stu- 
dents, I have no desire that they should have any preliminary prepara- 


774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tion. It has been my duty for more than thirty years to present the ele- 
ments of chemistry to the youngest class in one of our colleges, and I 
have never had any reason to complain of their want of interest in the 
subject. Indeed, I regard it as a great privilege to be the first to point 
out to enthusiastic young men the wonderful vistas which modern sci- 
ence has opened to our view. So far as their temporary interest is 
concerned, I should greatly prefer that they had never studied the sub- 
ject before coming to college. But even enthusiastic interest in popu- 
lar lectures is not scientific culture. A few men in every class always 
have been, and will continue to be, so far interested as to make the 
cultivation of science the business of their lives. But such men always 
labor under the disadvantages resulting from a want of early training, 
and these obstacles repel a large number whose natural tastes and 
abilities would otherwise have fitted them for a scientific calling. The 
change from one system of culture to another, at the age of eighteen, has 
all the disadvantages of changing a profession late in life. Neverthe- 
less, the college will always continue to educate a number of men of 
science in this way. Most of these men become teachers, and no one 
questions that their previous linguistic training makes them all the 
more forcible expositors of scientific truth. It is not for such persons 
that I desire any change. I am, however, most anxious that the uni- 
versity should do its part in educating that important class of men 
who are to direct the industries and develop the material resources of 
our country. Such men can be led to appreciate, and will give time 
to acquire, an elegant use of language, but they will not devote four 
or five years of their lives to purely linguistic training, and, if we do 
not open our doors to them, they will be forced to content themselves 
with such education as high-schools, or, at best, technical schools can 
offer. But, while they will thus lose the broader knowledge and 
larger scope which a university education affords, the university will 
also lose their sympathy and powerful support. Such students are 
now wholly repelled from the university, and, under a more liberal 
policy, they would form an important and clear addition to our num- 
bers, and—as I have said in another place—without diminishing by a 
single man the number of those who come to college through the clas- 
sical schools. 

But there is another class of young men with whom a system of 
education based on the study of Nature would, as I am convinced, be 
more successful than the prevailing system of linguistic culture: I refer 
to those who now come to college, some of them through the influence 
of family tradition, some of them through the expectation of social ad- 
vantage, and a still larger number on account of the attractions of col- 
lege-life. Many of these are men who, with poor verbal memories, or 
want of aptitude for recognizing abstract relations, can never become 
classical scholars with any exertion that they can be expected to make, 
but who can often be educated with success through their perceptive 


i 


FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION. 775 


faculties. These men are the dunces of the classical department, they 
add nothing to its strength, and in every classical school are a hin- 
drance to the better students; but some of them may become able 
and useful men, if their interest can be aroused in objective realities. 
Of our present students, it is only this class that the proposed changes 
would really affect. Those who have tastes and aptitudes for linguistic 
studies would continue to come through the old channels, and of such 
only can classical scholars be made. 

I know very well it is said that, although the classical department 
would be glad to be rid of this undesirable element, yet the change 
could not be made without endangering the continuance of the study 
of Greek in many of our classical schools. But can the university be 
justified in continuing a requisition which is recognized to be opposed 
to the best interests of an important class of its patrons ? And certainly 
it is not necessary to protect the study of Greek in this country by 
any such questionable means. I have a great deal more faith myself 
in the value of classical scholarship than many of my classical col- 
leagues appear to possess. Never has one word of disparagement 
been heard from me. I honor true classical scholarship as much as I 
despise the counterfeit. To maintain that the class of classical dunces, 
to whom I have referred, appreciate the beauties of classical literature 
or derive any real advantage from the study is, in my opinion, to main- 
tain a manifest absurdity. Fully as much do the convicts in a tread- 
mill enjoy the beauties of the legal code under which they are com- 
pelled to work ; and if, as Chief-Justice Coleridge has recently main- 
tained, in his speech at New Haven, classical scholarship is the best 
preparation for the highest distinctions in church and state, certain- 
_ly its continuance does not depend on the minimum requisition in 
Greek of this university.* The ‘‘new culture,” although a much 
“younger industry,” does not ask for any such artificial protection. 
It only asks for an opportunity to show what it can accomplish, and 
this opportunity it has never yet had. Even if the largest liberty were 
granted, those who seek to promote a genuine education, based on natu- 
ral science, would labor under the greatest disadvantages. Not only 
is the apparatus required for the new culture far more expensive than 
that of an ordinary classical school, but also more personal attention 
must be given to each scholar, and the ordinary labor-saving methods 
of the class-room are wholly inapplicable. In the face of such obsta- 
cles as these conditions present, the new culture can advance only 
very gradually ; and, amid the rivalry of the old system, it can only 
succeed by maintaining a very high degree of efficiency. The new way 
will certainly not offer any easier mode of admission to college than the 
old ; and when it is remembered that the classical system has the con- 
trol of all the endowed secondary schools, the prestige of past success, 


* This article was written and read to the Faculty of Harvard College shortly after 
Lord Coleridge’s visit to the United States, in the autumn of 1883. 


776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


and the support of the most powerful social influence, it is difficult to 
understand on what the opposition to the free development of the 
“new education” is based. Are not gentlemen, who have been talking 
of a revolution in education, taking counsel of their fears rather than 
of their better judgment ; and are they not forgetting that the teachers 
of natural science have the same interest in upholding the principles 
of sound education as have their classical colleagues? Certainly there 
can be no question that, in the future as in the past, they will ever 
seek to maintain the integrity of all the great departments of the uni- 
versity unimpaired. It has happened before this that the judgment, 
even of intelligent men, has been warped by their class relations or 
supposed interests ; but as, in this country, the learned class has no 
control of government patronage, we may at least hope that the dis- 
cussion of the Greek question will never assume with us the great 
bitterness that a similar controversy has aroused in Germany. 

There has been a great deal said in this discussion about the “ hu- 
manities,” and it has been assumed that, while the analysis of the 
Greek verb is “ humanizing,” the analysis of the phenomena of Nature 
is “materializing.” I can discover nothing humanizing in the one or 
the other, except through the spirit with which they are studied, and I 
know by experience that the spirit with which the study of the Latin 
and Greek grammars is often enforced is most demoralizing. Those 
who have been born with a facility for language may laugh at this 
statement ; but a boy who has been held up to ridicule for the want 
of a good verbal memory, denied him by his Creator, long remem- 
bers the depressing effect produced, if not the malignity aroused, 
by the cruelty. Many are the men, now eminent in literature as well 
as science, who have experienced the tyranny of a classical school, so 
graphically described in the autobiography of Anthony Trollope ; and 
many are the boys who might have been highly educated if their per- 
ceptive faculties had been cultivated, whose career as scholars has 
been cut short by the same tyranny. 

Again, a great deal has been said about specialization at an early 
age, as if the study of Nature were specializing while the study of 
Latin metres and Greek accents was liberalizing. But how could spe- 
cialization be more strikingly illustrated than by a system which limits 
a boy’s attention between the ages of twelve and twenty to linguistic 
studies to the almost entire exclusion of a knowledge of that universe 
in which his life is to be passed, and which so limits his intellectual 
training that his powers of observation are left undeveloped, his judg- 
ments in respect to material relations unformed, and even his natural 
conceptions of truth distorted? Now, although a special culture which 
has such mischievous results as these may be necessary in order to 
command that power over language which marks the highest literary 
excellence, and although a university should foster this culture by all 
legitimate means, yet to enforce it upon every boy who aspires to be 


FURTHER REMARKS ON THE GREEK QUESTION. 777 


a scholar, whatever may be his natural talents, is as cruel as the Chi- 
nese practice of cramping the feet of women in order to conform to a 
traditional ideal of beauty. Indeed, an instructor in natural science 
has very much the same difficulty in training classical scholars to ob- 
serve that a dancing-master would have in teaching a class of Chinese 
girls to waltz. 

Again, it has been said that while the opportunities for scientific 
culture in college are ample, no one will oppose such a modification of 
the requisitions for admission as the conditions of this culture demand, 
provided only we label the product of such culture with a descriptive 
name. Call the product of your scientific culture Bachelors of Science, 
we have been told, and you may arrange the requisites of admission 
to your own courses as you choose. I am forced to say that this argu- 
ment, however specious, is neither ingenuous nor charitable. If you 
will label the product of a purely linguistic culture with an equally 
descriptive name ; if, following the French usage, you will call such 
graduates Bachelors of Letters, we shall not object to the term Bach- 
elors of Science ; or, without making so great an innovation, I, for 
one, should have no objection to a distinction between Bachelors of 
Arts in Letters and Bachelors of Arts in Science. But it is perfectly 
well understood that in this community the degree of Bachelor of 
Arts is for most men the one essential condition of admission to the 
noble fraternity of scholars, to what has been called the “ Guild of the 
Learned.” To refuse this degree to a certain class of our graduates 
is to exclude them from such associations and from the privileges 
which they afford ; and this is just what is intended. Hence I say 
that the argument is not ingenuous, and it is not charitable because it 
implies that a class of men who profess to love the truth as their lives 
are seeking to appear under false colors. To cite examples from my 
own profession only I have always maintained that such men as Davy, 
Dalton, and Faraday were as truly learned, as highly cultivated, and as 
capable of expressing their thoughts in appropriate language, as the 
most eminent of their literary compeers, and I shall continue to main- 
tain this proposition before our American community, and I have no 
question that sooner or later my claim will be allowed, and the doors 
of the “Guild of the Learned” will be opened to all scholars who 
have acquired by cultivation the same power which these great men 
held in such a pre-eminent degree by gift of Nature. 

Lastly, Iam persuaded that in a large body politic like this it is 
unwise, and in the long run futile, to attempt to protect any special 
form of culture at the expense of another. If one member suffers, all 
the members suffer with it ; and what is for the interest of the whole 
is in the long run always for the interest of every part. I would wel- 
come every form of culture which has vindicated its efficiency and its 
value, and in so doing I feel that I should best promote the interests 
of the special department which I have in charge. 


778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 
By W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS. 


XXXVI.—DIET FOR THE GOUTY. 


CORRESPONDENT from Hereford refers to the concluding 

paragraph of my last paper “as too valuable to let slip, without 
making practical use of it,” and, accordingly, asks for further infor- 
mation concerning the salts that should be contained in our food, and 
“in what other form cana poor mortal obtain them.” 

As the question may have presented itself to many other readers, 
I will answer it here, especially as I can speak from practical expe- 
rience of the miseries that may be escaped by understanding and 
applying it. I inherit what is called a “lithic-acid diathesis.” My 
father and his brother were martyrs to rheumatic gout, and died early 
in consequence. I had a premonitory attack of gout at the age of 
twenty-five, and other warning symptoms at other times, but have kept 
the enemy at bay during nearly forty years by simply understanding 
that this lithic acid (stony acid) combines with potash, forming thus 
a soluble salt, which is safely excreted. Otherwise it is deposited here 
or there, producing gout, rheumatism, stone, gravel, and other dread- 
fully painful diseases, which are practically incurable when the de- 
posit is fairly established. By effecting the above-named combination 
in the blood, the deposition is prevented. | 

The potash required for the purpose exists in several conditions : 
First, in its uncombined state as caustic potash. This is poison, for 
the simple reason that it combines so vigorously with organic matter 
that it would decompose the digestive organs themselves if presented 
to them. The lower carbonate is less caustic, the bicarbonate nearly, 
but not quite, neutral. Even this, however, should not be taken as 
Sood, because it is capable of combining with the acid constituents of | 
the gastric juice. 

The proper compounds to be used are those which correspond to 
the salts existing in the juices of vegetables and flesh—viz., compounds 
of potash with organic acids, such as tartaric acid, which forms the 
potash salt of the grape, such as citric acid, with which potash is 
combined in lemons and oranges ; malic acid, with which it is com- 
bined in apples and many other fruits ; the natural acids of vegetables 
generally ; lactic acid in milk, ete. 

All these acids, and many others of similar origin, are composed of 
carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, held together with such feeble affinity 
that they are easily dissociated or decomposed by heat. This may be 
shown by heating some cream of tartar or tartaric acid on a strip of 
metal or glass. It will become carbonized to a cinder, like other or- 
ganic matter. If the heat is raised sufficiently, this cinder will all burn 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 779 


_ away to carbonic acid and water in the case of the pure acid, or will 
leave carbonate of potash in the case of cream of tartar or other potash 
salt. 

Unless I am mistaken, this represents violently what occurs gradu- 
ally and mildly in the human body, which is in a continuous state of 
slow combustion so long asit is alive. The organic acids of the pot- 
ash salts suffer slow combustion, give off their excess of carbonic acid 
and water to be breathed out, evaporated, and ejected, leaving behind 
their potash, which combines with the otherwise stony lithic-acid tor- 
mentor just when and where he comes into separate existence by the 
organic actions which effect the above-described slow combustion. 

If we take potash in combination with a mineral acid, such as the 
sulphuric, nitric, or hydrochloric, no such decomposition is possible ; 
the bonds uniting the elements of the mineral acid are too strong to 
be sundered by the mild chemistry of the living body, and the mineral 
acid, if separated from its potash base, would be most mischievous, as 
it precipitates the lithic acid in its worst form. 

For this reason, all free mineral acids are poisons to those who 
have a lithic-acid diathesis ; they may even create it where it did not 
previously exist. Hence the iniquity of cheapening the manufacture 
of lemonade, ginger-beer, etc., by using dilute sulphuric or hydro- 
chloric acid as a substitute for citric or tartaric acid. I shall presently 
come to the cookery of wines, and have something to say about the 
mineral acids used in producing the choicer qualities of some very 
“dry,” high-priced samples that, according to my view of the subject, 
have caused the operations of lithotomy and lithotrity to be included 
among the luxuries of the rich. 

It should be understood that, when I recommended the use of bi- 
carbonate of potass for the solution of casein, all these principles were 
kept in view, including the objection to the bicarbonate itself. In the 
case of the cheese the quantity recommended was based on an esti- 
mate of the quantity of lactic acid existing in the cheese and capable 
of leaving the casein to go over to the potash. In the case of the peas 
the quantity is difficult to estimate, owing to its variability. The more 
correct determination of such quantities is among the objects of fur- 
ther research, and which I alluded to in my last. 

Speaking generally it is not to the laboratory of the chemist that 
we should go for our potash salts, but to the laboratory of nature, and 
more especially to that of the vegetable kingdom. They exist in the 
green parts of all vegetables. This is illustrated by the manufacture 
of commercial potash from the ashes of the twigs and leaves of timber- 
trees. The more succulent the vegetable the greater the quantity of 
potash it contains, though there are some minor exceptions to this. 
As I have already stated, we extract and waste a considerable propor- 
tion of these salts when we boil vegetables and throw away the potage, 
which our wiser and more thrifty neighbors add to their every-day 


780 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


ménu. When we eat raw vegetables, as in salads, we obtain all their 
potash. 

Fruits generally contain important quantities of potash salts, and 
it is upon these especially that the possible victims of lithic acid should 
rely. Lemons and grapes ‘contain them most abundantly. Those who 
can not afford to buy these as articles of daily food may use cream of 
tartar, which, when genuine, is the natural salt of the grape, thrown 
down in the manner I shall describe when on the subject of the cook- 
ery of wines. 

At the risk of being accused of presumption, I must here protest, 
as a chemist, against one of “the fallacies of the faculty,” or of cer- 
tain members of the faculty, viz., that of indiscriminately prohibiting 
to gouty and rheumatic patients the use of acids or anything having 
an acid taste. 

This has probably arisen from experience of the fact that mineral 
acids do serious mischief, and that alkaline carbonate of potash affords 
relief. ‘The difference between the organic acids, which are decom- 
posed inthe manner I have described, and the fixed composition of 
the mineral acids does not appear to have been sufficiently studied by 
those who prohibit fruit and vegetables on account of their acidity. 
It must never be forgotten that nearly all the organic compounds of 
potash, as they exist in vegetables and fruit, are acid. It may be de- 
sirable, in some cases, to add a little bicarbonate of potash to neutral- 
ize this excess of acid and increase the potash-supply. I have found 
it advantageous to throw a half-saltspoonful of this into a tumbler of 
water containing the juice of a lemon, and have even added to it 
stewed or baked rhubarb and gooseberries. In these it froths like 
whipped cream, and diminishes the demand for sugar, an excess of 
which appears to be mischievous to those who require much potash, 

I must conclude this sermon on the potash text by adding that it 
is quite possible to take an excess of this solvent. Such excess is de- 
pressing ; its action is what is called “lowering.” I will not venture 
upon an explanation of the rationale of this lowering, or discuss the 
question of whether or not the blood is made watery, as sometimes 
stated. 

Intimately connected with this part of my subject is another vege- 
table principle that I have not. yet named. This is vegetable jelly, 
or pectin, the jelly of fruits, of turnips, carrots, parsnips, etc. Fremy . 
has named it pectose. It is so little changed by cookery that I need 
say little about it beyond stating the fact that an acid may be sepa- 
rated from it which has been named pectic acid, the properties and 
artificial compounds of which appear to me to suggest the theory 
that the natural jelly of fruits largely consists of pectites of potash 
or soda or lime. We all know the appearance and flavor of currant- 
jelly, apple-jelly, etc., which are poeRDoned of natural vegetable jelly 
plus sugar. , 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 781 


The separation of these jellies is an operation of cookery, and one 
that deserves more attention than it receives. I shall never forget 
the rahat lakoum which I once had the privilege of eating in the 
kitchen of the seraglio of Stamboul, in the absence at the summer 
palace of the sultana and the other ladies for whom it was prepared. 
Its basis was the pure pectose of many fruits, the inspissated juices of 
grapes, peaches, pineapples, and I know not what others. The sher- 
bet was similar, but liquid. Well may they obey the Prophet and 
abstain from the grosser concoctions that we call wine when such am- 
brosial nectar as this is supplied in its place! It is to imperial tokay 
as tokay is to table-beer ! 

The “lumps of delight” sold by our confectioners are imitations 
made of flavored gelatine. Similar substitutes are sold in Constanti- 
nople. The same as regards the sherbet. 

I conclude this part of my subject by re-echoing Mr. Gladstone’s 
advocacy of the extension of fruit-culture. We shamefully neglect 
the best of all food, in eating and drinking solittle fruit. As regards 
cooked fruit, I say jam for the million, jelly for the luxurious, and 
juice for all. With these in abundance, the abolition of alcohol will 
follow as a necessary result of natural nausea. 


_ XXXVIL—COUNT RUMFORD AND THE BAVARIAN BEGGARS, 


I must not leave the subject of vegetable cookery without describ- 
ing Count Rumford’s achievements in feeding the paupers, rogues, and 
vagabonds of:-Munich. An account of this is the more desirable, from 
the fact that the “soup” which formed the basis of his dietary is still 
misunderstood in this country, for reasons that I shall presently state. 

After reorganizing the Bavarian army, not only as regards military 
discipline, but in the feeding, clothing, education, and useful employ- 
ment of the men, in order to make them good citizens as well as good 
soldiers, he attacked a still more difficult problem—that of removing 
from Bavaria the scandal and burden of the hordes of beggars and 
thieves which had become intolerable. He tells us that “the number 
of itinerant beggars of both sexes, and all ages, as well foreigners as 
natives, who strolled about the country in all directions, levying con- 
tributions from the industrious inhabitants, stealing and robbing, and 
leading a life of indolence and most shameless debauchery, was quite 
incredible”; and further, that “these detestable vermin swarmed every- 
where, and not only their impudence and clamorous importunity were 
without any bounds, but they had recourse to the most diabolical acts, 
and most horrid crimes, in the prosecution of their infamous trade. 
Young children were stolen from their parents by these wretches, 
and their eyes put out, or their tender limbs broken and distorted, in 
order, by exposing them thus maimed, to excite the pity and commis- 
eration of the public.” He gives further particulars of their trading 
upon the misery of their own children, and their organization to obtain 


782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


alms by systematic intimidation. Previous attempts to cure the evil 
had failed, and the public had lost all faith in further projects, and 
therefore no support was to be expected for Rumford’s scheme. 
“ Aware of this,” he says, “I took my measures accordingly. To con- 
vince the public that the scheme was feasible, I determined first, by a 
great exertion, to carry it into complete execution, and then to ask 
them to support it.” 

He describes the military organization by which he distributed the 
army throughout the country districts to capture all the strolling pro- 
vincial beggars, and how, on January 1, 1790, he bagged all the beg- 
gars of Munich in less than an hour by means of a well-organized civil 
and military battue, the New-Year’s-Day being the great festival when 
all the beggars went abroad to enforce their customary black-mail 
upon the industrious section of the population. Though very inter- 
esting, I must not enter upon these details, but can not help stepping 
a little aside from my proper subject to quote his weighty words on: 
the ethical principles upon which he proceeded. He says that “with 
persons of this description, it is easy to be conceived that precepts, 
admonitions, and punishments would be of little avail. But, where 
precepts fail, habits may sometimes be successful. To make vicious 
and abandoned people happy, it has generally been supposed necessary, 
Jirst, to make them virtuous. But why not reverse this order? Why 
not make them first happy and then virtuous? If happiness and vir- 
tue be inseparable, the end will as certainly be attained by one 
method as by the other; and it is most undoubtedly much easier to 
contribute to the happiness and comfort of persons in a state of pov- 
erty and misery than, by admonitions and punishments, to improve 
their morals.” : 

He applied these principles to his miserable material with complete 
success, and referring to the result exclaims, “ Would to God that my 
success might encourage others to follow my example!” Further ex- 
amination of his proceedings shows that, in order to follow such exam- 
ple, a knowledge of first principles and a determination to carry them 
out in bold defiance of vulgar ignorance, general prejudice, and polite 
sneering, are necessary. 

Having captured the beggars thus cleverly, he proceeded to carry 
out the above-stated principle, by taking them to a large building 
already prepared, and where “everything was done that could be de- 
vised to make them really comfortable.” The first condition of such 
comfort, he maintains, is cleanliness, and his dissertation on this, 
though written so long ago, might be inscribed in letters of gold over 
the portals of our Health Exhibition of to-day. 

Describing how he carried out his principles, he says of the pris- 
oners thus captured: “Most of them had been used to living in the 
most miserable hovels, in the midst of vermin and every kind of filthi- 
ness, or to sleep in the streets, and under the hedges, half naked and 


THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY, 783, 


exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. A large and commodi- 
ous building, fitted up in the neatest and most comfortable manner, 
was now provided for their reception. In this agreeable retreat they 
found spacious and elegant apartments, kept with the most scrupulous 
neatness; well warmed in winter, and well lighted; a good, warm 
dinner every day, gratis, cooked and served up with all possible atten- 
tion to order and cleanliness ; materials and utensils for those that 
were able to work ; masters gratis for those who required instruction ; 
the most generous pay, in money, for all the labor performed ; and the 
kindest usage from every person, from the highest to the lowest, be- 
longing to the establishment. Here in this asylum for the indigent 
and unfortunate no ill-usage, no harsh language is permitted. During 
five years that the establishment has existed, not a blow has been given 
to any one, not even to a child by his instructor.” | 

This appears like the very expensive scheme of a benevolent Uto- 
pian ; but, to set my readers at rest on this point, I will anticipate a 
little by stating that, although at first some expense was incurred, 
all this was finally repaid, and, at the end of six years, there remained 
a net profit of one hundred thousand florins “after expenses of every 
kind, salaries, wages, repairs, etc., had been deducted.” 

I must not dwell upon his devices for gradually inveigling the lazy 
creatures into habits of industry, for he understood human nature too 
well to adopt the jailer’s theory, which assumes that every able-bodied 
man can do a day’s work daily, in spite of previous habits. Rum- 
ford’s patients became industrious ultimately, but were not made so 
at once. 

This development of industry was one of the elements of financial 
and moral success, and the next in importance was the economy of the 
commissariat, which depended on Rumford’s skillful cookery of the 
cheapest viands, rendering them digestible, nutritious, and palatable. 
Had he adopted the dietary of an English workhouse or an English 
prison, his financial success would have been impossible, and his pa- 
tients would have been no better fed, nor better able to work. 

The staple food was what he calls a “soup,” but I find, on follow- 
ing out his instructions for making it, that I obtain a porridge rather 
than a soup. He made many experiments, and says: “I constantly 
found that the richness or quality of a soup depended more upon a 
proper choice of the ingredients, and a proper management of the fire 
in the combination of these ingredients, than upon the quantity of 
solid nutritious matter employed ; much more upon the art and skill 
of the cook than upon the sum laid out in the market.” 

Our vegetarian friends will be interested in learning that at first he 
used meat in the soup provided for the beggars, but gradually omitted 
it, and the change was unnoticed by those who ate, and no difference 
was observable as regards its nutritive value. 

In 1790 little, or rather nothing, was known of the chemistry of 


784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


food. Oxygen had been discovered only sixteen years before, and 
chemical analysis, as now understood, was an unknown art. In spite 
of this, Rumford selected as the basis of his soup just that proximate 
element which we now know to contain, bulk for bulk, more nutritive 
matter than any other that exists either in the animal or vegetable 
kingdom, viz., casein. He not only selected this, but he combined it 
with those other constituents of food which our highest refinements of 
modern practical chemistry and physiology have proved to be exactly 
what are required to supplement the casein and constitute a complete 
dietary. By selecting the cheapest form of casein and the cheapest 
sources of the other constituents, he succeeded in supplying the beg- 
gars with good hot dinners daily at the cost of one halfpenny each. 
The cost of the mess for the Bavarian soldiers under his command 
was rather more, viz., twopence daily, three farthings of this being 
devoted to pure luxuries, such as beer, etc. The details of the means 
by which he achieved these notable results will be stated in my next. 


THE ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 
By M. ALPHONSE DE CANDOLLE.* 


A serene traditions of the ancient peoples, embellished by the poets, 
have commonly attributed the first steps in agriculture and the 
introduction of useful plants to some divinity, or at least to some 
great emperor or inca. Reflection teaches us that this is not probable, 
and the observation of the agricultural efforts among the savages of 
our own age indicates that the real facts in the ease are quite differ- 
ent. Generally, in the progressive steps that lead to civilization the 
beginnings are weak, obscure, and narrow. ‘There are reasons why 
this should be so in agricultural and horticultural initiatives. There 
are many gradations between the custom of gathering fruits, seeds, or 
roots in the field and that of regularly cultivating the plants which 
yield such products. A family may scatter seeds around its home, and 
the next year seek the same product in the forest. Some fruit-trees 
may be growing around a house, and we not know whether they have 
been planted there, or the hut has been built near them for convenience 
of access to them. Wars and hunting often interrupt efforts at culti- 
vation. Rivalries and jealousies may make one tribe slow in imitat- 
ing another. If some great personage ordains the cultivation of a 
plant and institutes some ceremony in demonstration of its utility, it 
is probably after obscure persons have spoken of it and successful 
experiments have been made upon it. Previous to such demonstra- 
tions adapted to impress the multitude, a shorter or longer period of 


* From his new book, “ The Origin of Cultivated Plants,” recently published in Paris. 


THE ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 785 


local and ephemeral trials must have passed. Determining influences 
were needed to incite these trials, to secure their renewal, and bring 
them to success. We can easily understand what they were. 

The first thing necessary was to have within reach some plant 
offering qualities desirable to all men. The most backward savages 
are acquainted with the plants of their own country ; but the Austra- 
lians and Patagonians are examples to show that, if they do not judge 
them productive and easy to raise, they do not think of putting them 
under cultivation. Other conditions are quite evident : a climate not 
too rigorous ; in hot countries, freedom from too long drought ; some 
degree of security and fixedness ; and, last, a pressing necessity result- 
ing from failure of resources in fishing, hunting, or the production of 
the nutritious fruits of native plants, such as the chestnut, the date, 
the banana, or the bread-fruit. When men can live without working, 
that is what they prefer. Besides, the element of chance in hunting 
and fishing tempts primitive men—and some civilized ones too—more 
than do the difficult and regular labors of agriculture. To return to 
the species which savages may be disposed to cultivate. They find 
them sometimes in their own country, but frequently they receive 
them from neighboring people who are more favored by natural con- 
ditions than they, or have already entered upon some degree of civil- 
ization. Unless a people, is cantoned in an island or in some place 
difficult of access, it will speedily receive those plants discovered else- 
where whose advantageous qualities are evident, and this will divert 
them from the cultivation of the inferior species of their own coun- 
try. History teaches us that wheat, maize, the yam, several species 
of the genus Panicum, tobacco, and other plants—particularly annual 
ones—became widely diffused before the historical period. These 
good species encountered and arrested the timid efforts which might 
have been made here and there with less productive or less agreeable 
plants. In our own days, we see, in different countries, wheat taking 
the place of rye, maize preferred to buckwheat, and many grains, vege- 
tables, and economical plants falling into neglect because other spe- 
cies, often brought from a distance, offer more advantages. The dis- 
proportion in value is, however, less between plants already cultivated 
and improved than formerly existed between cultivated plants and 
quite wild ones. Selection—that grand factor which Darwin has had 
the merit so fortunately to introduce into science—plays an impor- 
tant part when agriculture is once established ; but in every period, 
and especially in the beginning, the quality of the species is more im- 
portant than the selection of varieties. 

The various causes which favor or oppose the beginnings of agri- 
culture will explain why some regions have been for thousands of 
years populated by cultivators, while others are still inhabited by 
wandering tribes. Rice and several legumes in Southern Asia, bar- 
ley and wheat in Mesopotamia and Egypt, several grain-plants in 

VOL, xxv.—50 


786 THH POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Africa, maize, the potato, the yam, and the manioc in America, were 
evidently easily and soon cultivated under the inducements offered by 
their obvious good qualities and favorable climatical conditions, Cen- 
ters were thus formed, and hence the most useful species were dif- 
fused. In the north of Asia, Europe, and America, the temperature 
is unfavorable, and the indigenous plants are sparsely productive ; but, 
as the resources of hunting and fishing are available, the introduction 
of agriculture could be delayed, and the people could do without the 
valuable species of the South without suffering much. It was other- 
wise in Australia, Patagonia, and Southern Africa. The plants of the 
temperate regions of our hemisphere could not reach these countries © 
on account of the distance, and those of the intertropical zone were 
excluded from them by the excessive drought or the absence of high 
temperatures. At the same time the native species were miserable 
in. quality. It was not want of intelligence or of security alone that 
prevented the inhabitants from cultivating them. Their nature also 
discouraged the effort to such an extent that the Europeans, during 
the hundred years they have been in these countries, have only at- 
tempted the cultivation of a single species, the tetragonia, an inferior 
green herb. I do not forget that Sir Joseph Hooker has enumerated 
more than a hundred Australian species that might be used in some 
way ; but, in fact, they have not been cultivated, and they are not 
cultivated, with all the improved processes which the English colonists 
possess. ‘This demonstrates the principle I have just announced, that 
the quality of the species has an influence on the selection, and that 
there must be real qualities in a wild plant to induce an effort to cul- 
tivate it. 

Notwithstanding the obscurity that surrounds the beginnings of 
agriculture in different regions, it is settled that the dates vary exceed- 
ingly. One of the earliest examples of cultivated plants is drawn 
from Egypt, in the shape of a design representing figs in one of the 
pyramids of Gizeh. The date of the construction of the monument 
is uncertain ; authors vary in assigning it to from fifteen hundred to 
four thousand two hundred years before the Christian era. If we 
assign it to two thousand years before Christ, we would have an anti- 
quity of four thousand years for the fig. Now, the pyramids can have 
been constructed only by a numerous people, organized and civilized 
to a certain degree, who must consequently have had an established 
agriculture, going back several centuries, at least, for its origin. In 
China, twenty-seven hundred years before Christ, the Emperor Chen- 
nung introduced a ceremony in which, every year, five species of 
useful plants were sown—viz., rice, soja, wheat, and two kinds of 
millet. These plants must have been cultivated for some length of 
time in some places to have attracted the attention of the emperor at 
this period. 

Agriculture seems, then, to have been as ancient in China as in Egypt, 


THE ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 787 


The constant intercourse of the latter country with Mesopotamia 
- justifies us in presuming that cultivation was almost contemporaneous 
in the regions of the Euphrates and the Nile. Why may it not have 
been quite as ancient in India and the Indian Archipelago? The his- 
tory of the Dravidian and Malaysian people does not go back very 
far, and is very obscure; but there is no reason for presuming that 
cultivation, particularly on the banks of the rivers, did not begin 
among them a very long time ago. 

The ancient Egyptians and the Phenicians propagated numerous 
plants in the region of the Mediterranean ; and the Aryan peoples, 
- whose migrations toward Europe began nearly twenty-five hundred 
or, at latest, two thousand years before Christ, spread many species 
which had already been cultivated in Western Asia. We shall see, in 
studying the history of particular species, that some plants were proba- 
bly already cultivated in Europe and Northern Africa. This is indi- 
cated by names in languages that prevailed before the Aryans came: 
the Finnish, Basque, Berber, and Guanche (of the Canary Islands). 
The remains, called Kjékkenméddings, of the ancient habitations of 
Denmark have, however, as yet furnished no traces of cultivation, 
and no evidence of the possession of a metal. The Scandinavians of 
that period lived entirely by fishing, hunting, and, perhaps accessorily, 
on indigenous plants—such as those of the cabbage kind—which were 
not of a nature to leave traces of themselves in the manure-heaps, and 
which, perhaps, did not require cultivation. The absence of metals 
does not imply, in those northern countries, a greater antiquity than 
the age of Pericles, or even of the best period of the Roman Repub- 
lic. Agriculture was finally introduced later, after bronze had become 
known in Sweden, a country then still far from civilized lands. A 
sculpture of a plow, drawn by two oxen and guided by a man, has 
been found in the remains of that epoch. 

The ancient inhabitants of Switzerland cultivated several plants, 
some of which originated in Asia, when they had instruments of pol- 
ished stone, but not of metals. M. Heer has shown that they were in 
communication with the countries situated to the south of the Alps. 
They may, in this way, have received cultivated plants from the Ibe- 
rians, who occupied Gaul before the Celts. In the period when the 
lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Savoy were in possession of bronze, 
their cultivated plants were more varied. Apparently, even the lake- 
dwellers of Italy cultivated fewer species when they had that metal 
than the people of the lakes of Savoy—a fact which may have been 
connected with a greater antiquity, or with local circumstances. The 
remains of the lake-dwellers of Laybach and of the Mondsee, in Aus- 
tria, also attest a quite primitive agriculture; no cereals have been 
found at Laybach, and only a single grain of wheat at the Mondsee. 
So little advanced a condition of agriculture in that eastern part of 
Europe is in opposition to the hypothesis, based on some words of the 


788 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ancient historians, that the Aryans sojourned first in the region of the 
Danube, and that Thrace was civilized before Greece. Notwithstand- 
ing this example, agriculture seems to have been generally more an- 
cient in the temperate part of Europe than we would be ready to 
believe from the accounts of the Greeks, who were disposed, like some 
modern peoples, to make all progress appear to start from their nation. 

In America, if we may judge from the civilizations of Mexico and 
Peru, which do not go back even to the first centuries of the Christian | 
era, agriculture was not, probably, as ancient as in Asia and Egypt. 
But the immense dispersion of certain kinds of cultivation—as that of 
maize, of tobacco, and of the yam—leads us to assign an antiquity of 
nearly or about two thousand years to it. History fails us in this case, 
and we have no resource for ascertaining anything about it, except 
from discoveries in archeology and geology. 


WAGES, CAPITAL AND RICH MEN.* 


By tHe Avtuor or ‘‘Conriiot in Nature AnpD Lire.” | 


T is no marvel that labor and capital are in conflict ; and yet they 
are necessarily co-operative factors to the same end. What benefits 
capital should also benefit labor, and vice versa, and there is essential 
harmony between them, as Bastiat, Carey, Perry, and other economists 
insist ; but the theoretical harmony thus so obvious fails in practice, 
and we are compelled to acknowledge the fact of actual discordance. 
The. interests of labor are in the hands of one class, and the interests of 
capital in the hands of a very different class, and they naturally enough 
contend about a certain margin of profit, since what one class gets of 
this the other must necessarily do without. The war is really between 
laborers and the employers of laborers ; and it is quite likely in the 
course of events that this war will become a source of anxiety and suf- 
fering far beyond what one would expect from such apparently peace- 
able forces. There is hardly any doubt that, if the wealthy classes in 
this country could have their unrestrained way in all things, they 
would build up an aristocracy as oppressive and disdainful as ever ex- 
isted anywhere. If the so-called working-classes (not embracing those 
who are their own employers) could have their way, they would do 
even worse by precipitating the conditions of universal poverty. 

I speak of labor and capital as antagonists ; and this is true, though 
the owner of capital is not always a party to the conflict ; he is so only © 
when he uses his own capital in the employment of labor. Very large- 
ly the employer of labor is a borrower of capital, paying for the use of 


* From “Reforms: their Difficulties and Possibilities.” New York: D. Appleton & 
Co., 1884. 


WAGES, CAPITAL AND RICH MEN. 789 


the same. When this is the case, there are three parties having dis- 
tinct interests, The owner of capital must have “use” ; the borrower 
of capital and employer of labor must have “profits” ; and the laborer 
must have “wages.” But it will answer all the purposes of this state- 
ment in this connection to assume that the owner and user of capital 
are one, and that the contest is between him and the laborer. 

Laborers in the several departments of industry are as much com- 
petitors with one another as with other classes of society, and in some 
respects even more so. In connection with the class-feeling, which is 
apt to be engendered among the laborers of a particular department 
of industry, they come to regard the desired increase of their wages as 
the one thing needful for the prosperity and happiness of mankind. 
Allow that the additional wages are secured ; then, with what result? 
Labor is a large item in production, and, when it is made more expen- 
sive, the cost of production is increased. This may or may not add to 
the commercial price of the product: if it does, the additional price 
must be paid by all who purchase for consumption ; and, as about three 
fourths of all consumers in the civilized world are working-men de- 
pendent on their wages, they are now worse off than before, being 
taxed to better the condition of the favored few. 

“That is not the intention,” retorts Reformer; “we mean that the 
articles so produced shall be kept at their former price by reducing the 
profits of the employer.” A good idea, which should teach modesty 
to the “money power”; but it has this drawback, namely, that, if 
capital in this particular industry is thus compelled to accept consider- 
ably less return than capital employed in other industries, it will desert 
this field of operations for some other which pays better, and the 
laborers who have their wages thus arbitrarily raised will reap the 
penalty for their ignorance of economical laws by finding themselves 
out of employment, or working on short time. Capital and enterprise 
could, under such circumstances, be retained in the business at all only 
by an increase in the price of the product through reduced production, 
increased demand, or other means, so as to pay both the increase of 
wages and the usual interest of capital and profit to management. 

Reformer answers: “Such gain at the laborers’ expense is precise- 
‘ly what galls ; there is quite too much of it ; and it should be restricted 
by public sentiment taking the form of law.” Beware, my dear sir; 
that is just the way the other side used to do! Within the present 
century, even England has had laws on her statute-books restricting 
the freedom of laborers as laborers in the most arbitrary manner, be- 
cause it was assumed that only employers understood the proper thing 
to have done, and they made the laws. This was a survival of barba- 
rism in the interest of employers, and it can hardly be revived at this 
late day in the interest of employés. There may, indeed, be certain 
forms of restriction imposed on employers for the protection of labor- 
ers ; as, for example, in relation to the unhealthy condition of shops, 


790 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


too long hours, the employment of children, etc. But these are gen- 
eral rules, which do not touch the right of enterprise to select its field, 
and, under freedom of competition, to make the most of it. Restric- 
tion within limits may be even demanded by economics as well as by 
humanity ; but here the limits are of importance to the last degree, 
since disregard of them may destroy individualism and land us in 
state communism. 

If force could be used to compel capital under some rule to surren- 
der all or most of its gains to laborers, it would remove to a great ex- 
tent the motive for saving and the incentive to enterprise, and prevent 
the opening of new fields for the employment of new hands, ever ask- 
ing for something to do. Hoarding would take the place of invest- 
ment. Wealth would still be desired for use, but not for business ; 
and the currents along the old channels would become sluggish, and, 
with failure to invest for profit, would come the falling off of means 
foruse. This is substantially what takes place during periods of great 
commercial depression, when loss of confidence and fear of extending 
credits temporarily deprive capital of its active functions, and throw 
labor out of. employment. It is furthermore substantially the condi- 
tion of things under Eastern despots, where property is not protected 
from spoliation, and there is, consequently, little saved for the assist- 
ance of labor, which has, in consequence, to be done at a disadvan- 
tage, and all the people are hopelessly poor. 

Employers are not absolute arbiters of fate, and can not make a 
remunerating profit with the cost of production and the state of the 
market against them. Should the outlay for wages in any department 
of industry be so great that its products could only be sold as a loss, 
managers must contract operations or stop.altogether, when the laborer 
becomes the direct and principal sufferer ; and thus it is shown how 
easy it would be for him, if he had his own way, to destroy the indus- 
try on which he depends for support. Most laborers in the present 
state of their education are not a whit wiser than this implies, though 
some of them happily are. It is stated that committees of working- 
men, appointed to confer with their employers, have been known even 
to refuse the highest wages it would have been possible to exact, lest 
their product should be so weighted with cost of production as to place 
it at a disadvantage in the markets, and thus cripple their industry, 
and in the end do them more harm than good. ‘There are few such 
working-men, however, and it is to be feared that they are little on 
. the increase in number and influence. Mr. Gregg affirms (1879) that 
“never during the experience of a generation and a half can I remem- 
ber to have seen the artisans throughout the length and breadth of the 
land acting so entirely in defiance of common sense and right feeling, 
and with so total a disregard of plain and repeated warning ”’ (“ Nine- 
teenth Century ”). 

“Oh,” interrupts Reformer, “you are running on at a great rate, 


WAGES, CAPITAL AND RICH MEN. 791 


and getting in too much philosophy all at once ; we mean that all 
laborers in all industries shall have more wages.” Very well; raise 
their wages—and, then, with what economical result? <A protective 
tariff raises wages, but it raises the price of products even more ; and 
it raises wages simply because it raises prices. Any arbitrary measure 
which should raise wages along the whole line would so disturb the 
prevailing equilibrium of the economic forces as to necessitate a gen- 
eral readjustment which would leave the laborer no better off than 
before. He would find himself paying out with one hand the benefits 
he received with the other, and a general rise of wages, like a general 
rise of prices, would be no rise at all. 

“We mean nothing of that sort,” impatiently retorts Reformer ; 
“how short-sighted you are! We mean that what is thus given addi- 
tional to labor shall come out of interest and profit.” Good again ; 
but how will that work? We are now at the very pith of this thing. 
To advance wages along the whole line without increase in the price 
of products would transfer a part or all of what is called interest and 
profit from capitalists and the operators of business to the laborers. 
“ Certainly, that is what we want in order that laborers may live with 
dignity and comfort worthy of human beings.” Just so; no one would 
be more pleased than myself if this could be so. But, as I was going 
to say, if such an economic policy could be put in force, then the aggre- 
gate of savings for the establishment of industries and the employment 
of labor would be smaller than before, labor would be done in conse- 
quence at an increasing disadvantage, and the penalty would fall upon 
all classes, and would be most severely felt by the working-men. In 
this way the remedy would defeat itself, and turn out to be worse than 
the disease. But such an economical policy can not be put in force, 
because there is no element in the economical domain capable of exer- 
cising any such power. 

‘Then, in the name of justice and humanity, is there any relief for 
the working-man?” There is and there is not. There are many con- 
ditions which affect the reward of labor—such as the character of the 
soil, the cost of raw materials, the capital at command, the number 
competing for work, the facilities for exchange, and the like. Witha 
more intelligent direction of effort, with sobriety and frugality, with 
restraint on the increase of numbers, working-men would certainly re- 
ceive better pay, and it would dothem more good. There is something 
more wanting than the mere increase of money wages, now so gener- 
ally sought as the one thing needful. Labor is eventually paid in 
products which go to the support of the working-man’s family, and the 
increased expense of his goods is often greater than the increased pay 
for his work. Wages and prices rise and fall nearly together, and they 
do so as the effect of a common cause. The actual reward of labor is 
thus more uniform than the money price of labor. But even here, as 
usual, labor is at a disadvantage, because it can not be held, as goods 


792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


may, for higher prices. It is hardly possible, under such circumstances, 
that the working-people should be able, by any concert of action, to 
command their employers and dictate wages. 

“Tt’s all wrong,” exclaims Reformer, indignantly ; “it is slavery 
that men shall toil to make the rich richer!” Truly, we all wish it 
might be otherwise ; but we are compelled to accept human nature, 
revolt as we may against the limits of its possibilities. The economi- 
cal laws have grown out of it in the struggle of life, not by conscious 
purpose, but by overruling necessity, as resultants of the clashing and 
divergent forces of individualism and competition. Nobody is respon- 
sible ; and it may be that these vast accumulations of wealth have their 
good as well as their evil side. Ifa large proportion of civilized people 
have not had the energy and management to push themselves into posi- 
tions of plenty and comfort, it may be that even making the rich richer 
has points of advantage which render it a blessing rather than a curse 
to laboring-men themselves. Let us see. 

There is a surplus beyond immediate consumption from the prod- 
acts of all the industries in the world: what shall be done with this 
surplus? If certain classes of people could have their way, what is 
now surplus would all be consumed by the end of the year. It is not 
so consumed now, because those who would like it for consumption 
can not get it. Not only the ignorant and the improvident would so 
elect, but the more intelligent, such as are employed in offices and places 
of considerable trust. Most who live on salaries manage to keep about 
even; they do not spend more, because their salaries are not greater. 
Then, if nobody saved—an extreme supposition—what would be the 
result ? Civilization could not advance, the world could not become 
richer in the comforts of life, because the basis of production, capital, 
that is, the savings of labor, would not accumulate. Indeed, if there 
were not savings to be constantly invested for the repair of waste and 
wear, there would soon be a calamitous falling off everywhere in the 
comforts of life. It is capital that makes labor tell in successful pro- 
duction ; and, without capital, we should be in the condition of bar- 
barians, of savages even. Then, what is the part the accumulator 
plays? The savings from labor above consumption fall into his hands, 
where they are largely conserved for use. His capital seeks invest- 
ment, it utilizes invention and discovery ; it establishes industries and 
employs labor ; it distributes the products ; and the average of human 
comfort is constantly on the increase through this means. The savings 
of labor which have fallen so largely into the hands of the few, making 
them rich men, have built our railroads, steamships, telegraphs, manu- 
factories, thus in many ways adding to the means of production, and 
the facilities of commerce at home and abroad. These saved earnings 
in the hands of men seeking investment for profit have increased the 
wealth, resources, and refinements of civilization, made abundance pos- 
sible, and brought it within reach of all, except the unfortunate, or the 


WAGES, CAPITAL AND RICH MEN. 793 : 


indolent and improvident. The industrious and economical poor man 
is better off to-day than if laboring-men all through the past could 
have had what so many of them are at present clamoring for. This 
method of attaining the good does not, of course, come up to the 
standard of perfection ; it is not harmonious and artistic ; it is very 
far from being equitable, if tried by an ideal standard ; still, it is 
the best possible—human nature being what it has been and still 
is, this taint of evil is the inevitable condition of compassing the 
good. 

Let us suppose that capitalists and managers get less, and the work- 
ers more, of the common products. So far this would seem to be greater 
justice than now obtains. Suppose further—which, however, is absurd 
—that just as much will now be saved for business as before, and that 
it is in the hands of the working-people themselves for business pur- 
poses. Can they make it tell in business as it does in the hands of 
men whose shrewdness and skill bring them to the front by a sort of 
natural selection? Would there not be a great want of unity and con- 
cert of action among the million holders of this surplus to render it 
comparatively inefficient for the purposes of production ? Would it not 
come to pass that, through the misapplication of capital, the masses of 
the people, in drawing a larger proportion of the common earnings, 
would soon find a smaller aggregate to draw from? Is it not plain 
that here is a case in which seeming justice may defeat justice, and 
cause the working-man after a brief triumph to fall into a worse con- 
dition than before? And this would be true, even on the supposition 
that the proletariat would save as much as the accumulating classes 
now save; but they would not so save—they would consume ; there 
would be less capital, and business would suffer a decline, to the detri- 
ment of all classes. It is one of the difficulties of reform that a seem- 
ing good may react into evil. 

Agitators do not sufficiently keep in mind that business can not be 
carried on without capital, and that this capital can be had only by 
self-denial and by saving. Capital is not a providential gift bestowed 
like showers of manna from heaven. Only the industrious, enterpris- 
ing, economical, well-managing, are certain to acquire capital and re- 
tain it. In making investments for production by the employment of 
labor, there are very generally risks to run, and these risks the party 
responsible for the business must wholly assume. The laborer as such 
has no capital to fall back upon, and can not share in losses. Is it 
right, therefore, that he should receive so much of the products that 
there would be little or nothing left for the responsibility and enter- 
prise of management? Take two men fifty years of age: A has 
worked hard, lived economically, invested wisely, and saved more or 
less every year ; he is now a capitalist and employer. B has used up 
his earnings as he went along, and is now working for A. Has he 
any just right to insist that A shall forget the past, ignore its results, 


794 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


and take him in as an equal partner? This is substantially what all 
ask for who insist that labor shall have all it produces, without regard 
to the part which capital plays in production. It would not be just ; 
there would be a radical and far-reaching wrong in rewarding improvi- 
dence and shiftlessness equally with risk and enterprise. To do this 
would be to outrage moral government, by which an action of any 
kind should be followed by its fitting sequence. The practical results 
of such a course could not be good. We must reiterate that if, in the 
event of giving all to labor, there were no immediate falling off in the 
amount of capital, such falling off would nevertheless soon come about 
through mistaken investment, since the shrewd and enterprising, into 
whose hands capital now usually falls, are precisely those who are best 
qualified to discover the fields in which investments may be made to 
the best advantage ; for it is by the utilization of such fields that 
the greatest amount and variety of productions are had, and most is 
added to the general wealth of the civilized world. Profit and utility 
thus go along hand in hand. But the greatest loss from the indis- 
criminate reward of economical misdoing would be in the actual re- 
duction of savings and diminution of capital. 

Then, what is the economical function the rich man performs ? 
He conserves the surplus of production, holding it in trust for the 
good of all, and without him there would be no civilization. The ac- 
cumulator, the self-made rich man, usually expends only a percentage, 
often a small percentage, of his income, on his own gratifications. 
What he retains beyond this can not go to his own behoof, and, if it 
helps anybody to more of the goods of life, it must, as a rule, help 
others ; and it is precisely this surplus, thus saved and used as the 
basis of every industrial and commercial enterprise, that makes him 
rich and keeps him rich. So bound up is he with the system of civil- 
ized methods that he can not add to his wealth by successful enter- 
prise on the methods which legitimate business requires without help- 
ing others. The worthy rich man is, indeed, a self-exalted prince of 
civilization, who holds his wealth in trust for the maintenance and 
further advancement of that civilization. Surely he is entitled to our 
blessings rather than to our curses. 

Still, when we see wealth in the hands of the worthless who live in 
idleness, but to exemplify the vanities of life, while many a one who 
is a useful member of society, with capabilities of still greater useful- 
ness, is struggling in the battle of life with odds against him, we may 
impulsively curse the lottery that favors the one and dooms the other. 


* Tt’s hardly in a body’s power 
To keep, at times, frae being sour, 
To see how things are shared ; 
How best o’ chiels are whiles in want, 
While coofs in countless thousands rant, 
And ken na how to wair’t.” 


WAGES, CAPITAL AND RICH MEN. 795 


But this is largely incidental, and is an illustration of the discord- 
ances which attend on the operation of general laws in the constitution 
of things. There is no getting rid of such discordances ; they are an 
inevitable part of the system, and bound fast to the good. If we are 
blessed with the rain, we should not repine at the disorder in the ele- 
ments which sometimes accompanies it. 

But, while we are compelled to take this view of the economical 
function of wealth, let us not do it the injustice of drawing unwar- 
ranted inferences fromit. I do not lose sight of the fact that the ad- 
vantages of the moneyed classes are not wholly those which accrue 
from the legitimate action of economical principles. These classes 
have always seen to it that the laws were made in their favor, thus 
securing for wealth and position additional leverage to make the rich 
richer and the poor poorer. The natural advantages which wealth 
gives them is not enough ; they secure arbitrary privileges by legal 
enactment, and with these increase the distance between themselves 
and the masses of the people. And this is true, whether the people 
are the reputed rulers or not; only too often the innocent voter is 
unconsciously doing the political work which has been prepared for 
him by a dexterous hand which he does not see. I yield to none in 
utter execration of the unscrupulous devices whereby monopoly is 
“lawfully ” armed to take from the substance of the people for its 
own aggrandizement. 

_ In consequence of this very tendency to make a selfish and unjust 
use of power in government and society do the strong classes only 
too generally succeed in putting off labor with inadequate compensa- 
tion. There is something else in life than mere money and the exu- 
berant development of material prosperity. We could afford a little 
less of these, in order that the working-people might be richer in the 
substance of every-day life. But, when even liberal wages are not 
only consumed, but too often consumed in a way to injure the laborer, 
we see how difficult it isto hit upon the best practical thing to do. 
Too low wages is bad; and wages arbitrarily made extremely high 
would soon prove to be bad by cutting off the source from which 
wages are derived. I but state economical difficulties, and protest that 
they should not be made the occasion of unwarranted inferences. 

Another point which, in this connection, I do not forget, concerns 
the shadows of wealth. There are certain forms of good which can 
not be had without wealth ; but, when such wealth is secured, it brings 
with it certain forms of evil which have never yet been separated 
from the possession of wealth. But, if I attempt to show that the 
dreams of labor-reformers are impracticable in that they would soon 
reduce all to the same level of poverty, that attempt, in recognizing 
the economical conditions of plenty, is certainly not to be construed » 
in support of the evils of wealth ; for wealth is the very thing, what- 
ever its drawbacks, without which civilization can not exist. 


796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


DU MOTAY’S PROCESS OF ICE-MAKING. 
By G. B. SEELY. 


F all the projects that have excited the ridicule of the unimagina- 

tive of times gone by, perhaps none has appeared more exceed- 

ingly funny and chimerical than that of producing at will, by mech- 

anism operated by heat, a freezing cold, and that without the use 

of ice, or any previously congealed substance, and without ee to 
atmospheric temperature. 

In these days of rapid development of the mechanic arts, it seems 
hazardous to assert impossibility of any mechanical problem involy- 
ing the substantial amelioration of man’s condition. The manifest 
need of an improvement seems to be but the condition of its realiza- 
tion and development ; sooner or later appears the embryo invention ~ 
destined to be the theme of long study and continual modification, the 
perfected product often bearing little or no resemblance to the crude 
prototype that may have first embodied an idea fraught with lasting 
good to man. ‘The conception once concretely realized, its beneficent 
results become a part of the common capital of the race, making pos- 
sible still further advances in our material well-being. 

While the progenitors of the race seem early to have discovered 
the means of producing heat artificially, for their rude arts and for 
their bodily comfort, it is not probable that the means of obtaining 
artificial cold could ever have seemed to primitive man a pressing 
need, Civilization is a multiplying of needs, and nothing connected 
with man’s development seems more clear than that the adoption of 
artificial protection from the elements, conducing directly as it has to 
@ material modification of Nature’s means of protecting the body and 
providing for its wants, has not only led to the demand for readily 
available means of producing artificial heat, but for the means of arti- 
ficial refrigeration as well. 

Since the experiments of Professor Twining thirty years ago, with 
sulphuric ether, the problem of producing artificial cold has been 
attacked by many, but the basis of the more important and successful 
systems employed has been, as in Twining’s experiments, the volatili- - 
zation of a liquid in vacuo, by means of a gas-pump. Of the various 
substances available in nature for this purpose, ether and ammonia 
have received the most attention. Various other liquids have also 
been used, such as sulphide of carbon, methylic ether, chloride of 
methyl, chymogene, etc., and latterly sulphurous acid as used in the 
famous Pictet system. Compressed air has also been employed, but 
the mechanical labor required by this system is too costly to allow it 
to compete with what may be termed the volatilizing systems. 

The object sought has been the most economical method of em- 


DU MOTAY’S PROCESS OF ICE-MAKING. 797 


ploying those substances that are capable of producing the greatest 
degree of cold. But a difficulty is encountered in the high pressures 
of the gases produced in the pump, as there is no evading the physical 
fact that the cold-producing power of a gas is a concomitant of its 
tension, or pressure varying directly therewith. Thus, ammonia, with 
a pressure at rest of eight atmospheres, and at work of twelve to 
twenty atmospheres according to the temperature, is an excellent 
refrigerant, but the use of a gas with such a high pressure is attended 
with obvious drawbacks. At the other end of the scale is ether, 
which is manageable at a low pressure, viz., zero at rest, and ten to 
fifteen pounds per square inch at work ; but this advantage has its cor- 
responding drawback, in accordance with the law above mentioned, 
i. e., a comparatively low refrigerating power. It is, moreover, inflam- 
mable, and, in contact with any of the lubricants used on the pump- 
piston, there results an unintended product of soap, which, coating 
the parts of the mechanism, obstructs the passage of the latent heat 
from the circulating medium employed for freezing. Midway be- 
tween these two agents, as regards its pressure, is sulphurous acid. 
This gives a high degree of cold, its pressure at work being three and 
one half to six atmospheres, and a little over two and one half atmos- 
pheres at rest. Aside from its rather high pressure, a serious objec- 
tion to its use is the liability to corrosion of the parts on contact of 
the liquid with moisture, sulphuric acid being thereby produced, 
which rapidly wears away the more important parts of the mechanism 
employed. ; , 

The various defects enumerated, and others incident to the use of 
other agents not here particularized, viz., liability to explosion, inflam- 
mability, indifferent refrigerating capacity, high vacuum, high press- 
ure involving rapid wear and tear and danger in use, and other more 
or less serious drawbacks, have made the attainment of a still better 
system than the best of those referred to imperative. The great 
desideratum, it will be seen, has been a process admitting of using 
some of the better cold-producing agents without the dangers or an- 
noyances due to the high tensions of their gases, or to other peculiari- 
ties of their composition. The discovery of a method by which this 
object could be attained is due to the genius of the late C. M. Tessié 
du Motay. 

This eminent French chemist, acting on the suggestion of one of 
his associates, M. Etienne Gillet, a gentleman who had made a close 
study of artificial ice-making, sought to combine two or more liquids 
‘which should have the property, in combination, of mutually neutral- ° 
izing the defective features they exhibited when used separately, and 
which should at the same time retain their desirable qualities. He 
instituted experiments, in conjunction with M. Auguste Rossi, which 
resulted in the discovery that ether, when combined with sulphurous 
acid, furnished a compound absolutely free from any of the defects 


798 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


that had previously hindered successful working. The inflammability 
of ether was nullified by the sulphurous acid ; a perfect lubricant was 
obtained, and the substance had no corrosive action on the metals 
employed. But the most interesting feature developed by the experi- 
ment was that the ether was found to have the power of absorbing a 
large proportion of the gas of the sulphurous acid. This is the charac- 
teristic feature of the binary absorption system, as Du Motay termed 
his process. The ether, by absorbing the gas of the other constituent 
liquid, reduces the mechanical problem to that of liquefying a gas 
having a pressure not approximating that of sulphurous acid, viz., 
fifty to eighty pounds or more per square inch, but barely more than 
that of ether itself, viz., twenty pounds. The pressure of the com- 
pound at rest, like that of ether, is nzl. In other words, the ether is 
found to have accomplished the greater part of the work, and a law 
of nature governing the action of certain chemicals in combination is 
availed of to reduce the mechanical labor of liquefaction to a mini- 
mum. 

Since the death of Du Motay, which occurred very soon after his 
discovery, his associates, MM. Auguste Rossi and Leonard F. Beck- 
with, have continued the experiments under the Du Motay patents, 
with various other compounds, and have accomplished the hitherto 
unheard-of result of liquefying ammonia gas in the pump at a pressure 
of thirty-five pounds per square inch. This is accomplished by com- 
bining it with glycerine, a non-volatile, which gives up the ammonia 
gas in the vacuum-pump, but, when it has reached a certain tension, 
seizes it, so to speak, and renders it liquefiable at a fraction of its ordi- 
nary pressure. 

There are various other compounds capable of giving the same 
results—an intense freezing power at a greatly diminished pressure, 
and the peculiarities of various industries employing mechanical re- 
frigerants can thus be consulted and met by the use of whatever com- 
pound is found best adapted thereto. 

There are certain general features common to all the systems em- 
ploying a liquid volatilizable in the vacuum-pump, but the peculiar 
features of the binary absorption process admit of such a simplifying 
of the mechanical appliances employed as to materially distinguish 
their construction from that of other systems. 

The freezing agent, ethylo-sulphurous dioxide, or glycerine and 
ammonia, or whatever be the compound employed, is placed within 
the “ refrigerator,” which consists of tubular coils immersed in an un- 
congealable mixture. A double-acting vacuum-pump volatilizes the. 
agent in the refrigerator coils, and this is attended with the develop- 
ment of an intense cold, which is communicated to the surrounding 
mixture, and the latter, by means of a circulating pump, is made to 
flow through a suitable tank containing vessels of water to be frozen, 
or, if air-cooling only be desired, through iron tubing placed along the 


DU MOTAY’S PROCESS OF ICE-MAKING. 799 


walls or ceiling of the chamber to be cooled. The discharge-pipe of 
the circulating pump communicates with a condenser, which consists 
of a tubular vessel immersed in a tank containing cooling water taken 
from any convenient source and kept in constant circulation. The 
volatilized liquid is expelled from the pump into this condenser, where 
the process of condensation or liquefaction of the gas is completed. 
The restored liquid is then returned to the refrigerator by suitable con- 
nections, to be again volatilized, and so on continuously, the waste of 
the agent being but trifling. 

The time consumed in the process of freezing the water-cans 
ranges from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. The more perfect the 
insulation of the tanks in which the water-cans are immersed, the 
more quickly is the latent heat extracted from the water; and this, 
after all, is the problem involved in artificial freezing. To speak of 
the manufacture of cold, though popularly comprehensible and con- 
venient, is to misapply terms. In one sense heat seems to be but an 
incident of the cosmic order, an exception to a state of things pervad- 
ing interstellar space, and toward which the warm earth, and her sister 
planets, and all the burning orbs of heaven, are gradually tending. In 
producing cold we therefore seem but to assist Nature to re-establish, 
in an infinitesimal degree, the state of comparative molecular inac- 
tivity that distinguishes cold from heat, and which characterizes the 
vacuum. 

The need of an efficient system of artificial refrigeration is con- 
stantly increasing. Not alone in warm countries is ice rapidly be- 
coming a universal necessity, but, in myriad industries in temperate 
climes, the economy experienced by using air-cooling contrivances in 
the place of Nature’s unwieldy, slippery, and not always obtainable 
product, has long since been satisfactorily demonstrated by the wide- 
spread use of various systems of machines. 

In the years to come, there may arise some engineering genius bold 
enough to conceive and skillful enough to execute a plan for tapping 
the limitless reservoir of cold that pervades interplanetary space, and 
bringing a supply, regulable at will, to a sweltering world. This 
would be a highly satisfactory solution of the problem of such interest 
to nine tenths of humanity for a large portion of the year, how to 
keep cool. Pending, however, the realization of such a scheme, of 
which it must be confessed there is no immediate prospect, it is diffi- 
cult to discern any way to an improvement, in this branch of physics, 
on the latest product of French inventive genius. 


800 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MESMERISM.* 
By J. N. LANGLEY, F. 8.8. 


CATTERED about in the literature of the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries are many records of the cure of divers human 
maladies in simple and mysterious-seeming ways. Valentin Greate- 
rakes, in Charles II’s reign, was, we are told, “famous for curing vari- 
ous diseases and distempers by a stroak of the hand only.” His power, 
he thought, was a special gift from Heaven. Many people, however, 
were not slow to say that he had dealings with the devil. In some 
cases wonders were wrought by touching the affected parts of the 
patient with a magnet. Maxwell, who in 1679 published a short trea- 
tise on magnetic medicine, attributed the cures brought about by this, 
and by some other unusual forms of medical practice, to the accumu- 
lation of a subtile fluid in the body of the patient. This subtile fluid 
was diffused through all things in nature; a fortunate few among 
men had an inborn power of controlling its distribution. Such men 
could cure all diseases ; they could indeed, he says, by adding to their 
own proper quantum of fluid, make themselves live forever, were not 
the influence of the stars adverse. 

In 1775 the theory of animal magnetism was put forward in Vienna 
by Friedrich Anton Mesmer. Neither his theories nor his facts differ 
very greatly from those of some of his predecessors. ‘There exists, he 
said, in nature a universal fluid; in virtue of this, the human body 
possesses “ properties analogous to those of a magnet; there are to be 
distinguished in it poles equally different and opposite, which may 
even be communicated, changed, destroyed, and restored; even the 
phenomenon of inclination is observed therein.” By means of this 
magnetic fluid all the maladies of man could be healed. A few years 
- later Mesmer left Vienna for Paris. At first he magnetized his patients | 
by gazing steadily at them, or by means of “passes”; but, as patients 
became more numerous, he brought them into a proper magnetic con- 
dition by other methods, often of a very fantastic nature. The patients 
did not, when magnetized, all show the same symptoms: some passed 
into a heavy sleep, some became insensible to touch, or even to stimuli 
ordinarily painful; some became cataleptic, some were seized with 
local or general convulsions. This last condition was called a crisis, 
and was the triumph of the mesmerizer, the moment when the disease 
was considered to be forcibly expelled from the system. Nowadays it 
is the last state a physician would care to produce in a patient. 

For a time Mesmer’s success was enormous. His admirers sub- 
scribed for him a sum of nearly 350,000 francs, receiving in return 


* Abridged from an address delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, March 
14, 1884. 


THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MESMERISM. 801 


details as to the method of magnetization. In Paris the belief in the 
power of Mesmer to cure diseases soon waned ; but by this time he 
had made a stir in the world, and had drawn attention to a number of 
facts which were either only locally known, or largely disregarded. 
Mesmer devoted himself chiefly to curing patients, and it must be 
added, to receiving fees ; but about ten years after the time of his com- 
ing to Paris it was found that a state resembling somnambulism, or 
sleep-walking, could be produced in some persons by magnetizing 
them. This gave a stimulus to the investigation of what I may call 
the magical side of the phenomena. This magical side had always 
been present, but in the height of Mesmer’s power had not been much 
regarded. Of the magic of animal magnetism I will say one word 
more presently. 

The term animal magnetism lingered long, but has now happily 
fallen into disuse, either mesmerism or hypnotism being used in its 
stead. ‘‘ Hypnotism” we owe to Dr. Braid, of Manchester, who, from — 
1841 to the time of his death in 1860, subjected all the phenomena said 
to be produced in the magnetic state to a searching investigation. 
Braid is the founder of mesmerism in its scientific aspect. Hypnotism 
and mesmerism, as commonly used now, are synonymous terms; it 
would be advantageous, I think, if we could make a distinction be- 
tween them. We might, for example, use the term hypnotism to em- 
brace all those phenomena which are proved, and the term mesmerism 
to embrace all those phenomena which are not proved. Mesmerism 
would then mean what I have called its magical side, and would em- 
brace those phenomena which are sometimes called the higher phe- 
nomena of mesmerism. ‘These are of various kinds. It is said, for in- 
stance, that one person can, at any time he wishes, mesmerize another 
who is at a distance, and who is in perfect ignorance of :the intentions 
of the mesmerizer ; that a mesmerized person can perceive the thoughts 
and sensations of the mesmerizer, without receiving any indications 
from the known organs of sense ; that a clairvoyant can see with parts 
of the body other than the eyes, for example, with the back of the head, 
or with the pit of the stomach ; that a clairvoyant can describe places 
and persons which he has never read of, or heard of, or seen. Those 
observers who have done most to elucidate the subject, such as Braid, 
have failed to observe any of these and other similar higher phenom- 
ena. They are unproved. It would be convenient, I say, to include 
such phenomena only, under the heading of mesmerism; but this I can 
not yet venture to do. The facts I have to mention I shall call those 
of hypnotism or mesmerism indifferently. The magical side of the 
subject may, I think, at present be fairly left out of account. 

The primary point in mesmerism is the paralysis of the will; the 
nervous system is then out of the control of the subject, whether ani- 
mal or man, and, by appropriate stimulation, any one or more of his 
nerve-centers can be set in activity. I shall consider first the behavior 

VOL, xxv.—51 


802 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of the lower animals when mesmerized : in these the phenomena, as 
far as at present observed, are much simpler than they arein man. If 
a frog be turned over on its back, it at once regains its normal posi- 
tion ; if, however, it be prevented from doing so, and its struggles are 
for a short time gently suppressed, it becomes hypnotized. Then, 
although it be left at liberty to regain its normal position, it will not 
attempt to do so. Apart from the movements it makes in breathing, 
it lies motionless. If it has been held for a short time only, the hyp- 
notic state does not last long, usually from one to five or ten minutes ; 
but, if the movements it makes, say, at the end of one minute, or of 
five minutes, and so on, are suppressed, it will not infrequently happen 
that the frog will then stay without further movement for a consider- 
able time, sometimes even for many hours. During the first part of 
this time a slight pinch, a sudden flash of light, or a loud noise, will 
usually cause it to turn over and sit up in its normal manner. For a 
moment or two it looks a little dull and confused, but rapidly regains 
its normal activity. During the latter part of this time it responds 
less and less to external stimuli. When it is in this state, it may be 
propped up against a support with its legs crossed under it, or placed 
so that it rests on its head, or placed on its side with its legs arranged 
in this or that fashion, without offering the least resistance. 

I have spoken of the frog as being hypnotized or mesmerized. Let 
us consider what is meant by this. I think it is obvious that the ani- 
mal does not remain passive from any astuteness on its part; it is in- 
credible that the frog, finding its efforts to escape ineffective, should 
make up its mind to remain quiet, and should, although at liberty to 
move, stay still for hours, becoming more and more determined as time 
goes on to take no notice of noises, of flashes of light, and of pinch- 
ing of its skin. On the contrary, it is, I think, obvious that in some 
way its will has become paralyzed. In order to attempt to explain 
how this is brought about, we must consider an aspect of reflex action 
which is very little understood. 

A brainless frog will, when its leg is gently pinched, kick out the 
leg ; but, if just previously some other part of the body has also been 
pinched, one of two opposite things may take place—the leg may be 
kicked out more quickly and vigorously, or it may not be kicked out 
at all. In both cases the nerve-center involved in producing the move- 
ment of the leg receives an additional impulse from another nerve- 
center, but in one case the additional impulse increases the activity of 
the nerve-center involved in the reflex action, in the other case it 
annuls this activity—there is, to use the physiological term, an inhibi- 
tion of the “reflex ” nerve-center. 

Inhibition by impulses proceeding from the cortex of the brain 
occurs every day of our lives. The “ will” is perpetually being brought 
into play to inhibit some nerve-center or other. For example, you 
may be on the verge of yawning, when it suddenly occurs to you that 


THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MESMERISM. 803 


it will be better not to do so; you suppress the yawn without moving 
a muscle. . What happens is this: An inhibitory nerve-impulse is sent 
from the cortex, and puts a stop to the indiscreet activity of a nerve- 
center elsewhere in the brain. Further, when the cortex is set in ac- 
tivity in a particular way by one impulse, another impulse reaching it 
may inhibit the first activity, or, in terms of the localization theory, 
one nerve-center in the cortex may send out inhibitory impulses to any 
other nerve-center of the cortex. 

I need not further multiply instances of inhibition. I wish, how- 
ever, to lay stress on this, that it is highly probable that impulses 
traveling from any peripheral nerve-ending to a nerve-center, or from 
any one nerve-center to any other, may, under certain circumstances, 
diminish or annul the functional activity of the nerve-center—that is, 
may inhibit it. And there is equal reason to believe that, under cer- 
tain other circumstances, the effect produced will not be inhibition, 
but an increase of activity of the center. The exact conditions which 
determine whether one effect or the other takes place have not as yet 
been made out. For the present the facts must suffice us. We may 
now return to the mesmerized frog. 

Whatever the will may be, its action is accompanied by a certain 
activity of the cortex of the brain; if this activity is prevented from. 
taking place, the will can no longer act. From the physiological stand- 
point, then, the mesmerized frog lies motionless because an inhibition 
of a particular activity of the nerve-cells of the cortex has taken place. 
“We may distinguish two chief causes of this inhibition. 

The tactile stimuli sent to the central nervous system when the 
frog lies on its back are obviously different from those sent when the 
frog is in its normal position. The unusual nerve-impulses traveling 
from the skin in the unusual position of the frog are inhibitory nerve- 
impulses. There is reason to believe that they act first on some lower 
center of the brain, and that from this impulses are sent which dimin- 
ish or annul the activity of the cortical nerve-cells which is necessary 
for the exercise of the will. . 

The second chief cause of inhibition is in the cortex itself. Hand- 
ling the frog in the way which is done when it is mesmerized produces 
a certain emotional condition which we may call fright. But, when 
the animal is frightened, the nerve-cells of the cortex are set in activ- 
ity in a special manner. This mode of activity inhibits other modes 
of activity, and the will is paralyzed.* We can not at present, I think, 
put in any more definite form the effect of one state of the cortex of 
the brain upon its other possible states. We do not know enough of 
the relations of the cortex of the brain to the psychical functions to 
say more. In some cases fright seems to play a very small part, if 

* The term “ paralysis of the will” is here used to include the state in which there is 


an effort of will, but in which the effort is not followed by a dispatch of nervous impulses 
from the cerebral hemispheres to the lower nervous centers. 


804 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


any, in producing the effect. That it is not an essential factor is, to 
some extent, confirmed by the fact that a frog without the cerebral 
hemispheres can be easily mesmerized ; it is difficult to conceive of the 
animal in this state being very much frightened. 

It will be remembered that reflex action from all parts of the body 
is diminished in the mesmerized frog. After a time, then, there is a 
marked inhibition of activity of the whole nervous system. Now, in 
the brainless frog placed on its back there is no such diminution of 
reflex action ; hence in the intact hypnotized frog the spinal cord must 
be inhibited by impulses coming from the brain ; from which we may 
conclude that centers inhibited in their own proper action nevertheless 
send out inhibitory impulses to other centers. There appears, then, to 
be an irradiation of inhibitory impulses, just as we have seen that 
there is an irradiation of exciting impulses. 

Before passing to mesmerism in man I will show you two other 
instances of hypnotism in the lower animals. The alligator which you 
see here behaves very much like the frog. It has, however, less tend- 
ency to become cataleptic. After a brief struggle, it becomes quies- 
cent and its limbs slowly relax ; its mouth may then be opened, and 
a cork placed between its teeth, without giving rise to any voluntary 
movement on its part. It may be kept for a considerable time in this 
limp condition by gently stroking the skin close to its eyes. 

So far as I have observed, the hypnotic condition in birds and in 
lower mammals is not capable of any great development. It may last 
ten minutes, but rarely longer. In these animals, too, the emotional 
condition is probably the chief factor in producing the inhibition, Of 
impulses from peripheral sense-organs, tactile impulses seem to be most 
effective in the lower mammals, as in the rabbit and Guinea-pig, and 
visual impulses in the bird. The pigeon which I have here remains 
longest quiescent when, after it has been held for a minute or two, I 
bring my hand slowly up and down over its head. 

In man the phenomena of mesmerism are of a very much more 
striking character than they are in the lower animals. Speaking gen- 
erally, this seems to be due to a greater interdependence of the various 
parts of the nervous system in the lower animals. In these, when any 
one center is stirred up by exciting impulses, an irradiation of exciting 
impulses is apt to take place to all other centers, and the mesmeric 
state is in consequence apt to be broken. And on the other hand, 
when a center is inhibited, an irradiation of inhibitory impulses is apt 
to take place, and the whole nervous system is in consequence apt to 
be inhibited. Hence the activity or suppression of activity of particu- 
lar parts of the central nervous system, which forms so conspicuous a 
feature of mesmerism in man, can be only partially produced in the 
lower vertebrates. Even in man there is very considerable difference, 
in different individuals, in the ease with which particular nerve-centers 
can be excited or inhibited without other centers being similarly af- 


THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MESMERISM. 805 


fected. But apart from this the fundamental features are the same, 
whether a man ora frog be mesmerized. The primary point is, as I 
have said, the paralysis of the will—that is, the inhibition of a certain 
activity of the nerve-cells of the cortex of the cerebrum. 

The great majority of people can not be mesmerized unless they 
consent to fix their attention on some particular object. This fixing 
of the attention, speaking generally, seems to be a voluntary exclusion 
of exciting impulses, leaving thus the inhibitory ones an open field. 
Idiots, who, on account of the lack of co-ordination of their nerve- 
centers, can not fix their attention for any length of time on any one 
object, can not as far as I know be mesmerized. Now this, now that 
part of the brain becomes active, and exciting impulses are sent out 
which overpower the inhibitory ones.* Inhibition from impulses aris- 
ing in the cortex itself are rare unless the patient has been previously 
mesmerized. Some such cases, however, do occur. But in people who 
have been previously mesmerized inhibition in this manner is of not 
unfrequent occurrence ; within limits, the more often the changes in 
the cells accompanying inhibition have been produced, the easier they 
are to reproduce. Those who have often been mesmerized may fall 
again into this condition at any moment, if the idea crosses their minds 
that they are expected to be mesmerized. 

Thus, if a sensitive subject be told that the day after to-morrow at 
half-past nine he will be mesmerized, nothing more need be done ; the 
day after to-morrow at half-past nine he will remember it, and in so 
doing will mesmerize himself. 

An instance sent by M. Richer to Dr. Hake Tuke, presents, it 
seems to me, an example of inhibition from the cortex which is of a 
somewhat different class, and more allied to that which occurs in birds 
and lower mammals. <A patient was suspected of stealing some photo- 
graphs from the hospital, a charge which she indignantly denied. 
One morning M. Richer found this patient with her hand in the 
drawer containing the photographs, having already transferred some 
of them to her pocket. There she remained motionless, She had 
been mesmerized by the sound of a gong struck in an adjoining ward. 
Here, probably, the changes in the cortex accompanying the emotion 
which was aroused by the sudden sound at the moment when she was 
committing the theft produced a wide-spread inhibition—she was 
instantaneously mesmerized. 

I will show you the method of mesmerizing which is, perhaps, on 
the whole, most effective ; it is very nearly that described by Braid. 
I have not time to attempt a mesmeric experiment to-night ; it is the 
method only which I wish to show you. With one hand a bright ob- 
ject, such as this faceted piece of glass, is held thus, eight to twelve 

* It is said that some persons, while they are sleeping, can be brought by means of 
passes into the mesmeric state. It would be interesting to observe if this can also be 
done with insane people. 


806 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


inches from the subject, so that there is a considerable convergence of 
the eyes, and rather above the level of the eyes, so that he is obliged 
to look upward. The subject is told to look steadily at the piece of 
glass, and to keep his whole attention fixed upon it. This position is 
kept up for five to ten minutes ; during this time the pupils will prob- 
ably dilate considerably, often assuming a slight rhythmic contraction 
and dilation ; when this is the case, the free hand is moved slowly 
from the object toward the eyes. If the subject is sensitive, the eyes 
will usually close with a vibratory motion. In some cases the subject 
is then unable to open them, and the usual mesmeric phenomena can 
be obtained. If, when the operator brings his hand near the eyes of 
the subject, the subject instead of closing them follows the movements 
of the fingers, the whole proceeding is repeated, but the subject is 
told to close his eyes when the fingers are brought near them, but to 
keep them fixed in the same direction as before, and to continue to 
think of the object and that only. The operator then for some min- 
utes makes “ passes,” bringing his warm hands over and close to the 
face of the subject in one direction. When the subject is inclined to 
pass into the cataleptic state, an indication of his condition may be 
obtained by gently raising his arm ; if he is beginning to be mesmer- 
ized, the arm remains in the position in which it is placed. If the arm 
falls, the mesmeric state may not infrequently be hastened on by tell- 
ing the subject to keep his arm extended while he is still gazing at 
the object, or while the passes are being made. And that is the whole 
of the process. The man thus mesmerized sinks from manhood to a 
highly complicated piece of machinery. He is a machine which for a 
time is conscious, and in which ideas can be excited by appropriate 
stimulation ; any one acquainted with the machinery can set it in 
action. 

The distinguishing feature of the earlier stages of mesmerism in 
man is that by slight stimulation any one center can be easily set in 
violent activity, and its activity easily stopped, without the activity 
spreading to other distant centers. It is on this that the mesmeric 
phenomena usually exhibited depend ; with most of these phenomena 
you are no doubt familiar, so that I need mention one or two only. 

Complicated reflexes may be produced in various ways, just as we 
have seen is the case with a frog even when without its cerebral hemi- 
spheres. Thus Braid mentions that on one occasion an old lady who 
had never danced, and who indeed considered it a sinful pastime, 
when mesmerized began to dance as soon as a waltz-tune was played. 

A statement made to a subject will often produce implicit belief, 
notwithstanding the evidence of his senses. I remember telling a 
subject that I was about to bring a hot body near his face, and he was 
to tell me when it was painful. I put my finger on his cheek, upon 
which he cried out violently that I was burning him. When he was 
awakened he remembered that I had ,touched him with something 


THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MESMERISM. 807 


very hot. The idea I had given him was remembered, the evidence 
of his sense of touch was disregarded. 

There are certain attitudes which we usually assume under the in- 
fluence of certain moods or ideas ; from each of the muscles concerned 
in bringing about any one attitude, impulses travel up to the brain, 
and give rise to a definite muscular sensation which comes, therefore, 
to be associated with a particular mental mood. In mesmerized people 
the production of a definite muscular sensation not infrequently pro- 
duces in the mind the mood with which it is, in the wakeful state, as- 
sociated. At the same time ideas may be produced corresponding to 
the mood, and the ideas may give rise to particular actions, such as 
laughing, crying, fighting. 

If the head is pushed back and the shoulders opened out, the face 
assumes a look full of pride or haughtiness, and, if the subject be asked 
what he is thinking about, he will give some answer indicating what a 
fine fellow he fancies himself to be. If, then, the head is bowed and 
the shoulders contracted, the aspect of the face changes to one of hu- 
mility and pity. Occasionally it happens that a slight pressure on a 
single muscle, which causes it to contract, will by an irradiation of 
nerve-impulses produce the muscular sensations proper to a group of 
muscles, and this will give rise to the associated frame of mind. Thus 
very different feelings may be made to rapidly succeed one another in 
the mind of the subject by simply pressing on various muscles of the 
head and neck. At first sight such an experiment looks like a revival 
of the now happily forgotten phrenology. 

I have said that, in a frog which remains mesmerized for any time, 
there is a considerable reflex depression—i. e., inhibition of the whole 
of the central nervous system ; that there is an irradiation of inhibitory 
impulses. In man a similar irradiation of inhibitory impulses appears 
to take place : usually a mesmerized person if left alone passes gradu- 
ally, but often rapidly, into a state of torpor ; consciousness disappears, 
memory is lost, reflex action becomes difficult to obtain ; finally, it may 
be, there is complete anesthesia, a limb may be cut off without pro- 
ducing any movement or any pain. Since this torpor comes on with- 
out anything further being done to the subject, we may conclude that 
here, as in the frog, but to a much more marked degree, there is an 
irradiation of inhibitory impulses. The primarily inhibited centers 
send out inhibitory impulses to all other nerve-centers. Up to a cer- 
tain stage, possibly throughout, any one or more centers may be brought 
back to a condition of activity by certain exciting stimuli, but when 
these cease the inexcitable condition is soon brought back by the in- 
hibitory impulses streaming to them from other nerve-centers. 

The extent to which the torpid condition develops itself varies in 
different individuals. It depends upon the condition of the nervous 
system, upon the relative intensities of the inhibitory and exciting im- 
pulses. As far as our present knowledge goes, it would appear that a 


808 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


few only of those who can be mesmerized can be made to pass into a 
condition of complete anesthesia. It is possible, however, that this 
may be due to the passes which give rise to inhibitory impulses not 
being continued long enough. Dr. Esdaile, who in India was accus- 
tomed to mesmerize his patients before performing surgical operations 
upon them, used to continue the passes for one to two hours, and often 
to repeat this for several days in succession. 

In different people the order in which different centers are inhibited 
varies, as we should expect, from the unequal development of different 
centers in different people. This is no doubt of influence in determin- 
ing whether the general state is cataleptic, somnambulistic, or lethargic, 
and here probably the method used to mesmerize is also of considerable 
importance ; it would seem that the cataleptic condition is more likely 
to be developed when the process of mesmerization involves a strain on 
the eyes of the subject than when he is mesmerized by passes. Not 
much attention, however, has as yet been directed to this point. 

There can, I think, be no doubt that mesmerism may help, and 
sometimes cure, persons suffering from certain diseases of the nervous 
system. It is not in our power to make any accurate statement of the 
way in which this is brought about ; but, since disease may be the re- 
sult of either an over-activity or of an under-activity of any part of 
the central nervous system, it is reasonable to suppose that a beneficial 
effect will follow the employment of a method which allows us to di- 
minish or increase these activities as we will. This is aside of the ques- 
tion which is of the greatest interest both to physicians and to physi- 
ologists—to physiologists, since it bears directly upon the problem of 
the influence of the nervous system on nutrition. There is good rea- 
son to believe that, by directing attention strongly to any particular 
part of the body, the nutritive state of that part of the body may be 
altered. The determination of the actual way in which this is brought 
about is full of difficulties, but the following way is at least theoreti- 
cally possible: It may be that the nerve-centers connected with the 
tissue in question are made unusually active, and that they send out 
nerve-impulses of a trophic nature, that is, impulses which directly 
control the nutrition of the tissue. The alteration in the tissue caused 
by its changed nutritive state—its changed metabolism—may conceiv- 
ably be either beneficial or detrimental to the whole organism ; it may 
give rise to a diseased state, or get rid of an existing one. 

The modern miracles of healing, wrought in persons in a state of re- 
ligious enthusiasm, offer a field for investigating this problem ; the field, 
however, is a particularly bad one, and chiefly because so many people 
concerned regard any careful examination of the subject as impious. 
. But in mesmerized persons it seems probable that such investigations 
could be made on a fairly satisfactory basis. Men when mesmerized 
gradually lose remembrance of those things which they remember 
when they are awake, but not infrequently other things are remem- 


THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MESMERISM. 809 


bered which are forgotten in the waking state.* This is normally the 
case with a person who has been previously and recently mesmerized. 
He may then remember little else than what took place in the cor- 
responding stage of his previous mesmerization.’ In a certain state, 
then, an event or a command will produce in the central nervous sys- 
tem those changes which are necessary for the event or the command 
to be remembered later, without ever rising to consciousness in the wak- 
ing condition. Thus, a command to do a particular thing, given to a 
subject in this mesmeric stage, may be carried out when he awakes, 
although he is quite unconscious why he does it. We may say that 
such an act is one of unconscious memory. But it is, I think, some- 
thing more than this. The subject is usually uneasy and preoccupied 
until the thing is done ; he is, to a greater or less extent, unable to fix 
his attention on other things ; he is, in fact, in a state of unconscious 
attention to an unconscious memory. This brings us to our point. It 
suggests that if a subject, in a certain stage of mesmerization, be told 
that in a few days a sore will appear upon his hand, or, conversely, 
that a sore already there will disappear, the conditions which accom- 
pany conscious expectation and attention will, to a certain degree, be 
established ; and the trophic influence of the nervous system on the 
tissues may be tested in a manner which puts the experiment fairly 
within the control of the observer, and, to a certain degree, excludes 
imposture. Such an experiment has obviously some drawbacks: it 
would probably only succeed, if it succeeded at all, with a person 
whose nervous system was in a state of unstable equilibrium ; and it 
can hardly be expected that the effects would be so striking as when 
conscious expectation is also concerned. Still, observations of this 
kind are well worth attention, on account of the medical, the physio- 
logical, and the psychological issues involved in the results. 

Here I must leave the subject. I have not attempted to give an 
account of all the phenomena of mesmerism ; I have taken those phe- 
nomena which seemed to me to be the least easy to understand, the 
most liable to misconception, and have attempted to show that they 
resemble fundamentally certain simpler phenomena which can be ob- 
served in lower animals. I have further attempted to string together 
the various facts upon a thread of theory, which may be briefly summed 
up as follows : 


The primary condition of mesmerism is an inhibition of a particu- 
lar mode of activity of the cortex of the brain, in consequence of which 
the will can no longer be made effective. 


* A case is recorded by Braid, of a woman who, during natural somnambulism—which 
is almost identical with a state that can be produced by mesmerism—could repeat cor- 
rectly long passages from the Hebrew Bible, and from books in other languages, although 
she had never studied any of these languages, and was quite ignorant of them when she 
was awake. At length, however, it was discovered that she had learned the passages 
when she was a girl, by hearing a clergyman with whom she lived read them out aloud. 


810 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


This inhibition may be brought about by nervous impulses coming 
Jrom certain sensory nerves, as those of sight, touch, hearing. 

It may also be brought about by impulses or changes arising in the 
cortex itself. : 

The inhibited cortex, and probably also inhibited lower centers of 
the brain, send out inhibitory impulses to all other parts of the central 
nervous system, so that the mesmerized man or animal gradually passes 
into a state of torpor, or even of complete anesthesia. 

The phenomena of the excitable stage of mesmerism are proximately 
determined by the possibility of exciting any particular center alone, 
without exciting at the same time other centers by which its activity is 
normally controlled. In lower animals this stage is less marked in 
consequence of a greater interdependence of the various parts of the 
central nervous system. 


I would expressly state that I regard this theory only as provisional. 
Further, I am quite conscious that it is very imperfect. A complete 
explanation of the phenomena of mesmerism and of its allied states 
can only be given when we have a complete knowledge of the struct- 
ure and functions of all parts of the central nervous system. But I 
have not much doubt that the explanation of the main features of 
mesmerism will be found when we are able to answer the question, 
What is inhibition? And it is some comfort to think that the answer 
awaits us in the comparatively simple nervous system of the lower 
animals. I would not be understood to mean that variation of blood- 
supply and various other events are of no influence in producing mes- 
meric phenomena ; I think, however, that these events are of secondary 
importance only. 


& 
$ 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 
Il. 


{o the year 1875 the Meteorological Society of London was moved to 
follow the lead of the French meteorologists in reference to light- 
ning-conductors, and to appoint a Lightning-Rod Ccmmittee. From 
the report made to the society by the council in the following year, it 
appears that the objects contemplated in this action were “an inves- 
tigation and record of accidents from lightning, an inquiry into the 
principles involved in the protection of buildings, the diffusion of exact 
information regarding the best form and arrangement for lightning- 
conductors, and the consideration of all phenomena connected with 
atmospheric electricity.”* It is obvious that in its first conception 
this committee was intended to be essentially one of investigation and 


* See “ Quarterly Journal of the Meteorological Society,” vol. iii, p. 75. 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 811 


inquiry, and it was for this reason appropriately designated a “ Perma- 
nent Committee.” The meteorologists concerned in its inauguration 
were actuated by the same consideration that was present to the Sec- 
tion of Physics of the Academy of Sciences in Paris when the follow- 
ing paragraph of the instruction of 1854 was drawn up : 

One knows, it is true, a very great number of examples of people being killed 
or of houses being set on fire; one knows, also, many and diverse instances of 
metals fused, of timber shattered, of stones and even of walls thrown far away, 
and many other analogous effects; but what is generally wanting is precise 
measurements relative to distance, dimensions, the position of the object— both 
that which is struck and that which escaped. For it is necessary to know what 
the lightning spares, as well as what it strikes. It is the work of all observers, 
but especially of officers in the navy and artillery, of engineers, of professors, 
inventors, and architects, to test these phenomena at the moment they are pro- 
duced, and to describe them accurately for the benefit of science, as well as that 
of public economy. Such descriptions, when they refer to a stroke of lightning, 
should as much as possible point out the track of the lightning from its highest 
to its lowest point; also they should show, by sufficiently numerous horizontal 
sections, the relative positions of all objects in a circle wide enough to take in 
those which have been struck. 


In this passage the instruction of the French Academy no doubt 
touches the one point which is necessary before all else to improve, if 
not to perfect, the practice of electrical engineering, so far as this is 
aimed against the destructive powers of lightning. The broad prin- 
ciples upon which the engineer prosecutes his work are happily such 
as can be referred to actual experiments carried out by the artificial 
apparatus of the electrician. But there still remain some incidental 
questions, such as the influence of surface, extent, and form in con- 
ductors, the relation. of conductivity to tenacity, the area of protec- 
tion, and the maximum effect of lightning, which can not be settled 
in this way, and which require an appeal to the larger operations of 
Nature. This, however, concerns opportunities which can not be 
arranged at will. The method of the appeal must of necessity be ob- 
servational rather than experimental. It proceeds upon the lines of 
close watching and systematic record. Observations where the great 
operations of Nature are concerned are utterly worthless unless they 
are made with scientific insight and precision. The plan of investiga- 
tion that has to be pursued is therefore to collect an exact account of 
all accidents that occur, and to arrange a system of organization which 
enables all such chance opportunities to be seized upon and improved 
by an immediate investigation of concomitant conditions and circum- 
stances. This method of study also must be followed up by patient 
persistence for a considerable length of time, seeing that accidents 
from lightning occur at uncertain intervals, and that they are scattered 
capriciously over the greater part of the surface of theearth. It is for 
this reason, essentially, that a Lightning-Rod Committee needs to sit in 
permanence. 


é 


812 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


The Committee of the Meteorological Society, however, seems very 
soon to have lost sight of its own excellent design, and to have changed 
its plan into a mere conference for the preparation of a report, which 
was drawn up under its auspices and printed and published in 1882, 
apparently by the conference itself, and which assumes the form of a 
code of rules for the erection of lightning-conductors, with numerous 
appendices referring to authorities which had been in some sense con- 
sulted. The report is published under the editorship of the secretary, 
and simply as having been considered and adopted by the delegates of 
the conference, who seem indeed to have concentrated their attention 
upon one subordinate object which had been proposed by the Meteoro- 
logical Society, namely, “the diffusion of exact information regarding 
the best form and arrangement of lightning-conductors,” and to have 
overlooked entirely the more important work of observation and record 
which had been contemplated by the society in the first instance, and 
to which we have drawn attention. 

The code of rules put forward by the conference was obviously in- 
tended to possess the same kind of authority and position as the “ in- 
structions ” of the earlier French reports, and indeed its chief value 
seems to be the approval it accords to the practice of construction 
which had grown out of those instructions, and which is very generally 
in use at the present day. It virtually confirms most of the conclu- 
sions which had been arrived at by the French commissions. 

The “ Rules ” of the London Conference direct that the main stem 
of the conductor shall consist of a copper rod or tape, with an ascer- 
tained electrical conductivity amounting to ninety per cent of that 
which pure copper would possess, and weighing six ounces per foot ; 
or that it shall be an iron rod weighing two pounds and a quarter per 
foot ; and that the earth connection shall be made by a copper or iron 
plate presenting a superficial area of eighteen square feet, imbedded 
in moist earth, and surrounded with coke. The terminal points are to 
be more prominent than those usually adopted in England, but they 
may be less so than the heavy ¢iges of thirty-three feet employed in 
France. The rod is not to be insulated from the building, but inti- 
mately connected with all large masses of metal used incidentally 
in the construction. All joints in its length are to be imbedded in 
solder. Curves are not to be made too sharp, and ample provision is 
to be secured for free expansion and contraction by varying tempera- 
ture. Water-mains and gas-mains are to be utilized as means of 
earth contact wherever practicable, and the conducting integrity of 
the rod is to be tested every year. 

A careful perusal of the French instructions, or of Mr. Richard An- 
derson’s very excellent manual upon lightning-conductors, published 
in 1879, will show that this is substantially an authoritative acceptance 
of the measures already advised by the best authorities. It is, how- 
ever, somewhat remarkable that in the report itself of the London Con- 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 813 


ference nothing whatever is said of the influence of length in reducing 
the efficacy of a conductor. This is the more strange, bevause, in 
speaking of the care required for the formation of joints in the “ final 
decision of the conference on controverted points,” the report categori- 
cally remarks that bad joints have the same effect as “lengthening a 
conductor,” and a reference is incidentally made to one instance, in 
which a bad joint was found to have had the same effect on a dis- 
charge of electricity that the lengthening of a conductor to nineteen 
hundred miles would have had. This nevertheless was a point that 
was perfectly understood by the French investigators, and it is obvi- 
ously one in which the London code is behind its predecessors. In the 
first French instructions, issued in 1823, there is a paragraph which 
says: 

Among the conducting bodies there are none, however, which do not op- 
pose some resistance to the passage of the electric force; this resistance to the 
passage, being repeated in every portion of the conductor, increases with its length, 
and may exceed that which would be offered by a worse but shorter conductor, 
Conductors of small diameter also conduct worse than those of larger diameter. 


It follows, as a matter of absolute certainty from this increase of 
resistance with augmented length, that a conductor which was of am- 
ple dimensions for the protection of a building eighty feet high would 
not be of the same efficacy for a building four hundred feet high. It 
is for this reason that M. Melsens employed eight main conductors for 
the Hotel de Ville at Brussels, and it is for this reason that eight half- - 
inch copper ropes have been carried down from the lantern and cupola 
in St. Paul’s. To use eight main conductors of a given size is obvi- 
ously, in an electrical sense, the same thing as to use one conductor 
only of eight times the size.* The practice of the French engineers 
has hitherto been to double the sectional capacity of the rod for each 
additional eighty feet of the length that is to be protected by its in- 
strumentality. This practice is a sound one, and certainly should be 
observed. 

There is one other particular in reference to the conference report 
to which it seems desirable to draw attention on account of the erro- 
neous doctrine to which it may possibly give a sanction. Among the 
appendices which have been added to the report there is a table, 
obviously prepared at the cost of some labor, which professes to give 
the sizes of lightning-conductors recommended by various authori- 
ties. In order to facilitate the comparison of the several sizes, all have 
been reduced to what has been termed the equivalent dimensions of 
copper. But the oversight has been made, in preparing this table, of 
treating all cases of galvanized iron as if the zinc in the combination had 
no other function than the protection of the iron from rust. In reality, 

* The solid copper tape which is chiefly used by Mr. Anderson is, to meet the circum- 


stances here alluded to, manufactured of four different sizes, the smallest being § inch 
wide and +; inch thick, and the largest 14 inch wide and } inch thick. 


814 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. 


however, a galvanized iron rod conducts as a combination of iron and 
zinc, in which the zinc possesses a much higher conducting power than 
the iron. Zinc surpasses iron in this particular at least three times. All 
the statements of conductivity that have been drawn from galvanized 
iron conductors have hence been given much too low. The influence 
of a too powerful electrical discharge upon a conductor of galvanized 
iron is, in the first instance, to strip off its coating of zine by melting 
this more readily fusible metal. But until this is done the zinc assists 
very materially in the transmission of the discharge. Practically it is 
known that galvanized iron ropes effectually transmit discharges which 
could not be safely carried by ungalvanized ropes of the same diame- 
ter. ‘The table is on this account worthless for the purpose for which 
it was avowedly prepared. It attributes to several of the authorities 
which are named views on the matter of the size of lightning-con- 
ductors which they would certainly not indorse. For instance, Mr. 
Preece, the eminent electrician, is represented as holding that a copper 
wire with a sectional area of only the one-hundredth part of a square 
inch is “sufficient to serve as a lightning-rod for any house.” The 
authority upon which this startling statement is made is a passage in 
the “ Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers,” i in which Mr. 
Preece says that he thinks “ galvanized iron wire one quarter of an 
inch in diameter is sufficient for the protection of any house.” It 
needs no very large amount of acquaintance with electrical matters to 
enable the reader to understand that Mr. Preece would not himself 
have expressed the same confidence in a small copper bell- wire such as 
is given as the equivalent in the table of the report. Taken in con- 
nection with the omission of all reference to the increased resistance 
in long conductors, it might be inferred from this estimate that Mr. 
Preece would hold a small copper bell-wire, carried from the golden 
cross of St. Paul’s to.the ground, to be a sufficient protection for the 
great metropolitan cathedral. 

In his “ Notes et Commentaires sur la Question des Paratonnerres,” 
printed in 1882, Professor Melsens complains that no notice of his sys- 
tem of numerous conductors of weak or small section has been taken 
in the code of laws of the Lightning-Rod Conference of London, even 
as a possible alternative of construction, a silence which he interprets 
as equivalent to a formal condemnation. He says: 


Still, I believed that the silence which the conference observes in its code 
of law upon the possible application of my system was equivalent to a con- 
demnation ; I should have been glad to see the conference pronounce, distinctly, 
without any reticence, either for or against the system as a whole, or in regard 

to its adoption concurrently with the lightning-rods which it prescribes or 
which it commends; the eminent savants who were a part of it would not have 
failed in that case to discuss the essentials, with great profit in the elucidation 
of the scientific and practical question, particularly on the points still snbject to 
discussion, and on which we still meet very opposite opinions. I have to regret 
deeply, especially in consideration of the ancient savants who are members of 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 81s 


the English commission, the silence which they have thought it their duty to 
keep respecting my new system of lightning-rods, while giving the regulations 
and laws which, according to it, secure the most efficacious protection, aside 
from all consideration of the constructors who advertise so largely, or who are 
protected by letters-patent. 


The distinguished electrician of Brussels is not without good ground 
for this complaint, but he may. console himself for his disappointment 
in the approval of his system that has been accorded by other highly 
competent authorities. In his “ Report on Static Electricity and Para- 
tonnerres” at the International Exhibition of Electricity at Paris in 
1881, Professor M. E. Rousseau says : 


From the comparative examination that I have made, I am convinced that in 
each of the three constituent parts of which the lightning-conductor is composed, 
namely, the point, the rod, and the root or earth contact, the system of M. Mel- 
sens has a marked superiority over the old system; and, as MM. Angot and 
Nardi have remarked, must be regarded as efficacious as the old system, if not 
more so, besides being at the same time less costly.* 


M. Angot, the author of an able treatise on “ Elementary Physics,” 
printed in Paris in 1881, speaks of Professor Melsens’s system of light- 
ning-protection as being “more efficacious, as well as less costly, than 
the older plan, and sure to come soon into general use.” M. Nardi, in a 
memoir on “ The Parafulmine of Melsens,” printed at Vicenza in 1881, 
describes the multiple system of points and rods and the large earth 
contacts adopted by Professor Melsens as being “the most rational, 
the most efficacious, the most easy to construct and fix, and the least 
costly of all the alternative systems of construction.” M. Mascart, 
Professor of Physics in the College of France, in his excellent treatise 
on “Static Electricity,” describes the entire system devised by Professor 
Melsens as ‘‘ forming, without any doubt, the most beautiful model of 
the paratonnerre that has been realized.” The frank and outspoken 
acceptance and praise of France, Italy, and Belgium may, therefore, 
fairly be placed as a set-off against what Professor Melsens feels to be 
the discourteous, if not condemnatory, silence of London. 

Since the appearance of the report of the Lightning-Rod Confer- 
ence a small volume has been published by “ Major Arthur Parnell, of 
the Royal Engineers,” + entitled ‘‘The Action of Lightning, and the 
Means of defending Life and Property from its Effects.” In this little 
book the author has been at the pains to compile a reference to a very 
large number of accidents that have been occasioned by lightning. 
This, however, has been done for an ulterior and somewhat insidious 
purpose. He has a new theory of his own to propound, and a revolu- 
tion in the practice of lightning-rod engineering to propose. He wishes 

* Professor Melsens estimates that the cost of effective protection by the old system 
amounts to very nearly 44 francs the square metre, but by his system to only 0°66 of a 


franc the square metre. 
+ Now Colonel Parnell. 


* 


816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


to do away altogether with the lightning-rod as a dangerous and su- 
perfluous expedient, and to establish in its place a system of earth-buried 
plates and short earth-points surrounding the building. Space does 
not here permit an allusion to the various fallacies which are involved 
in this heretical scheme. It will be enough for all practical purposes 
to say that the proper answer to the dangerous heresy is an appeal to 
the argument of facts. There are innumerable instances on record in 
which lightning has been seen to strike lightning-conductors with a 
_ luminous flash, and there are still more in which the extremity of the 
rod bears the traces of the passage through it of lightning; but in 
every case, if the rod has been of due size and properly constructed and 
fixed, the building associated with it has been entirely uninjured. The 
truth obviously is that the question of efficiency and safety entirely 
hangs upon the amplitude of the dimensions, the number and _ position 
of the points, and the completeness of the earth contact, of conductors. 
In any case where these are insufficient the lightning-rod is a source of 
danger. In every case where they are ample, and where the system of 
their establishment is sound, the protection is complete. It will be 
time enough to enter upon a consideration of the merits of the retro- 
grade course which is advocated in this ill-advised scheme when any 
single case of failure in a lightning-conductor of satisfactory dimen- 
sions, and of tested perfection of construction, has been established 
before a competent jury on incontrovertible grounds. The failures 
incident upon defective work—as all unbiased and properly trained 
thinkers are aware—are among the weightiest of the arguments that 
tell in favor of the employment of conductors. 

In a very large majority of the cases in which accidents have oc- 
curred to buildings which have been furnished with lightning-conduct- 
ors, the mischief has been actually traced by competent inquiry to 
some easily recognized fault or deficiency of construction. A very 
instructive illustration of the accuracy of this remark has quite recently 
presented itself in a form which is worthy of notice. Shortly after 
midnight, on the 26th of November, during a thunder-storm of some 
severity, a flash of lightning struck the lightning-conductor attached 
to the spire of Chichester Cathedral, and scattered a considerable por- 
tion of it into fragments. A letter from “A Fellow of the Royal As- 
tronomical Society ” forthwith appeared in the “ English Mechanic and 
World of Science,” drawing attention to the accident, and commenting 
upon it in the following words: “This seems’ to open a very serious 
question indeed, because, if so elaborate an affair as the Chichester con- 
ductor proved so much worse than useless when a thunder-storm came, 
what security have we that a similar disaster may not befall at, say, 
the Government magazines at Purfleet or elsewhere?” In reference 
to the accident which called forth this note of alarm, it may be at 
once, however, said that it belonged essentially to the class of occur- 
rences which have been pointed at in the beginning of this paragraph. 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 817 — 


The conductor which was attached to the spire was not adequate and 
competent for the protective work which it was intended to perform. 
It had been put up sixteen years ago, when a new spire was erected in 
the place of the old one, which fell in consequence of having been add- 
ed as an after-thought to a tower that had not been prepared to bear 
its weight, and was of a form which is, happily, now obsolete. It 
originally consisted of twelve No. 15 gauge* copper wires arranged 
in a double series, side by side, and held together by a double strand 
of zinc and copper wire crossing them transversely, and acting as a 
kind of weft to the longitudinal copper warp. The conductor was 
thus a sort of ribbon of copper wire, with transverse binding-threads 
of zinc. The weight of the metal in this compound conductor was 
ten and a quarter ounces per yard, instead of being thirty-six ounces 
per yard, as it ought to have been at the very least if it had fulfilled 
the conditions that are now required for such a task as it had been 
required to perform. But, besides this, in consequence of having been 
exposed for sixteen years in its sub-littoral situation to the blasts of 
the moist sea-wind, the copper wires were in many places eaten into 
by corrosive action where the zinc wire of the woof crossed them, so 
as to reduce to some considerable extent their original conducting ca- 
pacity. The conductor was so fixed that it descended from the sum- 
mit of the spire along the slope, and along the face of the tower, then 
crossed the lead flashing of the roof, passed down the main wall of the 
building near the intersection of one of the transepts with the nave, 
and was finally plunged into a well dug-into the grave-yard about 
twenty feet from the place where it reached the ground. At the time 
of the storm a flash of light was seen to pass along the upper part of 
the track of the conductor, and this flash was accompanied by an 
instantaneous crash of thunder, that awoke most of the slumbering 
inhabitants of the close. The destruction of the conductor, however, 
was not discovered until the second morning after the storm, when 
some shattered fragment was observed projecting from the tower. It 
was then found that about forty feet of the conductor at the top of 
the spire still remained uninjured in its place, but that for the next 
one hundred feet below this the woven metallic band had been scat- 
tered into a shower of short fragments of copper wire, which were 
strewed thickly upon the roof of the tower and of the lower building. 
These fragments were three quarters of an inch long, corresponded in 
length with the materials of the transverse crossings of the zine wire, 
and bore unmistakable indications of galvanic corrosion upon their 
ends. The lower portion of the conductor was uninjured, but one of 
the iron rain-pipes, which descended from the roof of the transept a 
few feet away, had been shattered by the discharge. It was therefore 
manifest that from the leaden covering of the roof downward the 
incompetent conductor had been assisted in its work by the roof and 


* That is, of one sixteenth of an inch in diameter. 
VOL, XXV.—52 


818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


its numerous iron rain-pipes, and this intelligibly accounted for its 
own preservation through that portion of its course; and it was also 
clear that the earth communication of the conductor was not ample 
enough for the transmission of the entire discharge, as, if it had been, 
the lower part of the conductor would have been shattered like the 
upper part, and the rain-pipe would have remained uninjured. The 
resistance of the earth communication of the conductor, measured 
through the uninjured fragment, was sixty-five ohms—that is, some 
twelve or sixteen times greater than under any circumstances it ought 
to have been. So far, therefore, from this maligned conductor being 
open to reproach, it had done exactly what it was scientifically bound 
to do, and what any expert could have foretold that it would do, 
under the circumstances which have been described. 

But the critic who sounded the note of alarm in “The English Me- 
chanic ” was also egregiously wrong in another by no means unimpor- 
tant particular. The unfairly maligned conductor had not “ proved 
worse than useless when a thunder-storm came.” As some more ap- 
preciative commentator figuratively but not inaptly remarked at the 
time, it had “ gallantly died at its post in the efficient performance of 
its duty.” Although the lightning-conductor was destroyed, the ex- 
ceedingly beautiful stone spire remained absolutely uninjured. It had 
not even a scar upon its face. This circumstance of the destruction 
of a lightning-rod of too narrow capacity without injury to the build- 
ing to which it is attached is by no means of infrequent occurrence. 
About five inches of the top of the second conductor which Franklin 
himself erected in Philadelphia were destroyed by a discharge, which 
was seen to strike the rod, and which also made itself visible in a lumi- 
nous blaze in the dry earth around its base; and Franklin adroitly 
claimed the incident as a proof that Nature itself had borne testimony 
in favor of his invention. The brass-wire conductor of the war-ship 
Jupiter was struck at sea on June 13, 1854, and the sixty brass wires 
of which it was composed were shattered into fragments the size of a 
pin. But no injury was done to the vessel. A large number of in- 
stances of a kind very similar to this well-known and altogether typi- 
cal case might be adduced did space permit. But it must not there- 
fore be inferred that so desirable a result is in the proper order of 
events. When a lightning-rod “dies at its post” in a successful de- 
fense, as in the memorable Chichester case, the auspicious issue is due 
to the accidental circumstance that no better extraneous earth contact 
is within the striking reach of the discharge. If this were the case, 
the lightning would certainly be diverted from the course of the con- 
ductor into the more facile way, and, in making its devious leap into 
the more ayailable path, would be quite sure to leave the marks of its 
divergent passage in some undesirable form. It is on this account, as 
well as because of the wasteful outlay which is required to supply a 
new rod when an old one has been destroyed, that lightning-conduct- 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. | 819 


ors of insufficient dimensions, and of bad principles of construction, 
are by no means to be looked upon with tolerance, to say nothing of 
favor, notwithstanding the occasional good service that may be en- 
tered to their account. 

Irrespective of all theoretical considerations, and upon purely ex- 
perimental and demonstrative grounds, it is possible in the present 
state of electrical science to definitely state what it is that an electri- 
cal engineer has to do when he undertakes to protect buildings against 
the destructive force of lightning. He has, in the first. place, to make 
sure that, wherever the lightning can fall, it shall find an open and prac- 
tically unobstructed path to traverse in its passage to the ground. He 
is quite sure that the electric discharge will confine itself to the track 
of a conductor, and will pass quietly and harmlessly along it, provided 
its dimensions are adequate to the task of transmission, and provided 
the inlets and outlets are sufficiently capacious for its unimpeded 
reception and escape. It is a thoroughly established and altogether 
indisputable canon of electrical science that when a discharge has to 
pass through a conductor of too narrow size, and with obstructed inlets 
and outlets, it, of necessity, accomplishes its passage as a turbulent 
and ill-regulated force all the way, with a tendency at every step to 
make a devious outburst or overflow ; and that when it passes through 
a conductor of ample dimensions, and with unimpeded ingress and 
egress, it is devoid of all erratic impulse, and traverses the appointed 
channel as an obedient and well-trained power. The task of the en- 
gineer, therefore, resolves itself primarily into so arranging his appa- 
ratus as to keep the lightning in its well-ordered and harmless state 
so long as it is in the close neighborhood of buildings that might be 
injured by any uncontrolled outburst through a devious path. There 
are three ways in which he can seek to accomplish this purpose. He 
can multiply and, as it were, enlarge the gates of ingress by increasing 
the number of his air-terminals.and earth contacts through which the 
discharge may have to. be gathered into the conductor. He can aug- 
ment the dimensions and the carrying capacity of the conductor, and 
he can amplify the outlets of escape, whether in the direction of the 
cloud or earth. Where these conditions have been properly secured, 
there is not the most remote probability that the conductor will fail in 
its appointed task. This is not a question that is now open to doubt. 
It is as certain that the lightning will traverse a well-arranged and 
competent conductor, rather than the building to which this is attached, | 
as it is that the electric spark from the charged conductor of an elec- 
trical machine will strike a brass ball and rod, and will not strike a 
stick of sealing-wax or of dry wood, when these are presented side by 
side. As a matter of fact it is sometimes imperfectly insulated tracts 
of the surface of the earth that are inductively charged by the propin- 
quity of an overhanging storm-cloud, and sometimes the overhanging 
cloud that is inductively charged by disturbances originating in the 


820 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


ground. But the conductor provided by the electrical engineer acts 
in precisely the same way, and with equal efficiency, in either case. It 
provides the means by which the electrical disturbance may set itself 
at rest in a quiet and unexplosive way. The chief danger that has to 
be feared is the purely economical one that there is always a tendency 
on the part of the imperfectly informed public to limit too narrowly 
the cost, and in that way to impair the efficacy, of the engineer’s work. 
The duty of the engineer is, summarily, to see that his building is ade- 
quately covered above by the lines of the conducting network, that 
the main channel of his conductor is ample for any storm overflow that 
it can, by any possibility, be called upon to ‘accommodate, and that 
the outlet to the earth is capacious and free. Even in the present state 
of electrical science it can, with the utmost confidence, be affirmed, 
not only that wherever destructive accidents have occurred in associa- 
tion with lightning-conductors, such accidents have, in every case, been 
due to the circumstance that the conductors have been of faulty con- 
struction, but also that in by far the greater number of instances the 
fault has been in the least conspicuous and least obvious part of the 
apparatus, where the earth contact has to be established. In his report 
on the lightning-conductors of the Paris International Exhibition, Pro- 
fessor Rousseau states that it is in this particular that lightning-rods 
most generally and most flagrantly fail. In one passage of the report 
he says: 


I do not know whether I have defined with sufficient precision what is im- 
plied ina good communication with the earth, but I think the principle, at any 
rate, may be laid down that the communication of a lightning-conductor with 
the earth can not be considered good if it is inferior to that of any masses of 
metal that lie in its close neighborhood. If this is the case,it may be antici- 
pated, as has so frequently been found, that the lightning will quit the paraton- 
nerre to pass to the object which is in better communication with the earth. It 
is thus that buildings have been frequently set fire to by lightning which has 
leaped from paratonnerres to gas-pipes. In one notable case, after striking the 
conductor of a church in New Haven, United States, the lightning left the con- 
ductor to pierce a brick wall fifty centimetres (nearly twenty inches) thick, to 
get at a gas-pipe which rose twenty feet out of the ground a little distance off. 


We ourselves some little time ago investigated the nature of an ac- 
cident occasioned by lightning, which so strikingly confirms the views 
expressed by Professor Rousseau that it is worthy of being specifically 
brought under notice here. In the year 1865 the tower of the church 
of All Saints, in Nottingham, was struck by lightning during a severe 
thunder-storm. The tower was one hundred and fifty feet high, and 
had a small rope of copper wire, intended to serve as a lightning-con- 
ductor, descending along its west face from one of its corner pinna- 
cles to the ground, where the rope terminated by being coiled round a 
stone buried. a few inches in the dry soil. On the inner face of the 
same wall of the tower, near its base, and only separated from the con- 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 821 


ductor by a solid stone wall four feet six inches thick, there was fixed 
a gas-standard of iron, which was used in lighting the church. The 
lightning in its descent left the conductor at this point, and passed 
through the solid mass of masonry, to reach the standard, knocking 
out a large circular breach in the stone-work by the way. It preferred 
to take this devious path, and to avail itself of the facilities which the 
capacious gas-main connections of the town afforded it for the accom- 
plishment of its escape into the earth, rather than to embarrass itself 
with the still more onerous task of forcing its way into the dry soil 
at the bottom of the tower, through the too briefly terminated coil 
of the rope. The floor and pews of the church were found to be on 
fire the day after the storm, and some considerable mischief was done 
before the conflagration could be stopped. This fire was almost cer- 
tainly due to the circumstance that the gas-pipe from the standard 
was connected with the meter and the mains by means of a short 
length of soft fusible gas-pipe in a small basement-room under the 
floor of the church: But, when an investigation into the cause of the 
fire was subsequently instituted, no one seemed to be able to say 
whether an escape of gas from the injured pipe had been lit up at the 
time of the lightning-discharge, or whether the actual. lighting of the 
gas was due to some subsequent introduction of a burning flame into 
the neighborhood of the gas-meter. 

The obvious method of guarding against accidents of this class is 
the simple expedient, wherever gas-pipes are concerned, of connecting 
the termination of the conductor directly, by means of a sufficiently 
ample metallic band, with one of the large iron pipes of the general 
system of the mains. If this had been done with the lower extremity 
of the rope, in the case of the tower of All Saints Church, instead of 
merely twisting it around a stone in the dry surface-soil, the injury to 
the wall at the bottom of the tower, and the consequent train of acci- 
dents which culminated in the. burning of the floor of the church, 
would have been physically impossible. The lightning would then 
have gone through the large, open, and direct route to the mains in- 
stead of piercing a stone wall four feet six inches thick, and leaping 
across a small fusible gas-pipe to get there. 

The case is precisely of the same nature as the accidents alluded 
to by Professor Rousseau. The earth communication of the copper 
rope being inferior to that of the neighboring gas-pipe, the lightning 
quitted the rope to get at the ground through the pipe. No more 
striking and instructive illustration of the danger of insufficient earth 
contacts could possibly be furnished. 

A still more curious illustration of a somewhat similar kind oc- 
curred at Chichester, simultaneously with the destruction of the light- 
ning-rod which has been already alluded to. The boundary of the 
cathedral close in one direction is marked by a tall and stout iron rail, 
which divides its precincts from the main street of the town. On 


822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 


the side of this street which is opposite to the cathedral stands the 
Dolphin, the principal hotel of the city. About an hour after the 
accident, and while the inmates of the hotel who had been startled 
by the lightning and thunder were still awake, and in some alarm, a 
smell of fire was perceived to be pervading the house. The landlord 
at once rose and proceeded to investigate the cause, and was led by 
the odor of burning wood to one of the cellars in the basement, where 
he found the small gas-pipe fixed to furnish it with light melted for 
several inches, a large flame issuing from the improvised gap, and a 
beam of wood a little above the blaze already on fire. A thorough 
and exhaustive examination of the place at the time, and afterward, 
revealed no trace anywhere else of the passage of the lightning. A 
water-pipe running in from the outside main, however, transversely 
crossed, and almost touched, the gas-pipe as this descended from the 
ceiling to the bracket, and just where the gap had been made. The 
popular notion among the servants of the hotel was that the lightning 
had come in through some open cracks in the cellar-door from the 
pavement of the street, that it had run along the water-pipe, and that 
it had cut through the gas-pipe as it passed across. The more scientific 
explanation of the insidious invasion by fire, in the dead of the night, 
no doubt is that, when the discharge of lightning issued from the cloud 
to the earth, it had scattered itself in various directions, using such 
stepping-stones by the way as offered in its path. One part of the 
discharge, then, first seizing upon the gas-pipes connected with the 
street lamps, took a course through them to reach the earth, but, com- 
ing opportunely by the way across the water-pipe in the cellar of the 
hotel, transferred itself to that pipe on account of the greater facili- 
ties that were offered by it for making an easy and good earth contact 
through the largely expanded subterranean mains, but “sparked ” as it 
passed from pipe to pipe, and in doing so opened a breach in the small 
fusible metal wire, and lit the gas asit began to escape. The flame then 
enlarged the breach by melting a considerable portion of the pipe, and 
was making good progress toward burning down the house, when its 
mischievous proceedings were happily discovered, and arrested in the 
manner which has been described. 

The telegraph-wire which, according to the opinion of Mr. Preece, 
may be sufficient for the protection of any house, is also, it must be 
remembered, capable of acting as a source of very considerable danger 
in circumstances that are by no means unfrequently encountered in 
the arrangements of every-day life. At the time of thunder-storms, 
portions of the electrical discharge are apt to be conveyed into the 
interior of buildings by telegraph and telephone wires that are dis- 
tributed to them for the service of signaling-instruments, and may possi- 
bly set fire to badly conducting and inflammable substances that chance 
to be in connection with them. Instances of this form of accident 
are now often met with, especially in situations where telegraph-wires 


PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 823 


are carried to outlying post-offices over high and exposed tracts of 
land. In such cases it is, most generally, not the full force of the light- 
‘ ning-discharge which effects the mischief, but the partial and second- 
ary discharges which take place in consequence of the influence of in- 
duction. The long stretch of insulated wire, having been inductively 
charged by the near approach of some storm-cloud, sympathetically 
discharges itself of its accumulated force when the tension of the 
cloud is relieved by an outburst of lightning in some other direction. 
The shocks occasionally experienced by telegraph-clerks when hand- 
ling their instruments during the prevalence of thunder-storms in the 
neighborhood are due to this cause. It sometimes happens, however, 
that an actual discharge of lightning does involve a telegraph-wire, 
and such discharge is then usually distributed so that it passes to the 
earth in small, broken outbursts wherever it can find an outlet. In 
such instances enough of the fragmentary discharge may fall to the 
share of some signaling-office to produce very grave mischief. Tele- 
graph-wires should, on this account, never be carried into the interior 
of dwelling-houses, or of inhabited places, without appropriate ar- 
rangements having been made to neutralize the risk. The plan which 
is most usually adopted for the protection of instruments and opera- 
tors in such circumstances consists in the ingenious expedient of arrang- 
ing two broad metal plates so that their contiguous surfaces be face 
to face a very small distance apart, one of the plates being in imme- 
diate connection with the telegraph-wire, while the other is in com- 
munication with the ground. The narrow interval between the two 
plates is then sufficient to prevent any escape of the ordinary electri- 
cal current of low intensity which is employed in telegraph work, but 
upon the occasion of the wire becoming accidentally charged with an 
electrical force of high intensity, such as is produced by the agency of 
the thunder-cloud, this leaps through the narrow space by virtue of 
its superior explosive power, and so escapes harmlessly to the earth, 
instead of making its way through some more devious and dangerous 
route. The plates are, of course, designedly fixed where they serve to 
intercept the discharge by the temptation of the more open and free 
passage to the earth, and in that way divert it from the dangerous 
course which it would otherwise pursue. 

The best course for the electrical engineer, who is planning the pro- 
tection of any building against lightning is, therefore, on account of 
the various considerations which have been urged, to begin with the 
arrangement of that which is the primary essential, the earth contact. 
In towns where there is a large system of water-supply and gas dis- 
tribution at hand, this is generally an easy task. But it by no means 
follows that, where the main pipes of water and gas supplies are not 
available, a square yard of sheet-copper or iron, buried in the ground, 
can in all cases be accepted as a satisfactory earth connection. It cer- 
tainly would not have been so in the instance of All Saints Church. 


824 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


In the circumstances which have been described in speaking of the 
accident there, a yard-square earth-plate could not have been depended 
upon to prevent the mischief. The lightning would still have pre- — 
ferred the largely developed root of the gas-mains to any such puny 
substitute, although such an earth-plate, well bedded in moist ground, 
_ might have served all purposes in the absence of so formidable a com- 
petitor. The condition of safety is that which has been so well stated 
by Professor Rousseau. The communication of the conductor with the 
earth must not be inferior to that of any neighboring mass of metal. 
When the arrangement for the earth connection has been efficiently 
settled, the conductor may be carried up from it, and this may with 
equal assurance be done either upon the single-rod system of Gay-Lus- 
sac or upon the multiple-rod principle of Professor Melsens, so long as 
the building is of moderate size and of a compact form. But, if the 
building is of large dimensions and of irregular form, the single con- 
ductor would of necessity have to assume an approximation to the 
multiple type, as the main stem is branched out above to bring every 
gable and turret and pinnacle of the structure under its protection. 
It is only when it has been completed by a broadly cast net of me- 
tallic meshes and lines that the old early dogma of the protected 
area can be now allowed to survive even in the mind of the engineer. 
When the work of construction has been so far carried out it is still, 
however, not to be looked upon as complete until the stamp of efli- 
ciency has been placed upon it by the application of the final test, 
which the advance of electrical science has now placed in the hands 
of the constructor. It is the crowning distinction of this system of 
defense that by a very easy process it can be at once ascertained 
whether all the arrangements of the engineer have been properly car- 
ried out. By the employment of the ingenious piece of apparatus 
which is known as the “ Differential Galvanometer,” the electrician 
can in a few minutes ascertain what the resistance is that would be 
offered between the air-terminal and the earth communication of a con- 
ductor, if a discharge of lightning fell upon the rod. That resistance 
must never be left unheeded if it amounts to anything in excess of the 
quantity which is technically known as two ohms. It is quite possible, 
indeed, by the exercise of judgment and skill, to reduce the resistance 
in every case somewhat below that. With a conductor which has re- 
cently been erected upon the Hall of General Assembly in Edinburgh, 
it was found at the final test that the earth resistance was only the 0°7 
of anohm. But the galyanometer test must not only be applied as 
the last step of the construction ; it must also be drawn upon from 
time to time, and at not too distant intervals, to ascertain how far the 
originally well-conceived and well-executed work is or is not in process 
of being injuriously affected by the physical agencies that are at all 
times in antagonistic operation to the constructive efforts of man. The 
free and frequent use of the testing galvanometer is, indeed, the natu- 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 825 


ral consummation of the beneficent work which was initiated by Frank- 
lin one hundred and thirty years ago. Without this instrument the 
lightning-conductor is a hopeful and very generally helpful expedi- 
ent. But, with the galvanometer, it is now assuredly competent to 
take rank as a never-failing protection.— Edinburgh Review. 


we 
a 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 
Br THOMAS FOSTER. 


Crosinc REMARKS. 


T remains only now that I should consider the general conclusions 

toward which our discussion of the subject of happiness as a guide 
to conduct may appear to have led us. 

Let me note, yet once more, that those have entirely misappre- 
hended the whole drift of this series of papers who imagine, as many 
still seem to do, that my subject has been the morality of being happy, 
the propriety of seeking after happiness. The mistake appears so ab- 
surd, when the nature of the reasoning I have advanced is considered, 
that it would seem hardly worth while to correct it, seeing that no one 
who could fall into such a mistake could (one would imagine) in the 
least profit by any explanation or correction. Yet the mistake has 
been made by several who are clearly not devoid of capacity alike to 
render and to receive a reason. I have, therefore, felt bound to cor- 
rect it as far as possible, and, as several letters recently received show 
that the error is still entertained, I have now to correct it afresh. Let 
me explain, then, that the object of these papers has been to show 
what sort of moral law is likely to arise, and what law appears actually 
to have arisen and to be in progress of formation, when the guide 
of conduct is the increase of happiness—individual happiness, and the 
happiness of those around us, with due regard to the proper apportion- 
ment of altruistic and egoistic happiness. I have not examined such 
questions as, What is happiness? What kind of happiness is worthi- 
est ? and so forth. I have taken, as included in the term “ happiness,” 
all the various forms of pleasurable emotion of which the human race 
is susceptible, while all the various forms of painful emotion to which 
we are exposed have come naturally into consideration as all involving 
greater or less diminution of happiness. With the development of the 
human race, or of any part of the human race, in one direction or in 
another (for development is multiform), we find that ideas about pleas- 
ure and pain become modified in various ways. And it has been a 
special part of our.subject to consider how the lower forms of pleas- 
ure, those related first to the physical gratification of self, and next 
those related specially to self but otherwise of higher type, give place 


826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


gradually to the higher gratifications arising from altruistic relations. 
But, apart from such considerations, our whole inquiry has been into 
the development of conduct by the natural operation of those laws 
which influence the development of happiness. 

In passing I would, however, note that the law of conduct thus 
considered is by no means that abstraction which has been called “the 
happiness of the greater number,” according to which each person is 
to regard himself and to be regarded as one, while the rest, being 
many, are to be regarded as of very much greater importance. This 
abstraction has not and never had any value whatever, as a rule of 
conduct, either in a man’s self or in his relation to others. Even if we 
can adopt any meaning for the word happiness as thus used, it will be 
found that no rational way of apportioning the happiness thus regarded 
as a sort of common property, can be conceived. If the law instead of 
being an abstraction were real and could be definitely applied, it could 
result only in this, that each person, being but one, should utterly neg- 
lect his individual welfare in favor of the general happiness, and, as 
it can be readily seen that no benefits he might receive from those 
around him (obeying, we may assume, the same law) could possibly 
compensate for the direct and immediate effects of this complete self- 
abnegation, it follows that a community of persons obeying this law 
would be a community of miserable beings ; so that obedience to this 
law for obtaining general happiness would in reality insure universal 
misery. : 

Taking concrete instead of abstract happiness as the guide of con- 
duct, were cognize far different results. Wesee that, though there must 
of necessity be a compromise between egoistic satisfactions and altruis- 
tic cares, the compromise need by no means imply antagonism. Re- 
gard for the welfare of others, though in its inception more or less of an 
effort, becomes more and more spontaneous as social relations develop. 
After spontaneity has been attained, altruistic actions involve more 
and more of egoistic satisfaction. Conversely, the care of self, which 
in the earlier stages of social development appears to involve more or 
less of disregard for the interests of others, becomes more and more 
altruistic in its effect as society advances. Thus also we recognize the 
answer to what at first might seem a difficulty, viz., that with the im- 
provement of social relations the opportunity for altruistic actions 
might seem likely to steadily diminish. We see that the domain avail- 
able for altruistic actions changes in position rather than in extent ; 
nay, that such change of extent as actually accrues is toward increase, 
In a society where, owing to the steady improvement of the relation 
between egoistic and altruistic interests, the number of those depend- 
ing for their happiness or even for their existence on altruistic cares 
has steadily diminished, the number of those who are the subject of 
altruistic emotions will as steadily have increased. Sympathy becomes 
more widely extended, its development becomes surer and more rapid, 


THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 827 


as its operation becomes more pleasurable, and a change of this sort 
can not but take place as occasions for directly altruistic actions, such 
as arise out of pain and suffering, become less frequent. 

With increased spontaneity in altruistic actions, more pleasurable 
feelings in the discharge of altruistic duties, and a wider range for 
altruistic emotions, will inevitably come such an evolution of conduct 
as must tend greatly to increase the well-being of the community. The 
care of self will be felt as a duty to others ; due care of others will be- 
come a source of gratification to self. Society will be simply, on an 
enlarged scale and in a more varied form, such a community as might 
be formed by a number of kindly, well-meaning persons, of good 
capacity and pleasing manners, brought together for purposes of travel, 
research, or pleasure. In such a community it would be felt that each 
person’s first duty was to take due care of self, first as just to himself, 
and secondly (yet chiefly) as a duty to the rest of the community. But 
it would also be felt by each member of such a community that he must 
be careful of the interests of others, ready to be of use to any other 
members of the community who required assistance such as he could 
give individually, or to combine with others where the assistance of 
several might seem to be required. Picture the relations of such a 
community, all of good-will, kindly, and anxious that the business of 
the community should go on so as to give pleasure to all, and it will 
be at once seen how little there is of actual selfishness in due care of 
self, how such care may be, nay, must be, a duty owed to all the rest ; 
while, on the other hand, it will become clear also how each member 
of such a community is interested in the existence among all of a kind- 
ly interest on the part of each in the well-being of the rest. The social 
body, whether we consider the family, or the gathering of families 
into communities, or the collection of communities into nations, or the 
multitude of nations which form the population of the earth, may be 
regarded as an aggregate which should be pervaded by such ideas as 
are found essential for the comfort and happiness of gatherings casually 
brought together. The due subordination of self to others in certain 
relations, and of others to self in relations not less important, which is 
found in all such gatherings on a small scale and of comparatively uni- 
form character—as in the passengers on an ocean-steamship, the mem- 
bers of a company of travelers, the fellows of a scientific expedition, 
or even a pleasure-party—is what is necessary for the well-being of the 
body social ; and out of this necessity, instinctively recognized, and 
exercising its influence steadily in the process of the evolution of races, 
nations, and the human family as a whole, seem to have sprung all 
those duties between man and man, between race and race, and be- 
tween nation and nation, which form the present code of social morals, 
and will hereafter—developed and improved—form the moral code of 
perfected man. ‘“ What now, in even the highest natures,” as the 
great teacher of our day says, “is occasional and feeble may be ex- 


828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


pected with further evolution to become habitual and strong ; and 
what now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected event- 
ually to characterize all. For that which the best human nature is 
capable of is.within the reach of human nature at large.” 

“ That these conclusions,” Mr. Spencer goes on to say, “will meet 
with any considerable acceptance is improbable. Neither with current 
ideas nor with current sentiments are they sufliciently congruous, Such 
a view will not be agreeable to those who lament the spreading dis- 
belief in eternal damnation ; nor to those who follow the apostle of 
brute force in thinking that because the rule of the strong hand was 
once good it is good for all time; nor to those whose reverence for 
one who told them to put up the sword is shown by using the sword to 
spread his doctrine among heathens.” From ten thousand teachers of 
a religion of love who are silent when a nation is moved by the religion 
of hate will come no sign of assent ; nor from those priestly lawgivers 
who, “far from urging the extreme precept of the Master they pretend 
to follow, to turn the other cheek when one is smitten, vote for acting 
on the principle, Strike lest ye be struck. Nor will any approval be 
felt by legislators who, after praying to be forgiven their trespasses 
as they forgive the trespasses of others, forthwith decide to attack those 
who have not trespassed against them. But though men who profess 
Christianity and practice Paganism can feel no sympathy with such a 
view, there are some, classed as antagonists to the current creed, who 
may not think it absurd to believe that a rationalized version of its 
ethical principles will eventually be acted upon.” 

Finally, I would ask those who have followed me thus far to note 
how all the duties we have considered, both egoistic duties and altru- 
istic ones, may be seen with advantage from a different point of view 
and in a changed aspect, though unchanged in reality. We are in 
the habit of regarding the study of moral laws always from the per- 
sonal side, and nearly all teachers in such matters (one might almost 
say all) view the subject in this way, since, even when laying down a 
code of morals, they present each law as it appeals to the reason and 
should affect the conduct of the individual. But it should be remem- 
bered that a moral law which commends to each man a particular line 
of conduct, is a law which, if accepted and followed by all, influences 
each man by the effect it produces on all the rest. Thus, a rule of 
conduct seemingly egoistic, and really egoistic as affecting the indi- 
vidual, becomes, in any society which accepts and obeys it, purely 
altruistic in its effect; while, per contra, a law seemingly altruistic 
in terms becomes purely egoistic in influence. If, instead of indicating 
a due regard for self and a proper subordination of self to others, our 
study of the morality of happiness had indicated as best for the com- 
munity a series of duties directed solely to the benefit of self, yet the 
adoption of such a moral code by all men would be altogether unself- 
ish, seeing that it would mean the forsaking of all right or title to 


THE CHOLERA-GERM. | 829 


help or sympathy from others ; and others are many, while self is but 
one. If, on the other hand, we had found a system of perfect altruism 
commending itself as best, the acceptance of such a system would be 
no sacrificing of self to others, but. would mean the acceptance of the 
principle that every one else was bound to assist in all his ways and 
wishes the accepter of this seemingly altruistic code—to sympathize 
with him in all his sorrows, and to care for him far more than for 
themselves. We have not been led to recognize any such abnegation 
of self on the one hand, or regard for self alone on the other hand, as 
desirable ; but, in such degree as we have seen a regard for self to be 
desirable, we have in reality been led to the recognition of the rights 
of others ‘(since each self is another to all others), while, in such degree 
as we have seen that each should consider not only the rights but the 
requirements of others, we have been led in reality to the recognition of 
the rights of each man to the assistance and sympathy of his fellows. 


THE CHOLERA-GERM. 
By E. K. 


_ the present moment, when the Continent has again become the 
battle-field between cholera and the human race, all questions 
concerning the cause, diffusion, and prevention of the cholera-virus 
must take a prominent place in the deliberation on the best sanitary 
measures to be adopted in combating this insidious foe. Almost all 
practical preventive measures in this country and on the Continent 
as regards cholera and other infectious maladies are based on the as- 
sumption—supported by a good deal of evidence both theoretical and 
practical—that the virus is particulate, and, as indicated by its self- 
multiplication within the affected person, is a living organism. But 
the nature of this supposed organism of cholera has, until quite re- 
cently, been altogether mysterious. As is well known, Professor 
Koch and colleagues, sent out last year by the German Government 
to investigate the cholera in Egypt and India, have ascertained that 
in the rice-water stools voided by patients suffering from the disease 
there are present, besides micrococci and bacilli, common to the evacu- 
ations of other than cholera patients, peculiar curved bacteria, so- 
called “comma-shaped” bacilli, which Koch has not been able to 
discover in any cases of diarrhea. These “comma-shaped” bacilli 
Koch has succeeded in isolating by artificial culture. Unfortunately, 
cholera has hitherto not been found transmissible to the lower animals, 
and therefore the function of these “comma-shaped ” bacilli. must at 
present remain unknown. All we can therefore say is that Koch has 
shown that in cholera evacuations there exist, besides micrococei and 


830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


straight bacilli, other organisms also characterized by this—that they 
are curved or-comma-shaped. Whatever else has been said by Koch, 
his followers, and critics, scientific and daily papers, as to these 
*comma-shaped ” bacilli being the cause of cholera, is simply and 
purely a supposition, which, as we shall presently show, is wanting . 
in the most essential elements. 

First and foremost, Koch has been unable to find anything of this 
“comma-shaped ” bacillus in the blood or tissues in any stage of 
cholera. Now, all experience on cholera teaches that, whatever its 
cause may be, the alimentary canal is not the only passage through 
which the cholera-poison enters the system, but that its entrance 
through the respiratory organs is also an established fact. For this 
reason it is necessary to assume that, as in other infectious diseases, 
it passes through the blood and system in the stage of incubation of 
the disease. The symptoms of cholera, the whole nature of the dis- 
ease, shows that it is not a local distemper of the alimentary canal, 
but that the latter is merely a symptom of the malady, as much as 
in typhoid fever the distemper of the ileum and spleen, or in scarla- 
tina that of the skin, throat, and kidney. Had Koch found the 
“ comma-shaped ” bacillus in the blood or the tissues, e. g., the blood- 
vessels of the alimentary canal, mesenteric glands and spleen, the 
nature of this “comma-shaped ” bacillus would have been as obscure 
as ever, but still there would have been some sure element in the 
chain of surmises. Of course it might be argued, and as a matter of 
fact it is argued by Koch in the reports to his Government, that the 
bacillus, having found entrance into the cavity of the intestines, there 
multiplies, and produces some ferment, which, absorbed into the sys- 
tem, sets up the whole chain of appearances constituting the symptoms 
of cholera. This is quite possible, and, to a certain limited extent, is 
borne out by experience, notably in the case of putrid or pyzmic 
poisoning, where, owing to the presence of putrefaction in a wound, 
the products of putrefaction—the sepsin—absorbed in sufficient quanti- 
ties into the system, create the above disease, often terminating fatally. 
In this case no specific organisms are detected in the blood or tissues ; 
their presence is limited to the wound only, and their effect is merely 
this, that some ferment—ptomaine or some other substance—produced 
by them is absorbed into the system. 

That this should also be the case in cholera is, as we just said, 
possible, but it is not probable, for the simple reason that the cholera- 
virus in a large percentage of cases enters the system by the respira- 
tory organs, and therefore it must be assumed in these instances to 
pass into the general circulation, and consequently, if it is to be identi- 
fied, must be identified in the blood or tissues. 

The practical consequences of an assumption that the cholera-virus 
passes into the system exclusively by the alimentary canal, and that 
it has its breeding-ground in the latter only, are so great, that before 


CURIOUS FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 831 


acting on such an assumption the basis for it ought, to be established, 
which it certainly is not. | 

Secondly, is it a well-established fact that this “ comma-shaped ” 
bacillus is present only in cholera evacuations? If it should be found 
that this bacillus is absent from the alimentary canal in all other dis- 
eases, then we could at best recognize it as pathognomonic, but it by 
no means follows that it is also pathogenetic. 

I have lately had the opportunity of. inspecting this ‘“comma- 
shaped ” bacillus in specimens prepared by Koch, from the rice-water 
evacuations, and also in artificial cultures, and I have fully convinced 
myself of its reality. But I possess prepared specimens of evacuations 
of patients suffering from severe diarrhea (in an epidemic outbreak 
of diarrhea in adults in Cornwall in the autumn of 1883, and investi- 
gated by Dr. Ballard, Inspector to the Local Government Board), in 
which specimens, besides micrococci and straight bacilli, there are 
undoubtedly present bacteria which, in shape and size and mode of 
staining, so closely resemble the “comma-shaped” bacilli of cholera 
‘that I am unable to discover a difference between them. I ha¥t, how- 
ever, not made any artificial cultivation of them, and therefore can 
not say whether there exist any differences between the two, notably 
as regards their mode of growth. 

Here is one other point to which we wish to draw attention: as 
Cohn (“Beitrige zur Biologie der Pflanzen,” Heft ii) has shown, and 
as is now generally accepted, a rod bacterium which is characterized 
by being curved is regarded not as a bacillus but as a vibrio ; and it 
is not quite clear why, unless for the sake of novelty, Koch, generally 
accepting Cohn’s terminology, should in the case of the cholera bac- 
terium have deviated from it, and should not rather have spoken of 
it as a vibrio, because a vibrio, and particularly a Vibrio rugula (sp. 
Cohn), is the organism which he describes as a “ comma-shaped ” 
bacillus. —Vature. 


CURIOUS FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 


MONG the most striking features of the popular life and thought 
which the student of the different races of mankind has to con- 

sider are the ideas and usages that are grouped around death. The 
fact of death, on account of its absolute certainty as well as on ac- 
count of its nature, is the incident of human existence that has struck 
all peoples with the most solemn impressiveness. If there are any 
races who appear indifferent to death, it will most probably be found 
on examination that their feeling is not the natural one, but the result- 
ant of modifications that have been impressed upon it by some feature 
of their religious system or under the influence of peculiar ideas of 


832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


\ 
duty and virtue. The ancient Egyptians, so far as their monuments 
have revealed them to us, lived in constant view of death, and made 
the preparation for it, both for the care of their bodies and the salva- 
tion of their souls, the most important work of their lives. No other 
people seem to have paid so paramount attention to it ; but few if any 
tribes have ignored it or relegated it to an feinatGtens place. 

The ideas about death and the customs associated with it are as 
various as are the tribes. They have been formed under the influence 
of the surroundings and local circumstances among which the people 
have lived, have been molded by religious beliefs and institutions, and 
have been affected by historical changes, A substantial sameness in 
reference to them prevails at this time among civilized nations, particu- 
larly in the higher and more cultivated classes ; but, even in these na- 
tions, we have to go only a little way into the rural districts, among 
the peasantry, to find the most quaint and curious customs still in 
vogue, coming down from the times of heathenism and barbarism, 
before conventionality had become the potent social force that it is. 
Very interesting illustrations of these survivals of old-time notions 
may be found in the provinces of Hungary, whose polyglot nationali- 
ties of various origin and history have hardly yet begun to feel the 
influences that have nearly reduced the busy population of the cities 
to a European homogeneity. A few of the most striking customs of 
these peoples have been studied by Herr Hugo Klein and described by 
him in “ Das Ausland,” and from his article is derived what follows in 
that division of our subject. 

_A characteristic of the funeral ceremonies of the ‘Magyars is the 
feast which is eaten by the relatives and friends of the deceased after 
the burial, and is frequently accompanied by: religious songs. The — 
custom is beautifully illustrated in Palota, where the hymns are sung 
as the guests separate. The singing is continued on the streets, and 
the soft, clear tones of the dirge can be heard in all parts of the town. 
In Agard, fruit-trees are planted around the graves, to mark them in 
the years to come after time and the elements have removed the 
wooden crosses that are set at their heads. In Bonghad, the dead 
were formerly escorted’ with torches to their eternal rest. 

The funeral pomp formerly displayed by the Magyars in 'Transy]- 
vania reached a mark that defies description. ‘The coffin was covered 
with gold-embroidered velvet fastened with silver nails bearing the 
arms of the deceased. The man’s weapons and the woman’s jewels 
and dresses, frequently to the value of many thousands, were deposited 
in the grave. If the deceased was a great land-holder, the bells were 
tolled twice a day from the time of death till the burial, and all the 
families within the circle of his acquaintance were invited to witness 
the ceremonies, so that sometimes the village could hardly contain all 
who came. Special officers were appointed to direct the proceedings, 
and these, with the magnificent catafalque and the two armored knights 


CURIOUS FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 833 


who rode by its side, followed by the favorite horse of the deceased, 
and an attendant earrying his arms plated with silver, or a banner in- 
scribed with his epitaph, constituted an imposing head to the long pro- 
cession of black- or purple-clad mourners and guests. ‘The services in 
the church were set off in a corresponding style. Many persons spent 
the income of weeks for prayers to be said for the deceased, to drape 
churches in black, to dress a legion of servants In mourning, or to fur- 
nish the torches for the funeral ; and sometimes large collections of 
eulogies and verses were published to commemorate the good deeds 
which the dead man had performed in life. Funerals are told of that 
cost from ten to twelve thousand gulden—an immense sum in those 
days. The extravagance of these observances finally reached such a 
height that an ordinance had to be promulgated in 1747, wines the 
expenditure that could be allowed. 

In the grave-yards of the Palovzes, in the counties of Boise and 
Heves, may be seen here and there pyramidal monuments of stone, with 
niches in their sides for images of the saints. They are a survival from 
the ancient heathen altars of these people, the Kumanians of old, which 
were erected in honor of the sun-god; and to this day also may be 
seen on many of the houses of the Palovzes the symbol of the pyramid 
with Baal’s eye, the use of which has come down from generation to 
generation, without the peasants knowing what it means. Children 
who die still-born, or without having received baptism, are buried 
as near as possible to the pyramidal monuments. It is a part of the 
folk-lore of the Palovzes that the little ones who are laid to rest near 
these Baal-pillars will at the end of seven years come out from their 
graves, when, if some good soul will come near them and utter the 
baptismal formula, they will immediately become little angels and go 
to heaven ; but, if the baptism is not given, they will have to wait 
seven years longer for another opportunity to be released. Many 
other reminiscences of Baal-worship survive among these people. 
The mother who has lost a young child wraps her head, as a sign of 
mourning, in a fiery red cloth, The former prevalence of cremation is 
indicated in the custom of burning the clothes which the deceased 
wore last. The tear-jugs of the ancients may still be found in the 
houses, of exactly the old form and size, but destined to a quite 
different purpose. Another peculiar custom at the funeral feast 
is to lay a plate with salt and bread upon the table, for the use 
of the:soul of the departed one, if it should appear in the circle of 
friends. 

The Servians put lighted candles in the hands of their dead, and 
a saint’s image on their breast, and set lights around the bier. They 
leave all the furniture in the house undisturbed, so that the released 
soul shall not lose its way. For several days food and drink are 
taken to the grave. 

The Roumanians preserve many of the customs of the Romans, 

VOL. xxv.—53 


834 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


from whom they claim descent. Men who have lost their wives sig- 
nify their mourning by going bareheaded for six months. 

To the Ruthenians, death is a greatly dreaded visitor, and calls 
out most demonstrative expressions of grief. They now put the pipe 
and tobacco-box of the deceased in the grave, as in ancient times they 
used to deposit his armor there. All the furniture is removed from 
the place before the dead man is taken from the house, so that the 
escaping soul shall not be held back by its attachment to the familiar 
arrangement of the room—a custom which in itself, and in the thought 
that suggests it, contrasts curiously with the Servian fashion. When 
the coffin is being borne out, it is set down upon the door-step, so 
that the walls of the house may know that one of its inmates has 
left it. : 

The custom of providing the deceased with an obolus, or a piece 
of money to pay the ferryman over the river of death, prevails among 
the Roumanians, who derive it from the Romans, and among the 
Slovaks of North Hungary, who never had anything to do with the 
Romans. Among the Slovaks, the coffin of a young girl is red, while 
her dress is black, that being to them the color of innocence, and a 
sprig of rosemary is put in the hand of the corpse. A lighted taper 
is set at the head of the casket. 

Among barbarous and savage races, the diversities in funeral cus- 
toms are endless, and often mark strange and paradoxical notions of 
life and death. They may still be witnessed in the islands of the sea 
and in the “ Dark Continent,” where civilization and foreign influ- 
ences have hardly made a scratch, in all their pristine originality and 
freshness. A large book would not suffice to contain the descriptions 
of them all. We give here only a few of the hundreds of specimens 
we might present, culled from the most recent accounts of travelers © 
and missionaries : 

Herr F. Grabowsky relates, in an account of that people, that the 
Maanjans of Southeastern Borneo set great store upon dying in their 
own house, and on having their funeral celebrated in their native vil- 
lage. When the signal of death is sounded in solemn, rhythmic beats 
on the garangtong, the village is supposed to become partially un- 
clean, and particular observances are imposed on the people. The 
soul of the deceased is imagined to wander about the place uneasily 
till the funeral services are performed, and the night to.be its day. 
Hence, every person who has to leave the place for any reason makes 
it a point to do so before sunset; and, if he has to go out later, he 
avoids speaking to anybody, and every one shuns him. According to 
the superstitions of this people, the souls return from the spirit-world 
to the earth after seven generations ; and, if a pregnant woman craves, 
for instance, sour fruits, it is said that a soul from the other world has 
returned to dwell in her, in order to be born to life again. As soon 
as the dying man has breathed his last, the mourning-women begin 


CURIOUS FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 835 


their howling, the corpse is dressed and set in funeral array ; a fowl 
is slaughtered ; the coffin is prepared, and the body crowded sidewise 
into it. Half the clothes, money, rice, and usual necessities of life of 
the deceased, and the feet of the slaughtered hen, are placed in the 
coffin with the body, while the rest is consumed by the mourners. The 
grave is built up in the form of a stepped pyramid, the terraces of 
which are supported by planks, and over it is erected a canopy under 
which are deposited articles which the deceased has used. At seven 
and at forty-nine days after the burial, a second and a third fowl are 
slaughtered, and a part of them is carried ceremonially to the grave. 
The term of forty-nine days marks the period of mourning for an adult, 
while only seven days are given to a child ; and during this time the 
family must refrain from eating rice and satisfy themselves with a 
less desirable and much less palatable kind of grain. With the ob- 
servance of this season all the duties toward the dead are fulfilled till 
the time of the djamd, or the feast in commemoration of the entrance 
of the soul into the spirit-world. This festival is celebrated every 
two or three years, and all the families in the village that have lost a 
member during the interval join in defraying the expense of it. An 
invitation to the djamé is one of those things that are not declined. 
The festival lasts through seven days, to each of which is assigned 
some feature in the preparation for the ceremonial of cremation. A 
crematory is built, to which the dead are brought, amid the howlings 
of the mourning-women. A brief formula is recited by the wadian, 
or priest, over each body, as it is brought up, and it is then lifted upon 
the hearth. After the burning the ashes are placed without any further 
ceremony in a vessel called an agong, and this is deposited in the tam- 
bak, or family sepulchre, a structure which is erected upon posts a 
short distance above the ground. Children under seven years of age 
are not cremated, but their bodies are placed at once in the tambak. 
They must be purified, however, before they can enter the heavenly 
city, and this is done by sacrificing a hog on the day following that of 
their death. Seven days after the djamd, the siwah, a feast of pro- 
pitiation, is given, when priestly ceremonies are performed, with eat- 
ing, drinking, and sports. The viands which are eaten at these feasts 
must not be allowed to touch the ground, and are therefore brought to 
the feasting-place on wooden stands from one to two feet high. The 
really important act of the siwah is the manrus-ira, or blood-bath, a 
ceremonial that might well excite horror. Four fowls, four goats, and 
four swine, are slaughtered on a latticed platform, and their blood is 
allowed to drip down upon the ground below. The multitude rush to 
the spot to bathe in the blood ; women with nursing infants, children 
of every age and both sexes, decrepit old men and vigorous young 
men, besmear their faces, their heads, their breasts, and in fact their 
whole bodies, with the warm streaming blood of the slaughtered ani- 
mals, which are then cooked and eaten. : 


836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


A missionary in Batavia states that the people of the Island of 
Sumba, in the residence of Timor, drape the corpses of their dead, and 
bind them in a sitting posture to a post which is planted in front of 
the house of the deceased. ‘The body of a chief is allowed to remain 
there till it decays ; but the bodies of other persons, after two or three 
days, are buried in a grave which is dug in the shape of a well, and is 
afterward covered with a heavy stone. The clothes of the deceased 
and his jewelry are buried with him. The friends of the dead man 
are expected, while the body is exposed, to visit it, bringing gifts 
of clothing and other articles of value. The graves are situated in 
the midst of the towns, and are carefully attended to by the inhab- 
itants. | 
According to the descriptions of a Dutch missionary, the funeral 
feasts of the Island of Halmahera are quite elaborate affairs. The cere- 
monies begin, after ‘the deceased has been put in his coffin, with a 
rope-dance between the young men and the maidens, in which either 
party tries to pull the rope away from the other, to the music of a mo- 
notonous antiphonal chant, and which is continued through several 
evenings, with complete freedom from interference by the old people. 
Then follow four or five days of feasting, to which the whole neigh- 
borhood is invited to contribute in provisions and services, marchers 
and dancers, the men and the women taking the prominent part in the 
ceremonies on alternate days. On the last day of the feast, as large 
a company as possible is collected, to give effect to the final ceremo- 
nies. The body is placed in the grave, and is adorned with ornaments, 
lights, and garlands, and supplied with dishes of betel and provisions. 
Another banquet is served, the rope-dance is repeated, and a new cere- 
mony, called the toku, is performed. For this, the young men and the 
girls take places in opposite rows, each confronting pair joining hands. 
A child, festively dressed, is lifted up and made to walk upon the road 
formed by the pairs of hands, singing a refrain, to which the partners 
in the files chant a response. Each hand-joined couple in the rows 
withdraws as soon as the child has passed it, and takes a new place at 
the farther end, so as to prolong the walk to the extent that the occa- 
sion may seem to call for. As soon as this play is over, the rope-dance 
is transferred to the sea-beach, and the funeral ends with a ducking- 
match between the boys and the girls. 

Dr. Miclucho Maclay describes the Orang-Sakai tribes of New 
Guinea as having a terrible fear of the dead.. As soon as any one 
among them becomes critically sick, he is carried out into the forest 
and left there with a small supply of food. His hut is immediately 
destroyed, and no one will ever build again on the place where it 
stood. The remains of abandoned unfortunates are frequently met in 
the wilderness, as well as the ruins of huts which have been given up 
on account of the occurrence of death among their inmates. 

‘Herr J. C. Dieterle has published an account of the curious royal 


CURIOUS FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 837 


funerals and “ customs” of Tepi-Land, on the West Coast of Africa. 
According to him, when the king becomes dangerously ill, he is placed 
under the close care of a circle of chosen attendants. The fact of his 
illness must not be mentioned directly, but may, when that is neces- 
sary, be alluded to in some roundabout phrase, or as if it were the 
speaker himself that were sick. At the same, time the affairs of the 
court go on in their usual course, one of the chiefs representing the . 
king and offering to the people, when inquired of, some plausible ex- 
cuse for his majesty’s absence. When death takes place, all who are 
cognizant of the event, if they have not succeeded in running away, 
are put under guard, and the secret is kept as long as possible. Gen- 
erally, however, some manage to escape, and they will give the news 
to their friends in obscure hints, saying, perhaps, “Things are becom- 
ing dangerous,” “ The great tree has fallen,” “ Look out for the earth- 
quake,” but never plainly that the king is dead. Loud mourning is 
prohibited at this stage of the proceedings. The victims to be offered 
up are secured, and one is sacrificed, to lie at the feet of the corpse while 
it is prepared for burial. The body having been dressed and the head 
and breast sprinkled with gold-dust, if it can be afforded, his majesty’s 
death is announced to the chiefs, still in some obscure phrase ; as, 
“The king is unwell, and desires to see you,” “The king has gone to 
bed and can not get up,” “The only free is asleep ”; and the chiefs, but 
no common man, under penalty of death, are admitted to view the 
body in private. The corpse is carried at crowing of the cock to the 
royal burial-place, where sheep are slain, and the favorite dishes of his 
majesty, of which no one is allowed to eat but the designated chief 
victims, are set before him. The chief victims have been selected be- 
forehand, and are distinguished during life by a peculiar badge. . They 
are sacrificed by breaking their necks, while the heads of the other 
victims are cut off by a band of executioners composed of relatives of 
his late majesty. The victims are usually persons who have commit- 
ted some misdeed or have incurred the dislike of their fellow-slaves, 
and with them are offered up persons who have been sentenced to 
punishment and kept in reserve for the occasion. After these cere- 
monies are over, the wives of the king that have not been dispatched 
after him assemble around a ceremonial coffin and set up the stated 
mourning. The wives are expected to observe the conventionalities 
of mourning till they are given to the new king to be his wives, and 
this can not happen till after the celebration of the “ customs,” which 
is frequently delayed for a long time on account of the expense. The 
successor to the throne is chosen after consultation between the chiefs 
and the women of the royal family, in secret. Having been publicly 
proclaimed, the new king is instructed as to his own rights and duties 
and those of the tribe, is sworn to observe all that is prescribed, and 
then receives the homage of the chiefs, after which the royal feast is 
given and the royal gifts are bestowed. The enthronement takes place 


838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


on the occasion of the periodical festival of the adée, when, in the 
midst of great feasts to the chiefs and their retinues, the throne is 
brought out and two of the nobles set the new king upon it three 
times, with the prayer: “Spirits of all the deceased kings, bless this 
our new king! Give him riches, health, and great honor before all 
people and before all his fellow-kings!” Sheep are sacrificed, court is 
. held, and the people are entertained with dancing and a great noise. 
The “customs” for the deceased king do not take place till after the 
ceremonies of enthronement ; and, as they involve great expense, they 
may be postponed for months or for years. They last for eight days, 
during which time every one in the capital must keep his head shaved 
and wear a prescribed dress. Another sacrifice of men is made, to 
which the chiefs must contribute in victims or money; and it is made 
with imposing publicity, amid the firing of guns and drumming and 
dancing. During all the ceremonials, from the death of the old king 
down, the executioners and guests from abroad and the members of 
the band that performed the burial of the king enjoy special privi- 
leges of taking what they like; and solitary persons find it prudent to 
keep out of their way. During the “customs” a figure intended to 
represent the deceased king is set up and honored with the charac- 
teristic noisy ceremonial of the people. Finally, it is carried away 
and deposited in a shrine; and this marks the end of the whole 
matter. : 

Whenever any one among the Hereros of Damara-Land, South 
Africa, becomes sick unto death, says the missionary C. G. Biittner, 
it is the custom for all the relatives of the sick man and the people of 
the vicinity to gather around his bedside, in such throngs as to fill the 
house, and witness the death. In health the Herero is satisfied to lie 
upon the bare ground, but, as soon as he becomes seriously ill, it is the 
imperative duty of some one of his near relatives to sit down by him, 
and hold his head with tender care. ‘The people are not willing to 
recognize that any one can die from a purely natural cause, but 
always try to attribute the death to some external injury ; and, if 
nothing of the kind can be detected, they will lay it to some accident, 
even of the most trifling character, that may have occurred years 
before ; and if any one is known who has ever attacked the deceased, 
or struck him, he is liable to be fixed upon as the responsible agent. 
The body is buried at some spot near the place of death, sometimes in 
the spot itself, but, if the deceased was a very bad man, it is carried off 
as far and to as desolate a spot as possible, so that the ghost shall not 
come back and work mischief. Everything that belongs to the grave 
is tabooed, and must not be taken away under any circumstances ; and 
so strictly is this rule observed, that, although fire-wood is extremely 
searce, the palings that have been driven around the spot, and fallen 
down, or the hedge-bushes that have died may rot and disappear, no 
one will touch them. The burial is followed by a season of mourning, 


CURIOUS FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 839 


the ceremonial of which is performed by a band of hired mourners, 
The finest. of cattle-of the wealthy land-owner are slain, not by the 
usual method of stabbing, but by cutting off their heads, that their 
horns may be used to adorn the grave. The flesh of the cattle is 
given to be eaten to those who will in return join the band of mourn- 
ers for a specified term. If the cattle are not slain all at once, but by 
installments, the means are thereby secured of prolonging the period 
of mourning for as long a time as the meat will hold out. It is com- 
mon, after the head of a house has died, to remove the werst, or fam- 
ily residence. It is possible that this is done to get away from the 
malaria which the sickness and death of members of the family give 
notice has settled down upon the place ; for malarious influences have 
been found to linger over into the year following one of extreme sick- 
ness. The children visit the graves of their parents only rarely, and 
then with much ceremony, to consult the oracle of their ancestors ; 
and sometimes the oracle proclaims that the deceased desires again to 
enjoy the lowing of his cattle, when the son repairs to the grave with 
the herds. The Hereros are almost universally in as great terror of 
ghosts as any child among Europeans ; and the household legends, 
which are transmitted from generation to generation, consist for the 
most part of stories of returned spirits. No one will venture out 
alone in the thick darkness ; and, if one has to go at night for the 
missionary-doctor, he will not stir out without a.companion. Nothing 
in the world, says Herr Bittner, would move them to go into an ana- 
tomical museum, or to witness a dissection. Little as it troubles them” 
to slay a beast, they will not lay hands on a human corpse without 
extreme compulsion. “The pictures in my anatomical atlas were an 
object of horror to them. When, during my last few months in Da- 
mara-Land, I was buying from the natives whatever I could get for 
specimens, I succeeded in overcoming their dread sufficiently to induce 
them to sell me a considerable number of magical charms ; but not 
one of them would venture to bring me a skull, whatever price I 
offered them. A long box in which I had packed a lot of lances and 
bows, and which looked somewhat like a rough coffin, was a terror to 
all the people of my house, for how did they know that I was not 
going to fill it with the men’s bones I was trying to buy? It was 
amusing to see how the men who afterward had to handle this box, 
lift it upon the wagon, etc., hurried with the greatest fear, so as to 
get it out of their hands as quickly as possible.” 


840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


SKETCH OF LORD RAYLEIGH. 


E publish an excellent portrait, this month, of the subject of 

the present sketch, Professor Lord Rayleigh, President of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, which held its 
annual meeting this year at Montreal. | 

Joun Witi1am Srrott, Baron Rayleigh, of Ferling Place, Essex, 
was born November 12, 1842. He had a delicate constitution, which 
it was feared would render the exposures of the public school danger- 
ous, and he was accordingly placed under the charge of the Rev. J. T. 
Warner, of Torquay. He early developed a fondness for experimental 
research, and his chief amusement while a youth was photography. 
In October, 1861, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and was 
there classed among the “reading-men” by his fellow-students. He 
took several prizes and an exhibition in the course of his studies, and 
graduated with distinguished honors, being both senior wrangler and 
Smith’s prizeman. Following the usual custom, when a student of a 
college has distinguished himself in the final examinations, Trinity 
College elected him a Fellow. 

In 1871 Mr. Strutt married the second daughter of the late James 
Balfour, of Whittingham, Scotland, thus losing his fellowship, to 
which only celibates are eligible. On the 14th of June, 1872, he suc- 
ceeded to the title, and in the same year was elected a Fellow of the 
Royal Society, to whose transactions he has contributed many impor- 
tant papers. The medal of this society was conferred upon him in 
1882 as a recognition of the importance of. his scientific work. In 
1879, upon the death of Professor Clerk-Maxwell, who had filled the 
chair since its establishment in 1871, Lord Rayleigh was appointed 
Professor of Experimental Physics in Cambridge. Since then, he 
has devoted much of his time to the organization of the magnificent 
Cavendish Laboratory, the gift of the Duke of Devonshire, chancellor 
of the university. | | 

Lord Rayleigh was elected President of the British Association 
last year at its Southport meeting, and succeeds Professor Arthur 
Cayley, who is so well known for his devotion to pure mathematics, 
also in the University of Cambridge. The selection of a lord for the 
presidency of this body is not without abundant precedent, several 
distinguished noblemen, as Prince Albert, the Dukes of Argyll and 
Northumberland, Lord Wrottesley, and others, having occupied the 
position, which has given rise to the insinuation that this body has a 
weakness for great titles. But, in the first place, the British Associa- 
tion is not a republican club, but a body of men wise and practical 
in their generation, and who know how to adapt means to ends for 
the successful accomplishment of the objects they have in view. And, 


. 


SKETCH OF LORD RAYLEIGH. 841 


in the next place, the nobleman who presided at Montreal is not 
merely a lord, but-aman of very distinguished ability and eminently 
entitled to the honor from both the character and extent of his ori- 
ginal scientific work. His writings, however, are only or chiefly 
known to scientific men. Numerous papers from his pen are scattered 
through the pages of the proceedings of several learned societies of 
England, though some of them have been collected into a volume 
and published separately. He has produced but one extensive work, 
namely, “'The Theory of Sound,” a mathematical treatise in two vol- 
umes. It was begun on the Nile in 1872, and published in 187778. 
The article on “Optics,” in the last volume of the “Encyclopedia 
Britannica,” was also written by him. His determinations of the 
ohm, which were presented to the Paris Conference of Electricians 
in 1883-84, have been accepted as the basis of the unit of electrical 
resistance. His recent experiments in methods of practically measur- 
ing the strength of the electric current point to the method, by the 
deposition of silver, as one capable of furnishing a high degree of 
accuracy. 

To these scanty particulars of Lord Rayleigh’s life and career, for 
which we are mainly indebted to a brief sketch in the Montreal “Star,” 
we may add the estimate of his work given by Sir William Thomson 
in introducing him to the large audience at the first assemblage of the 
Association in Montreal, August 27th, when he assumed the presi- 
dential chair. Referring first to the work of his predecessor, Sir Will- 
iam Thomson remarked : ‘‘ Professor Cayley has devoted his life to 
the advancement of pure mathematics. It is indeed peculiarly appro- 
priate that he should be followed in the honorable post of president 
by one who has done so much to apply mathematical power in the 
various branches of physical science as Lord Rayleigh has done. In 
the field of the discovery and demonstration of natural phenomena 
Lord Rayleigh has, above all others, enriched physical science by the 
application of mathematical analysis; and when I speak of mathe- 
matics you must not suppose mathematics to be harsh and crabbed. 
(Laughter.) The Association learned last year at Southport what a 
glorious realm of beauty there was in pure mathematics. I will not, 
however, be hard on those who insist that it is harsh and crabbed. 
In reading some of the pages of the greatest investigators of mathe- 
matics one is apt occasionally to become wearied, and I must confess 
that some of the pages of Lord Rayleigh’s work have taxed me most 
severely, but the strain was well repaid. When we pass from the 
instrument which is harsh and crabbed to those who do not give them- 
selves the trouble to learn it thoroughly, to the application of the in- 
strument, see what a splendid world of light, beauty, and music is 
opened to us through such investigations as those of Lord Rayleigh! 
His book on sound is the greatest piece of mathematical investigation 
we know of applied to a branch of physical science. The branches of 


842 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


music are mere developments of mathematical formulas, and of every 
note and wave in music the equation lies.in the pages of Lord Ray- 
leigh’s book. (Laughter and applause.) There are some who have 
no ear for music, but all who are blessed with eyes can admire the 
beauties of Nature, and among those one which is seen in Canada 
frequently, in England often, in Scotland rarely, is the blue sky. 
(Laughter.) Lord Rayleigh’s brilliant piece of mathematical work on 
the dynamics of blue sky is amonument of the application of mathe- 
matics to a subject of supreme difficulty, and on the subject of refrac- 
tion of light he has pointed out the way toward finding all that has 
to be known, though he has ended his great work by admitting that 
the explanation of the fundamentals of the reflection and refraction 
of light is still wanting, and is a subject for the efforts of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science. But there is still another 
subject, electricity and the electric light, and here again Lord Ray- 
leigh’s work is fundamental, and one may hope from the suggestions 
it contains that electricity may yet be put upon the level of ordinary 
mechanics, and that the electrician may be able to weigh out electric 
ehcp as easily and readily as a merchant could a quantity of tea 
or sugar.” 

Lord Rayleigh is a man of modest deportment but a very strong 
man. It was feared that his inaugural address would be an abstruse 
performance little calculated to interest a general audience, but the 
apprehension turned out to be groundless. ‘The discourse was full of 
compressed thought, but closely interested his hearers, and was a 
model as a survey of the recent advancement in physical science. It 
was delivered in a clear and effective style, well measured, but with- 
out the least hesitancy of speech. In this respect the man of the 
laboratory of mathematics and of research contrasted strongly with 
. many of those literary Englishmen whom we might suppose would 
cultivate somewhat the art of delivery ; but in all respects Lord Ray- 
leigh’s manner of speaking was in sharp antithesis to the style, for 
example, of Mr. Matthew Arnold. 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


843 


EDITOR’S TABLE. 


THE SCIENTISTS AT MONTREAL. 


‘T\HE Montreal Congress of British 
Scientists, which was at first 
thought to be a very dubious experi- 
ment, turned out asuccess. Some nine 
or ten hundred members of the British 
Association crossed the sea, and, with 
the accessions from Canada, and a 
strong representation from the United 
States, the meeting became very large, 
and a great deal of excellent work was 
done. The address of the president- 
elect, and the inaugural addresses of the 
presidents of the several sections—of 
Sir William Thomson in Physics, of Sir 
Henry Roscoe in Chemistry, of Pro- 
fessor Blanford in Geology, of Professor 
Moseley in Biology, of Sir J. H. Lefroy 
in Geography, of Sir Richard Temple in 
Economics and Statistics, of Sir F. J. 
Bramwell in Mechanics, and of Mr. E. 
B. Tylor in Anthropology — were all 
productions of high, if not exceptional, 
ability. Many important papers were 
contributed to the several sections, 
while the attendance upon their meet- 
ings was large and the interest well 
sustained. Of course, the Canadians 
were delighted, as they had a right to 
be. They were proud of the compli- 
ment paid to the Dominion by the com- 
ing of so dignified and distinguished a 
body of scientific men to hold one of 
its customary meetings in Montreal; 
and were especially pleased that the 
Queen should have graciously conferred 
“the honor of knighthood upon their lead- 
ing man of science, Principal Dawson. 
Of course, there were inconveniences 
accompanying so large a gathering in a 
city not provided with accommodations 
on the largest scale. The reception at 
the Redpath Museum, given by McGill 
University, was a painful crush, pro- 
ductive of far more discomfort than 
pleasure, but the accommodations for 


the practical work of the sections in 
the university were more satisfactory. 
Every hospitality was extended to the 
strangers by the citizens of Montreal, 
and the press of that city manifested 
a creditable enterprise in reporting the 
proceedings and publishing important 
papers. The Governor-General, in his 
address of welcome, as was natural for 
a politician, used the occasion to mag- 
nify Canada as an important constituent 
of the British Empire, and appreciated 
the immense advertising that would 
come from this visit of the home scien- 
tists. Altogether, it was a memorable 
occasion; everybody was gratified, and 
its influence will, beyond doubt, be most 
favorable to the cause of science. 


THE ELEVATION OF PHRASES ABOVE 
THINGS. 


THE inaugural address of Professor 
Lord Rayleigh at Montreal, which we 
publish in full, is an able discussion. 
As a review of the recent progress 
of physics it is very instructive, full 
of practical suggestions, and fair to 
the workers of all countries. But 
there is one feature of it which we 
think deserves especial commendation, 
and that is the independent and com- 
mon-sense way in which it refers to 
the issue between the dead languages 
and scientific education. He might 
easily have evaded the subject, and, 
being a Cambridge man, it was rather 
to be expected that he would lean 
toward the side of tradition. But he 
did not shrink from his duty to recog- 
nize the importance of the question on 
this conspicuous occasion, and to rep- 
resent decisively its scientific side. The 
position which he took was moderate 
but firm, and he indorses with emphasis 
the main propositions advocated by the 
friends of scientific education. He 


844 


says: ‘To them it appears strange, and 
almost monstrous, that the dead lan- 
guages should hold the place they do in 
general education; and it can hardly 
be denied that their supremacy is the 
result of routine rather than of argu- 
ment.” After declaring his doubts 
whether an exclusively scientific train- 
ing would be satisfactory, he adds: 
“But it is useless to discuss the ques- 
tion upon the supposition that the ma- 
jority of boys attain, either to a know!l- 
edge of the languages (Latin and Greek) 
or to an appreciation of the writings of 
the ancient authors. The contrary is 
notoriously the truth.” This is a broad 
indorsement of the assertion that the 
study of the dead languages is generally, 
as a matter of fact, a failure. He fur- 
ther observes: ‘‘I believe that French 
and German, if properly taught, which 
I admit they rarely are at present, 
would go far to replace Latin and Greek 
from a disciplinary point of view, while 
the actual value of the acquisition 
would, in the majority of cases, be in- 
comparably greater. In half the time 
usually devoted, without success, to the 
classical languages, most boys could 
acquire a really serviceable knowledge 
of French and German. History and 
the serious study of the English litera- 
ture, now shamefully neglected, would 
also find a place in such a scheme.” 
We put these unsolicited and re- 
sponsible declarations of an English 
university man, who has had both a 
classical and a scientific training, against 
the one-sided expressions drawn by the 
classical party from Lord Coleridge and 
Matthew Arnold while in this country. 
But it is not this aspect of the mat- 
ter—a mere question of conflicting 
authorities—that chiefly concerns us 
here. Lord Rayleigh had previously 
made an incidental observation which 
strikes deeper into this subject than 
anything he said in his formal reference 
to it. He was speaking of the charac- 
ter of his celebrated instructor, the late 
Professor Clerk-Maxwell, of whom he 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


said, ‘As a teacher and examiner he 
was well acquainted with the almost 
universal tendency of uninstructed 
minds to elevate phrases above things.” 
This goes to the root of the antagonism 
between literary and scientific educa- 
tion, considered as means of mental 
cultivation. 

Literary education is carried on in 
the world of words; scientific educa- 
tion, truly such, goes on in the world 
of things, in which words, though in- 
dispensable, are subordinate, and not 
the substantive objects with which the 
mind is engaged. Literature, as a 
method, stops with the words, makes 
the things for which they stand of little 
account, and is occupied with the arts 
of expression. In science, things are 
uppermost, they are what the mind 
really has to deal with, and their verbal 
representatives are merely matters of 
convenience in dealing with them. 
But the literary mind exalts the sym- 
bols to the higher place, and makes 
education consist in loading the mind 
with languages, with but little con- 
ception of those higher ends to which 
all language should be made tributary. 
Of course, it is easier and more pleasant 
to become interested in words and pay 
little attention to things, and, where the 
object is only light intellectual gratifi- 
cation, literature answers the end. 

But we have here to do with the 
subject of education, with the true and 
best mode of developing the powers of 
the mind, and for this purpose the dif- 
ference between words and things is 
wide and fundamental. Both are im- 
portant, but the question is, which is to 
be held supreme? Science as anew force 
in education relegates words to the sub- 
ordinate place, and it clinches the case by 
affirming that knowledge of thingsis the 
true test of intelligence, and that the 
mere knowledge of words is but highly 
respectable ignorance. Unless there has 
been a grapple with some subject in its 
actual facts, elements, and relations, and 
some considerable degree of mental dis- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


cipline in the search for truth, the ob- 
servation of objects, and the study of 
principles, there has been no genuine 
education. For it is with facts at last 
that we have concern in experience, 
and the education of him who has not 
learned to study them is futile. The 


dictum of Clerk-Maxwell and Lord. 


Rayleigh that there is an “almost uni- 


versal tendency of uninstructed minds. 


to elevate phrases above things” has 
all the effect of a new definition of ig- 
norance. This idea has been long fore- 
shadowed in a vague recognition of the 
ignorance of mere book-worms, and in 


all the exigencies of a practical life the- 


worthlessness of simple book-knowl- 
edge is proverbial. The antithesis of 
ignorance is not learning but knowl- 
edge. Thinkers undoubtedly get help 
from books, when they know how to 
use and subordinate them so as not to 
become their victims. One of the pro- 
foundest English thinkers, Hobbes, who 
has impressed himself powerfully upon 
the thought of the last two centuries, 
read but few books, and Aubrey re- 
marks that ‘‘he was wont to say that 
if he had read as much as other men he 
should have continued still as ignorant 
as other men.” Mere reading is not 
mental discipline, but rather mental 
dissipation, and one of the worst feat- 
ures of our popular education is the su- 
perstitious supremacy it gives to naked 
book acquisitions. The radical work of 
scientific education must be done here: 
‘¢ The almost universal tendency of un- 
instructed minds to elevate phrases 
above things” must give place to the 
more rational and enlightened tendency 
to elevate things above phrases. It was 
inevitable that the verbal should be in 
the ascendant in ancient times, and in 
the medieval ages, when but little was 
aecurately and profoundly known of the 
relations of things; but science has 
given us a new dispensation of knowl- 
edge, and this has created a new edu- 
cation in which knowledge is no longer 
a matter of phrases, but a familiariza- 


845 


tion of the mind with the verities of 
nature and of truth. In this new ed- 
ucation, language, conceded to be of 
great importance, is not an end in it- 
self, but is to be made tributary to the 
higher end of understanding the nature, 
order, and constitution of things. 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


Tae New Cuemistry. By Jostan Parsons 
Cooke, LL.D. Revised edition, remod- 
eled and enlarged. New York: D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. Pp. 400. Price, $2. 


Aut who are interested in the progress 
of chemistry will be glad to learn that Pro- 
fessor Cooke has thoroughly revised his in- 
teresting volume in the “ International Sci- 
entific Series,” entitled “The New Chemis- 
try.” It took a position in all the languages 
in which it appeared, both as a model of 
admirable exposition and a standard work 
on the present condition of chemical theory. 
But, excellent as it was when first published, 
the author has not been content to let it go 
unrevised when there has been further im- 
portant progress, both of the science and of 
his own views of the subject. He has ac- 
cordingly revised and amplified it so that it 
may now be accepted as an authoritative 
statement of the present condition of chemi- 
cal philosophy. We reproduce the author’s 
preface to the new edition, that our readers 
may know exactly the import of the changes 
that have been made in the book: 


The progress in chemistry during the ten years 
which have elapsed since this work was first pub- 
lished and stereatyped has been accompanied by no 
such revolution in its philosophy as the previous 
transition from the dualistle system of Berzelius to 
the unitary system of structural organic chemistry 
had involved. Nevertheless, there has been a con- 
stant advance, during which we have gained clearer 
conceptions and more comprehensive views of the 
fundamental principles of the science ; and many of 
the accidental features which marked the transition 
period have disappeared. Meanwhile the distinc- 
tion between elementary substances and materials 
consisting of isolated elementary atoms has become 
clear, and, in making these last, alone, the elements 
of chemistry, we have pushed our science, if not to 
its extreme limits, still one step further back: and 
in taking this step we have left behind many of the 
anomalies which previously encumbered our phi- 
losophy. Except in a very limited sense, the so- 
called elementary substances are now seen to be as 
truly compounded as any other substances, and it 
is manifest that their qualities must depend on 


846 


molecular structure, or on the resulting dynamical 
relations, as well as on the fundamental attributes 
of the ultimate atoms. There is, therefore, no 
longer any reason for limiting the statement of the 
great fundamental law of definite proportions to the 
relations of elementary substance, and clearness of 
exposition is gained by giving to this statement the 
widest possible scope. " 

But unquestionably the most important advance 
in chemistry during the last decade has resulted 
from the study of the thermal changes accompany- 
ing chemical processes, which has proved that the 
law of the conservation of energy isa directing prin- 
ciple in chemistry as important 4s it is in physics. 
This study has developed an entirely new branch of 
our science called thermo-chemistry; and we now 
confidently look forward to a time in the near future 
when we shall be able to predict the order of phe- 
nomena in chemistry as fully as we- now can in as- 
tronomy. 

So important and fundamental have been the 
changes .required by the recent progress that, in 
preparing this book for a new-edition, the author 
has found it necessary to add a great deal of new 
material and in many places to rewrite the old, but 
he has endeavored to make the new edition, like 
the first, a popular exposition of the actual state of 
the science. 


HeattH IN THE HovsEHOLD; or, HyGtenic 
Cookery. By Susannah W. Dopps, 
M.D. New York: Fowler & Wells. Pp. 
602. Price, $2. 


By hygienic cookery the author means 


the preparation of predominantly vegetable | 


dishes without stimulating condiments or 
the assistance of ingredients hard to digest. 
On this subject she is in her own prefer- 
ences radical, for not only would she dis- 
card heating meats and spices and grease 
of all kinds, but she intimates that she 
would do away with milk, and, going behind 
even the uncorrupted instincts of animals 
in a state of nature, would abolish salt. 
Exalting grains, fruits, and vegetables, as 
_the predominantly suitable staples of human 
food, she has something to say of the man- 
ner in which these things should be com- 
bined in a single meal—what of them should 
be eaten together—that deserves attention. 
Radicalism and the statement of principles 
constitute, however, but a part of the book. 
In the practical part the author is more 
catholic, and gives recipes for dishes both 


in “the hygienic dietary ’’—that is, a diet- 


ary strictly according to her principles— 
and in an enlarged dietary of “ compromise 
dishes,” into which meat dishes and the 
least deadly errors of modern seasoning are 
admitted. Hygienic people do not appear 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


confined to a spare or monotonous diet. 
Mrs. Dodds’s list is full and various, and 
some of the dishes are as good any the gour- 
mands have. Including the compromise 
dishes, the dyspeptic who is strong enough 
to bear them can, after all, live like an epi- 
cure. 


La Fasuta DE Los Carises. (The Fable of 
the Caribs.) By Juan Ienacio DE AR- 
MAS. Havana: Francisco 8. Ibafiez. Pp. 
31. 

THis monograph is numbered I of a 
series of Americanist studies, and is a paper 
which was read before the Anthropological 
Society of Havana, at a date not given. It 
traces the fable of the Caribs—who were 
reported to be neighbors of the Amazons, to 
be cannibals, and to flatten their heads— 
from its origin with the ancients and its 
primitive location on the Black Sea, through 
the mutations it underwent with the authors 
of the middle ages, to its final location by 
the Spanish chroniclers in the newly discov- 
ered regions of tropical America. Having 
examined the grounds on which the charac- 
teristics first ascribed to the Chalybs of the 
Euxine were assigned to the Caribs of 
America, he finds that they were false, and 
that our Caribs were a people of mild and 
peaceful habits. ‘The fable of the Car- 
ibs,” he says, “was in the beginning a geo- 
graphical error; then a hallucination; and 
finally a calumny.” 


ReFitex Nervous InFivence, and its Impor- 
tance as a Factor in the Causation and 
Cure of Disease. By D. T. Smrru, M. D. 
New Orleans. 

Rertex influence is that property of the 
nervous system by means of which, when one 


“organ is affected, some other one responds 


to its call and acts instantaneously with it 
for the common good. It is an important 
factor in many relations of the individual to 
its environment; and familiar instances of 
its operation may be found in the daily ac- 
tions of men and beasts. Dr. Smith con- 
ceives its function to be much more general 
than has been supposed, and would extend 
it to cases of disease. Thus colds are cases 
of the response of some correlated internal 
nerves, now of one part, now of another, 
to impairment of vitality in the cutaneous 
nerves. Poultices act favorably by stimu- 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


lating the vitality and nutrition of nerves 
of skin covered by them, the exaltation of 
which is refiected to the deeper parts, and 
to the abscess whose maturity it is desired 
to hasten. The ordinary remedies for the 
relief of inflammation, and medicines which 
ean not directly reach the part it is desired 
to affect, operate by reflex action. Restora- 
tion of the tone of the stomach may be pro- 
moted by the taste, sight, or smell, of pleas- 
ant food, and expectoration is stimulated 
by the swallowing of remedies that can not 
be expected to reach the mucous membrane 
of the respiratory passages, simply by the 
operation of the principle under considera- 
tion. 


REPORT ON THE Cotton PRODUCTION OF THE 
Srare or Froripa: With an Account of 
the General Agricultural Features of the 
State. By Eugene ALLEN Smiru, Ph. D. 
Tuscaloosa, Ala. Pp. 77. 

As bearing upon the subject of the re- 
port, Professor Smith gives in this paper, 
besides matters immediately relating to cot- 
- ton, an outline of the physical geography 
and geology of the State, embodying a re- 
view of what has already been hitherto done 
in this field, together with a synopsis of the 
results obtained by himself during the sum- 
mer of 1880. The geological structure of 
Florida has been very much misunderstood, 
and the author’s observations, presenting 
the matter in a correct view, are a positive 
addition to knowledge. 


SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL Re- 
PORTS OF THE PEABoDY MusEuM or AMER- 
ICAN ARCHEZOLOGY aND Erunotocy. F. 
W. Pornam, Curator. Cambridge, Mass, 

Pp. 132. 

Tue out-door work of the Curator of the 
Museum in 1882 was directed chiefly to the 
exploration and examination of the prehis- 
toric works of various kinds on the Little 
Miami River, principally in Hamilton County, 

Qhio. Thecurator also examined some shell- 
heaps on the coast of Maine, and explored 

a large mound and a cemetery in William- 

son County, Tennessee. Valuable contribu- 

tions to the work of the museum were made 
by Dr. C. C. Abbott, in the gravels of Tren- 

ton, New Jersey, and by Miss Alice C. 

Fletcher, the fruits of her residence among 

the Indian tribes. In 1883 the explorations 


847 


on the Little Miami were continued; excur- 
sions were made by the curator to the works 
in Wisconsin and in the Scioto Valley, Ohio; 
and reports and collections were received of 
investigations in North Carolina, New Jer- 
sey, Delaware, the Zuflis of New Mexico, 
Massachusetts, Little Falls (Minnesota), and 
Nicaragua. Miss Fletcher was enabled to 
trace a relation between some peculiar feat- 
ures of the Madisonville works in Ohio and 
past customs of the Omaha Indians. The 
museum was enriched by the gift, from 
Thomas G. and Captain Nathan Appleton, 
of a collection from the Chiriqui graves, 
Panama. The report gives several papers 
in full on Indian customs, etc., by Miss 
Fletcher and other writers, and lists of ad- 
ditions to the collections, which now em- 
brace 33,150 entries. 


ArcHzZoLocicaL InstiroTe or AMERICA. 
Fifth Annual Report of the Executive 
Committee, and Third Report of the 
American School of Classical Studies at 
Athens. Cambridge, Mass.: John Wil- 
son & Sons. Pp. 118. 


THE report records the continuation and 
completion, for the present, of the excava- 


tions at Assos, in Asia Minor, the relics 


of which are “now one of the most inter- 
esting revelations of classical antiquity,” 
and the very interesting explorations of Mr. 
Baudelier in the antiquities of New Mexico. 
A few remarks are offered respecting the 
value .of the excavations at Assos, and of 
Greek civilization generally, to modern life. 
Fifteen colleges have co-operated in the 
maintenance of the classical school at Athens, 
which was under the direction, for the year, 
of Professor Lewis R. Packard, and is to be 
led for the coming year by Professor J. C. 
Van Benschoten, of Wesleyan University. 


Tue THEORIES OF DARWIN AND THEIR RELA- 
TION TO PuitosopHy, Reiiaion, aNnpD Mo- 
RALITY. By Rupotr Scumip. Trans- 
lated from the German by G. A. Znoer- 
MAN, Ph. D., with an Introduction by the 
Duke of Argyll. Chicago: Jansen, Mc- 
Clurg & Co. Pp. 410. Price, $2. 
Tue author of this book is President 

of the Theological Seminary at Schénthal, 

Wiirtemberg. His purpose is to examine 

the various German versions and extensions 

of Darwinianism, and, comparing them with 
the views of the English Darwinian school, 


848 


to ascertain the effect of each and all upon 
religious opinions and principles. Among 
the diversified phases of the subject, as it 
is presented by the different authors, he 
finds himself ‘‘led into the presence of a 
series of most interesting problems, but not 
a single solution finished,” and has, there- 
fore, been obliged to widen his investiga- 
tion, “‘and to discuss even all imaginable 
possibilities. The beneficent result of this 
comparison was,” he continues, “that reli- 
gion and morality not only remain at peace 
with all imaginable possibilities of scientific 
theories, but can also, in the realm of the 
philosophy of the doctrines of nature, be 
passive spectators of all investigations and 
attempts, even of all possible excursions 
into the realm of fancy, without being obliged 
to interfere.” Only in metaphysics is an 
antagonist found, in the attempt to elimi- 
nate from nature the idea of design, whose 
victory would be dangerous ; but this thought 
is dismissed as in opposition “not only to 
the whole world of facts, but also to all 
logical reasoning.” 


MANUAL OF THE Mosszs or NortH AMERICA. 
By Leo Lesquerevx and THomas P. 
James. Boston: §S. E. Cassino & Co. 
Pp. 445, with Six Plates. 


Mr. Lesquerevx is known as one of the 
oldest and most experienced American bota- 
nists, and as one of the highest authorities 
in those fields of the science in which he 
has been engaged during his working life. 
_ In 1848 William §S. Sullivant published, in 
the first edition of Gray’s “ Manual of Bota- 
ny,” descriptions of 205 species of mosses 
and 66 of hepatice; and in the second edi- 
tion of the same work, in 1856, descriptions, 
with illustrative plates, of 410 mosses and 
107 hepatice. He then began, in connec- 
tion with Professor Lesquereux, a separate 
volume on mosses, but the work was inter- 
rupted by disability of Professor Lesquereux 
and the death of Mr. Sullivant. It has since 
been resumed and pushed to completion, 
with the aid of the material already col- 
lected, by Professor Lesquereux, assisted by 
Mr. James in microscopic analysis; M. T. Re- 
nauld, a French bryologist, in special exami- 
nations; and Mr. Sereno Watson, in revising 
and editing. The resultis the present noble 
volume, which includes descriptions of all 
the species of mosses (about nine hundred) 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


that are known to occur on our continent, 
within the limits of the United States and 
northward. 


On A CARBONIFEROUS AMMONITE FROM TEXAS. 
By Professor ANGELO He1Lprin, of Phil- 
adelphia. Pp. 3. 

Tuts is a monograph on a new ammonite, 
named by the author Ammonites Parkeri, 
obtained from the carboniferous strata of 
Wise County, Texas, which is noteworthy as 
being the first ammonite that has been de- 
tected in any American formation below the 
Mesozoic series. Carboniferous ammonites 
have also, however, been found in India. 


Frre-Proor Burpines witn WoopEn Beams 
AND GirpEerS. New York: W. H. Dol- 
man, 229 Broadway. Pp. 14. 

AN exposition of the character and mer- 
its of Dolman’s fire-dampers, a device for 
fire-proofing wooden beams and floors by 
packing the beams or deafening the space 
under the floors with ashes, which is claimed 
to be cheap, effective, and easy to adapt. 


Waces anp TrapE In Manvracturine In- 
DUSTRIES IN AMERICA AND Evropr., By 
J. Scoornnor. New York: G. P. Put- 
nam’s Sons... Pp. 25. Price, 15 cents. 
Tas essay is published, with an intro- 
duction by R. R. Bowker, under the auspices 
of the New York Free Trade Club. It is 
intended to answer the communications in 
the “ New York Tribune” of Mr. Robert P. 
Porter on the same subject, who, having 
been dispatched to Europe as a special cor- 
respondent in the interest of protection, 
“did what he was sent to do,” and “ pre- 
sented a picture of the distress of England 
under free trade and of the prosperity of 
France and Germany under a protective tariff 
that was much of a surprise to those who 
know most of those countries.” An oppo- 
site view is here given. 


A Hawnp-Boox or Hyerene anp Sanitary 
Science. By Grorce Witson. Fifth 
edition, enlarged and carefully revised. 
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co, 
Pp. 512. Price, $2.75. 

Tuts is a very full and at the same time 
closely condensed manual of facts and prin- 
ciples in the whole field indicated by the 
title, arranged under the general heads (with 
many divisions and subdivisions) of ‘* Public 


LITERARY NOTICES. 


Health and Preventable Disease” ; “Food” ; 
“ Air, its Impurities and their Effects on 
Public Health”; “Ventilation and Warm- 
ing”; “Examination of Air and Ventila- 
tion”; “Water”; “Water Analysis”; 
“Impure Water, and its Effects on Pub- 
lic Health”; “ Dwellings”; “ Hospitals” ; 
“Removal of Sewage”; “ Purification and 
Utilization of Sewage”; ‘The Effects of 
Improved Drainage and Sewage on Public 
Health”; “Preventive Measures” (disin- 
fection); “Vital Statistics”; and “The 
Duties of (English) Medical Officers of 
Health.” 


Rerorms: Tuer Dirricutties anp Posst- 
BILITIES. By the author of “ Conflict in 
Nature and Life.” New York: D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. Pp. 229. Price, $1. 


Many who read that remarkable book, 
by an anonymous author, entitled “ Conflict 
in Nature and Life: a Study of Antagonism 
in the Constitution of Things,” which was 
published last year, were so deeply inter- 
ested in the views presented, and so struck 
with their possible bearings upon various 
practical questions, as to indulge the hope 
that the author would resume his novel dis- 
cussion, and work out some of the more ob- 
vious implications of his doctrine. This he 


while in a certain sense a sequel or supple- 
ment to the former work, is still an inde- 
pendent treatise that must stand substan- 
tially upon its own merits. The work on 
“ Conflict,” as we pointed out at the time of 
its publication, was devoted to an explica- 
tion of the dynamic view of Nature, which 
sees in it the action of forces ever resisted 
by other forces, so that the conception of 
conflict becomes the key to its universal 
operations. The radical ideas of that vol- 
ume are thus restated in the author’s intro- 
duction to the present work. He says: “A 
simple and primary form of antagonism is 
that of attraction and repulsion, which play 
so conspicuous a part in the phenomena of 
physics and chemistry. In biology, antag- 
onism appears in manifold forms, in some 
instances somewhat obscure, but neverthe- 
less everywhere present. Birth and death, 
growth and decay, waste and repair, devel- 
opment and degradation, are familiar exam- 
ples. It appears in the never-ending strug- 
VOL. Xxv.—54 


849 


gle of individuals with individuals, of spe- 
cies with species, and of persistence of type 
with divergence of type. It is even exem- 
plified by the rivalry of functions for vital 
energy from the organic sources in common, 
in consequence of which the over-activity 
of one may impoverish ancther, as when 
over-exertion of the brain exhausts the 
body, and early and over reproduction di- 
minishes growth and development. Similar 
forms of antagonism pass over into the 
sphere of mind. At the bottom of the men- 
tal scale, and at the top, mental action is 
counteraction, There is no mental concep- 
tion of properties except by contrast: one 
feeling antagonizes another; the mind is 
itself a system of balances, often fluctuating 
from one extreme to another ; and the will 
is forever the theatre of emotional conflict. 
And all this antagonism is not incidental 
and transitory, as usually supposed, but fun- 
damental and ineradicable.” 

But this policy of conflict is far enough 
from being confined to the icorganic, the 
organic, and the sub-human sphere of Na- 
ture. Man, with all his activities, is a part 
of the great unified natural order, and is to 
be as much studied in the light of this prin- 
ciple as any other divisions of phenomena. 


_ On this point the author observes: “ Now, 


has now done in the book before us, which, if this antagonism prevails in Nature, and 


is woven into the constitution of man, we 
should infer that the society which man 
forms would embody antagonistic elements 
in manifold forms of combination and in- 
terrelation. We should further infer that 
every attempt to act on human nature and 
on human society, for their improvement, 
should take an account of this ineradicable 
antagonism in the constitution of things in 
order properly to adapt the means to the 
end. A prevailing form in which this an- 
tagonism appears in life is in the essential 
coupling of the evil with the good, of a gen- 
eral evil with every general good. Now, in 
consequence of this union of evil with good, 
there is no such thing as perfection, and 
any attempt to bring about perfect results 
will fail. All that can be done is to effect 
the greatest possible good with the least 
possible evil. But reformers usually go to 
work in defiance of this principle ; they 
have panaceas for every moral disease in 
the world, and are bound that every wrong 


850 


shall be righted, and every evil extermi- 
nated, not seeing that, while they gain on 
one side, they are almost sure to lose on the 
other.” | 

It was quite inevitable that the author 
should be led by this train of thought to an 
examination of the general subject of re- 
forms, By this term has come to be under- 
stood that concerted and systematic effort 
which men put forth for the removal of 
evils, personal and social, and the attain- 
ment of a higher good through wiser action 
and better conduct. The reforms in which 
men and women engage are numberless, 
and are usually undertaken under the spur 
of a vivid sense of some evil to be removed, 
some suffering to be mitigated, or some 
great good to be achieved, rather than from 
any clear appreciation of how much it is 
possible to accomplish, or the danger of 
making matters worse by injudicious and in- 
tractable meddling. If ever amplitude of 
knowledge and cautious judgment are re- 
quired for the guidance of human activity, 
it is certainly when experiments are to be 
made upon human beings in social relations 
for the purpose of attaining ideal results. 
But knowledge is generally not at a pre- 


mium among reformers, and, instead of be- | 


ing men of dispassionate discernment and 
cool deliberation, they are too, generally ar- 
dent and passionate, and even hot-headed 
and fanatical. It may be said that it is just 
these qualities that are needed to drive a 
reformatory crusade, and that nothing in 
this direction is ever accomplished by dis- 
creet and well-balanced men. But our ex- 
perience with reforms and reformers—those 
who make it a business and a profession— 
is not such as to convince us that further 
knowledge on the philosophy of this im. 
portant subject is superfluous. 

For this reason we welcome the present 
book as a timely and valuable contribution 
to the question of the difficulties and the 
possibilities of reformatory effort. The au- 
thor brings out a view of the subject that 
needed to be elaborated. It is a great sub- 
ject, and his treatment of it is neither ex- 
haustive nor faultless; but it is sufficiently 
full, cogent, and instructive to be of great 
public service. The writer modestly re- 
marks: “It may be thought that more 
should have been said of the possibilities of 


i 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


reform. I could not say more on this point 
than has here been said without pretending 
to wisdom which I am perfectly conscious I 
do not possess. I believe there is need of 
some such presentation of the subject as an 
incentive mainly to a careful and judicious 
treatment of the great practical questions 
of the day.” 

The work is divided into three parts. 
Part I—consisting of five chapters, is de- 
voted to the labor question—wages, saving 
and management, monopoly, schemes for 
industrial reform, etc. Part II—three chap- 
ters—takes up financial questions—money, 
protection, and monopoly. Part III—six 
chapters—is devoted to, miscellaneous re- 
forms—questions of every-day economics, 
some points in education, the woman and 
divorce questions, the temperance question, 
and issues of the near future. The work is 
neatly printed and brought out at a moder- 
ate price. It should have an extensive cir- 
culation, for the country is full of reformers. 


INTELLECTUAL ARITHMETIC, UPON THE INDUC- 
TIVE Meruop or Instruction. By War- 
REN CoLBuRN. Revised and enlarged 
edition. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co. Pp. 216. Price, 35 cents. 

To commend Colburn’s Arithmetic would 
be like painting the rose. The system he 
introduced has held its place for sixty years, 
and educators are not yet ready to depart 
from its principles. The changes made in 
the present edition have been designed to 
make the “Colburn Method of Instruction ” 
more apparent and attractive, or to bring 
the modes of expression and the objects re- 
ferred to into conformity with the changed 
conditions of the life of to-day. A sketch 
of Colburn’s life, his original preface, and 
George B. Emerson’s introduction to the 
edition of 1863, are given in the Appendix. 


Text-Boox or Porvunar Astronomy. For 
the Use of Colleges, Academies, and High 
Schools. By Witt1am G. Peck, Ph. D., 
LL.D. New York: A. 8. Barnes & Co, 
Pp. 330. 

Tus book is intended to present, in a 
compact and popular form, all the facts and 
principles of astronomy that are needed in 
a general course of collegiate education. 
Mathematical formulas and demonstrations 
have been avoided as far as possible, and 


IITERARY NOTICES. 


when introduced have been put in different 
type from the other matter. The order of 
arrangement of the matter is a little varied 
from the common order. The stars are 
treated of in a general way before any de- 
tailed consideration is given to the solar 
system. Instruments are described at those 
places in the text where their use is indi- 
cated in the general development of the 
course. Terms are defined where they may 
receive immediate illustration from the con- 
text. Subjects are arranged according to 
the author’s idea of what is a natural and 
logical order. 


Nippon SHOKU BUTSU MEII; OR, NOMENCLA- 
TURE OF JAPANESE PLANTS IN Latin, Ja- 
PANESE, AND CHINESE. By J. Marsv- 
MURA. Supervised by Z R. Yarase. 
Tokio, Japan: Z. P. Maruya & Co. Pp. 
300. Price, $2. 

Tue author of this catalogue is Assist- 
ant Professor of Sotany in the University 
of Tokio, and has+.cue his work under the 
supervision of the Professor-in-chief of Bot- 
any in the same institution. But little more 
can be said in description of it than is given 
in the title. Twenty-four hundred and six 
species are catalogued in the alphabetical 
order of their recognized botanical or Latin 
names, with the authorities on which the 
names rest, and the equivalents for these 
names are given in Japanese, romanized 
Japanese, and Chinese. The list itself is 
a sufficient index to the Latin names; but 
three special alphabetical indexes are given 
for the Japanese, romanized Japanese, and 
Chinese names. The general execution and 
arrangement of the work are as nearly per- 
fect as such things ever are; and in me- 
chanical execution the book is equal to the 
best that has ever come from an American 
or European press. 


- Bearynincs with THE Microscope. By 
Water P. Manron, M. D. Boston: 
Lee & Shepard ; New York: Charles T. 

’ Dillingham. Pp. 73. - Price, 50 cents. 

Tue “ Beginnings” is a working hand- 
book containing simple instructions in the 
art and method of using the microscope and 
preparing objects for examination. It is 
easy to handle, easy to read, and easy to 
understand. The successful application of 
its directions must depend on the skill and 
industry of the student. 


History or THE Discovery OF THE CIRCULA- 
TION OF THE BLoop. By Henry C. Crap- 
MAN, M.D. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, 
Son & Co. Pp. 56. Price, $1. 

Tus essay was the concluding lecture of 

a course on “‘ The Circulation” delivered by 
the author at the Jefferson Medical College, 
during the term of 1883. Giving to Harvey 
the credit that is his due for grasping and 
formulating the law of the circulation, the 
author shows that the idea was entertained 
indefinitely in ancient times by Eristratus and 
Galen; that Servetus expressed some very 
intelligent ideas on the heart and its func- 
tions; that other writers had demonstrated 
particular features of the circulation, in an 
isolated way, before Harvey’s time; and 
that it was not until after the appearance of 
Harvey’s work that the discovery of the 
capillaries made intelligible the manner in 
which the blood passed from the arteries to 
the veins, and the demonstration of the lym- 
phatics completed our knowledge on the 
subject. 


Macuinery oF THE Heavens. A System of 
Physical Astronomy. By A. P. Picus- 
rEAU. Galesburg, Ill.: Plaindealer 
Printing Company. Pp. 142. Price, 
$1.50. 

Mr. Picnexeav is a practicing lawyer, 
who has kept up a living interest in astro- 
nomical questions and studies, While hav- 
ing the highest respect for astronomers, he is 
not fully satisfied with the sufficiency of their 
theories ; he has thoughtout some hypotheses 
of his own, which he presents modestly, but 
with confidence, in this ‘book. These theo- 
ries relate to the causes of planetary axial 
rotations and orbital motions, the origin of 
worlds, the genesis of comets’ tails, and the 
tides. If they can not be called scientific, 
it would be unjust to pronounce them con- 
trary to science. They are plausible specu- 
lations pleasantly uttered by an amateur. 


851 


Puysics iN Pictures. With Explanatory 


Text prepared by THEODORE Eckarpt and 
translated by A. H. Keane. London: 
Edward Stanford. 

In this work the principal natural phe- 
nomena and physical appliances in use are 
described and illustrated by thirty colored 
plates. Nearly every physical property of 
matter and ordinary manifestation of force 
is graphically represented, often with much 


852 


ingenuity. In the first plate, for instance, 
the property of center of gravity is illus- 
trated in a dozen ways, some of them amus- 
ing, in a two-page picture, which itself has 
no inconsiderable merit as a composition. 
Other plates explain the principles of the 
mechanical powers of simple and compound 
machines, the parallelogram of forces, den- 
sity, the fire-engine, pumps, watch and clock 
works, mills, distilling apparatus, house- 
heating apparatus, steam-engines, ship-con- 
struction, electricity and its applications, 
the aurora borealis, and acoustics and optics, 
and the instruments in which they are ap- 
plied, or are made subjects of investigation. 


In THe Heart or Arrica. By Sir Samven 
Baker. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 
Pp, 284. Price, $1. 

No one has done more to make the world 
acquainted with the regions of the Upper 

Nile and the Central African lakes than 

Sir Samuel Baker; and no one has conveyed 

_the knowledge gained of them in a more en- 

tertaining and instructive manner than he. 
His two works, on “The Nile Tributaries 
of Abyssinia” and “The Albert Nyanza 
Great Basin of the Nile,” are too large and 
expensive, and out of the reach of the mass 
of readers. The present volume has been 
condensed from them in such a manner as 
to omit that which is dry and only of detail, 
while the unity and thrilling charm of the 
narrative and the descriptive parts are re- 
tained. 


THE GLoBE PRONOUNCING GAZETTEER OF THE 
,Wortp. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd; 
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Pp. 
463, with Thirty-two Maps. Price, $2.50. 
Tue purpose of this “Gazetteer” is to 
furnish in a convenient form such a concise 
dictionary of geography as will, from its 
special features and cheapness, prove ac- 
ceptable and useful to the general public. 
It gives descriptions of the different coun- 
tries of the globe, and of their physical as- 
pects and political divisions, and the location 
of their principal towns, etc., with the pro- 
nunciation, and, in many cases, the etymol- 
ogy of the geographical names. The first 
edition of the “Gazetteer” was published 
in 1879. The present edition has been thor- 
oughly revised, and much new matter has 
been added. 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


Sorcnum: Irs CutturE anD MANUFACTURE. 
ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED AS A SOURCE 
or Sugar, Sirup, AND Fopper. By Pz- 
TER Coxirer, Ph.D. Cincinnati: Rob- 
ert Clarke & Co. Pp. 570. Price, $3. 
Ir is the purpose of this work to present, 

in a systematic manner, all the most impor- 
tant facts relating to the economical produc- 
tion of sugar, sirup, and fodder from sor- 
ghum. The attempt is made to separate 
that which is demonstrable from the vast 
accumulation of statements, true and fan- 
ciful, that have been made since the plant 
was first introduced into the United States. 
The actual working results of numerous 
practical experiments in the production of 
sugar from this source have been given in 
detail, together with illustrations and de- 
scriptions of all necessary apparatus. The 
author’s experience, as chemist of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, has given 
him excellent advantages for the study of 
different varieties of sorghum during all 
stages of development, the results of which 
he has endeavored to present, condensed 
and classified, in this volume. He has full 
faith in the possibility of making the pro- 
duction of sugar from sorghum profitable. 


‘A Bacuenor’s Tatks asout Marriep Lire 


AND THINGS ADJACENT. By Witiiam 
Arkman, D.D. New York: Fowler & 
Wells. Pp. 272. Price, $1 50. 

Dr. ArkMAN, infusing into his work the 
interest of a narrative and the easy grace 
of the informal essay, has given in this vol- 
ume a series of sketches, more or less con- 
nected, on the different phases and events 
of married life, each of which, and the 
whole together, are intended to convey a 
moral or a salutary practical lesson. 


Ovurtine or Lecture Notes oN GENERAL 
Cuemistry. By Joun T. Stopparp, Ph. 
D., Professor of Chemistry in Smith Col- 
lege. —“ The Non- Metals.” Northamp- 
ton, Mass.: Gazette Publishing Com- 
pany. Pp. 84. 

A Brier statement of the general princi- 
ples of the science occupies the opening 
pages of this little manual, and this is fol- 
lowed by notes as to the occurrence, prepa- 
ration, properties, history, etc., of each of 
the non-metallic elements. It is adapted to 
accompany a course of laboratory work and 
lectures on this division of the elements. 


LITERARY NOTICES, 


ToxoLoey : A Book ror Every Woman. By 
Auice B, SrockHam, M.D. Chicago : 
Sanitary Publishing Company. Pp. 277. 
Price, $2. 

ToKkoLoGy concerns the function of ma- 
ternity. This book aims to teach women 
how they may build up their physical con- 
stitutions and those of their daughters, so 
as to fit their systems to endure safely what 
maternity demands of them, and to convey 
health and vigor to their offspring. Besides 
precepts concerning general physical devel- 
opment, particularly that of the womanly 
structure, it gives instructions for regimen 
and hygiene during the period of pregnancy, 
directions for the care of infants, hints for 
the alleviation of the pains of labor, obser- 
vations on the disorders of pregnancy, and 
the alleviations of them, and on ventilation, 
baths, and gymnastics, with more than thirty 
pages on dietetics, embracing upward of a 
hundred recipes that are the outgrowth of 
experience. 


Tae Man versus tHE Srate: Containing 
“The New Toryism;” “The Coming 
Slavery ;” “The Sins of Legislators ;” 
and “ The Great Political Superstition.” 
With a Preface and a Postscript. By 
Hersert Spencer. New York: D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. Pp. 113. Price 30 cents. 
Unper this title the several articles by 

Mr. Herbert Spencer on social and political 
subjects, which have recently appeared in 
“The Popular Science Monthly,” are now 
reprinted separately. As our readers know, 
they are vigorous protests against certain 
pronounced political tendencies of the times, 
which, as Mr. Spencer and many others be- 
lieve, are full of danger to the cause of free 
government, and which at any rate deal with 
questions of greatimportance. The papers 
are issued in a cheap and attractive form, 
and the collection forms a very strong cam- 
paign document. 

It may be thought singular that these 
discussions should be so classed, and many 
will be surprised that they should be pub- 
lished at this time, as they are not in the 
interest of any party, and will hardly be 
considered as belonging to the proper lit- 
erature of a presidential canvass, But what 
can be more proper than to distribute 
through the community at the present time 
so able an examination of the principles 
which lie at the basis of free institutions? 


¢ 


853 


Every four years we in this country profess 
to remand to the people the whole subject 
of government policy, which is to be recon- 


‘| sidered, revised, embodied in new platforms, 


and represented by newly chosen men for the 
future guidance of the nation. This would, 
therefore, seem to be an especially suitable 
occasion to look closely into the tendencies 
of legislation, and to restate the principles . 
which will best promote the true objects for 
which government is established. Pure par- 
tisanship is, of course, unfavorable to any 
such serious work, its objects being wholly 
incompatible with the grave consideration 
of primary political principles. So true is 
this, that the time which of all others would 
seem most appropriate for taking up funda- 
mental questions of political policy is just 
the time when such questions are intention- 
ally and systematically excluded from pop- 
ular thought. So effectually are the most 
important suhjects evaded and ruled out of 
the platforms that, as between the two great ° 
rival parties to-day, there is nothing of mo- 
ment at issue. An election is to be won, 
and the canvass is to be made subservient 
to the personal ambition of the candidates, 
the getting possession of offices, and the 


distribution of patronage; and the intro- 


duction of fundamental issues of principle 
might disconcert the calculations of the poli- 
ticians. 

But unpropitious as the time might seem 
to issue a serious non-partisan document, 
appealing to intelligent and independent 
thinkers, there are strong reasons, neverthe- 
less, for doing it, because the prevailing ppl- 
icy of the parties is far from having the 
unanimous approval of our most thoughtful 
citizens. There are many who protest ve- 
hemently against the vicious working of our 
partisan tactics. There are multitudes, and 
their numbers are increasing, who have be- 
come restive and are growing rebellious un- 
der these despotic party exactions, and that 
rule of intriguers which is fast making Amer- 
ican politics the scandal and by-word of the 
world. Decent men are more and more dis- 
gusted with the empty pretenses, hypocrisy, 
and hollowness of our political life. They 
may acquiesce at last and vote the ticket of 
their party associations, but they denounce 
the system, and are ashamed of their own 
agency in supporting it. Itis to such men, 
to whom the common literature of the can- 


854 


vass is mere chaff and rubbish, that such a 
document as this of Spencer’s will make its 
successful appeal. Of the character of these 
papers it is unnecessary here to speak, but 
they have a living and permanent interest as 


masterly contributions to that phase of po- | 


litical inquiry which must absorb the atten- 
tion of the coming generation. The prob- 
lem of the function of government and the 
limits of its legitimate action must take pre- 
cedence of all other political questions. 


VAN NOSTRAND’S SCIENCE SERIES, NO. ‘6. 


Mopern ReEpropuctive GraPHic PRocESSsES. 
By James §. Perit, First - Lieutenant, 
First United States Infantry. New York: 
D. Van Nostrand. Pp. 127. Price, 50 
cents, 

Tuts little book was prepared for the 
use of the department of drawing of the 
United States Military Academy. It gives 
the outlines of about forty processes now in 
use for the reproduction of maps, drawings, 
and works of art, with details and formulas 
for such as are within the reach of amateurs. 
The processes are grouped as follows: Sen- 
sitive-paper processes, hektograph-printing, 
engraving, electrotypy, lithography, photog- 
raphy, and miscellaneous. Many of these 
processes which belong to the same group 
differ very little; their details are often 
trade secrets, ssid they are all, especially 
those in which chemicals are largely used, 
constantly undergoing improvements, and 
widening their range of application. 


Toe Hotianpers 1n Nova Zempia (1596- 
1597). An Arctic Poem translated from 
the Dutch of Hendrik Tollers. By Dan- 
reL Van Pett. New York: G. P. Put- 
nam’s Sons. Pp. 120. 

Tis poem, the work of the most es- 
teemed Dutch poet of the century, relates 
the story of the famous voyages of Barents 
and his companions three hundred years ago, 
and their over-wintering in Nova Zembla. 
The translation has been prepared and given 
to the public at the instigation of Samuel 
Richard Van Campen, who, greatly admir- 
ing the original and its author, and being 
also interested in Arctic research, sought 
long for a writer who could adequately pre- 
sent its beauties in an English dress. He 
found such a writer in Mr. Van Pelt, who 
had already begun the work of his own ac- 


‘age. 


maine J. Curtiss, M. D., of Joliet, Ill. 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


cord. To the translation Mr. Van Campen 
prefixes an historical introduction, covering 
the Dutch voyages of Arctic exploration. 


Firth AVENUE TO ALASKA. oe EpWarD 
Prerreront. New York: P. Put- 
nam’s Sons. Pp. 329, ar Maps by 
L. F. Beckwith. Price, $1.75. 

THE author made the journey, the ob- 
servations of which he has recorded in this 
volume, in company with his father, in the 
summer of 1883, by the Union Pacific Rail- 
road, with the usual digressions to Salt Lake 
City, the Yosemite, and the Big Trees, wa 
San Francisco, to Astoria, Portland, and the 
terminus of the Oregon and California Rail- 
road; thence back to Portland, and through 
Puget Sound to Victoria; and thence to and 
through “the fiords, straits, bays, and inlets 
of Alaska, above two thousand miles.” The 
return was by the Northern Pacific Railroad 
and the Yellowstone Park. What was seen 
is described in a simple, unaffected style, 
that seems designed to convey the exact 
impressions which the various adventures 
made upon the author. 


PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 


The Philosophy of History and the New Science 
of Sociology. By J.M. Long. Memphis, Tenn. Pp. 
61. 

The Unification of Longitudes and a Universal 
Time. By Benjamin A. Gould. Buenos Ayres. 
Pp. 12. 

Annual Festival of German Pioneers, Cincinnati 
Speech of Charles Reemelin. Pp, 28. 

Public Health Laws of Illinois. Springfield, IIl.: 
State Board of Health, John H. Rauch, Secretary. 
Pp. 51. 

este, 2 Systems, and the Epuration of Sew- 

By Henry J. Barnes. Cambridge, Mass.: 
Riverside Press. Pp. 48. 

Life and Public Services of Grover Cieveland. 
By Pendleton King. New. York: G. P, Putnam’s 
Sons. Pp. 224. 80 cents. 

Catalogue of the State A gricultural and Mechani- 
cal College of Alabama, Auburn, “ Pp. 24, 

United States Hay - Fever Association, 1884. 
Portland, Me.: Hoyt, Fogg & Donham. . 86. 

The Offices of Electricity in the Srowth, te 
Plants. By H. B. Philbrook, New York. Pp. 2 

Sawdust Gas. By George Walker. Pp. 15. 

An Anarchist on Anarchy. By Elisée Reclus. 
Boston: Benjamin R. Tucker. Pp. 24. 

Lightning-rod Humbugs. By J. K. Macomber. 

. 8. 


_ Chickering Classical and Scientific Institute, 
Cincinnati. Pp. 20. 

Medical Education and State License. Mi Ro- 

By J. 8. Ogil- 

. 128. 15 


Seven Hundred Album Verses. 
vie. New York: J. 58. Ogilvie & Co. 
cents. 

Calcification and Decalcification of the Teeth 
By C. N. Pierce, D. D. 8., Philadelphia. Pp. T. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


Barometric Waves of Very Short Period, pp. 11; 
Electric Potential and Gaseous Pressure, pp. 4. 
By H. M. Paul, Washington, D- C. 

Proceedings of the Central Ohio Scientific Asso- 
ciation. Urbana, Ohio. Pp. 17, with Plates. 

bat og etc., of the Kentucky State Sani- 
tary Council, March, 1884, J. N. McCormack, Secre- 
tary. Bowling Green, Ky. Pp. 60. 

. Meteorites, pp. 7; The Argillite and Conglom- 
erate of the Boston Basin, pp. 4; Relation of the 
Quincy Granite to the Primordial Argillite of 
Braintree, Mass., pp. 5; On the Trachyte of Mar- 
blehead Neck, Mass., pp. 7; Rocks and Ore Depos- 
its in the Vicinity of Notre Dame Bay, Newfound- 
land, pp. 11; On the Classification of Rocks, pp 
12; Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, 
pp. 32; The Fortieth Parallel Rocks, pp. 20; At- 
a Action on Sandstone, pp, 2. By M. E, 
Wadsworth, Harvard University. 

Equalizing and increasing our Country’s Re- 
et By John R. Lomas. New Haven, Conn. 


Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civ- 
ilization. By William B. Weeden. Baltimore: N. 
Murray. Pp. 51. 50 cents. 

Reports from the Consuls of the United States 
on Commerce, Manufactures, etc. Washington: 
Government Printing-Office. Pp. 179. 

A New Method of recording the Motions of the 
Soft Palate. By Harrison Alien, M.D. Philadel- 
phia: P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 34. 

Handbook for Horsewomen. By H. L. de Bus- 
signy. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 75. 
dU cents. 

Life ona Ranch. By Reginald Aldridge. New 
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 22T. 50 cents. 

Handbook for the Dominion of Canada. By S. 
E. Dawson. Montreal: Dawson Brothers. Pp. 335. 


Forests and Forestry of Northern Russia and 


Lands beyond. Compiled by John Croumbie Brown. | 


Montreal; Dawson Brothers; Edinburgh, Oliver 
& Boyd. Pp. 278. 

Illinois State Board of Health. Fifth Annual 
Report. Springfield, Hl.: H. W. Rokker. Pp. 663, 

The Orchids of New England. By Henry Bald- 
win. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 159, 
with Plates. 

Report of the Board of Regents of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, 1882. Washington: Govern- 
ment Printing-Office. Pp. 855. 

Text-Book of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxi- 
cology. By John J. Reese, Philadelphia : 
P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 606 

The Amazon. By Carl Vosmar. New York: 
William 8. Gottsberger. Pp. 262. i 

Nervous and Mental Physics. By 8. V. Cleven- 
ger, M.D. Pp. 76. 

The Wind and the Whirlwind. By Wilfrid S. 
Blunt. Boston: Benjamin R. Tucker. Pp. 30. 

Excessive Saving a Cause of Commercial Dis- 
tress. By Uriel H. Crocker. Boston: W. B. 
Clarke & Carruth. Pp. 40. 50 cents. 

Elements of Analytical Geometry. By Simon 
Newcomb. New York: Henry Holt & Oo. Pp. 
356. $1.50. ‘ 

Diseases of the Throat and Nose. By Morell 
Mackenzie. Pp. 550. $3._ 

Electrical Appliances of the Present Day. By 
Major D. P. Heap. New York: D. Van Nostrand. 
Pp. 287. , 

Fallacies in “ Progress and Poverty.” By Will- 
iam Hanson. New York: Fowler & Wells, Com- 
pany. Pp.191. $1. 

Cholera and its Preventive and Curative Treat- 
ment. By D. N. Ray. New York: A. L. Chaiter- 
ton Publishing Company. Pp. 128. 

Wonders and Curiosities of the Railway. By 
William Sloane Kennedy. Chicago: 8. C. Griggs 
&Co. Pp. 254. $1.25. 


in November and then in December. 


855 


Formation of Poisons by Micro-organisms. B 
G. V. Black, M. D., D. D.S8. Phiiadelphia : p. 
Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 178. $1.50. 


Manual of Biblical Nn By the Rev. J. 
L. Hurlbut, D. D. Chicago: The Continental Pub- 
lishing Company. Pp. 158. $4.50. 
Essay on Hamlet. By Professor C. C. Schaeffer. 
ena cu : Charles, Brother & Co. Pp. 25, with 
e. 


“Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia.’* Second Series, Vol. LX, Part I. 
Pp. 154, with Plates. 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


The Warmest Month.—M. E. Renou re- 
marks, in the “Annuaire” of the French 
Meteorological Society, that throughout the 
northern temperate zone the maximum of 
temperature occurs, as a rule, in July. In 
the corresponding zone on the other side of 
the equator the maximum comes in Janua- 
ry. Between these two zones, or at the equa- 
tor, the epoch of maximum falls at various 
dates, according to the storms that rule in 
the region. They are not so important there 
as in the other regions, for the difference 
between the coolest and the warmest month 
is little at the most. A curious law seems. 
to prevail in the distribution of the maxi- 
mum. In North America the warmest 
month is almost universally July ; but inthe 
southern regions of that continent it occurs. 
in August. In the Antilles it may be’looked 
for in September, and at Cayenne in Octo- 
ber. Passing through South America, be- 
fore reaching the latitude where it comes in 
January, we find. countries where it occurs, 
The 
maximum is found in January through all 
the southern part of that continent and in 
Chili. In Peru it occurs in March ; there is, 
therefore, a region between Peru and Chili . 
where it must be looked for in February. 
North of Lima it is found in April, and far- 
ther north in May. Finally, it comes in 
June as we approach Sonora, and in July in 
California, where we are brought back in 
the returning circle to our starting-point. 
Between Cayenne and Peru we shall evi- 
dently find places in which the maximum 
moves from October into November, etc., 
and at last into March. In the Gulf of 
Mexico wé mgy also remark a rapid varia- 
tion in the time of the maximum tempera- 
ture as we go from east to west. A similar 
distribution, marked by the same peculiari- 
ties, is noticeable in the Old World. The 


« 


856 


march of the temperatures of both conti- 
nents is marked by the analogous phenome- 
na of a shifting of the month of the maxi- 
mum from July to January in going from 
north to south on the eastern side, and 
from January to July in returning from 
south to north on the western side of the 
continent, The most rational explanation 
of the.difference presented by the eastern 
and western coasts is to be sought in the 
differences in their positions in relation to 
the seas and to the distribution of storms. 


The Earthquake of Angust 10th,—The 
Northern Atlantic section of the United 
States was disturbed on Sunday afternoon, 
August 10th, by a very distinct earthquake- 
shock, which, taking place in the city of 
- New York, at about seven minutes past two 

o’clock, lasted for some ten or fifteen sec- 
onds. The shock was felt all along the sea- 
board from North Carolina to Maine, through 
a district of country about six hundred miles 
long and two hundred miles wide, the most 
distant point from the ocean where it was 
remarked being at Titusville, Pennsylvania. 
Its greatest force appears to have been along 
the Long Island and New Jersey coasts. 
The statements of the time of the observa- 
tion of the shock vary some seventy-five 
seconds as between Boston and New York, 
so as to show that the general direction of 
its progress was from north to southwest. 
It was not accompanied or preceded by any 
observable peculiarities in atmospheric phe- 
‘nomena. No damage appears to have been 
done by it anywhere, beyond the occasional 
fall of a brick from a dilapidated chimney 
or the shaking down of some article that 
was not securely fastened, although the 
nervous excitement it occasioned appears to 
have been fatal to a few persons. At Bos- 
ton, the signal-officer, taking his ease in the 
highest building in the city, was shaken off 
from hislounge. AtSeabright, New Jersey, 
the railway-station was shifted to one side, 
with a “shaking up of the contents”; and 
other trifling incidents of no worse character 
were remarked in various places. 


A Destroyer in the Spruce-Forests of 
Maine.—According to accounts of observa- 
tions published in the third “ Bulletin” of 
the entomological division of the Department 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of Agriculture, the ravages of the spruce- 
bud worm (TZortriz fumiferana) have been 
extensive and destructive in the coast for- 
ests of Maine west of the Penobscot River. 
The damage appears to have reached only 
a few miles inland from the coast, but the 
belt in which it has prevailed is marked by 
extensive masses of dead woods. The trees 
are attacked inthe terminal buds, which are 
eaten away, and, when that is done, the case 
is hopeless. Tho fatal character of the at- 
tack is owing to the fact that the spruce 
puts forth but few buds, and those mostly 
at the end of the twigs, and, when these are 
destroyed, it has nothing on which to sus- 
tain the season’s life. The attack is made 
in June, when the growth is most lively, 
and just at the time when the check upon it 
can produce the most serious results. The 
larches are also attacked by a saw-fly, but 
with results that are not as necessarily fa- 
tal.as in the case of the spruce. They are 
more liberally provided with buds, some of 
which may escape and afford a living pro- 
vision of foliage. The larch, moreover, 
sheds its leaves in the fall, and is in full 
foliage before its enemies attack it. ILence, 
while the spruce and fir succumb to the first 
season’s assaults, the larch can endure two 
years of them, 


The Greely Aretic Expedition.—The ves- 
sels sent out for the relief of Lieutenant 
Greely and his Arctic Expedition returned 
to St. John’s, Newfoundland, July 17th, 
with the report that they had, on the 22d 
of June, rescued from their quarters in 
Camp Clay, Cape Sabine, near the entrance 
to Smith Sound, seven of the members of 
the expedition, the other eighteen mem- 
bers having died during the present year, 
of starvation and exposure. One of the 
rescued men, Sergeant Elison, died a few 
days later, after the amputation of his 
frozen feet. All the records of the expedi- 
tion were saved, and are to be published. 
They show that its work was of the most 
creditable character, and was fruitful in sci- 
entific results. Lieutenant Greely’s party 
was sent out by our Government in 1881, 
as one of a series of International Arctic 
Expeditions, on the plan suggested by Lieu- 
tenant Weyprecht, of the Austrian service, 
for establishing permanent stations as far 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


north as possible, whence advance parties 
might be sent farther toward the pole. In 
the summer of 1882 it established a station 
at Fort Conger, north of Lady Franklin Bay, 
near the eighty-second degree of latitude, 
which it abandoned in August, 1883, to come 
down to Cape Sabine. Of the exploring par- 
ties sent out, one, under Lieutenant Lock- 
wood, reached in Lockwood Island the high- 
est latitude yet attained—83° 24:5’ and lon- 
gitude 40° 45’, and went a short distance 
beyond. From a height of two thousand 
feet, Lieutenant Lockwood discerned in 
the northeast Cape Robert Lincoln, latitude 
83° 35’, longitude 38°. Lieutenant Greely, 
exploring Grinnell Land, discovered Lake 
Hazen, some sixty miles by ten miles in ex- 
tent, and ascended Mount Arthur, five thou- 
sand feet high. In a subsequent explora- 
tion by Lieutenant Lockwood and Sergeant 
Brainerd, Grinnell Land was found to be 
bounded by a water, named Greely Fiord, 
across which was discerned another land, to 
which the name of Arthur Land was given. 
The northern and southern parts of Grin- 
nell Land appear to be covered with ice- 
caps, between which is a belt.of open coun- 
try some sixty miles wide. Hayes Sound 
was found to extend some twenty miles far- 
ther to the west than is shown on Sir George 
Nares’s chart. The lowest temperature ob- 
served was 61° below zero. Animal life was 
abundant around Fort Conger, but scarce on 
Cape Sabine. The details of the sufferings 
and privations to which the party were ex- 
posed on Cape Sabine, in consequence of the 
failure of the supply expeditions to deposit 
stores of provisions where they were expect- 
ed to be found, are extremely painful. 


Relation of Springs and the First Settle- 
ments of a Country.—At the recent Con- 
ference on Water-Supply, held by the Soci- 
ety of Arts in connection with the London 
Health Exhibition, Mr. W. G. Topley read 
a paper showing how the location of the 
early settlements in England was deter- 
mined by facility of access to water. The 
influence of this condition in attracting set- 
tlement to the shores of rivers, lakes, etc., 
is well known, but Mr. Topley showed also 
that the law operated with force in the 
case of the less imposing distribution of 
springs, and how long lines of early villages 


857 


could be found situated along lines of ter- 
ritory where well-digging is practicable. 
Springs occur near where a pervious bed 
overlies or underlies an impervious bed, or 
where a valley reaches down to the level at 


-which the rock is saturated with water. A 


soil which allows water to sink into it is a 
dry soil, and is, therefore, suited for habita- 
tion and for agriculture. Hence the main 
conditions which favor the settlement of a 
district are found in the same soil, or along ~ 
the outcrop of the same bed. We thus see 
that geological structure controls the distri- 
bution of population, not only in such great 
features of the earth’s surface as mountain- 
chains, plains, and valleys, but also in minor 
divisions of the district. The outcrop of a 
narrow band of porous rock beneath wide 
beds of clay is strongly marked by the oc- 
currence of a long line of villages, each of 
which obtains its water from shallow wells 
or springs. When rocks rise from beneath 
a covering of clay, there are often springs 
at the junction. While the early settle- 
ments in England were nearly always con- 
trolled by these circumstances, relating to 
the distribution of springs, the later devel- 
opment of special towns and districts has 
depended upon a variety of conditions, 
many of which have become very compli- 
cated. 


Construction of Stretchers and Ambu- 
lanees.—Dr. Robert Lawson has given some 
valuable hints on the construction of stretch- 
ers and ambulances for the removal of the 
sick and wounded. It is most desirable in 
them to avoid or mitigate as far as possible 
inequalities and roughness in motion. Field- 
stretchers are liable to swing with the sway- 


ing from side to side of the bodies of their 


bearers and to a regular series of jolts. 
With each step he takes, the porter bends 
his body to the side on which a foot is 
touching the ground to maintain his equi- 
librium, and his burden follows him. The 
swinging may be diminished by causing the 
bearers to walk out of step, so that the sway 
of one to the right may be neutralized by 
the sway of another to the left. The jolts 
are consequent upon the shortening of the 
height of the bearer as his body bends over 
when the foot is set forward to make the 
next step. They are mitigated by shorten- 


858 


ing the length of the pace; a difference in 
height of three and a half inches, with a 
pace of thirty inches, may be reduced to 
about an inch and a half if the pace is 
shortened to twentyinches. If the stretcher- 
poles are round and too slender, the jolt is 
aggravated by their bending, sometimes by 
as much as two inches. A stretcher with 
square-cut poles, three square inches in sec- 
tion, weighed twenty pounds, and was found 
remarkably free from vertical oscillation, 
and easier to carry than one with lighter 
poles. The sacking of the stretcher should 
be six feet long. Legs should be attached 
to the frame, so that the couch shall be 
lifted above the ground when at rest. Am- 
bulances should be made to receive the 
stretcher, and not compel a transfer. With 
a truck of five feet two inches, they may be 
contrived so as to admit two field-stretchers 
one foot eleven inches wide, and leave space 
for a partition an inch thick, to prevent the 
occupants from rolling. The motion of am- 
bulances, at least in injurious directions, 
should be reduced as much as possible. 
Springs inside of the wagon, in addition to 
the ordinary springs, for the stretchers to 
rest upon, have been tried, but they have 
been found to produce discords in motion 
through the inequality in the rhythm of their 
vibrations, causing pain and injury to the 
patient. The wounded man is “ most ad- 
vantageously situated when he is subjected 
to the motion of the body of the wagon 
alone, at a point as near the floor as can be 
managed, and the ease of this motion can 
only be adequately provided for by careful 
adaptation of the springs to the weight they 
have to carry.” 


The Electric Light and Health.—‘‘ The 
Bearing of Electric Lighting on Health” 
was the subject of an essay by Mr. R. E. 
Crompton and a conference at the recent 
Health Exhibition. Mr, Crompton held that 
the conditions of health were not so good in 
any kind of artificial light as in daylight. 
Even the electric light, diffused, is deficient 
in intensity and inferior to daylight. All 
artificial lights except the electric contami- 
nate the air. At the twelve-candle stand- 
ard, coal-gas vitiates 348, paraffine-oil 484, 
composite candles about 650, and tallow- 
candles 988 cubic feet of air per hour, but 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


the electric light none. The amount of 
heat produced in the same time by the same 
lights is represented respectively by the num- 
bers 279, 862, 888, 505, and 14. The criti- 
cism of the glare of the electric light is not 
just; we are not supposed to look at it, The 
real test is the intensity of the diffused light. 
The steadiness of the incandescent electric 
light gives it a great advantage over all 
others, and the arc-lights are also being 
made more steady. The eye-sight of the 
men in the British General Post-Office has 
been greatly improved since the electric 
lights were introduced. Other advantages 
of the electric light are the greater pleasure 
it gives, its greater convenience, and its ab- 
solute safety. 


How State Monopoly of Railroads 
works.—An interesting view of the opera- 
tion of the state monopoly of railroads in 
India was given a short time ago by Mr. J. 
M. Maclean before the British Society of 
Arts. Of 12,655 miles of railroad which 
were open in India on the 31st of March, 
1883, 5,087 miles had been built by the 
Government, and 7,618 miles by companics 
working with the assistance or under the 
guarantee of the Government. Thus, the 
whole railway system of the country is in a 
very large measure controlled by the state. 
In the case of the guaranteed lines, the 
Government has contracted to pay the 
shareholders an annual interest of five per 
cent, paying two.and a half per cent every 
six months. This arrangement is so car- 
ried out in practice as to work very unevenly 
as between the Government and the share- 
holders. If the net earnings of any line 
fall below the stipulated rate in a particular 
half-year, the Government has to make 
good the deficit, while, if the earnings are in 
excess, the surplus is divided between the 
Government and the shareholders. Now, 
in Western India, the profits of the rail- 
roads all come in one half of the year; and 
while in this half the roads may earn a sur- 
plus of profits amounting to hundreds of 
thousands of pounds, of which the Govern- 
ment gets a half, in the other half year the 
earnings may not be enough to pay the 
guaranteed interest, and then the Govern- 
ment has to bear the whole burden of the 
loss. During 1882-’83, the Government act- 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


ually lost £231,380 on the guaranteed lines, 
while the shareholders pocketed a hand- 
some profit in interest and surplus; and 
the state was saved from absolute loss only 
by the excessive profits it made out of a 
single one of its own lines. The system 
thus leads to the habit of regarding all the 
railways as one great property, and of seek- 
ing to make up for the losses that may be 
incurred on one set of lines by the more 
than legitimate profits which there may be 
opportunity to make on another set. The 
Government has thus become accustomed 
to the idea of maintaining its military and 
administrative lines at the expense of the 
commercial ones. The latter lines need en- 
largement to accommodate their increasing 
business, and would amply pay for it, but 
the state needs the money they furnish it, 
and which ought to be applied in that way, 
for the maintenance of its unproductive 
lines, and has adopted a penurious policy 
toward its productive ones. Whenever a 
complaint is made, or a proposition having 
in view a more liberal policy is agitated, a 
half-dozen boards and sets of officers in 
India and England. “ straightway begin to 
play an elaborate and interminable game of 
battledoor and shuttlecock with the public 
interests. Any suggestion that is offered 
is minuted upon, referred, transferred, and 
generally knocked about, till the authors 
of it are ready to abandon it in despair.” 
When called upon to interfere, the Govern- 
ment “is always, perhaps unconsciously, 
influenced by the thought that, if it sanc- 
tions increase of expenditure or reduction 
of rates, it may diminish its share of sur- 
plus profits. Hence the unwise parsimony 
which leaves main lines insufficiently sup- 
plied with rolling-stock to meet any sudden 
expansion of traffic.” Our civil war was 
over before the Peninsular Railway was sup- 
plied with engines and cars enough to take 
away the cotton which choked all of its sta- 
tions. The stations are glutted with wheat 
awaiting transportation to such an extent 
that the peasant dreads a good crop for 
fear that it will add to the quantity he must 
lose, because it takes on the average about 
five years to get the facilities that are needed 
on the instant. The Government hesitates 
when it should act, because it grudges an 
expenditure of capital, which, while it is 


859 


comparatively insignificant and sure to bring 
ultimately a large return, means for the 
present a temporary reduction of profits on 
a lot of railroads, the most of which are 
losing ones. . 


Influence of Oceupation on Physical 
Development.—The data obtained by the 
Anthropometric Committee of the British 
Association reveal some curious facts re- 
specting the influence of occupation upon 
physical development. As a rule, the in- 
habitants of the country are taller and 
heavier than those of the large towns; but 
London is an exception, and seems to exert 
an attraction that draws in the more vigor- 
ous part of the country population. The 
metropolitan police, as a rule, are nearly as 
tall as the laborers of Galloway—the tallest 
of Britons—and twelve pounds heavier. 
The members of the Fire Brigade, who need 
not be so solid, but are expected to be act- 
ive, are two and a half inches shorter and 
twenty-five pounds lighter than the police- 
men. Athletes average five feet eight and 
one third inches in height, and only about 
one hundred and forty-three pounds in 
weight ; from which it is inferred that the 
majority of the population carry from ten 
to twenty pounds weight which they would 
not carry if they were in the highest phys- 
ical condition. The Fellows of the Royal 
Society—a class of prominent intellectual 
gifts—are among the tallest of the race, ay- 
eraging five feet nine inches and three quar- 
ters. The criminal class are forty-five 
pounds lighter than the police and four 
inches and a half shorter; and they are 
eighteen pounds lighter and two inches 
shorter than the average of the population. 
Lunatics are about as short as the crimi- 
nals, but heavier. In men of the same oc- 
cupation belonging to different races, the 
influence of race appears to be predominant 
over that of occupation. 


Climbing the Himalayas.—Mr. Graham, 
an Englishman, with the help of two Swiss 
mountain-guides, has recently made an at- 
tempt to ascend some of the lofty peaks of 
the Himalayas. Starting from Nynee Tal, 
he found his first difficulty, and not an in- 
significant one, to be to get to the mount- 
ains. They stand far back, and are ap- 


860 


proachable only through valleys occupied 
by large streams. The first attack was 
made upon Dunnagiri, which is 23,184 feet 
high. In order to reach it they had to 
climb over two peaks 17,000 and 18,000 
feet high, and then, after a five days’ march, 
they camped on a glacier at the height of 
18,400 feet. On the sixth day they reached 
a height of 22,500 feet, when, a snow-storm 
coming on, they were compelled to retreat, 
after they had come in sight of their goal. 
Mr. Graham observes that the peaks of the 
Himalayas, as a rule, are considerably steep- 
er than those of the Alps; and he is con- 
vinced that breathing is no more difficult at 
the height he reached than at 10,000 feet 
lower down. The party also ascended the 
Kang La, 20,800 or 20,800 feet high, and 
a new mountain, 23,326 feet high, which 
was called Mount Monal, from the number 
of birds of that name seen upon its slopes. 


Voleanic and Cosmic Dusts in Submarine 
Deposits.—Messrs, John Murray and A. Re- 
nard have taken advantage of the phenom- 
ena attending the eruption of Krakatoa last 
year for the extension of their studies in the 
accumulation of volcanic débris and cosmic 
dust in deep-sea deposits, .Mr. Murray had 
already shown, before the Royal Society of 
Edinburgh, in 1876, that volcanic .materials 
play the most important part in the forma- 
tion of these deposits, and how they may 
have been furnished by the decomposition 
of pumice and the settling of incoherent 
volcanic ejections. Rounded fragments of 
pumice are collected on the surface of the 
sea in regions far from coasts, and at. cer- 
tain points on the bottom of the ocean the 
greater part of the deposit is composed of 
vitreous splinters derived from the tritura- 
tion of such stones. The eruption of Kra- 
katoa in a few hours filled the Bay of Lam- 
pong with about 150,000,000 cubic metres 
of ejected matter. Floating fragments from 
this source were collected on the surface of 
the water with their angles rounded off, and 
showing, as the only asperities upon their 
surface, crystals and fragments of crystals 
projecting beyond the mass of vitreous mat- 
ter. The crystalline fragments and volcanic 
minerals can not be identified with certainty 
when reduced to their finest state, as in the 
deep-sea deposits ; for in that condition they 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


lose all their characteristics of form and op- 
tical properties. The case is different with 
the vitreous particles derived from the pum- 
ice, or included in the volcanic ash, whose 
characters remain constant to the extreme 
limits of pulverization. The results of the 
study of the micro-structure of the vitreous 
particles from Krakatoa, which are described 
in full by the authors, can be applied with 
most perfect exactitude to the volcanic dusts, 
which have been determined as such, in the 
deep-sea deposits. The latter have, how- 
ever, only partly been derived from the pul- 
verized ejections of a volcano, but more from 
the trituration of floating pumice; but it is 
hardly possible to trace the differences be- 
tween the two. The minerals that can be 
determined in the ashes of Krakatoa are the 
same as are almost always found in the de- 
posits along with the splinters of glass. It 
is not to be expected that the volcanic dusts 
found in all the deep-sea deposits shall be 
uniformly identical. In the first place, they 
may originate from magmas of varying char- 
acters, according as they come from volca- 
noes in different parts of the world. The 
matter also goes through a sifting process as 
it is carried through the air and in settling 
in the water. The vitreous particles, being 
lighter, are carried farthest from the vol- 
canic center, and are longest in reaching the 
bottom. The fact has been illustrated in 
the case of Krakatoa that, in proportion as 
the ashes are collected at a greater distance 
from the volcano, they are less rich in min-. 
erals, and the quantity of vitreous matter 
predominates; a submarine tufa-deposit in 
the center of the South Pacific, in which the 
particles are graduated from the bottom up, 
illustrates the difference in the facility of 
settling. The evidence that has been ad- 
duced in favor of the hypothesis of a circu- 
lation in the atmosphere and a settling upon 
the earth of cosmic dusts is doubted by some, — 
who have suggested various possibilities of 
an earthly origin for the particles described 
as cosmic. According to our authors, how- 
ever, many of the doubts are at once re- 
moved by a statement of the circumstances 
under which cosmic spherules are formed in 
deep-sea deposits, and when the association 
of the metallic spherules with the most char- 
acteristic bodies of undoubted meteorites is 
shown. Cosmic particles are found in most 


POPULAR MISCELLANY. 


abundance in deep-sea deposits at distances 
from land that preclude the supposition of 
their having originated in inhabited coun- 
tries, and their form and character are essen- 
tially different from those of bodies collected 
near manufacturing centers, with which the 
attempt has been made to associate them. 
After describing some of these spherules, 
with graphic illustrations of their structure 
and composition, the authors express the be- 
lief that they have presented enough evi- 
dence to show that in their essential charac- 
ters the spherules are related to the chondres 
of meteorites, and are formed in the same 
manner. 


Manganese in Plants.—M. E. Maumené 
has found manganese in wines and in a con- 
siderable number of vegetable and animal 
products in which it had hardly been sup- 
posed to be present; and now announces, as 
the result of his latest investigations, that 
he has detected it in a great many plants, 
Wheat contains not less than from yg4q5 to 
seu Of metallic manganese, and rye, bar- 
ley, rice, and buckwheat have also yielded 
considerable quantities of it. A little of it 
may be found in the potato, and more in 
the beet, the carrot, beans, peas, asparagus 
(principally in the green part), sorrel, wild 
chicory, lettuce, parsley, and in many fruits. 
It occurs in large proportions in cacao and 
the coffees, and in tea there are five grains 
of the metal to one kilogramme of the leaves. 
Tobacco is quite rich in it, as are also a va- 
riety of other plants, including some forage 
and some medicinal plants. The human 
system refuses to absorb it, and whatever 
of it may be introduced with the vegetable 
food in which it is present is eliminated with 
the fecal matter. 


Gutta-Percha.—The earliest known men- 
tion of gutta-percha is by John Tradescant, 
who, in the catalogue of his “ Rarities,” 
preserved at South Lambeth (1656), men- 
tions “ plyable mazer wood,” which, “ being 
warmed in water, will work to any form.” 
The earliest introduction of the gum to the 
commercial world is due to Dr. William 
Montgomerie, of the East India Company’s 
service, who experimented upon it at Singa- 
pore, in 1822, and recommended it to the 
Medical Board of Calcutta in 1842 as a sub- 


861 


stance useful in the making of surgical 
splints, The name gutta is a Malay word, 
signifying gum, or juice. The gum is de- 
rived from the middle layer of the bark of 
a number of trees of the order Sapotacee, 
to which order also belong the sapodilla- 
plum and the vegetable-butter trees. The 
principal source is the Dichopsis gutta, a 
plant which was described by Sir W. J. 
Hooker, in 1847, as Isonandra gutta. Dr. 
De Voiese, of the Dutch Government service, 
names eighteen species that yield the gum. 
The Dichopsis gutta is found in the Malay 
Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, and through- 
out the Malayan Archipelago generally. It 
grows to a height of from sixty to eighty 
feet, with a diameter of from two to five 
feet. The leaves are inversely egg-shaped 
(oblong in one variety) and entire, pale- 
green on the upper side, and covered he- 
neath with a reddish, shining down. The 
flowers are arranged in clusters of three or 
four in the axils of the leaves. The fruit 
is a small oval berry. The gutta, as it flows 
from the tree, is of a grayish color, at times 
somewhat roseate in hue. When cast or 
rolled it assumes a fibrous structure, and 
acquires a tenacity in a determinate direc- 
tion. Ata temperature of from 32° to 77° 
Fahr., it has as much tenacity as thick leath- 
er, but is not at all elastic, and is less flex- 
ible than leather. In water, toward 120° 
Fahr., it softens and becomes doughy, al- 
though still tough; at from 145° to 150° 
Fahr, it becomes soft and pliant, assuming 
the elasticity of caoutchouc, but becomes 
again hard and rigid on cooling. It is highly 
inflammable, burning with a bright flame, 
and has marked electric properties. 


Courtesy and Sagacity of the Duck,— 
A correspondent of the London “ Specta- 
tor” extols the courtesy and sagacity of the 
duck. In illustration of the former trait, 
he tells of a “solitary, little, old bantam 
hen” he had among some fifty or sixty head 
of ducks and fowls, which became blind, or 
nearly so, and had to “sulk” in the dark 
to escape the persecutions of her mates. 
“ Here,” he says, “she might, perhaps, have 
starved, but for the constant and sympa- 
thetic attentions of a duck. Twice daily, 
every day so long as the poor bantam lived, 
some three weeks, this good Samaritan, in 


862 


the form of a duck, was observed to fill her 
capacious beak with from twenty to thirty 
grains of barley, with which she proceeded 
to the fowl-house, and there deposited her 
store immediately in front of the bantam.” 
Another anecdote is given in evidence of 
the sagacity of the duck. “I had five 
Aylesbury ducks, with a number of fowls. 
The lord of the yard, a most despotic chanti- 
cleer, would never suffer the ducks to feed 
with his family and friends when, at the reg- 
ular meal-times, the grain was scattered for 
their common use. Ferociously, and without 
pity, he drove them from the ground. This 
had been going on for many weeks; and one 
day, at the twelve-o’clock repast, the act of 
expulsion was performed as usual. I was 
present, and saw the discomfited ducks re- 
tire to a corner of the yard. There they 
evidently held a conference. Having been 
so engaged some five minutes, they proceed- 
ed with deliberate and resolute air, in single 
file, as is their wont, toward their oppressor. 
Having reached the tyrant, they surrounded 
him, each duck turning his posterior toward 
the enemy, and with concerted action fairly 
hustled him clean out of the yard. To see 
the surprise of the cock, as he jumped from 
side to side to avoid the pressure of the at- 
tacking party, was ludicrous in the extreme. 
The victory was complete; from that hour 
the ducks were never again molested.” 


Attractions and Repulsions of Dust.— 
Mr. John Aitkin has recently performed 
- some experiments illustrating the forma- 
tion of clear spaces in dusty air. His ap- 
paratus consisted of a dust-hox blackened 
inside, having a glazed front, and provided 
with a window on one side. Condensed 
light was admitted through the window 
from a dark-lantern. Dusts were made by 
chemical processes or from calcined mag- 
nesia, lime, or charcoal, and were stirred 
up by means of a jet of air. A round tube 
was introduced into the box and the dust 
stirred up, when it was observed that the 
dust came in close contact with the top and 
sides of the tube, but that below it a space 
was clear. This disposition of the dust 
was found to be an effect of gravitation, 
under which the falling particles did not 
reach the space immediately under the 
tube. When a thin plate was inserted ver- 


force. 


ae 


¥ 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


tically in place of the tube, no clear space 
was formed. No increased effect was ob- 
served on lowering the temperature from 
the normal; but, if a little heat instead of 
cold was applied to the round tube, the 
dark space rose and encircled the tube, and 
the two currents of clear air united over 
the tube to form the dark plane in the up- 
ward current. Heat was furthermore found 
to exert a real repelling effect on the dust. 
On heating the vertical metallic plate, the 
dark plane was formed in the ascending 
current in front of the plate, beginning 
with the slightest increase, and’ growing 
thicker with the rise, of temperature. With 
very high temperatures, produced by heat- 
ing platinum wire in a battery, every kind 
of dust was found to have a different-sized 
dark plane; and, as the particles could be 
seen streaming into the dark space under 
the wires, it was obvious that these large 
dark planes were not caused by repulsion, 
but by the evaporation or disintegration of 
the particles. The effect of electrification 
of the hot surface was found to be opposite 
to that of heat, and dust was attracted to 
the surface or. repelled from it, according 
as electricity or heat was applied with more 
It was also found that after the . 
dust-particles were electrified they tended 
to deposit themselves on any surface near 
them, and electricity proved to be capable 
of depositing the very fine dust of the at- 
mosphere. The air in a flask was purified 
much more quickly by means of the elec- 
tric discharge than it could have been by 
means of an air-pump and cotton-wool fil- 
ter. It was shown that a hot and wet sur- 
face repels dust more than twice as strongly 
as a hot and dry one. From this it was con- 
cluded that the heat and moisture in our 
lungs exert a protecting influence on the 
surface of the bronchial tubes, and tend to 
keep the dust in the air from contact with 
their surfaces. It was also observed that 
dust was attracted to cold surfaces and at- 
tached itself to them. 


Chinese Plants in America,—Dr. D. J. 
MacGowan has published some notes on 
Chinese plants which it may be profitable 
to acclimatize in the United States. Among 
the plants he has recommended are sev- 
eral bamboos, the coir-palm, banian, plano- 


5 


NOTES. 


‘convex turnip, mat-grass, glutinous and red 
rice, and bitter orange. The trees used for 
the preparation of varnish form another 
group. Ningpo varnish is a compound 
article, the product of two trees; one a 
kind of rhus, or sumach, which has a wide 
range of growth, and the nut-oil tree, 
whence the nut-oil or “ wood-oil” of com- 
merce is derived, of which there are two 
varieties, the hill and the green variety. 
The varnish is made by combining the juice 
of the rhus and the nut-oil extract. An 
important varnish is also made from a wild 
persimmon, and a similar one is obtained 
from what appears to be an alga. The 
yang-mei, or tree-strawberry, produces a 
famous fruit resembling the mulberry, 
which, it is said, is given a terebinthine 
flavor by a curious process of grafting on 
the fir. Lichi (Nephalin lichi, Nsungau) is 
a delicious tropical fruit, of which there 
are between thirty and forty kinds, and is 
found as high up as the latitude of 30° in 
Szechuen. Dr. MacGowan also suggests the 
expediency of experimenting with Chinese 
water-plants. Among them are the water- 
caltrap, which bears a valuable fruit; the 
tuberous water-chestnut (Hllocharis tube- 
rosus) ; the chico pai, with celery-like shoots ; 
the chin tsai, or water-celery, which is culti- 
vated in floating gardens built on bamboo 
rafts; the ?ish-shu, or iron-tree, “the most 
beautiful of the Cycadacece,” which is re- 
vived, when it grows old, by driving iron 
nails into its trunk; and the trao-lau, a 
hanging epidendron, which flowers only 
when taken from the ground and suspended 
. from a ceiling. 


NOTES. 


AccorpineG to the estimates of Mr. J. C. 
Smock, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, made 
after a comparison of all the observations, 
the great glacier of our continent “‘ appears 
to have covered the whole of New England 
and Northern New York, and to have filled 
the Hudson Valley to a depth of at least 
three thousand feet, as far south as the Cats- 
kills, burying the Berkshire Hills, the Sha- 
wangunk Mountain range, and the Highlands 
ef Southern New York in its icy folds. 
Above it stood the higher peaks of the Cats- 
kills and the summits of the Moosie High- 
lands as isolated landmarks, or islands, in 
the great mer de glace.” 


863 


Proressor OC. E. Bessey suggests that as 
the Government has efficiently encouraged 
the study of the insects injurious to vegeta- 
tion, and given us an increased acquaintance 
with the habits of these pests, and hints as 
to the way they are to be dealt with, it might 
do another service quite as valuable to agri- 
culture by promoting the investigation of 
the parasitic fungi which injure and often 
destroy farm and garden crops. The de- 
struction they effect is almost as great as 
that occasioned by insects. 


Tue International Forestry Exhibition 
was opened at Edinburgh on the Ist of 
July, by the Marquis of Lothian, who spoke 
of the importance of education in forestry 
to the British nation. The United King- 
dom, he said, had more property in the 
world than any other nation, but in this 
respect it was behind the others, 


ProFessoR GABRIEL DE Morrinver is 
about to begin the publication of a new © 
fortnightly journal of the anthropological 
sciences, to be called “L’Homme.” He will 


. be assisted by a body of specialists as de- 


partment-editors, and will contend actively 
for the recognition of anthropology as a 
science, the peer of the other sciences, 


Captain James B. Eaps, the American 
engineer, has received the Albert medal of 
the British Society of Arts. He is the first 
American on whom this distinction has been 
conferred. 


Ir is generally understood that the hair 
and nails grow faster in hot weather than 
in cold, but few probably are aware that 
any temperature of the weather can impart 
so great a stimulus to the growth as Colonel 
Prjevalsky, the Russian traveler, says the 
Central Asian heat did during his journey 
in those regions. In June the ground and 
the air became -excessively hot, so that it - 
was impossible to travel in the day-time. 
The hair and beards of all the party grew 
with astonishing rapidity, and, strangest of 
all, some youthful Cossacks, whose faces 
were perfectly smooth, all at once developed 
quite respectable beards. 


M. Ouzensky has liquefied hydrogen at a 
temperature of —371° Fahr. In this condition 


the element appears to lose the metallic 


affinities which it manifests in the ordinary 
state, and assumes qualities of mobility and 
transparency more like those of the hydro- 
carbons. 


EXPERIMENTS made by Dr. William Mc- 
Murtrie, which are described in “ Bulletin 
No. 3” of the Entomological Division of the 
Department of Agriculture, go to show that 
the silk fiber from worms fed exclusively 
upon the Osage orange is somewhat finer, 
and, on the average, equal in strength to 
that obtained from mulberry-fed individuals. 


864 


GABRIEL Gustav VALENTIN, till 1881 Pro- 
fessor of Physiology in the University of 
Berne, died May 24th. He was an excellent 
teacher and a profound physiologist, and 
was the author of several scientific works 
on physiological subjects, among them two 
in Latin. His “Text-Book of Physiology ” 
was translated into English by the late Dr. 
Brinton. 


Mapame bE Cotzert has intrusted the 
French Academy with some valuable manu- 
scripts of her grandfather, Laplace, which 
she has recently discovered, on condition 
that they shall not be opened till 1930, 


Mr. H. W. Eaton, of Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, has described, in “Science,” a female 
negro child which was born in that city in 
March, having what appeared to be a rudi- 
mentary tail. The tail was visible as a 
“fleshy peduncular protuberance,” about 
two and a quarter inches long, and measur- 
ing an inch and a quarter around at the 
base, closely resembling a pig’s tail in 
shape, but showing no sign of bone or carti- 
lage, situated about an inch above the lower 
end of the spinal column. It had grown 
about a quarter of an inch in eight weeks, 


Proressor James Hatt has been elected 
a corresponding member of the French 
Academy of Sciences, mineralogical section, 
in place of the late Professor J. Lawrence 
Smith. 


AmonG the important enterprises under- 
taken by the United States Coast and Geo- 
detic Survey are the measurement of the arc 
of the thirty-ninth parallel, which is nearly 
50° long, and of the meridian of the ninety- 
ninth degree of longitude, which stretches 
nearly 23° through the ‘United States, and 
may be extended north and south to a length 
of 50°. This will furnish two lines of the 
highest value in solving the great problem of 
the figure of the earth. 


GRAPE-SEEDS contain about eighteen per 
cent, by weight, of oil, which is largely ex- 
tracted at Modena and other places in Italy, 
and used for purposes of illumination, 


OBITUARY NOTES. 


FERDINAND von Hocusterrer, the Ger- 
man mineralogist and geologist, is dead, in 
the fifty-fifth year of his age. His earlier 
scientific work was done in New Zealand, 
when, having left the Novara expedition, 
he began geological investigations about 
1857. He was afterward Professor of Min- 
eralogy and Geology in the Polytechnic In- 
stitute of Vienna, and President of the 
Vienna Geographical Society. Besides 
works relating to the topography, geology, 
and paleontology, and the boiling springs 


THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


books on the geology of Eastern Turkey 
and the Ural, and of various popular pub- 
lications. 


Tue July death-list contains the names 
of three of the scientific men of Sweden: 
the geometrician, August Pasch, who was 
fifty-one years old; the botanist, Dr. Lar 
Magnus Larsson, of the high-school at Carl- 
stad, sixty-two years old; and the chemist, 
Professor Sten Stenberg, who died in the 
sixtieth year of his age. 


THE death is announced of the Abbé 
Frangois Napoléon Marie Moigno, at Saint- 
Denis, France, at the age of eighty years, 
The abbé was of Breton birth, and was 
educated for the Church. Displaying a 
taste for science, the Jesuits made him a 
teacher of mathematics in one of their 
seminarics. In 1861 the superior of the 
order directed him to suspend the publica- 
tion of a work on the calculus which he 
was preparing, and assigned him a chair 
of Hebrew and History. We preferred sci- 
entific studies, and left the order rather 
than give them up. He became a scientific 
contributor to the journals, and founded the 
“Cosmos,” which eventually gave place to 
the journal “ Les Mondes,” He was author 
of books on electric telegraphy, the stereo- 
scope and the saccharimeter, modern optics, 
a course in popular science, analytical me- 
chanics, several volumes of “‘ Scientific Ac- 
tualities,” and “ The Splendors of Faith.” 


Dr. Erasmus Wi1son, a well-known 
English medical writer, died August 9th, 
in the seventy-sixth year of his age. His 
specialty was diseases of the skin, and he 
founded chairs of Dermatology at the Col- 
lege of Surgeons and at Aberdeen, as well as 
the Museum of Dermatology at the former 
institution. 


Proressor Kari Ricnarp Lepsius, the 
oldest Egyptologist in Europe, died in Ber- 
lin in July last. He was born in 1810; 
having studied philology at the German 
universities, he gave his attention to the 
examination of the Semitic and other al- 
phabets, and of the hieroglyphic alphabet ; 
published studies of various important 
Egyptian tablets and inscriptions, and of 
the “‘ Book of the Dead”; and went upon 
his scientific expedition to Egypt in the 
fall of 1842. He published his “ Einlei- 
tung,” or “Introduction to Egyptian Chro- 
nology,” in 1849; his great “ Denkmaler,” 
or portfolios of all the Egyptian monu- 
ments, between 1849 and 1860; his “ K6- 
nigsbuch,” or lists of kings, in 1858; and 
his “Standard Alphabets,” in 1860. He 
began the publication of a periodical de- 
voted to Egyptology and archeological re- 
search in 1864; and he was the discoverer 
and the translator of the celebrated trilin- 


of New Zealand, he was the author of ; gual “ Decree of Canopus.” 


PAGE 
SNR TERS EG) 2 Els ONS gpa sare arpa er ea ae sree Mp5 aca 474 
I NN Fo oi i eee cops io ion oldu ae Us bk ee eae 396 
NC SENUINUIOR fo bis oo Foee pink ccs pees webs pw bev ee sete eeret Sees ae 
Pes ee conraus. OR60 OF. os cnc coe dks lub any eas 6 ieee AW owess 122 
Ns isc aes PV CoA a Re vo o> 0000 oun eee URW ees 50, 332, 433 
IONS, To ine, o's dd. s pu.cere's ped c4h Sicaasu eabeat 565 
American Scientific Association, Meeting of the..............22cceer cee 698 
@amos, ‘Lhe Sonthorn, and Patagonia. ...2.. 000. sec ccs cece scectes 574 
SEE, A MIINEIIORIAGTS WILD, 5000. s. oo oso renin re gin eu ae meanest als oe euluw es 426 
I ERD HRAC RS. QUOP S . «. o:cingcrkiginid 0.00 v0.0: sae mpaels Che aba eeu 759 
Anomalies, Human, The Significance of. ...........cesc cece cecccceeees 721 
Sey’ Td BUNOy OF... is oon os vo iew eee eek esa eee aneccude 605 
Antiques, Bogus American.......... ae Donn chu ne Hebe Cue eerie ee. is 714 
BORN BOS. oii5 i bee okies a t.e aevawietvusbes varerewe ste wees a ae 
Me DOTMIOVILY O80 oo 6 ick ek beck Sewer ee ia ba aioe outk ids 60 
Astronomy, The, of Primitive Peoples...................... ip aha biate stores 620 
DE IG rig oo 4 Via 6G Go 6 a 5 6 dip 0 dé sno boo Ralonin Ohelea ewes 405 
Merrereuads Onudron, GilaszOw's....0.. o.oo scab a hb Wake oa che wale 400 
Mee PA: COPD TODO 5556550 50-05 5 isis nis eeresea cde os b eccramgapee eee can eee Daa 140 
Batteries, Storage, in Electric Lighting............... 00 .ccccecceccees 143 
Memven, tuo, @nd his Works 00202... 6 i ee eee Ys einle C ROO a 14 
Pee SROUIR® KITOTIVINIO. Cy Gis soo ses ide cee dee ceed silken chicowe 696 
IIE PA EMBO 8S oe eS ss oc bea gc bok ocakie a ef Obiebvs MO pee ne 
RUM ME S5 SPS OP Vio wae aN OR tess cr ced oS eee eepen Memes eee 396 
Eran Lactes for Color and Music... .. 6... soe cece esc eteteccdevwes 715 
NOE ER uae 0s cidciwas-6 bs 6:0 + < wis binder gle ReMeb ee pe Ree eee 123 
Book Notices: 

= pactera.’ (Magnin and Sternberg)... . 0.0.00. eo Sle ce ees alee 130 
‘Flowers and their Pedigrees” (Allen)...............-.02020. veh eee 
“Record of Family Faculties” (Galton)........... bese usin lie Raa 132 
REN THOU 655 5 Sa aa awe sink Kos bie og ONS Rule he ee atta aie 133 
** Bleaching, Dyeing, and Calico- Printing” (Gardner)............... 133 

‘“‘ Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1882, 
BOR sila (Vad Sea on Se Hes wae 4 AVR ae eae 134 
‘<A System of Rhotorie” (Bardeen)... 5 oie ck ke One a 135 
‘Energy in Nature” (Carpenter) .........5..cccc cs ee cece cee’ esc, 386 
“ A Defense of Modern Thought” (Le Sueur)...............020000. 136 
“ A Plea for the Cure of Rupture” (Warren)............-2ss0cceee 136 


FOL. xxv.—55 


866 ) INDEX. 


Book Notices: PAGE 
* 2 ne sopographer” CAARDe) cise ces cao vanes boeken cee eanee 137 
“‘ Insanity in its Medical Relations’ (Hammond).................. 269 
‘Examination of Herbert Spencer’s Philosophy of the Unknowable” 

EOE) 6 ons cscs ok antics oops CN REEL O ES aH eo Rachie es Vee 270 
‘Indiana Geological Reports” (Collett)... 0... ccc cece ee seesbacvnte 271 
‘¢ Text-Book of Physics” (Daniel)..... al eS Age copa eos cea eee 271 
*‘ Relation of Animal Diseases to Public Health” (Billings).......... 272 
‘Relations of Mind and Brain” (Calderwood)...............2.200 273 

“The Fertilization of Flowers” (Miller)... ......ccccccsssecccces 274 
Virhe Unity of Nabore” (Atev ei yes ecu s ec ces pee 27 
‘‘¥or Mothers and Daughters.” (Oook)... 4, ; ..4 ss ssessteaseetes 274 
“‘The Philosophy of Self-Consciousness” (Fitzgerald).............. 275 
“‘ Hand-Book of Tree-Planting’”’ (Egleston)....... ...cececeeeeeees 275 
‘* Protection to Young Industries” (Taussig)..............0+++e005- 275 
“Federal Taxation” (Barnett) 205. snus dis sk 64 shoe 0 See 275 
Miinneas Oily Reviews ook fo oie cates i cen eeu vn a eke ee 276 
‘Canadian Record of Natural History and Geology” (Donald)....... 276 
‘* Text-Book of Inorganic Chemistry ” (Von Richter)............... 276 
“‘The Past and Present of Political Economy” (Ely)............ +. 414 
Freciens Wenays.” (Balti)... os) 6.5.00 vie, ceca aw Vetan wae eeee eae 418 
‘‘ James and Lucretia Mott’ (Hallowell)............cccecceeeceess 419 
* Property and Progress.” (Malloth) co. goss ooces idee OL sie ees 420 
“The Story of the Coup d’Etat”” (De Maupas)...........0.ceeeeeees 420 
Pee AuseaOON UC INBIGD) cigs ks sins eae ols eek so Cae eee 420 
‘* Literature of the Scandinavian North” (Horn)...............+..- 421 
‘Life and Times of John Bright” (Robertson)..............0++e44 421 
‘t Evidence for Evolution in the Histology of the Extinct Mammalia” 

eg SOUR apm tlie BES NE Pa ead + Fades wee Aha ie oe eee 421 
‘Local Government and Free Schools in South Carolina”? (Ramage). 422 
“Voice; Song, and Speech ” (Browne)... <9 6652s glee sc cs ok cee 422 
“The Ghertente” (Brinton). 5. oo. oes isis + sighs bie eee eee 422 
“The Oinchona-Barks ™ (Fla0kiger) | 'si.< 5 dic ca inte ee 6s ou ew eee 423 
‘Scientific Papers, Vassar Brothers’ Institute” (Cooley)............ 423 
“Gospel of St. Matthew,” fonetic edishun (Vickroy)............ sues 438 
** Medical Directory of Philadelphia, 1884”? (Hoppin)............... 423 
** Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington” Gilbert)..... 423 
‘“‘Geological-Excursions” (Winchell) 0.20556 o ecco dec emaees 556 
*‘ Brain-Exhaustion” (Corning)........... lee IA ue oes Bee 557 
“‘ Methods of Historical Study ” (Adams).............eecceeeceeees 557 
“The Bible analyzed” (Keleo) 0.03 ic ob bec cs sine he cease esse es 558 
* Book. of the Bepinnings ” (Newton)... . 6 s4c. cs cuca canes see ees 558 
“ Outskirts of Physical Science” (Dale). ...5. 6.6. rene ccc s wee cme 558 
* Home and School Training” (Aroy). . . 4 sds > cists e Beene oui 558 
*‘ Science and Art of Education” (Payne)... 2.2.00. .e ec cee ct eeeetes 559 
‘A History of Taberonlosis”’ (Sattler) .. 1.0.6 0s eb ke so ne ve eee 559 
*S BOR ECOUGE bis os a Win cis lk ew Sie wainse aera alaeie Bien ek oo ie SC 559 
“The Land. Lawa’ (Polock) i066 cass iis Seal ae oe wee 560 
‘Destructive Influence of the Tariff” (Schoenhof)............+....- 560 
{ Politics ” (Crane. and: Moses) 200 6.36 i. on eas Sone meee ‘gulp OOO 


*‘House-Drainage” (Gerhard) ......... Oo pwc wun biel on ek LR 561 


Book Notices: ie 
“ Connecticut Agricultural Expegiment Station. Report, 1883” 
NNN 6s di coer eas OY ee la di fas a ae 561 
“Glacial Boundary in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky” (Wright)...... 561 
“Real and Imaginary Effects of Intemperance” Creneen) he bese gas 561 
NOES. FOOLER: 6 rs So oes ag pe ae ee, 561 
““New York State Survey. Report, 1883” (Gardiner)........... . 561 
_ “Teaching of Drawing in Grammar-Schools” (Perry).............. 562 
e eue American University? (Burgess). . os. 00. 6 ooo ce Pesce kes 562 
* Administrative Organization”’ (LL. B.)..........c.cbecccccccens 562 
* Ancient Egypt in the Light of Modern Discoveries” (Osborn)..... 562 
“ Bilateral Asymmetery of Function ” (Hall and Hartwell)........... 563 
“The Railroad as an Element in Education ” (Hogg)............... 563 
** Psychological Medicine and Nervous Diseases ” Qian) inches eee 563 
~ sroatmoent of Wounds” (Mitchell)... .. eee ie 564 
“Truths and Untruths of Evolution ” (Drury)...................-. 564 
Papuned oF Psychology ”. (Gully). <2... 0 idivevees eee nee needs 704 
“The True Theory of the Sun” (Bassnett).........-.. cee cece eens 705 
“The Consolations of Science” (Straub)..............ceccescecces 706 
Parovernment Revenue” (Roberts)... 2... cs cccc ceases sc csuckeeec © UUme 
“Six Centuries of Work and Wages” (Rogers)...........--.seeeee- 708 
“Key to North American Birds” (Coues).............-2--eecceees 708 
“Mental Evolution in Animals” (Romanes)...............--ee0e0- 709 
“The Franco-American Cookery-Book” (Déliée).................. 710 
** Geology of the Lead and Zinc Mining District of Cherokee County, - 
Mm Ores CHBWOPED). ooo i or akc kaaes Bea ba wowace eet 711 
** Cotton Production of Georgia” (Loughridge).................... 711 
** Whirlwinds, Cyclones, and Tornadoes” (Davis).................. 711 
‘Massachusetts State Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletins”.... 711 
** Synopsis of Fishes of North America” (Jordan and Gilbert)....... 712 
Peeme erence  (HONkiNs)... 0... cs is eet Vbneven eye ene ~ 712 
‘‘Recent Improvements in Astronomical Instruments” (Newcomb)... 712 
‘* American Meteorological Journal’. ... 2.005 6006S i eeccnces 712 
mane mow Cnomisiry” (COOKe)....0. . ceaecsavecseceuwsesveeds 845 
= teaitn in the Houschoid”” (Dodds)... . 6c. sce c eeu caceceswess 846 
“La Fabula de los Caribes” (De Armas)...........-c.ceceeeeeees 846 
“Reflex Nervous Influence” (Smith)............ ccc cece eee c eens 846 
“Cotton Production of Florida” (Smith)...............0. eee eees 847 
“Reports of the Peabody Museum of American Archeology and 
Minnology.” (Patna). ooo eos «cece Ohtkaen eee cesdess be aes 
* Archeological Institute of America”............... eee eec cece 847 
Ene snevries of Darwin” (Schmid)... os.i 0 be TD te oes 847 
“Manual of the Mosses of America” (Lesquereux and James)........ 848 
“On a Carboniferous Ammonite from Texas” (Heilprin)............ 848 


“Fire-proof Buildings with Wooden Beams and Girders” (Dolman). 848 
‘Wages and Trade in Manufacturing Industries in America and 


Kurope” (Goledphot yi: 7 foo 22s ro nce csei eens anise tees 848 
‘¢‘ Handbook of Hygiene and Sanitary Science” (Wilson)............ 848 
‘Reforms: Their Difficulties and Possibilities”.................... 849 
‘Intellectual Arithmetic” (Colburn)... ............. cece cece ee eens 850 


“ Text-Book of Popular Astronomy ” (Peck).........-+eeeeeeeeeees 850 


868 . INDEX. 

Book Notices: PAGE 
‘‘ Nippon Shoku butsu meii” (Matsumura)..............e see e eens 851 
‘‘ Beginnings with the Microscope” (Manton)..............s2+-eeee- 851 

“‘ History of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood” (Chap- 
MOT ia. huis Hips eek bls Soe Wiad bine oe Cale Rae eaentees 851 
‘Machinery of the Heavens” (Pichereau)...........c.ecceececeves 851 
‘‘ Physics in Pictures ” (Eckardt)....... i aay’ WOR ala tw Gee CRT 851 
“In the Heart of Atrica”” (Baker)... 6.6.05 cee eee ni Ly eeek Ate 852 
‘“‘The Globe Pronouncing Gazetteer of the World”................ 852 
* Sore.” (OGG ORY icc. cin acs ay dee oe © giants ele mcaeld a eee w We Rte 852 

‘“¢ A Bachelor’s Talks about Married Life and Things adjacent ” (Aik- 
TODD) side sak n eh SRW GRA haa ROA ke Re 06 CAKE ey CRE 852 
‘Lecture Notes on General Chemistry ” (Stoddard)................ 852 
COMMONS,” (OBROIRRIN i io ca Se Sind send wan B Roem bow ewe 853 
“ The Man versus The State.’ (Spencer) ...... 0... eee ce sce eeccecs 853 
‘Modern Reproductive Graphic Processes” (Pettit)................ 854 
“ The Hollanders in Nova Zembla” (Tollens)............-eeeceeeses 854 
“Fifth Ayenue to Alaska” (Pierrepont) «. 5.4/4 << 0is bis vio's soe «a eieie DE 854 
Boring Power, The, of Mollusks..... ........... es Wares De Rk ee 717 
Brain-Weighings, Value of............ :igiptatig Wg ain © al SER Wey’ ania saat ea 717 
Bremont, Dr. Félix..... saat GMOS SO NiNGhan sk atime. dt Nesp Maes Oy as is gg 6438 
PTGS, AICP ONOG. BN 6 as pee ho ee te as RO ei a 142 
Rese ASAE SON TBs oi 5s nik k hin a kon SES Ce Oy achebincs oe CRE 277, 698 
Mrdnso, Vircbow. on the Origin: Of. 6 e053. sie kssce gn eitenes ne were ae 578 
PPOtLOrn Nhs, TIOKOT FN US BUG. cis'o 5 nok 9-9 0s vis 0.6 sob. e ol eles bowace py ee ee 433 
POIUIGE MOE ce cea aed bron dbs ven saa war ee nike eeehe ener e 167 
Wasamicciolay What destroyed... scasens ssh eames aachele oe pie teh mee Wivee fe) 
Cataracts, The One Hundred, of the Iguazu........... ahs de acetone. 574 
Catastrophes, Gealogiogh: | .asens S35 cad news whe sie ch ocho oo ao aoe 6a 280 
Unremonios; Onrious Funeral soo) 0 5 6. 6 Siec5n 0s « os oie ois pinie #8 tie Re a 831 
Change as a Recreative Agent... 6.2... ce cece ceeeec cones gael 431 
Character, The Measurement of........ Sem cydin Sd Glee NG ata Sted eel ola ee eee 732 
eMistry. Ene, OF COORERe ool 5 a. ce ties was 62, 212, 514, 686, 778 
Obinese Coroners’ ingests «<5. i555, once sae bios ois cei oe ences apy ene 690 
Christian Agnosticigit....6 ccccs Vek dees - six se - een bee een sie bare ee ee 78 
Comore (bt. Thess iis dan ck ee eet n cee © Wes elpchin wince pam eM 829 
Otpoles, WHY WO WOK 10 csi cde oem see cies cep ae ea 6 ene ‘572 
CHATS; AGaDbAtiOn GO. ee tic aie wh baie bn salale Be ene Sweety + in api ee 896 
Copal, and the Ooal-Tar Colors... ok. oo.c cso se cle legacsee ss +o eanie Coen 201 
Rain, ML Deni CoN oon cviehcie She SP ree cee eae ew gna enna eee 201 
Gnaoa-Nut, The Mille i the: 5c os ces dae Fcolwae vee ‘nasties 50 
Coborade for Tnvalids 5 4 336i s schns caine sks SSA in ain SS Gas aap eee 313 
Golor snd Music, Binds’ Tastes for. s feed os ahead does ik ay a 715 
Convicts; Innocent, Reparation: £05, .:.o vio igs do ad See eb cle a oi Rea e 508 
Cooke; Profesmond osial Bic ha Nw ae is ee AON eee 577, 772 
Cookery, The Chemistry of..... iS oad cel Ma Ney SAS GRU 62, 212, 514, 686, 778 
Correction, A..... ws ca'y "ous aide bis pearic atid Ath! Si a alne'ek bith WBNS UOs MR hie BIE NSE en 704. 
SOFTER ONGENCO: i os 5'o os wee ss RR ae Ge no ee Vinee ae nee DO 121, 696 
RO. Wie Al. ei COR i ke pana oe paw ives mate ae si aiocss Ek Rides 110 


me 


INDEX. 869 

PAGE 

I LD EROVT CUR Ce oe Sone cmon nciees oor see edad spaeeeeses 78 
rea eOPUT SIME inc sc bss nln no 8 bb CbW ee bed eevee od Coens cdue 279 
ena CO BINS oo os. 5 i 6s ook k code a ued owed vas coos cs éeawe ie 713 
NRE. ME PRR ee Ns a ww win Se eek 6 cin¥% eR dicdwbe e's bes Oo’ 784 
aeale oche, Etienne. ................... eae Pere ee Ca ee en! 548 
Diseases of Plants.............. ies sven oc ks ee Cale daly OO Roe Mined oh Oks 885 
jee ow tho, became @ Parasite... .. 2... ose. dean cnc ecsbubeus oss 647 
INT OE MMR sy co wu wae ov ya ee Sean ees in dae ee ie Ges: a 
Duck, Courtesy and Sagacity of the................... ev ca awnenelipaaes 861 
muon, eteracuons and Repulsions of... 2... <<. ac ea occu tk cu vecvens 862 
Dusts in Submarine Deposits, Volcanic and Cosmic.... ..............-. 850 
Rr mena te Arb Of: 2.6.5 8, 5.65 6. ow dds 2a ea ce 569 
wermnane Or Adinst 10th The... os. +. ess sa specs che dh ech upie gees 856 
TONS oe os chon bes cce pecs. eer Tae 123, 266, 410, 553, 698, 848 
Education, Classical and Scientific, Sir John Lubbock on................ 566 
aucation, Liberal, President Eliot on... . 2.2... cece ocecccencccsecees 412 
Electrical Exhibition, The Coming International............. Le Whee 425 
meas Larne 1nd, and Health: .: ..........sseccneween ess sue enueey 858 
Electric Lighting, Storage-Batteries in............ cece eee ewes Li cage 143 
eumuege and Fermentation. 2... 6. 2 se ee Sea ee Ne Caew db ew RN 21% 
MUNONOG, CAV TNIOON si See oad sen ed N MOORE R blew Ween aye a 121 
MIE MR EEO os kab hes coed veee Cane ou eae een ae cow ee 
ene ta tho Bantu Negroes, so. 5. ss-.. ese nice deka vee sade ede ae 767 
ees 2G WOLERO ONOA MOTE. 6... ss vie cece sep eerie ehucbbus sia eens 701 
Fire, A People who can not make...............-.-- Oe EC ee ee 569 
eeenen, croorge Jackson, M, De. 5.3 sn i eciia tate cs EO a pee oe 405 
ES Oi a Sy ion ss Wa awl Guvc aces « RNMAA whee CRW ORES Gade 522 
PR WB Ei ot ae bs 5 Sas cas RE ORES San ee ee eee 313 
NS a et Le Sa Sos cus aid oe 800 5 CRIS CLE EE oe eee 567 
Fleuss, The, Breathing Apparatus and Safety-Lamp..................... 717 
IN MND HUN i 3 ok 6 NS hla Vo oa o bg RO baa eS OR Ree 68 
Floods in Mountain Valleys, Prevention of... ............. ccc e ence cues 1428 
Flower, William H., F. R.S......... cleo S Wale a'x 0 schon 9 O6/cba ama eee a «ae 605 
TN NS ey ee eS ok 6 le iw a aaa 108, 878, 537, 663, 825 
NIM OL Meg Ton Liane aww e's son tutes deeb geet ee euee eres 620 
ag 0 SMR a ag ee a aa 6 bite Dee ee eae 717 
SIC ROY SORT IR s Ci5 6s son's 00's 6s oe pine Mae ae ee 430 
NN SONI ONG oss dg ais Wold Cig ba U's ance owe Veen beady eee keke ek cee 732 
RENTING Cie ERE Sooke No ss nseus ceswne thes Ue eensee eke 427 
geography and tho Railroads... . 20.0.5. .sscdecseseteseeces eet ohn 230 
Seeseer srogions, The World®. oo. 56s... 0s cece ered 0 cb ebds teed ewar-seigs 494 
PRP SRODOEG, Silay DoF. ides oS a pienso ncn vad tans Me bneid epee eames 22 
Glacial, The, Dam and Lake of the Ohio River..............-2200-0-+-- 716 
Glasgow’s Bandy-legged Children.............. as idan cke OCS ak ee ee 400 
RONGR OB POON dis oa 5 ads vac eek ee cee css Webs 5 5 es «oo pieeee eee 123 
Greek Question, The, Further Remarks on..............---ceceeeceees 772 


Greely Arctic Expedition, The..... 2.2.00. .ccccc cece cece neceeecocoses 856 


870 INDEX. 


PAGE 
RAMU ORO 4 LAU e ovo sos Moho ca NaS NRE Cw eN MEE CUbe cA c Peet w Ne 861 
SAV ORL Re Mis os ke 4s ERAS Laie ROE ROW EEN ee ee 857 
meyos, Arnold Henry, Sketoh Of. 34525 < dsias ee ev ess we 261 
Hatook, Ketward J: A.M. Phy Doss cece yeaa ce Oe as Cee 188 
SAMUNOY FAUT PIG shes oa Nae rcabiones oy ck cks ae beace betes Seen 159 
prapoimees, The Morality of. oo. 66S; oo i le Sane 108, 378, 537, 567, 668, 825 
RUNES OM POROUS ik a se sae soo bab cde as bee exe Dae aia Wee 440 
BE UST OTAROE MAS Deon eno yo cinet Narn teas bound eh ceecunies see 189 
Be TROOP, Bo oc Se ae as . aus Tele 400 
eeealth, Tacional, and Work.) e645 vee vs obo d Chae Wea a us bw ose eee 653 
Hickory-Nuts and Butternuts........ ned ened Sak ORR a ata ee 433 
Aialavas, Climbing the. oo. eee cc ees te Avo Le enebwaawee egies 859 
Hospital, Our New Skin and Cancers: ..: 066665 00.0000 Oo 8 woe bees 94 
tFOWO, OWI Ja MOD cas his ev eo ie Re eee boas tae eee 244 
Buennmgs Jackson; Ji MOD. ei is cds ed eke vce k vba S ie Clee 171 
Mydrophobia, The Prevention Of. . 65.5. ys ce ee's oF 04s cede os oe oe es ee 376 
1é6e-Making, Du Motay's Process of) .co.e ois k ec pee Kale. ge 
POVOEE WAG BI eee ee ay ain s he Se Seeemdiee sue Se ee oa 110 
Iguazu, The One Hundred Cataracts of the.......... 00. cc cee eee ee 574 
Indians, The American, Old-World Origin of. ........... 0.0.00 cceeeee 571 
anebriate Pationts, Treatment: for... 0 oy oso e en ye eV che ee 571 
ipevriety, Dr. Orothars’s Studies of...) 4 ea eves Sak wee ne een 427 
Riabnele and TiNOORe, 66'S oi eos ei ain ka ee ON Fidos ADR ee eee eee 122 
Dinette, Oar Deve 80 isis eis ddan bes we ea NR HO ieee 332 
Tetornational Seiekes si) eis oe a pc gee ae ae eso. 698 
sreland,: Reatloresting Of. oo 3 6.6 cs oe 685 cae CSO 570 
Iron, On the Supposed Discovery of, in Prehistoric Mounds Sissel eam 138 
ia, COMER oo es eo Fea fas oko 647 
PTI), DOR hs Ne i oy Gad oi vied Gill easy © bough 0 bine Gok ob woe Se 230 
PRO IES TUNIS hee be ie 4 a ene RE es eR ee yaa eee 
BODDEOD, PO WSTO eas i aka Vibaeee oop ete as pees Ge euee eee 47 
woraan, Professor David Bois cees hes ook od canes ee nea enme seen mane 547 
PuReErLOS. F TOLSSGOR, LIGHON-OR Ls oss «os so sheds a's ea ua hes a emeumee 278 
enowiodge,. What, is-of most Worth: 0... cee: aces heerees coecgene 696 
Preenten, The Voloanio Eruption of. 6.060065 fsa. ne evens ris cco ues 365 
Danometer, Albert By Myo. od asic Viwiee sce eeee een bean aeeay sas cau 60 
RiMRROT GE. Ro Rate UG sac see hha Ve ed ne ab eae se oes Ome be kn. eee 800 
Legmiators, The Qualifications of; 605.2. caiig ooo ke ca ieee ee 696 
Legislators, The Sins of............. a ey ‘een Vek abe saa oe ee 
Leeiay, Profeesor J.P: Sketeh 06 F658 svcd c sees fea cia eee eee 693 
DitG, WETS CHE TE Depeche cians a oes ee ce eke eee 73 
cage Any A baclige Unit 06.6962 Sb 8s esse Ce Sk ee ee 715 
Lightning, Protection ee LEP TCL Me Oba ee Fes Se RET Re ees 678, 810 
Baperary Notiaws oor ee RRs Goel ee pe 180, 269, 414, 556, 704, 845 
BR DOCK, FOUN Ss er Foc ic Fo RA ae Bo ice ane cea are eh ee 426 
rer: Oliver Toes: ors ec eas ce Cece te er erate si | 


Epon, tev. George Geos. ees Peo cGag oes: ae sage se eek eae 320 


INDEX. 871 

PAGE 

Malcolm, J. G...... Bea carters OE Aihis  6ini6a Wa BUEN aig ho RaL Dheee caged 696 
RR eran iran gee, SOP ea any reer 861 
et ST RU is oo webu vasa s,s n 0 cae e LEN oe dae beans 759 
emmENNry PINE BEMIS. OF os. ov noc 5 ccc ent dabei d coi vackdecse 347 
Mask-Dances, The, of New Ireland.............. Oe eet Se Heke tc ink 572 
Ns oo 0 5's, ou /aa, d Kona uns a's. 0 4. 0'd a0 0b Wield ee Cees oh bs 530 
SE FOE RFTATROUOR cosa adn aie o's vhe ows 8 Obie cid veces 732 
IIS RIAD AVOID OF Bn oes vn ke aid ne coin tn ep © so unle Oubies We 570 
MI. 2 F PORTORS O66. ooo ode vs cas duiate tases) cawick Camels 266 
Mesmerism, The Physiological Aspect of..............c0ceeeececeeeeee 800 
meen: ue Trde end Paleo i. 05.5 obs cic ccs ae daciecs bed Sb NGs 568 
I: SOO TOMINNIN GS Of. ooo... cca cvlewdine sivbseaeas sees peenw 86 
Microbes in Bricks........... F CCAiata yin te abs « sleeper i nee 142 
EN PR Rh yi. ca 6 vn daa o Sec uate se ey bade e ceeds aneede 219 
Milne-Edwards’s Marine Investigations. ..........6......ccccceecoeceees 716 
Minnesota, Physiographic Conditions of... ....... 25s. ce cece cee ee cc nee 715 
mee Tevet, Le Upper; Syatein 2. 6. sos ee ec 594 
Re COO OTIS LOWE? OL, 5 6 os is sos 3's y's gs ee oe 717 
MU ECS Ens yk UY yee ven doe oc vino ec de te ene wal bees 522 
Meeaney, the, of Happiness... 22.6.0... 0. eee 103, 378, 537, 567, 663, 825 
I TS Be chs ol ee Eicicw ss ois ove phy ee eas Eauwetae eee ues 671 
Men SUCRER MO WOUK oc ine cans Cos oes ca yok eae bake wens be eed 653 
SMG PING -SUAINDIOS OF 8.6. osc ie sso ka vine ob obinbsuba waa ven ebucds 474 
Deamoes, the Banta, Fetichism Of... . 2... 0... .c ns ke se cae cc eeceevecde 767 
Nervous System, Evolution and Dissolution of the....................-- 171 
meee baie, 68 On Economical Plané. . .. 2... oo ea Re Sikes hss 714 
Pees teune im the United States, <6 6.5. soc ce ccecausessce scene 568 
I, AS ORATOR MINN 5 5 5 ya's woo nine 9 ck vce iece do Rbs Scan Poe ines 281 
meee aver, 40 Mask-Dances Of, ooo... oes aig ok cao ee avae ewes seat ss 575 
i er i ici sat 143, 286, 431, 575, 719, 863 
Coeeee FOG DE VatIC ETODOTUCE OF... o 6 oo cc cach ode Altes coe cscbwewee 543 
Mmavica in the United States... . . i. ok. ec te ceb sabe vcesees 428 
a ER NTI Ree hee STEUER ai Beg hep rire a yar 864 
Occupation, Influence of, on Physical Development..................... 859 
Ohio River, The Glacial Dam and Lake of the......... Potisae Cleon an 716 
MEE AMIROB BF IS Soci cir cvs cs ones UN a oe bake os wane ee wan tae ey 653 
MEAN, CHOCHODICAL UL VOY Ol 655 oo ies oie cn sw nav 4s wav ce man ene eben Me 430 
Parliamentary Influence, Spencer on... ...........ceccee ceeeececesces 129 
I IE To hye be isimliaie RS. PERNT EM oe yey 627 
RN ME CANIS ace biay wha tine «va b's aig 6 we Cae FRE bikeviibecas 376 
IE 0 80 Lal = WORK: OE 5.55 oo ois on oo oan a cmisnin Hh RaW a AU ae eae 235 
Patagonia, The Southern Andés and. . 2. . 2... ees ect wweesecqeesve 574 
MM, og BR. ID 3 Suede 3 a edi aio ose weirs Minsada's aw inte Wm AUMaLee las oll 494 
OMNMNM TEOGRIR> W SUOE 55) 860.55 hs einnin ie 6 Mae an aw eo o.s cn wlan eae meee Soe 430 
BOAO, Dh Pig tinue bs me wa cs amen SOUS be o0 lols mig Maa EI Ma 385 
MGGRPONY, SCIODTIIO 0 i/o csc disc's cay in ates cab h evn bane tue aaa ee 481 
Physiological Experiment, The Future of ............ 0. cee cee eeeseces 282 


Physiology versus Metaphysics .......0..ccccccenccccccereseusescscoce 249 


872 INDEX, 
PAGE 
Plant Contraction, Mechanism of............e0e00008 we N60 Naan eee 284 
Plants, Cultivated, The Origin of.......... reaper iar alee oe AOE aie eee 784 
Blants, DIRS Gs09 OF aise ssc es cig clsbe-sioteee atacelaretonnre’  uey Ga Ok 885 
Plants: in America, Ohinese..). 00 cesceieoorcses tow diy Oh 0 eee ewes 862 
Poey, Professor Felipo, Sketoh Of.:...:0 5.5 icc da vou Ts oN A ica aes 547 
Poisons developed in tho Body. 0/0: scare cosets sore 'e'ostlvk HOLMEN e's 283 
Pos and Wire Evil, Thee es ie ee Ne EUAN 181 
POVGION MIBCCUBNY. < soos ayes s Cees e eae aes 138, 277, 425, 565, 713, 855 
Fopuiation, The Problem of...) vs es eh oA ee a 671 
Prehistoric Mounds, On the Supposed Discovery of Iron in......... wie We 138 
Primitive Peoples, The Astronomy Of. 6.0.66. oskses vcku ete de ewe ues 620 
Progress and Social ‘lmprovement)s..o6ss5 cess cha bv ea aes 128 
Prohibition, An Exporiment in... oi. vay cece ciu bab bye eae 47, 696 
Railroads, How State Monopoly of, works...........0.0cceeesceeeues . 858 
Rambles, Some, of a Naturalist 03.0. 06.65 085 AU a a a ae 474 
peayloigh; Professor Lod... 6 oo css SR eae als TO 
Rayleigh, Professor Lord, Sketoh of: 23.66.05 SCS ak 840 
Feetigion, Retrogreasive.. ssc Sn ee cee oe PO as eae en 451 
Bengrn, The Ghost of. iis cases eee eae 440 
Remember, Where-and how wo... eos. 238. se 609 
Heparation to Innocent Convicts 05.6 oes rs a ea 508 
“Beproduchon, Modes of, in Plante... 0 es oc ee 159 
PROTORTOREVO EVULUMOD ooo vice was si hoes knebo oa dea bgne var oe ee ee 451 
Tet SINE Miss steed od 6 Sle Va wie ae howe Les ware eK eee bce eee 86 
Rheumatism, Seasonal Variations of...............2.000- eet n hee se 429 
PORN OT, CONGRION aos ek Su eens sae hwo ce ele seed e bos UeeMeee Crud 759 
eiver-Dou, (wWimnamg, Orie Of. us iwc es ceea ess ms Ome eae yan 284 
River Water, Efteot of Sewage On... 2... seks ek eb ew acts cuean eaauenes 575 
BOONE. DIP, Soe o's iv es ose Wd Sonn eh haber keee Ok ees 68 
SyNBGIAN THOIOHH AG HOOIONES 5 64 ois. bcs ch a os een ese hee eos Wee nee 285 
Salt-Deposits, The, of Western New York.... 2.2.2... cece cece ce ecees 530 
School Examinations, Dr. Michael Foster on.............-eeeececeocees 281 
Rokool- Work, Effect of, on the Brain... 623....035 sins: saan hawers 4a 282 
Science and Art, Are, Antagonistic? <s-.... <i dN ¥eesnss seen ibe Onnaeanes 857 
Science and the Temperance Reform..........ecscsevcccseseaewrsts ... 553 
Svience, Physical, The Recent Progress of. o.oo sa. eels oc ee tena ce oe 739 
TONGS. CUlbGTG 6 os bocca ck aeae sae bu Ghee ble sek ae Wek MED ENN 577 
Meléntific Philanthropy... <<. fis f. + s«s405 ous belle dies cue aul ehe Nia wake 481 
mcientifie Societies,. Rassian.. a... sdmsssee ch poe cu sens anda MaMa 285 
Scientists, The, at Montreal.............. olny aca piel e-cy Saw posi SUR rales 843 
Gente: Professor Wi Bids (nos. du was sae nudes cd cusyas eure ein el 261 
Rorrbhoer, G. Hiltons. i. 0.55 och owned asses asawes aes +> be Wane iene Cline 73 
Seasons, The, Correlations of................. Ayo & sa 5 hyn ob «Oe RU 714 
WOOLY, (1. The. vs ty cee eGo be eeyd BMD Geb awk Sakae ee oe ee ee 796 
Sewage, Effect.of, on Rivers Water. 0.0. cc seees eb cin ee meee hs sce ere 575 
Shepherd, Francis J., M.D...... Fk eee Sm Nth hs te seins A ng 721 
Siberian Superstitions........... mS Aume es bot UN Ghats wake ME Sue ieee OFS 


_ Sins, The, of Legislators ..... VW SAND EA Vee RAs MRS CRN RUN eS gE 1, 145 


aye PAGE 
RIO ls 6 ist bee vdimnas asters cect ces saveecss 652 
RR I ale os Wana ps oes coos fdas Oe ook 643 
Solar Storms and Sun-Spots............ Seni «Ok kn i ok 142 
oe mierwiie Mary, Sketch of................seeee PER RE pens Pog 113 
Seem DOUTCO OF HUGS. 7... 6.55. kee cece enc cancacs ace 627 
I MRE SIV OTR os ko a vd oo oak eh elec. 258 
@ueeracies, Dhall we put, on Childron?.......... 0... ccc ccc cece cee eee 429 
Spencer, Herbert........ Fe CORRES RE em arp Pema e 1, 145, 289, 451 
‘Spencer on Parliamentary Influence................ 2 cece cece c cc coos 129 
Springs and the First Settlements of a Country, Relation of............. 857 
Spruce-Forests of Maine, A Destroyer in the...................c0ce eee. 856 
Meee Gen, M.D... . cess... nb Hea eden eae oe ans 609 
RIEL, OCS BDOUE fd ass on 5 os os so dae ede cutee cee teecee 278 
Oy Oa cd's os a e's on ad g ake dseuNas Suip peas on 189 
EE MS re is iy yg Kalla s'c-c + vie 0s ce bak 2 a pv bee deen Ones 14. 
Studies, College, Yale Professors on................. abiding hed aoeele es 124 
Stretchers and Ambulances, Construction of............... ccc eee e eee 857 
is oso svn sey aw Ro wae dn eens “ieee 652 
INO Fe TORE SURO Go sonic n so 3 5 ae v's wb ab ohde vameccene ee 289 
Superstitions, Political, The Survival of.............cccceececcccsccess 410 
I UNA a sw oa a ss oo ok clown hss awine eet es apes 572 
- Swiss, The, Society of Natural Sciences.............0se cess ee eee PEE 140 
UC AEME WETIUISIY 29M 5 oo Siolcis' eo vac s snes e nae sng ensscses peice dh 2'79 
(7) amen sroprivea Of the Pleasures of... . 1... ccc ccc ccsencecctss 425 
TM ge ce OCGA So’ asec 4 oe hs gat ons pean es aoe 320 
Thermometers, How to expose............ Lia s wines GR Ree a WE A cay OES 428 
Things, The Elevation of Phrases above..............ceccccceceeecces 843 
I NEON CN. os nals a dic ne ne eu de We aos weeege 280 
I, IE A DOOIULG, oo a's c's ok sic o sen tn pces ea eehs comes casees 715 
IIE CROC LOROMING 626 os. sc os cin a tbo hoe sleep acces ecb es 139 
@eupor Missouri River System, The......... 22... cece cee ee ccc cccees 594 
NN alc ciedics 6.4 sib cikv des bacseis €b cone gae es ies @eeees 481 
IE ME TRCN AON og ie Se onto ois'w cde a pimane wana ssh 788 
EE cigs Coa See Saw Sa ase 0 54.0 one aes pee un Cas 9 6 8 249 
A a uc ees a se can't oeuee cna beeen cen cee 594 
Warmest Month, The............ BN iscid Coes Mactan Ce eere ne a0 tere 855 
Mee 10. ONG NOUTAIZIA. .. wo oc kk eee cen cen cncenr eens 281 
Weather, The, Health, and Crime...................-.. Sev anaae tates 566 
SITEAE AQULION. 6c yc cc deuce ees cessccccees 62, 122, 212, 514, 636, 778 
mumeerard. Professor ©. M.. 2... 2... ccc cette re eset eceeiesees 347 
Working-Classes, The Progress of the, in the Last Half-Century..... ese 
Yale Professors on College Studies..........ceeee cece eect eee eeeeeeres 124 
Pees Wo, ML Dio ie cee cet cee cect we ce reser enerceegs 94 
Zodlogical Gardens, The Ideal ..... 2.2... eee eee eee eee eee eter eee eees 573 


END OF VOL. XXV. 


‘ 
= 


‘, 
Teach *S. 
= iy 
>}. 
: ' 
{ 
\ 
i 
e S, 
: : 
« 2 ‘ 
é 2 . 
ed . M x 
‘ 
‘ 
‘ 
x 
Ps 
% 
w 
‘ ; 
a 
. * 
' 
‘ 
4 
2 
hen * 
et 


oP ss Liia a 
ve ged lke I ery eet te 


Q Popular science monthly 


1 
10 
Physical & 
| Applied Sci. 
ee gees 


PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE 
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET 


UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY 


Ragen peel a Soe ioe 
rena nee 


: > aed en 

bet aht pram BP re Pye ete Raines 

ve . i eae (65 Dies 
olen 


3 ea 
* ARERR 


cada agiret ese 


Sea ets 


eet Parte “~ eka s a ~ 0) (3 teheion.s ay pm, “4 eh Ss . ; : 
iar aint eoes mente icoians se teeters Pasomant piace Fen poy 2 ake se ~ : saa oo 
: sedis arch a BKM ER oe al peo Loans a ee : hanes Ap enneg ¢ t 
Menten tn Pee am OP PN ah pee ee ral Map pags weer igigoe a : pend avy Si a may), oad te ee Peri terscttmeg par Fatale le tn Teciek agree 
a sa Se ee iid wind osoniciimt Sve alana) 2 Srdece, eis : x oa “ “y wy > - a trp ae Nakane noes 
Siedanibeleciote : : Kime; a fheseeare sen fons reer Z 7 sa ae 5 2 “ os 


a x Pilot) 
Hie ; eR erg 
eu? Ve Sr ogc