Full text of "The Popular science monthly"

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POPULAE SCIENCE 



MOI^THLT 




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VOL. XL. 

NOVEMBER, 1S9J^TQ APRIL, 1892. 




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1893. 



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THE ~K * 

POPULAR SCIEN0¥ 
MONTHLY. 



NOVEMBER, 1891 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION". 

By C. HANFOED HENDEESON. 

ONE can scarcely fail to notice, in the intellectual life of 
America, how very rapidly a new thought sweejDS across the 
continent. It travels with almost the speed of the whirlwind. 
The storm center is commonly Boston or New York or Philadel- 
phia, and progress is toward the westward. At once the impulse 
is felt in Chicago and Denver and San Francisco. A new book, 
a new creed, or a new social ideal easily gains the popular ear. 
Like the Epicureans and Stoics, we delight to hear a new thing. 
It can not be said that this interest is always, or even generally, a 
profound or fruitful one. But it has at least this advantage, that 
it secures a speedy hearing for such ideas as are put in a form 
suitable for assimilation, and this alone is no inconsiderable gain. 
The educational movement known as university extension is 
an admirable illustration of this national alertness and versatility. 
It is a movement capable of very definite presentation and of 
calling up equally definite mental images. As a result, it is now 
familiar in name at least to the majority of our people, and it has 
become so in a surprisingly short space of time. Returned trav- 
elers from England have whispered the name in private for sev- 
eral years past. Certain phases of the movement, such as the 
Toynbee Hall experiment of planting a colony of culture-loving 
men in the arid district of London, have for some time attracted 
attention on both sides of the water. But, as a distinct object of 
public interest and discussion in America, university extension is 
hardly two years old. It was not until the winter and spring of 
1890 that the movement took rank as a question of the day. Out- 
side of the larger and more interested cities, and possibly even 
within their borders, it may still be that the name of the move- 

TOL. XL. — 1 

31769 



2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

ment is more familiar than tlie idea for which, it stands. It is the 
purpose, then, of the present article to state briefly — as becomes 
the importance of the subject — just what university extension is, 
somewhat of its history, and what claim it has for a permanent 
place in our intellectual life. 

University extension has been well defined as a university 
education for the whole nation by an itinerant system connected 
with established institutions. 

I confess that this sounds ideal, the proposition to educate the 
whole nation on higher lines, but that is precisely what the move- 
ment means. It means that any one in any place and at any time 
may take up advanced work in any department of human knowl- 
edge, and that qualified men stand ready and willing to help him. 
I feel that this is a most significant statement — so significant. 
Indeed, that I may be pardoned for having said the same thing 
twice. 

Our people as a whole are not intellectual and are not culture- 
loving. They are not given to what Emerson calls the reasonable 
service of thought. The majority of them are the servants of a 
much less noble master. It can not be expected, therefore, that so 
large an idea as forms the germ of university extension will meet 
with anything like immediate fruition. But it is a leaven which 
is well worth setting to work. The success of the movement is 
already well enough assured to demonstrate that in any com- 
munity there are unsuspected numbers with a turn for higher 
education, and such an attitude of mind is apt to spread. 

That is the end — to permeate the nation, the whole American 
people, with a taste for culture, and then to provide means for 
satisfying it. It is admitted that such a taste does not generally 
exist, but it is believed that it can be brought into being. No 
right-minded person, I think, will quarrel with this purpose, pro- 
vided it can be shown that the proposed culture is genuine and 
not merely a veneer. The method, too, is correspondingly simple, 
and it seems to me quite adequate. It would be an impossible 
task to civilize all America at once. The Philistine element is 
much too strong for that. If the movement attempted such a 
task it might well be regarded as overly optimistic. But it is 
really as practical in its methods as a paper-box factory. It is 
going to attempt no regeneration in the lump, nor to force its 
wares where they are not wanted. What it is doing and going to 
do is simply this, to put the higher education within reach of 
those who care for it, and through these to stimulate others also 
to want the same thing. It might be well described as a mission- 
ary movement conducted on scientific principles. 

Unharnessed to events, the scheme would read somewhat like 
a dream. It will be better, then, to give an account of it by telling 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 3 

just wliat is being done in England, and what is being done and 
planned in America. It is well to begin with England, as being 
the older and better organized field. For my knowledge of the 
work there I am indebted to the conversations of friends who 
have attended the Oxford meetings, and to various reports and 
pamphlets, but most of all to an admirable little book on Uni- 
versity Extension by Messrs. Mackinder and Sadler, which I 
would strongly commend to those who care to go further into the 
details and history of the English movement. 

The work in England is divided among four organizations: 
the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, 
the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and 
Victoria University. While there may be some friendly rivalry 
as to which shall most abound in good works, it must not be 
thought that the organizations are in competition with one 
another. This would indeed be impossible in the case of the 
London Society, since its staff of lecturers includes those of both 
Cambridge and Oxford as well. The chief business of these 
central offices is to provide lecturers and to arrange courses. It 
must be constantly kept in mind that they are essentially teach- 
ing organizations and by no means mere lecture bureaus. It is 
true that university extension does not disdain to present knowl- 
edge in an attractive form. It makes an admitted effort to be en- 
tertaining. But this is only a means to an end. The main object 
is more serious, and consequently no course is ever given on mis- 
cellaneous topics. The unit consists of twelve weekly lectures on 
one approved subject. Such a course, therefore, covers three 
months and constitutes one term in the extension work. There 
are two a year, the fall and spring terms, separated by the Christ- 
mas holidays. Now that the movement is well established, a 
strong effort is being made to bring the studies into close educa- 
tional sequence, and to have the work of succeeding terms con- 
tinue what has been done previously. This is not always pos- 
sible, for university extension studies are strictly elective and 
are never administered in prescribed amounts. But it represents 
the ideal and the more intelligent students clearly see the ad- 
vantage of continuous and related work in place of indiscrimi- 
nate browsing. 

The central offices do not, however, assume the initiative. 
They are the agents and inspirers of the local ■ centers. The 
movement generally starts in any given neighborhood by the in- 
terest and effort of one individual, or perhaps by the concerted 
action of several. The known friends of education in the locality 
are called upon, and the question of forming a center discussed. 
If the scheme seems feasible, a public meeting is arranged, great 
care being taken that it shall have no religious, political, or class 



4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

coloring. A speaker goes to tliem from one of the nniversities 
and explains the extension plan. If the impression produced be 
favorable and the question of ways and means do not hinder, the 
meeting results in the formation of a local center, and a per- 
manent secretary and a board of managers are aj)iDointed. A 
subject is then chosen, and application made to one of the central 
offices for a lecturer. In many cases a particular lecturer is 
asked for, as the extension men are coming to have pretty widely 
known reputations, and the public naturally selects the most 
popular. The question of finance now comes in. The universi- 
ties supply qualified lecturers, arrange courses, and hold examina- 
tions, but the expenses must be guaranteed by the local centers. 
The work does not pay for itself, but then no scheme for higher 
education ever does. The receipts from the sale of lecture tickets 
may generally be counted upon to meet half the expenses of the 
course. The rest must be provided for in some other way, com- 
monly by subscriptions or by some larger benefaction. The uni- 
versity fee for the twelve lectures is about £45, and the local ex- 
penses will generally amount to about £20 more. This is for a 
single course. Where more than one course is taken, the propor- 
tionate expense is somewhat less. 

In most cases the local center is an outgrowth from some 
library association or institute, and has already much of the 
needed machinery in the way of hall and books. The course is 
duly advertised and as strong a local interest enlisted as possible. 
The audience is made up of all classes, the more miscellaneous 
the better. The extension movement recognizes no class distinc- 
tions. It includes the gentry, mechanics, school-teachers, bar- 
risters, tradesmen — all, indeed, who will come. The work differs 
from that of the school, as it is primarily for the education of 
adults, and its methods have men and women in mind as the 
material. 

And now the lecture begins. It lasts for about an hour, the 
lecturer endeavoring not so much to present the whole of the 
subject-matter of the evening as to give a distinct and helpful 
point of view from which his hearers may look at it for them- 
selves. It seems to me that this is a most hopeful feature of the 
extension work, and one which brings it into direct line with 
the best of modern educational practice. It is the spirit of the 
new education to proceed always by appealing to the self-ac- 
tivity of the taught rather than simply to their capacity for 
receiving. 

If the lecturer be skillful, the hour seems very short, for the 
feeling is abroad that here is a man thinking out loud and suggest- 
ing a whole lot of new thoughts which will make one distinctly 
the richer. It is a pleasant sensation, recalling the very cream of 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. . 5 

bygone school days, and it shows itself in rows of flashed and 
grateful faces. An essential part of the lecture scheme is the 
printed syllabus, which is supplied at merely nominal price. 
This gives the systematic outline so needful to the student, yet so 
uninspiring in the lecture itself. In addition, the syllabus sug- 
gests a careful line of home reading in connection with each 
lecture. The lecturer also gives out one or more questions which 
are to be answered in writing and mailed to him some time before 
the next lecture. This home paper work is regarded as of the 
utmost importance, since it brings out the thought and original- 
ity of the student in a way that a simple lecture never could. 

When the lecture is over, a class is formed of alL those who 
care to enroll themselves as students, the other hearers withdraw- 
ing. The class lasts for about an hour, and also ranks above the 
lecture in educational importance. It is here that the personal 
intercourse between lecturer and students comes into play. It is, 
indeed, very much like the college seminar, and is as conversa- 
tional in its tone as the bashfulness of the students will allow. 
The lecturer develops his points a little further, and explains any 
difficulties that may have arisen. He also uses the occasion to 
return the written exercises, and makes such criticisms and com- 
ments as he thinks best. Often, misapprehensions are to be cor- 
rected, and false views pointed out. Frequently there is the more 
agreeable task of reading some particularly good answer, and 
acknowledging the justness and perhaps the originality of a stu- 
dent's comment. In all cases no names are mentioned, and great 
care is taken not to wound the sensitiveness of any one. The 
sharper tools of irony and satire are always contraband. 

One can readily see how much depends upon the personal 
qualities of the lecturer. He must, indeed, be a man out of a 
hundred, a well-qualified specialist, a brilliant speaker, and, above 
all, a man of much fine tact and discretion. Each organization 
has its regular staff of lecturers, who hold, in most cases, some 
other appointment, and give only a portion of their time to exten- 
sion work. A few, such as Mr. R G. Moulton, of Cambridge, and 
Rev. W. Hudson Shaw, of Oxford, devote themselves exclusively 
to the movement, and are its most successful exponents. But 
many promising young men have also been attracted to extension 
work — some through a genuine missionary interest in the spread 
of culture, and some for less disinterested motives. It is not, 
however, a proper field for experimentation. The work is diffi- 
cult and needs men of known ability. The universities try to 
guard against failure by duly testing the capabilities of all young 
aspirants for lecture appointments. While it is most unfortunate 
when the wrong man does get into the work, the mischief is soon 
remedied, for his lack of success leaves him in a very short time 



6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

quite without engagements. In the lecture world there is a mani- 
fest survival of the fittest. 

When the course ends there is a formal examination, open to 
all students who have attended a specified proportion of lectures 
and done the requisite home work. Certificates are awarded to 
the successful candidates, the results depending upon the term 
work as well as the examination. I have not myself much faith 
in academic labels, but these certificates have a certain value in 
stimulating the students to carry their work to completion. 

Where university extension is still untried, half courses, of six 
lectures each, are sometimes given by way of experiment, but in 
this case no examinations are held and no certificates are awarded. 

The statistics of the movement show that it is still increasing 
in popularity. All of the numerals which sum up its activity, 
attendance, lecturers, courses, have much more than doubled 
within the past five years. The figures of 1889-'90 show that 
nearly four hundred courses were given, and that these were 
attended by over forty thousand people. During the winter of 
1890-'91 the attendance was over forty-five thousand. It is esti- 
mated that about ten per cent take the examinations. A num- 
ber of new and interesting developments have attended this 
growth. Besides the regular fall and spring terms there are also 
summer meetings at both Oxford and Cambridge, which have 
been a most pronounced success. One can scarcely overestimate 
the advantage of even this brief residence at the universities 
themselves. It is no inconsiderable education simply to be in 
Oxford. The tastes which are thus encouraged make possible 
better things in the winter courses following. The Cambridge 
summer meeting is, on the whole, more scientific in its scope, 
and the numbers in attendance are consequently small, but are 
increasing as the opportunity becomes better known. 

At Oxford the meetings have always been of a more popular 
character. The students are numbered by hundreds and even of 
late years by the thousand. The meetings only began in 1888, 
when the session lasted for but ten days. Yet there were nine 
hundred students present. Since then the sessions have length- 
ened and the attendance has likewise grown. For obvious reasons 
the students are largely drawn from the teaching class, the greater 
number being women. The opportunity of hearing such men 
as Max Miiller brings even an increasing company of Americans 
to these summer meetings. 

While the expense is kept as small as possible, the question of 
ways and means is too much for many of the poorer extension 
students, and scholarships are being founded to enable these to 
taste Oxford for at least a few weeks. 

There are many other features of the English work, such as 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 7 

students' associations, home reading circles, traveling libraries, 
and the like, which are doing much to extend its influence and 
render the movement permanent. One of these features, the 
scheme of affiliating students to the universities, deserves special 
mention. What the universities have been working for all along 
is the promotion of serious and continued study. Where this 
was out of the question, they did what they could, and tried to 
stimulate the neighborhood to something better. The work has 
now progressed far enough for them to offer a systematic course 
of study covering four years, and having a definite end in view. 
The students who take eight unit courses in related subjects ap- 
proved by the management, and who do the home work and pass 
the examinations successfully, receive the title of S. A. — affiliated 
student — and have the privilege at any subsequent time of remit- 
ting one year's residence at Cambridge, and so completing their 
studies there in two years. In the majority of cases two years 
would be quite as prohibitory as three, since the students are no 
longer young, and are already pledged to some career in life. 
Yet affiliation is held to be a great good, for it brings system and 
continuity into extension work, and makes a closer and more vital 
bond between the universities and the people. 

If we come now across the ocean to our own country we shall 
find, considering the newness of the movement here, a develop- 
ment of the university extension idea even more surprising than 
in England. It is a large tribute to the catholicity of this idea 
that it stands transplanting so admirably. The needs of the 
human spirit are much the same in all countries. What is deep- 
est in us and best is essentially cosmopolitan. The extension 
scheme is distinctively English in its origin, yet it has needed 
surprisingly little adaptation to fit it to American conditions. 
Perhaps the chief differences in condition are geographical. Life 
is more concentrated in England than with us, and the main 
changes will have to be in deference to our magnificent dis- 
tances. 

In certain quarters the importation of a British idea is resented 
almost as warmly as if the article were a steel rail or a durable 
cloth. In others, again, it is said that we have had university 
extension in America for many years, and we are pointed to the- 
lyceums of New England and to Chautauqua. These institutions 
have undoubtedly done admirable work, but they are not uni- 
versity extension, and it is no discredit to them to say so. I have 
no particular desire to represent the movement as unique. It 
would be seriously misrepresented, however, if the impression were- 
allowed to become current that university extension is simply a 
duplication of educational machinery already in successful opera- 
tion. It is not. It is a movement with a new end, the popular!- 



8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

zation of higher Tiniversity education, and it proceeds by a new 
method, the personal carrying of this teaching from the universi- 
ties to the people. It is held to be more practical to take one man 
to a hundred students than to take a hundred students to one 
man. It is important to keep this object and this method free 
from any confusion with other organized work, for the usefulness 
of university extension lies in these lines, and not as a competitor 
with already established agencies of culture. 

It is somewhat difficult to tell the story of university exten- 
sion in America, for the idea sprang into action in a number of 
different localities. Without attempting to present the full his- 
tory of the movement, it may be said that three distinct ideals 
have been advanced — the local plan, represented by Baltimore 
and Buffalo ; the State plan, represented by New York ; and the 
national plan, represented by Philadelphia. 

The local plan is the oldest. Its first home seems to have been 
at Johns Hopkins University. Several years ago popular lecture 
courses were given by Dr. Adams and his colleagues at various 
centers in and around Baltimore, and as time went on the move- 
ment assumed more and more the form, and finally the name, of 
university extension. Several such courses were given during 
the winter and spring of 1888. The method was quite similar to 
that followed in England. The course consisted of twelve lect- 
ures, followed by the customary extension classes at their conclu- 
sion. The students were supplied with printed syllabi of each 
course. Dr. Adams also rendered a most important service to the 
movement by his interest in making it more generally known 
outside of his own city. Similar initiatory work was done by 
Dr. Bemis at Buffalo. In the fall of 1887 he gave a course 
of lectures on economics, which were quite in the extension 
spirit. 

The State plan is, I believe, peculiar to New York. It would, 
indeed, be less possible elsewhere, since New York is the only 
State which has a department created and maintained by statute 
to " encourage and promote higher education." The movement 
has had the constant interest and support of the best element in 
both the city and State. The State Librarian, Mr. Melvil Dewey, 
has been particularly active in its promotion. According to this 
plan , the State assumes the direction of university extension, 
working by means of an established central office at Albany, and 
operating through existing institutions for higher education. The 
Legislature has recently granted an appropriation of ten thousand 
dollars for carrying on the enterprise. Already much good work 
has been done in the way of lecture courses and printed syllabi 
and text books. 

The national plan has been a slower evolution. It is an out- 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. g 

growth of tlie local society at Philadelphia. The history of this 
organization is sufficiently typical to warrant its statement in 
some detail, the more so as its aims are now national. The idea 
of university extension was not known to the city at large until 
the winter and spring of 1890. It aroused so much interest, how- 
ever, that the public discussion of the question led to the forma- 
tion of a society on the 1st of June. Dr. Pepper, the Provost of 
the University of Pennsylvania, became its first president, and 
Mr. George Henderson was chosen secretary. The society at once 
went to work in a most practical and business-like way. It was 
recognized that two things were wanted — more definite informa- 
tion in regard to what was being done in England, and also the 
interest and co-operation of educators connected with neighbor- 
ing teaching bodies. Accordingly, the secretary was sent to 
Europe, and in the fall presented a report of what had been accom- 
plished there. Further, a circular letter addressed to the availa- 
ble teachers of the locality assured the society of a sufficient staff 
of lecturers. These ends gained, the work of the society began 
last fall in earnest. The first local center was at Roxboroiigh 
and was organized in connection with St. Timothy's Working- 
men's Club and Institute, which was already provided with an 
excellent hall and well-selected library. The subject chosen was 
chemistry, the first lecture being given on November 3d. The 
formation of centers and the announcement of courses soon 
became epidemic. By spring it was a rare thing to find any one 
among the more thoughtful classes who had not attended at least 
one extension lecture. 

In the one season forty-two courses were given, numbering 
about two hundred and fifty lectures. The total attendance was 
about 55,500, a result unparalleled even in England. 

Numbers alone are a very bad standard for an educational 
movement, but figures such as these indicate at least a wealth of 
teachable material. The success has indeed been beyond the 
most sanguine expectation. The idea is, I believe, due to Dr. 
Pepper that so vast a movement as this should properly be a 
national interest, and without local bounds. In December, there- 
fore, the society changed both its name and its purpose, and 
became the American Society for the Extension of University 
Teaching. 

The work in England, it will be remembered, is divided among 
four organizations, and there are advocates of this separation as 
well as of unification. Here in America the movement is just 
beginning, and we are called upon to choose. It must not be un- 
derstood that the three plans mentioned are in any way antago- 
nistic or are meant to compete with one another. They are the 
natural products of the different conditions under which they 



lo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

have grown up. The only question is as to which plan will best 
serve the cause of culture. There is much to be said for all of 
these ideals, but it seems to me that the balance is indisputably in 
favor of the national plan. Already the American Society has 
extended its operations outward from Philadelphia as a center 
for upward of one hundred and fifty miles, and its purpose is to 
reach from ocean to ocean. A large step toward nationalization 
has been taken in the West. The extension work in Colorado, 
centering about the University of Denver, and perhaps the im- 
mense work planned for Chicago, will become branches of the 
American Society. It is also hoped that association may be 
brought about with the New York work. By bringing all these 
movements into one organization there will be greater adminis- 
trative economy and greater system in the educational results. 

What has been already accomplished by the National Society 
makes entirely reasonable the large plans which it has in mind 
for the future. The acting president of the organization is now 
Prof. E. J. James, who has associated with him educators of fore- 
most rank from all sections of the country. It is proposed to 
utilize every feature which experience in England has shown to 
be helpful. The success of the American Society is indeed largely 
due to the fact that it has done little useless experimenting. The 
first season is always critical, but the movement had the large 
advantage of the constant service and counsel of Mr. Moulton. 
His many years' experience in the English work made him in- 
valuable here. During nearly the entire season he lectured after- 
noon and evening in Philadelphia and its suburbs as well as in 
other American cities. He will be followed winter after next by 
the Rev. Hudson Shaw. 

Now that university extension is well launched in America, it 
is hoped to offer more thoroughly systematized courses of study 
than was possible during the first season. A journal known as 
University Extension has been established, and issued its first 
number in July. Summer meetings will also be arranged, pref- 
erably at different university towns throughout the country. It 
is further proposed to introduce the plan of affiliating students 
to the universities, or even to go further than this, and finally to 
offer full courses leading to university degrees. 

A most important and indeed an integral part of the work 
will be in the line of encouraging home stiidy, and a well-thought- 
out plan has already been adopted. This provides a systematic 
course for that vast number of solitary students who can neither 
attend a university nor even form an extension center, but who 
are well worthy of the attention of a society committed to the 
cause of general culture. As at present arranged the courses 
cover four years of seven months each, or twenty-eight months 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. n 

of study in all, and are strictly along university lines. It is true 
that these students lose the large gain which comes from jjersonal 
intercourse with the teacher, but they are in constant communi- 
cation with him, and by his letters and printed notes he can be an 
immense help in the way of stimulating and directing. At the 
end of four years a regular examination will be held. Those who 
pass it successfully and whose progress during the course has 
been satisfactory will be awarded a certificate which it is the pur- 
pose of the society to make of recognized value. 

It is, then, an almost realized dream that any one in any place 
whatsoever may have the advantage of university education. It 
is a mistaken idea altogether, and one that has robbed the race 
of much progress, that education ends when maturity begins. By 
that time one has only gathered a few of the materials of culture. 
A grown-up man or woman with a book in hand for the purpose 
of serious study is in too many American communities almost an 
anomaly. But we have now fallen, it is hoped, upon better days, 
and the education of men and women has become a national 
purpose. 

When a rich man founds an institution, erects substantial 
buildings for its accommodation, and bestows his name upon it as 
well as his money, public attention is arrested, for there is some- 
thing visible and tangible for comment to spend itself upon. But 
right here, in our very midst, there is growing up a university 
more vast, I am bound to believe, than any of these extensive 
benefactions, and one destined to make a more profound impres- 
sion upon the intellectual life of America than has yet been made. 
It is a university whose strength lies in this, that its students are 
as miscellaneous as society itself ; that it is bound to no creed, no 
class, no party, but is committed only to the service of truth — not 
truth as you or I see it, or as any particular body of men see it, 
but to that increasingly transparent vision of truth which comes 
to humanity as a whole. Nor is the purpose of this university 
defeated by distance and railroad fares. It is the guest of every 
man or woman who will make it welcome. Neither does it 
demand what so often can not be given, one's entire time. Its 
duties may be fulfilled at odd moments, at any time as well as at 
any place. 

To carry out so vast a purpose as this is going to take a pro- 
portionate number of men. And to do it thoroughly, on the high 
plane which is promised, is going to take thoroughly equipped 
men. It is still an open question as to just how this need shall 
be supplied. All the lecturers so far, with the exception of Mr. 
Moulton and possibly one or two others, have been men holding 
positions in established institutions, and this has had its advan- 
tages. The men bring the experience and the discij^lined spirit of 



12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the class-room with them and teach as well as lecture. And the 
effect upon the men is good too. The human element in them 
grows, and this without loss of scholarship. But so large an un- 
dertaking as this can not obviously take second place in the con- 
sideration of its agents. As time goes on, the staff of lecturers 
will probably include an increasing number of men who give 
their entire time to extension work. 

It might be well if a man could alternate between resident and 
itinerant duty. Perhaps this would save him from that intellect- 
ual stagnation which is one of the chief dangers of the professo- 
rial chair. At present it seems to me that our universities are too 
much the asylum of men who nurse rather than use their scholar- 
ship, or who give their best energy to original research and throw 
only an occasional crumb to those who are pleasantly called their 
students. In all but the largest institutions one man has gen- 
erally to teach several branches of his subject. If he did both 
university and extension work, he might devote himself to one 
particular branch and get better results in both fields. Prof. 
Johnson used to say that he wished there might be a professor 
for each chemical element, and he would like to be Professor of 
Iridium. But this is a matter which may safely be left to expe- 
rience. 

Besides the men, money is needed. So far, the work of the 
society has been paid for by the annual membership dues of five 
dollars, while each local center has met the expense of its own 
courses. The lecturer's fee is always fifteen dollars a lecture. 
This is paid to the central office by the local center, the lecturer 
having no direct business relations with the people to whom he 
goes. The incidental expenses of the course, varying with the 
locality, are met by the local management. Extension work may 
thus be undertaken by any university which will devote a little 
of the time of its secretary to the purpose, and by any local center 
which can raise the fee for a course of six lectures, ninety dollars, 
and provide for incidentals. It will thus be seen that very little 
money is required to make the experiment of an extension course. 
In some instances the local centers have had a considerable bal- 
ance at the end of the season. But this has been due to the fact 
that only popular subjects have been chosen. It has been the 
experience in England, and it will undoubtedly be the experience 
here, that the more systematic and satisfactory work will not pay 
for itself. Some outside revenue must be looked to. 

In England, several plans have been tried and proposed. In 
some cases a fixed subscription, as with the American Society, 
supplies the needed funds. In others, associations are formed and 
shares offered for sale, while still others depend upon private 
munificence. But all these resources are transient, and place the 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 



»3 



work much at the hazard of changing fortunes. A better finan- 
cial basis is wanted. It has, therefore, been proposed to attempt to 
secure endowment, through personal benefactions, by the definite 
assignment of university funds, or through state aid. 

Sooner or later the same problem must be met here in Ameri- 
ca. Sufficient funds have been forthcoming to start the move- 
ment and carry it through a highly successful season. That 
was the main thing. The good gained is now to be secured and 
extended. To do this it is very desirable that the revenues shall 
not be precarious. The present source of income, by subscrip- 
tions, will keep the movement alive, but it will not allow that 
more comprehensive policy which seems so desirable. Private 
endowment has already done something and will probably do 
more, as the opportunities for good become known. 

The possibility of enlisting Government aid opens a larger 
question. University extension is a national movement which is 
intended to reach all classes and to promote the most vital inter- 
ests of the nation. It has, then, as large a claim upon the national 
pocket-book as any interest which the Government can recognize. 
The States provide for primary and secondary education; the na- 
tion might well provide for the higher culture. It seems to me a 
possible and in many ways a highly desirable scheme that with 
the unification of university extension into one national society, 
and the division of the country into suitable districts, the work 
should assume a truly national character and should be brought 
into close relation with the Department of Education at Wash- 
ington. The commissioner might have his representative in each 
extension district, and the local office thus organized would not 
only be the center of the extension work in the district, but it 
could also render material service in the collection of educational 
statistics, and in bringing the department into more vital touch 
with the schools of the country. In this way we should have a 
university coextensive with America, a truly national university, 
since it would include the entire people, and one which would be 
a much greater power for good than the elaborate institution 
which is dreamed of for the capital city. 

It is a commonplace that the most vital interest of America 
is the education of her citizens, and that her greatest danger lies 
in the disintegrating force of ignorance within her own borders. 
But this largest interest, both in point of power and of danger, is 
given secondary place in the national councils. We have a Sec- 
retary of War, of the Navy, of the Treasury, and of such material 
interests, but we have no Secretary of Education. With the ele- 
vation of the commissioner to the place of a cabinet ofiicer, the 
new portfolio would be well charged with power if it had linked 
to it the destiny of a work of such magnitude and promise as uni- 



14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

versity extension. We should then be committed as a people in 
very practice to what we now profess only in theory, to the en- 
lightenment and elevation of the whole nation. There are doubt- 
less difficulties and objections in the way of carrying out the sug- 
gestion here brought forward ; but, when the evidence for and 
against is duly considered, I believe that the balance will be 
found much in favor of such a nationalization of the extension 
movement. 

As I set down in formal order these statements concerning the 
achievements and potentialities of university extension, I feel 
again the deep enthusiasm which was aroused by a first acquaint- 
ance with that large idea for which the movement stands. The 
attempt to realize this idea has had mixed with it somewhat that 
was unworthy. There has been a manifest tendency to estimate 
its worth by the common American standard of numbers. That 
thousands should listen to a popular extension lecturer was count- 
ed success ; and men have gone into the work for the admitted 
purpose of advertising themselves and their branches. But these 
are the accidents of the movement. Under them there is an es- 
sential principle, a working idea, which has in it immense 
promise. 

As a people we greatly need the leaven of a higher purpose. 
The ideal of life most current has in it much that is sordid and 
mercenary. Here is an opportunity to present a more worthy 
ideal, to substitute for the popular self-assertion a spirit of greater 
teachableness. We have not yet reached a point where we can 
impose our ideas upon the world-spirit, however vaingloriously 
we may try. They are not worthy. They must needs be reno- 
vated and transformed before they deserve permanence. The 
greatest claim which the extension movement can have upon 
thoughtful people is that it is an organized crusade against that 
current Philistinism which devotes the social opportunity known 
as America to lower motives and ends than are worthy of it. It 
is a mistake to suppose for an instant that the public schools of 
the country will ever save us from the utterly commonplace, or to 
fancy that the higher education is an expensive luxury which we 
can quite as well do without. On the contrary, it is just as much 
a necessity as the elementary training. It is essential to have 
good foundations, but, if we all went to building cellars and 
stopped there, we should never have any cities. We need the 
higher education in America, and we need it in large measure, for 
we are a people with a large opportunity. And we need it par- 
ticularly now, for the grave problems which press upon us for so- 
lution will demand a tolerance and large-mindedness which come 
only when the human spirit is well disciplined. We have here a 
great and busy people, but a people too unimaginative and too 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 15 

unideal. We need the infusion of a spirit of culture into tlie 
national thought and life, if we are to realize the destiny which 
seems possible to us. 

The preaching of Peter the Hermit aroused all Europe. The 
present occasion is less picturesque, but the crusade which it 
preaches stands for interests much more vital than the recovery 
of Jerusalem. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES 
SINCE COLUMBUS. 

IX. THE MANUFACTURE OF STEEL. {Concluded.) 
Br WILLIAM F. DURFEE, Engineer. 

WHILE the Englishmen, Bessemer and Parry, and the Ameri- 
can, Martien, were experimenting in England, the germ 
which they were trying to develop into vigorous life had been 
discovered in America; for the evidence is unimpeachable that 
the late William Kelly had been for several years experimenting 
in the same direction as his English contemporaries. We are 
indebted to Mr. James M. Swank for securing a description of 
these experiments from Mr. Kelly himself; and the reader who 
desires to s§e the most complete account yet published of them 
will find it in Mr. Swank's Iron in all Ages. 

Mr. Kelly and his brother bought the Eddyville Iron Works, 
in Kentucky, in 1846. Their product was pig metal and charcoal 
blooms. As a result of close study, the idea occurred to Mr. Kelly 
that in the refining process fuel would be unnecessary after the 
iron was melted, if powerful blasts of air were forced into the fluid 
metal, for the heat generated by the union of the oxygen of the 
air with the carbon of the metal would be sufiicient to accomplish 
the refining. He first built a small blast-furnace, about twelve 
feet high, in which to test this idea. The furnace had two tuyeres, 
one above the other, the upper one to melt the stock, and the 
lower to convey the blast into the metal. He began his experi- 
ments in October, 1847, but was interrupted by other work, and 
did not find time to take them up again till 1851. Finding that 
this furnace was not capable of melting the iron properly, he de- 
cided to separate his refining process from the melting operation, 
and take the metal already melted from the blast-furnace. In 
these experiments he was endeavoring to produce malleable iron. 

" With this object in view," says Mr. I^elly, " I built a furnace, 
consisting of a square brick abutment, having a circular chamber 
inside, the bottom of which was concave like a molder's ladle. 
In the bottom was fixed a circular tile of fire-clay, perforated for 



i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

tuyeres. Under this tile was an air-chamber, connected by pipes 
with the blowing-engine. This is substantially the plan now 
used in the Bessemer converter. The first trial of this furnace 
was very satisfactory. The iron was well refined and decarbon- 
ized — at least as well as by the finery fire. This fact was ad- 
mitted by all the forgemen who examined it. The blowing was 
usually continued from five to ten minutes, whereas the finery 
fire required over an hour. Here was a great saving of time and 
fuel, as well as great encouragement to work the process out to 
perfection. I was not satisfied with making refined or run-out 
metal ; my object was to make malleable iron. In attempting 
this I made, in the course of the following eighteen months, a 
variety of experiments. I built a suitable hot-blast oven ; but, 
after a few trials, abandoned it, finding the cold blast preferable, 
for many reasons. After many trials of this furnace I found 
that I could make refined metal, suitable for the charcoal forge 
fire, without any difficulty, and, when the blast was continued 
for a longer period, the iron would occasionally be somewhat 
malleable. At one time, on trying the iron, to my great sur- 
prise, I found the iron would forge well, and it was pronounced 
as good as any charcoal forge iron. I had a piece of this iron 
forged into a bar four feet long and three eighths of an inch 
square. I kept this bar for exhibition, and was frequently asked 
for a small j^iece, which I readily gave, until it was reduced to a 
length of a few inches. This piece I have still in my possession. 
It is the first piece of malleable iron or steel ever made by the 
pneumatic process." 

Although not giving up the idea of making malleable iron, 
Mr. Kelly now proceeded to utilize his invention so far as it was 
a complete success. He built a converter, five feet high and 
eighteen inches inside diameter, with the tuyere in the side. In 
this vessel he could refine fifteen hundred-weight of metal in 
from five to ten minutes, effecting a great saving in time and 
fuel. After a few days' trial, the old, troublesome " run-out " 
fires were entirely dispensed with. " M}^ process," says Mr. Kelly, 
in the account above quoted, " was known to every iron-maker in 
the Cumberland River iron district as ' Kelly's air-boiling pro- 
cess.' The reason why I did not apply for a patent for it sooner 
than I did was that I flattered myself I would soon make it the 
successful process I at first endeavored to achieve — namel}", a pro- 
cess for making malleable iron and steel. In 1857 I applied for a 
patent, as soon as I heard that other men were following the same 
line of experiments in England ; and, although Mr. Bessemer was 
a few days before me in obtaining a patent, I was granted an inter- 
ference, and the case was heard by the Commissioner of Patents, 
who decided that I was the first inventor of this process, now 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 17 

known as the Bessemer process, and a patent was granted me 
over Mr. Bessemer." 

There has been a feeling among metallurgists in both hemi- 
spheres that William Kelly's claims as an originator of a process 
similar in all its essential features to that invented by Henry 
Bessemer rest on a very unsubstantial foundation of experi- 
mental facts and experience. This impression is entirely errone- 
ous, as was proved in the interference proceedings before the 
Commissioner of Patents, pending the issuance of a patent to 
Kelly (June 23, 1857) ; and again in 1870, when the question of 
granting an extension of Bessemer's patent (of November 11, 
1856) was before the United States Patent Office, the commissioner 
refused to grant such extension, holding that the patent should 
not have been issued, as William Kelly was the prior inventor ; 
and still again, when in 1871 William Kelly's patent was extended 
for seven years, it having been proved to the satisfaction of the 
commissioner that he had not been sufficiently remunerated for 
the invention ; and yet again, by the fact of royalties having 
been regularly paid by the manufacturers of steel during the 
whole of the seven years for which Kelly's patent was extended, 
for the right to use his invention; and so unimpeachable was 
the evidence on which his claims were founded, that there was 
no attempt to set them aside during that time.* 

The plain, straightforward statement of Mr. Kelly above quoted 
is an additional proof that he was no mere schemer or dreamer. 
It is evident that he had a definite end in view — the making of 
malleable iron — and had he possessed more. capital and been situ- 
ated where he could have availed himself of the best facilities, it 
is quite probable that he would have arrived at that end by the 
employment of methods and apparatus which would have left 
little to be desired ; but, located in a small community (Eddyville 
had not five hundred inhabitants), in a part of the country re- 
mote from the best mechanical appliances and with limited 
means, it is remarkable that he carried his invention as far as 
he did before the heavy hand of bankruptcy crushed alike his 
ledgers and experiments. 

As matters stood when Kelly's patent was issued, Bessemer 
had received a patent for the same invention, and at a later date a 
number of patents for apparatus the design of which was clearly 
very far in advance of anything accomplished by Kelly. Joseph 
G. Martien also had obtained a patent (February 24, 1857) for sub- 

* In this connection it is proper to note that all the profits which the owners of the 
patents of Bessemer, Kelly, and Mushet ever received were earned and divided during the 
seven years covered by the extension of the patent of William Kelly ; and had not that 
extension been granted, the parties who had put their money into the purchase of these 
patents would never have received one cent for their investment. 

VOL. XL. — 2 



i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

stantially the same claims as he had patented in England ; but^ so 
far as can be ascertained, he made no attempt to work his process, 
having become convinced that the inventions of Bessemer and 
Kelly were mnch more practical and really of an earlier date.* 

On May 26, 1857, Kobert F. Mushet, son of David Mushet, the 
famous Scotch metallurgist, obtained an American patent for the 
addition of a compound of iron, carbon, and manganese to cast 
iron in the process of making malleable iron and steel. Previous 
to this invention neither Bessemer nor Kelly had secured uniform 
product ; and in fact Kelly had in only a few instances been able 
to make a malleable metal, Mushet's invention, therefore, became 
at once of controlling value as respects the new method of manu- 
facturing steel. 

Early in the year 1860 the attention of the late Zohetli Shear- 
man Durfee f was attracted to the Bessemer process. Having 
become convinced of the great value of the process claimed alike 
by Bessemer and Kelly, he induced the late Captain E. B. Ward, 
of Detroit, to join him in obtaining control of Kelly's patents, and 
of the American patents of Bessemer's apparatus and process, 
and of Mushet's manganese mixture. In 1861 Mr. Durfee went to 
Europe and spent several months in studying the practice of 
making " Bessemer steel " in England, France, and Sweden. After 
his return he and Captain Ward, in May, 1863, organized " The 
Kelly Process Company,^' admitting Daniel J. Morrell, of Johns- 
town, Pa., and William M. Lyon and James Park, Jr., of Pitts- 
burg, Pa,, to an interest in the enterprise. J Although Mr. Kelly 

* Under date of May 29, 1357, Martien wrote to Messrs. Munn & Co., the solicitors of 
William Kelly, a most generous letter, in which he abandons all claim to precedence in 
the invention. The following is an extract from this letter: "I have found and have 
been made perfectly satisfied, from the ample testimony laid before me in the case, that Mr. 
Kelly is honestly the first and original inventor of the said process of manufacturing iron 
without fuel. I find, moreover, that he has quietly been and is making improvements and 
advancing with his invention in a very praiseworthy manner, and of which the public will 
be put in possession in a short time." 

f The late Z. S. Durfee was born in Fall River, Mass., on April 22, 1831, and died in 
Providence, R. I., June 8, 1880. He was a practical worker in iron and steel, and I claim 
that he was the first business man in America to fully appreciate the great value of the 
new process. He manifested the faith that was in him by a persistent effort to secure its 
adoption, and, had his views been supported by his business associates, the manufacture of 
steel by the pneumatic process would have been both a technical and commercial success 
in the United States many years earlier than it was. 

X These gentlemen were selected because of their well-known business ability and 
their influential association with or ownership of some of the largest and best-appointed 
iron and steel works of the country, and it was confidently expected that they would take a. 
lively interest in the new process by promptly employing it in the works with which they 
were identified, and that their example would be very generally followed by the larger iron 
and steel works of the United States. In this expectation Captain Ward and Z. S. Durfee 
were greatly disappointed, as neither Mr. Lyon nor Mr. Parke ever adopted the process in 
their works, and Mr. Morrell only succeeded in overcoming the objections of his associates 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 19 

was not included in this company, a certain interest in any 
profits which it might make was guaranteed to him. Mr. Z. S. 
Durfee soon went to England again to arrange for the control of 
the rights of Bessemer and Mushet in America. He was unsuc- 
cessful in the former case, but obtained, October 24, 1864, control 
of the American patent for the use of spiegeleisen, as Mushet's 
triple compound was called, on terms which admitted Robert F. 
Mushet, Thomas D. Clare, and John N. Brown, of England, to 
membership in the company ; and on the 6th of September, 1865, 
it was further enlarged by the admission of Charles P. Chouteau, 
James Harrison, and Felix Vallt^, all of St. Louis, Mo.* 

While Z. S. Durfee was on his first visit to Europe, the writer 
of these papers was invited by Captain Ward to design and erect 
an experimental plant to determine the possibility of making a 
good steel by the new process from Lake Superior iron. I ac- 
cepted the invitation, and reached Detroit, Mich., on the morning 
of July 1, 1862. It was decided to construct a blowing engine, 
and a converting vessel large enough for producing steel on a 
commercial scale, with reference to their use in a works properly 
planned for economical administration and production should the 
experimental works justify such an enterprise. As to the rest of 
the plant, it was decided to construct it as cheaply and simply as 
would answer the purpose of the experimental works only, and it 
was further decided that the experimental plant was to be located 
adjacent to, and partly in, the building of the Eureka Furnace 
at Wyandotte, Mich., about ten miles from Detroit, where Cap- 
tain Ward had extensive rolling-mills. The metal for the ex- 
periments would be taken direct from the blast-furnace, and the 
spiegeleisen was to be melted in crucibles. 

As soon as this general scheme was fixed upon, I began my 
plans for carrying it out. But very little guidance was obtain- 
able in this task. I had never seen any apparatus for the manu- 
facture of steel by the method proposed, and the description of 
that used by Mr. Kelly convinced me that it was not suited for 
an experiment on so large a scale as was contemplated at Wyan- 
dotte. As it was confidently expected that Z. S. Durfee would 
be able to purchase Bessemer's American patents, it was thought 
only to be anticipating the acquisition of property rights to use 
his inventions. I accordingly procured copies of his patents, 

in the Cambria Iron Company (of which he was general manager) in such time as to enable 
him to commence making steel eight years after he was admitted as a member of " The 
Kelly Process Company." 

* These gentlemen were owners and operators of large iron-works ; and, although their 
admission as members of " The Kelly Process Company " was with the expectation that 
their example and influence would promote its interest, they did not erect steel-works, and 
the company was in no way strengthened by their connection with it. 



20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

which, together with the description contained in the first edition 
of Fairbairn's History of the Manufacture of Iron, embraced all 




^ 


CO 


a. 




o 


■< 


? 

^ 




Ul 

111 


a 


H 


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tn 




11. 


X 


O 


u 


z 




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the information then accessible to me relative to the European 
practice of the new art. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 



21 



Difficult as my task was, it was made almost insupportably 
burdensome by the outspoken opposition of nearly every influ- 
ential person in Wyandotte. Nevertheless the work progressed, 
so that on the return of Z. S. Durfee from England in September, 
1862, I was enabled to show him the "converter" nearly com- 
plete, and was greatly pleased to hear him say that it " looked 




Fig. 61.— ('iMss-f^KCTioN of the Casting-house at Wyandotte. 

very like converters that he had seen abroad." In the winter of 
1863-63 the blowing engine was commenced, but owing to various 
interruptions it was not completed till the spring of 1864. 

The plan (Fig. 60) shows the general features of the arrange- 
ment adopted, save that over the casting-pit was a single-track 
traveling-hoist for handling ingots and molds. This hoist was op- 
erated by a winch located at lu, the space allotted me in the cast- 
ing-house not permitting the use of a crane of ordinary form. 

The reverberatory furnace for melting pig iron was not in- 
cluded in my original programme ; but in the summer of 1864, 
before the first conversion was made, it was decided to erect it in 
order that we could experiment with a variety of brands of pig 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



iron sent us by parties interested in the works. A hearth was 
made near the base of the chimney for melting spiegel ; and sub- 
sequently a small furnace (located at S, Fig. GO) was constructed 
for melting spiegel when the metal for conversion was taken 
direct from the blast-furnace.* 

Continuing our description of the works, Fig. 01 is a view of the 
machinery in the casting-house as it apj^eared to a person standing 
in the " pulpit " (see Fig. 60) and looking toward the converter, V. 
This converter is represented on a larger scale in sectional ele- 





Section of Tuyere on line A.B- 



Lower end of Tuyere 



Fig. 62.— Section or the First American Steel Converter. 

vation by Fig. 62 ; and to the right of this figure is seen a longi- 
tudinal section and end views of one of the seven tuyeres used in 
the converter. This vessel was made with its upper part in two 
separate sections, and it was supported on its trunnions by two 

* It was at these works, in the summer of 1865, that Z. S. Durfee made the first 
attempt to melt pig metal in a cupola for use in the converting vessel. At that time the 
practice abroad was to melt the metal in a reverberatory furnace. Owing to the small size 
of the eupola and its distance from the converting vessel, the experiment was not entirely 
successful ; but Mr. Durfee did not abandon his belief in the usefulness of this process. 
I claim for him the origination of the idea of cupola melting, which has contributed so 
much to the rapidity and economy of production in the steel-works of the world. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 23 

tall cast-iron standards, and was turned by worm-gearing arranged 
to be driven either by band or power. The engine which supplied 
the blast to the converter is represented in front elevation by Fig. 
G3 ; it was constructed from original working drawings made by 
the writer. It was intended to produce a pressure of blast of six- 
teen pounds per square inch, which was regarded as very heavy ; in 
fact, I was informed, at the time of commencing the plans for this 
engine (the winter of 18G3-'63), that the pressure used for blowing 
steel in England and Sweden was but eight pounds. I adopted 
the higher pressure with a view to shortening the time required 
for a " blow," but I soon became satisfied that this was a mistaken 
departure. I found myself in most excellent company, however, 
for, before my engine was finished, steel was blown in England 
with a blast pressure of twenty-five pounds, a practice which 
has continued until the present time. The engine had three 
upright cylinders of the same internal dimensions (twenty-four 
inches in diameter and thirty-six-inch stroke), the middle one 
being the steam cylinder and the outside ones the blowing 
cylinders. 

Very soon after entering upon the study of the new process it 
became evident to me that an accurate knowledge of the chemical 
constituents of the metals and other materials employed was 
essential to its successful conduct ; for, after we had found by 
working them that certain irons were, and others were not, suited 
to our purpose, analysis would in future enable us to determine 
whether any offered brand of iron was of suitable quality. These 
considerations, with others, determined the addition of a chemical 
laboratory to the works.* 

As late as 1868 a large establishment for the manufacture of 
steel (in which over a million dollars was invested) commenced 
operations in western Pennsylvania, and at the end of one year 
it was abandoned and dismantled, the whole of the investment 
having been utterly lost in consequence of attempting to use ma- 
terial which an analysis costing not over fifty dollars would have 
shown to be absolutely unfit for the purpose intended. American 
" iron-masters " (so called) were not alone in their contempt for 
chemistry. I have in my possession a pamphlet published by a 
well-known firm of steel manufacturers in Sheffield, England, as 
late as 1870, for the purpose of attracting attention and trade, in 
which the following sentences occur : " The various articles on the 

* At this time there was no such thing as a laboratory in connection with a steel-works 
in America: to the so-called "practical steel-makers" chemistry was an unknown and 
unappreciated science, and no sneer was too cynical for them to bestow upon those who 
advocated its employment. The laboratory at Wyandotte (which was derisively called 
"^ Durfee's 'pothecary-shop ") was ultimately destroyed by the influence of incarnate ma- 
licious ignorance. 



24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

manufacture of cast steel in encyclopaedias and other works are 
for the most part out of date or are written by scientific men hav- 
ing little or no practical acquaintance with the subject, and con- 
sequently are not of much value. . . . The steel manufacturers of 
Sheffield are not chemists. The application of chemistry to the 
manufacture of cast steel has not yet met with any success. The 




Fig. 63. — Blowing-Engine of the Wyandotte Works. 



analysis of steel is a very difficult process. It has frequently 
been attempted in Sheffield, but never with any practical success." 
It is possible that the triumphs of chemistry during the past 
twenty years, as illustrated by the Thomas- Gilchrist and many 
other important improvements in metallurgical practice, may 
have convinced the worshipers of the ultra-practical — American 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 25 

as well as English— that there are possibilities in chemistry not 
dreamed of in their philosophy. 

The need of a laboratory was fully appreciated by Mr. Z. S. 
Durfee, and in the spring of 1863 he secured the services of Mr. 
Emil Schalk, a native of Germany, and a graduate of the Ecole 
Centrale of Paris, as chemist. On his arrival in Detroit, at the 
request of Captain E. B. Ward, he accompanied an exploring 
party to northern Wisconsin. The result of this expedition was 
the discovery of a number of deposits of excellent iron ore. 

On Mr. Schalk's return in October, 1863, he commenced some 
original investigations with a view to determine the influence of 
nitrogen upon steel, which promised to develop very interesting 
and valuable results ; but, unfortunately, circumstances for which 




Fig. 64.- 



w w 

-Chemical Laboratory at Wyandotte. 



he was in no way responsible caused his resignation in December, 
1863, before they were completed. Of Mr. Schalk's abilities I had 
the highest estimation, and I very much regretted his departure 
from Wyandotte. 

I will now describe the arrangement of the laboratory. The 
main building shown in the plan (Fig. 64) was about twenty-four 
feet square ; it was divided by a partition into two rooms, A and 
B, of equal size, and each about eighteen feet high. At the rear 
of this building was a lean-to shed, C ; cZ is an entrance to this 
shed from without ; x, a door communicating with A ; and y is 
the main entrance to the building. The room A was used for 
general analytical work, and was provided with furniture and 
VOL. XL. — 3 



26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

apparatus, as shown in the plan. The furnishing of the room B 
is also indicated. 

The *' melting-hole,'' in the corner of the lean-to shed C, was 
large enough to receive a pot which would hold seventy pounds 
of melted metal. Space will not permit a detailed description of 
the apparatus used in this laboratory,* but it would be regarded 
at the present day even, as thoroughly adequate for its purpose. 

In the works at Wyandotte, on one of the early days of Sep- 
tember, 1864, was produced, under the supervision of the writer 
of these papers, the first " Bessemer steel " f made in America. 

* This description of tlie Experimental Steel Works of Wyandotte is, owing to space 
limitations, much curtailed ; but any interested reader will find in the Transactions of the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, vol. vi, p. 40, and in the Transactions of the 
American Institute of Mining Engineers, vol. xii, p. 223, papers by the writer hereof in 
which much more attention is given to details than is here permissible. 

f I adopt here and elsewhere in this article the popular designation, for the reason 
that I believe it to be the just and proper one ; for, while there is no room for a doubt 
that the late WiUiam Kelly anticipated Bessemer by several years in the discovery of the 
fundamental idea of the process, he did not carry it out to its ultimate possibility as a 
means for the manufacture of steel ; and while there is no reason to believe that Besse- 
mer ever heard of what Kelly was doing, it is pretty certain that had not Kelly noted the 
granting of a patent to Bessemer he would never (owing to his unfavorable location sup- 
plemented by pecuniary embarrassment) have been able to procure such attention from the 
iron trade of this country as would have insured him any reward for his invention. Fur- 
thermore, although in Kelly's stationary " converter," it would have been, under proper 
management, quite possible to make a satisfactory quality of steel (stationary "con- 
verters " were used in Sweden with success for many years), it was quite evident from the 
first that the highly original and ingenious apparatus invented by Bessemer (especially 
the tilting " converter," and the " casting ladle " having a tap-hole in its bottom) was far 
superior to anything proposed by Kelly. It is also quite evident that had not Mushet (or 
some one else) suggested the use of spiegeleisen, neither the ideas of Kelly nor Bessemer 
would have been of value except in the direction in which they were practically carried 
out by Kelly as a substitute for the refinery-fire, or in the special case of iron containing a 
notable quantity of manganese (as was the fact in those used at first in Sweden) ; but it is 
not at all probable that Kelly would have discovered what was necessary to perfect the 
process, as he had no knowledge of spiegeleisen (in 1857 no iron was known in the com- 
merce of America by that name) and was not a chemist or an employer of chemists — but, 
judging from the fact that Bessemer availed himself of the aid of chemistry at an early 
day in his investigations, it is not at all improbable that he would have himself discovered 
the value of spiegeleisen had not Mushet anticipated him. I think all the facts warrant 
the naming the discovery The Bessemer-Kelly-Mushet Process ; but as Bessemer, by his 
ingenuity, persistence in methodical endeavor, and business sagacity, is clearly entitled to 
the first place, and if the process is to bear but one name, the popular verdict of over 
thirty years is fully justifiable in calling it " The Bessemer Process." 

While we are thus considering the relative merits of the chief actors in this metallur- 
gical drama, it is but just that we should award due praise to Martien, the American, and 
Parry, the Englishman, for ideas of great originality, which, had they been followed out to 
their logical conclusion, must have developed similar results to those attained by Besse- 
mer. These metallurgists evidently were standing, as it were, on the " delectable moimt- 
ains " of discovery, and seeing dimly and afar some suggestions of the practical glories 
of the metallurgy of coming generations. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 27 

This event was a great disappointment to all those who had filled 
the air with predictions of failure, and they immediately turned 
their attention to a general depreciation of the results attained, 
and the persecution, with renewed vigor, of all who were respon- 
sible for them. 

The first steel rails produced in America were rolled at the 
works of the Chicago Rolling-Mill Company (now a part of the 
Illinois Steel Company's plant, but then under the superintend- 
ency of O, W. Potter, Esq., late President of the Illinois Steel 
Companj^), at Chicago, on the 24th day of May, 18G5. These rails 
were successfully rolled in a " twenty-one-inch three-high train," 
whose rolls were intended for rolling iron rails, and this fact is 
indubitable evidence of the excellent quality of the steel. There 
were three rails rolled on the 2-l:th, and on the 25th three others.* 
Various experiments were tried to test the ductility and work- 
ing qualities of the steel produced at Wyandotte ; some of the 
early product was sent to Bridge water, Mass., and there rolled 
into tack plate and cut into tacks, which were pronounced to be 
very much superior to any previously made of iron.f In order 
to test the welding qualities of the steel, John Bishop, the black- 
smith of the works, made a tobacco-pipe, the size of an ordinary 
clay pipe, the bowl and stem of which were welded up of Wyan- 
dotte steel, and when perfectly polished there was no visible evi- 
dence of a weld. I have now two jackknives and a razor made 
from this steel ; the knives are rather soft, but the razor was used 
regularly by my father for fifteen years, to his entire satisfaction. 

When it had been shown that the pneumatic process was a 
qualitative success, instead of carrying out the original under- 
standing and erecting new works arranged with especial refer- 
ence to rapid and economical w^orking, the parties in interest in- 
sisted that I should put a second converter into the experimental 
works, and attempt to make it a commercial success. Knowing 
that such an attempt could only result in utter failure, I resigned 
my position (June 1, 1865). Nevertheless, the proposed plan was 
carried out, and the works were permanently closed after about a 
year's unprofitable experience. 

While the experimental works were being constructed at Wy- 
andotte, the firm of Winslow, Griswold & Holley was formed 
for the purpose of purchasing Bessemer's American patents, and 
manufacturing steel under them. Negotiations with Bessemer 
were concluded in the spring of 1SG4, and an experimental plant 
at Troy, N. Y., was started on February 16, 1865. 

* These rails were laid in the track of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, and it is 
known that they carried the traffic over ten years, but unfortunately there is no record of 
the time when they were taken out and discarded. 

f It is believed that these were the first tacks made of steel. 



28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

The purchase of the American patents of Bessemer by this 
firm at once challenged the right of the Kelly Process Company 
to employ the jjrocess invented by Kelly, and to the use of the 
apparatus invented by Bessemer ; but, at the same time, the Kelly 
Process Company having purchased the Mushet patent for the 
use of spiegeleisen, was in a position to challenge the possibility 
of Messrs. Winslow, Griswold & HoUey's making steel by the 
" Bessemer process " at all. The validity of the Bessemer patents 
for apparatus was, from the first, conceded by the Kelly Process 
Company, and arrangements were made, as soon as it was ascer- 
tained that they could not purchase the American patents of 
Bessemer, to dispense with the use of the machinery protected 
thereby ; for they could avail themselves of that used by Kelly, 
which, although not nearly as convenient, was still, with some 
obvious improvements, capable of doing good work ; or, rather, 
what the practice of the time called such.* 

In view of these facts the Kelly Process Company was clearly 
the master of both the legal and commercial situation ; and had 
it been governed by an enlightened business selfishness it would 
have profited by the advantageous position in which (thanks to 
the indefatigable labors of the late Z. S. Durfee, its secretary) it 
was placed ; but in order to do this the law had to be invoked, 
and to the majority of the members of the Kelly Process Com- 
pany the law was a terror! Lawyers must be paid! Experts 
would not testify gratuitously ! Costs of court would accumu- 
late ! Judges were doubtful ! Jurors were uncertain ! And then, 
if victorious, what would they gain ? And if defeated, utter ruin 
would overwhelm them ! Never before or since has a party of rep- 
utable business men been so needlessly alarmed and so utterly ob- 
livious of the first principles of a sound business policy. The vari- 
ous bugaboos and hobgoblins which their terrified imagination 
conjured up of the horrors of the life to come among courts, judges, 
lawyers, experts, witnesses, and obstinate jurors, in case they 
ventured to assert in a court their manifest right, at last drove 
them into making a proposition to Messrs. Winslow, Griswold & 
Holley looking to a combination of the interests of the two com- 
panies, and to their final acceptance of an agreement under which 
they surrendered rights which were of great value to Messrs. 
Winslow, Griswold & Holley, and obtained practically no rights 
in return save that of receiving but thirty per cent of the royal- 
ties earned by the combination, and that of leaving to Messrs, 
Winslow, Griswold & Holley the remaining seventy j)er cent. 

* In the early days of the Bessemer process, three " blows " in ten hours was thought 
to be a very creditable performance, but at the present time a works that could not make 
that number in an hour would be regarded as a fit subject for an inquest. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 29 

In the whole history of business affairs it would indeed be hard 
to find a more perfect illustration of " the tail waggling the dog " 
than this. It is only justice to the late Z. S. Durfee to say that 
he opposed this compromise and its unjust disposition of the 
rights of himself and associates with all the energy of which he 
was capable ; and the fact that all the royalties the combination 
ever earned were received under the operation of an extension of 
the patent of William Kelly is quite sufficient to justify his busi- 
ness sagacity and foresight. 

The experimental works erected by Messrs. Winslow, Griswold 
& Holley at Troy were used for nearly two years for the pur- 
pose for which they were designed, and their proprietors " ex- 
tended every facility to blast-furnace owners in all parts of the 
country to have their irons tried for steel ; . , . many were tried 
and most were found wanting." * It does not aj)pear that any 
effort was made to compare the chemical composition of the irons 
that made good steel with that of the irons that would only make 
bad steel ; and what was " good metal " seems to have been decided 
by actual treatment in the converter. Notwithstanding the nu- 
merous failures in the Troy works to make good steel out of poor 
iron (all tending to discredit the process), there were a sufficient 
number of successes and enough " good metal " discovered to en- 
courage the firm in the erection of new works (called the five- 
ton plant) on a manufacturing scale. January 1, 1867, the late 
A. L. Holley left the Troy works to take charge of works at 
Harrisburg, for which he had furnished the plans. f For a short 
time after the departure of Mr. Holley the Troy works X were 
under the charge of Mr. John C. Thompson. He was succeeded 
by Z. S. Durfee, who " built the forge and made some alterations 
both in plant and details of manufacture. Among other things, 
he adopted for the small or experimental plant the practice of 
melting the recarburizing metal in crucibles, and obtained most 
excellent results. . . . Mr. Durfee resigned his connection with the 
works in 1868, and Mr. Holley once more became the manager." 

Up to January, 1871, the ingots produced in these works were 

* Paper by R. W. Hunt, Trans. American Institute of Mining Engineers, vol. v, pp. 
201-216. 

f The phenomenal development of the " Bessemer process " in America during the 
fifteen years preceding the death of Mr. Holley in 1882 was largely due to his efforts. For 
a full account of the life and labors of the late Alexander L. Holley, C. E., LL. D., the 
reader is referred to a memorial volume published in 1884 by the American Institute of 
Mining Engineers, and to an able address delivered by James Dredge, Estj., Honorary 
Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, in Chickering Hall, October 2, 
1890, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Holley Memorial Statue, in Washington 
Park, New York. 

X These works are still running, the company owning them now being known as the 
Troy Steel and Iron Company. 



30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

either hammered in the forge, or " bloomed " from nine-inch ingots, 
at the Rensselaer Rolling Mill in Troy, N. Y., or the Spuyten 
Duyvil Rail Mill at Spuyten Duyvil, N. Y., and then rolled into 
rails at these establishments, but on the above date Mr. Holley 
had a thirty-inch blooming mill ready to run. This mill was the 
joint invention of James Moore, William George, and A. L. Holley, 
and was built by James Moore, at his Bush Hill Iron Works, 
Philadelphia. The mill was provided with front and back lifting 
tables raised by hydraulic power. The tables carried loose rolls, 
on which the twelve-inch ingot (heavy enough to make two rail 
blooms) was placed and pushed into the rolls by men. Eight men 
were required to attend the mill. This mill proved to be a great 
advance over previous practice, but in the fall of 1873 improve- 
ments were added (invented by George Fritz, of Johnstown, Pa.) 
which reduced the force required at the mill to three men and 
a boy. 

It is manifestly impossible in these pages to give in detail the 
history of the several Bessemer steel-works now in operation, and 
I have been thus particular in sketching at length the inception 
and development of the plants at Wyandotte, Mich., and Troy, 
N". Y., because they were the genesis of the Bessemer steel indus- 
try in America, and their history admirably illustrates the mani- 
fold obstacles which the promoters of all ultra-novel and radi- 
cally revolutionary inventions have always had to encounter. I 
well remember the sneers which greeted my statement that the 
time would come " when a steel rail could be made cheaper than 
an iron one " ; and now that time having arrived, it is no small 
compensating satisfaction to know that the faith delivered thirty 
years ago to the workers at Wyandotte and Troy has expanded 
with the years and by " works "' has been made perfect : mount- 
ains have been removed,* and the metal of their ores now in our 
railways binds the nation together with bars of steel, along 
which glide shuttle-like, to and fro, the steam-propelled carriers 
of the commerce of a continent ; interweaving it with the warp 
threads of agriculture and all arts, and producing a fabric of 
national prosperity and happiness that shall wear through the 
ages and continue to clothe this people while time endures. 

A modern establishment for the manufacture of steel rails is 
vastly different from those ancient " plants " in which bar iron 
and iron rails were made forty years ago. Works that would 
turn out seventy tons per day then were thought to be remarkable 
both in size and in administration, but at the present time there 

* The " Iron Mountain " of Missouri, which at one time was supposed to be inex- 
haustible, has had all its ore passed through the " furnace " and converted into iron and 
steel ; and it is only a question of a few years when other great deposits now regarded ag 
" mountains of ore " will share the same fate. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 



3» 



are many mills in the United States that can produce more than 
ten times as much in the same time. In the more perfectly ar- 




ranged steel-works the molten metal is taken directly from the 
blast-furnace to the converter, and, after being " blown," is cast 



32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

into an ingot suflSciently heavy to make four rails ; this ingot is 
taken from its mold while it is red-hot on its outside and still 
liquid internally, and put into a " soaking pit " * or a reheating 
furnace to prevent loss of heat, and as soon as possible, it is sent 
to the " blooming train " and rolled into a bloom ; this is at once 
automatically conveyed to the " rail-train " and rolled into a con- 
tinuous rail about one hundred and twenty-three feet in length, 
which is carried on rollers driven by power to the "" cutting-off 
saws," which divide it into four rails of thirty feet in length, and 
the two extreme ends of the original rail, called " crop ends," are 
about eighteen inches long. The four rails, while still red-hot, 
are carried by machinery to the " cambering machine," and thence 
to the " hot-bed." f They are next taken to the " cold straightening 
presses," and any crookedness is removed by powerful pressure ; 
the bolt-holes for "fish-plates " are then drilled in their ends, after 
which the rails are turned over to the " inspectors " rej)resenting 
the railway for which the rails are intended. 

Fig. 65 I is a very spirited night view of a scene outside the 
casting-house of one of the furnaces of the Illinois Steel Com- 
pany. A portion of the furnace itself and one of its supporting 
columns are seen through the left-hand arch. In the left fore- 
ground are two " slag-buggies " being filled with liquid slag ; on 
the right is a locomotive ready to pull them to the dump. In the 
center of the picture are two large " ladles " (numbered 14 and 10) 
capable of holding ten tons each of fluid metal, which is con- 
veyed to them by the " runners " or " gutters " whose ends are seen 
projecting over the " ladles " ; these gutters receive the molten 
metal direct from the "blast-furnace," and as soon as the 
" ladles " are filled they are drawn away by a locomotive which 
takes them up an inclined plane on to an iron bridge or platform, 
which extends across the converter-house in front of the converters. 
This bridge is plainly shown in Fig. 60, and a small locomotive is 
seen on the left-hand end of it. 

Beyond this bridge, and between it and the back wall of the 
building, are the three converters, each intended for the conver- 
sion of ten tons of iron into steel at one operation. The left-hand 



* This is a pit but little wider than the ingot, lined with fire-brick. The lining prevents 
the heat of the steel from radiating into space, and hence the internal heat of the ingot is 
diffused uniformly through its mass ; and after being in the " pit " a certain time the ingot 
is apparently hotter than when it was put in ; it is then taken out and rolled immediately. 
" The soaking-pit process," invented by John Gjers, is the most important improvement in 
the manufacture of steel that has been brought forward in the last eight years. 

f This term is the reverse of descriptive. The " hot-bed " is a huge gridiron, on which 
the rails are placed to cool. 

:): I am under obligations to E. C. Potter, Esq., late Vice-President of the Illinois Steel 
Company for the very effective views from which this and the three following engravings 
have been reduced. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 



33 



converter is shown " turned down," pouring its contents of liquid 
steel into a casting-ladle ; the central converter is upright, and a 




dazzling white volcanic flame issues roaring from its mouth, dis- 
charging itself though the open archway in the wall of the build- 



34 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing — a " blow " is evidently under full headway. The third con- 
verter is seen on the extreme right of the picture, with its 
mouth downward, its bottom having been removed for repairs. 




In front of this bridge are a number of cranes, all operated 
hydraulically, but, unlike the ordinary " hydraulic press," whose 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 35 

movement is usually very slow, these cranes are very rapid in 
their action, more so than any other form of crane ; were this not 
the fact, it would be impossible to handle the vast quantity of 
hot materials — "ingots," and their "molds" — that must be dis- 
posed of with great promptness in a modern steel-works. These 
cranes are veritable giant arms, lifting and conveying with a tire- 
less strength, insensible alike to heat and weight, such masses of 
steel as have only come to the knowledge of man since the in- 
vention of the Bessemer process. 

The various operations of the " converting-house," embracing 
the turning of the converter, the regulation of the blast, and the 
movement of the cranes, are all directed and controlled by means 
of proper " hand-gear " located upon the platform called " the 
pulpit " represented in the foreground of the picture. 

The general aspect of the interior of a converting-house at 
night is at once startling and grandly impressive. Here heat, 
flame, and liquid metal are ever present ; locomotives whistle 
and puff, dragging with clatter and clang huge ladles of molten 
iron; the lurid light, flashing and flaming, that illuminates the 
scene, throws shadows so intensely black that they suggest the 
"black fire" of Milton, for in such a place it is impossible for 
a shadow to be cool ; half-naked, muscular men, begrimed with 
sweat and dust, flit about ; clouds of steam arise from attempts 
to cool in some degree the roasting earth of the floor ; converters 
roar, vibrate, and vomit flames mingled with splashes of metal 
from their white-hot throats ; at intervals the scorching air is 
filled with a rain of coruscating burning iron ; ingot molds lift 
mouths parched with a thirst that can only be appeased for a 
short time by streams of liquid steel that run gurgling into them ; 
the stalwart cranes rise, swing, and fall, loading scores of tons of 
red-hot steel upon cars of iron : all these conditions and circum- 
stances combine to make an igneous total more suggestive of the 
realms of Pluto than any other in the whole range of the metal- 
lurgic arts. 

The ingots of steel are taken from the " converting-house " as 
promptly as possible after they are cast, and carried on iron cars 
to the " blooming-mill " (Fig. G7), where they are put into gas-fired 
furnaces (the end of one is seen on the right of Fig. 67), where 
their heat is maintained, and thence they are taken to the 
" blooming train " and rolled into blooms. The steel-rail bloom 
is a rectangular bar of steel, long enough to produce four or even 
six rails. 

In the cut (Fig. 67) on the left is seen a white-hot ingot of steel 
being carried on an iron " buggy " to the rolls of the blooming 
train, which occupies nearly the center of the picture. On the 
right of this train is seen a bloom about to pass through the 



36 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 




AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 



37 



" finishing groove." The blooming train has a heavy fly-wheel 
driven by an engine of great power. In the farther part of the 
building is seen a cloud of steam which marks the location of the 
" rail train/' to which the finished bloom is conveyed by mechan- 
ical means. Fig. (JS is a very spirited view of that portion of the 
rail-mill beyond the rail train (which is seen in the distance on 
the left of the picture). In the left foreground is shown one of 
the saws which cut the rails into lengths, and near the center 
of the picture a man is seen dragging out one of the " crop ends." 
In all these views the small number of men employed in pro- 
portion to the work performed is very noticeable. By comparing 
one of these cuts with Fig. 47, the great difl'erence between the 
practice of the present and that of thirty-six years ago in this 
respect is very evident. In 1855 a very large proportion of the 
work of a rolling-mill was performed by the strong right hands 
of a multitude of workmen ; but in our day much more and heavier 
work is accomplished by powerful machinery — the crystallization 
of ideas emanating from the strong right head of some mechan- 
ical engineer, who had the ingenious courage to devise hands of 
iron, and muscles of steel, to do the required work of the present. 




'Fig. 69. — View of Plate-mill. 



Fig. 69 is a view of a plate-mill at the Homestead Steel Works 
(Carnegie, Phipps & Co.) near Pittsburgh, Pa. This mill is what 
is known as a "three-high plate-mill." The train of rolls is 
driven at the rate of fifty revolutions a minute. On the delivery 
side of these rolls is a roller table five feet in width and 363 feet 
long, the rollers being driven by power. This mill can roll plates 



38 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



three inches thick and 115 inches wide, or sheets 3=^ of an inch 
thick and 117 inches wide, and of course any intermediate dimen- 
sions of any length, and of a weight not exceeding six tons. This 
mill can turn out five thousand net tons per month. 

Fig. 70 * is a view of 
the hydraulic shears in 
the " slabbing-niiir' of 
the Homestead Steel 
Works. 

The men in the pict- 
ure will assist the mind 
of the reader in form- 
ing a correct idea of the 
magnitude of this pon- 
derous piece of mecha- 
nism, whose purpose is 
to cut into the required 
lengths the "slabs" as 
they come from the 
" slabbing rolls." The 
lower knife is station- 
ary, and the movement 
of the upper knife in a 
vertical plane is insured 
by guides on the " hous- 




FiG. 70. — Hydkaulic Sheabs. 



ings" of the machine. The upper knife is actuated by a water 
pressure of about three thousand tons, and the shears are capable 
of cutting a section 24" X 48" of hot metaL The^slabs" are taken 
to the plate-mill, reheated, and rolled to the required dimensions. 
The above description of some of the machinery in use m the 
Illinois Steel Works and in the Homestead Steel Works must 
serve for illustrating the ponderous character of the mechanism 
of a modern " steel plant," as it is plainly impossible m this paper 
to speak of details which would require a volume to adequately 

^""^ The ""Bessemer process," as for many years conducted, could 
only deal successfully with iron which contained a very small 
quantity of phosphorus; this being the case, a very large propor- 
tion of the world's make of that metal was useless for the manu- 
facture of steel; and therefore it was evident that any improve- 
ment bv which such iron could be made available would have 
great value. This fact stimulated inventors to endeavor to dis- 



*ric.s 69 and TO are reduced from photogravure engravings illustrating a paper by 
W Richards and J. A. Potter, descriptive of the Homestead Steel Works, which was pub- 
lished in vol. XT, No. 3, of the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 



39 



cover some means by whicli pig iron high in phosphorus could be 
used m the '' converter " or " open-hearth " furnace. Success was 
finally achieved in this by two English chemists, Sidney Gilchrist 
Thomas and Percy C. Gilchrist, of London, who secured patents 
for their invention November 22, 1877.* Their modification of 
the " Bessemer process " consists in the employment of lime as 
the chief constituent of the lining of the "converter" or "open- 
hearth furnace," and the action of this "basic lining" (hence the 
process is commonly called the "basic process") is to remove the 
phosphorus from the metal as a " phosphate of lime " in which 
condition it is found in the "slag" produced. There are a num- 
ber of claimants, English, French, and American, for the discov- 
ery of the value of lime as a lining in "Bessemer converters " 
and "open-hearth furnaces" for the treatment of iron rich in 
phosphorus, who have caused so much litigation as to retard great- 
ly the use of the "basic process" in this country; but, never- 
theless, there were made during the year 1890 about ninety thou- 
sand tons of " basic steel " in the United States. The " basic pro- 
cess" IS very largely employed in Europe, and fairly deserves 
recognition as the most important improvement in the metal- 
lurgy of steel that has been practically developed within the past 
dozen years. 

In recent years there have been a number of alleged improve- 
ments m the manufacture of steel patented, most of them havino- 
no value. ^ 

It will be remembered that some of the early American experi- 
menters, who "with great pains and cost found out and obtained 
a curious art by which to convert, change, or transmute common 
iron into steel" (in Connecticut, 1728 to 1750), succeeded in mak- 
ing somewhat more than half a ton of steel" in four years 
This seed of the steel industry on this continent has year by year 
and generation after generation increased and multiplied until 
for the year 1890 the production of steel of all kinds in the United 
States reached the enormous total of "4,277,071 gross tons" an 
amount larger than was produced in that year by any other'coun- 
try m the world. 

. .T'^??*^'^^-^ y®^^^ ^^o ^l^ere were but two Bessemer converters 
m the United States, and it is not at all probable that in the year 
18(Jo there were more than five hundred tons of "Bessemer steel" 
made therein; but this germ product has so wonderfully devel- 
oped that m the year 3 890 the total production of "Bessemer 
steel m this country was 4,131,535 net tons, or 8,263 times the 

th.?' 'f T- ^'"'' •' ''^''''' *^'* "'' " ''"'^' P™^*^^^ " ""^ <^ond"Cted in Europe involves 
the use o the invention of Messrs. Thomas and Gilchrist, in connection with those of G. J. 
Snelus of Workm^ton, and Edward Riley, of London, whose inventions have contributed 
materially to its success. 



40 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tonnage of 1865. This enormous output was made in eighty-five 
" converters " owned by forty steel-works, which were distributed 
in eight States, viz., Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, 
West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Colorado. 

In 1772 the American manufacturers' price for steel was equal 
to $180.60 per gross ton. Steel of better quality can be purchased 
of the American manufacturer of to-day for thirty dollars per 
gross ton, a decline of eighty-four per cent in one hundred and 

nineteen years. 

Twenty-seven years have elapsed since the first Bessemer steel 
was made in America, and that time, improved by the labors of 
skillful men from among our engineers, metallurgists, and chem- 
ists, has wrought wondrous changes in the construction and man- 
agement of our furnaces, steel-works, and rolling-mills. To-day 
the tendency of all metallurgical manufacturing enterprises is 
toward concentration, not only in commercial and administrative 
afeairs, but in their machinery as well. Giant engines, ponderous 
roll-trains, colossal hammers, crushing forging-presses, stalwart 
cranes, furnaces whose "fervent heat" destroys all doubt of the 
possibility of the fusion of worlds, ore piles rivaling mountams 
in magnitude; enormous stores of coal, suggesting yet more 
enormous mines ; a vast entanglement of railways to all parts of 
the works ; a water-supply sufficient for a town ; miles of subter- 
ranean pipes bringing gaseous fuel to the roaring mills— are but 
the common details of a modern establishment for the manufact- 
ure of steel. Practices once condemned as criminal extravagances 
are now regarded as essential economies ; things once deemed im- 
possible by men of little faith are but the familiar occurrences of 
to-day. Buildings, machinery, methods, have all been touched 
by the spirit of progress. Science has become better acquainted 
with art, and art has a better appreciation of science, and their 
united forces are marching forever forward. Before their steady 
advance difficulties vanish, obstacles are surmounted, and seem- 
ing impossibilities are overcome ; sound principles are established 
in place of empiricisms, and educated skill replaces laborious ig- 
norance. Verily, " old things are passing away and all things are 
become new." 



Eyidence is given in the Rev. Thomas Parkinson's Yorkshire Legends and 
Traditions of the survival of the belief in fairies to a late date. An old man told 
the author a few years ago that his father, when young, had seen a dance of fames, 
and that they were " of nearly all colors." A similar statement has been made to 
Mr Parkinson's reviewer in the Athenaeum, who suggests that such visions may 
be misinterpreted facts, not mere mental illusions. The birds called ruflPs dance 
in the moonlight much after the fashion of the round dances of yore, and some 
of these dances may have been mistaken for those of fairies. 



DO WE TEACH GEOLOGY? ^^ 



DO WE TEACH GEOLOGY? 

By EOBEET T. HILL. 

n^HE late Prof. Alexander Winchell, who did so mucli to 
J- popularize geology in this country, asked, " Shall we teach 
geology ? " and our educational institutions have answered the 
question in the affirmative by expending liberal sums for the en- 
dowment of chairs in schools and colleges. The question now is, 
not shall we teach, but do we teach geology ? 

No modern science has been so vaguely understood and so in- 
definitely represented as that of geology. Our text-books, as a 
rule, are from fifteen to twenty years behind in the presentation 
of the vast results of the army of investigators in the field ; and 
even among the working geologists there are wide differences in 
regard to fundamental definitions and theories. This great study, 
which has done so much for the advancement of knowledge and' 
for industry, is still in a chaotic condition ; and even its element- 
ary definitions, as given in our text-books, are confiicting. 

In the popular mind, in consequence of the mighty throes into 
which^ geological interpretation precipitated religious thought, 
the science is usually considered an irreligious inquiry into the 
history of the earth, or a useless study of curious fossils and 
pretty minerals To the practical investigator and student, how- 
ever, geology has but one meaning, and that is, the science which 
treats of the structure of the earth and its changes. 

A glance at the curricula of our universities will show that 
few of them teach the subject on this basis ; they deal with the 
science either in the old-fashioned historical way, or devote their 
energies to some narrow branch— for example, paleontology, mi- 
croscopic petrography, or economic mineralogy. 
^ Geology can in many ways be compared with architecture 
inasmuch as it is a scientific art, requiring a knowledge of many 
special arts and sciences. The architect must have a knowledge 
of mensuration, carpentry, masonry, materials, chemistry, physics 
decoration, and other specialties pertaining to house-buildino-' 
Likewise the geologist or student of earth-structure must have a 
knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, mineralogy, mensura- 
tion, and all the sciences which are useful in interpreting this 
structure. Although we would never mistake a house-painter 
for an architect, we are overwhelmed by paleontologists, micros- 
copists, and theologians who assume the title of geologists, and 
teach their narrow specialties under the broader name. An' eth- 
nologist who studies primitive dwellings is not an architect, yet 
how many astronomical data concerning pre-nebular hypotheses 

TOL. XL. — 4 



42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

and pre-geological speculations are taught as geology, as if to 
mystify the minds of students ! 

I well remember a young man who went from one of our great 
universities a few years ago with particular mention upon his 
diploma that he had attained special excellence in geology ; in later 
years he found himself face to face with some of the greater prob- 
lems of earth-structure, and slowly it dawned upon him that he 
had no conception of what the study really was. He knew the 
names of many fossils and minerals, could enumerate the histori- 
cal sequence of the geologic time-epochs, but when required to 
report upon a new and strange region he found himself ignorant 
of the four necessary geologic rudiments— determination, defini- 
tion, distribution, and delineation. 

There is hardly a college in the land in which the study of the 
structure of the earth is not made subservient to the study of its 
history and composition, and in which the student does not learn 
to consider the extraordinary instead of the ordinary, by being 
taught to begin away back in Archaean time, and thence to trace 
the history of life-epochs. But the working geologist regards 
time-nomenclature as a secondary consideration, and the word 
Archeean means to him only a common dumping-ground for all 
older terrenes whose structure has not been differentiated. 

Geology is not a science of the past, but a grand study of the 
present structure of the earth, its contour, composition, and read- 
justments. Geology has nothing to do with the origin or begin- 
ning of the globe— a field of inquiry purely astronomical— but 
takes the earth where astronomy leaves it, a completed mass of 
matter, and investigates its changes. Although Hutton a hun- 
dred years ago presented this thought in his saying that in the 
economy of Nature there is no trace of a beginning or evidence 
of an ending, still much of our geologic instruction is wasted on 
these subjects. 

The cultural aspects of civilization are due to geologic struct- 
ure, but in how many of our institutions are students taught to 
appreciate the topography or configuration of the earth's surface 
and its relation to structure, or to observe with inquirmg eye the 
forms and contours of the landscape ? The student usually learns 
the chemistry of certain nicely arranged hand specmiens of hard 
rocks, and memorizes the names of leading fossils or the crystal- 
lography of minerals under the guise of economic geology. As a 
result, the study is supposed to be merely the study of hard rocks 
and curious fossils. Although the student knows these by sight, 
he can not trace a rock-sheet above the ground or below it, or see 
the great soft terrenes void of fossils and rocks which make up 
the larger area of our country, and can not appreciate the broader 
relations of structure to agriculture, hygiene, climate, and civih- 



BO WE TEACH GEOLOGY? 43 

zation. Hence the great iinfossiliferons terrenes are unknown ; 
for example, the non-monntainous regions of the West and South, 
over which in places one may travel from the Rocky Mountains 
to the Gulf of Mexico without finding a fossil, a crystal, or a 
building-stone. 

There is but one geological laboratory, and that is the great out- 
of-doors ; and no student should learn a fossil or a mineral until 
he has first studied the landscape and is able to distinguish one 
stratum with its topographic form from another as strata, and not 
as fossil beds or chemical compounds. A field-glass and a quiet 
seat upon a commanding eminence, where the local surroundings 
can be studied, are worth to the beginner miles of traveling about 
with hammer and specimen-bag ; and a thorough curiosity aroused 
as to why one hill is flat, another round, or one stream broad and 
sluggish while another is narrow and raj^id, is more valuable 
than a cabinet of curios. An inquiry as to the origin of sediment 
in a river, whence it came, and what will become of it, will lead 
to a grander conception of earth-stripping and formation-making 
than the memorizing of all the specimens in a laboratory. 

It is not my wish to discourage the study of paleontology or 
petrography, but is it not a serious error to teach these first and 
geology later ? They are to geology as trigonometry is to mathe- 
matics, something that follows the fundamental arithmetic and 
algebra. 

Some one has said that geology begins and ends with the rain- 
drop. If not literally true, the saying is worthy of consideration ; 
and if the teacher begins with it, his students will soon be familiar 
with the grand facts of the erosion and distribution of earth-mat- 
ter, and the origin of the rock-sheets that make the whole, and 
the life-history of our earth's great cycles can be read. 

When we lay by our icthyosaurians and useless crystals for 
advanced study, and teach the ordinary and not the extraordinary 
features of the earth, geology will be appreciated, and every 
farmer, every builder of homes, every drinker of water, will learn 
that upon a knowledge of its simple laws his success depends. 

To the high-school student a knowledge of the structure of 
the earth is as important as chemistry or foreign languages ; but, 
until some simple text-book is written dealing with the subject 
on these lines, it is not to be expected that geology will be gener- 
ally taught. 

The principal acbievement recorded in Dr. Hugo Zoller's recent explorations 
in New Guinea consists in the ascent of the Finisterre Mountains to a height of 
8,700 feet, and the discovery of a still loftier range inland, which appeared to 
be covered with snow. Comparative vocabularies are given of forty-four lan- 
guages, most of which were collected by the author himself or under his super- 
vision. 



44 



THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTRLY. 



DRESS AXD ADORNMENT. 

III. ORNAMENT. 

By Prof. FREDERICK STARR. 

THE savage loves finery. Anything bright and showy has for 
him remarkable attractiveness. Traders have often been 
blamed for their unequal trades with unsophisticated savages 
whereby they get a large return for articles of little value. Yet 
it must be admitted that often they could do little else. Truly 
useful and desirable articles are often passed by, and tawdry or- 
naments, beads, and tinsel are sought with avidity. The writer 
himself has frequently found, if cash payment is offered, that 
Indians demand preposterous prices for objects of ethnological 
interest ; a few handfuls of beads or some yards of bright rib- 
bon will bring about a quick and mutually satisfactory bargain. 
Early travelers found no peoi:)le on some of the islands of the Pa- 
cific who would give anything for new kinds of fowls, domestic 
animals, or useful devices, but " a few red feathers would buy the 

whole island." " Ne- 
cessity is always sec- 
ondary to luxury " is a 
remark that will bear 
frequent c|uotation. 
Ornament is univer- 
sal. The barbarian 
will go naked, unjjro- 
tected, hungry, but he 
will have his orna- 
ments. 

The beginnings of 
ornament lie far back 
in antiquity, but they 
may also be seen in 
savage life of to-day. 
The incentive that de- 
velops it is personal 
vanity — the desire for 
self - individualization. 
A man wishes to mark 
himself off from his 
neighbor by some external sign. If he kills a savage beast, what 
is more natural than that he should use its skin, its teeth, its claws, 
as a trophy ? Wearing these, he is known as a mighty or success- 
ful hunter. Possibly the oldest decoration we know is a necklace 
from Duruthy Cavern, in France. Under a stone, apparently 




Fig. 1. — American Indian with Necklace of Claws. 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 



45 



fallen from the roof, was found part of tlie skeleton of a man. 
He had been crushed probably by the descending mass. Scattered 
about in such a way as to show that they had been strung to- 
gether, were some forty large canine teeth of the cave bear, an 
animal now extinct. The teeth 
were perforated, and several 
were carved — not poorly — 
with animal and other de- 
signs. This necklace must 
have been originally a fine 
affair, and it is a good exam- 
ple of trophy-wearing. Nat- 
urally, what happens in hunt- 
ing life may also occur in war. 
There, too, parts of enemies 
slain in battle may be worn 
as trophies. In the Louisade 
Archipelago, bracelets made 
of the jawbone and clavicle 
of foes killed in war were 
worn by warriors. Nearly all 
North American tribes for- 
merly took scalps, which were 
worked up as fringes for gar- 
ments, head-dresses, or other 
articles of ornamental dress. 
Trophies of the chase or of 
war were, we firmly believe, 
the first objects of decoration, 
and their only purpose was to 
render conspicuous the indi- 
viduality of their wearer. 
Later the idea of beauty in 
ornament arose, and with it a f kj. 2.-0rnamental Apron made of Tofcan- 

host of objects which were not bones. Mundurucu Indians, South America. 

trophies came to be worn. 

In examining the objects of ornament worn by savage, bar- 
barous, and civilized tribes, we find a marvelous varietj^ of mate- 
rials and designs. We are amazed at the ingenuity displayed in 
making the most unpromising materials into things of beauty. 
Through this impulse of personal vanity — the wish to emphasize 
his individuality — man has been led to make many interesting 
discoveries and to develop many important arts. A dude is not 
a pleasant object ; but, after all, the motive which has produced 
him has been of vast service in the world's progress. We will 
consider some instructive examples of ornament. The animal, 




46 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vegetable, and mineral kingxloms have all been laid nnder tribute 
for materials. Teeth, claws, shells, jjearls, bone, hair, ivory, feath- 
ers, beans, seeds, grasses, leaves, fibers of all kinds, crystals, metals 
— these are but a few of the many substances that man has 
learned to use, more or less effectively, in self -adornment. 

Necldaces are universal. Very simple are the garlands of red 
and yellow flowers, so popular throughout Polynesia. The whale- 
tooth necklaces of Samoa and the neighboring islands were really 
attractive, and were so highly valued that only kings and the 
most powerful chiefs could afford or dare to wear them. They 
consisted simply of the natural teeth perforated for stringing. 
They are now rare and seldom seen. Those at present used in the 
same district are lighter, more slender and artistic, but are made 
in England and sent out to the islands for trading. An interest- 
ing neck ornament was the xxdaoa of the Hawaiians. It consisted 
of a carved and i^olislied piece of bone and ivory attached to an 
elaborately braided decoration of black hair. This ornament was 

worn only by chiefs of 
high rank and had some 
talismanic virtue. Among 
the necklaces from Aus- 
tralia are those consisting 
of kangaroo-teeth strung 
on thread, and the careful- 
ly made and really beau- 
tifid ones composed of cas- 
sowary feathers. Neck- 
laces of trophies of dan- 
gerous hunting, analogous 
to that from Duruthy Cav- 
ern already mentioned, 
are made by Indian huiit- 
ers from claws of the roy- 
al Bengal tiger. From the 
same materials the skillful 
goldsmiths of India make 
marvels of beautiful work. 
Such a one lies before me. 
The claws are perfectly 
cleaned and polished, mounted in gold settings, and strung on a 
chain of gold ; pendent at the lower end is a pretty tiger and a 
charm, both of gold. Hundreds of years of time and generation 
of art development lie between the necklaces of Duruthy and Ben- 
gal ! One of the most instructive lessons in culture history is shown 
by two South African necklaces described by Wood. The lesson 
is this ; in any art developuieiif, as new materials are gained, the 




Fig. 3. — Necklace of Whale's Teeth. Samoa. 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 



47 



old types are copied in the new material. One of these necklaces 
consists of beads and teeth. Six or seven fine leather thongs are 
strung with black beads of small size ; rows one and a half inch 
long being made, a single bead of larger size, and in color white 
spotted with blue, is added ; then follows another inch and a half 
of black beads ; then comes a cluster of leopards' teeth three to five 
in number ; this arrangement is repeated. The other necklace 
copies this in general plan. Rows of white beads are followed 
by a brass tooth ; then come ruby-red beads with white spots ; 
then another brass tooth, white beads, etc. The necklace with 
real teeth is of an older type than the other, and it is interesting, 
even after metal has been introduced and the ornamental and not 
the trophy idea prevails, to see the old trophy pattern carried over 

into a new and artificial material. Patterns survive. 

Arm-bands and bracelets occur in great variety, but little need 

be said of them. Two 

African forms only will 

detain us. Among the 

Kaffirs, and in the west 

of Africa as well, a plain 

ivory arm-ring, in a sin- 
gle piece, is in common 

use. Such are easily 

made. The tusk of the 

elephant is hollow save 

near the small end. To- 
ward the larger end the 

ivory sheath is thin and 

irregular, but it thick- 
ens and becomes solid 

toward the tip. All that 

is necessary to make 

arm-bands is to remove 

the soft, vascular inner 

part and then to cut the 

ivory into cross-sections, 

two or three inches wide. 

The rings thus made 

vary, of course, in size. 

After being cut they are 

carefully polished. With 

such rings the whole arm from wrist to elbow is often covered. 

Schweinfurth describes a pretty ornament of metal rings — the 

dagobar — as in use among White Nile tribes. The individual rings 

are of iron and are narrow and neatly made. They are worn so 

closely together upon the arm as to make a continuous metal 




Fig. 4. — Paloa. Hawaiian Islands. 



48 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sheathing. Very curious are the arm-coils from Bouka Bay, New 
Guinea, which consist of one spiral strip of bark. Ear-rings are 
found in all times and among almost every people. They range in 




•Necklace of Tiger-claws. India. (Miss Abbie M. White.) 



size, material, and elegance from the brilliant solitaire in gold set- 
ting, worn by our ladies, to the bird-skins worn in the ears in New 
Zealand or the immense ornaments of shell with carved ivory in- 



DEESS AND ADORNMENT. 



49 




Fig. 6. — African Arm Ornament. The Dii'nibar. 



laying, from New Guinea. King Munza's sister begged lead bullets 
from Schweinfurth and hammered from tliem bright ear-rings. 
From New Zealand come very pretty ear-rings of grfeen jade in 
the shape of sharks' teeth. Is it not certain that we here have 
another example of the law of copying an old form in a new ma- 
terial ? Did the New 

Zealanders not wear real 
sharks' teeth, as some 
Alaskan and British 
Columbian tribes do 
now, before they made 
these more beautiful 
ones ? Waist - girdles 
are interesting, not only 
in themselves, but also 
because of their influ- 
ence upon dress devel- 
opment, already traced. 
In Australia they are 

often made of finely twisted human hair. Unique in material and 
really attractive in appearance are the Hottentot girdles made by 
stringing concave-convex disks of ostrich-egg shell. Such cords 
looked like a rope of ivory, and sometimes passed quite around 
the body. Nose ornaments and labrets were spoken of in the lect- 
ure on Deformations, and we care little to add to what is there 
said. Mr. Kunz recently showed us some interesting labrets made 
by the old Mexicans from jade and amethyst that show skillful 
work. These are all of the hat-shaped pattern, and the one of 
jade is very large. Were not some of the oldest ornaments 
known supposed to be hair-pins, we should hardly refer to these. 
From the lake dwellings of Switzerland we have a large number 
of these objects very neatly made, in a variety of large and orna- 
mental patterns, from bronze. Vast quantities of bronze orna- 
ments of all kinds — rings, arm-bands, wristlets, hair-pins, pendants, 
etc., have been found on these sites. Feathers are often worked 
up into wonderfully beautiful decorations. Some Upper Nile 
peoples use the " supple breast-feathers of the gray pelican, mak- 
ing them up into close perukes, which form excellent imitations 
of a luxuriant crop of gray hair." The head-dresses of bird-of- 
paradise feathers from the South Seas are beautiful in colors 
and graceful in form. The New Zealander made an elegant 
head-dress of pelican feathers, arranged in white bunches as 
wings on each side of the head, meeting above. The " war-bon- 
nets " of eagle feathers, and the single, neatly wrapped and dec- 
orated feathers worn by American tribes, are well known. In 
this connection we may see how ornaments may indirectly en- 



5° 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



courage art. Such delicate and perishable ornaments need espe- 
cial protection from dust and injury. Receptacles of some sort 
must be provided, and usually sucli would themselves be dec- 
orated. In buying war feathers from the Sacs and Foxes, we 
found them kept in neatly made wooden boxes with slide covers. 
These boxes were usually carved and painted. The New Zea- 
lander for his choicest feathers made, with an infinity of toil and 
pains, elegant carved boxes of hard green jade. 

Pendants have been used from an early date and are much 
prized by barbarous people. Akin to them are all sorts of breast- 
plates, brooches, etc. Wood describes the dibbi - dihhi of the 
Australian. This is ordinarily fan-shaped and made of shell. 
It is also, however, at times crescentic and nearly as large as a 
cheese-plate. They are ornamented with drilled and engraved 
designs. Very much like them are the shell gorgets that have 
been found in the mounds of Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. 

They are among the finest 
specimens of art from the 
mounds. From two to five or 
six inches in diameter, these 
are disks, neatly carved from 
shell. The upper surface is 
concave and usually bears a 
carved design, often conven- 
tional but always well done — 
a spider, a rattlesnake, com- 
binations of circles, spirals, 
and dots, a human figure, etc. 
While speaking of ornaments 
of this shape and size we may 
refer to the salcalion of the 
Sacs and Foxes. These are 
still made by the native jew- 
elers from German silver. 
Those worn by men are pen- 
dent ; those for women have 
a pin for attachment, form- 
These scikalion are ingeniously 
made and are worn in great nuinbers — one little girl's dance- 
waist bore two hundred of them. They are usually about an 
inch and a half in size. Among our Iowa Indians these pin- 
ning sakahon are only used by women, but Mrs. Harriet Maxwell 
Converse has a great numlier of very small ones, of silver, not 
more than a half-inch in diameter, which were formerly worn by 
the famous Iroquois orator Red Jacket. Beads are highly prized. 
The earliest were made of shell or stone, and later these were 




Fig. 7. — Nose Ornament. New Guinea, 

ing what is called a fibula. 



BEESS AND ADORNMENT. 



51 



copied in glass and metals. Glass beads liave gone the world 
over. They have replaced many old materials, and have wrought 
great changes in many lines of aboriginal art Avork. But, there 
are beads and beads ! Fashion changes as often among savages 
as with ourselves, 
and the bead so 
highly prized to- 
day may be worth- 
less to - morrow. 
In Africa iron 
beads are always 
good, but glass 
beads fluctuate. 
One author tells 
us " they prefer as 
beads the * mand- 
yoor' — long poly- 
hedral prisms as 
large as a bean 
and as blue as 
lapis lazuli." But 
woe to the trader 
who took a stock 
of ma n dyoo r 
there to - day ! 
They might be a 
drug on the mar- 
ket. It may seem 
as if we have 
been too detailed 
in describing all 
these savage and 
barbaric decora- 
tions. We have 
simply aimed to 
show how varied in material and how diversified in form and 
use such ornaments may be. To show the profusion of ornament 
worn in some cases, and to illustrate the amount of discomfort 
which one will willingly endure for the sake of display, we quote 
a few descriptions : 

Livingstone describes the sister of chief Sebatuane as "wear- 
ing eighteen solid brass rings as thick as one's finger on each 
leg ; three of copper under each knee ; nineteen brass rings on 
the right arm ; eight of brass and copper on the left arm, and a 
large ivory ring above each elbow. She had a heavy bead sash 
around her waist and a bead necklace. The weight of rings upon 




Fig. 8. — Head-dress of Bird-of-Paradise Feathers. 
Islands. 



South Sea 



52 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



her ankles was so great as to necessitate wrapping these with 
rags." Nubian women are particularly fond of silver, often 
wearing several watch-chains, three pairs of bracelets, bangles^ 
ankle and leg ornaments, hair-pins, etc. That things were not 
much better in olden days is shown by Isaiah's remarks regarding 
the Jewesses : " Moreover the Lord saith. Because the daughters 
of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and 
wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tink- 
ling with their feet. ... In that day the Lord will take away the 
bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their 
cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the brace- 
lets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, 
and the headbands, and the tablets and the ear-rings, the rings and 
nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel and the mantles, and the 
wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and 

the hoods and the veils" (Isaiah, 
iii, lG-23). King Munza, whose 
state dress we spoke of in the 
last lecture, had an extensive 
wardrobe of ornaments. It oc- 
cupied several apartments. In 
one room there was nothing but 
hats and feathers, especially 
those of the red parrot, arranged 
in great round tufts. In one hut 
were bundles of tails of civets, 
genets, patamochoeri, and gi- 
raffes, with skins and thousands 
of ornaments. There were also 
long strings of teeth of rare 
animals, one of more than one 
hundred lions' fangs. Surely it 
would seem that he had enough. 
An even more striking illustra- 
tion of discomfort endured for 
the sake of display than that of 
Sebatuane's sister is the African belle who wore copper arm-rings 
which became so hot in the sun's rays that she was obliged to 
have an attendant with a watering-pot who would from time to 
time drench her to cool the metal. 

We have already said that the desire for ornament has led to 
much material progress. We believe that to it must be attributed 
the origin and development of metal-working. The evidence of 
this will be found in an examination of the metal-work of various 
primitive peoples. The bronze relics from the Swiss lakes are 
exceedingly various, but much the larger number of them are 




Fig. 9. — Samoan Chief with Ornaments. 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 



53 



ornaments — not weapons or instruments. So in Africa, although 
it is true that the natives make wonderful assegai-blades, we 
believe that they use both copper and iron far more for leg-bands, 
arm-rings, and other decorations, than for articles of utility. As 
due to the ornament-search of man, metal-working possesses a 
special interest for us, and its beginnings deserve consideration. 
The first steps are well shown in North America. Here not only 
the recent tribes but also the builders of the mounds used native 
copper from Lake Superior. This was not smelted, but was beaten 
into shape with hammers 
of stone. Thin sheets were 
also beaten out between two 
stones and used for covering 
wooden forms. Prof. Put- 
nam has found some very 
interesting spool-shaped ear 
ornaments of copper in Ohio 
mounds. These are not easy 
to describe, but they are very 
ingeniously made. They con- 
sist of two convex-concave 
disks of beaten copper, from 
an inch to two inches in di- 
ameter, held together by a 
narrow column of rolled 
copper - sheet. Such have 
been found in other metals 
as well as in copper. In one 

altar mound of the Turner group were found two bushels of 
ornaments of stone, copper, mica, shells, teeth, pearls, etc., nearly 
all perforated for suspension. Several copper ornaments, viz., 
bracelets, beads, and ear ornaments, were coated with beaten sil- 
ver ; one copper pendant was covered with beaten gold ; one ear 
ornament of copper was covered with meteoric iron, and half 
of one of these ornaments was composed entirely of this latter 
metal. 

Just how smelting arose we do not know. It may have been 
an accidental discovery, but, if so, the accident must have occurred 
in different places and at different times, as there is good evidence 
that the art has independently originated at several centers. In 
western Europe bronze preceded iron. In the heart of Africa it 
seems as if there had been no bronze age before the iron age. 
The Africans are often remarkable smiths, producing an excellent 
quality of iron with a very primitive outfit. The bellows consist 
of two wooden or pottery bowls with bladder tops, or of leather 
sacks ; from these run pipes made of wood or of antelope horns ; 




Fig. 10. — Nubian Gikl with Nose Ornament. 



54 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the tips of these are incased in a clay tube. Wooden sticks 
are fastened to the middle of the bladder covers or to the 
upper end of the skins. By working these handles up and down 
air is forced through the pipes into the tube and through the fire. 
This is built in a hole dug in the ground. The heated iron is 
worked hot between two stones used as anvil and hammer. Asse- 
gai-blades are made with this poor outfit of such excellence that 
they may be sharpened so as to be used as razors, and so pliable 
that they may be bent double and then straightened after reheat- 
ing. This is iron working, not smelting. Schweinf urth describes 
how the Dyoor get the iron from the ore, and the process is x)i'acti- 
cally the same throughout Africa, In March, just before seeding- 
time, he says, they go to the woods to smelt iron. In the shaded 
center of a very wooded spot they make groups of furnaces of 
clay. These are cones not more than four feet high, widening to 
a goblet shape. A cup-shaped cavity at the top communicates by 
a small throat with the main cavity of the furnace, which is filled 




Fig. 11. — African Smiths at Work. 

with charcoal. The upper receiver is filled with fragments of ore 
about a cubic inch in size. The hollow tunnel extends lower than 
the ground-level, and the melted ore, finding its way down through 
the fire, collects below. Openings here admit air and allow the 
withdrawal of slag. The iron has to be twice heated, and when 
taken out is in small bits which on reheating are beaten into 
one mass. 

Metal-working had doubtless an exceedingly slow develop- 
ment ; but it is remarkable how some people, strangers to the art 
as originators, acquire it as imitators. Thus the Sacs and Foxes 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 



55 



smelt no ores, but a dozen men in the tribe make from German 
silver neat and tasteful bracelets, armlets, rings, sakahoii, and 
ear-rings. The jeweler's outfit consists of a square block of wood 
for an anvil, a hammer, a pair of shears, compasses, and a set of 
rude punches made from scrap iron, steel nails, bits of old files, 
etc. To make a finger-ring, the workman selects a piece of German 
silver and cuts from it a narrow strip long enough to encircle the 
finger. A square, rectangular, or oval piece of copper may be cut 
for a setting. This is marked with a neat design worked on with 
punches tapped by a hammer. The strip of white metal is bent 
into ring-form, the setting is laid upon it at the junction where 
the ends meet, and the two are firmly held together by a brass 
wire passed around them. A drop of solder is put upon the junc- 
tion inside, a small stick is thrust through the ring to support it, 
and it is held in an open fire until the solder melts, flowing into 
the junction and cementing the whole firmly. After cooling, the 
ring is smoothed with a file and polished. 

Sometimes we find the same object serving at once ornamental 
and useful purposes. The arm-rings of metal or ivory with which 
the African delights to cover his arms to the elbow are a useful 
protection against weaj)ons. The metal rings worn by Latuka 
warriors on their right wrists are set with four or five sharp- 
edged knife-blades and are terrible weapons. The Isenga wear 
rings of considerable weight and sharp-edged ; usually these are 
incased in leather sheaths, but, when uncovered, they become 
horrid weapons for hand-to-hand fighting. The very heavy arm- 
bands of the Wakamba are of triple use, serving at once as orna- 
ments, parries, and striking weapons. Ornament often becomes 
money. The Nubian woman or the Hindoo frequently carries the 
family wealth on her person as silver ornaments. The important 
influence of ornament upon dress has already been considered in 
a preceding lecture. 

We know of only one paper which treats at all fully of orna- 
ment. It is by Mougeolles, Although we do not concur in all 
the conclusions of this author, we wish to call attention to some 
propositions that he lays down. With the statement of these and 
of one or two additional, we shall close : 

(a) With the growth of dress, ornament declined. If our view 
as to how dress developed is correct, this is natural. If dress 
began as ornament, the ornamental idea would gradually disap- 
pear as it passed into a modesty-covering and a bodily protection. 
As dress develops, the sort of ornament must change: ornament 
at first attached to the person, gradually passes into ornament 
attached to the dress. We notice here again an example of wom- 
an's conservatism. Man in civilization wears little ornament, and 
what he does wear is fastened to the dress ; woman wears more 



56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

ornaments, and these are frequently attached to the person. Man 
in civilization still wears ornament " when he is a warrior, an offi- 
cer, or a courtier." In all these cases we simply have survival of 
ornament in these conservative relations. 

(b) The search for ornament is as universal as the social ine- 
quality from wliicli it has been derived. We have seen that in its 
very beginnings ornament was a distinction. It was intended to 
mark a man from his fellows as one who had done what others 
had not accomplished. As the mark of social inequality it will 
exist wherever class distinctions are recognized. 

(c) Jeivelry in ornament tends to grow more and more delicate 
ivitli advancing civilization, and finally disappears as social dis- 
tinctions vanish. The first part of the proposition is shown by 
history. Ornament may be traced in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, 
and wherever there is actual progress toward true civilization 
ornament dwindles. The proposition as a whole grows out of the 
preceding. There is no place for ornaments in a true democracy 
where equality prevails. A revival of ornament indicates the 
retardation of democratic ideas. 

{d) In our first lecture we referred to mutilations made to 
admit of ornament-carrying. We saw that ears, noses, cheeks, 
lips, and other parts are or have been pierced for insertion of orna- 
ments. These mutilations tend to disappear with advancement, and 
those tuhich are most painful disappear first. The least painful of 
these is ear-piercing, and we know that it still lingers in many 
cases where all other mutilations have disappeared. 

(e) In orjiament as in dress we find much in the way of sur- 
vival that is interesting. Mougeolles claims that in the various 
head ornaments used as emblems of rank or power we have bits 
of history. He maintains that in very ancient Egyj^t masks were 
worn by hunters and warriors of the heads of slain animals. These 
are represented upon gods and goddesses in the bas-reliefs. The 
most commonly represented are made from heads of lions, jackals, 
etc. Isis wears a beef's head. Dog-headed figures are common. 
These animal head-dresses copied in other material continue in 
use, and, gradually conventionalized, lose their original form. He 
believes the crown was derived from a lion's head, the miter from 
that of a jackal, the Greek helmet from a horse's head. 

(/) Notice the importance, in its results, of ptersonal vanity. 
Without it we believe that man would have remained low in civ- 
ilization. To the desire to mark himself off from his fellows by a 
visible sign we owe dress development ; to it we owe a long list 
of important arts, chief among tliem perhaps that of metal-work- 
ing ; to it we owe much of the scientific method of studying the 
world around us : for, impelled liy it, man first began to investi- 
gate Nature, beyond what was necessary to secure a food-supply 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 57 

and bodily protection ; to it we owe the development of our 
sestlietic sense in large degree. It may be true that to-day in a 
civilized democracy there is no proper place for personal orna- 
ment and decoration ; but we can forgive much of weak display 
and many a useless survival of the past on account of what per- 
sonal vanity has done for man's progress. 



SOME OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF ECO:NrOMIC 
BOTANY.* 

By GEOEGE LINCOLN GOODALE. 

/^UR Association demands of its president, on his retirement 
V^ from office, some account of matters connected with the 
department of science in which he is engaged. 

But you will naturally expect that, before I enter upon the 
discharge of this duty, I should present a report respecting the 
mission with which you intrusted me last year. You desired me 
to attend the annual meeting of the Australasian Association for 
the Advancement of Science, and express your good wishes for 
its success. Compliance with your request did not necessitate 
any material change in plans formed long ago to visit the South 
Seas ; some of the dates and the sequence of places had to be 
modified ; otherwise the early plans were fully carried out. 

I can assure you that it seemed very strange to reverse the 
seasons, and find midsummer in January. But in the meeting 
with our brethren of the southern hemisphere nothing else was 
reversed. The official welcome to your representative was as 
cordial and the response by the members was as kindly as that 
which the people in the northern hemisphere would give to any 
fellow-worker coming from beyond the sea. 

The meeting to which I was commissioned was held in Jan- 
uary last in the cathedral city of Christchurch, New Zealand, 
the seat of Canterbury College. 

Considering the distance between the other colonies and New 
Zealand, the meeting was well attended. From Hobart, Tas- 
mania, to the southern harbor, known as the Bluff, in New Zea- 
land, the sea voyage is only a little short of one thousand miles 
of rough water. From Sydney in New South Wales to Auckland, 
New Zealand, it is over twelve hundred miles. If, therefore, one 
journeys from Adelaide in South Australia, to Christchurch, New 
Zealand, where the meeting was held, he travels by land and by 

* Presidential address delivered before the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science, at Washington, August, 1891. 

VOL. XL. — 5 



58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

sea over two tliOTisand miles. From Brisbane in Queensland, it 
is somewhat farther. Although certain concessions are made to 
the members of the Association, the fares by rail and by steam- 
ship are high, so that a journey from any one of the seats of 
learning in Australia proper to New Zealand is formidable on 
account of its cost. It is remarkable that so large a number of 
members should have met together under such circumstances, and 
it speaks well for the great strength and vigor of the Association. 
The Australasian Association is modeled rather more closely 
after the British Association than is our own. The president 
delivers his address upon his inauguration. There are no general 
business meetings, but all the details are attended to- by an exec- 
utive committee answering to our council ; none except the mem- 
bers and associates are invited to attend even the sectional meet- 
ings, and there are some other differences between the three 
associations. The secretaries stated to me their conviction that 
their organization and methods are better adapted to their sur- 
roundings than ours would be, and all their arguments seemed 
cogent. Although the Association has been in existence but three 
years, it has accomplished great good. It has brought together 
workers in different fields for conference and mutual benefit ; it 
has diminished misunderstandings, and has strengthened friend- 
ships. In short, it is doing the same kind of good work that we 
believe ours is now doing, and in much the same way. 

Your message was delivered at the general evening session 
immediately before the induction of the new officers. The retir- 
ing president. Baron von Mueller, and the incoming president. 
Sir James Hector, in welcoming your representative, expressed 
their pleasure that you should have seen fit to send personal 
greetings. 

In replying to their welcome, I endeavored to convey your 
felicitations upon the pronounced success of the Association, and 
your best wishes for a prosperous future. In your name I ex- 
tended a cordial invitation to the members to gratify us by their 
presence at some of our annual meetings, and I have good reason 
to believe that this invitation will be accepted. I know it will be 
most thoroughly and hospitably honored by us. 

On the morning of the session to which I refer, we received in 
the daily papers a cable telegram relative to the Bering Sea 
difficulties (which were then in an acute stage). In your stead, I 
ventured to say, " In these days of disquieting dispatches, when 
there are rumors of trouble between Great Britain and the United 
States, it is pleasant to think that 'blood is thicker than water.' " 
This utterance was taken to mean that we are all English-speak- 
ing kinsmen, and, even before I had finished, the old proverb was 
received with prolonged applause. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 59 

The next meeting of the Australasian Association is to be lield 
in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, under the presidency of the 
Governor, Sir Robert Hamilton. The energetic secretaries. Prof. 
Liversidge, Prof. Hutton, and Mr. Morton, promise a cordial wel- 
come to any of our members visiting the Association. Should 
you accept the invitation, you will enjoy every feature of the 
remarkable island, Tasmania, where the meeting is to be held. 
You will be delighted by Tasmanian scenery, vegetation, and cli- 
mate ; but that which will give you the greatest enjoyment in this 
as in other English South Sea colonies is the fact that you are 
among English-speaking friends half-way around the world. You 
will find that their efficient Association is devoted to the advance- 
ment of science and the promotion of sound learning. In short, 
you will be made to feel at home. 

The subject which I have selected for the valedictory address 
deals with certain industrial, commercial, and economic ques- 
tions : nevertheless, it lies wholly within the domain of botany. 
I invite you to examine with me some of the possibilities of eco- 
nomic botany. 

Of course, when treating a topic which is so largely specula- 
tive as this, it is difficult and unwise to draw a hard and fast line 
between possibilities and probabilities. Nowadays possibilities 
are so often realized rapidly that they become accomplished facts 
before we are aware. 

In asking what are the possibilities that other plants than those 
we now use may be utilized we enter upon a many-sided inquiry.* 
Speculation is rife as to the coming man. May we not ask what 
plants the coming man will use ? 

There is an enormous disproportion between the total number 
of species of plants known to botanical science and the number of 
those which are employed by man. 

The species of flowering x^lants already described and named 
are about one hundred and seven thousand. Acquisitions from 
unexplored or imperfectly explored regions may increase the ag- 
gregate perhaps one tenth, so that we are within very safe limits 



* The following are among the more useful works of a general character dealing with 
the subject. Others are referred to either in the text or notes. The reader may consult 
also the list of works on Economic Botany in the catalogue published by the Linnaean 
Society. 

Select Extra-tropical Plants, readily Eligible for Industrial Culture or Naturalization, 
with Indications of their Native Countries and some of their Uses. By Baron Ferd. von 
Mueller, K. C. M. G., F. R. S., etc., Government Botanist for Victoria. Melbourne, 1888. 
Seventh edition, revised and enlarged. 

At the close of his treatise on industrial plants. Baron von Mueller has grouped the 
genera indicating the different classes of useful products in such a manner that we can 
ascertain the respective numbers belonging to the genera. Of course, many of these 



6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

in taking tlie number of existing species to be somewhat above 
one hundred and ten thousand.* 

Now, if we should make a comprehensive list of all the flower- 
ing plants which are cultivated on what we may call a fairly- 
large scale at the present day, placing therein all food f and for- 
age plants, all those which are grown for timber and cabinet 
woods, for fibers and cordage, for tanning materials, dyes, resins, 
rubber, gums, oils, perfumes, and medicines, we could bring to- 
gether barely three hundred species. If we should add to this 
short catalogue all the species which, without cultivation, can be 
used by man, we should find it considerably lengthened. A great 
many products of the classes just referred to are derived in com- 
merce from wild plants, but exactly how much their addition 
would extend the list it is impossible in the present state of 
knowledge to determine. Every enumeration of this character is 
likely to contain errors from two sources : first, it would be sure 
to contain some species which have outlived their real usefulness , 
and, secondly, owing to the chaotic condition of the literature of 
the subject, omissions would occur. 

But after all proper exclusions and additions have been made 

genera figure in more than one category. Ee has also arranged the plants according to the 
countries naturally producing them. 

Useful Native Plants of Australia (including Tasmania). By J. H. Maiden, F. L. S., 
Curator of the Technological Museum of New South Wales, Sydney. Sydney, 1889. 

See also note (*), page 71. 

Hand-book of Commercial Geography. By Geo. G. Chisholm, M. A., B. So. London, 
1889. 

New Commercial Plants, with Directions how to grow them to the Best Advantage. 
By Thomas Christy. London, Christy & Co. 

Dictionary of Popular Names of the Plants which furnish the Natural and Acquired 
Wants of Man. By John Smith, A. L. S. London, 1885. 

Cultivated Plants : Their Propagation and Improvement. By F. W. Burbage. Lon- 
don, 1877. 

The Wanderings of Plants and Animals from their First home. By Victor Hehn, edited 
by James Steven Stally brass. London, 1885. 

Researches into the Early History of Mankind, and the Development of Civilization. 
By Edward B. Tylor, D. C. L., LL.D., F.R. S. 1878. 

* The number of species of Phwnocjamia has been given by many writers as not far 
from 150,000. But the total number of species recognized by Bcntham and Hooker, in 
the Genera Plantarum (Durand's Index), is 100,220, in 210 natural orders and 8,417 
genera. 

f Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant, to whose kindness I am indebted for great assistance in the 
matter of references, has placed at my disposal many of his notes on edible plants, etc. 
From his enumeration it appears that, if we count all the plants which have been culti- 
vated for food at one time or another, the list contains 1,192 species; but if we count all 
the plants which either " habitally or during famine periods are recorded to have been 
eaten," we obtain a list of no less than 4,090 species, or about three and one half per 
cent of all known species of plants. But, as Sir Joseph Hooker has said, the products 
of many plants, though eatable, are not fit to eat. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 61 

the total rmm'ber of species of flowering plants utilized to any- 
considerable extent by man in his civilized state does not exceed, 
in fact it does not quite reach, one per cent. 

The disproportion between the plants which are known and 
those which are used becomes much greater when we take into 
account the species of flowerless plants also. Of the five hundred 
ferns and their allies we employ for other than decorative pur- 
poses only five ; the mosses and liverworts, roughly estimated at 
five hundred species, have only four which are directly used by 
man. There are comparatively few algae, fungi, or lichens which 
have extended use. 

Therefore, when we take the flowering and flowerless together, 
the percentage of utilized plants falls far below the estimate 
made for the flowering alone. 

Such a ratio between the number of species known and the 
number used justifies the inquiry which I have pro^Dosed for dis- 
cussion at this name — namely, Can the short list of useful jDlants 
be increased to advantage ? If so, how ? 

This is a practical question ; it is likewise a very old one. In 
one form or another, by one people or another, it has been asked 
from early times. In the dawn of civilization, mankind inher- 
ited from savage ancestors certain plants, which had been found 
amenable to simple cultivation, and the products of these plants 
supplemented the spoils of the chase and of the sea. The ques- 
tion which we ask now was asked then. "Wild plants were exam- 
ined for new uses; primitive agriculture and horticulture ex- 
tended their bounds in answer to this inquiry. Age after age 
has added slowly and cautiously to the list of cultivable and 
utilizable plants, but the aggregate additions have been, as we 
have seen, comparatively slight. 

The question has thus no charm of novelty, but it is as prac- 
tical to-day as in early ages. In fact, at the present time, in view 
of all the appliances at the command of modern science, and 
under the strong light cast by recent biological and technological 
research, the inquiry which we propose assumes great impor- 
tance. One phase of it is being attentively and sj^stematically 
regarded in the great experiment stations, another phase is 
being studied in the laboratories of chemistry and pharmacy, 
while still another presents itself in the museums of economic 
botany. 

Our question may be put in other words, which are even more 
practical. What present likelihood is there that our tables may, 
one of these days, have other vegetables, fruits, and cereals than 
those which we use now ? What chance is there that new fibers 
may supplement or even replace those which we spin and weave, 
that woven fabrics may take on new vegetable colors, that 



62 ' THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

flowers and leaves may yield new perfumes and flavors ? What 
probability is there that new remedial agents may be tound 
among plants neglected or now wholly unknown ? The answer 
which I shall attempt is not in the nature of a prophecy ; it can 
claim no higher rank than that of a reasonable conjecture. 

At the outset it must be said that synthetic chemistry has 
made and is making some exceedingly short cuts across this 
field of research, giving us artificial dyes, odors, flavors, and 
medicinal substances of such excellence that it sometimes seems 
as if before long the old-fashioned chemical processes m the plant 
itself would play only a subordinate part. But although there is 
no telling where the triumphs of chemical synthesis will end, it 
is not probable that it will ever interfere essentially with certain 
classes of economic plants. It is impossible to conceive of a syn- 
thetic fiber or a synthetic fruit. Chemistry gives us fruit-ethers 
and fruit-acids, and after a while may provide us with a true arti- 
ficial sugar and amorphous starch ; but artificial fruits worth the 
eating or artificial fibers worth the spinning are not coming m 

our day. „ ,i ,• i 

Despite the extraordinary achievements of synthetic chemis- 
try, the world must be content to accept, for a long time to come, 
the results of the intelligent labor of the cultivator of the soil 
and the explorer of the forest. Improvement of the good plants 
we now utilize, and the discovery of new ones, must remain the 
care of large numbers of diligent students and assiduous wOTk- 
men. So that, m fact, our question resolves itself into this : Can 
these practical investigators hope to make any substantial ad- 
vance ? . 1 . 1 ^•^^A 
It will be well to glance first at the manner m which our wild 
and cultivated plants have been singled out for use. We shall m 
the case of each class, allude to the methods by which he selected 
plants have been improved, or their products fully utilized. 
Thus, looking the ground over, although not minutely, we can see 
what new plants are likely to be added to our list. Our illustra- 
tions can, at the best, be only fragmentary. ^ ^. . . , ,, ^ 
We shall not have time to treat the different divisions of the 
subject in precisely the proportions which would be demanded by 
an exhaustive essay; an address on an occasion like this must 
pass lightly over some matters which other opportunities for dis- 
cussion could properly examine with great fullness. Unfortunate- 
ly some of the minor topics which must be thus passed by possess 
considerable popular interest ; one of these is the first subordinate 
question introductory to our task, namely. How were our useful 
cultivated and wild plants selected for use ? 

A study of the early history of plants employed for ceremonial 
purposes, in religious solemnities, in incantations, and for medici- 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 63 

nal uses shows how slender has sometimes "been the claim of cer- 
tain plants to the possession of any real utility. But some of the 
plants which have been brought to notice in these ways have 
afterward been found to be utilizable in some fashion or other. 
This is often seen in the cases of the plants which have been sug- 
gested for medicinal use through the absurd doctrine of signa- 
tures.* 

It seems clear that, except in modern times, useful j^lants have 
been selected almost wholly by chance, and it may well be said 
that a selection by accident is no selection at all. Nowadays the 
new selections are based on analogy. One of the most striking 
illustrations of the modern method is afforded by the utilization 
of bamboo fiber for electric lamps. 

Some of the classes of useful plants must be passed by without 
present discussion; others alluded to slightly; while still other 
groups fairly representative of selection and improvement will be 
more fully described. In this latter class would naturally come, 
of course, the food-plants known as 

I. The Cereals. — Let us look first at these. 

The species of grasses which yield these seed-like fruits, or, as 
we might call them for our purpose, seeds, are numerous ; f 
twenty of them are cultivated largely in the Old World, but only 
six of them are likely to be very familiar to you, namely, wheat, 
rice, barley, oats, rye, and maize. The last of these is of Ameri- 
can origin, despite doubts which have been cast upon it. It was 
not known in the Old World until after the discovery of the New. 
It has probably been very long in cultivation. The others all 
belong to the Old World. Wheat and barley have been culti- 
vated from the earliest times ; according to De Candolle, the chief 
authority in these matters, about four thousand years. Later 
came rye and oats, both of which have been known in cultivation 
for at least two thousand years. Even the shorter of these pe- 
riods gives time enough for wide variation, and, as is to be ex- 
pected, there are numerous varieties of them all. For instance, 
Vilmorin, in 1880, figured sixty-six varieties of wheat with plain- 
ly distinguishable characters.J 

If the Chinese records are to be trusted, rice has been culti- 
vated for a period much longer than that assigned by our history 
and traditions to the other cereals, and the varieties are corre- 
spondingly numerous. It is said that in Japan above three hun- 

* The Folk Lore of Plants. By T. F. Thiselton Dyer, 1889. 

f In Dr. Sturtevant's list, 88 species of Graminece are counted as food-plants under 
cultivation, while the number of species in this order which can be or have been utilized 
as food amounts to 146. Our smaller number 20 comprises only those which have been 
grown on a large scale anywhere. 

X " In Agricultural Museum at Poppelsdorf 600 varieties are exhibited." 



64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

dred varieties are grown on irrigated lands, and more than one 
hundred on uplands,* 

With the possible exception of rice, not one of the species of 
cereals is certainly known in the wild state, f Now and then speci- 
mens have been gathered in the East which can be referred to the 
probable types from which our varieties have sprung, but doubt 
has been thrown upon every one of these cases. It has been 
shown conclusively that it is easy for a plant to escape from culti- 
vation and persist in its new home even for a long time in a near 
approximation to cultivated form. Hence, we are forced to re- 
ceive all statements regarding the wild forms with caution. But 
it may be safely said that if all the varieties of cereals which we 
now cultivate were to be swept out of existence, we could hardly 
know where to turn for wild species with which to begin again. 
We could not know with certainty. 

To bring this fact a little more vividly to our minds, let us 
suppose a case. Let us imagine that a blight without parallel has 
brought to extinction all the forms of wheat, rice, rye, oats, bar- 
ley, and maize now in cultivation, but without affecting the other 
grasses or any other form of vegetable food. Mankind would be 
obliged to subsist upon the other kindly fruits of the earth — upon 
root-crops, tubers, leguminous seeds, and so on. Some of the sub- 
stitutions might be amusing in any other time than that of a 
threatened famine. Others would be far from appetizing under 
any condition, and only a few would be wholly satisfying even to 
the most pronounced vegetarian. In short, it would seem, from 
the first, that the cereals fill a place occupied by no other plants. 
The composition of the grains is theoretically and practically al- 
most perfect as regards food ratio between the nitrogenous mat- 
ters and the starch group ; and the food value, as it is termed, 
is high. But, aside from these considerations, it would be seen 
that for safety of preservation through considerable periods, and 
for convenience of transportation, the cereals take highest rank. 
Pressure would come from every side to compel us to find equiva- 
lents for the lost grains. From this predicament I believe that 
the well-equipped experiment stations and the Agricultural De- 
partments in Europe and America would by and by extricate us. 
Continuing this hypothetical case, let us next inquire how the sta- 
tions would probably go to work in the up-hill task of making 
partially good a well-nigh irreparable loss. 

The whole group of relatives of the lost cereals would be passed 

* E. L. S. in letter, quoted from Seedsman's Catalogue. 

•)■ The best account of the early history of these and other cultivated plants can be 
found in the classical work of De Candolle, Origine dcs Plantcs Cultivees (Paris), trans- 
lated in the International Series, History of Cultivated Plants (New York). The reader 
i:houId consult also Darwin's Animals and Plants under Domestication. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 65 

in strict review. Size of grain, strength and vigor and plasticity 
of stock, adaptability to different surroundings, and flexibility in 
variation would be examined with scrupulous care. 

But the range of experiment would, under the circumstances, 
extend far beyond the relatives of our present cereals. It would 
embrace an examination of the other grasses which are even now 
cultivated for their grains, but which are so little known, outside 
of their own limit, that it is a surprise to hear about them. For 
example, the millets, great and small, would be investigated. These 
grains, so little known here, form an important crop in certain 
parts of the East. One of the leading authorities on the subject * 
states that the millets constitute " a more important crop " in India 
" than either rice or wheat, and are grown more extensively, being 
raised from Madras in the south to Rajputana in the north. They 
occupy about eighty-three per cent of the food-grain area in 
Bombay and Sinde, forty-one per cent in the Punjab, thirty- 
nine per cent in the central provinces," " in all about thirty 
million acres." 

Having chosen proper subjects for experimenting, the cultiva- 
tors would make use of certain well-known principles. By simple 
selection of the more desirable seeds, strains would be secured to 
suit definite wants, and these strains would be kept as races, or 
attempts would be made to intensify v/ished-for characters. By 
skillful hybridizing of the first, second, and higher orders, tenden- 
cies to wider variation would be obtained and the process of selec- 
tion considerably expedited.! 

It is out of our power to predict how much time would elapse 
before satisfactory substitutes for our cereals could be found. In 
the improvement of the grains of grasses other than those which 
have been very long under cultivation, experiments have been 
few, scattered, and indecisive. Therefore we are as badly off for 
time-ratios as are the geologists and archaeologists in their state- 
ments of elapsed periods. It is impossible for us to ignore the 
fact that there appear to be occasions in the life of a species when 
it seems to be peculiarly susceptible to the influence of its sur- 

* Food-grains of India, A. II. Church, London, 1886, p. 34. In this instructive work 
the reader will find much information regarding the less common articles of food. Of 
Paiiicum frumentaccum. Prof. Georgeson states in a letter that it is grown in Japan for 
its grain, which is used for food, but here would take rank as a fodder-plant. 

f In order to avoid possible misapprehension, it should be stated that there are a few 
persons who hold that at least some of our cereals, and other cultivated plants, for that 
matter, have not undergone material improvement, but are essentially unmodified progeny. 
Under this view, if we could look back into the farthest past, we should see our cereals 
growing wild and in such admirable condition that we should unhesitatingly select them 
for immediate use. This extreme position is untenable. Again, there are a few extrem- 
ists who hold that some plants under cultivation have reached their culminating point, and 
must now remain stationary or begin to retrograde. 



66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

roundings.* A species, like a carefully laden sliip, represents a 
balancing of forces within and without. Disturbance may come 
through variation from within, as from a shifting of the cargo, or 
in some cases from without. We may suppose both forces to be 
active in producing variation, a change in the internal condition 
rendering the plant more susceptible to any change in its surround- 
ings. Under the influence of any marked disturbance, a state of 
unstable equilibrium may be brought about, at which times the 
species as such is easily acted upon by very slight agencies. 

One of the most marked of these derangements is a consequent 
of cross-breeding within the extreme limits of varieties. The re- 
sultant forms in such cases can persist only by close breeding or 
by propagation from buds or the equivalents of buds. Disturb- 
ances like these arise unexpectedly in the ordinary course of 
nature, giving us sports of various kinds. These critical periods, 
however, are not unwelcome, since skillful cultivators can take 
advantage of them. In this very field much has been accom- 
plished. An attentive study of the sagacious work done by 
Thomas Andrew Knight shows to what extent this can be done.f 
But we must confess that it would be absolutely impossible to 
predict with certainty how long or how short would be the time 
before new cereals or acceptable equivalents for them would be 
provided. Upheld by the confidence which I have in the intelli- 
gence, ingenuity, and energy of our experiment stations, I may 
say that the time would not probably exceed that of two genera- 
tions of our race, or half a century. 

In now laying aside our hypothetical illustration, I venture to 
ask why it is that our experiment stations, and other institutions 
dealing with plants and their improvement, do not undertake 
investigations like those which I have sketched ? Why are not 
some of the grasses other than our present cereals studied with 
reference to their adoption as food-grains ? One of these species 
will naturally suggest itself to you all, namely, the wild rice of 
the lakes, t Observations have shown that, were it not for the 

* Gray's Botanical Text-Book, vols, i and ii. 

f A Selection from the Physiological and Horticultural Papers published in the 
Transactions of the Royal and Horticultural Societies, by the late Thomas Andrew Knight, 
Esq., President of the Horticultural Society, London. London, 1841. 

X Hlustrations of the Manners and Customs and Condition of the North American 
Indians. By George Catlin. London, ISTe. A reprint of the account published in 1841, 
of travels in 1832-'40. " Plate 278 is a party of Sioux, in bark canoes (purchased of the 
Chippewas), gathering the wild rice, which grows in immense fields around the shores of 
the rivers and lakes of these northern regions, and used by the Indians as an article of 
food. The mode of gathering it is curious and, as seen in the drawing, one woman 
paddles the canoe, while another with a stick in each hand bends the rice over the canoe 
with one and strikes it with the other, which shakes it into the canoe, which is constantly 
moving along until it is filled." Vol. ii, p. 208. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 67 

difficulty of harvesting these grains, which fall too easily when 
they are ripe, they might be utilized. But attentive search might 
find or educe some variety of Zizania with a more persistent 
grain and a better yield. There are two of our sea-shore grasses 
which have excellent grains, but are of small yield. "Why are not 
these, or better ones which might be suggested by observation, 
taken in hand ? 

The reason is plain. We are all content to move along in lines 
of least resistance, and are disinclined to make a fresh start. It 
is merely leaving well enough alone, and, so far as the cereals are 
concerned, it is indeed well enough. The generous grains of 
modern varieties of wheat and barley compared with the well- 
preserved charred vestiges found in Greece by Schliemann,* and 
in the lake-dwellings,t are satisfactory in every respect. Im- 
provements, however, are making in many directions ; and in the 
cereals we now have we possess far better and more satisfactory 
material for further improvement, both in quality and as regards 
range of distribution, than we could reasonably hope to have 
from other grasses. 

From the cereals we may turn to the interesting groups of 
plants comprised under the general term 

II. Vegetables. — Under this term it will be convenient for 
us to include all plants which are employed for culinary purj)oses, 
or for table use, such as salads and relishes. 

The potato and sweet potato, the pumpkin and squash, the 
red or capsicum peppers, and the tomato, are of American 
origin. 

All the others are, most probably, natives of the Old World. 
Only one plant coming in this class has been derived from south- 
ern Australasia, namely, New Zealand spinach {Tetragonia) . 

Among the vegetables and salad-plants longest in cultivation 

* Schliemann's carbonized specimens exhumed in Greece are said to be " very hard, 
fine-grained, sharp, very flat on grooved side, different from any wheats now known." 
American Antiquities, 1880, p. 66. The carbonized grains in the Pcabody Museum at 
Cambridge, Mass., are small. 

■)• Prehistoric Times as illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs 
of Modern Savages. By John Lubbock, Bart. New York, fourth edition, 1886. " Three 
varieties of wheat were cultivated by the lake-dwellers, who also possessed two kinds of 
barley and two of millet. Of these the most ancient and most important were the six- 
rowed barley and small " lake-dwellers' " wheat. The discovery of Egyptian wheat 
{Triticum turgidum), at Wangcn and Robenhausen, is particularly interesting. Oats were 
cultivated during the bronze age, but are absent from all the stone age villages. Rye was 
also unknown " (p. 216). "Wheat is most common, having been discovered at Merlen, 
Moosseedorf, and Wangen. At the latter place, indeed, many bushels of it were found, 
the grains being in large, thick lumps. In other cases the grains are free, and without 
chaff, resembling our present wheat in size and form, while more rarely they are still 
in the ear." One hundred and fifteen species of plants have been identified (Ileer, 
Keller). 



68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

we may enumerate the following: turnip, onion, cabbage, purs- 
lane, the large bean (Faha), chick-pea, lentil, and one species of 
pea, garden pea. To these an antiquity of at least four thousand 
years is ascribed. 

Next to these, in point of age, come the radish, carrot, beet, 
garlic, garden cress and celery, lettuce, asparagus, and the leek. 
Three or four leguminous seeds are to be placed in the same cate- 
gory, as are also the black peppers. 

Of more recent introduction the most prominent are the pars- 
nip, oyster-plant, parsley, artichoke, endive, and spinach. 

From these lists I have purposely omitted a few which belong 
exclusively to the tropics, such as certain yams. 

The number of varieties of these vegetables is astounding. It 
is, of course, impossible to discriminate between closely allied 
varieties which have been introduced by gardeners and seedsmen 
under different names, but which are essentially identical, and we 
must therefore have recourse to a conservative authority, Vil- 
morin,* from whose work a few examples have been selected. 
The varieties which he accepts are sufficiently well distinguished 
to admit of description, and in most instances of delineation, with- 
out any danger of confusion. The potato has, he says, innumer- 
able varieties, of which he accepts forty as easily distinguishable 
and worthy of a place in a general list, but he adds also a list, 
comprising, of course, synonyms, of thirty-two French, twenty- 
six English, nineteen American, and eighteen German varieties. 
The following numbers speak for themselves, all being selected 
in the same careful manner as those of the potato : celery, more 
than twenty ; carrot, more than thirty ; beet, radish, and potato, 
more than forty ; lettuce and onion, more than fifty ; turnip, more 
than seventy ; cabbage, kidney-bean, and garden pea, more than 
one hundred. 

The amount of horticultural work which these numbers repre- 
sent is enormous. Each variety established as a race (that is, a 
variety which comes true to seed) has been evolved by the same 
sort of patient care and waiting which we have seen is necessary 
in the case of cereals, but the time of waiting has not been as a 
general thing so long. 

You will permit me to quote from Vilmorin f also an account 
of a common plant, which will show how wide is the range of 
variation and how obscure are the indications in the wild plant 
of its available possibilities. The example shows how completely 
hidden are the potential variations useful to mankind : 

* Les riantes Potagh-cs, Vilmorin, Paris. Translated into English under the direc- 
tion of W. r.obinson, Editor of the (London) Garden, 1885, and entitled The Vegetable 
Garden. 

•)• Loc. cit., English edition, p. 104. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 6g 

Cabbage, a plant wbich is indigenous in Europe and western Asia, is one of 
tbe vegetables which has been cultivated fi-om the earliest time. The ancients 
were well acquainted with it, and certainly possessed several varieties of the head- 
forming kinds. The great antiquity of its culture may be inferred from the im- 
mense number of varieties which are now in existence, and from the very impor- 
tant modifications which have been produced in the characteristics in the original 
or parent plant. 

The wild cabbage, such as it now exists on the coasts of England and France, 
is a perennial plant with broad -lobed, undulated, thick, smooth leaves, covered 
with a glaucous bloom. The stem attains a height of from nearly two and a half 
to over three feet, and bears at the top a spike of yellow or sometimes white 
flowers. All the cultivated varieties present the same peculiarities in their inflo- 
rescence, but up to the time of flowering they exhibit most marked differences from 
each other and from the original wild plant. In most of the cabbages it is chiefly 
the leaves that are developed by cultivation ; these for the most part become im- 
bricated or overlap one another closely, so as to form a more or less compact head, 
the heart or interior of which is composed of the central undeveloped shoot and 
the younger leaves next it. The shape of the head is spherical, sometimes flat- 
tened, sometimes conical. All the varieties which form heads in this way are 
known by the general name of cabbages, while other kinds with large branching 
leaves which never form heads are distinguished by the name of borecole or kale. 

In some kinds the flower stems have been so modified by culture as to become 
transformed into a thick, fleshy, tender mass, the growth and enlargement of which 
are produced at the expense of the flowers, which are absorbed and rendered abor- 
tive. Such are the broccolis and cauliflowers. 

But til is plant lias other transformations. 

In other kinds the leaves retain their ordinary dimensions, while the stem or 
principal root has been brought by cultivation to assume the shape of a large ball 
or turnip, as in the case of the plants known as kohl - rabi and turnip-rooted 
cabbage or Swedish turnip. And, lastly, there are varieties in which cultivation 
and selection have produced modifications in the ribs of the leaves, as in their 
couve troDchuda, or in the axillary shoots (as in Brussels sprouts), or in several 
organs together, as in the marrow kales and the Neapolitan curled kale. 

Here are important morphological changes like those to which 
Prof. Bailey has called attention in the case of the tomato. 

Suppose we are strolling along the beach at some of the seaside 
resorts of France, and should fall in with this coarse cruciferous 
plant, with its sprawling leaves and strong odor. Would there 
be anything in its appearance to lead us to search for its hidden 
merit as a food-plant ? What could we see in it which would give 
it a preference over a score of other plants at our feet ? Again, 
suppose we are journeying in the highlands of Peru, and should 
meet with a strong-smelling plant of the nightshade family, bear- 
ing a small irregular fruit, of subacid taste and of peculiar fla- 
vor. We will further imagine that the peculiar taste strikes our 
fancy, and we conceive that the plant has possibilities as a source 
of food. We should be led by our knowledge of the potato, prob- 
ably a native of the same region, to think that this allied plant 



70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

might be safely transferred to a northern climate ; but would there 
be promise of enough future usefulness, in such a case as this, 
to warrant our carrying the plant north as an article of food ? 
Suppose, further, we should ascertain that the fruit in question 
was relished not only by the natives of its home, but that it had 
found favor among the tribes of south Mexico and Central Amer- 
ica, and had been cultivated by them until it had attained a large 
size ; should we be strengthened in our venture ? Let us go one 
step further still. Suppose that having decided upon the intro- 
duction of the plant, and having urged everybody to try it, we 
should find it discarded as a fruit, but taking a place in gardens 
as a curiosity under an absurd name, or as a basis for preserves 
and pickles ; should we not look upon our experiment in the in- 
troduction of this new plant as a failure ? This is not a hypotheti- 
cal case. 

The tomato,* the plant in question, was cultivated in Europe 
as long ago as 1554 ; f it was known in Virginia in 1781 and in the 
Northern States in 1785 ; but it found its way into favor slowly, 
even in this land of its origin. A credible witness states that in 
Salem it was almost impossible to induce people to eat or even 
taste of the fruit. And yet, as you are well aware, its present 
cultivation on an enormous scale in Europe and this country is 
scarcely sufficient to meet the increasing demand. 

A plant which belongs to the family of the tomato has been 
known to the public under the name of the strawberry tomato. 
The juicy yellow or orange-colored fruit is inclosed in a papery 
calyx of large size. The descriptions which were published when 
the plant was i^laced on the market were attractive, and were not 
exaggerated to a misleading extent. But, as you all know, the 
plant never gained any popularity. If we look at these two cases 
carefully we shall see that what appears to be caprice on the part 
of the public is at bottom common sense. The cases illustrate as 
well as any which are at command the difficulties which sur- 
round the whole subject of the introduction of new foods. 

* According to notes made by Mr. Manning, Secretary Massacbusetts Horticultural 
Society (History Massachusetts Horticultural Society), the tomato was introduced into 
Salem, Mass., about 1802 by Michele Felice Cornc, an Italian painter, but he found it diffi- 
cult to persuade people even to taste the fruit (Felt's Annals of Salem, vol. ii, p. 631). 
It was said to have been introduced into Philadelphia by a French refugee from Santo 
Domingo in 1798. It was used as an article of food in New Orleans in 1812, but was not 
sold in the markets of Philadelphia until 1829. It did not come into general use in the 
North until some years after the last-named date. 

f " In Spain and those hot regions, they use to eat the (love) apples prepared and 
boiled with pepper, salt, and olives ; but they yield very little nourishment to the 
bodies, and the same nought and corrupt. Likewise they doe eat the apples with oile, 
vinegar, and pepper mixed together for sauce to their meat even as we in these Cold 
Countries do Mustard." (Gerard's Herbal, p. 316.) 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 71 

Before asking specifically in wliat direction we shall look for 
new vegetables I must be pardoned for calling attention, in pass- 
ing, to a very few of the many which are already in limited use 
in Europe and this country, but which merit a wider employment. 
Cardon, or cardoon; celeriac, or turnip-rooted celery; fetticus, 
or corn-salad ; martynia ; salsify ; sea-kale ; and numerous small 
salads, are examples of neglected treasures of the vegetable 
garden. 

The following, which are even less known, may be mentioned 
as fairly promising : * 

1. Arr acacia esculenta, called arracacha, belonging to the 
parsley family. It is extensively cultivated in some of the north- 
ern states of South America. The stems are swollen near the 
base and produce tuberous enlargements filled with an excellent 
starch. Although the plant is of comparatively easy cultivation, 
efforts to introduce it into Europe have not been successful, but 
it is said to have found favor in both the Indies, and may prove 
useful in our Southern States. 

2. Ullucus or ollucus, another tuberous-rooted plant from 
nearly the same region, but belonging to the beet or spinach 
family. It has produced tubers of good size in England, but 
they are too waxy in consistence to dispute the place of the better 
tubers of the potato. The plant is worth investigating for our 
hot, dry lands. 

3. A tuber-bearing relative of our common hedge-nettle, or 
Stacliys, is now cultivated on a large scale at Crosnes, in France, 
for the Paris market. Its name in Paris is taken from the locality 
where it is now grown for use. Although its native country is 
Japan, it is called by some seedsmen Chinese artichoke. At the 
present stage of cultivation the tubers are small and are rather 
hard to keep, but it is thought that, '' both of these defects can be 
overcome or evaded." f Experiments indicate that we have in 
this species a valuable addition to our vegetables. We must 
next look at certain other neglected possibilities. 

Dr. Edward Palmer, J whose energy as a collector and acute- 

* Commercial Botany of the Nineteenth Century. By John R. Jackson, A. L. S. 
Cassell & Co. London, 1890. Mr. Jackson, who is the Curator of the Museums, 
Royal Gardens, Kcw, has embodied in this treatise a great amount of valuable information, 
well arranged for ready reference. 

f Gardener's Chronicle, 1888. 

X Department of Agriculture Report for 1870, pp. 404-428. Only those are here copied 
from Dr. Palmer's list which he expressly states are extensively used : 

Ground-nut {Apios tubcrosa) ; Aesculus californica ; Agave amcricana ; Nwpliar 
advena ; prairie potato (Psoralca esculenta) ; Scirpus lacustris ; Sagittaria variabilis ; 
kamass-root {Camassia esculenta); Solanum Fendlm-i (supposed by him to be the original 
of the cultivated potato) ; acorns of various sorts ; mesquite [Algarohia glandulosa ; 
Juniperus occidentalis ; nuts of Carya^ Juglans, etc. ; screw-bean {Slrombocarpus pubescens) ; 



72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

iiess as an oloserver are known to you. all, has brought together 
very interesting facts relative to the food-plants of our North 
American aborigines. Among the plants described by him there 
are a few which merit careful investigation. Against all of them, 
however, there lie the objections mentioned before, namely : 

1. The long time required for their improvement, and — 

2. The difficulty of making them acceptable to the commu- 
nity, involving — 

3. The risk of total and mortifying failure. 

In the notes to this address the more prominent of these are 
enumerated. 

In 1854 the late Prof. Gray called attention to the remarkable 
relations which exist between the plants of Japan and those of 
our Eastern coast. You will remember that he not only proved 
that the plants of the two regions had a common origin, but also 
emphasized the fact that many species of the two countries are 

various cactacefc ; Yucca ; cherries and many wild berries ; Chenopodium album, etc. 
Psoralea esculentaz= prairie potato, or bread-root. (Palmer in Agricultural Report, 18Y0, 
p. 402). The following from Catlin, he. dt.., i, p. 122: "Corn and dried meat 
are generally laid in in the fall, in sufHcient quantities to support them through 
the winter. These are the principal articles of food during that long and in- 
clement season ; and, in addition to them, they oftentimes have in store great quantities 
of dried squashes, and dried ' pommcs blanches,' a kind of turnip which grows in great 
abundance in those regions. . . . These are dried in great quantities and pounded into 
a sort of meal and cooked with dried meat and corn. Great quantities also are 
dried and laid away in store for the winter season, such as buffalo-berries, service- 
berries, strawberries, and wild plums. In addition to this we had the luxury 
of service-berries vv'ithout stint ; and the buffalo bushes, which are peiarulc 
to these northern regions, lined the banks of the river and the defiles in the 
bluffs, sometimes for miles together, forming almost impassable hedges, so 
loaded with the weight of their fruit that their boughs everywhere gracefully bending 
down or resting on the ground. This last shrub {Shepherdia), which may be said to be 
the most beautiful ornament that decks out the wild prairies, forms a striking contrast to 
the rest of the foliage, from the blue appearance of its leaves by which it can be distin- 
guished for miles in distance. The fruit which it produces in such incredible profusion, 
hanging in clusters to every limb and to every twig, is about the size of ordinary currants 
and not unlike them in color and even in flavor ; being exceedingly acid, almost unjjalata- 
ble, until they are bitten by frost of autumn, when they arc sweetened and their flavor 
delicious, having to the taste much the character of grapes, and I am almost fain 
to think would produce excellent wine." (George Catlin's Illustrations and Manners, 
Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, p. 72, vol. i.) For 
much relative to the food of our aborigines, especially of the Western coast, consult 
The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America. By H. H. Bancroft. New 
York, 18Y5. The following from vol. i, p. 538, indicates that inaccuracies have crept into 
the work: " From the earliest information we have of these nations" (the author is speak- 
ing of the New Mexicans), " they are known to have been tillers of the soil ; and though 
the implements used and their methods of cultivation were both simple and primitive, 
cotton, corn, ivheat, beans, and many varieties of fruits which constituted their principal 
food were raised in abundance." Wheat was "not grown on the American continent until 
after the landing of the first explorers. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 73 

almost identical. It is to that country, wliicli has yielded us so 
many useful and beautiful plants, that we turn for new vegetables 
to supplement our present food resources. One of these plants, 
namely, Stachys, has already been mentioned as rather promis- 
ing. There are others which are worth examination and perhaps 
acquisition. 

One of the most convenient places for a preliminary examina- 
tion of the vegetables of Japan is at the railroad stations on the 
longer lines — for instance, that running from Tokio to Kobe. For 
native consumption there are prepared luncheon-boxes of two or 
three stories, provided with the simple and yet embarrassing 
chopsticks. It is worth the shock it causes one's nerves to invest 
in these boxes and try the vegetable contents. The bits of fish, 
flesh, and fowl which one finds therein can be easily separated and 
discarded, upon which there will remain a few delicacies. The 
pervading odor of the box is that of aromatic vinegar. The 
generous portion of boiled rice is of excellent quality with every 
grain well softened and distinct, and this without anything else 
would suffice for a tolerable meal. In the boxes which have 
fallen under my observation there were sundry boiled roots, 
shoots, and seeds which were not recognizable by me in their 
cooked form. Prof. Georgeson,* formerly of Japan, has kindly 
identified some of these for me, but he says, " There are doubtless 
many others used occasionally." 

One may find sliced lotus roots, roots of large burdock, lily 
bulbs, shoots of ginger, pickled green plums, beans of many sorts, 
boiled chestnuts, nuts of the gingko tree, pickled greens of various 
kinds, dried cucumbers, and several kinds of sea-weeds. Some of 
the leaves and roots are cooked in much the same manner as beet 
roots and beet leaves are by us, and the general efi^ect is not un- 
appetizing. The boiled shoots are suggestive of only the tougher 
ends of asparagus. On the whole, I do not look back on Japanese 
railway luncheons with any longing which would compel me to 
advocate the indiscriminate introduction of the constituent vege- 
tables here. 

But when the same vegetables are served in native inns, under 
more favorable culinary conditions, without the flavor of vinegar 

* Pickled daikon, the large radish, often grated. Ginger-roots — shoga. Beans 
( Glycine hispida), many kinds, and prepared in many ways. Beans {DoHrhos culfratus), 
cooked in rice and mixed with it. Sliced hasu, lotus roots. Lily bulbs, boiled whole and 
the scales torn off as they are eaten. Pickled green plums (ume-boshi), colored red in the 
pickle by the leaves of Perilla arguta (shiso). Sliced and dried cucumbers, kiuri. 
Pieces of gobo — roots of Lappa major. Rakkio — bulbs of AUium Hakeri, boiled in 
shogu. Grated wasabi — stem of Eutrcma toasabi. Water-cress — midzu-tagarashi (not 
often). Also sometimes pickled greens of various kinds, and occasionally chestnut-kernels 
boiled and mixed with a kind of sweet sauce. Nut of the gingko tree. Several kinds of 
eea- weeds are also very commonly served with the rice. Prof. C. C. Georgeson in letter. 

VOL. XL. — 6 



74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

and of the pine wood of the luncheon-boxes, they appear to be 
worthy of a trial in onr horticulture, and I therefore deal with 
one or two in greater detail. 

Prof. Georgeson, whose advantages for acquiring a knowledge 
of the useful plants of Japan have been unusually good, has placed 
me under great obligations by communicating certain facts re- 
garding some of the more promising plants of Japan which are 
not now used here. It should be said that several of these plants 
have already attracted the notice of the Agricultural Department 
in this country. 

The soy bean {Glycine hispida). This species is known here 
to some extent, but we do not have the early and best varieties. 
These beans replace meat in the diet of the common people. 

Mucuna {Muouna capitata) and dolichos {Dolichos cuUratus) 
are pole-beans possessing merit. 

Dioscorea; there are several varieties with palatable roots. 
Years ago one of these was spoken of by the late Dr. Gray as pos- 
sessing "excellent roots, if one could only dig them." 

Colocasia antiquorum has tuberous roots, which are nutri- 
tious. 1 • T, • V J 

Conophallus Konjak has a large bulbous root, which is sliced, 
dried, and beaten to a powder. It is an ingredient in cakes. 

Aralia cordata is cultivated for the shoots, and used as we use 

asparagus. . i i. vi 

CEnantlie stolonifera and Cryptotc2nia canadensis are palatable 
salad plants, the former being used also as greens. 

There is little hope, if any, that we shall obtain from the hot- 
ter climates for our southern territory new species of merit The 
native markets in the tropical cities, like Colombo, Batavia, Singa- 
pore, and Saigon, are rich in fruits, but, outside of the native plants 
bearing these, nearly all the plants appear to be whol y m estab- 
lished lines of cultivation, such, for instance, as members of the 
gourd and nightshade families. 

Before we leave the subject of our coming vegetables, it will 
be well to note a na/ive caution enjoined by Vilmorm m his work, 
Les Plantes Potag^res.* 

"Finally," he says, "we conclude the article devoted to each 
plant with a few remarks on the uses to which it may be applied 
and on the parts of the plants which are to be so used. In many 
cases such remarks mav be looked upon as idle words, and yet it 
would sometimes have been useful to have them when new plants 
were cultivated by us for the first time. For instance, the giant 
edible burdock of Japan [Lappa eduUs) was for a long time 
served up on our tables only as a wretchedly poor spinach, be- 

* Loc. cit. Preface in English edition. 



LUSSONS FROM THE CENSUS. 75 

cause people would cook tlie leaves, whereas, in its native country, 
it is only cultivated for its tender, fleshy roots/' 

I trust you are not discouraged at this outlook for our coming 
vegetables. 

Two groups of improvable food-plants may be referred to be- 
fore we pass to the next class, namely, edible fungi and the bever- 
age-plants. All botanists who have given attention to the matter 
agree with the late Dr. Curtis, of North Carolina, that we have in 
the unutilized mushrooms an immense amount of available nutri- 
ment of a delicious quality. It is not improbable that other fungi 
than our common " edible mushroom " will by and by be subjected 
to careful selection. 

The principal beverage-plants — tea, coffee, and chocolate — are 
all attracting the assiduous attention of cultivators. The first of 
these plants is extending its range at a marvelous rate of rapidity 
through India and Ceylon ; the second is threatened by the pests 
which have almost exterminated it in Ceylon, but a new species, 
with crosses therefrom, is promising to resist them successfully ; 
the third, chocolate, is every year passing into lands farther from 
its original home. To these have been added the kola, of a value 
as yet not wholly determined, and others are to augment the 
short list. 

[To be concluded. '\ 



LESSONS FROM THE CENSUS. 

Br CAEROLL D. WEIGHT, A.M., 

TTNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF LABOR. 
II. 

TO my own mind, the Federal census system is faulty in many 
features. It is bungling, unwieldy, and unproductive of sci- 
entific results. It is the legitimate growth of time and the honest 
endeavor to secure broader and broader results to satisfy the 
growing demand for information concerning all the conditions of 
the people, and it is perfectly natural that the additions from 
time to time should have resulted in the present system. The 
system should be changed radically before another census period 
comes around. 

To be specific in the condemnation of our system, attention 
should be paid, first, to the method of enumeration. Vicious as it 
is, it is a vast improvement upon that existing prior to 1880. 
There are four methods of enumeration, or rather four methods 
of enumeration have been tried on pretty extensive scales. The 
English method consists in securing all the facts called for under 



-^e THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the law in one day. For this pnrpose a vast army of enumerators 
is appointed from the central office.* The organization under the 
British Census Act is under the control of the Local Government 
Board, and the immediate chief is the Registrar-General. Local 
registrars of births and deaths must divide their subdistricts 
into enumerators' divisions, in accordance with instructions from 
the Registrar-General, and subject to his final supervision and ap- 
proval. Every registrar of births and deaths must furnish to his 
superintendent registrar lists containing names, occupations, and 
places of abode of a sufficient number of persons qualified, accord- 
ing to instructions, to act as enumerators within a subdistrict, 
and such persons, if approved by the superintendent registrar, 
shall be appointed enumerators for taking the census. The 
board causes to be prepared a table of allowances to be made to 
the several enumerators, registrars, superintendent registrars, and 
other persons employed in taking the census ; and such table, 
when approved by the Treasury, is laid before both Houses of 
Parliament for their action. Under the act' the schedule compre- 
hends eleven inquiries, relating to the members of the family, 
visitors, boarders, and servants who slept or abode in the dwell- 
ing on the night of Sunday, April 5, 1891, and the schedule was 
called for on Monday, April 6th, by the appointed enumerator, 
whose business it was to see that the schedule was properly filled 
by the head of the household, and, if not, to cause it to be so filled. 
This method seems to be the one that attracts the attention of 
statisticians as the ideal method. Under it, however, much com- 
plaint exists in Great Britain, not only as to the processes of 
carrying out the law, but relative to the inaccuracies in the re- 
turns ; and I have been informed that much difficulty is experi- 
enced in obtaining well-filled schedules. It is unreasonable to sup- 
pose that in a population varying widely in the intelligence of its 
individual members a schedule can be properly filled or so well 
filled as to secure a reasonably scientific result. The English cen- 
sus has been extolled for its accuracy. I do not believe it is any 
more accurate than any other census taken by other methods. I 
have before me a discarded schedule — that is, an improperly filled 
one — left with an intelligent mechanic, well educated, of wide ex- 
perience, a machinist by trade, and perfectly competent to write 
an article for a magazine ; and yet he could not, or did not, 
properly fill the schedule left with him, and on an examination of 
it it is not strange that he did not. When the difficulties of fill- 
ing the simple English schedule are considered, it becomes pre- 

* In an article in the North American Review for June, 1889, I stated that the English 
census was taken through the constabulary. I made this statement on most excellent 
authority. It was, however, an error. 



ZUSSOJ^S FROM THE CENSUS. yj 

posterous to suppose that the expanded schedule under the Fed- 
eral system could be filled under the English method. This has 
been tried, and in a State where the population has been taught 
to consider the value of statistics — the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts. In 1875 the English method was adopted ; the sched- 
ules, comprehending all the inquiries at that time called for by- 
law, were left with the heads of families, with clearly defined in- 
structions, sample sheets, etc., all in accordance with the recog- 
nized English method ; and from that community, which, it is 
reasonable to suppose, could fill the census schedules if any com- 
munity could do it, but thirty-seven per cent of the returns were 
in a condition for use. The balance had to be corrected or made 
entirely by the enumerators. That method was therefore aban- 
doned in subsequent censuses for the State of Massachusetts. 
With the sparsely settled population of the United States, and 
with the broad schedule of the Federal census, covering as it does 
twenty-four inquiries, it would be absurd to attempt to take the 
census under the English system. 

In Germany the labor of enumeration is performed by persons 
who, in consideration of the public utility of the work, do it with- 
out compensation.* It has been thought that this feature could 
be embodied in the United States census to a certain extent, or at 
least supplemented by the employment of school-teachers in the 
enumeration. The German method involves, of course, the crea- 
tion of exceedingly small enumeration districts, after the English 
method, a block in a city or a portion of a street in a town or vil- 
lage being allotted to some patriotic citizen who would without 
compensation see to it that the schedules were properly filled. It 
is doubtful if this method could be made useful in the United 
States. Our people are too busy — at least those competent to take 
charge of such work — to induce them to enlist. The great difii- 
culty even now is to secure men for a week or a month's service 
under the Census Office. 

The third method of enumeration is that practiced in the State 
of Massachusetts, and certainly the scientific results of the cen- 
suses of that State would indicate the value of the method em- 
ployed. Since 1845 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has 
taken a census regularly, on the mean year of the Federal cen- 
suses. It started its census work in 1837 by an account of its 
manufactures, etc. ; but its first enumeration on any broad scale 
was in 1845, through the assessors of cities and towns. In 1875 
the field work was done by enumerators appointed by the census 
authorities and paid by the day, and they were instructed to secure 

* The History, Theory, and Technique of Statistics, by August Meltzen, Ph. D., pro- 
fessor at the University of Berlin. Falkner's translation. 



78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

full and complete results without regard to tlie time taken. For 
the population the English method was used, as already stated. 
The manufactures and agricultural products were secured on in- 
dividual schedules, statements being certified to by proprietors. 
In 1885 the card schedule for population was successfully intro- 
duced, the other features of the 1875 system and per diem com- 
pensation being retained. 

Under the Federal system, which I have said is so faulty, all 
data are collected, so far as population, agriculture, and the gen- 
eral statistics of manufacture are concerned, by enumerators se- 
lected by the supervisors and appointed by the Superintendent. 
The supervisors under the eleventh census are fairly compen- 
sated ; the enumerators are not. The compensation for enumer- 
ating the population under the existing law is in most of the 
country two cents for each living inhabitant, two cents for each 
death reported, fifteen cents for each farm, twenty cents for each 
establishment of productive industry enumerated and returned, 
and five cents for each surviving soldier, sailor, or marine, or 
each widow of a soldier, sailor, or marine returned. In some 
subdivisions the allowance for each living inhabitant may be in- 
creased, but the comi^ensation allowed to any enumerator in any 
difificult district shall not be less than three dollars nor more than 
six dollars per day of ten hours' actual field work, when a per diem 
compensation shall be established by the Secretary of the Interior 
instead of a per capita ; nor, where the per capita rate is increased, 
shall it exceed three cents for each living inhabitant, twenty cents 
for each farm, and thirty cents for each establishment of produc- 
tive industry ; nor shall claims for mileage or traveling expenses 
be allowed any enumerator in either class of cases, except where 
difiiculties are extreme, and then only when authority has been 
previously granted by the Superintendent of the Census. The 
allowance relative to inhabitants and deaths is the same as under 
the tenth census. There is an increase of a few cents in the com- 
pensation for enumerating farms and establishments or productive 
industry. It may not be possible nor wise to change this method, 
but it is possible and wise to make the compensation fair and just. 
Under these rates it is almost impossible for an enumerator to 
earn a fair day's wage if he does his duty. In localities where 
the population is dense, he can earn three or four dollars per 
day. His ambition is — and human nature prompts it — to se- 
cure as many names as possible, and in too many instances he 
will do this at the expense of accuracy ; for accuracy consumes 
time. Furthermore, he may be inclined, in the very worst locali- 
ties, in the slums of great cities, to omit, for personal reasons of 
convenience or otherwise, to enumerate all the peojDle, being con- 
tented with taking the population in sight ; in other words, two 



LESSONS FROM THE CENSUS. 79 

cents a name miglit not induce him to enter all the dens of the 
slums of a great city for the sake of accuracy. In sparsely settled 
localities even three cents a name (the per capita rate, it must be 
borne in mind, covers all the multitude of facts called for on the 
population schedule) will not enable an enumerator to earn a 
living for the time employed, and he is often inclined to take the 
statements of neighbors rather than to travel a mile or two to 
secure accurate statements relative to half a dozen persons. In 
enumerating establishments of productive industry, the compen- 
sation allowed by law will not enable an enumerator, either hon- 
estly or dishonestly inclined, to secure any very valuable results. 
It is quite impossible to fill out a manufactures schedule com- 
pletely and with fair accuracy for twenty cents. A man could 
not earn one dollar a day if he did his duty, and on the enumera- 
tion of farms he could not earn seventy-five cents a day. The 
complete agricultural statistics under the census of Massachusetts 
in 1885 cost about one dollar per farm, instead of fifteen or twenty 
cents. 

The difficulty which Congress would have to meet in adjusting 
this matter of compensation is twofold. If a very large body of 
enumerators, like that employed under the elventh census, nearly 
fifty thousand, should be enlisted on a per diem compensation, the 
fear would be that there would be men enough in that vast army 
who would delay their work for the purpose of increasing their 
earnings to swell the cost of enumeration to enormous propor- 
tions^ although reasonable accuracy would thereby be secured in 
every direction. On the per capita basis the question would be 
whether accuracy should be sacrificed for the sake of a lower cost. 
The evils of the present system are so great, however, so far as 
compensation is concerned, and the results of the census vitiated 
to so large a degree, that it would seem to be wise to adopt a sys- 
tem of compensation which should secure fair accuracy in the 
results^ even at an increase in the expense The country grows 
so rapidly, and the wealth and business increase so largely, that 
the total expense of a census should not be considered when the 
accuracy of the same is at stake. 

Another fault of the present system, to my mind, lies in the 
organization of the field forces. It is perfectly natural that the 
Census Office, and that Congress, even, should seek a speedy 
enumeration of the people ; but it is submitted that if an instan- 
taneous enumeration can not be had — and it is clearly demonstra- 
ble that it can not in this country — then whether it take a week or 
two weeks, or even three or four, to complete the enumeration be- 
comes a matter of lesser consideration. It might, therefore, be 
wise to make larger districts aiid use a less number of enumerators 
rather than to extend the method by decreasing the size of the 



8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

districts and increasing the number of enumerators, as is the 
present tendency. An enumerator, working for a few days, ac- 
quires speed a7id accuracy as a matter of experience, and his 
second week's work is of vastly greater value than his first few 
days' service. It might he well, therefore, to so subdivide the coun- 
try into enumeration districts that each enumerator would have 
at least four or five thousand people to enumerate, instead of an 
average of two thousand, as under the present method. If the 
districts were enlarged, the number of supervisors should be 
greatly increased. The present law provides for one hundred and 
seventy-five supervisors ; that of 1880 provided for one hundred 
and fifty. It would seem to be a prudent measure to provide for 
at least one thousand supervisors, which body, with a reduced 
number of enumerators, could take greater pains with all parts of 
the enumeration ; and if supervisors could be selected with special 
reference to their fitness and enumerators could be tested by the 
use of a preliminary schedule relating to their own families and 
perhaps one or two neighboring families, results would be secured 
which would defy criticism. With such changes there should 
come a change of date for the enumeration. The count of the 
people is now made as of the 1st of June — under the present 
law, the first Monday in June. The changes in the habits of the 
people necessitate a change of date. More and more every year 
people leave the town for the country, and this change occurs 
about the time of the enumeration. The date should be changed 
to a period of the year when the population is more thoroughly 
fixed or more thoroughly housed in permanent homes. Could 
the date be carried forward to the autumn, a great gain would be 
made in the accuracy of the enumeration — not perhaps in the total 
for the whole country, but in the total for each State and city. 
Certainly the results would be far more satisfactory to all con- 
cerned, even though the change in the total population of the 
United States did not exceed a few thousand. Each State wants 
its own: political and social reasons demand that this should 
be so. 

Perhaps the very worst form of the present system is the tem- 
porary nature of the service. As the census year comes in sight 
each decade, a Census Office is created by law, the organization 
to be taken entirely from new material, from the head to the foot. 
Of course, the aim always is in securing a superintendent to select 
some one who has had more or less experience or is supposed to 
be more or less competent in census work ; but then comes the 
greater difficulty, the selection of the forces. A good business 
man at the head of the Census Office — one of excellent adminis- 
trative and executive abilities, without knowledge of statistics — 
would handle a census, in all probability, as well as or better 



LESSONS FROM THE CENSUS. 81 

even than a statistician without business qualifications ; but the 
organization demands skillful men at the head of divisions and 
skillfid and trained statisticians as assistants. Every superin- 
tendent endeavors to draw into his service a certain number prop- 
erly qualified, statistically speaking, for the service required ; but 
everything must be drawn together hurriedly — a great bureau, 
the largest in the Federal Government, created in a brief period, 
and the work carried on with the greatest rapidity. With the 
vast expansion of census inquiries, in connection with the neces- 
sarily speedy organization, it is absurd, without regard to the 
qualifications of the head of the office, to expect valuable results 
for the money expended. It is not in the power of any superin- 
tendent, no matter what his experience, no matter what his quali- 
fications may be, to take a very satisfactory census under the con- 
ditions involved in our Federal system. The attempt is made to 
create a vast official machine, and then to at once collect material 
involving in its collection answers to thousands of inquiries by a 
force of nearly fifty thousand men in the field and an office force 
of five thousand, the whole work to be completed within a year or 
two, and the data to be collected under a system of compensation 
which does not allow, or certainly does not induce, accurate work. 
The result is that the Census Office is, within a few months after 
the date set for enumeration, literally " snowed under " with raw 
material collected by crude and, in a large majority of cases, in- 
efficient forces, to be digested and compiled for printing by an- 
other force nearly as crude as the field forces. It is not in the 
power of human capacity to carry out scientifically the work of 
the Federal census. It never has been done ; it never can be done 
until the system is changed. This does not involve any criticism 
as to the growth of the system nor of the men who have so ably 
administered it. The point I make is that the census system has 
grown to be unwieldy in natural ways, and that it is time to cor- 
rect it, and the very first step toward correction lies in the direc- 
tion of the establishment of a permanent Census Office, under 
which there ought to be a constant force of trained and experi- 
enced statistical clerks, and the collection of facts distributed over 
the ten years instead of being crowded into a few months. This 
change of itself would correct many of the faults of the present 
system. The facts relating to population and agriculture might 
be collected in the fall of the census year^ when the new agricult- 
ural crops would be considered instead of the old, as under the 
present system, and then the data relating- to manufactures and 
all the other features necessarily involved in the census could be 
taken up year after year and carried each to a successful conclu- 
sion. This would involve the employment constantly of a much 
reduced office force, and a field force, except for the enumeration 

VOL. XL. *? 



82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

of the population, gradually becoming more and more skillful. 
The exjDense during the whole ten years would be somewhat larger 
than is now involved, but the results would be of such infinitely 
greater value that the increased expense would not be a matter 
for a moment's consideration. My suggestion, then, for future 
census work would be, first, a permanent Census Office, involving 
an efficient field force, under the most liberal provisions as to 
supervision, and an organization of an office force so adjusted 
that it could be made elastic and yet preserve the functions re- 
quired to secure accuracy and completeness; second, an adjust- 
ment of compensations for field work that would secure complete 
and accurate returns in all the departments of census work. 

It may be argued that there would be nothing for a permanent 
Census Office to do a great part of the time. In answer to this it 
can be said, that if the regular work of the census should leave the 
force in comparative idleness, it might be employed in tabulating 
some of the results of previous censuses which it was found neces- 
sary to abandon ; for instance, in 1880, although the facts were 
secured by the regular enumeration, no tabulation was made of 
the single, married, widowed, and divorced. The questions now 
agitating the public mind relative to marriage and divorce are 
only half discussed, because the facts for the whole country can 
not be ascertained. This is only one feature. A tabulation of the 
facts relative to conjugal condition, as indicated, for the year 1880 
would be vastly more valuable, even now, than it would have been 
in 1880. And so of other features. By picking up such aban- 
doned results, a reasonable force in the Census Office could be 
constantly and profitably employed, with increasing skill, so that 
when the results of new enumerations came into the Census Office, 
a trained force sufficiently large to influence the whole body of 
new appointees would be in readiness. 

If, in addition to the changes suggested, the several States 
could be induced to co-operate with the Federal Government, a 
great advantage would be gained. The States might undertake 
the collection of the statistics of population, manufactures, and 
agriculture on as extended a basis as individually they might 
choose, but guaranteeing to furnish the Federal Government with 
certain clearly defined and uniformly collected data, for which 
the Federal Government should provide reasonable compensation. 
Under some such adjustment the statistical work of the United 
States Government and of the individual States could be brought 
to a very high state of perfection, with the burden of expense so 
divided and adjusted that it would not be considered as a stum- 
bling-block in the way of progress. 

One of the most encouraging movements of the present day is 
that of the trade and business organizations of the country to 



REEF-KNOT NETS. 83 

secure a perfected and scientific statistical service in tliis country. 
This movement commenced during the closing days of the last 
Congress^ through memorials from boards of trade, presented by 
the National Board of Trade, asking that the question of the es- 
tablishment of a permanent Census Office be considered by the 
Secretary of the Interior and a report made to the Fifty-second 
Congress. The matter is therefore open for consideration by the 
public and by Congress, and, whether a permanent statistical serv- 
ice is provided for or not, great good must come from the discus- 
sion, and ultimately the faulty features of the present system be 
removed. 



REEF-KNOT NETS. 

By WILLIAM CHUECHLLL. 

AT the bottom of textile industries net-meshing appears to 
precede even such simple weaving as the making of mats of 
grass and bark. Not only is it the earliest of the textile arts, but 
it is even more prominently an unchanged art through all the 
stages of development which have culminated in the Jacquard 
loom. Ancient or modern, laboriously made by hand or the 
product of intricate machinery, the mesh knot is practically un- 
modified in the nets of the steam trawler and the naked savage. 
It seems, indeed, one of the few contrivances of human ingenuity 
which came early to perfection and have not proved susceptible 
of any improvement in all the succeeding ages. 

It may, then, be not without interest to present a radical vari- 
ant of the common mesh knot as noticed in general use among a 
considerable people in the western Pacific, together with such 
notes as are available to show a wider distribution of this knot. 

In Avestern New Britain, on the coast of Dampier Strait, facing 
New Guinea, where the Papuan characteristics are most strongly 
impressed upon the Melanesian type, the writer noticed the net- 
ting of a large seine and was attracted by the unfamiliar motions 
of the old women engaged in the work. Closer examination dis- 
closed the fact that every knot in the mesh was of the sort known 
as the reef or square knot, in which the four ends come out in 
pairs, each pair on one side of the bight or loop of the other pair. 
As nothing could be more widely dissimilar from the ordinary 
mesh knot, an effort — and a successful one — was made to induce 
the netters to communicate their art, which is here presented 
with figures which may aid to a clear comprehension of the 
method of manufacture employed. These figures give a view of a 
net in process of construction, with detailed drawings of the foun- 
dation knot and of the successive stages in forming the mesh knot. 



84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Besides the netting-cord (commonly coir, the fiber of the cocoa- 
nut husk, which is very durable in the water), the only tool used 
is the mesh-block (E, Fig. 4). This is a thin block of hard wood 
rasped into shape, and, since these tools are treasured as heir- 
looms, together with interminably long rhythmical recitals of the 
wonderful takes of fish made by nets fabricated on each block, 
the wood most commonly employed is the very dense and hard 
iron-wood {Casuarina equisetifolia). It is highly polished and 
usually ornamented upon the ends with property marks, showing 
the exogamous marriage class and gens of the owner, which here 
take the place occupied by tribal distinctions among the endoga- 
mous races. The blocks are commonly of uniform size. Their 
length, which is practically a constant quantity, is determined by 
the length (about five inches) which may be held between the 
extreme tips of the fingers and the ball of the thumb, for that is 
its position when in use and to secure it against slipping the 
edges are carefully brought to a true right angle. The height of 
the block is, of course, determined by the width of mesh desired, 
but a height about equal to the breadth of the hand across the 
palm is most frequent, since the mesh made upon that gauge is 
found most satisfactory in taking the fish usually seined for. In 
width the blocks seldom exceed a half-inch, and have an oval 
section. Smaller hand-nets, in which accurate meshing is not de- 
sired, are commonly knotted over the finger with much nicety. 

The net is started on pegs driven into a beam, corresponding 
in number with the number of meshes in a tier which it is de- 
sired to put into the net, and these netting -beams are a promi- 
nent feature on every village green. At a distance from the end 
of the cord somewhat greatei .than the proposed width of the net, 
a bowline knot (A, Fig. 4) is turned in and cast upon the first peg 
toward the right. The two unequal parts of cord issuing from 
this knot may, for the sake of distinction, be denominated the 
ball part and the free part. The latter is carried taut to the sec- 
ond peg, and there stopped close to the beam by a light lashing, 
and at the top of the peg is passed into an eye or narrow cleft. 
The mesh-block is now laid against the row of pegs ; the ball i3art 
is passed first below and then above it from the bowline knot to 
the second peg, forming the first half-mesh (B, Fig> 4) ; it is then 
cast over the second peg, and the free part of the cord attached 
thereto with a pair of half -hitches (C and D, Fig. 1). The free 
part is then withdrawn from the eye in the peg, drawn taut 
through the two half-hitches, and half-hitched back upon itself 
(E, Fig 1). It is now carried from the knot just formed (C, Fig. 
4) to the next peg and there made ready for further use ; the ball 
part is again carried around the mesh-block and hitched and 
bound as before. Upon the last peg in the row this knot is made, 



REEF-KNOT NETS. 



is 



and in the remainder of the free part close to the peg there is 
turned in a second bowline knot (D, Fig. 4). These two bowline 
knots serve as clews to the net. This selvage and first tier 
of half-meshes are invariably made from right to left, on the 
ground that it is the custom of the country, and any variation 
therefrom would be attended by consequences as unpleasant as 
they are ill-defined. 

The second tier of meshes is made from left to rigbt, and here 
the peculiar mesh knot makes its first appearance. 

Holding the mesh-block in her left hand, so that its upper 
edge just touches the bottom of the meshes already formed, the 
operator passes the ball of cord from the last knot down in front 
and up behind the mesh-block (F, Fig. 4), making due allowance 
for the difference in size of this exterior mesh necessary to keep 
the tier uniform. The ball is held in the right hand, gripped be- 
tween the ball of the thumb, the palm, and the third and fourtli 
fingers, thus leaving the thumb and two fingers free to work 



/? 



^i;h 










*^ 




7S 



Fig. 1. — Selvage Knot. Fig. 2. — Mesh Knot, Fig. 3. — Mesh Knot, second titrn. 

first tukn. 



with. A loop (C, Fig. 2) of any convenient size is made in the 
netting-cord, between the block and the ball, passed up through 
the bight of the mesh (A) from below, and drawn through the 
bight sufficiently far to draw taut the part which passes about 
the mesh-block, in which position it is stopped by the left thumb 
on the block. The ball (E) is passed through the loop (C), also 
from below upward (as shown at D), returned to its place in the 
palm of the right hand, and the part drawn taut and stopped by 
the left thumb. This completes a single turn of the knot as 
shown in Fig. 2, where the relation of the several parts is ex- 
hibited before they have been pulled taut and stopped, which in 
practice will be found essential to the success of the operation. 

The second and final part of the knot is illustrated in Fig. 3. 
A second loop (F) is made in the cord between the ball and the 
part stoppered by the left thumb. This loop is passed from 
above downward through the bight of the mesh (A), drawn taut, 
and stopped at the mesh-block by the left thumb as before. 



86 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Through this loop (F) the ball (E) is passed also from above 
downward (as shown at G), and pulled taut to the left thumb, 
where the knot is felt to turn part way around, and is found to be 
a perfectly formed square knot as shown in Fig. 4, at G. 

This second tier of meshes completed, the operator shifts the 
ball to the left hand and the mesh-block to the right, and makes 
the third tier from right to left. The final tier with its clews and 
selvage are made by reversing the process described for begin- 
ning the net. 




Fig. 4. 



This method of meshing, though unfamiliar, has several dis- 
tinct advantages over the more usual method ; of which one in- 
heres in the knot itself, two in the line of greater simphcity m 
the mode of manufacture, and one in the possibility of easily pro- 
ducing irregular designs for particular purposes— that is to say, 
of netting pockets and pounds without interruption of the thread. 

The advantage in the knot is one which will immediately 
be apparent to those who have given attention to the study of 
knots for the reef knot is incontestably the simplest and most 
secure means of joining two parts of cord. The advantages m 
tlie mode of manufacture are that one implement, the nettmg- 
needle, is dispensed with, and that the net may be made of a 
single cord continuous throughout, and thus is of equal strength 
in every part. It would be tedious to go into the details of mak- 
ing pounds and pockets in a net ; it is more simple than appears, 
and the thread continues without a break through the net and 
insert-piece as well. It is possible that some one skilled m me- 
chanical arts may find in this device the suggestion of a mode of 
simplifying the machinery at present used in the manufacture ot 
nets for commercial purposes. 



THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 



87 



In connection with the several obscure but remarkable in- 
stances of correspondences between the American shores of the 
Pacific and the remoter islands of Melanesia, it is interesting to 
note that the only other well-defined discovery of this mesh was 
made in British America upon the Pacific shore. Prof. George 
Davidson, of San Francisco, a most accurate student of the life 
of the native races with whom he had to deal, in prosecuting the 
survey of that coast, found nets of this peculiar mesh manufact- 
ured by the Tchin-cha-au Indians of British Columbia in the 
vicinity of Port Simpson, and described it in the proceedings of 
the California Academy of Sciences, of which body he was for 
many years the president. The writer has been informed that a 
similar mesh has been noticed in the textile remains of the la- 
custrine period of Switzerland, but he has been unable to identify 
the reference in any of the figures contained in the usual authori- 
ties upon that prehistoric society. 



THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 

By WAEKEN G. BENTON. 

TN former papers on the Chinese religions I referred to Confu- 
-L danism as a religion, following the generally accepted view 
of the matter. But in this paper I shall treat it as in no legitimate 
sense a religion, but simply and purely a system of moral or 
ethical philosophy. 

^ Religion has to do primarily with the existence of a deity and 
with the question of man's immortality, and the relationship exist- 
ing between the two. Morality may grow out of man's effort to 
sustain an acceptable relationship to the Deity and the future life • 
but if so, it is incidental to and not a part of religion. The ao-es 
most noted for religious enthusiasm, and in which human fife 
and liberty were most freely sacrificed for orthodoxy in religious 
opinions and forms, were notoriously immoral. And at the pres- 
ent day, in many countries, the most religious are not the most 
moral^ communities. At Panama, a few years ago, I went to a 
cockpit on a Sunday afternoon, and among the spectators were 
several gentlemen in clerical cloth ; and after the various battles 
were ended I observed that these clerically clad gentlernen were 
exchanging coin on the result. During the same afternoon, while 
"taking in" the sights of that town of cathedrals and churches, I 
saw more than one woman, around whose neck was suspended an 
image of the Virgin Mary, but whose manner of life indicated 
that a less appropriate symbol could not well be imagined. It is 
equally significant that rarely does a criminal ascend the gallows 



88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

in this country that he is not accompanied by a clergyman, and 
he dies with the professions of piety and religious faith on his 
lips. Our penal institutions are filled with religious believers, 
and it is rare, in fact, that such men are not nominal members of 
churches, or at least have been at some time in their lives. I do 
not mention this fact to intimate that religious education or belief 
tends to promote immorality, for it does not ; but rather to show 
that religious belief does not necessarily promote morality, no 
more than does the absence of such belief tend to promote immo- 
rality 

If a system of ethics and morality founded upon a purely 
human basis, and having no reference to any deity or future life 
whatever, is a religion, then Confucianism is a religion. But I 
do not know of any definition of the term that would include such 
a system. 

The simple assertion, by those claiming authority on a subject 
that lies beyond the sphere of demonstration or proof one way or 
the other, has either to be accepted as a fact or repudiated as not 
proved. In the realm of religious dogmas it has been held to be 
good logic that when a proposition can not be disproved that it 
stands as proved. By this logic religions have been established. 
But in the matter of ethics the case is different. This comes 
within the scope of experience and demonstration, and is the out- 
growth of experiment. There is no absolute standard of morality, 
what is construed as such being a relative condition, and re- 
garded as good or bad, according to the state of civilization and 
educational standard by which actions are measured. What is 
regarded as perfect conduct in one age or under one environment 
may be rightly condemned under a higher development of the 
moral sense as a feeble attempt at morality. 

What is called conscience can not be set up as a guide in the 
matter, for it is but the result of the mode of education. One 
man's conscience will approve of a given course, when another 
under a better social and political education will repudiate it as 
vicious. Among the lower orders of savages and uncivilized men 
there is apparently no moral standard observed. With the lower 
animal kingdom questions of priority and individual rights are 
settled, not by any tribunal in equity, but by the measure of 
physical strength. And what are considered the cardinal points 
in moral and ethical systems, as set forth in the decalogue of the 
Jews and in the corresponding codes of other ancient religions, 
are but the embodiment of the results of experience in the earlier 
developments of civilization When men first began to acquire 
property by industry or cunning, they found it inconvenient to 
have others appropriate the results of such thrift, and perhaps 
the first moral obligation recognized was the right to property ; 



THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 89 

and tlie law against theft was among the first formulated codes : 
" Thou shalt not steal/^ Before such institutions as police courts 
were evolved, the only tribunal for adjusting personal difficulties 
was to fight it out ; and the stronger combatant, other things 
being equal, was proved in the right because he vanquished his 
foe. But, as societies or community of interests began to be 
formed, it was found better to have boards of arbitration to settle 
disputes, and, as is shown in the controversy over the ownership 
of a certain herd of cattle in biblical times, the method of settling 
intricate problems partook largely of the plan of tossing up of 
pennies, yet it indicates that progress was being made over the 
fighting era. " Thou shalt not kill," especially a fellow-tribesman, 
was an early section of the moral code. 

The custom of mating which obtains among many species of 
birds and some quadrupeds, and which, as man advanced in civ- 
ilization, resulted in the establishment of the marriage relation, 
led to the edict against adultery. As tribes increased in numbers, 
it was found necessary for purposes of offensive and defensive 
warfare that some sort of organization should be observed, and 
this implied a division of labor and function. Political organiza- 
tion implied that some one or more of each tribe be designated to 
direct the operations of the rest, and the greatest warrior was 
naturally selected as the first chief ; and the first chief used his 
power and position to install his sons as his successors, and thus 
were the first royal families evolved and succession to rulership 
established. National or tribal lines of jurisdiction followed the 
introduction of agricultural and breeding pursuits, and states and 
national boundaries were surveyed or designated. Territorial 
limits being established, tribunals or international bodies were 
necessary to regulate conflicting interests. The first resort was 
the war-club, and the enslavement of the vanquished. This 
method of arbitration has not yet been fully eliminated, but 
progress is being made in that direction, and international tri- 
bunals for arbitration now endeavor to supersede the sword. 

Thus were governments evolved and written constitutions and 
statutes enacted, and codes of laws with penalties for restraining 
the criminal classes from violating the rules experience has found 
to be essential to good government and good society. None of 
these primary laws have been created by the makers of religions, 
but all such have found these in force wherever man has reached 
a sufficient degree of civilization to receive a religion. 

This is why in all the various systems of religion we find the 
same essential basal moral laws inculcated. One has not copied 
from another, as is sometimes asserted. The fact that the same 
moral laws are found in two or more systems of religion does not 
indicate that the younger has copied the older, but that both ap- 

TOL. YL. 8 



90 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



propriated existing well-defined and primal elements of moral 
law which had been evolved in preceding ages. 

Confucius followed this principle, and did not lay claim to 
having originated the principles of his philosophy, but to have 
simply undertaken to revive laws which the ancients had laid 
down, but which had become practically obsolete through non- 
observance. He undertook to induce his fellow-men to observe 
the essential laws of good government and good society, not be- 
cause of attached penalties, but because it was necessary to good 
society and the promotion of virtue. He recognized with sorrow 
that political intrigue, infidelity to the trusts of men in all rela- 
tions, and crime of all kinds prevailed in spite of the laws in- 
tended to regulate such things, and to the task of restoring the 
righteous rules of his ancestors he set himself. He knew that 
penal codes were powerless for good when there was not a moral 
sense to enforce them. Modern prohibitive legislation is a par- 

All the prohibitive statutes that our Legislatures have so far 
enacted have failed to do away with drunkenness, for the reason 
that there is lacking sufficient personal sense of obligation to en- 
force them. The Chinese statutes, or the writings of the fathers, 
the classics so called, set forth the means to virtue and morality ; 
but neither the legal authorities nor the people recognized any 
need for enforcing or observing them. He sought by precept 
and example to revive the moral sense of the people ; but at the 
end of a long life he died in poverty and disappointment, having 
apparently produced no impression. 

Kung-f u-tse (Latinized into Confucius) was born about 550 B. c. 
His father was descended from one of the many royal families 
which had figured in the past as rulers of tribes or provinces. 
Most likely these ancient Chinese royal families were little more 
than the Indian chiefs in our day, and their claim to royalty was 
recognized only in a very narrow limit. But he was not in power 
when the Sage was born. He had been married two or three 
times, but had no son, except one cripple, which did not count. 
At an advanced old age he married a young wife, and Kung, Jr., 
was the result. The father died when the boy was about three 
years old, and left his family in poverty. But, under the class 
distinctions into which Chinese society was divided, Kung in- 
herited at least the class instincts of a gentleman, and managed 
in some manner to obtain a good education as Chinese education 
went. He was married when about twenty years old, and soon 
after his marriage his mother died. According to the custom of 
his country, this event required that he retire for three years 
from all business relations, and it is supposed that he spent this 
period of mourning in the study of the classics. When he again 



THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 91 

appeared in public he engaged in teaching school for some years ; 
but, being imbued with the desire to effect a reformation among 
his people, he gave up teaching and sought and obtained employ- 
ment in a government position under the ruler of his native prov- 
ince. His life as a civil officer enabled him to observe the 
methods of official conduct, and still further intensified his desire 
to restore a more righteous rule. He decided to seek the co-opera- 
tion of some one of the many claimants to royal prerogative, 
and, by enlisting such sympathy, he calculated that by inaugu- 
rating a model reign, under whose influence men would turn 
again to the correct paths, he would absorb all contiguous prov- 
inces, unify the government of the race under a common flag, 
and see virtue and peace again among men. But he failed, after 
wandering from one province to another, to enlist the sympathy 
or co-operation of any one in a position to assist him ; and he 
eventually gave up in despair, and, gathering a small following 
of disciples about him, he retired from public view, and passed 
the remainder of his days in teaching his chosen few and lament- 
ing the evil days upon which his peo^jle had come. To fully appre- 
ciate the great task he had set out to accomplish, the reformation 
of China upon a strict ethical basis, it is necessary, as far as pos- 
sible, to picture the condition of his people at that time. If we 
allow for some advance in civilization during the past twenty- 
five hundred years^ and contemplate the China of our day with 
what in his day it must have been, we must concede that he had 
a very unpromising, crude material to work upon. From what 
he wrote on the condition of things, and also from the writings 
of Mencius a century later, we conclude that it was indeed a dark 
picture for the idealist to contemplate. Mencius states that in 
his time men had reached a state of degradation in which they 
denied that there was any distinction between good and evil, 
virtue and vice. All moral restraints were thrown off, and pub- 
lic or private morality was unknown. But, notwithstanding the 
philosopher was dead, his name and writings still existed, and 
had their influence on a few minds. Among these was Mencius, 
who seems to have been a more able man than Kung himself, and 
who espoused the cause of reform. He was wise enough to see that 
nothing might be hoped for in the way of co-operation of the 
rulers, who were as bad as the common people, but he set to work 
to gather and put into form the writings of Kung-fu-tse. Per- 
haps but for this work the very name of the Sage would long ago 
have been forgotten ; for his writings were left in a fragmentary 
and scattered shape, and even do not take high rank in point of 
literary merit. The Confucian Analects, as compiled by Mencius, 
and with added comments by the latter, have been translated into 
English by Rev. Mr. Legge, an eminent Oriental scholar, and the 



92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

work comprises in many large volumes about all that is known 
of the writings of the Sage. 

The bulk of this extensive work consists in obscure allusions 
to things no doubt familiar in his time, but now obsolete ; and in 
meaningless fine distinctions and references to the " Rules/' 
" Forms/' and such things that have but little significance to the 
modern reader. But the gist of the matter may be summed up 
in one short sentence : " Walk in the old paths." And when we 
come to define the old paths we find what he called the " Five 
Relations/' under which he defines every known duty of man. 
These " Relations " had been defined and enforced ages before, in 
the books called the Classics, perhaps for the reason that they 
were so old that no one knew when or by whom written. It is 
these five propositions that have called forth dozens of folio 
volumes to elucidate and enforce. And it is these that constitute 
what is known as Confucianism, although he never originated 
them nor claimed to be other than a teacher of the faith of the 
ancients. 

These five relations have in them an entire code of political 
and social economy of the highest order. 

First Relation; King and Subject.— Kung, in harmony 
with the established form of government under which he lived, 
was an advocate of absolute monarchy. The fact that he had a 
tinge of royal blood in his own body may have unconsciously in- 
fluenced his judgment on this point. At all events, he left no in- 
dication of any disapproval of the system. He favored paternal 
government, both for the nation and in the family. The patri- 
archal plan has always been followed out in China to the fullest 
detail. The Emperor is as the father of the big family, and there 
is no appeal from his authority. The question of how the reign- 
ing monarch attained his position is not taken into consideration. 
The fact that he is on the throne is sufficient to secure the most 
absolute and abject obedience to his mandates. Kung set forth 
certain wholesome rules which should control his actions in the 
belief that the subject as well as the ruler had rights. He sought 
to supersede kingship by force with kingship by fitness. The civil 
government being a counterpart to the family government, the 
rules or principles obtaining in one should be equally applied in the 
other. The subject should love the king as the son loves the 
father, not for the enemies he might have made, but because of a 
righteous administration of the affairs of the country. He gave 
no countenance to a divided household. No rival political parties, 
appealing by bribes of office, nor threats of non-support at the 
next election, could disturb the serenity of the rulers or ruled. 
No penalties for treason, where a government was so good that 
none could find fault, were needed ; and, in the event of Individ- 



THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 93 

ual remonstrance, the recalcitrant was to be dealt with as a 'father 
would treat a disobedient son. The rod has always been the chief 
instrument of enforcing discipline in the political household as 
well as the domestic household ; and cases that will not submit to 
this primitive method of chastisement are visited with the guil- 
lotine. 

The fact that no one could be found willing to undertake to 
put in force his method of conducting government is due to the 
strict conditions he sought to enforce. Rulers were accustomed 
to hold the people in check by force of arms, and subaltern petty 
ofi&cers were appointed by the crown and held their position by 
carrying out the desires of their creator. Confucius declared 
that political appointments in the civil service should be made on 
the basis of individual merit, rather than simply the standard of 
subservience to the dictation of the throne. He was the first ad- 
vocate of civil-service reform, and his success in that line is not 
calculated to create very high hopes in those of our day who would 
substitute a similar test for office. 

It is commonly understood in this country that China has 
long practiced competitive examinations of candidates for office. 
They do go through such a form, but it is a mere farce. For 
appointment to a position in the customs service, for example, the 
examination is conducted by testing the candidate in his pro- 
ficiency with the bow and arrow, and by having recitations from 
memory of certain portions of the classics. The man who can hit 
the bull's-eye the greatest number of times in a given number of 
shots with the bow, and can recite the greatest number of pages 
from some book, of the meaning of which he may be utterly igno- 
rant, is considered the best fitted for the position. It may be that 
they consider that a man who is skillful with the bow, and whose 
memory will absorb a long list of trite sayings in a book, will also 
be capable of acquiring useful knowledge in his chosen position in 
the civil or military service ; but certainly the attainments tested 
are of no practical benefit in the work to be done. Running and 
jumping and other athletic attainments are also tested. This 
is more useful, especially in the military service, than the other 
tests appear to be. A good runner in the army may be an im- 
portant foresight in the selection of soldiers or officers who are 
thus selected. China's experience in her recent wars with Euro- 
pean armies has taught her the need of a fleet-footed soldiery to 
enable them to get out of the way of the enemy. 

It is, of course, difficult to estimate what part the teachings of 
Confucianism have had in forming the national character of the 
Chinese. Some powerful influence must have been required to 
secure such a condition of contentment under such an arbitrary 
government to hold together in apparent submission to one reign- 



94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

ing house for so many centuries. True, that country has been 
the scene of many bloody civil conflicts in her history. At the 
time of Confucius the country was not, as now, one united em- 
pire, but was divided into many smaller jurisdictions. The politi- 
cal unity of China was brought about several centuries after his 
death, and was the result of a long period of tribal or provincial 
conflicts. 

Then later the Tartars subjugated China, and absorbed the 
original China proper, as it is spoken of, into the present bound- 
ary, and the Tartar dynasty has held the control of the govern- 
ment ever since. The only attempt of any importance made since 
that conquest to restore Chinese rule was the Taiping rebellion. 
This revolt promised to be successful, until the British and French 
Governments interfered in aid of the Tartars, and under Chinese 
Gordon put down the rebellion. Now every precaution is taken 
to j)revent another rebellion. Guns and gunpowder have been 
declared contraband, and are not permitted to the ownership of 
the natives. 

The Chinese contingent in the army is equipped with bows and 
arrows, spears, and old-fashioned muzzle-loading blunderbusses 
of the most primitive pattern. All native regiments are also 
officered by Tartars, and Tartar regiments are equipped with 
modern rifles, and drilled under European tactics, to give them 
an advantage in the event of any future uprising. 

Local magistrates and governors of provinces and districts 
are all appointed by the Emperor, from the Tartar contingent, 
and hold their offices at the discretion of the throne. They 
assume to judge of what is beneficial, and decide the policy of the 
Government entirely on their own judgment, without consulting 
the wishes of the populace. There is no appeal to the people for 
approval or disapproval of the Government's action on any sub- 
ject. The masses submit to the inevitable, not apparently so much 
from any recognition of wisdom in its administration, but rather 
as an inevitable result of their inability to help themselves. 
Taxation is laid in a most summary and arbitrary manner, and 
collected by the officers appointed for that purpose, and there is a 
continual struggle between the tax-collectors and the tax-payers 
to try to outwit each other. Duty is assessed upon every article 
of domestic production, as well as all imports. Farm products 
have to pay duty at every thirty miles they may have to traverse 
to reach a market. A cargo of tea leaving Hankow for the sea- 
board for export, if carried in native bottoms, must pay taxes 
every thirty miles of the distance. Under treaty stipulations, 
cargo carried under foreign flags is assessed only at the point of 
departure. This has created a lucrative business for many Ameri- 
cans and others, who ostensibly buy boats and cargoes, and fly 



THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 95 

the American flag over them, for a fee from the real owners. 
Merchants of all classes are taxed five per cent on gross sales, and 
liave to submit their books for inspection freely to the tax-collect- 
ors ; and detected efforts to get around the tax, other than by 
bribing the collectors, which is not at all difficult to do, results in 
the confiscation of their entire possessions. Once I witnessed the 
novel transaction of a foreigner who wanted to purchase a milch- 
cow, and the farmer drove the cow to the outside limits of the 
tax station on the outskirts of the town, and tied her there and 
came for the buyer to accompany him outside to complete the 
purchase. He could pass the cow without taxation, but the native 
owner could not. This is why the Chinese in California show 
such skill and fertility of resource in smuggling in opium. Their 
past training in subterfuges to beat their own tax-collectors has 
trained them in the business. And they do not regard it as any 
crime to beat the Government if they can. In this freak they are 
not wholly unlike many of our own race, as our custom-house 
officers are aware. 

"We can not, of course, determine what would have been the 
condition of China, in the matter of the relationship between ruled 
and rulers, had Confucianism never impressed its doctrines on 
the subject, but certainly he has not achieved any striking success 
in this first of the five relations. 

Second Relation : Husband and Wife. — The husband is 
regarded as holding much the same relation to the wife as the 
Emperor to the people — that is, he has absolute authority over 
her. But that authority must be exercised with justice and sym- 
pathy. The wife shall obey the husband, but he must be worthy 
of obedience. Polygamy is now practiced in China, but it seems 
not to have been at the time of Confucius. At least I have ob- 
served no reference to the matter in his treatise on the second 
relation, which seems probable would be the case if it was recog- 
nized at the time he wrote. His plan elaborated the most minute 
provisions for the conduct of married people, and, were his ideal 
carried out, a most happy state of married life would result ; but, 
judging from appearances, he has more signally failed on this 
point than on the first relation. Chinese marriages are not con- 
ducted on the plan most conducive to harmony. Their matches 
are not made in heaven, as poets sometimes declare of this matter, 
but in a broker's office. They are not the result of a personal 
courtship between the parties to the compact, but are a matter 
of barter and sale. Fathers negotiate for wives for their infant 
sons, and infant betrothals are in reality infant purchases. Both 
husband and wife being entirely passive in the matter, there can 
not be anything approaching to personal attachment between 
them. Marriage being a matter of purchase, there is no provision 



96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

for divorce required. If a husband is not pleased with the wife, he 
can sell or trade her ojl. If the wife is not satisfied, she can drown 
herself. The so-called slavery of women in Chinese communities 
in this country is simply the lawful marriage arrangement of that 
country. It sometimes transpires that women bought as wives 
are treated as merchandise, which they really are as a matter of 
fact, and are subjected to immoral and degrading uses. This is 
especially the case in this country, where the women are few in 
comparison to the number of men of that race. In China women 
are treated with perhaps as much consideration as in other coun- 
tries, .They are not accorded full recognition as the equal in 
rights with man, but there are those even in our own country 
who declare that this is true of our women also. In China 
they are not treated as being personally responsible for 
their position in society, and are guarded with a more jealous 
care than with us. Here, a wife or daughter, growing weary of 
the restraints of the home, may go to another city, change her 
name, and enter upon a life of entire freedom from all restraints 
with impunity. With them it is impossible. Women there sus- 
tain more the position of domestic animals, which have a material 
value, and, if they stray from home, some one is interested in look- 
ing after them, much as an estrayed horse or ox. It is a matter 
of fact that, from whatever cause, there is not to be found in 
Chinese cities the class of abandoned and immoral women as in 
all European and American cities. The laws of the land forbid 
them, and their laws are more strictly enforced in this regard than 
in any other country I know anything about. Polygamous mar- 
riages and the concubinage system j^revail, however, and, while 
this may be as bad as the other, it is not so apparent and obtrusive 
upon the public notice as are the Whitechapels of London or New 
York. But, view it as one may, it is apparent that the condi- 
tion of Chinese women is far from what Confucius thought it 
should be. 

Third Relation: Parent and Child. — In this relation the 
greatest stress is placed upon filial obedience. Under the patri- 
archal family economy, the eldest male living is the acknowl- 
edged head of every family, even though the family, as it often 
does, contains three and four generations. The father of the 
family is the established authority on all matters of policy in 
business and otherwise, yet each son owes special allegiance to 
his own father. ISTor is this duty ended with the death of the 
father, but is perpetual. Once a year the grave must be visited 
and the little mound rebuilt and kept in repair by the dutiful 
son. The wine and food that are left by the grave in connection 
with this ceremony of rebuilding graves are not a part of Confu- 
cianism, but the point of contact with Taouism. This custom of 



' TEE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 97 

honoring tlie dead lias created the impression among foreigners 
that the Chinese worship their dead. "Ancestral worship" is 
commonly spoken of as an established fact ; but it is entirely a 
mistake. They do not worship their dead in any legitimate sense. 
The ceremony of restoring the graves is not unlike in nature and 
answers much the same sentiment as our annual Ceremony of dec- 
orating the graves of our soldier dead. We strew flowers upon 
graves and construct monuments in marble or bronze over the 
tombs of our distinguished dead, and yet we do not worship them. 
If a Chinaman, witnessing these observances with us^ wrote to 
his friends that the Americans worship their dead and erect idols 
over their tombs, it would be a similar error to that we perpetuate 
in our books regarding the Chinese ceremonies in honor of their 
dead. Ancestral tablets are hung upon the walls of Chinese 
homes much as painted portraits are upon ours, not to be wor- 
shiped, but to keep in perpetual memory the departed. The 
desire to be thus honored after death is why Chinamen are so 
anxious to leave sons. It is also why those dying in foreign lands 
are so careful to have their bones taken back to their native homes. 
They wish to be remembered when they are gone, and only sons — 
dutiful sons — will see that the graves of their fathers are kept 
green. It is the most striking feature of Chinese character — 
their great respect for their fathers. In all business enterprises, 
in poverty or in wealth, the Chinese look to their fathers for 
counsel and example. This amounts with them to a positive pas- 
sion, and is the greatest obstacle in the way of the introduction 
of modern methods and appliances. What was good enough for 
their forefathers is good enough for them. If anything new is 
offered, they dismiss it with the belief that, if it had been neces- 
sary, their fathers would have had it. They are not an inventive 
people, and use to-day the same pattern of plow and hand-made 
goods of all sorts they did a thousand years ago. The same cut 
of coat, build of boats, architecture, everything remains now as it 
was at the time when history with them first began. Filial affec- 
tion is deep-rooted in their natures, and no one questions the pro- 
priety of it. Here, at least, Kung has impressed himself upon his 
people. 

Fourth Relation ; Brother to Brother. — The patriarchal 
plan of family government leaves but little scope for individuality 
in the members of a household. Estates are entailed from one 
generation to another intact. All the members of a family par- 
take of the resources in common, and are supposed to perform 
their share of the labor. But they own nothing in severalty. 
This removes the most fruitful source of fratricidal conflict. No 
quarreling over division of property, and no cutting off of one in 
favor of another heir at law, for all remain in equal possession of 

VOL. XL. — 9 



98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the property, and each subsists upon a common treasury. All the 
sons work in the same business, shop or store, with the father. 
This is why for a hundred generations the Chinese follow the 
same calling. A shoemaker's sons are shoemakers, for the reason 
that they are put to work at the bench as soon as they can drive 
a peg. Shifting from one employment to another is rare with 
them. They do not take freely to learning a new trade, because, 
if they have any property in the family, it can not be divided and 
sold by the heirs, unless the sale is by consent of all the heirs, 
and then, of course, a mutual distribution is made. In business 
pursuits, the profits of the enterprise are not drawn out by the 
members of the firm, which in almost all cases means the family ; 
but, after meeting current expenses, the accrued surplus goes into 
the accumulated assets. Thus, unequal wealth is not a source of 
family quarrels. I never knew two brothers where one was poor 
and the other rich. They are all poor or rich together. The trait, 
thus developed, of intimacy between brothers and all members of 
the household has left its imprint upon Chinese character in gen- 
eral. Clannishness is one of their national marks. 

Fifth Relation; Man to Man. — In this proposition is the 
province of ethics. It is a far wider field for the philanthropist 
and reformer to deal with than any of the foregoing. Here all 
ties of *kinship and fear of authority are removed, and the ques- 
tion of the equality and rights of man comes in. The same senti- 
ments in our Constitution are lauded as the climax of humanity 
and civilization. The same sentiments were promulgated by a 
pagan philosopher five hundred years before the Christian era ; 
and he founded his arguments upon what had been written so 
long before his time as to be ancient history. 

Men have always been in each other's way Conflicting inter- 
ests of tradesmen and fellow-workmen of the same crafts always 
have and always will exist. The harmonious co-operation of Bel- 
lamy will probably require more than twenty centuries to materi- 
alize. Labor unions seek to regulate the matter by restricting 
apprenticeships. Merchants try by underselling each other to 
drive the weaker ones to the wall. Manufacturers and capitalists 
enter into trusts, hoping to freeze out the smaller competitors and 
destroy competition. But all alike fail of their purpose, and con- 
flicting interests as old as the human race itself continue, and 
always will, in all likelihood. In times past unwelcome competi- 
tion was checked in a more violent manner. Walking delegates 
and boycott committees were armed with daggers and clubs, and 
the stronger tribes annihilated the weaker ones or enslaved them. 
It is certainly a high testimonial to the pagan reformer that he 
sought to inculcate the doctrine that one man had any rights that 
another was under obligations to respect. 



THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS. 99 

The golden rule of the Christian religion is regarded as tlie 
climax of excellence. Five centuries before Christ, Confucius 
wrote page after page to inculcate this same principle. One half 
of the decalogue of Moses is devoted to enforce the rights of 
man between man. Thou shalt not steal, nor bear false witness 
against thy neighbor, nor covet anything that is his. One man 
shall not tear down or injure another, in order to promote his 
own interests, is a doctrine hostile to the nature and practices of 
men in all ages, and yet a principle essential to the perpetuity of 
governments and social progress. Animals by instinct devour 
and destroy each other in their j)ursuit of life. Men in uncivil- 
ized states do the same thing in effect ; and it is quite clear that 
we have not yet fully outgrown the animal instinct in this direc- 
tion. But we all understand that it is right to do so, and, if we 
do not, we at least pretend that we do, and only eat each other 
metaphorically. 

Nature has wisely provided that, when a man has lived for a 
few years, he shall give place to his successors. But as long as 
one remains on the earth, other things being equal, he is entitled 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in his own way, pro- 
vided his way does not interfere with the rights of others. There 
is room on the earth for all that are likely to occupy it at any one 
time, and, when the numbers reach an excess, disease or famine 
or war relieves the surplus. And under all circumstances every 
man should be protected in his life and interests from unequal 
advantages being taken of him by his neighbors. So taught Con- 
fucius. So teach all systems of sound social and moral philosophy. 

In conclusion, I wish to say that, judged by what it has prob- 
ably accomplished, the Confucian system has done much toward 
creating whatever of good is found in Chinese character and in- 
stitutions ; and what it has failed to accomplish is not due to 
any defects in the system, but rather to the inherent tendency in 
human nature to seek its own way. Men have been slow to ask 
what is the better and wiser course to pursue, and have inclined 
to follow their more brutish instincts. 

At the present day, however, Confucius wields but little in- 
fluence over the Chinese. In most cities are temples, or, more 
correctly speaking, halls known as Confucian halls. They are 
entirely void of any appearance of idolatry. His name is revered 
as a wise and good man, but he is not worshiped, nor has he in any 
legitimate sense been deified by the people. As Washington in 
America is venerated as the father of his country, and as Abra- 
ham Lincoln is spoken of in history as the savior of his country, 
so likewise is Confucius spoken of among Ms people as the wise 
philosopher, and patron of letters, and promoter of good govern- 
ment, but not as the founder of a religion, nor an object to be 



100 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

worshiped. Educated Chinamen all profess to he disciples of 
him and to read his works, and to be guided by his instructions. 
In some respects they perhaps do, -but they put their own inter- 
pretation upon the import of his teachings. There are no special 
teachers to expound his works, and every one is free to place such 
construction upon his teachings as his intelligence or impulses 
may lead to. 

I am convinced that the power of the philosopher over his 
people has been overestimated by foreigners generally, and that 
the real nature and scope of his work have been largely misappre- 
hended. 



I 



THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING. 

By M. LAZAE POPOFF. 

T is said repeatedly, as of course, that Egypt was the cradle of 
the arts. Yet archaeologists like Lartet, Garrigue, Cristi, and 
others have shown that the first artistic manifestations go back 
to epochs far anterior to the ancient Egyptians. According to 
these authors, these first manifestations were contemporary with 
the presence of the reindeer in the south of France— when the 
mammoth had not yet quite disappeared, and when man, ignorant 
of the metals, made all his instruments of stone, bone, and wood. 
In fact, the first works of art, and particularly the first efforts at 
drawing, date from those prehistoric times. In France, the oldest 
remains of these works of art have been found, in the shape of 
drawings engraved with a flint point as ornaments on articles of 
reindeer-horn, in caves by the side of the fossil remains of animals 
which, like the mammoth, have since disappeared, or, like the rein- 
deer, have abandoned those regions. Other drawings have been 
found on tablets of stone, horn, or mammoth-ivory. 

It is not our intention to insist on the simply linear rudiment- 
ary designs of which these ornaments consist. We rather invite 
attention to more perfect and characteristic works, in which, ac- 
cording to the words of Carl Vogt, the spirit of observation and 
imitation of Nature, and especially of living Nature, is remarkably 
manifested. An image of a mammoth, found in the cave of La 
Magdelaine, in the Dordogne, is engraved on a tablet of mammoth- 
bone. Very striking are the ungainly attitude of the animal's 
massive body, its long hair, the form of its elevated skull, with 
concave forehead, and its enormous recurved tusks. All these 
traits, characteristic of this extinct type of pachyderm, are repro- 
duced by the designer with a really artistic distinctness. The 
mammoth was already rare in Europe when this primitive artist 
lived ; and this, perhaps, is the reason why only two of the numer- 



THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING. loi 

OTIS designs found in the caves of France are of this animal.* The 
second of these drawings, found in La Loz^re, represents a mam- 
raoth's head sculptured on a staff of command. The images of the 
chamois, bear, and ox are found more frequently ; hut figures of 
the reindeer are most numerous. Some are engraved on plates of 
bone^ and others serve to ornament various objects. Sometimes 
groups of animals are represented, or, on the other hand, the ani- 
mals are only partly drawn, and merely the head or head and chest 
are visible. 

The larger part of these drawings do not excel in execution the 
figures which our school-boys make on walls ; but the figures of 
the reindeer are generally superior on account of the remarkable 
care with which the characteristic lines of the animal are traced, 
and also, in examples that are otherwise very rare, by the addition 
of a few shadows. We conclude that the artist of the caves was 
particularly interested in the reindeer, which furnished his con- 
temporaries with their principal food, as well as with clothing 
materials, arms for hunting, and household implements. We 
know, in fact, that the cave-dwellers lived on reindeer-meat, 
dressed themselves in its skin, made thread of its tendons, and cut 
their arrow-points from its bones. In other words, as the reindeer 
had not yet been domesticated, it stood to those primitive men as 
a valuable game, and the hunting of it occupied the larger part 
of their existence. We thus explain why that animal haunted the 
imagination of the artist of those times. The drawings of the 
chamois, the bear, and the ox were also often surprisingly exact 
and really valuable. 

Besides these designs of mammals, there have been found in 
the caves of France a number of drawings of fishes, tolerably cor- 
rect, but very uniform. According to Broca, they can all be re- 
ferred to the salmon. 

All these relics of the primitive arts of design prove abun- 
dantly that the men of that prehistoric age observed carefully the 
forms and attitudes of animals and were capable of representing 
them in an exact and elegant style, attesting, according to Broca, 
a real artistic sense. 

Nothing like this has been observed in the reproduction of the 
human figure, and drawings of that kind are extremely rare. 
There are two such deserving mention, one of which represents a 
naked man, armed with a club and surrounded by animals ; the 
second, a fishing scene, a man lancing a harpoon upon a marine 
animal — a fish according to Broca, a whale according to other 
authors. The whole of the design is puerile and out of shape, and 

* Similar linear ornaments have been found in the caves in Belgium, and are referred 
by Dupont to the age of the mammoth. 



102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the proportions are outrageously violated. This is not an excep- 
tion, for the examination of all the drawings of this kind shows 
that skillful as were the men of those times in their drawings 
of animals, particularly of those which were important to them, 
they were bad delineators of the human figure. "I do not 
know," says Broca, " what prevented them from reaching perfec- 
tion on this point, but the fact is indisputable and is certainly 
characteristic.''^ Another no less characteristic point is the entire 
absence of designs representing plants. No design of a tree has 
been found, or of a bush or a flower, unless we regard as a flower 
the " three little rosettes " engraved on a handle of reindeer-horn, 
which some authors actually regard as a composite flower. This 
exclusive taste of the artists of the caves is evidently not acci- 
dental, for chance exj)lains nothing ; and we can not assume, with 
Carl Vogt, that primitive drawing originated in a general tend- 
ency of man toward imitation of living Nature. "We believe that 
the object of these artistic productions was of a different charac- 
ter, and that they were intended, not for ornamentation of objects 
or for imitation pure and simple of Nature, but for the production 
of an instrument to be used in the struggle against Nature. We 
shall endeavor to substantiate this proposition in what follows, 
and shall have occasion to say something on the origin of painting 
in general. 

We remark, first, that there is nothing to prove that the man 
of that time was intellectually superior to existing savages ; and, 
if we observe these, we shall find that their drawings have usually 
a totally different significance from that which art has among 
civilized peoples ; and that they have nothing in common with 
ornamentation and Eesthetics in general. Indeed, numerous facts 
go to show that human thought, in the lower degrees of its devel- 
opment, distinguishes but poorly between subjective representa- 
tions and objective reality, and that both give rise to the same 
ideas. For example, a savage seeing one of his family in a dream, 
can not imagine that the image is independent of the organic sub- 
stance of the person in question ; and he will see the same relation 
between the two as between a body and its image reflected by a 
surface of water. Thus the Basutos believe that if the shadow of 
a man is projected upon the water, the crocodiles will be able to 
seize the man himself. A like identification may be pushed to 
the point that tribes are known which use the same word for the 
soul, the image, and the shadow. 

It is necessary to take this fact into consideration in order to 
appreciate the real sense of the primitive design, and to re-estab- 
lish the conditions under which it originated. If we suppose a 
material relation between the image and the object as well as 
between the shadow and the object, it becomes evident that the 



THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING. 103 

savage would comport himself similarly toward the image, the 
shadow, and the object. From his point of view the image and 
the object are in close relation, and an action upon one wonld 
operate in the same way upon the other. By this way of looking 
at things, as Sir John Lubbock says, the savage is convinced that 
an injury done to the image is inflicted upon the original ; or, to 
use the words of Mr. Taylor, he thinks that by acting upon the 
copy he will reach the original. The evidences are many that 
demonstrate the importance attributed by savages to this mode 
of action on the original. Waitz relates, after Denghame, that in 
a tribe of western Africa it was dangerous to make a portrait of 
the natives, because they were afraid that by some kind of sor- 
cery a part of their soul would pass into their image. Lubbock 
also speaks of the same fear as existing among savages ; and the 
more like the portrait, the greater the danger to the original ; for 
the more life there is in the copy, the less must be left in the per- 
son. One day, when some Indians were annoying Dr. Kane by 
their presence, he rid himself of them very quickly by telling 
them that he was going to make their portraits. Catlin tells a 
story, at once sober and comical, that when he was drawing the 
profile of a chief named Matochiga, the Indians around him 
seemed greatly moved, and asked him why he did not draw the 
other half of the chiefs face. " Matochiga was never ashamed to 
look a white man square in the face." Matochiga had not till 
then seemed offended at the matter, but one of the Indians said to 
him sportively : /' The Yankee knows that you are only half a 
man, and he has only drawn half of your face, because the other 
half is not worth anything." A bloody fight followed this ex- 
planation, and Matochiga was killed by a bullet which struck him 
in the side of the face that had not been drawn. A still more 
characteristic incident is communicated by M. Brouck concerning 
a Laplander who had come to visit him from motives of curiosity. 
He having drunk a glass of wine and seeming very much at ease, 
M. Brouck took his pencil and began drawing his portrait. AlZ 
at once our subject's humor changed; he drew on his cap and 
started to run away. Explanations being had, the Laplander 
made the rash artist understand that, if he had let him copy his 
figure, the artist would have gained a dangerous influence over 
him. 

Charlevoix said, in the last century, that the Illinois and In- 
dians of some other tribes made little figures representing persons 
whose lives they wanted to shorten, and pierced them in the 
region of the heart. A custom still exists in Borneo that consists 
in making a figure in wax of the enemy whom one wishes to be- 
witch, and setting it before the fire to melt ; it is assumed, accord- 
ing to Taylor, that the person aimed at is disorganized as fast as 



104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

his image disappears. The Peruvian sorcerers still proceed in the 
same way, except that their figures are made of rags. In the 
Indies, according to Dubois, they knead earth collected from a 
very salt place with hair or pieces of skin, and make a figure on 
the chest of which they write the name of an enemy, and then 
stab it with needles, or mutilate in some way, in the belief that 
the same harm will be suffered by the person represented. 

Traces of this primitive superstition are also found among 
civilized people, for Grimn reports that in the eleventh century 
Jews were accused in Europe of having killed Bishop Ebergard 
by a sorcery of the kind. They were said to have made a figure 
of wax representing the bishop, hired a priest to baptize it, and 
put it into the fire. As soon as the wax was melted, the bishop 
was attacked by a mortal disease. The famous adventurer, Jacob, 
chief of the Pastorals, in the thirteenth century, seriously believed, 
as he says in his Demonology, that the devil taught men the att 
of making images of wax and clay, the destruction of which 
brought on the sickness and death of the persons they repre- 
sented. It was a custom in the time of Catharine de' Medici to 
make such figures of wax, and melt them slowly before the fire or 
stab them with needles, in order to bring suffering to enemies. 
This operation was called putting a spell upon them. We may 
also mention the opinion of the earlier Christian writers, who be- 
lieved, according to Draper, that painting and sculpture were in- 
terdicted in the Scriptures, and were consequently evil arts. It 
may be questioned if this oj)inion did not have its roots in the idea 
of primitive peoples that the art of drawing was an instrument of 
sorcery, by means of which one acquired the power to act upon 
a person. Mussulmans still have a horror of images, and the Koran 
forbids having one's portrait made and possessing any image 
at all. 

We would not exhaust this evidence if we did not cite all the 
facts that go to prove that, in the mind of primitive man, it was 
sufficient to possess anything — a piece of the garment, hair, a bit 
of a nail — that had belonged to a person to have power to act 
upon him and do him harm. The belief in the efficacy of this 
means is still so strong among some backward peoples, that per- 
sons who have any reason to distrust others hide their clothes so 
that they shall not be robbed of any part of them. Others, when 
they cut their hair or nails, put the cut parts on the roofs of their 
houses or bury them in the ground. So peasants in some coun- 
tries bury the teeth which they pull from themselves. 

We should add, to complete the picture, that writing to the 
savage enjoys the same magic power as drawing. This is easily 
understood when we recollect that writing by figures preceded 
writing by letters or any conventional signs, and is still met 



THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING. 105 

among some savage tribes. In these -writings by figures, the fact 
tliat the man or animal represented is nnder the influence of an 
evil lot is indicated by an arrow directed from the mouth toward 
the heart. A sign of this kind is considered equivalent to a real 
possession of the animal or person represented. 

"We could hardly give more convincing proofs of the special 
significance attributed by the savage to drawing, regarded by him 
as an instrument of power over another ; and while the examples 
which we have just brought together relate chiefly to man, we 
may assume logically that the same process — that is, a figured 
representation of animals — plays a like part in the struggle of 
the savage against his natural enemies. Other facts exist con- 
firmatory of this hypothesis. 

According to Mr. Tanner, the North American Indians, to assure 
success in their hunting expeditions, made rude drawings of the 
animal they were pursuing, and stabbed them in the region of the 
heart, under the conviction that they would thereby obtain power 
over the desired game. Taylor relates, according to an old ob- 
server among the Australians, that the natives, in one of their 
festival dances, construct a figure of the kangaroo with plants, in 
order that they may become masters of the real kangaroos of 
the forest. An Algonkin Indian, going out to kill an animal, 
hangs up a figure of it in his lodge ; then, after giving it due 
warning, shoots an arrow at it. If the arrow hits, the animal will 
be killed. If a hunter, having touched a sorcerer's rod with his 
arrow, succeeded in hitting the track of the animal with the ar- 
row, it would be stopped and held till the hunter could come up 
to it. The same object could be attained by drawing the figure 
of the animal on a piece of wood and addressing suitable prayers 
to the image. 

Such was the function of drawing at its origin. An Indian 
song admirably explains this function, in the words " My draw- 
ing has made a god of me ! " Faith could hardly be more vigor- 
ously expressed in the power of the art of drawing as an instru- 
ment by the aid of which primitive man obtained a supernatural 
power over his enemy or his game. Regarding the works of the 
cave men in the light of these facts, we perceive that the purpose 
that inspired them had few points in common with the sense of 
the beautiful or the tendency to imitation ; and it is clear that if 
there existed in the mind of the primitive man a material relation 
between a being and its shadow or its image, that man thought 
that the same relation was preserved between the being and its 
image when transferred to any object whatever. The purpose to 
be reached was to possess the shadow of the coveted object, and 
the only means of accomplishing it was to fix upon something or 
another the silhouette of that shadow. 



io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

This, in our opinion, was the origin of drawing, and, conse- 
quently, of painting. It is worthy of remark that all works of 
this kind derived from the embryonic period of the arts of de- 
sign betray the same lack of proportion and absence of symmetry 
characteristic of the silhouettes of shadows. The uniform im- 
pression given by the drawings is that they relate, not to the 
objects themselves, but to their shadows. It is further interest- 
ing to note that some contemporary savages, some Australians, 
for example, are still incapable of grasping the meaning of exact 
images, while they readily comprehend a crude, disproportioned 
drav/ing. Thus, to give them an idea of a man, you have to draw 
him with a very large head ; a feature with which precisely cor- 
responds a drawing representing a fisherman that has been found 
in a cave in France. He has a greatly reduced body, but his 
hand, armed with an enormous harpoon, is the hand of a giant. 

In his struggle with surrounding Nature, a struggle of which 
he can not form an exact conception, primitive man had especial 
need to possess every means that could give him confidence in vic- 
tory. In starting for the hunt he took with him, as the North 
American Indian does now, and as some players in our most civil- 
ized circles do under another form, the fetich that would insure suc- 
cess — that of an image of the animal to be killed. By engraving 
on the handle of his knife the image of a reindeer or some other 
animal, he did not think of ornamenting his weapon, but of exert- 
ing some magic power over his prey. And his belief in this mys- 
terious jDower, by giving him boldness, energy, and sureness of 
movements, would often procure him success. Confidence does 
thus in all things. Just like the modern savage, the cave man 
would believe that the greater the resemblance between the image 
and the animal, the greater also would be the chance of acting 
upon the animal. Hence the care that was applied to the repro- 
duction of the animals especially coveted and with which the con- 
test would be hardest ; and hence those perfect designs of the rein- 
deer, that magnificent game of our ancestors.* 

Very different are the characteristics of the drawings of hu- 
man forms ; and, to account for these differences, we should con- 
sider the fact that all the archseological data relative to the epoch 
of the reindeer testify that the disposition of the man of that age 

* In this I differ from the students who find in some of these drawings evidence that 
the reindeer was a domesticated animal at that time. A representation of two reindeer 
has been found at Loz^re, one of which wears what is regarded as a kind of haher. But 
the absence of fossil remains of dogs, without which domestication of the reindeer is im- 
possible, pleads, as Carl Vogt remarks, against the existence of the domesticated reindeer. 
In my opinion, this supposed halter represents rather the emblematic line of which I have 
spoken, proceeding from the mouth to the heart, indicating the enchantment thrown at the 
animal by the hunter. 



THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING. 107 

was pacific. Broca calls these raen " peaceful hunters/' and at- 
tributes a gentle character to them. He remarks that an examina- 
tion of their arsenal very rarely brings out warlike arms, and that 
we can thus satisfy ourselves of their peaceful character. The 
Belgian archaeologist, M. Dupont, observes that the cave-dwellers 
of his country had no idea of war. And, if we have a right to 
compare the existing savage with primitive man, we find that the 
Eskimo, who is nearest like him, is quiet and peaceful. The Eski- 
mo whom Ross met on the shores of Baffin's Bay could not be 
made to understand what war is, and possessed no warlike weap- 
ons. Wliile, then, we may believe that the cave men rarely raised 
their hands against one another, it nevertheless remains deter- 
mined that they waged a bitter and relentless war against animals. 
Hence they rarely had occasion to exercise themselves in drawing 
the human form ; and hence the imperfect character of their hu- 
man images as compared with those of animals. As to the forms 
of plants, it may be remarked that the boreal flora of that epoch, 
not being at all threatening, could furnish little food for supersti- 
tion ; and no drawings of plants are found in the caves. 

In short, the condition of the art of drawing with primitive 
man seems to be in complete harmony with the meaning which 
we have attributed to drawing itself, of its being inspired by be- 
lief in the existence of a material relation between a being and its 
image and in the possibility of acting on the first through the sec- 
ond. Consequently, the principle of painting can not be found in 
a natural tendency of primitive man to the artificial imitation of 
living Nature, but seems rather to be derived from the desire of 
subjecting that Nature to its needs, and of subjugating it. In the 
course of its progressive improvements, the art of drawing has 
gradually lost its primitive significance and original meaning, till 
it has become what it is now. It does not differ much, however, 
from what it was originally ; for, while the primitive man expected 
to reach the living being in its image, it is still life which the civ- 
ilized man seeks to-day in works of art. — Translated for the Popu- 
lar Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. 



Dr. Peters, the African traveler, believes that the Waganda, or people of 
Uganda, are descended from the ancient Egyptians; and some color is apparently 
lent to his view by the burial of their kings in mounds, the custom of embalm- 
ing, and the existence of ancient rock excavations. But the Waganda might 
have borrowed these things from their northern neighbors. Dr. Peters observes 
that they undoubtedly excel every other African nation in the development of 
llieir intelligence, and that, in contrast to all other negro tribes, they feel the need 
of progress. It is believed that in the oldest of the burial mounds are interred 
records of the dead sovereigns that will explain the origin of the race; but at 
present the "Waganda will not allow a search to be made. 



io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



HIGH LIFE. 

EVERYBODY knows mountain flowers are beautiful. As one 
rises up any minor height in the Alps or the Pyrenees, be- 
low snow-level, one notices at once the extraordinary brilliancy 
and richness of the blossoms one meets there. All Nature is 
dressed in its brightest robes. Great belts of blue gentian hang 
like a zone on the mountain slopes ; masses of yellow globe-flower 
star the upland pastures, nodding heads of soldanella lurk low 
among the rugged bowlders by the glacier's side. No lowland 
blossoms have such vividness of coloring, or grow in such con- 
spicuous patches. To strike the eye from afar, to attract and 
allure at a distance, is the great aim and end in life of the Al- 
pine flora. 

Now, why are Alpine plants so anxious to be seen of men and 
angels ? "Why do they flaunt their golden glories so openly be- 
fore the world, instead of shrinking in modest reserve beneath 
their own green leaves, like the Puritan primrose and the retiring 
violet ? The answer is. Because of the extreme rarity of the 
mountain air. It's the barometer that does it. At first sight, 
I will readily admit, this explanation seems as fanciful as the 
traditional connection between Goodwin Sands and Tenterden 
Steeple. But, like the amateur stories in country papers, it is 
" founded on fact," for all that. (Imagine, by the way, a tale 
founded entirely on fiction ! How charmingly aerial !) By a 
roundabout road, through varying chains of cause and effect, the 
rarity of the air does really account in the long run for the beau- 
ty and conspicuousness of the mountain flowers. 

For bees, the common go-betweens of the loves of the plants, 
cease to range about a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below 
snow-level. And why ? Because it's too cold for them ? Oh, dear, 
no ; on sunny days in early English spring, when the thermome- 
ter does'nt rise above freezing in the shade, you will see both the 
honey-bees and the great black bumble as busy as their conven- 
tional character demands of them among the golden cups of the 
first timid crocuses. Give the bee sunshine, indeed, with a tem- 
perature just about freezing-point, and he'll flit about joyously 
on his communistic errand. But bees, one must remember, have 
heavy bodies and relatively small wings : in the rarefied air of 
mountain heights they can't manage to support themselves in the 
most literal sense. Hence their place in these high stations of the 
world is taken by the gay and airy butterflies, which have lighter 
bodies and a much bigger expanse of wing-area to buoy them up. 
In the valleys and plains the bee competes at an advantage with the 
butterflies for all the sweets of life, but in this broad subglacial 



HIGH LIFE, 109 

belt on the mountain-sides, the butterflies in turn have things all 
their own way. They flit about like monarchs of all they survey, 
without a rival in the world to dispute their supremacy. 

And how does the preponderance of butterflies in the upper 
regions of the air affect the color and brilliancy of the flowers ? 
Simply thus : Bees, as we are all aware on the authority of the 
great Dr. Watts, are industrious creatures which employ each 
shining hour (well-chosen epithet, " shining ") for the good of the 
community, and to the best purpose. The bee, in fact, is the Tjon 
bourgeois of the insect world : he attends strictly to business, loses 
no time in wild or reckless excursions, and flies by the straightest 
path from flower to flower of the same species with mathemati- 
cal precision. Moreover, he is careful, cautious, observant, and 
steady-going — a model business man, in fact, of sound middle- 
class morals and sober middle-class intelligence. No flitting for 
him, no coquetting, no fickleness. Therefore, the flowers that 
have adapted themselves to his needs, and that depend upon him 
mainly or solely for fertilization, waste no unnecessary material 
on those big, flaunting colored posters which we human observers 
know as petals. They have, for the most part, simple blue or 
purple flowers, tubular in shape and, individually, inconspicuous 
in hue ; and they are oftenest arranged in long spikes of blossom 
to avoid wasting the time of their winged Mr. Bultitudes. So long 
as they are just bright enough to catch the bee's eye a few yards 
away, they are certain to receive a visit in due season from that 
industrious and persistent commercial traveler. Having a circle 
of good customers upon whom they can depend with certainty 
for fertilization, they have no need to waste any large propor- 
tion of their substance upon expensive advertisements or gaudy 
petals. 

It is just the opposite with butterflies. Those gay and irre- 
pressible creatures, the fashionable and frivolous element in the 
insect world, gad about from flower to flower over great distances 
at once, and think much more of sunning themselves and of 
attracting their fellows than of attention'to "business. And the 
reason is obvious, if one considers for a moment the difference in 
the political and domestic economy of the two opposed groups. 
For the honey-bees are neuters, sexless purveyors of the hive, 
with no interest on earth save the storing of honey for the com- 
mon benefit of the phalanstery to which they belong. But the 
butterflies are full-fledged males and females, on the hunt through 
the world for suitable partners: they think far less of feeding 
than of displaying their charms ; a little honey to support them 
during their flight is all they need : "For the bee, a long round 
of ceaseless toil ; for me," says the gay butterfly, " a short life and 
a merry one." Mr. Harold Skimpole needed only " music, sun- 



no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

shine, a few grapes." The butterflies are of his kind. The high 
mountain zone is for them a true ball-room ; the flowers are light 
refreshments laid out in the vestibule. Their real business in life 
is not to gorge and lay by, but to coquette and display themselves 
and find fitting partners. 

So while the bees with their honey-bags, like the financier 
with his money-bags, are storing up profit for the composite com- 
munity, the butterfly, on the contrary, lays himself out for an 
agreeable flutter, and sips nectar where he will, over large areas 
of country. He flies rather high, flaunting his wings in the sun, 
because he wants to show himself off in all his airy beauty ; and 
when he spies a bed of bright flowers afar off on the sun-smitten 
slopes, he sails off toward them lazily, like a grand signior who 
amuses himself. No regular plodding through a monotonous 
spike of plain little bells for him; what he wants is brilliant 
color, bold advertisement, good honey, and plenty of it. He 
doesn't care to search. Who wants his favors must make himself 
conspicuous. 

Now, plants are good shopkeepers; they lay themselves out 
strictly to attract their customers. Hence the character of the 
flowers on this beeless belt of mountain-side is entirely determined 
by the character of the butterfly fertilizers. Only those plants 
which laid themselves out from time immemorial to suit the 
butterflies, in other words, have succeeded in the long run in the 
struggle for existence. So the butterfly-plants of the butterfly- 
zone are all strictly adapted to butterfly tastes and butterfly fan- 
cies. They are, for the most part, individually large and brill- 
iantly colored ; they have lots of honey, often stored at the base 
of a deep and open bell which the long proboscis of the insect 
can easily penetrate ; and they habitually grow close together in 
broad belts or patches, so that the color of each re-enforces and 
aids the color of the others. It is this cumulative habit that ac- 
counts for the marked flower-bed or jam-tart character which 
everybody must have noticed in the high Alpine flora. 

Aristocracies usually pride themselves on their antiquity ; and 
the high life of the mountains is undeniably ancient. The plants 
and animals of the butterfly-zone belong to a special group which 
appears everywhere in Europe and America about the limit of 
snow, whether northward or upward. For example, I was pleased 
to note near the summit of Mount Washington (the highest peak 
in New Hampshire) that a large number of the flowers belonged 
to species well known on the open plains of Lapland and Finland. 
The plants of the High Alps are found also, as a rule, not only on 
the High Pyrenees, the Carpathians, the Scotch Grampians, and 
the Norwegian f jelds, but also round the Arctic Circle in Europe 
and America. They reappear at long distances where suitable 



HIGH LIFE. Ill 

conditions recur ; they follow tlie snow-line as the snow-line re- 
cedes ever in summer higher north toward the pole or higher 
vertically toward the mountain summits. And this bespeaks in 
one way to the reasoning mind a very ancient ancestry. It shows 
they date back to a very old and cold epoch. 

Let me give a single instance which strikingly illustrates the 
general principle. Near the top of Mount Washington^ as afore- 
said, lives to this day a little colony of very cold-loving and 
mountainous butterflies, which never descend below a couple of 
thousand feet from the wind-swept summit. Except just there, 
there are no more of their sort anywhere about ; and as far as the 
butterflies themselves are aware, no others of their species exist 
on earth ; they never have seen a single one of their kind, save 
of their own little colony. One might compare them with the 
Pitcairn Islanders in the South Seas — an isolated group of Eng- 
lish origin, cut off by a vast distance from all their congeners in 
Europe or America. But if you go north some eight or nine 
hundred miles from New Hampshire to Labrador, at a certain 
point the same butterfly reappears, and spreads northward toward 
the pole in great abundance. Now, how did this little colony of 
chilly insects get separated from the main body and islanded, as 
it were, on a remote mountain-top in far warmer Nevv^ Hamp- 
shire ? 

The answer is, they were stranded there at the end of the Gla- 
cial epoch. 

A couple of hundred thousand years ago, or thereabouts — 
don't let us haggle, I beg of you, over a few casual centuries — the 
whole of northern Europe and America was covered from end to 
end, as everybody knows, by a sheet of solid ice, like the one 
which Frithiof Nansen crossed from sea to sea on his own ac- 
count in Greenland. For many thousand years, with occasional 
warmer spells, that vast ice-sheet brooded, silent and grim, over 
the face of the two continents. Life was extinct as far south as 
the latitude of New York and London. No plant or animal sur- 
vived the general freezing. Not a creature broke the monotony 
of that endless glacial desert. At last, as the celestial cycle came 
round in due season, fresh conditions supervened. Warmer 
weather set in, and the ice began to melt. Then the plants and 
animals of the subglacial district were pushed slowly northward 
by the warmth after the retreating ice-cap. As time went on, 
the climate of the plains got too hot to hold them. The summer 
was too much for the glacial types to endure. They remained 
only on the highest mountain-peaks or close to the southern limit 
of eternal snow. In this way, every isolated range in either con- 
tinent has its own little colony of arctic or glacial plants and 
animals, which still survive by themselves, unaffected by inter- 



112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

course with their unknown and unsuspected fellow-creatures else- 
where. 

Not only has the Glacial epoch left these organic traces of its 
existence, however ; in some parts of New Hampshire where the 
glaciers were unusually thick and deep, fragments of the prime- 
val ice itself still remain on the spots where they were originally 
stranded. Among the shady glens of the White Mountains there 
occur here and there great masses of ancient ice, the unmelted 
remnant of primeval glaciers ; and one of these is so large that 
an artificial cave has been cleverly excavated in it, as an attrac- 
tion for tourists, by the canny Yankee proprietor. Elsewhere the 
old ice-blocks are buried under the debris of moraine-stuff and 
alluvium, and are only accidentally discovered by the sinking of 
what are locally known as ice-wells. No existing conditions can 
account for the formation of such solid rocks of ice at such a 
depth in the soil. They are essentially glacier-like in origin and 
character ; they result from the pressure of snow into a crystal- 
line mass in a mountain valley ; and they must have remained 
there unmelted ever since the close of the Glacial epoch, which, 
by Dr. Croll's calculations, must most probably have ceased to 
plague our earth some eighty thousand years ago. Modern 
America, however, has no respect for antiquity ; and it is at pres- 
ent engaged in using up this palseocrystic deposit — this belated 
storehouse of prehistoric ice— in the manufacture of gin slings 
and brandy cocktails. 

As one scales a mountain of moderate height— say seven or 
eight thousand feet — in a temperate climate, one is sure to be 
struck by the gradual diminution as one goes in the size of the 
trees, till at last they tail off into mere shrubs and bushes. This 
diminution — an old commonplace of tourists — is a marked char- 
acteristic of mountain plants, and it depends, of course, in the 
main upon the effect of cold, and of the wind in winter. Cold, 
however, is by far the more potent factor of the two, though it 
is the least often insisted upon ; and this can be seen in a mo- 
ment by any one who remembers that trees shade off in just the 
self-same manner near the southern limit of permanent snow in 
the arctic regions. And the way the cold acts is simply this : it 
nips off the young buds in spring in exposed situations, as the 
chilly sea-breeze does with coast plants, which, as we commonly 
but incorrectly say, are " blown sideways " from seaward. 

Of course, the lower down one gets, and the nearer to the soil, 
the warmer the layer of air becomes, both because there is greater 
radiation and because one can secure a little more shelter. So, 
very far north, and very near the snow-line on mountains, you 
always find the vegetation runs low and stunted. It takes advan- 
tage of every crack, every cranny in the rocks, every sunny little 



EIGH LIFE. 113 

nook, every jutting point or wee promontory of shelter. And as 
the mountain plants have been accustomed for ages to the strenu- 
ous conditions of such cold and wind-swept situations, they have 
ended, of course, by adapting themselves to that station in life to 
which it has pleased the powers that be to call them. They grow 
quite naturally low and stumpy and rosette-shaped; they are 
compact of form and very hard of fiber ; they present no surface 
of resistance to the wind in any way ; rounded and boss-like, they 
seldom rise above the level of the rocks and stones whose inter- 
stices they occupy. It is this combination of characters that 
makes mountain plants such favorites with florists ; for they 
possess of themselves that close-grown habit and that rich profu- 
sion of clustered flowers which it is the grand object of the gar- 
dener by artificial selection to produce and encourage. 

When one talks of " the limit of trees " on a mountain-side, 
however, it must be remembered that the phrase is used in a 
strictly human or Pickwickian sense, and that it is only the size, 
not the type, of the vegetation that is really in question. For 
trees exist even on the highest hill-tops; only they have accom- 
modated themselves to the exigencies of the situation. Smaller 
and ever smaller species have been developed by natural selection 
to suit the peculiarities of these inclement spots. Take, for ex- 
ample, the willow and poplar group. Nobody would deny that a 
weeping willow by an English river, or a Lombardy poplar in an 
Italian avenue, was as much of a true tree as an oak or a chest- 
nut. But as one mounts toward the bare and wind-swept mount- 
ain heights one finds that the willows begin to grow downward 
gradually. The " netted willow " of the Alps and Pyrenees, 
which shelters itself under the lee of little jutting rocks, attains 
a height of only a few inches; while the "herbaceous willow," 
common on all very high mountains in western Europe, is a 
tiny, creeping weed, which nobody would ever take for a forest 
tree by origin at all, unless he happened to see it in the catkin- 
bearing stage, when its true nature and history would become at 
once apparent to him. 

Yet this little herb-like willow, one of the most northerly and 
hardy of European plants, is a true tree at heart none the less for 
all that. Soft and succulent as it looks in branch and leaf, you 
may yet count on it sometimes as many rings of annual growth 
as on a lordly Scotch fir tree. But where ? Why, underground. 
For see how cunning it is, this little stunted descendant of proud 
forest lords : hard-pressed by Nature, it has learned to make the 
best of its difficult and precarious position. It has a woody trunk 
at core, like all other trees ; but this trunk never appears above 
the level of the soil : it creeps and roots underground in tortuous 
zigzags between the crags and bowlders that lie strewn through 

VOL. XL. — 10 



114 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

its thin sheet of upland leaf-mold. By this simple plan the wil- 
low manages to get protection in winter, on the same principle as 
when we human gardeners lay down the stems of vines ; only the 
willow remains laid down all the year and always. But in sum- 
mer it sends up its short-lived herbaceous branches, covered with 
tiny green leaves, and ending at last in a single silky catkin. Yet 
between the great weeping willow and this last degraded mount- 
ain representative of the same primitive type, you can trace in 
Europe alone at least a dozen distinct intermediate forms, all well 
marked in their differences, and all progressively dwarfed by long 
stress of unfavorable conditions. 

From the combination of such unfavorable conditions in arctic 
countries and under the snow-line of mountains there results a 
curious fact, already hinted at above, that the coldest floras are 
also, from the purely human point of view, the most beautiful. 
Not, of course, the most luxuriant : for lush richness of foliage 
and " breadth of tropic shade " (to quote a noble lord) one must 
go, as every one knows, to the equatorial regions. But, contrary 
to the common oj)inion, the tropics, hoary shams, are not remark- 
able for the abundance or beauty of their flowers. Quite other- 
wise, indeed : an unrelieved green strikes the key-note of equa- 
torial forests. This is my own experience, and it is borne out 
(which is far more important) by Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who 
has seen a wider range of the untouched tropics, in all four hemi- 
spheres — northern, southern, eastern, western — than any other 
man, I suppose, that ever lived on this planet. And Mr. Wallace 
is firm in his conviction that the tropics in this respect are a com- 
plete fraud. Bright flowers are there quite conspicuously absent. 
It is rather in the cold and less favored regions of the world that 
one must look for fine floral displays and bright masses of color. 
Close up to the snow-line the wealth of flowers is always the 
greatest. 

In order to understand this apparent paradox one must re- 
member that the highest type of flowers, from the point of view 
of organization, is not at the same time by any means the most 
beautiful. On the contrary, plants with very little special adapta- 
tion to any particular insect, like the water-lilies and the poppies, 
are obliged to flaunt forth in very brilliant hues and to run to 
very large sizes in order to attract the attention of a great num- 
ber of visitors, one or other of whom may casually fertilize them ; 
while plants with very special adaptations, like the sage and mint 
group, or the little English orchids, are so cunningly arranged 
that they can not fail of fertilization at the very first visit, which 
of course enables them to a great extent to dispense with the aid 
of big or brilliant petals. So that, where the struggle for life is 
fiercest and adaptation most perfect, the flora will on the whole 



HIGH LIFE. 



"5 



be not most, but least, conspicuous in the matter of very hand- 
some flowers. 

Now, the struggle for life is fiercest, and the wealth of Nature is 
greatest, one need hardly say, in tropical climates. There alone 
do we find every inch of soil " encumbered by its waste fertility," 
as Comus puts it ; weighed down by luxuriant growth of tree, 
shrub, herb, creeper. There alone do lizards lurk in every hole ; 
beetles dwell manifold in every cranny ; butterflies flock thick in 
every grove ; bees, ants, and flies swarm by myriads on every sun- 
smitten hillside. Accordingly, in the tropics, adaptation reaches 
its highest point ; and tangled richness, not beauty of color, be- 
comes the dominant note of the equatorial forests. Now and then, 
to be sure, as you wander through Brazilian or Malayan woods, 
you may light upon some bright tree clad in scarlet bloom, or 
some glorious orchid drooping pendent from a bough with long 
sprays of beauty; but such sights are infrequent. Green, and 
green, and ever green again — that is the general feeling of the 
equatorial forest ; as different as possible from the rich mosaic of 
a high alp in early June, or a Scotch hillside deep in golden gorse 
and purple heather in broad August sunshine. 

In very cold countries, on the other hand, though the condi- 
tions are severe, the struggle for existence is not really so hard, 
because, in one word, there are fewer competitors. The field is 
less occupied ; life is less rich, less varied, less self-strangling. 
And, therefore, specialization has not gone nearly so far in cold 
latitudes or altitudes. Lower and simpler types everywhere oc- 
cupy the soil ; mosses, matted flowers, small beetles, dwarf butter- 
flies. Nature is less luxuriant, yet in some ways more beautiful. 
As we rise on the mountains the forest trees disappear, and with 
them the forest beasts, from bears to squirrels ; a low, wind-swept 
vegetation succeeds, very poor in species, and stunted in growth, 
but making a floor of rich flowers almost unknown elsewhere. 
The humble butterflies and beetles of the chillier elevation pro- 
duce in the result more beautiful bloom than the highly developed 
honey-seekers of the richer and warmer lowlands. Luxuriance is 
atoned for by a Turkey carpet of floral magnificence. 

How, then, has the world at large fallen into the pardonable 
error of believing tropical nature to be so rich in coloring, and 
circumpolar nature to be so dingy and unlovable ? Simply thus, 
I believe. The tropics embrace the largest land areas in the world, 
and are richer by a thousand times in species of plants and ani- 
mals than all the rest of the earth in a lump put together. That 
richness necessarily results from the fierceness of the competition. 
Now, among this enormous mass of tropical plants it naturally 
happens that some have finer flowers than any temperate species ; 
while as to the animals and birds, they are undoubtedly, on the 



ii6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

whole, both larger and handsomer than the fauna of colder cli- 
mates. But in the general aspect of tropical nature an occasional 
bright flower or brilliant parrot counts for very little among the 
mass of lush green which surrounds and conceals it. On the other 
hand, in our museums and conservatories we sedulously pick out 
the rarest and most beautiful of these rare and beautiful species, 
and we isolate them completely from their natural surroundings. 
The consequence is that the untraveled mind regards the tropics 
mentally as a sort of perpetual replica of the hot-houses at Kew, 
superimposed on the best of Mr. Bull's orchid shows. As a mat- 
ter of fact, people who know the hot world well can tell you that 
the average tropical woodland is much more like the dark shade 
of Box Hill or the deepest glades of the Black Forest. For really 
fine floral display in the mass, all at once, you must go, not to 
Ceylon, Sumatra, Jamaica, but to the far north of Canada, the 
Bernese Oberland, the moors of Inverness-shire, the North Cape 
of Norway. Flowers are loveliest where the climate is coldest ; 
forests are greenest, most luxuriant, least blossoming, where the 
conditions of life are richest, warmest, fiercest. In one word. 
High Life is always poor but beautiful. — Cornhill Magazine. 



SKETCH OF JAMES CURTIS BOOTH. 

THE life of Prof. Booth is divided by Mr. Patterson Dubois, 
in his memorial address, into three periods : that of his pre- 
paratory student life, or the formative period, which closed in 
1835-'36 ; the creative period, so named " because it called into 
being a method of technical education which has, probably more 
than anything else, resulted in establishing chemistry as a factor 
in commerce, and in gaining for the chemist a recognized place 
in the economy of the world's work," 1836 to 1849 ; and the period 
of his official life as melter and refiner at the United States Mint 
in Philadelphia. 

James Curtis Booth was born in Philadelphia, July 28, 1810, 
the son of George Booth, of New Castle, Del., and Ann Balton, 
of Chestertown, Md. ; and died in Philadelphia, March 21, 1888. 
He was taught in Philadelphia, at the seminary in Hartsville, 
Pa., and at the University of Pennsylvania, whence he was 
graduated in 1829. He then spent a year at the Rensselaer Poly- 
technic Institute at Troy, N. Y. He had a decided preference for 
the study of chemistry, of which he very early realized the capa- 
bilities and the practical value. Seeking opportunities and facili- 
ties for the performance of laboratory work in connection with 
his studies which America could not afford, he went to Europe 



SKETCH OF JAMES CURTIS BOOTH. 117 

for them, and was tlie first American student who visited Ger- 
many for that purpose. He spent the year 1833 .in Wohler's pri- 
vate laboratory in Cassel ; then practiced for nine months in the 
laboratory of Prof. Gustav Magnus, in Berlin ; and employed the 
rest of three years abroad in attending lectures in Berlin and 
Vienna, and in visiting manufacturing establishments on the 
Continent and in England. 

Having returned home, Mr. Booth established, in 1836, a stu- 
dent's laboratory — " the parent of all our existing laboratories for 
students in applied chemistry " — and became a teacher, " But it 
■was no part of Mr. Booth's idea," Mr. Dubois says, " to make the 
laboratory course usurp the rightful position of the text-book 
and the lecture. He saw the great want of a supplementer rather 
than a supplanter. How truly he discerned what the scientific as 
well as the commercial world required, and how fully he met that 
requirement, needs no explanation here. The student's labora- 
tories all over the country — if not beyond — as well as the throng 
of students who have come into and gone from his own laboratory 
during the past half-century — all attest the foresight, the judg- 
ment, the energy of a scientist and a business man." 

In 1836 Mr. Booth was appointed Professor of Chemistry ap- 
plied to the Fine Arts, in the Franklin Institute. In this capacity 
he delivered, between 1836 and 1845, three courses of lectures, of 
three seasons to each course. From 1842 to 1845 he was also 
Professor of Chemistry in the Central High School of Philadel- 
phia. He interested himself in mineralogy and geology, and en- 
gaged in the Geological Surveys of Pennsylvania and Delaware, 
concerning which Prof, J. P. Lesley has written : " Prof, Booth 
and John Frazer, then a young man, were appointed by Prof, 
Rogers, in the spring of 1836, his two assistants in prosecuting the 
work of the first Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, From 
spring to fall they traveled along the Susquehanna and Juniata 
Valleys, blocking out the order of the great formations. Prof. 
Booth was sent by Prof. Rogers up the Potomac to make a section 
which could be compared with the Juniata section ; and, when 
these three met at Huntingdon, he announced, to the astonishment 
of Mr. Rogers, that the mountains which fill the middle belt of 
Pennsylvania were made by two separate formations, now known 
as No. IV and ISTo. X. Mr. Rogers was unwilling to accept this 
conclusion, and instructed Mr. Frazer to go to the Huntingdon 
Bedford line and make a cross-section from the Broad-Top coal 
down to the limestone of Morrison's Cove. At the end of the 
week the three met again in Huntingdon, and Mr. Frazer con- 
firmed the statement of Prof. Booth. Mr. Rogers was still dis- 
satisfied, and then went himself to repeat the section made by 
Mr. Frazer, finding it correct, and then accepting Prof. Booth's 



ii8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Potomac section. Thus the grand column of our Palasozoic for- 
mations was established, and the credit of it is due to Prof. 
Booth. . . . Both Prof. Rogers's assistants resigned at the end of 
the year ; and Mr. Booth was then appointed immediately, or not 
long thereafter, State Geologist of Delaware. His work in Dela- 
ware was published in his report, an octavo volume, now so rare 
that it is impossible to obtain a copy. My belief is that Prof. 
Booth abandoned field work very early in his career, and devoted 
himself to his chemical laboratory. At all events he is known 
in science altogether as an accomplished chemist, with a great 
reputation for diligence and accuracy, especially in the field of 
mineral analysis." The Delaware survey was under Prof. Booth's 
charge in the years 1837-'38; and a summary of the results to 
which it led was published in the Annual Report of the Survey 
in 1839, and in a memoir on the subject in 1841. 

The act providing for the geological survey of Delaware 
required that an equal portion of the appropriation should be 
expended in each county. But the several counties did not all 
need the same attention. The geologist, however, was expected 
to spend an equal portion of his time in each county. He im- 
proved the time, when the geological work did not demand the 
whole of it, by traversing different parts of the counties, and im- 
parting to the people such knowledge relative to agriculture as 
lay within the sphere of his information ; and he embodied agri- 
cultural essays in his report. Pertinently to this instance of a char- 
acteristic weakness of law-makers. Prof. Booth remarked in his 
report on the unwisdom of allowing local interests to sway so 
much in legislation, when more could be gained in the long run 
by taking broader views. Believing that the wealth of the people 
could be promoted by their employing their own resources, how- 
ever limited, he directed much time to the development of such as 
deposits of shells and decomposed organic matter, glass-making 
materials, potter's clay, iron, and copperas. 

In explanation of the admission of theoretical matter into the 
report, when the work was designed to possess a practical charac- 
ter, he said : " In all probability the number of those who may 
peruse these pages is large, and their attainments are of a varied 
nature ; some being purely practical men, others again having 
made considerable attainments in literature and science; and 
hence it was deemed advisable to adapt the memoir to the various 
demands of the community. ... I am well aware of an opinion, 
too generally prevalent among men devoted to practical pursuits, 
that an attention to theories is rather prejudicial than otherwise 
to the successful pursuit of business. Whatever grounds they 
may have for such views, they are not valid when applied in a 
general way to theoretic investigations; for, independently of 



SKETCH OF JAMES CURTIS BOOTH. 119 

other proofs of the incorrectness of their conclusions, it may be 
shown that many valuable practical results have either originated 
with or were improved by theorists, by those who have experi- 
mented with a view to establishing, maintaining, or refuting. 
Now in regard to agriculture, it may be observed that it had al- 
ready made considerable advancement when it began to assume a 
scientific form ; but from that period to the present, by deriving 
assistance from other sciences, and particularly from chemistry, 
its progress toward perfection has been constant and rapid." ^ 

Prof Booth's attention was drawn to the subject of refining 
cobalt, concerning which little or nothing was known outside of 
the commercial refineries, by the ill-success of an experiment m 
mining the metal which was begun in 1845. It was at the Mine 
La Mott, in Missouri, where he mined a large amount of cobalt, 
which was sent to England. It was returned as impure ; where- 
upon Prof. Booth at once set to work to discover the best method 
of refining the metal— and succeeded. 

Of Prof Booth's qualities as an instructor Dr. Alexander 
Muckle, a pupil of his, as also of Wohler and Bunsen, and after- 
ward his assistant at the Mint, is quoted as saying : " With this 
experience of teachers and means of comparison, I can say that 
Mr Booth had few if any superiors as a teacher of practical 
chemistry; that he kept abreast of the times by constantly secur- 
ing the best and latest scientific books and periodicals. A high 
value was placed upon a course in his laboratory, which soon be- 
came widely known and in great repute as a place for learning 
chemistry ; and his teachings are believed to have had a potent 
influence in developing and disseminating the knowledge of the 
science and its practical applications." 

Prof. Booth was appointed Melter and Refiner of the Mint by 
President Taylor in 1849, and entered that service on December 
10th of that year. The time corresponded closely with the discov- 
ery of gold in California. The influx of gold from that source, 
already heavy, increased rapidly, and added greatly to the work 
of his office, while the quality of the metal increased considerably 
the difficulty of dealing with it. The new gold was alloyed with 
silver in excess of the amount admissible in the coinage, and this 
had to be extracted. The provisions of the Mint, which had been 
adapted for the treatment of the bullion which had been previously 
sent there, were not suitable to the refinement of this gold.^ New 
methods had to be adopted, and the whole plan of the parting ap- 
paratus had to be reconstructed. It was Prof. Booth's duty to 
make this adjustment. The process already known in the labora- 
tories had to be expanded and used on a manufacturing scale. " To 
this work, as well as to all the other labors of his department," says 
Mr. Robert Patterson, Mr. Booth "brought the full knowledge of 



120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

theory and practice derived from former professional experience, 
and further showed, what is not always the case with chemists, a 
capacity to apply his knowledge in the larger way required for 
commercial results." There was delay at first in disposing of the 
gold that came to the Mint, and some impatience on the part of 
consignors, but the capacity of the Mint was soon enlarged to 
meet promptly every demand. In the course of five years the 
pressure of gold at the Philadelphia ofBce was relieved by the 
creation of a Government Assay Office in New York and a 
Branch Mint at San Francisco. Then came a change in the 
standard of silver coin, causing an immense recoinage in small 
pieces ; and then the issue, in place of the old copper cents, of 
copper-nickel pieces, and, after these, of bronze ; each calling for 
other processes of assay and involving additional work. 

An improved process for refining gold was described by Prof. 
Booth, in a letter to the Wastage Commission, as follows : " I re- 
fine usually to 993 and 995 m., and sometimes, to make a finer 
gold, I heat the alloy of gold and silver with parting acid, so as 
to nearly separate them, and then heat the residue with oil of 
vitriol and saltpeter, at a steam-heat, by which I have brought 
the gold to 998 m. The process is my own, and not known out- 
side of the Mint." A paragraph from an article in the Journal of 
the American Chemical Society for June, 1885, on The Smelting 
Furnace of the United States Mint, is quoted by Mr. Dubois as 
characteristic. " My last improvement," Prof. Booth says, " which 
is still practiced, consists in the very simple operation of melting 
all the iron residues from the furnaces, even including grate-bars, 
and keeping them in a quiet melted state, so as to allow the heavier 
gold and silver to settle out of the iron. When the mass is cold, 
the precious metal is knocked off the bottom by a hammer as a 
single tough king, with scarcely a trace of iron in it, while the 
iron mass above it has never yielded a trace of gold or silver to 
the assayer. Instead of spending three weeks of annual vacation 
from melting in hammering tons of accumulated iron, we now 
melt through the year, whenever convenient, from five to fifty 
pounds of iron residues at a time. We gathered in one melting, 
last autumn, a cake of a few ounces of gold and silver from a mass 
of over fifty pounds of iron in a part of a day, and the latter was 
entirely free from the precious metals. When I first succeeded 
with this process, I could hardly believe in the perfect separation 
from iron, and the late Mr. J. R. Eckfeldt, the best assayer in the 
United States, doubted it, until, by numerous tests made from a 
piece of some thirty pounds of iron, he found a total absence of 
gold and silver." 

The difficulties met at the Mint in adapting processes to the 
various kinds of metallic impurity that came in with the gold 



SKETCH OF JAMES CURTIS BOOTH. 121 

and silver, and the responsibility of managing so large amounts, 
for which he was accountable in law to the full value, weighed 
heavily and constantly on his mind, and told severely upon his 
physical constitution, and, according to Mr Dubois, in his later 
years a painful anxiety " seemed to be ineradicably seared into his 
very life." His noticeable failure is traced by Mr. Dubois from 
the great " wastages " of 1872, together with subsequent difficul- 
ties in the recoinage of seventeen millions of our gold coin in 
1873. Prof. Booth himself wrote upon this subject in a private 
letter in October, 1887 : " The whole truth is that the constantly 
increasing business of the Mint beyond its own capacity for bull- 
ion storage has been increasingly weighing down my anxious 
thoughts for its safety, and you may add to that the consciousness 
that I was personally responsible for every ounce of bullion re- 
ceived, and then you will readily perceive sufficient ground for a 
constant anxious care, which I sometimes imagined to be as the 
square or cube of the extra quantity of bullion constantly poured 
in. . . . It was that constant and constantly augmenting ounce- 
for-ounce responsibility that finally affected my mind, and I rather 
think broke me down. I went home quite sick from the Mint 
early in April, and lay on my back for about three months. I 
suppose that such a statement will be quite sufficient to explain 
my present position. I am glad to say that I had sufficient strength 
to resign from my place in the Mint " (he resigned in August, 1887, 
after thirty-nine years of service), " although no one is yet ap- 
pointed to take my place. However, I do not go more than once 
a week to the Mint, and shall be glad when the string of union is 
severed. . . . From my age, over seventy-seven, I hardly expect 
restoration of full strength, and am satisfied with Avhat Provi- 
dence designs." His successor was not appointed when he died. 

Prof. Booth had a variety of side-pursuits, and was especially 
fond of linguistic studies, among which he took a particular in- 
terest in phonetics, short-hand writing, and the reform of English 
orthograxjhy. He regarded phonography as important in element- 
ary education, and thought it should be required as an essential 
branch. Having mastered Pitman's Phonography, he perceived 
the defective character of the text-books on the subject, and him- 
self published an elementary work upon it in 1849 — the Phono- 
graphic Instructor. The Instructor was republished, with a key, 
in 1850 and in 1856. The book was a successful one. 

Most of Prof, Booth's writings bore upon the special field of 
his studies and his work. Having become a member of the Amer- 
ican Philosophical Society in 1839, he, in connection with Prof. 
Martin H. Boy^, communicated to the eighth volume of its trans- 
actions, new series, a paper on the Conversion of Benzoic Acid 
into Hippuric Acid. A considerable number of the reports of 



122 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the Franklin Institute Committee on Science and the Arts were 
of his writing. In co-operation with Campbell Morfit he pre- 
pared a report on Recent Improvements in the Chemical Arts, 
which was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1852. The 
conservative, ijractical spirit that presided over the composition 
of this work is illustrated in the preface, where the authors say : 
" We have freely exercised discrimination in the selection of sub- 
jects, and have omitted much that we found in ap]3lied chemistry, 
because novel views need, in many cases, further confirmation to 
render them reliable in practice, and, if presented too earlj^ to the 
artisan, may be productive of more evil than good. We have 
kept in view the benefit of the practical man, the manufacturer or 
worker, and, while we have not avoided scientific terms where 
they were more convenient, we have generally used words of de- 
scription intelligible to every one. We have confined ourselves 
to such foreign improvements in the chemical arts, whether pat- 
ented or not, as we believed the American artisan might avail him- 
self of, frequently offering critical remarks on them, and some- 
times pointing out where improvements were likely to be made." 

In the Journal of the American Chemical Society are papers 
on some methods of toughening gold and silver (September, 1884) : 
A General Method of toughening Gold and Silver in the Melt- 
ing Crucible (June, 1884) ; and The Smelting Furnace of the U. S. 
Mint (Juno, 1885), from which we have quoted. Other papers, 
the media of publication of which are not given by Mr, Dubois, 
are: On Beet-root Sugars (1842) ; Chrome Iron Analysis (1842); 
Constitution of Glycerin and Oily Acids (1848) ; and a Report on 
the Water-supply of Philadelphia (18G2). His most conspicuous 
effort in literature was the Encyclopsedia of Chemistry published 
in Philadelphia in 1850, which was written chiefly by him, but on 
the last half of which Dr. Campbell Morfit assisted. 

Prof. Booth received the degree of LL. D. from the University 
of Lewisburg in 1867, and that of Ph. D. from the Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute in 1884. He was made a member of the 
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in 1842 ; of the Philadelphia 
Academy of Natural Sciences in 1852 ; ci the Maryland Institute 
for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts in 1853 ; of the Philadel- 
phia Society for Promoting Agriculture about 1859 ; and of the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1884. He was President of 
the American Chemical Society in 1883 and 1884, and declined re- 
election for a third term ; and was interested in the diocesan 
work of the Protestant Episcopal Church and in various philan- 
thropies. He is described as having been personally a gentleman 
of refined manners, pleasing address, and a cheerful disposition, 
which was often obscured, however, by his nervous intensity. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



123 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



UNIVERSITY EXTENSION. 

THE article by Prof, C. Hanford 
Henderson on University Exten- 
sion, which a|)pears in the present num- 
ber of the Montlily, is one which de- 
serves and doubtless will receive a wide 
and sympathetic attention. Prof. Hen- 
derson states his case well, and no in- 
telligent reader can fail to be impressed 
with the importance of the movement 
which he describes and advocates. For 
our own part we think its importance 
can hardly be over-estimated. It aims 
at nothing less than an intellectual revo- 
lution — at placing within the reach of 
thousands in every part of the country 
educational advantages which hitherto 
have been confined to university stu- 
dents. Useful as the colleges and uni- 
versities are in their way, we incline to 
the opinion that what is known as uni- 
versity extension holds out a promise 
of yet greater usefulness. The former 
are often spoken of as " seats " of learn- 
ing, and the expression is appropriate; 
but, in the extension movement, learn- 
ing leaves its seats and goes forth to 
find its disciples in the highways and 
byways. This simple fact is a pledge of 
a more living adaptation to the practical 
needs of the community than is to be 
expected in the case of the older and 
more permanent educational establish- 
ments. The reactive effect upon the 
colleges themselves will doubtless be 
also very beneficial. The theory of the 
movement is that college professors will 
do extra-collegiate work ; and it is cer- 
tain that, in addressing more miscellane- 
ous audiences than are wont to be 
gathered within college walls, they will 
learn new methods of instruction and 
discover new springs of influence. Col- 
lege students form a more or less select 
class, and they are expected not only to 
follow in an unquestioning manner the 



lines of study indicated to them, but to 
accept in the same way whatever may 
be the special educational views or tra- 
ditions of the institution they attend. 
The extension classes will be at once 
more fluid in their composition and 
more favorable to initiative and origi- 
nality on the part of the teacher. There 
will thus tend to be developed a new 
type of teaching and new conceptions 
of the possibilities of intellectual growth. 
Science will learn — what it has never 
yet thoroughly learned — to dwell among 
the people and mingle its life with 
theirs. 

Taking another point of view, we 
might dwell upon the great need that 
exists for something that will bring 
home a touch of true culture and of ex- 
act knowledge not so much to the 
" masses "' as to the " classes." Among 
the latter the fields are " white to the 
harvest." We are often told that the ig- 
norance of the working classes is a source 
of danger to the state, but we are by no 
means persuaded that the ignorance 
of a somewhat higher social stratum 
is not a more serious danger. A couple 
of years ago the most popular clergy- 
man in the United States, addressing 
his own congregation, recommended 
those of his hearers who were wealthy 
to spend their money freely upon every 
form of expensive luxury — to clothe 
themselves in the richest fabrics and 
most expensive furs, to ornament them- 
selves with the costliest jewels, to make 
their houses gorgeous with everything 
that was most sumptuous and elegant, 
to feed themselves with splendid liber- 
ality, to conduct themselves in gen- 
eral—so he actually said — as God's fa- 
vored children, for whom nothing could 
possibly be too good. In olden times it 
was said that the poor had the gospel 
preached to them, and that they heard it 



124 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gladly; to-day good news of a slightly dif- 
ferent tenor comes to the rich, and how 
sweet it must be to be told that, being 
rich, you are presumably a favored child 
of God, and that in living a life of lux- 
ury that might make Dives turn green 
with envy you are simply carrying out 
his fatherly designs ! But the eloquent 
preacher told his wealthy hearers more : 
he assured them that, in thus heaping 
indulgences upon themselves, they were 
helping the poor by furnishing them 
with employment. Of course he be- 
lieved it, because the whole class to 
which he belongs, with only here and 
there an exception, believes it ^ and that 
is just where we see the great need for 
the missionary work of the university- 
extension system. Here are thousands 
of high-feedmg, richly dressed, gospel- 
taught people, who, in matters economic, 
are sitting in the outer darkness of ig- 
norance—silly enough to think that the 
more they consume on their pleasures the 
more benefit they confer on the world, 
the more they lighten the toil of the poor. 
But it is not upon economic subjects 
only that the talk of the so-called edu- 
cated classes betrays a woful lack of in- 
formation and of coherent thought. 
Upon scientific and historical subjects 
it is mucli the same. By this time the 
main axioms connected with the doc- 
trine of the conservation of energy ought 
to be the common property of all de- 
cently educated persons, but we con- 
stantly hear well-dressed people talking 
as if electricity, for example, were a mys- 
terious something derived from a mys- 
terious nothing, and thus constituted a 
boundless source of energy to be had for 
the asking. It is needless, however, to 
multiply examples ; the world, in spite 
of all our educational institutions and 
perhaps a little through their fault, is 
full of ignorance in places where one 
would think ignorance ought not to be; 
and we may well, therefore, hail with joy 
the introduction of a scheme which 
seems likely to bring light and knowl- 
edge to many thousands of minds. 



Upon one point, however, we find 
ourselves unable to agree with our con- 
tributor. After making out a strong 
case for the usefulness of university ex- 
tension, he is disposed to draw the con- 
clusion that the national Government 
should take it under its protection and 
sustain it by subsidies. From our point 
of view this would tend to mar the whole 
scheme. Its success will depend mainly 
on the individual zeal and public spirit 
with which it is conducted; but if there 
is anything that is fatal to zeal and pub- 
lic spirit, it is a subsidy. "What is the 
cause of the paralyzing lack of vitality in 
our public schools if it is not that they 
are part and parcel of a pcjlitical sys- 
tem ? It may be granted at once that a 
national subsidy would greatly acceler- 
ate the movement ; but we are con- 
vinced that what would be gained in 
rate of growth would be more than off- 
set by deterioration in the ethical and 
intellectual quality of the work done. 
If people do not get knowledge to-day 
it is not for lack of pecuniary means ; 
it is because they prefer to spend the 
means they might apply to the pur- 
pose to less worthy objects. If there 
is one feature more than another of 
the university-extension movement that 
awakens our interest and commands our 
sympathy, it is that it offers an oppor- 
tunity for a true crusade against igno- 
rance and folly. But the crusader and 
the subsidy-seeker are very different per- 
sons. The former may be mistaken, but 
he is enthusiastic; the latter is rarely 
mistaken, but his enthusiasm is of a low 
quality. Now, as we have said, here is 
a grand opportunity for a crusade — an 
opportunity to show that those who 
possess the keys of knowledge are will- 
ing to unload their stores for others, and 
that those who have means in abundance 
are willing to contribute freely to raise 
the intellectual and moral standard of 
society. All the elements of a great 
movement are present if only we can 
count on enthusiasm — on some small 
share of that feeling for duty and that 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



125 



regard for others which bring Salvation- 
ists into the streets with their drums 
and tambourines. But the opportunity 
would be thrown away, and the move- 
ment would assume a thoroughly com- 
monplace and almost mercenary char- 
acter, if it were to be fed with the pro- 
ceeds of taxation. "We trust that the 
leaders of the movement will resolve to 
have nothing to do with politics save to 
purify and elevate them by the direct 
action of sound instruction on the pub- 
lic mind. It will not help our politics a 
bit to have university extension hang- 
ing round the Capitol for an appropria- 
tion. 



A GROUP OF SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS. 
The meeting of the American As 
sociation was held this year in the 
midst of the meetings, beginning Au- 
gust 11th and closing September 1st, 
of a number of societies cultivating 
special fields of science, which have 
grown up out of and around it. The 
multiplication and division of socie- 
ties in tliis way is a natural result of 
the increasing expansion and speciali- 
.zation of scientific studies in the United 
States, and one of the most certain signs 
of them. The fields which one society 
was able to cultivate have become too 
large and too many to be adequately 
tilled by it alone, and it has been found 
convenient to distribute the details 
among separate workers, while the old 
Association remains the central organi- 
zation and chief, under which the whole 
is unified. This grouping of meetings 
promises to be a permanent feature, and 
to make our annual scientific conven- 
tion an event of larger and growing in- 
terest. The meetings held in advance 
of the larger meeting were those of the 
American Microscopical Society, the So- 
ciety of Official Chemists, the Associa- 
tion of Agricultural Colleges, the Socie- 
ty for the Promotion of Agriculture, a 
body which is limited to forty mem- 
bers ; and the Association of Economic 



Entomologists. The discuss* ons in these 
assumed, to a large extent, a practical 
shape, and aimed directly or indirect- 
ly at the advancement of agricultural 
interests. Among the important feat- 
ures of the meetings were the arrange- 
ments that were made for the fusion of 
the chemical societies of the United 
States into a single body. Eight socie- 
ties were represented in the Union, viz. : 
The American Chemical Society, the 
Washington Chemical Society, the As- 
sociation of Official Chemists, the Chemi- 
cal Societies of Cincinnati, the Brook- 
lyn Institute, the Franklin Institute, 
the Association of Manufacturing Chem- 
ists, and the Louisiana Association of 
Sugar Chemists. Under the terras of 
union, which have yet to be approved 
by the societies separately, the new or- 
ganization will be called the American 
Chemical Society, and each local society 
will retain its identity as a branch. The 
name of the general society is the best 
that could be chosen for a body repre- 
senting the whole country, and gives, 
besides, a fitting recognition to the old- 
est and one of the most efficient and 
active of our chemical associations. 

The meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation itself was one of the largest and 
best that have been held in recent years. 
The number of members reached 653, 
and was greater than had been recorded 
since the New York meeting of 1887, 
when 729 members were registered. 
Three hundred and seventy -one new 
members were elected, and 235 papers 
were entered to be read. Permanent 
Secretary Putnam has been quoted as 
saying that the papers read were above 
the average in interest and importance, 
and this opinion appears to be well 
founded. Among the subjects inform- 
ally talked of as things to which the 
Association should give the support of 
its approval and influence were those 
of the establishment of a fund for the 
encouragement of scientific research, 
which was supported by Prof. Brash- 
ears and President Prescott ; the with- 



126 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



drawal of certain public timber lands 
from entry and their protection as for- 
est reserves ; and the utilization of the 
"Weather Bureau and the agricultural 
experiment stations in forming a service 
of water statistics and the survey of 
vpater-supplies to serve as a basis for the 
application of proper principles of wa- 
ter management. On the invitation of 
the Australasian Association represent- 
atives were appointed to serve on an In- 
ternational Committee to prepare a uni- 
form system of biological nomenclature. 
The meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation was immediately followed by 
that of the American Geological So- 
ciety, which was followed in its turn 
by that of the International Geological 
Congress. The former meeting also 
took on somewhat of an international 
character, for several of the European 
geologists were present, and such of 
them as chose to take part in the pro- 
ceedings were given the first places. 
The meeting of the International Con- 
gress was the fifth of the triennial series, 
and was attended by about two hundred 
members, nearly half of whom were 
foreigners from Austria, Belgium, Chili, 
France, Mexico, Peru, Roumania, Rus- 
sia, Switzerland, Canada. Germany, 
Great Britain, and Sweden. Profs. 
James D. Dana and James Hall were 
designated honorary presidents of this 
body and Prof J. S. Newberry presi- 
dent; but he not being able to attend 
on account of age, the sessions were pre- 
sided over by one or another of the vice- 
presidents. Prof. Joseph Leconte pre- 
siding at the opening session. The 
Congress was welcomed by Secretary 
Noble, in a happily phrased address, 
in which he spoke of the importance 
of geology in its scientific and economi- 
cal aspects, the activity with which its 
study is pursued in the United States, 
and the liberality with which it is as- 
sisted by the Government. The meet- 
ings were varied by the usual number 
of excursions, ending in a grand excur- 
sion of the International Geologists to 



the Yellowstone Park, the mining dis- 
tricts, the Colorado Cafion, and other 
points of geological interest in the "West, 



The American Association has se- 
lected Rochester, N. Y., as the place for 
its meeting of 1802, and the following 
ofBcers have been chosen for that oc- 
casion : 

President, Prof. Joseph Le Conte, Berke- 
ley, Cal.; permanent secretary. Prof. F. W. 
Putnam, Cambridge, Mass.; general secre- 
tary, Prof. Amos W. Butler, Brookville, Ind.; 
council secretary. Prof. T. H. Norton, Cincin- 
nati, Ohio; treasurer, William Lilly, Mauch 
Chunk, Pa. 

Vice-presidents of sections : A, Prof. J. 
R. Eastman, Washington, D. C; B, Prof. B. 
F. Thomas, Columbus, Ohio ; C, Dr. Alfred 
Springer, Cincinnati, Ohio ; D, Prof. J. B. 
Johnson, St. Louis, Mo.; E, Prof. H. S. Will- 
iams, Ithaca, N. Y.; F, Prof. S. H. Gage, Ith- 
aca, N. ¥.; H, W. H. Holmes, Washington, 
D. C; I, Prof. S. Dana Horton, Pomeroy, 
Ohio. 

Secretaries of sections : A, Prof. Wiuslow 
Upton, Providence, R. 1.; B, Prof. Browne 
Ayres, New Orleans, La.; C, Prof. J. L. 
Howe, Louisville, Ky.; D, Prof. 0. H. Lan- 
dreth, Nashville, Tenn.; E, Prof. R. D. Salis- 
bury, Madison, Wis.; F, Prof. B. D. Halsted, 
New Brunsvvick, N. J.; H, Dr. Stewart Culin, 
Philadelphia, Pa.; I, Lester F. Ward, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 

Auditors ; Dr. H. Wheatland, Salem, 
Mass.; Thomas Meehan, Germantown, Pa. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 

The Question of Copyright. By George 
Haven Putnam. New York : G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons. Pp. 412. 

This convenient and timely book con- 
tains a summary of the copyright laws at 
present in force in the chief countries of the 
world, together with a report of the legisla- 
tion now pending in Great Britain, a sketch 
of the contest in the United States, from 
1837 to 1891, in behalf of international 
copyright, and certain papers on the devel- 
opment of the conception of literary prop- 
erty, and on the probable effects of the new 
American law. To the author's view, the 
American act of the present year, providing 
copyright for aliens, can hardly be accepted 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



1 27 



as final legislation, and will doubtless at 
some no distant date call for further consid- 
eration as to some of its provisions. It 
leaves us still, in recognition of the claims 
of literary workers, very much behind the 
other nations of the civilized world. The 
result of fifty-three years of effort, it brings 
this country to the point reached by France 
in 1810, and by Great Britain and the states 
of Germany in 1836-'37. Under the pro- 
visions of the Berne Convention of 1887 — 
which probably represents the final stage of 
international copyright in Europe — by fulfill- 
ing the requirements of their domestic copy- 
right laws, authors can now at once secure, 
without further conditions or formalities, 
copyright for their productions in all the 
states belonging to the International Union. 
This union comprises nearly all the countries 
of Europe, with Tunis, Liberia, and Hayti. 
" It is not probable," says Mr. Putnam, " that 
another half-century of effort will be re- 
quired to bring public opinion in the Ameri- 
can Eepublic up to the standard of inter- 
national justice already attained by Tunis, 
Liberia, and Hayti." 

The Prison Question. By Charles A. 
Reeve. Chicago: A. C' McClurg & Co. 
Pp. 194. Price, $2. 

This book gives a theoretical and philo- 
sophical review of matters relating to crime, 
punishment, prisons, and reformation of con- 
victs ; considers mental, social, and political 
conditions as they bear upon these things ; 
and presents the author's views about the 
causes and the prevention of crime and the 
production of criminals. We do not have to 
accept the author's views specifically to rec- 
ognize that he has thought carefully and 
deeply on the subject, and has reasoned 
upon it without undue prejudice. The fun- 
damental principles of the book were first 
presented by him in a public lecture, about 
twelve years ago, and have been urged in 
various papers read before the National 
Prison Congress. The purpose of the book 
is to group some important well-established 
facts and apply them to the subjects of 
prisons and reforms, in such order as will 
interest so much of the general public as can 
be reached, and so aid in creating a public 
opinion that can intelligently and practically 
deal with and dispose of the defective classes 



and the causes that produce them. The 
author believes that an impractical theology 
on the one hand, and a blind agnosticism on 
the other, alike operate to prevent a true so- 
lution of the problems of criminality. From 
a false position no step can be taken in ad- 
vance without plunging into falsities. The 
only practical steps are such as lead to a 
true position. These the author tries to 
point out, by studying the criminal's mind 
and the factors that operate upon it — among 
which are physical and mental energy, 
theology, natural forces, marriage, society, 
and other surrounding influences — as they 
tend to develop, restrain, perpetuate, or pro- 
create criminal tendencies. A very impor- 
tant place is given to heredity, and, by con- 
sequence, to such regulation of marriage as 
will best prevent the transmission of crimi- 
nal appetites. The relations of government, 
legislation, punishment, and prisons to the 
criminal are considered ; reformation re- 
ceives a hopeful word ; but the measures to 
which real importance is attached are those 
that appertain to prevention. 

The Sturgeons and Sturgeon Industries 
OF the Eastern Coast cf the United 
States, with an Account of Experi- 
ments bearing upon Sturgeon-culture. 
By John A. Ryder. Washington : Gov- 
ernment Printing-office. Pp. 50, with 
Plates. 

The studies embodied in this monograph 
were made by the author in the spring of 
1888 at Delaware City, Del., a very impor- 
tant center of the sturgeon-fishery. Not- 
withstanding the results of the effort were 
in some respects unsatisfactory, a number 
of novel facts were collected and experi- 
ments were carried out which must be of 
great significance in any further attempts 
at the artificial propagation of these fishes. 
The embryological data have been drawn 
partly from the author's own experiments 
and partly from the work of other authors. 
The embryos of the common sturgeon here 
illustrated are believed to be the first of that 
species that were ever figured. The irppor- 
tant fact was determined that the common 
sturgeon (Acipenser sturio) is the only spe- 
cies which is at the present time of com- 
mercial value in the fishery of the Delaware. 
A few specimens of Acipenser brevirostris 
were obtained — a species which has not been 



128 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



certainly recognized since Le Sueur's time. 
The only profitable fishery of the common 
sturgeon — unless the Florida sturgeon should 
prove to be of the same form — is on the 
eastern coast of the Delaware River and 
Bay. A considerable amount of capital is 
invested in the business. The experience 
of the dealers and fishermen shows that a 
steady falling off has occurred in the catch 
within a few years. This and other facts 
prove that it is high time that something 
was being done to stay the extinction of the 
fish. The only means of maintaining and 
increasing the industry is through artificial 
propagation ; and the author has every rea- 
son to think that this may be successfully 
accomplished at a comparatively insignifi- 
cant outlay. 

The Diseases of Personality. By Th. 
RiBOT. Chicago : Open Court Publishing 
Company. Pp. 157. Price, 75 cents. 

The idea of personality is easily handled 
by metaphysicians who assume an ego. The 
school of experimental psychology, however, 
which claims M. Ribot, views this as no sim- 
ple task, but rather the reward of arduous 
research. In the present volume, therefore, 
the author seeks through investigation of 
those cases in which the sense of person- 
ality is disorganized to discover a clew to its 
nature. In order to kn(3w human personal- 
ity we must analyze it, but it must be re- 
membered that the phenomena separated 
for purposes of analysis are interdependent. 
The various disorders of personality may be 
classified as organic, emotional, and intel- 
lectual. The sense of individuality in the 
normal body, its fluctuations dependent upon 
alterations in general or local sensibility, the 
egoistic sense in monsters and twins, show 
"as the organism, so the personality." 
Emotional manifestations peculiar to im- 
paired nutrition, sexual aberration, and per- 
version of the higher instincts are found to 
confirm the same proposition. Intellectual 
vagaries of all kinds, due to sensorial de- 
rangement, hallucinations, the phenomena of 
hypnotism and of mysticism, furnish the 
corollary that ideas are only a secondary 
factor in changes of personality. 

Regarding personality as " the highest 
form of psychic individuality," the nature of 
consciousness and the individual is involved. 



Instead of the subjective notion that con- 
sciousness is '' a basic property of soul," M. 
Ribot finds it " a simple phenomenon super- 
added to activity of the brain, appearing and 
disappearing according to circumstances." 
States of consciousness are coincident with 
disassimilation of nervous tissue, so that we 
may predict that they depend upon a certain 
state of the nervous system But we do not 
yet understand all of the physiological con- 
ditions of consciousness. 

If individual be defined as that which is 
not divided, we are obliged to descend very 
low in the organic world to find an example. 
" Every protoplasmic mass which attains a 
few tenths of a millimetre spontaneously 
divides itself. Protoplasm in the individual 
state is therefore limited in size." Scientists 
may find a rudimentary consciousness in the 
unfolding, absorbing, and dividiag of the 
lowest organism ; but M. Ribot considers this 
an irritability common to living beings, 
which is developed into the general sensi- 
bility of more complex forms. In colonies 
of Hydradinia, or in Agalmidce, where loco- 
motion is centralized, we meet with a co- 
ordination which is the germ of personality. 
Gradually, as the nervous system becomes 
more prominent, psychic individuality is 
constituted. In any given time the sum of 
nervous actions in man will far exceed the 
sum of the states of consciousness. Thus 
conscious personality is but an abstract of 
what takes place in the nervous centers. 
" Why certain nervous actions become con- 
scious, and which are they ? " is yet unan- 
swerable. Different states of consciousness 
succeed each other and depend upon nerv- 
ous activity. Pathology confirms the fact 
that the feeling of tlie ego changes with the 
bodily condition. The problem thus becomes 
biological, and psychologv must wait, there- 
fore, for a fuller knowledge of the genesis 
of organisms. 

Studies i\ Evolution and Biology. By 
Alice Bodivgton. London: Eliot Stock. 
Pp. 220. 50 cents. 

A PERUSAL of this book shows exten- 
sive reading on the part of the author, and 
a clear conception of the principles of evo- 
lution. Some of the chapters are very in- 
teresting. It is difficult, however, to see 
the purposes of the book : as a help to the 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



129 



working student it is far too meager, and 
lacks references to original material ; as a 
popular book for the uninformed it is too 
condensed to be of much use. At the out- 
set a list of books is given for consultation, 
and this will strike one as a curious collec- 
tion for the purpose. In the preface the 
author says, " I am at a loss to imagine 
why it is considered almost wrong to write 
about physical science without having made 
original experiments." The advantage of 
having made original experiments leads a 
writer to greater exactness, and, above all, 
to appreciate the relative value of state- 
ments and facts. Her allusions to the fixed 
ascidians as being comparatively free from 
vicissitudes and dangers in contrast with 
locomotive forms derived from the same 
stock, is misleading. The helpless creature 
nibbled at by fishes, infested by extraneous 
growths, unable to fight or flee, is seriously 
handicapped in the struggle for existence. 

We know of no evidence to show that 
the duration of life of a species is gov- 
erned other than by the law of natural 
selection. An interesting article, by Prof. 
"Verrell (Science, vol. i, p. 303), would have 
given the author some hints as to the prob- 
able cause of the rapid disappearance of 
the larger vertebrates in past times. An 
allusion is made to the divergence of the 
Ainos from the Japanese, whereas the 
Ainos covered the islands of Japan before 
the Japanese were crystallized into a nation. 

Silly flights of fancy are quite out of 
place in a serious work of this nature ; but 
the attempt to enliven a dignified discourse 
by lugging in extracts of poetry or non- 
sense is peculiarly English, and so must be 
endured. 

The Progress Report on Irrigation in tlie 
United States, prepared by Special Agent 
Richard J. Hinton, on account of the short- 
ness of time during which the survey had 
been at work when it was made (sixty-one 
days), does not include results of the investi- 
gation itself, but only the returns of corre- 
spondence with experts and persons inter- 
ested in the subject, invited in order to show 
the conditions and development of irriga- 
tion as applied to the soil for the purposes 
of cultivation. The large number of letters 
received shows how extensive and growing 

VOL. XL. — 11 



is the interest in the subject, and promises 
that the oflBce of the irrigation inquiry will 
soon have a record of all that has been done 
about it. As among our own people, prac- 
tical irrigation appears to have begun with 
the Mormon settlement on the Great Salt 
Lake ; but has been practiced by the Indi- 
ans in Arizona and New Mexico for five 
hundred years. General irrigation really be- 
gan in the United States with the founda- 
tion of the colony at Greeley in Colorado, in 
ISvO, which was successful at once. Its de- 
velopment, slow till 1880, has been more 
rapid since then. One of the sequences of 
its adoption is the appearance of a tendency 
toward division of large holdings of land 
and its more or less rapid disposal in small 
bodies. Another incident is a movement 
among land, mortgage, and trust companies 
to form syndicates for developing the water- 
supply of the plains country, for the pur- 
pose, of course, of improving the security 
for their loans. Horticulture in California 
is said to be in great part the result of irriga- 
tion, as is illustrated in the great fruit farms 
at Riverside, iluch stress is laid upon the 
value of the " undersheet water " of the 
Arkansas and Platte and other valleys, the 
results of the survey of which, by Chief- 
Engineer Xettleton, are noticed below. The 
curious fact is mentioned concerning this 
water that cultivation tends to draw it up. 
Thus at Fresno, where the first cultivators 
had to dig fifty feet for it, they now get 
it at from eight to twelve feet below the 
surface. 

The Report of Artesian and Underfow In- 
vestigation between the ninety-seventh degree 
of west longitude and the foot-hills of the 
Rocky Mountains, presented by Edwin S. 
KeffletoT), in response to a call by the Senate, 
is also a progress report, and relates to work 
done in November and December, 1890, in 
parts of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, 
covering particularly the valleys of the 
Platte and the Arkansas. Valuable features 
of the report are the plan and profiles show- 
ing in detail the location and relation of 
the surface of the underground water, as 
found in rivers, wells, springs, and pools, as 
well as the elevation of the surface of the 
country along the line surveyed. There ap- 
pears to be usually sufficient rainfall in this 
region during the whole year, if it were 



130 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



properly distributed throughout the cropping 
season, to make agriculture reasonably cer- 
tain without the aid of irrigation ; and the 
people of the country believe that the hot 
and dry winds have more to do with short- 
ages of crops than lack of rainfall. The 
capacity of the surface streams being limited 
(the Arkansas and South Platte are already 
made to give up most of their water before 
leaving Colorado), a valuable other resource 
for irrigation is derived from the use of the 
subterranean or "undersheet" water, with 
which the sand and gravel deposits in the 
river valleys of considerable width and 
unknown depth arc charged. Much of this 
is obtained by means of open subflow 
ditches. In other cases it has to be pumped. 
In regions where this is not available, the 
people must depend upon deep wells of 
limited capacity, the storage and immediate 
use of storm waters, and the flow of artesian 
wells. 

The Journal of the College of Science of 
the Imperial University of Japan, \o\. IV, 
Part I — published by a committee of four 
professors, three of whom are Japanese — 
cohtains seven articles on subjects of biol- 
ogy and physiology, all by Japanese writers. 
All are distinguished by great merit, but 
are of too technical a character to be sus- 
ceptible of detailed notice in a popular 
journal. Prof. K. Mitsukari offers a study 
on the embryology of the turtle, in which 
many notable features hitherto overlooked 
are presented. Mr. Kamakichi Kishinonge 
describes the pulmonary lamellae of certain 
genera of spiders and their development, 
which he suggests may be from some aquat- 
ic arthropod, as limulus. Mr. A. Oka de- 
scribes a new species of fresh-water poly- 
zoa. A new fungus enemy of the mulberry 
tree is described by Mr. Nobujiro Tanaka. 
The Irritability of the Stigma is shown by 
Mr. M. Miyoshi to have a relation to cross - 
fertilization. A paper by Mr. Masamaro 
Inaba on the Development of Suprarenal 
Bodies in the Mouse contains much of in- 
terest to physiologists. All these papers 
are abundantly illustrated in the highest 
style of lithographic art, with colors. 

In his lecture on Les Proges de V Anthro- 
pologic (Paris, De Saye & Son, printers), the 
Marquis de Nadaillac endeavors to refute 
the theory of evolution. It is no slight tes- 



timony to the solid foundation on which that 
theory has been established in our modern 
philosophy that so learned and earnest a 
writer has not been able to add one to the 
arguments which English students met and 
answered long ago. 

Two studies of general interest in the 
Amm-ican Journal of Psychology for April 
are those of Dr. E. W. Scripture on Arith- 
metical Prodigies and Mr. Ilerbert Nichols 
on the Psychology of Time. In his paper 
on Arithmetical Prodigies, Dr. Scripture first 
gives an account of the persons themselves, 
with a bibliography of the subject; and 
afterward undertakes to make such a psycho- 
logical analysis of their powers as will help 
in the comprehension of them, and furnish 
hints to the practical instructor in arith- 
metic. 

The most important paper in Part XYIII 
of the Proceedings of the Society for Psy- 
chical Research is that of Jlrs. Henry Sidg- 
wick on the Evidences for Clairvoyance. 
Other curious studies are those of Baron von 
Schrenck-Notzing on Thought-transference ; 
Mr. Thomas Barkworth on Automatic Writ- 
ing ; and M. Leon Marrilier on Apparitions 
of the Virgin in the Dordogne. Prof. Will- 
iam James's Principles of Physiology is re- 
viewed at length by F. W. H. Myers. London. 

Dr. William W. Parker, of Richmond, 
Va., endeavors, in a paper on Instinct in Ani- 
mals and Intelligence in Man contrasted, to 
show that there can be no comparison be- 
tween the two, but that the matter is one of 
contrasts and antitheses : that in the ani- 
mal, intelligence is limited ; in man unlimit- 
ed ; that man's highest qualities or percep- 
tions have no existence even in embryo in 
animals ; and that " not one, not a thousand, 
links can bridge the chasm between the in- 
telligence of animals and the intelligence of 
man." 

Insects and Insecticides, a practical manual 
concerning noxious insects and the methods 
of preventing injuries, is designed by the 
author, Clarence M. ^yeed, who is also hia 
publisher (Hanover, N. H.), for the use of 
the farmer, fruit-grower, floriculturist, and 
housekeeper. It has been prepared to fur- 
nish these persons with a concise account of 
the more important injurious insects with 
which they have to contend, together with a 
summary of the latest knowledge concerning 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



131 



the best methods of preventing or counter- 
acting the injuries of the pests. For this 
the author has drawn from the investiga- 
tions of our leading entomologists. He has 
tried to make the discussions of life-histo- 
ries and remedies plain and simple. The 
insects are classified according to the plants 
or parts of plants on which they ravage — as 
those affecting, severally, the larger fruits, 
the smaller fruits, shade trees, ornamental 
plants, and flowers, vegetables, cereal and 
forage crops, and domestic animals and the 
household. Price, $1.25. 

In Los Animales Pardsitos introducidos 
por el Agiui en el Organismo (London, Burns 
& Gates) a full account is given by Dr. 
Rafael Blanchard of the parasitic animals 
introduced into the organism by water. The 
work is of convenient size, is neatly printed 
and abundantly illustrated, and will be of 
great value to the Spanish readers for whom 
it is intended. 

Mr. Edward Trcvert, author of several 
hand-books on electricity, batteries, and 
dynamos, has prepared a manual on Elcc- 
tricitif and its Applicatiojis, which is pub- 
lished at Lynn, Mass., by the Rubier Pub- 
lishing Company (price, $2). It is written to 
supply a demand which the author finds to 
exist, particularly among amateurs and stu- 
dents, for more information relating espe- 
cially to the practical part of the science. It 
treats (giving facts rather than theories, and 
avoiding technicalities) of voltaic batteries, 
dynamos, the electric arc and arc lamp, elec- 
tric motors, field magnets, armatures, the 
telegraph and telephone, electric bells, the 
induction coil, incandescent lamps, electrical 
mining apparatus, the electric railway, elec- 
tric welding, plating, and gas-lighting ap- 
paratus, other electric inventions, electric 
measurements, and gives resistance and 
weight tables and an illustrated dictionary 
of electrical terms and phrases. 

In his Introduction to Dynamics (Long- 
mans) Mr. Charles V. Burton has included 
kinematics, kinetics, and statics, because of 
the difficulty, in writing a book for young 
students with no previous knowledge of the 
subject, of making a satisfactory division of 
it. Absolute systems of units have been 
used, and the C. G. S. system has been given 
the most prominent place. Price, $1.50. 

In Optical Projection (Longmans) a trea- 



tise is given of a practical character by 
Mr. Lewis Wright on the use of the lantern 
in exhibition and scientific demonstration 
through its entire range. The author has 
practiced optical projection as a hobby for 
many years, and in his experiments has dis- 
covered many ways of improving the appli- 
cation of the art and enlarging its scope. 
His treatise is comprehensive, and includes, 
besides an exposition of the philosophy of 
projected images, descriptions of the parts 
of the lantern, and of the lights susceptible 
of being used with it, and accounts of the 
demonstrations of the apparatus in repre- 
sentations of experiments in molecular and 
mechanical physics, physiology, chemistry, 
sound, reflection, refraction, dispersion, and 
color of light, the spectrum, interference, 
polarization, heat, and electricity. Price, 
$2.25. 

A series of studies in History, Economics, 
and Public Law has been begun by the Uni- 
versity Faculty of Political Science of Co- 
lumbia College, to be conducted under the 
editorial direction of Prof. Edwin R. A. Sehg- 
man. The monographs are to be chosen main- 
ly from among the doctors' dissertations in 
political science, including only such studies 
as form direct contributions to science and 
are works of original research. They will 
appear at irregular intervals, and will be 
paged both consecutively and separately. 
The first of the list to appear is a study by 
Walter F. Wilcox on The Divorce Problem. 
The argument of it is that legal provisions 
of whatever sort have little direct and per- 
manent influence on divorce. The whole 
ideal and tendency of our modern civiliza- 
tion are to teach every individual self-direc- 
tion and self-government. No legal reform 
can do such work. The main work of the 
state should be as an educator of public 
opinion; and law may contribute by holding 
up a standard of morality in advance of the 
average standard. Other correctives may be 
sought in education and the Church, or ethi- 
cal society. The second paper in the series 
is The History of Tariff Administration in 
the United States, from Colonial Times to 
the McKinley Bill, by John Dean Goss. The 
author suggests that if our tariffs had been 
simply for revenue the problems of the best 
methods and rates would have been solved 
long ago ; but the adoption of the policy of 



132 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



protection, the very logic of whose honest 
application compelled the taxation of an 
almost innumerable list of articles and the 
general introduction of ad valorem rates, 
vastly complicated the problem. It has 
brought in devices to deceive the Govern- 
ment, and " this seems to be the legitimate 
outcome of any system of ad valorem duties," 
while the introduction of the consignment 
system has thrown the business of import- 
ing largely into the hands of unnatural- 
ized foreigners. But there has been, on the 
whole, a steady development toward more 
stringent supervision, regulation, and control 
over the importer. 

The Hon. Andrew S. Draper, State Su- 
perintendent of Public Instruction of New 
York, desiring to get a view of the workings 
of the Prussian educational system from the 
obsei'vations of an expert, commissioned Mr. 
James Russell Parsons, Jr., an experienced 
oflScer of the public schools, on his being ap- 
pointed United States consul at Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, to examine the schools of the country 
and report upon them. The fruits of Mr. 
Parsons's observations arc now published in 
the volume Prussian Schools through Amer- 
ican Eyes, by C. W. Bardcen, Syracuse, N. Y. 

Problems of the New Life is the title of 
a book of essays on social and labor ques- 
tions by Iforrison I. Swift, and published 
by him at Ashtabula, Ohio, The author 
writes with much ability from the point of 
view that the social organization is wrong, 
and a remedy is to be sought by agitation. 
The first paper is on The Social Ordeal of 
Christianity, and the burden of it is that 
the Church has failed to regenerate society. 
The ethical culture organization is contrasted 
with it as having recognized the progressive 
tendency of the time and placed itself in the 
current with it. In the paper on The Old 
and the New Life exception is taken to 
the attention given to mental culture as at 
the expense of physical development, and 
the accepted criterions of social esteem are 
decided to be wrong. Other essays concern 
Education and Power, The Extension of 
Culture, Nationalism, The Awakening of the 
Farmers, The Growing Eevolution, etc. The 
conclusion of the last is that " the death of 
the old order is declared." 

In Politics and Property, or Phronocracy 
(G. P. Putnam's Sons), a compromise is pro- 



posed by Slack Worthington between de- 
mocracy and plutocracy. Causes are recog- 
nized for the existence of discontent and 
strife, but it is also seen that they can never 
be entirely annulled ; that poverty can never 
be eradicated from society any more effectu- 
ally than disease from the human body. But 
it can be ameliorated by the timely enact- 
ment of intelligent laws. The author op- 
poses both plutocracy on the one hand and 
socialistic tendencies of all kinds on the oth- 
er, and advocates a reasonable or conserva- 
tive position between the two, which he calls 
Phronocracy, or the rule of reason, prudence, 
and understanding. He holds that the prop- 
erty rights of men shall, to a reasonable ex- 
tent, be fully recognized and sedulously pro- 
tected, but that the masses have grievances 
that must not be ignored. He further ad- 
vocates the curtailment of the elective fran- 
chise by property and educational qualifica- 
tions. 

Tlie American Citizen (D. C. Heath & Co.) 
is intended by the author, Mr. Charles F. 
Dole, to supply in part the growing demand 
for the more adequate teaching of morals in 
schools, especially with reference to the mak- 
ing of good citizens, and to show- in this case 
the practical application of the precepts to 
the duties of life. It aims, not merely to 
state the facts about the government of our 
country and our social institutions, but also 
to illustrate the moral principles that under- 
he the life of civilized men. The work is 
intended for youth in the higher schools, and 
for adults who may wish to make a begin- 
ning in the study of citizenship ; and the au- 
thor hopes to leave such an impression as to 
lead his more thoughtful readers to take up 
a more thorough course of study. 

The publication (by Macmillan) of the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica's article on War in 
a separate volume gives the author, Colonel 
F. Maurice, opportunity to insert a few re- 
marks on the probable influence on tactics 
and warfare generally of the latest improve- 
ments in destructive agencies, of which the 
most important are smokeless powder and 
the introduction of " high explosives " into 
shells. The general efPect of the former ele- 
ment will probably be to render a defensive 
position more difficult to approach, while the 
assailants will continue to be completely ex- 
posed to view. The effect of high explosives 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



133 



will be to put it within the power of field 
artillery to demolish permanent fortifications 
in all their forms ; and even field defenses, 
earthworks, and the like, are destined to 
lose much of their value from this new de- 
velopment. But there are inconveniences 
in the use of these agents that will to a cer- 
tain degree compensate for the advantages 
their possessors will enjoy. Strategy will 
be affected by the application, because it will 
be possible to carry out great movements 
with less regard to the influence of for- 
tresses than was formerly necessary. But 
the difficulties involved in the constant re- 
placement of material will also seriously af- 
fect the system of supply of armies in the 
field. The change in tactics will tend to 
favor offense rather than defense. To the 
amended original article of the Britannica 
are added an essay on Military Literature — 
a subject which is declared to occupy a field 
almost unknown to most English readers — 
and a list of books " of which it may be 
useful to know the correct titles." 

The little book, Stumhllng-stones removed 
from the Word of God (Baker k Taylor Co.), 
is addressed by its author, the Rev. Arthur 
T. Pierson, not so much to those who accuse 
and assault the Scriptures as to believers. 
It is acknowledged that " even the most 
candid and reverent believer finds in the 
English Bible some difficulties or hindrances 
in the way of his understanding, if not of 
his faith." But, assuming that the error in 
this case lies in what he mistakes for the 
truth, as a mirage is mistaken for reality, 
or in his own vision, the true believer is 
advised that he " runs no risk in calmly and 
resolutely examining into any alleged diffi- 
culty or discrepancy in the Bible. If one 
encounters a supposed ghost on a dark 
night, the best way is to walk up to it and 
look it squarely in the face. To flee from a 
supposed apparition may leave a lingering 
doubt whether the ghostly illusion was a 
reality or not : a bold touch would have dis- 
pelled both the illusion and the doubt." 

An edition of Eight Books of CcEsar''s 
Gallic War is published by the American 
Book Company, undgr the editorial care of 
Dr. William Ravaey Harper and Dr. Herbert 
Curling Tolman. Regarding Cesar's Latin 
as not excelled by that of any Roman 
writer in richness and purity, and therefore 



as of that which most deserves to be studied, 
the editors have endeavored in this edition 
to present the facts of the language and 
illustrate the subject in a manner different 
from the traditional method. Among the 
new features of the edition are the indica- 
tion of the first occurrence of every word 
by putting it in full-faced type ; the inser- 
tion of " topics for study," based upon the 
portion read, after the several chapters ; 
examples of inductive studies and list of 
topics for investigation ; and others touch- 
ing points of less prominent importance. A 
life of Caesar, history of Gaul, Germany, 
and Britain, and a sketch of the method of 
Roman warfare, are given in the introduc- 
tion in continuous narrative. 

TJie Quarterly Register of Current His- 
tory is a new pubUcation, the purpose of 
which is to collect, arrange, and preserve 
notices of all current events of importance, 
as they are given in the newspapers, for fu- 
ture reference and information. Such mat- 
ter is of the very kind that every one who 
would keep himself informed of current 
events would desire most to have at hand ; 
and yet it is just this kind of knowledge 
that, immediately its day is over and the 
newspaper containing it is thrown away, is 
soonest and most irrecoverably lost. The 
Quarterly Register is intended to remedy 
this evil and supply the want. The first 
number contains a review of the whole year 
1890. The succeeding numbers will give 
simply quarterly records. Evening News 
Association, Detroit, Mich. Price, $1 a year. 

Geografia per Tutti (Geography for All) 
is the name of a fortnightly journal for 
the diffusion of geographical knowledge, 
published at Bergamo, Italy, by the Brothers 
Cattaneo, under the editorial direction of 
Prof. A. Ghisleri. It is a popular journal, 
intended to reach the entire reading public 
and keep them abreast of the latest discov- 
eries. Among the articles in the opening 
number are some bearing on the interests of 
Italians in America, as that on New Orleans 
and the Italian Emigration, and one by Elisee 
Reclus on the Delta of the Mississippi. 
Sketches and portraits are also given of the 
famous Italian travelers, Gaetano Casati and 
Romolo Gessi. 

A Journal of Amei-ican Archeeology and 
Ethnology^ edited by J. Walter Fewkes, and 



134 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bearing the imprint of Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co., comes to us from the Hemenway Ar- 
chasological Expedition. The present num- 
ber, which is marked Vol. I, contains papers 
on A Few Summer Ceremonials at Zuui 
Pueblo, with seventeen illustrations ; Zuni 
Melodies, with the music transcribed from 
the phonograph ; and a Reconnaissance of 
Euins in or near the Zuui Reservation, with 
eleven maps, plans, and illustrations. 

In Educational Papers by Illinois Sci- 
ence Teachers it is stated that science is not 
taught in the country schools, for two rea- 
sons. The average teacher holds a second- 
grade certificate, which does not represent 
any scientific acquirement ; and the rural 
tax-payer is afraid that scientific instruc- 
tion may cost. In larger villages and cities 
outside of Chicago an elementary training 
may be found in high-schools, and occa- 
sionally a graded science course is provided 
from the beginning. A Xatural Science 
Section was formed by the Ilhnois State 
Teachers' Association in 1888. The papers 
published include those read at the sessions 
of 1889 and 1890. It is emphasized through- 
out that elementary science can not be taught 
by memorizing the zoological and botanical 
classifications of text-books. A natural ob- 
ject should be the first study, and generali- 
zation can be learned from the attempts 
to classify actual specimens. Among those 
easily obtainable are domestic animals, in- 
sects, common flowers, leaves, and table-salt. 
Elementary physics is best studied in the 
uses of the lever, cord and pulley, wheel, 
axle, and ventilation of rooms. In the clos- 
ing essay upon the material for science 
study it is urged that the phenomena of life, 
as exhibited in familiar animals, are more 
interesting to the child than any facts of 
structure. 



PDBLTCATIONS EECEIVED. 

Abbe. Cleveland. A Plea for Terrestrial Physics. 
Proceeding's of A. A. A. S., 1S90. 

Agricultural Experiment Stations : New Jer=ey, 
Keport of the Botanical Department. — Ohio, Bulle- 
tin, Vol. IV, No. 8.— Wyoming. Bulletin No. 2. 

Anderson, E. L. The TTniversality of Man's Ap- 
pearance and Primitive Man. E. Clarke & Co. Pp. 
2S. 2.5 cents. 

Bacteriological "World. Monthly. Paul Paquin, 
M. D., Editor. Columbia, Mo. %'i a year. 

Bohm-Bawerk, E. von. The Positive Theory of 
Capital. Translated by W. Smart. Macmillari & 
Co. Pp. 42S. $4. 

Boston Society of Natural History. Proceedings. 
Vol. XXV, Part 2. 



Egleston, T., Ph. D. Catalogue of Minerals and 
Synonyms. J. Wiley & Suns. Pp. 378. 

Fernow, B. E. What is Forestry ? United States 
Department of Agriculture. Pp. 52. 

Freelance, Frank. Eum is Eight. Freelance 
Publishing Co., New York. Pp. 156. 50 cents. 

Gaceta Cientifica. Monthly. Vol. VII, No. 7. 
Lima. Peru. 

Griswold, "W. M. Descriptive List of Eomantic 
Novels. Cambridge. Pp. 165-31S. $1. 

Hammond, Major Harry. Eeduetion of the Cot- 
ton Crop. Beach Island (S. C.) Farmers' Club. 

Jaques, W. H. Eecent Progress in the Manu- 
facture of Heavy Armor. Illustrated. Bethlehem 
Iron Co., South Bethlehem, Pa. Pp. 24. 

Kinmont, A. The Natural History of Man. J. 
B. Lippincott Co. Pp. 835. $1. 

Langley, S. P. Experiments in Aerodynamics. 
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 115. Ten Plates. 

Lewis, T. H. Cupstones near Old Fort Eansom, 
North Dakota. Eeprint from American Naturalist. 

Lord & Thomas, Chicago. Calendar, lS!)l-'92. 

Metal Worker Essays on House-heating. David 
■Williams, New York. Pp. 2SS. .112.50. 

Missouri Medical College. Fifty-first Annual 
Catalogue. St. Louis. 

Muter, J. Short Manual of Analytical Chemis- 
try. Pp. 205. 

Quarterly Eegister of CcuTP.nt History. Vol. I, 
No. 3. Illustrated. Evening News Association. 
Detroit. Pp. 213-;?44. $1 a year. 

Eandall, J. E. A Practical Treatise on the In- 
candescent Lamp. Illustrated. D. Van Nostrand 
Co. Pp. 82. 50 cents. 

Eichter. V. von. Chemistry of the Carbon Com- 
pounds. Translated by E. F. Smith. Second Amer- 
ican edition. P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 1040. 

Eickoff, A. J. First Lessons in Arithmetic. 
American Book Company. Pp. 150. 36 cents. 

Silver Bills. Addresses, Interviews, etc., by W. 
P. St. John, F. E. Newlands, and others, in favor of 
Free Coinage. Four pamphlets. 

Smith, J. W., M. D. Sulphuring or Bleaching 
Dried Fruit a Mistake if not a Crime. From Trans- 
actions of the American Public Health Assoc. Pp. 3. 

Smithsonian Institution. E. A. Andrews. Eeport 
upon the Annehda Polycha-ta of Beaufort, N. C. 
Pp. 26. — C. Bendire. Directions for collecting, pre- 
paring, and preserving Birds' Eggs and Nests. Pp. 
10. — G. K. Cherrie. Description of New Genera, 
Species, and Subspecies of JBirds from Costa Eica. 
Pp. 10.— T. Gill, un Eleginus of Fischer. Pp. 8.— 
F. n. Knowlton. Directions for collecting Eecent 
and Fossil Plants. Pp 46. — F. A. Lucas. Notes on 
the Preparation of Eough Skeletons. Pp. 11. — E. 
E. C. Stearns. List of Shells collected by Dr. \V. H. 
Jones. Pp. 20. — L. Stejneger. Directions for col- 
lecting Beptiles and Batrachians. Pp. 13.— Descrip- 
tions of Three New Lizards. 

Smythe. G. C, M. D. Influence of Heredity in 
producing Disease and Degeneracy. From Trans- 
actions of the Ind. State Medical Society. Pp. 24. 

Society for Psychical Eesearch. Proceedings, 
July, 1801. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 
London. 2«. 6d. 

Stewart, S. T. Plane and Solid Geometry. 
American Book Company. Pp. 406. $1.12. 

Studies from the Kindergarten. Educational 
Monographs. No. 19. New York College for tho 
Training of Teachers. Pp. 46. 

Tavlor, P. M., Ann Arbor, Mich. The Eight of 
the State to be. Pp. 109. 

Terr}', .1., American Museum of Natural History, 
New York. Sculptured Anthropoid Ape Heads. 
Pp. 15. 4to. Five Plates. 

Te.xas. Eeport of the Geological Survey, 1890. 
Pp. 756. 

United States Board on Geographic Names. Bul- 
letin No. 3. Pp. 10. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



135 



United States Department of Agriculture. North 
American Fauna. No. 5. Pp .127. 

United States War Department. Charts show- 
inff the Averag-e Monthly Cloudiness in the United 
btates. Twelve c;harts, folio.— Charts showing the 
Probability of Eainy Days. Twelve Charts, foHo. 

University Extension. Monthly. Philadelphia : 
J. H. Shinn. $3 a year. 

Whelpley Dr. H. M. A Course in Microscopical 
Technology for Colleges of Pharmacy. From Pro- 
ceedings of American Pharmaceutical Assoc. Pp.3. 

Wiley, John, .t Sons. Catalogue of Text-books 
and Industrial Works. Pp. SO. 

Wilson, Sir Daniel. The Pvight Hand : Left- 
handedness. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 215. $1.25. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 

Irtesian Wells and their Flow.— That 
part of the definition of an artesian well 
given by the Department of Agriculture 
that includes all subterranean waters which, 
on being reached or opened from above, 
are found to flow by pressure to a higher 
level than the point of contact, is accepted 
by Mr. R. Ellsworth Call, in his preliminary 
paper on Artesian Wells in Iowa, as complete 
in itself and as properly defining artesian 
water. Artesian flows may be variable, that 
is, may exhibit sometimes increased and at 
other times decreased flows of water, but the 
artesian characters are still very marked. 
Originally all artesian waters are meteoric, 
that is, are all waters which reach the earth 
by precipitation as rain. That they shall 
percolate to lower strata, be included between 
impervious sti-ata or layers of clay or close- 
textured rock, is a necessary condition. But 
the total water thus held in confinement has 
a definite relation to the catchment basin on 
the one hand and to the total annual rain- 
fall on the other. It is easily seen, then, that 
artesian waters may vary with the season ; 
that in dry seasons, when the wells are shal- 
low, they will soonest show decreased flow ; 
that in a series of years when the precipita- 
tion is far below the normal the artesian areas 
may entirely fail, again to present good wells 
whenthefallof meteoric waterreachesthe nor- 
mal or rises above it. Wells may then, in a 
certain sense, be temporary and still be arte- 
sian. In the case of the deep wells, those 
that lie far below the range of variation from 
causes connected with the variable factors of 
annual character that mark shallow wells, ar- 
tesian flows are apt to be more constant ; but 
even here there are certain variable features 
which show differences through longer inter- 



vals of time. No artesian basin exists any- 
where, but it will be found necessary, sooner 
or later, to control, by mechanical means, the 
total flow or " output " of the several wells. 
The waters are bound to be exhausted in the 
long run if there be no well-planned govern- 
ing relation between the consumption and the 
known sources of supply. The deepest and 
the largest flowing wells will sometimes be 
taxed beyond their " life," and then, for a 
time at least, they must be allowed to rest. 
No owner of artesian wells in the glacial 
districts, where the wells are shallow, can 
afford to allow his well to flow and the 
water to be wasted. 

Different Effects of Denndation, — De- 
scribing the old, or abandoned, fields of the 
south. Prof. W J McGee spoke, in the Ameri- 
can Association, of the different aspects pre- 
sented by the results of denudation accord- 
ing to the situations of the fields. When the 
tracts are low or gently undulating, they are 
quickly clothed with vegetation ; but when 
they are hilly and high, the ravines or deep- 
ened gullies invade the hill slopes and up- 
lands, until in some cases the entire soil is 
washed away and the verdure-clothed sur- 
face is transformed into a glaring sand, while 
the bottom lands, once the most fertile of 
cotton fields, are clogged with the sand swept 
from the hills until they, too, are ruined for 
agriculture. The reasons for this accelerated 
denudation may be sought for in the rela- 
tions which geologists have found to exist 
between the elevation and the configuration 
of lands, their climatal conditions, and the 
character of their vegetation. An area stand- 
ing high above the base level for a consider- 
able period assumes a rugose configuration. 
There is also a configurative characteristic of 
the prairie and another characteristic of the 
woodland, the latter being more rugose ; and 
the geologist trained in this line of investi- 
gation can discriminate at a glance between 
the lands cleared of forests by human agency 
and those that are naturally grass-covered. 
The configuration of Mississippi and other 
parts of the southern United States indicates 
considerable altitude above base-level and an 
originally forest-covered condition. The sur- 
face slopes are too steep to withstand the 
action of. the storms and streams when the 
forest coverinK is removed. It is true that 



136 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



during the palmy days of the plantations the 
fields were not eroded, but that was because 
of the constant use of concentric cultivation, 
hillside ditches, balks, and other protective 
devices; but when the fields were abandoned 
the waters gathered on the hillsides, ran down 
the slopes, and quickly destroyed the surface. 
In many cases the destruction has gone so 
far that to check it would cost more than the 
value of the land ; but when not too far ad- 
vanced it may be checked by planting Ber- 
muda grass on the steep slopes and locust 
trees about the heads of the gullies, and by 
other preventive measures. 

The Travels of Weeds.— The term 
" weed " is a relative one, and, as defined 
by Prof. Byron D. Halsted, means "only 
plants that are able to assert their inborn 
rights above all others and wage a close 
warfare with man for the possession of the 
earth. There is nothing in structure, form, ; 
or substance that distinguishes a weed from 
other plants. It hrcs, grows, and reproduces 
its kind like all others of its class, and 
therefore the methods of migration are the 
same as obtain with those of its kin. The 
rapidity may be greater because of the 
dominant weed nature, but the difference is 
only in degree and not in kind." A large 
number of our worst weeds came to us from 
foreign countries ; just how they emigrated 
will never be known in every case. " Some 
came as legitimate freight ; many were 
stowaways. Some entered from border 
lands upon the wings of the wind, upon 
river bosoms, in the stomachs of migrating 
birds, clinging to the hair of passing ani- 
mals, and a hundred other ways, besides by 
man himself. Into the New England soil 
and south along the Atlantic seaboard the 
weed seeds first took root. Also, there are 
wild plants of that region, with a strong 
weedy nature, developed into pests of the 
farm and garden. As civilized man moved 
westward the weeds followed him, rem- 
forced by new native ones that soon vied 
with those of foreign blood. Not satisfied 
with this, the natives of the interior ran 
back upon the trail and became new ene- 
mies to the older parts of our land. The 
conditions for the development of weeds have 
increased with the development of our 
country, until now we are literally overrun. 



Weeds, usually as weeds, go and come in 
all directions, no less as tramps catching a 
ride upon each passing freight train than in 
cherished bouquets gathered by the wayside 
and tenderly cared for by transcontinental 
tourists in parlor cars." 

The Scharf Library of Johns Hopkins.— 

The library presented by Colonel J. Thomas 
Scharf to Johns Hopkins University includes 
books, pamphlets of great value, and several 
hundred unpublished manuscripts. Most of 
the works are historical. The manuscripts 
include ten by James D. McCabe, formerly 
of the Confederate War Department ; many 
on revolutionary history, and a large number 
of a miscellaneous character. Other depart- 
ments consist of a collection of materials for 
the history of New York city and vicinity ; 
a collection on early Missouri history ; the 
most valuable of Thompson Westcott's books 
on Pennsylvania ; materials on almost every 
phase of Maryland history, and more varied 
and complete materials for the history of 
Baltimore ; a rich mass of documents on 
southern history, and covering the whole pe- 
riod of the rebellion ; about three thousand 
" broadsides," covering many departments 
of Revolutionary history, and including speci- 
mens of almost every one written or printed 
in Maryland during the last and the early 
part of the present century ; Confederate and 
Revolutionai-y autographs, with the letters to 
which they are attached, some of them inter- 
esting in themselves ; and various miscellane- 
ous articles. 

Japanese Playing-cards.-^-The Japanese 
playing-cards are more distinctly original, 
according to Mrs. J. King Van Rensselaer, 
than any others, and show no marks of com- 
mon origin with them. They are oblong, 
and are made of pasteboard, with the backs 
painted black. The designs seem to be 
stenciled, and are brightly and appropriately 
colored and then covered with an enamel or 
varnish, which makes them slippery. They 
are much smaller than our cards. Forty- 
nine in number, they are divided into twelve 
suits of four cards in each suit. One card 
is a trifle smaller than the rest of the pack, 
and has a plain white face, not embellished 
with any distinctive emblem, and is used as 
a " joker." The other cards are covered 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



137 



with designs that represent twelve flowers 
or other things appropriate to the months 
of the year. Each card is distinct and dif- 
ferent from its fellows, even though it bears 
the same emblem; and they can be easily 
distinguished and classified, even if they 
bear the same emblem, by the symbolic 
flowers they bear, and also by a character 
or letter that marks nearly every card, and 
seems to denote the plant that represents 
the month. The only month that has no 
floral emblem is August, and that suit is 
marked by mountains and warm-looking 
skies. 

The Monkey Language. — The results of 
experiments in the language of monkeys are 
published by Prof Garner in the New Re- 
view. Most of them were made in the 
United States. He had long believed, he 
says, that each sound uttered by an animal 
had a meaning which any other animal of 
the same kind would interpret at once ; and 
had observed, as most of us have done, that 
animals soon learn to interpret certain 
words of man and to obey them, but never 
try to repeat them. When they reply to 
man it is in their own peculiar speech. The 
author began his studies by visiting the zoo- 
logical gardens of the United States and 
watching and listening to the monkeys in 
their prattle. By permission of Dr. Frank 
Baker, of the National Zoological Garden, 
two monkeys which had been caged together 
were separated and placed in different 
rooms. A phonograph was arranged near 
the cage of the female, into which she was 
made to speak. It was then made to re- 
peat her " words " near the cage of the 
male. His surprise and perplexity " were 
evident. He traced the sounds to the horn 
from which they came, and, failing to find 
his mate, he thrust his hand and arm into 
the horn quite up to the shoulder, withdrew 
it, and peeped into the horn again and again. 
He would then retreat and again cautiously 
' approach the horn, which he examined with 
evident interest. The expressions of his 
face were indeed a study." This satisfied 
Prof. Garner that the monkey recognized 
the sounds as those of his mate. He then 
managed to get some sounds from him 
which the mate in her turn recognized. The 
ne.'ct recorded interviews were with two 



chimpanzees, from which a fine, distinct 
record was secured, and with a capuchin 
monkey in the Cincinnati garden. The au- 
thor spoke to the monkey in his own tongue, 
using the word supposed to stand for milk. 
The monkey " rose, answered me with the 
same word, and came at once to the front of 
his cage. He looked at me as if in doubt, 
and I repeated the word ; he did the same, 
and turned at once to a small pan in the cage, 
which he picked up and placed near the 
door at the side, and returned to me and 
uttered the word again. I asked the keeper 
for some milk, which he did not have, how- 
ever, but brought me some water. The ef- 
forts of my little simian friend to secure 
the glass were very earnest, and the plead- 
ing manner and tone assured me of his ex- 
treme thirst. I allowed him to dip his 
hand into the glass, and he would suck his 
fingers and reach again. I kept the glass 
from reach of his hand, and he would re- 
peat the sound and beg for more. I was 
thus convinced that the word I had trans- 
lated milk must also mean water, and from 
this and other tests I at last determined 
that it meant also drink and probably 
thirst. I have never seen a capuchin who 
did not use these two words. The sounds 
are very soft and not unlike a flute, very 
difficult to imitate, and quite impossible to 
write." Other sounds were detected for 
solid food or the hunger for it, pain and 
sickness, and for alarm. On the utterance 
of the last, the monkey sprang to the high- 
est point in his cage, and on repetitions of 
it became almost frantic with dread — so 
that the sound for food would for the time 
have no inducements for him. These sounds 
Prof. Garner regards as the constituents of 
a monkey language which has a variety of 
dialects, according to the species addressed. 

Famous Japanese Swords.— A Japanese 
short sword exhibited by Mr. Inman Homer 
before the Numismatic and Antiquarian So- 
ciety of Philadelphia is distinguished by 
an inscription on the blade. Mr. Benjamin 
Smith Lyman said that this inscription was 
in Japanese characters, and appeared to be 
the name of the sword. " It is not usual," 
he said, " for swords to have a name in 
Japan, but it is sometimes the case, as in 
Europe. Two famous swords are recorded 



138 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in Japanese history — one, called Hizamane 
(the knee-sword), from its being tried upon a 
convict, and at one stroke severing the knee 
as well as the neck ; and another, called 
Higekiri (beard-cutting), from its cutting 
through the beard when similarly tried. 
Another sword is mentioned in the cele- 
brated romance of the memoirs of the Eight 
Dogs of Satonu and called Murasame (Au- 
tumn Showers), because it had the magical 
property of shedding water that kept it free 
from blood. The sword now exhibited is 
inscribed with Osoraku, which appears to 
mean 'fearful,' so the sword probably 
bore the not inappropriate name of ' The 
Fearful.' Being a short sword, it has no 
guard, as the short sword was sometimes 
worn beneath the robe, where a guard 
■would be in the way. Long swords usually 
have an inscription under the wooden han- 
dle, giving the name of the maker and the 
date. This bears none, but the maker's 
name is found upon the blade of the small 
knife inserted into the same scabbard, which 
is inscribed Morju Shiro Kanekiyo. Ka- 
nenga was the name of a famous sword- 
maker, some of whose works are dated from 
1321-1323 A. D. A successor of his was 
Kaneyoshi (1492-1500), and from certain 
parallel inclined lines which Kaneyoshi 
used as a distinguishing mark, and found 
on the part of the present sword concealed 
by the handle, it seems probable that the 
maker, Kanekiyo, was a pupil of his, or a 
not very distant successor, making the 
sword, therefore, probably over three hun- 
dred and fifty years old." 

A Chinese View of it.— The Chinese lit- 
erati have now come to the conclusion, ac- 
cording to the North China PIcrald, of Shang- 
hai, that "Western science has been built up 
from the leaking out of the knowledge pos- 
sessed by their ancestors to Western men, 
who cultivated it, improved upon it, and de- 
veloped it. Hence they argue in favor of 
accepting foreign science and inventions in 
China, saying : " We wish to make use of the 
knowledge of Western men, because we know 
that what they have attained in science and 
invention has been through the help that our 
sages gave them. We have a good right to 
it. What Europe has done she has done 
through the help we gave. If wc did not 



exactly give science to Europe, we gave it 
the fruitful germ which produced it. They 
have the science of optics, but in our Motsz 
we find that reflection from mirrors was 
known in the days of Mencius. The men 
of the West hold that the earth is round. 
This was believed also by our poet Chii Yuen, 
who, in his ode on astronomy, announces this 
doctrine ; and this was not many years after 
Mencius. This being so, we ought not to 
be ashamed of the study of Western science. 
We are the rivals of the Western kingdoms, 
and it is good policy to use their spears in 
order to pierce their shields. We ought to 
train our youth in Western science, so that 
we may know how best to meet them in the 
struggle to resist their encroachments." 

The Birds of the Fame Islands.— The 

Fame or Fearne Islands of the coast of 
Northumberland, England, famous by associ- 
ation with Grace Darling, " the wrecker's 
daughter," are more noted as the home of 
countless sea birds which resort there to 
nest and rear their young. The variety of 
their features of " cliffs, stacks, and crags, 
rabbit-warrens and land thickly covered 
with vegetation, rocks, and sloping beach," 
admirably adapts them for this purpose. 
They arc not inhabited, except by the light- 
house keepers and their families, so that 
the birds and the rabbits have them all 
substantially to themselves. They are at- 
tractive spots to visit, and this is best 
done in the second week in June, when the 
breeding season of the birds is at its height ; 
in addition to the eggs, which are practically 
countless, the visitor then has the pleasure 
of seeing many newly hatched birds. As 
" the Pinnacles " of the islands are ap- 
proached, the guillemots are seen occupying 
in thousands the flat tops, sitting on end, 
and packed so closely together that to all 
appearance there is not room for another ; 
" indeed, so dense are the masses, that one 
can not help wondering how each individual 
bird can recognize its own egg — for the 
guillemot lays but one — or, having left it, 
can force its way back to it again when it 
has recognized it, more especially as the 
eggs are placed on the bare rock, without 
the faintest vestige of a nest. They are 
pear-shaped, very large for the size of the 
birds, and the color and markings vary in 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



139 



different specimens in a most extraordinary 
manner." Nearly every shelf or projection 
cf the rock, both in the Pinnacles and in 
the rest of the islands, is occupied by the 
kittiwakes, whose well-built nests, with their 
spotted, brown eggs or speckled, downy 
young, can be easily seen from the tops of 
the cliffs. " Walking about," says a writer 
in the Saturday Review, " it is hard to avoid 
treading on the gulls' eggs, which are 
placed in rather loosely made nests among 
the coarse herbage or on the rocks them- 
selves. As the center of the island is 
reached it is easy to see the nests of the 
cormorants, which are large, slovenly con- 
structions, composed principally of sea-weed, 
mixed with pieces of drift-wood, corks off 
fishing-nets, and other such flotsam and 
jetsam, the whole covered and made filthy 
both to sight and smell by the droppings of 
the birds and remnants of fish. The eggs, 
which are bluish-green in ground color, are 
covered with a white, calcareous matter ; 
but, except where freshly laid, look as dirty 
as the nests. ... In a comfortable hol- 
low between two rocks we find the nest of 
an eider duck, and then, within a very short 
distance, one or two more. These nests are 
most cozily lined with the brown down 
which the bird picks from her breast from 
time to time during the process of incuba- 
tion, and in which the large, greenish-gray 
eggs, from five to eight in number, are al- 
most covered." These birds are very tame 
and approachable. The light and peaty soil 
of the interior of the island is full of bur- 
rows, which are divided between numberless 
puffins and a few rabbits. " Many of the puf- 
fins, curious, pompous-looking little fellows, 
with large, brightly colored bills, may be seen 
sitting about on the rocks or flying and 
swimming round the island, while their part- 
ners are below the ground, sitting each on 
the solitary egg which she has laid at the 
end of the burrow. In the campion-covered 
centers of the islands the terns are num- 
berless, and the beach down to high-water 
mark is covered with their eggs, so that 
very great care has to be used in walking 
to avoid treading on them. They are also 
to be found in large numbers among the 
sea campion ; many are laid on the shingle 
with little if any pretense of a nest ; while 
others have slight nests, made of bents and 



pieces of sea-weed. The list of birds breed- 
ing on the Fame Islands includes twelve 
species, and others may be occasionally seen 
there as visitors. The birds and eggs, which 
had been exposed to danger of destruction 
and extermination, have had their existence 
more and more secured under the wild 
birds' protection acts passed since 1869 ; 
and in 1888 an association of gentlemen in- 
terested in ornithology was formed, which 
has secured a lease of the islands, keeps in- 
truders off, and takes care of the birds. 

Wild Life in the Snow. — Snow, remarks 
in the London Spectator an observer of 
wild life, generally catches our animals un- 
prepared, and they are put to all kinds of 
shifts to find food and escape their enemies. 
The more open and exposed the districts, 
the greater their difficulties. Where there 
are thick woods and hedgerows, and, above 
all, running water, birds and beasts alike 
can find dry earth in which to peck and 
scratch, or green things to nibble and water 
to drink. But on the great chalk downs a 
snow-storm seems to drive from the open 
country every living creature that dares 
to move at all. For the first day after a 
heavy fall, the hares, which allow the snow 
to cover them, all but a tiny hole made by 
their warm breath, do not stir ; only toward 
noon, if the sun shines out, they make a 
small opening to face its beams, and per- 
haps another in the afternoon, at a differ- 
ent angle to the surface, to catch the last 
slanting rays. But soon hunger forces the 
hares to leave their snug snow-house, and 
they find their way to the cabbage or tur- 
nip gardens. Squirrels, which are often sup- 
posed to hibernate, retire to their nests 
only in very severe and prolonged frosts. 
A slight fall of snow only amuses them, and 
they will come down from their trees and 
scamper over the powdery heaps with im- 
mense enjoyment ; what they do not like is 
the snow on the leaves and branches, which 
falls in showers as they jump from tree to 
tree, and betrays them to their enemies, the 
country boys. During a mild winter they 
even neglect to make a central store of nuts, 
and, instead of depositing them in big hoards 
near the nest, just drop them into any con- 
venient hole they know of near. Rabbits 
also seem to enjoy the snow at first. They 



140 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



require a dry, bracing atmosphere, and sea- 
breezes and frosts suit them ; and in the 
morning after a snow-fall their tracks show- 
where they have been scratching and play- 
ing in it all night. But after a deep fall they 
are soon in danger of starving. If there is 
a tucnip-field near, they will scratch away 
the snow at the roots and soon destroy the 
crop ; if not, or if the surface of the snow 
is frozen hard, they strip the bark from the 
trees and bushes. While all the harmless ani- 
mals are obliged to spend the greater part of 
the day and night seeking food, their enemies 
profit exceedingly. The stoats and weasels 
find that they have only to prowl down the 
stream-side to catch any number of thrushes 
and soft-billed birds which crowd the banks 
where the water melts the snow, and little 
piles of feathers and a drop or two of red 
on the snow show where the fierce little 
beasts have murdered here a redwing and 
there a water wagtail, or even a water-hen. 
Water-shrews, water-rats, and otters all 
dislike frost and snow, more, perhaps, be- 
cause the streams are frozen and food is 
more difficult to obtain along the banks, 
than from any inconvenience the snow 
causes them. Otters, even if the rivers do 
not freeze, have a difficulty in finding the 
fish, which in cold weather sink into the 
deepest pools, and in case of some species 
burrow in the mud. So they go down to 
the sea-coast for the cold weather, and, 
making their homes in the coast caves or 
old wooden jetties and wharves, live on the 
fish of the estuaries. Rats also often emi- 
grate to the coast in snow-time and pick up 
a disreputable livelihood among the rubbish 
of the shore. Of all effects of weather, 
snow makes the greatest change in animal 
economy in the country- side, and weeks 
often pass before the old order is restored. 

Where Women rule. — At the opening of 
a paper on the political domination of wom- 
en in Eastern Asia, Dr. Macgowan refers 
to the condition of the aboriginal peoples 
whom the Chinese found on Yellow River on 
their arrival from Akkad. The Chinese then 
possessed the rudiments of civilization, of 
which the aboriginals were then destitute. 
That this irruption of the Chinese was ante- 
rior to the invention of cuneiform writing in 
Akkad was probable, because of their use of 



quipos or knotted cords in keeping records. 
These quipos, the author said, and not mere 
tradition, were the base of Chinese archaic 
annals, and from them the earliest form of 
Chinese written characters was evolved. 
Anterior to these quipos, judging from 
certain neighboring tribes, notched sticks 
were employed. As to the tribes which the 
Chinese found existing when they reached 
their future home, the philosopher of 
Universal Love, Motzu, enunciated views 
on the evolution of the state and family 
which are in accord with those of modern 
anthropologists. Men at first were in the 
lowest state of savagery ; there was no 
golden age, as depicted by sages and politi- 
cal philosophers, until men felt a necessity 
of a I'emedy for the anarchy that prevailed. 
Some of the practices of self-deformation 
were remarkably curious — as, for instance, 
those of drinking through the nostrils, ex- 
tracting front teeth and substituting dogs' 
teeth, head-flattening, etc. ; the most striking 
was the attempt to raise a polydactylous race, 
by destroying all children who came mto 
the world with the usual number of fingers 
and toes. The author described a number 
of instances of rule by Amazons, and ob- 
served that it is mostly among the aboriginal 
inhabitants that the chieftaincy of women 
obtains to this day. There is seldom an age 
of which one tribe or another does not 
afford examples ; the more primitive the 
condition of these tribes the slighter is 
sexual differentiation as regards public gov- 
ernmental affairs. The fables and myths in 
Greece respecting Indo-Scythian Amazons 
arose chiefly from rumors respecting tribes 
of this kind. 

The Tonrouks. — The Yourouks of Asia 
Minor, according to a paper by Mr. 11. Theo- 
dore Bent in the British Association, are a 
fair race of nomads of Tartar origin, from 
the north of Persia. They wander on regu- 
lar lines of pasturage, live in goat's-hair 
tents, occasionally showing a tendency to 
sedentary life, and build miserable hovels 
out of the ruins of the cities. The Yourouk 
has very little religion, and refuses to adopt 
the measures desired by the Turkish Gov- 
ernment. The people have sacred trees hung 
with rags, say prayers over their dead, and 
practice circumcision, but do not carry out 



P OP ULAR MIS CELLAXT. 



141 



the elaborate svstem of prayers and washing 
inculcated by the Koran. They are polyg- 
amous, and have wives, or rather slaves, each 
having her separate occupation in the family 
life — one minding camels, another the flocks, 
another the tent arrangements, etc. They 
have regular communication with the outer 
■world. Greeks from the towns lend money 
to start them in flocks by what is called an 
" immortal contract." Merchants for wool 
and cattle pay regular visits to the different 
encampments. Tinkers, the public circum- 
ciser, and other periodical visitors go among 
them spring, summer, and winter. Their 
utensils are principally of wood — wooden 
mortars, wooden gloves for reaping, wooden 
musical instruments, etc., are used. They 
are clever at getting food from mountain 
plants and herbs. An excellent substitute 
for cofiee is produced by a species of thistle ; 
and a sweet, somewhat like chocolate cream, 
is made out of the cone of a juniper tree. 
Formerly they were very clever in making 
dyes from mountain herbs, but the introduc- 
tion of aniline dyes has greatly destroyed 
their taste. 

Animals in the Desert of Gobi. — In re- 
spect to its fauna, the Desert of Gobi con- 
stitutes a zoological district by itself, with- 
out its animal world being rich in species. 
Animals may be found in considerable groups 
in certain places, as in the mountains and 
along the rivers and lakes, but they are com- 
paratively rare in the desert itself, where one 
meets hardly anj-thing but innumerable hz- 
ards gliding under his feet- Birds as well 
as quadrupeds lead a nomadic life, being 
forced to seek food at places a considerable 
distance apart. The animals of the desert 
are, however, not very particular, especially 
with respect to drink, and some of the small 
mammals probably do not drink, but satisfy 
themselves with succulent plants, or the lit- 
tle snow that falls in winter. Among the 
mammals the wild horse and camel and the 
argali sheep are worthy of mention. Preje- 
valsky discovered in Zungaria the horse which 
has been called by his name, the Kirghiz 
kantaff, the Mongol make. It lives in the 
most inhospitable regions, in groups of five 
or six individuals. While the existence of 
a wild horse in central Asia was unknown 
till the present time, it has been understood 



from the days of Marco Polo that a wild 
camel lived there ; but none of the authors 
who have mentioned it, on the authority of 
the Chinese, had ever seen it, and its exist- 
ence was doubted by Cuvicr It also was 
seen by the Russian explorer in the neigh- 
borhood of Lake Lob and the Desert of Zun- 
garia. The camel prefers sandy spots more 
or less inaccessible to man. It spreads over 
a considerably larger area than the wild 
horse ; for, while the latter is cantoned in a 
single locality of Zungaria, it inhabits the 
lower Tarrin, the country of Lake Lob, Kha- 
mi, and the Thibetan Desert of Zaidam. 
Prejevalsky calls this animal the wild Bac- 
trian camel. While the domestic camel is 
usually timid, stupid, and indolent, the Gobi 
camel is distinguished by its vigilance and 
the extraordinary development of its senses 
of sight, hearing, and smell. It can run a 
hundred kilometres without stopping a mo- 
ment, and can climb mountains with an agil- 
ity comparable to that of the chamois. Its 
voice is rarely heard, but is more like that 
of the bull than that of the domestic camel. 
The argali sheep is common in the mount- 
ainous parts of the Gobi, whence it descends 
in the spring to feed on the herbage. It ad- 
heres to the places it has once chosen, and a 
mountain spur is often the permanent abode 
of a whole flock. As it is not troubled by 
the natives, it has not yet become afraid of 
man, and passes indifferently by the Mongol 
camps on its way to water. Among the car- 
nivorous animals of the Gobi are the tiger 
and the wolf, but the bear has not been seen 
there, although it is found in the Thian Shan 
Mountains. 

Stolidness of Eskimos. — One of the most 
remarkable peculiarities of the Eskimos of 
Cape Prince of Wales, as described by Mr. 
n. r. Payne, of the Meteorological Office, 
Toronto, is their sensitiveness to ridicule. 
It is necessary to put on the gravest expres- 
sion in dealing with them, else they will 
refuse to work for or with you, and sulk. 
While, as a rule, the Eskimo looks upon the 
white man as born to do him favors, those 
the author met would sometimes offer pay- 
ment for their services. If an Eskimo was 
given an unusually valuable present, he would 
immediately turn round and ask for the 
most impossible things, as though he thought 



142 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



you were now in a good humor and it was 
the time to get all he could from you. As 
far as it could be seen, it appeared to be the 
general belief that all property, especially in 
the way of food, belonged to everybody in 
common, and therefore, if you held more 
than another, it was only because you and 
your family were physically strong enough to 
protect it. Few men would, of course, steal 
from one another when food was plentiful, 
and thereby make enemies for themselves ; 
" but when food is scarce, might is right," 
and all make note of the position of their 
neighbors' caches before the winter snow cov- 
ers them. The Eskimos are exceedingly free, 
and never consider a man their superior un- 
less he or his family are physically stronger 
or are better hunters than they. These 
superior men are treated with little defer- 
ence, though they are usually sought for in 
the settlement of difficulties, and act as pub- 
lic executioners. 

Ccn!ral Asian Plienomena. — M. Gabriel 
Bonvaldt and the Prince Henri of Orleans 
were received by the Geographical Society of 
Paris on the last day of January, on the 
occasion of their return from a journey 
through the heart of central Asia from the 
frontiers of Russian Turkistan to Tonquin. 
They claim to have discovered ranges of 
mountains, lakes, extinct volcanoes, geysers, 
and a pass at a height of 6,000 metres, 
never before explored. Yaks, antelopes, 
wild horses, and other animals were numer- 
ous below 5,000 metres, but birds had disap- 
peared, and there was no vegetation. The 
travelers and their men and animals suffered 
greatly from " mountain-sickness." The par- 
ty went by what is called " the little road " 
from Thibet to China, which they believed 
had never been explored. They found well- 
wooded valleys full of game — meeting twen- 
ty-one bears in three days — and often well 
cultivated and studded with villages ; and 
they crossed the upper waters of several of 
the rivers of eastern Asia, including, as they 
supposed, the Yang-tse-kiang. Among the 
more important features of the country was 
a hitherto unknown volcanic region. Two 
isolated volcanoes were named the Pic de 
Paris and Mont Reclus. A group of other 
volcanoes gave them reminders of the craters 
of Auvergne, appearing like tunnels with a 



small cone in the center. Lava-blocks were 
numerous, some of them being two cubic 
metres in dimension. From a distance they 
might have been taken for yaks. Hot sulphur 
springs and frozen geysers were numerous. 
Many minerals were found, including iron 
and lead. Curious gray monkeys with long 
hair and short tails were found living among 
the rocks at the foot of Mont Duplex, but 
nowhere else. 

The Fntnre of the Lobster-fishery. — 

The experiments begun a few years ago for 
improving the lobster and cod fisheries of 
the coasts of Newfoundland promise to 
be successful. Besides 15,000,000 lobsters 
hatched and placed in the waters at the 
Dildo hatchery, 432 floating incubators have 
been established, at which more than 390,- 
000 lobsters have been hatched. All these 
would have been lost except for these oper- 
ations. Lobsters arrive at maturity in five 
years ; and if the useful work now going 
on is continued year after year, it is evi- 
dent that the threatened destruction of the 
lobster can be averted, and the stock in 
the waters maintained and extended. The 
cod-hatchery has not been quite so success- 
ful, but still the results have been very sat- 
isfactory. Fishermen in the neighborhood 
of Trinity Bay are said to have recently 
observed large shoals of small cod, which 
they have not noticed before, from one to 
two inches long ; and this, it is claimed, 
would be the present size of the fry placed 
in the waters in June and July last. 



NOTES. 

A REMARKABLE metcof, fouud in Arizona, 
was described by Prof. A. E. Foote, in the 
Geological Section of the American Associa- 
tion. It was extraordinarily hard, so that a 
number of chisels were destroyed in cutting 
it, and the emery wheel used in polishing it 
was ruined. Cavities were reached in cut- 
ting it, which were found to contain dia- 
monds, small and black, and of little com- 
mercial value, but of the greatest mineral- 
ogical interest. Granules of amorphous 
carbon were found within the cavity, in 
which a minute white diamond was revealed 
by treatment with acid. The general mass 
of the stone contained three per cent of 
nickel. Diamonds were previously observed 
in a meteorite by two Russian mineralogists 
in ISST. 



NOTES. 



H3 



In the Anthropological Section of the 
American Association, Mr. William 11. Sea- 
man read a paper on the Essentials of Edu- 
cation, with a new classification of knowl- 
edge, in which he set forth the changes or 
modifications in present systems of educa- 
tion required to adapt them to modem ideas. 
Mr. Walter Hough described the custom 
of cava-drinking among the Papuans and 
Polynesians ; Major Powell exhibited his 
linguistic map of North America ; Mr. 
Thomas Wilson described the jade imple- 
ments from Mexico and Central America, 
and a collection of ancient gold ornaments 
from the United States of Colombia; Mr. 
J. Owen Dorsey discussed the onomatopous 
types and phonetic types of the Siouan lan- 
guages ; Mr. J. H. Perkins described a col- 
lection of stone pipes from Vermont; and 
Mr. M. M. Snell enforced the Importance of 
the Science of Comparative Religion. 

A CONNECTION between tariffs and the 
distribution of life in the districts which they 
effect has not hitherto been supposed, but, 
according to the late D. H. Graham, of lona, 
it was free trade brought the rooks to that 
island. Thus : " Since the ports were opened 
to the importation of foreign cattle, the rear- 
ing of black cattle has been abandoned in 
those parts of the Highlands ; consequently 
sheep have taken their place, and in lona, 
where two years ago you could hardly find a 
sheep, now you will sec scores of them ; 
and whereas two years ago not a rook came 
to the island, now the hill-pastures are black 
with them." 

A cuRiocs trial has recently taken place 
in London, in which an American named 
Pinter was prosecuted for an attempt at 
cheating by pretending to manufacture gold. 
The accused man set up in defense that he 
really possessed a secret by which he could 
increase the bulk of a mass of gold. It was 
alleged by the prosecution that he once did 
increase a piece of gold by placing a black 
powder in a crucible, and it was asserted that 
the powder must have contained gold. The 
accused asked the magistrate if he had ever 
known gold to float. Some of the powder 
being tested on water floated. This result 
was afterward said to have been produced 
by mixing lampblack with the powder and 
making it too greasy to sink quickly. The 
accused pretends to more power than the 
old alchemists, for they only assumed to 
turn other substances into gold, while he 
pretends to make it outright. 

Dr. Carl Peters relates in his book on 
Africa that he came to a place where the 
natives on one bank of a broad river com- 
municate with those on the opposite side 
by speaking with voices hardly raised, " and 
yet each side can perfectly hear what the 
other says." Dr. Peters says that Bishop 
Ilannington was killed, not because he was 
a Christian, but because he insisted on ap- 



proaching Uganda from the east. The Wa- 
ganda have an old prophecy according to 
which an expedition from the east is to 
" eat up " the land and make an end of the 
dynasty of the Wakintu. Accordingly the 
approach from the east has been strictly for- 
bidden. 

The Philadelphia Zoological Gardens 
were visited during the year ending in April 
last by 211,884 persons, or S.^IO fewer than 
visited them in the previous year ; giving an 
average of 581 daily admissions. The su- 
perintendent's report embodies the important 
remark that the attention of all institutions 
devoted to zoological pursuits is being di- 
rected more strongly each year to the rapid 
destruction of many of the more valuable 
and important animals of our native fauna, 
and to the need for immediate adoption of 
every means that can be employed to save 
them from complete extinction. In further- 
ance of this object increase in the capacity 
of zoological gardens is important, in order 
that room and facilities may be provided for 
their increase and growth, secure against 
improper crossing and inbreeding. 

Besides the active enemies which are 
continually seeking to destroy earth-worms, 
these animals have a habit of seeking de- 
struction on their own account. On any 
wet morning the shallow puddles in the 
roadways and elsewhere are often occupied 
by the dead bodies of earth-worms, or by 
individuals at their last gasp. Have these 
worms voluntarily sought a watery grave ? 
or do they represent, as Darwin thought, 
merely the sickly and dying individuals that 
have been washed out of their burrows by 
the rain ? Darwin's explanation is probably 
true, but it is also credible that the heating 
of the puddles by the sun's rays has some- 
thing to do with the great mortality of the 
annelids. Cold fresh water seems to be 
practically harmless, though salt water is 
rapidly fatal to earth-worms. 

An illustrated account of the drawings of 
aboriginal origin that are found in caves in 
different parts of the United States, prepared 
for Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia for 1889, 
has been sent us in a separate pamphlet by 
the author, Mr. T. H. Lewis. The designs 
include figures conventionalized from the 
forms of man, the hand, fishes, serpents, an 
elk, a face, birds, and combined figures. It 
is suggested by the editor of the Annual 
Cyclopedia that one of them may be intended 
to represent a family or tribal ensign. 

In a paper read before the Medical Soci- 
ety of Virginia, Dr. W. W. Parker, of Piich- 
mond, favors burial rather than cremation 
on grounds of convenience and economy ; 
natural sentiment, whereby we cling to every 
vestige of the body in which dwt4t the soul 
of the dear one; the .=entiment of affection, 
which wants to know the exact spot where 
the body lies ; and religious motives. 



144 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The reports of the United Kingdom Tem- 
perance and General Provident Institution 
are regarded by Dr. J. J. Ridge as affording 
evidence of increasing weight and conchisive- 
ness to the value of temperance as a factor 
in longevity. For the last year the actual 
claims upon the Institution for relief were, 
in the temperance section, 71 "06 per cent; 
in the general section, 100*2 per cent of the 
expected claims. A summary of five quin- 
quennial returns, or for twenty-five years, 
shows that while in the general section the 
deaths have fallen short of the expected 
number by 242, in the temperance section 
the deaths are 1,470 fewer. The fact that in 
the general section the deaths are below the 
healthy male average proves that the dif- 
ference between the two sections is not due 
to excessive drinking on the part of any 
considerable number of the general section. 
The comparison is therefore fairly between 
abstainers and moderate drinkers, and goes 
to show that the use of alcoholic liquors 
produces degeneration of the tissues and 
shortens life. 

Some habits of crocodiles are described 
by M. Voeltzkow, who observed the ani- 
mals in Vituland. Seventy-nine newly laid 
eggs were obtained from a spot six paces 
in diameter which had been cleared of 
plants, apparently by the crocodile having 
wheeled round several times. The eggs lay 
in four pits, dug in the hard, dry ground, 
about two feet obliquely down. According 
to the natives, the crocodile, having selected 
and prepared a spot, makes a pit in it that 
day, lays twenty or twenty-five eggs in it, 
and covers them with earth. The next day, 
it makes a second pit, and so on. It re- 
mains in the nest from the beginning, and 
sleeps there till the young are hatched, in 
about two months, at the setting in of the 
rainy season. 

A PAPER by Prof. William Frear, in the 
American Chemical Association, dealt with 
differences in composition in the European 
and the American chestnut. European chest- 
nuts transplanted to this country lose their 
peculiarities in some degree, but American 
chestnuts also exhibit wide differences in 
different years. 

Tre question of the relative influence 
of animal and vegetable diet on the animal 
temperature has never, according to the 
Lancet, been investigated in the human 
species on a sutficiently comprehensive scale 
to be of any value ; hvX such comparative 
facts as throw light on the matter tend to 
indicate that vegetable feeders, among the 
lower creation, have a high temperature. The 
evidence, however, does not seem to be uni- 
form to this point, and it is suggested that 
some of the apparent discrepancies may be 
due to the nature of the clothing of the skin. 
A correspondent of the Lancet and his wife 
have for about three years been living chiefly 



on fruit and vegetables, with a little milk 
and its products, eggs and cheese, and with- 
out alcohol, and find that they live as health- 
ily as before, at a lower expenditure of 
energy. If it be proved that a minimum 
of animal diet will support life efficiently 
under reduced combustion and reduced waste 
of material, " a valuable as well as curious 
fact will be added to our practical knowl- 
edge." 

The limit of a man's power to do with- 
out sleep has been the subject of curious 
experiments. Lord Brougham once tried it 
on himself, and, beginning Monday morning, 
kept awake till Tuesday night, when he fell 
asleep on seating himself while trying to 
dictate to an amanuensis. The recent com- 
petition of six men in Detroit, in trying to 
postpone sleep for seven days, is in point. 
Beginning on Monday noon, March 80th, four 
of the men failed before Thursday. A fifth 
kept up till Sunday moining, had a hard 
struggle with his sleepiness all through the 
day, and succumbed at midnight. The sixth 
completed the time and was conducted to 
the stage and introduced to the spectators, 
but was sound asleep before the introduc- 
tion was over. It is said, however, that 
these men were allowed to sleep in fifteen- 
minute naps at the end of their several 
vigils, and it is added that they suffered no 
permanent ill. 

According to Brandis's Wald in der 
Vereinigten Staatcn von Nord America, for- 
est vegetation is much richer in North Amer- 
ica than in Europe, and comprises 412 spe- 
cies — of which 176 are native to the Atlan- 
tic region, 106 to the Pacific, 10 are common 
to both, 46 to the Eocky Mountain region, 
and 74 are tropical species near the coasts 
of Florida — as against 158 species in Eu- 
rope. Six North American species of forest 
trees — the red-bud or Judas tree, persim- 
mon, hackberry, plane tree, hop hornbeam, 
and chestnut — are also indigenous in Eu- 
rope, all now growing there naturally south 
of the Alps. And since many American for- 
est genera existed in Europe in Tertiary 
times, while only five European forest gen- 
era (Cera/onia, Laburnum, Olca, St/yin(/a, 
and Laurus) are not found in America, it is 
possible that other species formerly common 
to both countries were destroyed in Europe 
north of the Alps by the Glacial epoch. 

A PARLIAMENTARY rcport shows that ether 
is now used to a considerably large extent 
in Ireland to produce intoxication. It is 
preferred to whisky because it is cheaper 
and more effective. Its effects are described 
as arousing combative instincts and produc- 
ing a high state of exhilaration accompanied 
by shouting and singing and the use of pro- 
vocative words. Even children are accus- 
tomed to it, and come to school smelling 
of it. 










DMITRI IVANOWITSH MENDELEEFF. 




THE 

POPULAR SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 



DEGEMBEE, 1891 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 

By EDWIN ATLEE BAEBEE. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE 
COLUMBUS. X. 

FOREIGN writers would have the world believe that the 
United States can boast of no ceramic history. Even our 
own chroniclers have, singularly enough, neglected a branch of 
our industrial progress which is not altogether insignificant nor 
devoid of interest. On the contrary, it can be shown that the 
fictile art is almost as ancient in this country as in Great Britain, 
and has been developed in almost parallel lines. 

The first European settlers found the American natives pro- 
ficient in the manufacture of earthen vessels, and we would not 
be justified in supposing, even in the absence of documentary 
evidence, that our ancestors were more ignorant of the useful 
arts than the Atlantic Coast Indians, who, less cultured than the 
prehistoric mound builders and the Pueblo races of the West, 
were in possession of rude, but often ornamental, utensils made 
of baked clay and sand. 

Primitive potteries for the production of earthenware on a 
small scale were operated in the provinces at an early period, but 
as only the coarser grades of ware were needed by the simple 
inhabitants of a new country, no extended accounts of them 
appear to have been written by the older historians. As early as 
the year 1649, however, there were a number of small potteries 
in Virginia which carried on a thriving business in the communi- 
ties in which they existed ; and the first Dutch settlers in New 
York brought with them a practical knowledge of potting, and 
are said to have made a ware equal in quality to that produced 
in the ancient town of Delft. Prof. Isaac Broome, of the Beaver 

TOL. XL. — 12 



146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Falls Art Tile Works, informs me tliat the remains of an old 
kiln fire-liole, saved from the ravages of time by being thoroughly 
vitrified, still exist a mile or two below South Amboy, N. J. 
This is a relic of the earlier pottery ware made on this continent, 
and was most probably established by the Dutch to make stew- 
pans and pots. 

Dr. Daniel Coxe, of London, proprietor, and afterward gov- 
ernor, of West Jersey, was undoubtedly the first to make white 
ware on this side of the Atlantic. While he did not come to 
Anierica himself, he caused a pottery to be erected at Burlington, 
N. J., previous to the year 1690, through his agent, John Tatham, 
who, with Daniel Coxe, his son, looked after his large interests 
here. It is recorded that in 1691 Dr. Coxe sold to the " West New 
Jersey Society " of London, consisting of forty-eight persons, his 
entire interests in the province, including a dwelling-house and 
"pottery-house" with all the tools, for the sum of £9,000 sterling. 
We are indebted to Mr John D. McCormick, of Trenton, N. J., 
for calling attention to the following reference to this pottery, 
supposed to have been written about 1688, in the Rawlinson 
manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England: "I 
have erected a pottery att Burlington for white and chiney 
ware, a greate quantity to ye value of £1200 have beene already 
made and vended in ye Country, neighbour Colonies and ye 
Islands of Barbadoes and Jamaica where they are in great re- 
quest. I have two houses and kills with all necessary imple- 
ments, diverse workemen, and other servants. Have expended 
thereon about £2000." * It is possible to gain some idea of the 
nature of this " white and chiney ware " by examining the state- 
ments of Dr. Plot, a contemporary, who published his Natural 
History of Staffordshire two years before, as quoted by the late 
Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, in his Ceramic Art of Great Britain : 
*' The greatest pottery they have in this country is carried on at 
Burslem, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, where for making their 
different sorts of pots they have as many different sorts of clay 
.... and are distinguish't by their colours and uses as fol- 
loweth : — 

" 1. Bottle day, of a bright Avhitish streaked yellow colour. 

"2. Hard fire day, of a duller whitish colour, and fully inter- 
sperst with a dark yellow, which they use for their hlach u-ares, 
being mixt with the 

" 3. Bed Blending day, which is of a dirty red colour, 

" 4. White day, so called it seems, though of a blewish colour, 
and used for making yellow-colour'd ware, because yellow is the 
lightest colour they make any ivare of." f 

* MS. Rawlinson, c. 128, fol. 896. f Page 97, vol. i, London, 1878. 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 147 

In 1G85 Thomas Miles made a white "stone-ware" of pipe- 
clay procured at Shelton. A few years after this, it is said that 
a potter named Astbury made " crouch " and " white stone " ware 
in the same town, on which he used a salt glaze.* It is probable 
that the "chiney" of the Burlington pottery was in reality a 
cream-colored ware or a white stone-ware somewhat similar to 
that made about the same time in England. It is not unlikely 
that the clay was brought from South Amboy, as Dr. Coxe owned 
considerable land in that vicinity. This clay has since been ex- 
tensively employed in the manufacture of fine stone- ware. 

Among the immigrants of the seventeenth century were pot- 
ters who had learned their trade in the mother country, and 
Gabriel Thomas, who came from England, states in his Descrip- 
tion of Philadelphia, published in 1697, that "great encourage- 
ments are given to tradesmen and others. . . . Potters have six- 
teen pence for an earthen pot which may be bought in England 
for four pence." 

It has heretofore been generally believed that the first bricks 
used in the erection of houses in this country were imported, but 
it is more than probable that by far the greater proportion were 
made here. Daniel Pegg and others manufactured bricks in 
Philadelphia as early as 1685, and within a few years after that 
date numerous brick-yards were in operation along the shores of 
the Delaware. Many residences throughout the country, particu- 
larly in certain sections of Pennsylvania, were built of brick 
early in the eighteenth century. The cost of importing these 
supplies from England and transporting them to the rural dis- 
tricts, far removed from tide- water, would have been prohibitory. 
That building-bricks were extensively manufactured here pre- 
vious to 1753 is indicated by a statement of Lewis Evans, of Phila- 
delphia, who wrote to a friend in England in that year : " The 
greatest vein of Clay for Bricks and Pottery begins near Trenton 
Falls, and extends a mile or two in Breadth on the Pennsylvania 
side of the River to Christine ; then it crosses the River and goes 
by Salem. The ivhole world cannot afford hetter bricks than our 
town is huilt of. Nor is the Lime which is mostly brought from 
White Marsh inferior to that wherewith the old castles in Brit- 
tain were formerly built." 

When burned, as formerly, in "clamps," the bricks formed 
their own kiln, piled on edge, a finger's breadth apart, to allow 
the heat to circulate between. Those which came in direct con- 
tact with the wood-fire in the kiln were blackened and partially 
vitrified on the exposed ends ; while the opposite extremities, 

* This was made of tobacco-pipe clay mixed with flint, and was superior to anything 
produced before. 



148 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which were farthest from the heat, were only partially burned, 
and consequently too soft for external use. The other bricks in 
the kiln which were uniformly surrounded by heat came out red. 
To utilize all the bricks produced, the black ends of the former 
were laid outward in the wall, thus combining utility with orna- 
mentation. Many of the older houses were constructed in this 
manner. An old building on the Brandywine, near West Chester, 
erected in 1724, was built of bricks made on the property from 
clay found in the vicinity. The structure was considered an 
imposing one in its day, and the walls are still standing, in an 
excellent state of preservation. The annexed drawing will con- 
vey a good idea of the manner of laying the bricks in a wall 
where the red and black varieties were used, known as the Flem- 



FiG. 1. — Flemish Bond. 

ish bond, in which the binders and stretchers alternated, each 
layer breaking joints with that above and below. 

Roofing tiles were also manufactured in this country more 
than a hundred years ago. Plain tiles were made of ordinary 
brick clay, about five eighths of an inch in thickness and six 
and a half to seven inches wide by thirteen to fourteen in length. 
They were fastened to the rafters of the roof by means of a clay 
knob or hook at the upper margin of the under side. The sur- 
faces were broadly and shallowly grooved to carry the water off. 
Such tiles are still found in the debris of an old smithy which 
was built in 1799 at Cope's Bridge on the Brandywine. Other 
examples, made in Lancaster County, Pa., one of which bears the 
date 1769, have recently come to light. 

A stone-ware factory was started in New York, at " Potter's 
Hill," near the " Fresh- water Pond," back of the City Hall, in or 
about 1735, by John Remmey, who came from Germany. The 
business passed through three generations, all of the same name, 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 



149 




and was discontinued about 1820. Later on, John Remmey, great- 
grandson of the above, moved to South Amboy, N. J., and estab- 
lished a pottery there. 

Previous to the middle of the last century, and before the 
manufacture of porcelain had been attempted in America, Eng- 
lish potters were using 

china clays procured in 'P b lilllllllllllilll!'i!llti^lillllill|lllli:i 

this country. Mr. Jewitt, 
in his Ceramic Art of 
Great Britain, informs us 
that a patent was taken 
out in 1744, by Edward 
Heylyn, of the parish of 
Bow, in the county of 
Middlesex, merchant, and 
Thomas Frye, of the par- 
ish of West Ham, in the 
county of Essex, painter, 
for the manufacture of 
china-ware ; and in the 
following year they en- 





FiG. 2. 



-Ameeican Roofing Tiles (eighteenth 
century). 



rolled their specification, in which they state that the material 
used in their invention " is an earth, the produce of the Chirokee 
nation in America, called by the natives unaker." 

In 1878 and 1879, Mr. William H. Goss, proprietor of the ex- 
tensive porcelain works at London Road, Stoke-on-Trent, con- 
tributed to the English Pottery and Glass Trades' Review a series 
of notes on Mr. Jewitt's work. In December of the former year 
he wrote : " The specification of this patent is of startling interest. 
Who would have thought, until Mr. Jewitt unfolded this docu- 
ment to modern light, that the first English china that we have 
any knowledge of was made from American china-clay ? Let our 
American cousins look out for, and treasure up lovingly, speci- 
mens of the earliest old Bow-ware after learning that." Then 
follows the specification in full as given by Mr. Jewitt, and Mr. 
Goss continues : " This ' unaker,' the produce of the Chirokee 
nation in America, is decomposed granitic rock, the earth or clay 
resulting from the washing being the decomposed felspar of that 
rock. It is curious that it should have been imported from among 
the Chirokees when we had mountains of it so near as Cornwall; 
unknown, however, to any ' whom it might concern ' until Cook- 
worthy discovered it twenty-four years later than the date of the 
above patent." William Cookworthy was acquainted with Ameri- 
can clays as early as 1745, for in a letter to a friend dated fifth 
month, thirtieth, of that year, quoted by Mr. Jewitt, he writes : 
" I had lately with me the person who hath discovered the china- 



150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

earth. He had several samples of the china-ware of their making 
with him, which were, I think, equal to the Asiatic. 'Twas 
found in the back of Virginia, where he was in quest of mines ; 
and having read Du Halde, discovered both the petunse and 
kaulin. 'Tis the latter earth, he says, is the essential thing 
towards the success of the manufacture. He is gone for a cargo 
of it, having bought the whole country of the Indians where it 
rises. They can import it for £13 per ton, and by that means 
afford their china as cheap as common stoneware. But they 
intend only to go about 30 per cent under the company." 

We must not conclude from this statement that the ware which 
Cookworthy had seen had been made in America. It is much 
more probable that the pieces were some of those produced at the 
Bow works, within the year that had just passed, from the re- 
cently discovered American materials. 

Not until 1769 was there any serious attempt made to manu- 
facture fine porcelain on this side of the water. In Watson's 
Annals of Philadelphia we find the brief statement that "the 
desire to encourage domestic fabrics gave rise, in 1771, to the 
erection of a flint-glass manufactory near Lancaster, by which 
they hoped to save £30,000 to the province. A china factory, too, 
was also erected on Prime Street, near the present Navy Yard, 
intended to make china at a saving of £15,000." In a foot-note 
the author adds : " This long row of wooden houses afterwards 
became famous as a sailors' brothel and riot-house on a large 
scale. The former frail ware proved an abortive scheme." Mr. 
Charles Henry Hart, of Philadelphia, made the interesting dis- 
covery, a few years ago, of some old advertisements in the news- 
papers of that time which threw considerable light on this early 
American enterprise, and he has kindly placed at my disposal the 
results of his investigations. The first of these announcements, 
which appeared in the latter part of the year 1769, is as follows : 

New China-ware. — Notwithstanding the various diflBculties and disadvan- 
tages, which usually attend the introduction of any important manufacture into a 
new country, the Proprietors of the China "Works, now erecting in Southwark, 
have the pleasure to acquaint the puhlic, they have proved to a certainty, that the 
clays of America are productive of as good Porcelain, as any heretofore manu- 
factured at the famous factory in Bow, near London, and imported into the colo- 
nies and plantations, which they will engage to sell upon very reasonable terms; 
and as they purpose going largely into this manufacture as soon as the works are 
completed, they request those persons who choose to favor them with commands, 
to be as early as possible, laying it down as a fixed principle, to take all orders in 
rotation, and execute the earliest first ; dealers will meet with the usual encour- 
agement, and may be assured, that no goods under Thirty Pounds' worth, will be 
sold to private persons out of the factory, at a lower advance than from their 
shops. All workmen skilled in the different branches of throwing, turning, mod- 
elling, moulding, pressing, and painting, upon application to the Proprietors, may 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 151 

depend on encouragement suitable to their abilities ; and such parents, as are in- 
clined to bind their children apprentices to either of these branches, must be early 
in their application, as only a few of the first offering will be accepted, without a 
premium ; none will be received under twelve years of age, or upwards of fifteen. 
All orders from the country, or other provinces, inclosed in letters, post paid, and 
directed to the China Peopeietors in Philadelphia, will be faithfully executed, 
and the ware warranted equal to any, in goodness and cheapness, hitherto manu- 
factured in, or imported from England, 

Subsequently the proprietors advertised for bones, offering 
twenty shillings per thousand " for any quantity of horses or 
beeves shank-bones, whole or broken, fifteen shillings for hogs, 
and ten shillings for calves and sheep (a proportionable price for 
knuckle bones) delivered at the china factory in South wark " ; 
concluding with the announcement that the capital works of the 
factory were then completed and in full operation. The pro- 
jectors of this enterprise were Gousse Bonnin, a foreigner, who 
had most probably learned his trade at Bow, and George Anthony 
Morris, of Philadelphia. In January, 1771, they applied to the 
Assembly for pecuniary assistance, in the form of a provincial 
loan, the petition being given in full by Colonel Frank M. Etting 
in his History of Independence HaU. In their address it is stated 
that the petitioners " have expended great sums in bringing from 
London Workmen of acknowledged Abilities, have established 
them here, erected spacious Buildings, Mills, Kilns, and various 
Requisites, and brought the Work, we flatter ourselves, into no 
contemptible Train of Perfection." Whether they were successful 
in securing the loan does not appear, but later in the same year 
they advertised for zaffer or zaffera, without which they could 
not make blue ware. In April, 1772, they advertised for appren- 
tices to the painting and other branches, and shortly after for 
flint glass and " fifty wagon loads of white flint stone." The at- 
tempt, however, proved a failure in a financial point, and in the 
latter year the proprietors made a public appeal for charity for 
the workmen who had been brought to a strange country and 
were left without means of support. After running about two 
years the factory was closed, the real estate was sold, and Bonnin 
returned to England. 

Little is known of the ware made here. The fact that zaffer 
was used shows that blue decorated ware was made. The Bow 
works at that period turned out little but blue and white china, 
as was the case with all of the early English factories, which em- 
ployed lapis lazuli and zaffer to color beneath the glaze. 

The terra-cotta works owned by Mr. A. H. Hews, at North 
Cambridge, Mass., were founded by his great-grandfather, 
Abraham Hews, at Weston, Mass., some time previous to 17G5. 
At first only the ordinary household utensils of earthenware were 



152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

made and sold in exchange for general mercliandise. After 
several changes in the firm name, the business descended to the 
present proprietor in 1865, and five years later was transferred to 
its present location, where it is said that more flower-pots are 
produced than at any other factory in the world. Here also are 
made the usual line of fancy garden terra-cotta and a large 
variety of art pottery for decorators. 

Toward the latter part of the last century potteries for the 
manufacture of earthen and stone ware had become numerous 
throughout the States. During the Revolutionary period con- 
siderable china was imported from India, Holland, and England 
for the use of the wealthier citizens, but pewter utensils were also 
much in vogue. The common people used earthenware, generally 
red pottery, on which the first attemi)ts at decoration were made 
with yellow slip. Dishes and flower-pots, with pie-crust edge and 
rude floral designs or dates, were common (see Fig. 17). 

Before the beginning of the present century several stone-ware 
and earthenware potteries were started in Connecticut. In 1791 
John Curtis was making a good quality of pottery in Phila- 
delphia from clay obtained where the brewery now stands at 
Tenth and Filbert Streets, and his name is found in the directory 
as late as 1811 in the same business. In the former year Andrew 
Miller also made earthenware in the same town, and continued 
the business until 1810, when it passed into the hands of Abraham 
and Andrew Miller, Jr., who carried on the business jointly for 
about six years. In 1824 Abraham Miller displayed, at the first 
annual exhibition of the Franklin Institute, " red and black 
glazed tea-pots, coffee-pots, and other articles of the same descrip- 
tion. Also a sample of platinated or lustre pitchers, with a speci- 
men of porcelain and white ware, all of which exhibited a grow- 
ing improvement in the manufacture, both in the quality and 
form of the articles." Quoting from the report of the committee : 
*^ It is but a few years since we were under the necessity of im- 
porting a considerable proportion of this description of ware for 
home consumption, but since our potters have attained the art of 
making it equal, if not superior, to the imported, and as cheap, 
they have entirely excluded the foreign ware from the American 
market." Miller continued to manufacture a fine grade of earth- 
enware, such as plates, vases, and ornamental flower-pots, until 
1858, but we can not discover that he carried the manufacture of 
porcelain beyond some successful experiments. 

John and William Norton established a pottery in Bennington, 
Vt., in 1793, for the production of red ware, which was discon- 
tinued about 1800, when the manufacture of stone -ware was 
substituted. This ware has been made continuously ever since, 
the business being now carried on by Messrs. Thatcher and Nor- 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY IXDUSTRY 



153 



ton, the latter a great-grandson of John Norton, one of the 
founders. 

A " china '' manufactory existed in Philadelphia ninetj^-one 
years ago, but very little is known regarding it. A friend has 
recently shown me a letter, dated August 14, 1800, written by a 
merchant of that city to his wife, who was then visiting in New 
Jersey, in which occurs the following interesting bit of news : 
" On account of a man being murdered at the China Factory on 
Monday evening last, a block maker by trade, a number of the 
same profession, with Ro]3e makers and Carpenters, assembled and 
on Tuesday evening began to pull down the buildings ; they con- 
tinued at their work till yesterday mid-day, — it was pulled down 
by Ropes in spite all the Squires and Constables that could be col- 
lected — say every house, only leaving the Chimneys standing." 
The writer, an ancestor of the present owner of the letter, was in 
business at that time near Fourth and Chestnut Streets, and we 
are led to infer that the factory was somewhere in that neigh- 
borhood. All white ware at that time was known as china, and 
the term was evidently applied 
to queen's-ware — certainly not 
porcelain. 

Paul Cushman had a stone- 
ware factory at Albany, N. Y., 
in the first decade of this cent- 
ury, and some examples of his 
ware are now in the possession 
of Mr. S. L. Frey, of Palatine 
Bridge, N. Y., one of which 
bears the inscription, impressed 
on the surface of the jar, and 
twice repeated around the body, 
" Paul Cushman Stone Ware 
Factory 1809 Half a Mile West 
of Albany Gaol." 

In 1813 Thomas Haig, from 
Scotland, established a pottery 
in the Northern Liberties, 
Philadelphia, where he made red and black ware. At the Frank- 
lin Institute exhibition in 1825, articles made at this pottery were 
considered, " in the opinion of the judges, better than goods of 
the same kind brought from England." The pottery is still op- 
erated by Thomas Haig, a son of the founder, wdio is now in his 
eightieth year. 

Queen's-ware was j^robably first made in the United States 
about 1800. Eight years later the Columbian pottery, on South 
Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth, in Philadelphia, was 

VOL. XL. — 13 




Fio. 3. — Albany Stone-ware. (Collection of 
Mr. S. L. Frey. ) Made about 1809. 



154 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 






k§ 



- N 



turning out white ware which was daimed to be ecjual in quality 
and workmanship to the best made in Staffordshire. Two years 
later Captain John Mullowney, brick-maker, was ojDerating the 
Washington pottery on Market Street, west of Seventeenth ; and 
in the files of the Aurora or General Advertiser, published in 
Philadelphia in 1810, this factory advertised red, yellow, and 
black coffee-pots, tea-pots, pitchers, etc, and called special atten- 
tion to the decorating ])ranch, artists being employed who were 
prepared to put any device, cipher, or pattern on china or other 
ware at the shortest notice. 

Daniel Freytag was making in Philadelphia, in 1811, a finer 
quality of china-ware than had yet been produced in the United 

States. It was made of various colors, 

,:r^~' ' and was embellished with gold and 

_^i^- ^ silver; and in 1817 David G. Seixas 

fV' " ' > manufactured an imitation of the 

Liverpool white crockery from native 
American clays with great success, 
continuing the business until 1822. 

Porcelain was made in New York 
city early in this century, probably 
by Dr. Mead. How long this factory 
was in operation is not known, but it 
is believed that a fine grade of ware 
^was made there from American ma- 
terials. A vase over a foot in height, 
of excellent body and exceedingly 
white glaze, is preserved in the 
Franklin Institute. This was " fin- 
ished in New York in 1810," and is 
supposed to have been made at that 
factory. It is entirely devoid of gild- 
ing or coloring, and is made in two 
parts, held together by a screw and 
nut, after the French manner. 
In 1823 Henry Remmey, a brother of John Remmey, the last 
proprietor of the New York stone-ware factor}^, wdiich was closed 
about 1820, came to Philadelphia and embarked in the same busi- 
ness, which is now continued by a great-grandson, Mr. Richard 
C. Remmey, who now owns the largest stone-ware works in the 
United States. Here are manufactured fire-bricks of superior 
quality, and chemical stone and porcelain ware of every descrij^- 
tion, some of the vessels having a capacity of two hundred to five 
hundred gallons. In addition to these specialties, the factory pro- 
duces a large line of household utensils, and the business has grown 
to such proportions that the ten large kilns are taxed to the utmost. 




Fig. 4. — Pokcelain Vase. 
York, 1810. 



New 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 



155 



No considerable progress was made in the manufacture of por- 
celain in the United States until William Ellis Tucker, of Phila- 
delphia, began his experiments. From 181G to 1819 his father, 
Benjamin Tucker, had a china shop on the south side of Market 
Street, at No. o24, then between Ninth and Tenth Streets, near 




Fig. 5.— Tucker & Hemphill's China Factory. Philadelphia, 1832-'38. (From a vase 
owned by Mrs. Thomas Tucker.) 

where the new post-office building now stands. During this 
period Mr. Tucker built a small decorating kiln in the rear of his 
store for the use of his son, who employed much of his time in 
painting the imported white china and firing it in the kiln. These 
attempts were at first only partially successful. He then com- 
menced experimenting with different clays, which he procured in 
the vicinity of the city, to discover the .process for manufacturing 
the ware itself. These experiments resulted in the production of 
a fair quality of opaque queen's- ware. He then directed his atten- 
tion to kaolin and feldspar, and finally succeeded in discovering 
the proper proportions of these ingredients, in combination with 
bone-dust and flint, necessary for the production of an excellent 
grade of natural or hard porcelain. Having secured a translucent 



156 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



body of great hardness, density, and toughness, capable of with- 
standing extreme changes of temperature, he first seriously began 
the manufacture of the ware for the market in the year 1S25. The 
old water-works, at the northwest corner of Schuylkill-Second 
(Twenty-first) and Chestnut Streets, were obtained from the city, 
where the necessary glazing and enameling kilns, mills, etc., were 
erected. His first attempts were fraught with many difliculties. 
While the body and glaze of the earlier productions were good^ 
the workmanship and decoration were inferior. The decoration 
consisted generally of landscapes painted roughly in sepia or 
brown. 

In 1828 Thomas Hulme was admitted to the business, but re- 
tired in about one year. During this period great improvement 
was made in decoration, the best productions being painted with 
floral designs in natural colors. A number of pitchers made dur- 
ing that period are marked " Tucker & Hulme, China Manufact- 
urers, Philadelphia, 1838," the only pieces from this factory known 
to have been signed. 





Fig. 6. 



-Tucker Creamer. 

ration. 



Sepia deco- 



FiG. 7.— Hemphill Vase. (Collection of Hon. 
James T. Mitchell.) 



William Ellis Tucker died in August, 1832, but previous to this 
Judge Joseph Hemphill had put some money in the enterprise, 
and continued to carry on the business after his partner's death. 

Messrs. Tucker & Hemphill purchased the property at the 
southwest corner of Schuylkill - Sixth (now Seventeenth) and 
Chestnut Streets, where they erected store-houses and three 
kilns, and greatly increased the producing capacity of the fac- 
tory. In 1832 they appealed to Congress for the passage of a 
tariff law which would afford them protection from foreign com- 
petition. 

Mr. Thomas Tucker superintended the business after the de- 
cease of his brother, which was carried on in the name of Judge 
Hemphill for about three years, but in 1835 the latter entered 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 157 



into negotiations with a company of Eastern gentlemen, and sold 
the factory to them shortly after. In 1837 the factory was leased 
to Thomas Tucker, who continued the manufacture of fine porce- 
lain for about one year, when it was permanently closed. Under 
the direction of Judge Hemphill, who had become interested in 
the subject while abroad, great improvements were made in the 
body of the ware as well as in the glazing and ornamentation. 
French porcelain was selected as the model after which the 
Tucker & Hemphill china was patterned, and skilled artists 
were brought from France to decorate the ware. Pitchers and 
vases were^ sometimes decorated with painted portraits of Revo- 
lutionary heroes ; two of the former, with likenesses of Washing- 
ton and Wayne, are still preserved. The later productions of this 
factory were greatly superior to anything produced in the United 
States before. They were characterized by smoothness of paste, 
beauty of coloring, and rich- 
ness of gilding — indeed, it is 
said that the amount of gold 
consumed in the decoration of 
this ware was so great as to 
cause a considerable pecuniary 
loss to Judge Hemphill. It is a 
matter of regret that the limit 
of this article is not suSiciently 
elastic to permit a more ex- 
tended review of this interest- 
ing factory and description of 
some of its many beautiful pro- 
ductions which have been re- 
cently brought to light. 

Isaac Spiegel, one of Tucker 
& Hemphill's workmen, started 
in business for himself in Ken- 
sington, Philadeli)hia, about 
1837. He made Rockingham 
black and red ware of excellent 
quality, including mantel orna- 
ments, such as figures of dogs 
and lions. Some of the ma- 
chinery was moved to his pot- 
tery from the Hemphill factory 
on its closing, and he secured 





Fig. 8.— Hemphill Vase (with painting of a 
shipwreck). 



many of the molds which had 
been used for making ornamental porcelain pieces. In 1855 Mr. 
Spiegel retired from active business, and was succeeded by his 
son Isaac, who carried on the works until 1870. In 1880, John 
Spiegel, a brother of the latter, resumed the business, and is at 



158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the present time engaged in burning magnesia for the drug 
trade. 

About the time that Tucker first placed his new ware on the 
market a factory for the production of a somewhat similar com- 
modity was erected at Jersey City, presumably by Frenchmen. 
Later, under the title of the American Pottery Company, cream- 
colored, white, Parian, and porcelain wares were made here. In 
1843 an exhibit of embossed tea-ware, jugs, and spittoons was 
made by this company at the Franklin Institute, the specimens 
of Parian with blue ground and raised ornamentation in white 
being especially praiseworthy. After several changes in proprie- 
torship the business passed into the hands of Messrs. Rouse & 
Turner in 1870, and the name of the factory was altered to the 
Jersey City Pottery. Mr. John Owen Rouse came from the Royal 
Derby Works about forty years ago. Mr. Turner died in 1884, 
leaving the former sole proprietor. The plant at present consists 
of four kilns, one of which has an interior diameter of nineteen 
and a half feet, and numerous large buildings for manufacturing 
and storage purposes. Here are now made large quantities of 
white granite ware in table and toilet services and decorative de- 
signs, a specialty of the factory being porous cups for telegraphic 
uses, of which fully five thousand are produced every week. 

After the year 1840 the number of potteries in the United 
States multiplied rapidly. About that time Samuel Sturgis was 
making, in Lancaster County, Pa., in addition to earthen and stone 
ware, clay tobacco-pipe bowls, which he molded after the French 
designs in the form of human heads. These were glazed in yel- 
low, green, and brown, and supplied largely to the tobacconists of 
eastern Pennsylvania. In 1843 there were one hundred and eighty- 
two potteries in that State alone, few of them, however, of any 
importance, whose aggregate productions amounted to $158,000. 
In 1800 there were only about eighty potteries in the same State, 
a falling ofi" of more than half. This diminution in number 
does not by any means indicate a decadence of this industry, 
because the establishments of half a century ago were mostly 
scattered through the rural districts and were insignificant af- 
fairs, producing only the coarser and cheaper grades of crockery. 
Such potteries have almost entirely disappeared, while those of 
to-day manufacture, for the most part, the finer qualities of 
earthen, white granite, and porcelain wares. At the present time 
there are over five hundred potteries in the United States, not in- 
cluding architectural terra-cotta and tile works, of which some 
twenty-five are in Trenton, K J., and about the same number in 
East Liverpool, Ohio. 

An exhibit of Rockingham was made at the Franklin Insti- 
tute in 1846 by Bennett & Brother, of Pittsburg, which was 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 159 




Fig. 9.— Rockingham Monument. Made at Bennington, Vt., 1851. 



i6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

pronounced by the judges superior to the English ware. A " tor- 
toise-shell " pitcher, eight-sided, with human head molded in re- 
lief under the mouth, which is still in the cabinet of the Institute 
was awarded a silver medal. ' 

Messrs. Alanson Potter Lyman and Christopher Weber Fen- 
ton embarked in the manufacture of yellow and Rockingham 
ware m Bennington, Vt., about 1847. Three years later they 
commenced making white ware. Their workshop was known as 
the United States Pottery. In 1S51, or the year following, Mr 
Fenton had a large monumental piece of Rockingham made, ten 
feet m height, in which was placed a life-sized Parian bust of 
himself surrounded by eight glazed columns, the work being sur- 
mounted by figures of a woman and child in Parian. This was 
modeled by Daniel Greatbach, formerly connected with the Jer- 
sey City Pottery. The base of the monument is made of several 
varieties of clay mixed together, having the appearance of un- 
polished marble. It stands at present on the porch of Mr. Fen- 
ton's former residence in Bennington, having been first placed on 
exhibition at the New York Crystal Palace in 1853, with other 
productions of this factory, including a group of "patent flint 
enameled ware," which was probably analogous to the so-called 
majolica of the present day. Common china, white granite, and 
Parian were made here extensively. A limited amount of' soft 
porcelain was produced also, but chiefly in small ornamental fig- 
ures and statuettes. These, like the Parian pieces, were often 
copied from old English works. A graceful pitcher of the latter 
ware, in the collection of the writer, is molded with white figures 
in relief on a dark-blue " pitted " ground, and is almost an exact, 
though enlarged, reproduction of a sirup-jug from the Dale Hall 
Works, England. The jasper- ware of Josiah Wedgwood was also 
imitated in Parian. The art of the American potter had not yet 
reached that point where competition and public demand stimu- 
lated originality in body, design, or decoration. Fig. 10 shows a 
group of pieces made at the Bennington factory between 1850 
and 1855. In the center may be seen a large Rockingham figure, 
beneath which are two small mantel ornaments of artificial por- 
celain. The central pitcher above the dog and the two small 
pitchers to the right are white granite, decorated in gold. The 
three remaining pitchers and the small vase are Parian, with 
ornamentation in relief. 

The United States Pottery was closed in 1857, and two years 
later Mr. Fenton, with Mr. Decius W. Clark, his former superin- 
tendent, went to Peoria, 111., and there established a manufactory 
of white and granite wares. After a period of three years this 
experiment proved a financial failure, and the factory passed into 
other hands. At present it is being successfully operated by the 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 161 

Peoria Pottery Company, wliicli makes a fine grade of similar 
goods. 

Messrs. Haiigliwout, Dailey & Co. had a decorating establish- 
ment in New York city in 1853, and employed a hundred hands 
in painting French china for the American market. Mr. James 
Carr, who came to this country in 1844, worked for the American 
Pottery Company of Jersey City until 1853, when he went to South 
Amboy, and there established a pottery for the manufacture of 




t'ui. li). — Wakk mauk uy Lyman & Fextox. 

yellow and Rockingham wares. In October, 1855, he started a 
pottery in New York, under the firm name of Morrison & Carr, 
where table-services in opaque china, white granite, and majolica 
were made. He directed his efforts toward the attainment of 
higher standards, and his experiments resulted in the production 
of some artistic pieces of porcelain and faience, excellent both in 
design and execution ; but as there was little demand for this 
class of goods at that time, these attempts were discontinued. In 
1888, owing to the close competition of out-of-town manufactur- 
ers, the New York pottery was closed and the factory torn down. 
Mr. Carr has recently built, on the premises in West Thirteenth 
Street, several large stores, the rentals from which, he claims, 
yield him better returns than potting. 

The Philadelphia City Pottery of Mr. J. E. Jeffords, who came 
from the New York establishment of Messrs. Morrison & Carr 
about 18G0, includes two distinct factories, one of which turns out 
a high grade of Rockingham, yellow, and white-lined blue ware, 
while the adjoining workshop produces an excellent variety of 
white and decorated earthenware for toilet and table use. In 
Rockingham some of the old English designs are reproduced, 
such as the "Toby " ale-jug and the cow creamer. A few years 
ago a more elaborate ornamentation was attempted in the paint- 



i62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

ing of bird and floral subjects above the glaze, but this was soon 
discontinued owing to the expense. Printing from copper plates 
is extensively practiced here at the present time, and competent 
artists are employed to apply the gold in pleasing devices to the 
rich dark glazes which characterize the better grades of ware 
produced. Mr. Jeffords has fully equipped his factories with the 
most approved modern appliances, and is one of the most pro- 
gressive and successful of our modern potters. 

Mr. Alexander William Robertson started a small pottery in 
Chelsea, Mass., m the year 1866, for the manufacture of brown 
ware such as was made in Great Britain, and of lava-ware simi- 
lar to that of Germany. Two years afterward, Mr. Hugh Corn- 
wall Robertson, a younger brother, was admitted to partnership 
m the business, the firm name being A. W. & H. C. Robertson 
when the production of brown ware was discontinued and the 
manufacture of plain and fancy flower-pots was substituted. In 
the following year porous cones or filters of a high grade were 
made for chemical purposes. In 1872 James Robertson, a practi- 
cal potter of wide and varied experience in Scotland, England 
New Jersey, and New York, and recently from the East Boston 
pottery, joined his sons, the firm name being changed to James 
Robertson & Sons, when work of a more pretentious character 
was undertaken. A red bisque ware, in imitation of the antique 
Grecian terra-cottas and Pompeiian bronzes, was first produced 
in 1875. The factory adopted the name of the Chelsea Keramic 
Art Works. The red ware was characterized by a remarkably 
fine texture and smooth finish, the clay being peculiarly adapted 
to the faithful reproduction of the graceful classic forms, the fine 
polished grain offering an excellent surface for the most minute 
carving, showing the engraved lines as perfectly as on wood. In 
1876 a pleasing effect was obtained by polishing the red ware with 
boiled linseed oil. On a few spherical vases thus treated, Mr. F. 
X. Dengler, the talented young sculptor who afterward died at 
the age of twenty-five, modeled from life, in high relief, choosing 
child and bird forms. The firm also received the benefit of ad- 
vice from a number of capable artists, including, John G. Low, G. 
W. Fenitz, and others. For lack of public support this branch 
of the art was abandoned. The next venture was the Chelsea 
faience, introduced in 1877, which is characterized by a beautiful 
soft glaze. This ware soon attracted the attention of connoisseurs, 
and carried the firm to the front rank of American potters. The 
decoration consists of floral designs, either made separately by 
hand and sprigged on, or carved in relief from clay laid directly 
on the surface while moist. Some beautiful effects were produced 
by hammering the surface of the faience before burning, and aft- 
erward carving sprays of flowers in relief in clay applied to the 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 



163 



surface. This modeling was executed by Miss Josephine Day, a 
sister-in-law and pupil of Mr. H. C. Robertson, and by Mr. Rob- 
ertson himself. Being done by hand from original designs, no 
duplicates were produced. On some of the hammered vases the 
designs were cut into the surface and filled in with white clay, 
forming a mosaic, the bases of the vessels being colored buff, 
which offered a pleasing contrast through a semi-transparent 




Fm. 11. ^Inlaid, Hammered and Embossed 1'ottert. (Clielsea Keramic Art Works.) 

glaze. About the same time a variety of faience known as the 
Bourg-la-Reine of Chelsea was produced, after the discovery of 
the process of painting on the surface of the vessel with colored 
clays and covering with a transparent glaze, on the principle of 
the Limoges faience. 

Mr. James Robertson died in 1880, after a long and useful life, 
at the ripe age of seventy years. The firm continued under the 
same name, and in 1884 A. W. Robertson retired from the busi- 
ness. In that year the remaining partner, Mr. Hugh C. Robertson, 
discovered a stone-ware somewhat resembling Parian in appear- 
ance, possessing a hard, vitrified body, which he worked into a 
variety of artistic forms. 

From this time Mr. Robertson directed his efforts toward solv- 
ing the secret of the famous Chinese Sang de hcsAif, and after 
four years of sacrifice and patient investigaticm his labors were 
crowned with success. This discovery is the exact treatment 
necessary to produ(^e the true ox-blood red, which with the Chi- 
nese was the result of accident rather than an established art. 
The body is the true stone, perfectly water-proof, and capable of 
resisting as high a degree of heat as any known ware. The forms 
of the vases are simple, with curving outlines, and entirely devoid 
of ornamentation which would tend to impair the beauty of 
color, which is that of fresh arterial blood, possessing a golden 



164 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lustre, whicli in the liglit glistens with all the gorgeous hues of 
a sunset sky. In experimenting to obtain the blood- red of the 
Sang de Imuf, varieties were produced of a deep sea-green, 
"peach-blow," apple-green, mustard-yellow, greenish blue, ma- 
roon, and rich purple. Specimens of this ware have been secured 
by a number of prominent collectors throughout the United 
States, but the demand for works of this character being limited, 
the remaining examples which were produced still rest on the 
dusty shelves in the Chelsea workshop. The history of the dis- 
covery of this process is a repetition of the old story of genius 




Fig. 12.— Plaque representing Spring. (Designed by H. C. Eobertson, 1879.) 



After twenty-four years of devotion to art, Mr. Robertson finds 
himself unable to prosecute the work further, and for over two 
years the fires have not been lighted in his kilns. It is difficult 
to explain the apparent indifference of Americans to works of 
artistic merit which emanate from their countrvmen.* 



* Since writing the above, word comes to us that a company has been incorporated 
under the name Chelsea Pot.oiv V. S., and date July 17, 1891, of which Mr. Hugh C. Rob- 
ertson will be the manager. 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY 



165 



Thus far we have attempted to review, in the briefest manner, 
some of the earlier potteries in the United States. The space at 
command has only permitted the bare statement of facts relating 
to the condition of the ceramic industry down to the period just 
preceding the Centennial Exposition of 187G. It has not been 
possible to refer to many establishments whose record would be 
necessary to a full history of the development of this art. Let 
us now see what progress has been made in the methods em- 
ployed in this country down to the present time. 

The potter's wheel used well into the present century was a 
clumsy and primitive affair. It consisted of a perpendicular 
beam, generally about two feet in height, surmounted by a circu- 
lar disk a foot or so in diameter. At the lower extremity of the 
beam or axis was a horizontal wooden wheel, four feet across, 
possessing four inclined iron spokes which extended from the 
beam to the rim of the wheel, which the workman pushed around 
with his feet. He sat on a framework behind the wheel, while in 
front were piled the lumps of clay to be manipulated. 




Fig. 13. — Old-fashioned "Throwing Wheel." 



A great advance was made in potters' machinery a few years 
later, or in the first quarter of the present century, when the 
" throwing wheel " was introduced into the more prominent fac- 
tories. This was composed of a plate or disk which was revolved 
by means of a belt which passed around two spindles and ex- 
tended to a large vertical wheel operated by a crank in the hands 
of a second person. This upright wheel usually measured four, 
five, or more feet in diameter, dej)ending on the rate of velocity 
desired ; the larger the wheel, the greater the speed to be attained. 



i66 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The revolving plate at which the potter sat was often ten or more 
feet from the crank-wheel, and the apparatus was therefore 
cumbersome, besides requiring the services of an extra hand. 
This contrivance was a great improvement over the old method of 
turning, as it secured uniformity of motion and enabled the 
operator to devote his entire attention to his work. This style of 
wheel, in time, was superseded by the more simple form which is 
worked by a treadle with the left foot of the operator, and is still 
used in many of the smaller potteries. The subjoined engraving 




Fig. 14.—" Kick Wheel (now used). 



represents one of these "kick" wheels, as made at the present 
time by Messrs. Taplin, Rice & Co., of Akron, Ohio. This firm 
also manufactures a power- wheel such as is now operated in the 
larger factories, which is so constructed that the velocity can be 
regulated by a foot-lever. 

The old methods of grinding and mixing clays by hand have 
given place to improved mechanical processes. In olden times it 
was customary for one or two men to manipulate the clay, which 
was placed in a square tank sunk in the floor, with a wooden 
shovel or paddle. Now this work is performed much more effect- 
ively and rapidly by special machinery known as "blungers," 
"pug" and "grog" mills, etc. Some of the improved grinding 
mills have a capacity of twenty-five tons or more per day, and the 
agitating and mixing machines perform the work of many men. 

I have in my possession a drawing of the old-fashioned slip 
kiln used by Messrs. Tucker & Hemphill in 1832. This con- 
sisted of a long horizontal brick fire-box, at one end of which 
were built three partitions or pans, one after the other. In these 
the slip was poured, and flues passing around the sides furnished 
the heat necessary to dry the clay to the proper consistency. 
This drying process was necessarily a slow one. The contents of 
the pan nearest the fire-box would be ready for removal first, and 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 167 

the others in succession. A recent invention has simplified this 
process very materially. This device is a clay press consisting of 
a series of sacks in which the slip is placed. The moisture is 
forced through the bags by strong pressure, and the clay is ready 
for use Mr. A. J. Boyce, of East Liverpool, Ohio, has recently 
perfected an improved hydrostatic press, which is being intro- 
duced into many of the more progressive factories throughout 
the country. The illustration will convey a clear idea of the clay 




Fig. 15.— The Boyce Clat Press, with twenty-fouk Cfiambkrs. 

press used in reducing the slip to a workable mass. In each 
chamber is placed a sack made of ten-ounce Woodberry duck, 
which, if of the proper quality, will last some time. The moist- 
ure is pressed through the fabric, and the clay, on removal, is 
ready for manipulation. 

"Jiggers" and " jollies " now greatly facilitate the manutact- 
ure of circular and swelled vessels, such as jars, jugs, crocks, 
cuspidors, and umbrella jars. A " jigger " is a machine which 
carries a revolving mold, in which the clay is shaped by a former, 
which is brought down into the mold and held in place by means 
of a lever We give here an illustration of one of the jiggers 
made by Mr. Peter Wilkes, of Trenton, N. J. A is the jigger- 
head or receptacle in which the mold is placed, which is screwed 
fast to the revolving spindle. 5 is a stationary iron column on 
which the frame or sleeve C slides up or down. D is an iron tork 



i68 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



which i)re vents the frame C from turning. E is the former or 
profile which shapes the interior of the vesseh The lever or pull- 
down, above the horizontal bar F, gives a transverse motion, 
and forces the former toward the side of the mold. 1 and 2 are 
adjustable collars which are fastened by screws ; 1 regulates the 

distance to wliich the col- 
lar or frame C must be 
lowered to give the prop- 
er thickness to the bot- 
tom of the vessel, while 
2 acts as a stop to pre- 
vent the frame from be- 
ing thrown up too high. 

A " jolly " is a some- 
what similar contrivance, 
consisting of a table on 
which is a revolving 
mold with a single or 
double pull-down. 

The construction of 
pottery kilns has changed 
but little in the past fifty 
years. The glaze kiln of 
the Tucker & Hemphill 
factory was made on the 
French plan. It possessed 
six fire - boxes and the 
same numT)er of flues, 
eight inches in width, 
which passed through 
solid walls and met in 
the center. Besides the 
central space there were 
two circular passages, 
one extending around the 
circumference of the kiln 
and another midway be- 
tween this and the cen- 
ter. Modern kilns are 
generally made about 
fifteen to sixteen and a 
half feet diameter inside, and measure about the same in height 
to the crown, with usually ten fire-boxes. In some of the 
Western kilns slight modifications have been made in the lat- 
ter for the employment of natural gas, which is used instead 
of coal. 




Fig. 16.—" Jigger." 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 



169 



Until quite recently each establishment made its own saggers 
or fire-clay" boxes in which the ware is burned, but now they are 
made in large numbers by machinery and supplied to the 
trade by the Trenton Terra-Cotta Company at a very low price. 
In the manufacture of earthenware formerly, " cockspurs " were 
used to separate the pieces when placed in the kiln. These were 
small four-pointed objects of clay formed somewhat like the old- 
fashioned caltrop, three of the arms resting on the lower vessel 
while the upper supported another above. Three sjjurs being 
used, it is evident that the upper surface of the lower piece would 
show nine marks after coming out of the kiln, where the points 
tore away the glaze, as in old Delft plates. The bottom of the 
upper vessel would show three. " Cockspurs " and " cones " were 
superseded by "pins" and by "triangles" and "stilts," having 
three horizontal arms, equidistant, with double yjoints projecting 
upward and downward. These were for some time made by hand 
at the factories where they were to be used, but recently they 
have been made in assorted sizes by machinery, and sold to pot- 
ters more cheaply than they could be made by hand. 

Labor-saving machines have greatly simplified the work of 
the potter. Steam pow- 
er has to a great extent 
taken the place of hand 
and foot power in run- 
ning wheels, lathes, 
" jiggers," and " jollies." 
Steam grinding - mills, 
"blungers," sifters, and 
clay-presses now grind, 
sift, mix, dry, and pre- 
pare the clay for the 
workman. There are 
many other problems to 
be solved, however, in 
order to still further 
cheapen the production 
of utilitarian articles. 
The committee appoint- 
ed by the United States 
Potters' Association to investigate the subject of potters' ma- 
chinery, in their report presented at the convention held in 1890, 
used the following language : " We think we can see in the dis- 
tance a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, which we trust will 
speedily increase to such proportions that the industry will feel 
the outpouring of benefits such as have not entered into the 
imagination of the potter's mind. We require only to get thf 

VOL. XL. — 14 




Fio. IT. — Slip-decorated Pie Dish. Allentown, 
Pa., 1826. 



170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

American mechanical mind turned in tlie direction of our need, 
and we will not fear for the future of our business. 

" We would urge upon the manufacturing potters that more 
thought be given to this subject, and that they come in closer 
touch with the best machinists of our several centers. Let the 
practical machinist know our need. Much can be done ; much 
must be done if we expect to hold our own. And what is our 
own ? The American market for American manufacturers." 

Note. — Several of the illustrations which appear in this paper are from pen-and-ink 
drawings made from the original porcelains by Mr. Vernon Ilowe Bailey, a student at the 
Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, Philadelphia. 

[To be continued.'] 



PROGRESS AND PERFECTIBILITY IN THE LOWER 

ANIMALS. 

By Peof. E. p. EVANS. 

WHAT we call institutions are only organized and hereditary 
instincts, and are common to man and the lower animals. 
The original social character of animals, which forms the basis of 
their institutions, is also the quality that renders them capable of 
domestication. Man simply takes advantage of this quality, and 
turns it to his own account by bringing the animal into his 
own domestic circle and service and making it a member of his 
household. 

In birds, for example, the conjugal instinct is remarkably 
strong, or, as we would say in speaking of human relations, the 
institution of marriage, either in its monogamous or polygamous 
form, is firmly established and highly developed, and forms the 
foundation of a well-ordered domestic and social life. 

The paternal fox trains his young with as much care and con- 
scientiousness as any human father ; the beaver constructs his 
habitation with the foresight of a military engineer and the skill 
of an experienced architect; the bee lives in well-regulated 
communities, forms states, and founds colonies ; and the ant not 
only cultivates the soil, plants crops, gathers in the fruits of his 
labor and stores them for future use, and keeps other insects as 
domestic cattle, but shares also the vicious propensities and domi- 
neering disposition of man, waging war on creatures of his own 
species and holding his prisoners as slaves. 

These habits or customs have the same origin and character in 
the lower animals as in man, being in both cases products of evo- 
lution and undergoing modifications from generation to genera- 
tion. Animal, not less than human, societies are governed by 



PROGRESS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 



171 



their laws and traditions, and preserve a sort of historical con- 
tinuity by which past and present are bound together in a certain 
orderly sequence. Bee-hives which suffer from over-population 
rear a queen and send forth with her a swarm of emigrants to 
colonize, and the relations of the mother-hive to her colonies are 
known to be much closer and more cordial than those w^hich she 
sustains to apian communities with w^hich she has no genetic con- 
nection. Here the ties of kinship are as strong and clearly recog- 
nized as they are between consanguineous tribes of men. 

Again, the statement that animal habits are fixed, and human 
customs variable and improvable, is true only to a very limited 
extent. Closer observation has shown the latter to be more stable 
and the former more mutable than is generally imagined, espe- 
cially if we compare the highest orders of animals with the low- 
est human tribes. In primitive society and among savage races 
customs remain the same for countless generations, and seem to 
be quite as persistent and incapable of change as animal instincts. 

Not only do animals, often in the course of a comparatively 
short period, undergo marvelous transformations both of mind 
and body, through the force of natural selection or by careful in- 
terbreeding, but they are also led by circumstances and through 
forethought to make conscious and intentional changes in their 
manner of life. 

It is curious to note the variety of characteristics distinguish- 
ing members of the same family or genus. Thus, the European 
cuckoo lays her eggs in the nests of other birds, and leads the life 
of a shiftless parasite and shameless polyandrous vagabond. The 
American cuckoo, on the contrary, has not yet learned to shirk 
her maternal duties and domestic responsibilities, but, like an hon- 
est and thrifty housewife and conscientious mother, hatches her 
own eggs and rears her own young. The South African and Aus- 
tralasian representatives of the cuculincB follow, in this respect, the 
habits of the European bird. There is also a species of moloihrus, 
which sometimes begins but seldom finishes a nest, like the hy- 
pothetical man in the parable, who would fain build without first 
sitting down to count the cost. She is seized occasionally with a 
spasm of virtuous endeavor in this direction, but soon yields to 
the greater comfort and convenience of imposing upon others the 
burden of brooding and nurturing her offspring. Evidently she 
turns the matter over in her mind, and, like Rousseau, reasons 
herself into the belief that it is better not to assume any family 
cares, but to cast. her children as foundlings upon the bosom of 
public charity. " There are the goldfinches, thrushes, fly-catchers, 
cardinal grossbeaks, and other fussy motherly fowl," she seems to 
say, " willing enough to undertake the charge ; why not gratify 
their low philoprogenitive passion, and thus enable me to devote 



172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

myself to more congenial pursuits ! " Still another kind of molo- 
thrus leads the life of a squatter, never building a nest of her 
own, but brooding in the abandoned nest of some other bird. 

Many birds have, within the memory of man, made consid- 
erable advances in architectural skill, and adoj^ted new and im- 
proved methods of constructing their nests. This progress has 
been observed especially in California since the settlement of that 
country, and in all cases the young profit from the knowledge ac- 
quired by their parents, and the improvement becomes a perma- 
nent possession of the race. In places where they are particularly 
exposed to the attacks of pugnacious sparrows, they have been 
known to close the opening in front of their nests and make the 
entrance on the back near the wall. In some instances this purely 
precautionary and defensive change of structure, after its efficiency 
had been tested in a single nest, has been adopted by the swallows 
of an entire district. Orioles, according to the observations of Dr. 
Abbott, finding that the bough from which they have suspended 
their nest is too slight to sustain the weight of the full brood, at- 
tach it by a long string to the branch above, fastening it securely 
"by a number of turns and a knot." It would be difficult to say 
in what respect the mental process leading to the adoption of such 
a mechanical contrivance differs from that which causes an archi- 
tect to buttress a weak wall. 

The Baltimore oriole also adapts the texture and structure of 
its nest to the exigencies of climate. In the Southern States it 
selects a site on the north side of a tree, and builds of Spanish 
moss loosely put together and without lining, so as to permit a 
free circulation of air. Farther north it seeks a sunny exposure, 
builds more compactly, and uses some soft material for lining. 
The impulse to build is instinctive, but conscious intelligence is 
exercised in modifying the methods of building to suit circum- 
stances. 

The same bird now uses yarn and worsted instead of vegetable 
fiber for its nest, but it always selects for this purpose the least 
conspicuous colors, such as gray and drab ; and yet the bird's gor- 
geous plumage is proof, according to the theory of sexual attrac- 
tion, that bright colors are pleasing to it. -Here we have an ex- 
ample of eesthetic pleasure being subordinated to considerations 
of safety; the prudent oriole, notwithstanding its fondness for 
resplendent hues, choosing those colors which render its nest less 
visible and more difficult to discover, and rejecting those which, 
in other respects, are more gratifying to its fancy. 

The tailor-bird of East India used to stitch the leaves of its 
nest together with fine grass, horse-hair, and threads, which it 
twisted out of wool ; since the introduction of British manufact- 
ures it uses sewing-thread and the filaments of textile fabrics, 



PROGRESS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 173 

except in remote regions, where the ingenious bird still works on 
in the primitive way. So, too, in America, birds in constructing 
their nests everywhere turn to their account the products of 
human industry and keep abreast with the progress of the age. 
The materials employed correspond to the contemporary state of 
civilization, and mark the periods of industrial development 
through which the human race has passed. The wagtails, in a 
watch-making district of Switzerland, have learned to build their 
nests of fine steel shavings ; a nest of this kind, if preserved, 
would indicate to the inhabitants of that country a thousand 
years hence the kind of industry that was carried on by their 
ancestors. Sjjarrows, which usually build in chinks of walls or 
under roofs, if forced to build their nests in trees or other un- 
sheltered places, cover them with a sort of hood to keep out the 
rain. Buffon, who records this fact, adds : Uinstinct se ma^iifest 
done ici par un sentiment iwesque raisonne et qui suppose au 
moins la comiparaiso^i de deux petites idees. In the presence of 
such clear manifestations of thought and reflection, it seems ab- 
surd to speak of a " sentiment almost reasoned," or to indulge in 
condescending baby-talk about " two little ideas," 

Apiarists now provide their hives with artificial comb for the 
storage of honey, and the bees seem glad to be relieved of the 
labor of making cells as their predecessors had done. Instead of 
gathering propolis from the buds of plants, the workers stop their 
hives with the mixture of resin and turpentine with which the 
arboriculturist salves wounded trees, and readily substitute oat- 
meal for pollen if they can get it. These facts, and many others 
which might be adduced, suffice to prove that animals avail them- 
selves of new discoveries and easier methods in order to increase 
the comforts and conveniences of life. 

Even instincts, which seem firmly rooted and are regarded as 
characteristic of the class, are by no means so persistent as is 
commonly supposed. The individual inherits, but soon loses 
them if they are not brought into early exercise. A duck or 
gosling, if reared in the house until it is two or three months old, 
has no greater liking for the water than a chicken, and' if thrown 
into a pond will scramble out, showing signs of great fear of the 
element to which its web-feet are particularly adapted. An arti- 
ficially hatched chicken does not attach itself to a hen more than 
to any other animal, but follows its first associate, a child, a cat, 
or a dog. 

Buffon denies that animals are susceptible of what he calls 
" the perfectibility of the species." " They are to-day," he says, 
" what they always have been, and always will be, and nothing 
more ; because, as their education is purely individiial, they can 
only transmit to their young what they themselves have received 



174 ^^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

from their parents. Man, on the other hand, inherits the culture 
of ages and gathers and conserves the wisdom of successive gen- 
erations, and may thus profit by every advance of the race, and, 
in turn, aid in perfecting it more and more/' 

This assertion has been repeated by scientists of the ohl school 
as though it were an axiom of natural history, instead of an arro- 
gant anthropocentric assumption refuted by scores of well-au- 
thenticated facts. The whole j^rocess of domestication, which is 
to the lower animals what civilization is to man, and the possi- 
bility of producing and propagating desirable qualities in the 
race, run counter to Buff on"s theory. The value of a horse's pedi- 
gree depends upon the transmissibility of distinctive characteris- 
tics which were originally peculiar to some individual horse, 
idiosyncrasies which commended themselves to man as worthy 
of preservation, or such as in the natural struggle for existence 
would assert and propagate themselves. 

If the descendants of blood-horses do not inherit the individual 
training of their sires, neither are the children of scholars or 
m.usicians born with a knowledge of books or the ability to play 
on musical instruments. What is inherited in both cases is some 
particular disposition or endowment, a superior aptitude for the 
things in which their progenitors excelled. Indeed, this heritage 
is handed down in horses with surer and steadier increase, or, at 
least, with smaller loss and depreciation than in human beings, 
since they are mated with sole reference to this result ; and there 
is no room left for the play of personal fancy and caprice, or for 
social, sentimental, or pecuniary considerations, which exert a 
baneful influence upon marriage from a physiological point of 
view, and contribute to the deterioration of the race. This is 
strikingly perceptible in some portions of Europe, where the 
struggle for existence, and especially for high social j^osition, is 
exceedingly intense, and a large dower suffices to cover u^d all 
mental and physical deficiencies in the bride. 

The scientific swine-breeder keeps genealogical tables of his 
pigs, and is as jealous of any taint in a pure porcine strain as any 
prince of the blood is of plebeian contamination. In both cases 
the vitiation bars succession, the one condition of which is purity 
of lineage. It is by the selection not only of the finest stock, but 
also of the choicest individuals for breeding, that animals are 
" progressively improved " both bodily and intellectually. This 
is, perhaps, most clearly observable in hunting-dogs and race- 
horses, which have undergone quite remarkable modifications 
within the present century owing to the extraordinary pains 
taken to develop and perfect their peculiar characteristics. In 
some instances unusual births or freaks of nature are preserved, 
and by persistently propagating themselves form the starting- 



PROGRESS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 175 

point of new species. A striking example of tliis perpetuation of 
individual peculiarities is the sliort-legged and long-backed An- 
con sheej), a comparatively recent product of ISTature rendered 
permanent by the care of man. A pointer, greyhound, or collie 
inherits and transmits to its offspring not only race attributes, but 
also acquired aptitudes in the same manner and to the same de- 
gree as a human being does who is distinguished for some special 
faculty. There are prodigies of dogs which do not beget prodi- 
gies of puppies, just as there are men of genius whose children 
are by no means eminent for their intellectual endowments. 

If the conceptual world of the lower animals is limited and 
fragmentary, so is that of savages and of ignorant and unculti- 
vated men, who live for the most part in the present and the im- 
mediate past, and have a relatively narrow range of thoughts and 
experiences. Long-lived animals, such as parrots, ravens, and 
elephants, have an advantage over short-lived animals in the de- 
velopment of intelligence. Civilized man, however, not only lives 
his own individual life, and profits, like other animals, from the 
wisdom of his parents and the influences of his environment, but 
also, by means of written records, lives the life of the race, of 
which he enjoys the selectest fruits garnered in history. 

It must also be borne in mind that dogs are and always have 
been bred for special purposes, such as pointing, retrieving, run- 
ning, watching, and biting, but not for general intelligence. Mr. 
Galton, who calls attention to this fact, suggests that it would be 
interesting as a psychological experiment to mate the cleverest 
dogs generation after generation, breeding and educating them 
solely for intellectual power and disregarding every other consid- 
eration. 

In order to carry out this plan to perfection and to realize all 
the possibilities involved in such a comprehensive scheme, it 
would be necessary to devise some system of signs by which dogs 
would be able to communicate their ideas more fully and more 
clearly than they can do at present, both to each other and to 
man. That the invention of sucli a language is not impossible is 
evident from what has been already achieved in the training of 
dogs for exhibition, as well as from the extent to which they have 
.learned to understand human speech by mere association with 
man. Prof. A. Graham Bell believes that they may be taught to 
pronounce words, and is now making scientific experiments in 
this direction. The same opinion was expressed two centuries 
ago by no less an authority than Leibnitz, who adduces some 
startling facts in support of it. The value of such a language as 
a means of enlarging the animal's sphere of thought and power 
of conception, and of giving a higher development to its intel- 
lectual faculties, is incalculable. 



176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Every dog trained as a hunter or herder is a specialist, and is 
prized for one fine capacity attained in some degree at the expense 
of mental proportion and symmetry ; in miscellaneous matters 
outside of his province he may be easily surpassed by any under- 
bred and mongrel but many-sided village cur. Modern scholarship 
shows a like tendency to psychical alogotrophy or one-sided intel- 
lectual growth. As science deepens its researches, each depart- 
ment of investigation becomes more distinct, and the toiler in the 
mines of knowledge is forced to confine his labors to a single lode 
if he would exhaust the treasures it contains. He sees clearly so 
far as his lantern casts its rays ; but all outside of this small 
luminous circle is dense darkness. 

If a race of superior beings had taken charge of man's educa- 
tion for thousands of years and conducted it on the same princi- 
ple as that which has guided us in domesticating and utilizing 
the lower animals, what maimed specimens of humanity would 
have been the result ! Slavery has always tended to produce this 
effect ; but the slave, however degraded his condition, speaks the 
same language as his master, thereby profiting from his inter- 
course with those who are placed over him, and sharing in the 
general progress of society more fully than any dumb animal 
could do. So, too, the position which Christian intolerance as- 
signed to the Jews for many centuries, closing to them all 
branches of industry except usury, developed in them a peculiar 
talent for finance, together with many hard and offensive traits 
of character naturally growing out of money brokerage, and 
finally becoming almost innate. In the middle ages they were 
made to serve as sponges to suck ujd the people's substance in 
order that it might be squeezed out of them at the convenience of 
the rulers. King John II, surnamed the Good, issued in 1360 a 
decree permitting the Jews in his realm to take, as compensation 
for loaning money, " quatre deniers par livre par semaine,'' equiva- 
lent to ninety per cent per annum, not from any feeling of favor- 
itism for the Israelites, but, as he expressly stated, because " the 
greater the privileges enjoyed by the Jews, the better they will 
be able to pay the taxes levied on them by the king." This 
" good " monarch was wont to confiscate periodically a large por- 
tion of the pillage thus obtained in order to replenish his ex- 
hausted exchequer, and was actually praised by his subjects for 
punishing Jewish rapacity. It was a system of indirect taxation 
Avorthy of modern tariff legislators. 

In the early part of the thirteenth century, Frederic II, the 
Hohenstaufen, ordained that the Jews should be permitted to dwell 
in Nuremberg and to lend money on interest, stating that, "inas- 
much as this sinful business is essential to trade and to the com- 
mercial prosperity of the city, it would be a lesser evil to let the 



PROGRESS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 177 

Jews carry it on than that Christians should imperil the salvation 
of their souls by such practices, since the former, owing to their 
notorious obduracy, will doubtless persist in their religious per- 
versity and be damned anyhow/' If the Jews now " take a breed 
of barren metal " as naturally as a pointer takes to pointing or a 
hound to the trail of a fox, this tendency is due in part at least to 
circumstances which they did not create and could not control. 
The chief accusation brought against them by anti-Semitic agita- 
tors is that they are unwilling to follow industrial or agricultural 
pursuits, in utter forgetfulness of the fact that until a compara- 
tively recent date they were forbidden by Christian legislation 
either to engage in mechanical employments or to own land. 

The influence of domestication on the mental development of 
animals depends upon the purposes which the domesticator has 
in view. If he regards them merely as forms of food, and his sole 
aim is to increase the amount of their adipose tissue and edible 
substance and thus get the maximum of meat out of them, then 
domestication tends to stupefy them. The intellectual training 
of the pig would naturally diminish the quantity of lard it would 
produce. So far as man is concerned, this latter function is the 
chief end of the porker's existence, and it must not be tried and 
found wanting in this respect, whatever may be its mental defi- 
ciencies. It must be fat-bodied whether it be fat-witted or not, 
and the natural qualities which do not contribute to its gross 
weight and enhance its ultimate value as victuals are systemat- 
ically discouraged and depressed. 

In view of the treatment that the pig has received for centuries 
at the hands of man, it is remarkable that the animal has re- 
tained so much of its original cunning and love of cleanliness as 
it now possesses. That a creature so fond of bathing in puie 
running water should be condemned to a filthy sty is an act of 
unconscious cruelty discreditable to human discernment. If the 
sow that has been washed returns to her wallowing in the mire, 
it is as a last resort in hot weather; she would much prefer a 
clear pond or limpid stream if she could get access to it. 

Being fed and protected by its owner in its domestic state, the 
hog no longer needs to exercise the faculties which were essential 
to the self-preservation of its wild progenitors. The stimulus 
arising from the struggle for existence ceases, and, as it is reared 
solely to be eaten, its association with man does not call forth 
any new powers. In China and Polynesia, where the dog is 
esteemed chiefly as food, it is a sluggish and stupid beast. On 
the other hand, the pig can be trained to hunt, and not only 
acquires great fondness for the sport, but also shows extraor- 
dinary sagacity in the pursuit of game. It has an uncommonly 
keen scent, and can be taught to point better than the pointer. 



178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Curiously enough, when the pig is used for hunting purposes, the 
dogs, usually so eager for the chase, sullenly retire from the field 
and refuse to associate with their bristly competitor in venery. 
Possibly the hereditary and ineradicable enmity between the dog 
and hog as domestic animals may be a survival of the fierce an- 
tipathy which is known to exist between the wolf and the wild 
boar. In Burmah the ringed snake is trained for the chase, and 
is especially serviceable in flushing jungle-cock, since the reptile 
can penetrate the thickest underbrush, where it would be impos- 
sible for a dog or a falcon to go. 

The tamability of an animal is simply its capability of adapt- 
ing itself to new relations in life, and depends partly on its mental 
endowments, but still more upon its moral character. It is quite 
as much a matter of temperament and social disposition as of 
quickness of understanding. The elephant, dog, and horse among 
quadrupeds, the beaver among rodents, and the daw and raven 
among birds, are, for this reason, most easily tamed, and show 
the most marked and rapid improvement in consequence of their 
daily intercourse with man. Intellectual acuteness without the 
social affections and kindred moral qualities rather resists than 
facilitates domestication. Of all domestic animals the cat was 
the most difficult to tame, and it needed the patience and persist- 
ence so strongly characteristic of the ancient Egyptians, sustained 
by religious superstition, in order to accomplish this result. Even 
now the cat, although extremely fond of its home and capable of 
considerable attachment to persons, has never been reduced to 
strict servitude and become the valet of man like the dog, but 
has always remained to a certain degree what it originally was, 
a prowling beast of prey. 

Barking in dogs is a habit due to domestication. The wild 
dog never barks, but only howls, like the Himalayan buansu, or 
merely whines, like the East Indian colsum ; and the domestic 
dog reverts from barking to howling when it relapses into its 
primitive state. Wagging the tail is another mode of expression 
which the dog has acquired through association with man. It is 
well known, too, that a dog which has been reared by a cat adopts 
many of the habits of its foster-mother, such as cleaning itself 
with its paw; by continuously pairing such dogs and rearing 
them under like influences it would be possible to produce a 
canine species with feline traits, which should become jDermanent 
and transmissible. 

A recent writer. Dr. Leopold Schutz, professor in the theo- 
logical seminary at Treves, who may be taken as an extreme 
representative of the old orthodox school of zoopsychologists, 
maintains that animals do not think, reflect, form purposes, or 
act with premeditation of any kind, have no freedom, no choice. 



PROGRESS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 179 

no emotional or intellectual life of tlieir own, but that a higher 
power performs all these operations through them as cunmng 
pieces of mechanism. The bird sings, according to this theory, 
without any personal pleasure or participation m its song ;_ it 
sings at a certain time and can not help it, nor is it able to sing 
at any other time. The living cuckoo is as automatic as the 
wooden cuckoo of a Black Forest clock, and under the same 
mechanical compulsion to sing its song when the appointed hour 
arrives Altum, in his book on bird-life (Der Vogel und sem 
Leben Miinster, 1868), infers from the fact that a bird smgs more 
in the pairing season than at other seasons of the year, that its 
sono- is a "natural necessity," in which it takes no individual 
pleasure But this conclusion by no means follows from the 
premises. The song is a means to an end, and has for its final 
obiect sexual attraction and selection. One would snrely not be 
iustified in inferring that a woman who dresses well, chieliy m 
order to gratify her husband or her lover, finds no individual 
aesthetic satisfaction in a fine gown ; or that a man goes a-woomg 
from "natural necessity," and gets no entertainment out of court- 
Prof. Schutz's doctrine that animals are mere puppets, whose 
movements are determined by the direct intervention of higher 
powers, seems to have been derived from what is recorded of the 
relations of these creatures to holy men in the legends of the 
saints, rather than from a scientific study of the book of Nature ; 
his point of view is not that of the zoOpsychologist, but that of 
the hagiologist. 

The chief difficulty attending the investigation of mental 
processes in animals is that they can not express themselves in 
human language and explain to us their thoughts and feelings 
and the motives underlying their conduct. We are thus liable 
to misinterpret their actions and deny them many endowments 
which they really possess, just as the first explorers of new 
countries fail to discover in savages ideas and conceptions which 
are afterward found to characterize them in a remarkable 

degree. 

We have happily rid ourselves somewhat of the ethnocentric 
prepossessions which led the Greeks, and still lead the Chinese, to 
regard all other peoples as outside barbarians ; but our percep- 
tions are still obscured by anthropocentric prejudice which pre- 
vents us from fully appreciating the intelligence of the lower 
animals and recognizing any psychical analogy between these 
humble kinsmen and our exalted selves. 



i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

TYPE-CASTING MACHINES. 

By p. D. EOSS. 

TN the composing-room of the New York Tribune some forty 
-L type-casting machines have been used for several years. The 
foreman informed me in October last that all the ordinary read- 
ing-matter in the Tribune was being "set" by these inventions, 
and expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the working of the 
machines. As a rule, he said, not one of them was out of order, 
and on the average each did the work of three fair compositors.' 
In a printed circular issued by the patentees of the machine the 
foreman, Mr. G. W. Shafer, declares that, compared with what 
the same amount of setting would cost if done by hand by com- 
positors, " the machines save the Tribune office sixty per cent— 
probably more." 

My object in visiting New York at that time was to look into 
the type-casting process. The result of the visit was a conviction 
that the problem of setting type by machinery has been solved. 
Small printing establishments may not benefit from it for a 
few years. Large establishments, particularly large newspapers, 
may profit at an early date. The New York papers are looking 
to this. The business manager of the World, Mr. G. W. Turner, 
informed me that he had ordered one hundred machines. In 
the composing-room of the Brooklyn Standard-Union I saw six- 
machines working. I was informed that orders for machines had 
been placed by the New York Sun, Herald, Times, and Mail and 
Express. Outside of New York, the Louisville Courier-Journal 
uses thirty machines, and says it saves fifty per cent of what 
hand composition used to cost it. The Providence Journal uses 
twelve machines, and claims to save two hundred and fifty dol- 
lars per week. The Chicago News says it is saving fifty per cent 
m the cost of composition. These are only some of the news- 
papers which state that they have been using the machines 
regularly and successfully during the past year. Four machines 
ordered by the Canadian Government have been used in the Gov- 
ernment Printing Bureau at Ottawa for some months, and, in 
reply to a question in the House of Commons recently, the Secre- 
tary of State, Hon. J. A. Chapleau, said that they were satisfactory 
and economical. 

^ All this goes to show that the type-casting principle has ob- 
tained a practical footing in the market. In discussing the sub- 
ject, I propose to confine myself as much as possible to my per- 
sonal experience and investigations. If I state anything which I 
do not know personally or have not been told at first hand by 
disinterested persons, I will give the source of my information. 



TYPE- CASTING MA CHINES. 



181 



What Type-casting is.— Before describing the type-casting 
principle, allow me to review briefly the process of type-settmg 

by hand. -.^ t .r -t « 

In this process the operator, technically called a compositor, 
has before him an oblong frame (or "case") divided mto a num- 
ber of small open boxes. One box contains the a's, another tii^x 
b's another the numeral I's, another the numeral 2's, and so on. > 
In his left hand the compositor holds a little steel receivmg box, 
called a " stick." With his right hand he picks out from the 
« case " the letters he requires to form a word, and puts them one 
by one in his " stick." The stick is the same width as the column 
of his newspaper. Toward the end of each line in his stick he has 
to pad out the line with lead slugs so as to exactly fill the width 
of the stick ; this is called " justifying." When he has a certam 
quantity of reading matter in his stick, say one tenth of a column 
in length, he transfers the type to a "galley" or long_ stick. 
By and by, when the galley is filled up, the type m it is. trans- 
ferred to the large receiving form called a "chase," m whicn the 
columns of the newspaper are made up to be placed on the print, 
ing-press. Such, very roughly described, is the process ot type- 
setting by hand. ^ • i ^. n 
After the paper is printed the compositor must pick out all 
the separate letters and numerals from the columns of type, and 
put them back in the proper boxes in his "case." This is called 
" distributing." The " distribution " occupies about one fifth of a 
compositor's whole working-time. 

In all this, civilization is to-day where it was five hundred 
years ago, and almost where the Chinese were two thousand 
years ag^'o. Alone of all the great inventions of man, type-setting 
has stood still from its birth until now. In war and in com- 
merce, on our farms and in our workshops, in travel and in our 
homes, almost every mechanical process, once slowly and labori- 
ously effected by manual or animal labor, has been quickened 
generation after generation by new appliances or inventions, save 
and except the work of type-setting. That is as slow now^ as 
when Coster or Gutenberg did the first European type-setting 
early in the fifteenth century. Printing has otherwise moved 
with the rest of the world. Our printing-presses, our power, our 
folding and pasting machines, all are wonderfully improved. 
Nothing in all the world has developed more marvelously than 
the printing-press. But type-setting has stood still. The ordi- 
nary composing-room of to-day can work no faster and no better 
than the composing-room of the fifteenth century. 

With the type-casting machine should come a new era. The 
operator needs only the intelligence which is required in a good 
compositor. He does not require more than one tenth the tram- 



182 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. . 

in- Tims equipped, he can, I believe, do steadily and regularly 
the work of three fair hand compositors. He does not handle 
type; has no "stick-; is not required to do any justification nor 
any distnbutiug. He sits in front of a machine and works a 
key-board and a lever, and the machine does everything else 

^ow to outline the working of the type-casting machine. A 
key-board similar to that of a type-writer fronts the machine 
There is a key for each letter of the alphabet. The operator 
sits in front of the key-board. Let us suppose that he wishes to 
set the word new." He touches the key n. The touch on the 
key releases from a magazine in rear of the machine a mold 
technically called a matrix, for the letter n. The matrix, which 
IS of brass, slides down into a receiver near the key-board Next 
the operator touches the key e. A matrix for the letter e is 
released and slides down alongside the letter n. The operator 
touches the key w. A matrix for w comes down and ranges itself 
alongside e Now m the receiver we have, what ?-the word ne^o 
m type ? No, nothing of the kind. We have three little brass 
molds standing side by side, from which, if we poured molten 
metal nito them, we would get the word new in a solid cast. But 
there is no type. The machine knows nothing of type whatever, 
tliough, for convenience' sake, we are calling it at present a type- 
casting machine. -^ 

But the time is not come to put molten metal into the three 
little molds or " matrices." An entire line should be set not 
merely a word. Suppose the line is to be, "new things come to 
pass." The operator proceeds to touch key after key for the suc- 
cessive letters until the matrices for the whole line are ranged 
side by side. Now at this point comes in what was for years the 
great problem in type-casting by machinery. As the end of a 
line of matrices or type is approached, it may not be possible to 
fit m an even word or syllable. Padding, or " justifying," becomes 
necessary. In setting by hand, the compositor does this with 
little lead slugs, called " spaces," inserted between words. How 
IS this to be done by a machine ? Inventors long stuck at it. But 
they have found out how. The process is simple in action, though 
difficult ^to describe without a model. Roughly speaking, the 
" spaces " or slugs which are used between each word in the line 
of matrices are compensating wedges, the bottoms of which pro- 
ject below the matrices. When the line of matrices requires 
justification," a touch on a lever by the operator causes the 
bottoms of the compensating wedges to be struck by a cross-bar, 
which forces the wedges up between the words until the line is 
solidly filled out. 

The line of matrices or letter molds is then ready to receive a 
cast. Where is the molten metal ? It is in the machine. This 



TYPE-CASTING MACHINES. 



183 



^Yonderful apparatus has a furnace for a heart and a melting-pot 
for a stomach. The furnace, consisting of a series of gas-jets, and 
the melting-pot, are in the lower part of the body of the machine. 
In the pot, stereotype metal is melted. The pot is not very large, 
because fresh metal may be put into it at any time when needed. 
The same metal may be used over and over again as often as de- 
sired ; it does not deteriorate. 

A jet of molten metal is thrown into the matrices by a torce- 
pump worked by the automatic action of the machine. The 
metallic fluid, hardening almost in an instant, a property ot 




The Typograph. 

stereotype metals, forms a solid cast or bar, on the face of which 
is the line "new things come to pass," and the machine automat- 
ically ejects this cast or bar of letters into a receiver, into which 
it is followed line after line by new casts with wonderful rapidity, 
until in a short space of time a column of reading-matter m bars 
is ready for the press. The speed of the machine is measured by 



184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

the speed of the operator at the key-board. It can work as fast 
as he can. 

When a line of matrices has been utilized, the matrices must 
be returned to their channels ready for use again. This is accom- 
plished by ingenious contrivances as soon as the cast has been 
made. The matrices being thus promptly returned, there is only 
need for a few of each letter. Thus a few dozen of the little brass 
molds do the work which in type-setting by hand needs a stock 
of from forty to fifty pounds of type. 

The Rival Patents.— There are two type-casting machines 
on the market. These are the Mergenthaler or Linotype, and the 
Rogers or Typograph. The Linotype weighs a ton, covers floor 
space about six feet by six, stands seven feet high, and is sold for 
$3,000, or rented for $500 a year. I have seen an expert operator 
set at the rate of nearly eight thousand ems per hour on it from 
a phonograph communicating with his ear. The proprietors claim 
a regular practical speed of over four thousand ems an hour, which 
is four times the speed a good compositor averages by hand, if 
we include the time he must take for distributing. On the Lino- 
type, the first time I ever touched a key-board, I set one hundred 
and fourteen ems of strange copy in six minutes, or at the rate of 
eleven hundred and forty ems an hour. 

The Typograph weighs four hundred and fifty pounds, covers 
floor space four feet by four, is four feet six inches high, sells for 
$2,500, and rents for $365 a year. The proprietors claim a regular 
practical speed of three thousand to thirty-five hundred ems per 
hour. I have set one hundred and fourteen ems by the Typograph 
in nine minutes. At the end of each line the operator at the 
Typograph must stop to throw back the cap of the machine, a 
movement which restores the matrices to their magazines. The 
proprietors of the Typograph claim that it can work as fast as 
will ever be practically possible on any machine. In other words, 
they think that human beings will not be physically capable 
throughout a whole working day of requiring as great a steady 
speed as the Typograph can give. 

The Typograph was submitted to a severe practical test in 
September, 1890, by the New York World. An eight-page section 
of the Sunday World, September 28th, was set by one machine 
working continuously day and night for one hundred and nine- 
teen hours and thirty-five minutes, or nearly a week. The object 
of the test was to ascertain how the machine would bear a con- 
tinuous steady strain. Three operators took eight-hour shifts at 
the work. The machine— I was informed both by the business 
manager of The World, Mr. Turner, and by one of the operators, 
the foreman of The World composing-room— stood the test almost 
perfectly. I measured the amount of setting done. It came to 



TYPE-CASTING MACHINES. 



185 



one Imndred and fifty-six thousand ems of minion. As the ma- 
chine was worked one hundred and nineteen hours, this shows an 
average speed of only thirteen hundred ems per hour. At first 
sio-ht this might seem disappointing. There were reasons why it 
was not so. The three operators were compositors, and had had 
only three or four weeks' practice on the Typograph. Owing 




The Linotype. 

to faults of the motor used to run the machine, it had to be worked 
by hand-power one quarter of the time. The three operators not 
only ran the machine, but they read the proofs, made the correc- 
tions, set the headings, and made up the " forms " ready for the 
press. Finally, the machine lost several hours' work through a 
fault in a casting. Taken as a whole, it seems to me the test was 
a conclusive proof of the practical success of the Typograph. 

VOL. XL. 15 



i86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Type-setting by Machinery.— Type-casting is quite different 
from machine type-setting. Before contrasting type-casting with 
ordinary hand type-setting, it may clear the way to outline the 
principle of machine type-setting. 

The type-setting machine has a reservoir of type, instead of a 
magazine of matrices as in the casting-machine ; but, unlike the 
matrices, which return to their magazine the moment a line is cast 
from them, the type must go the whole way to the printing-press. 
Otherwise, the action of the type-setting machine is somewhat 
similar to that of the casting-machine. The type-setting machine 
is also worked by an operator at a key-board. When the operator 
touches a key, a type is released, just as a matrix is in the casting- 
machine, and slides into a receiver, where it is joined by other 
successive letters until words and lines are formed. As type is 
directly used, there is no furnace or melting-pot about the ma- 
chine. This is the only advantage it has over the casting-machine, 
while compared with the latter it has serious drawbacks. 

The type-setting machine seems to be a practical success, and 
an improvement on type-setting by hand ; but, if for two reasons 
only, it is doomed to be superseded by the casting-machine. 1. It 
requires a heavy stock of type instead of a few matrices. 3. At 
least two attendants are required to each machine, one to operate 
the key-board, the other to justify the lines, attend to corrections 
and superintend matters generally, and to distribute the type 
again. Still, the business manager of the office in which the New 
York Forum is printed, informed me that through their use he is 
saving $1,700 a year in the setting of that monthly magazine, 
which does not require in a year as much composition as a daily 
paper in a month. 

Comparison with Type-setting by Hand.— In any consider- 
able quantity of straight reading matter, type-casting machines 
as compared with hand composition should, if working success- 
fully, effect a saving of from one fourth to one third the cost of 
setting. Moreover, the setting is better. Perhaps this conten- 
tion is best illustrated by figures. Those which I propose to 
give are based on the conditions prevailing in Canadian news- 
paper offices. Let us suppose an office in which one hundred and 
twenty thousand ems of straight reading matter are set per day 
in minion type. To fix ideas, we may describe this roughly as 
equal to about twenty-five ordinary newspaper columns. Many 
of the larger city papers in Canada print just about this quantity 
of reading matter per day. The union rate paid compositors in 
Canada is thirty-three and a third cents per one thousand ems. 
One hundred and twenty thousand ems would cost, therefore, about 
$40 for composition, apart from the cost of the type, foremen, office, 
etc. Forty dollars per day would come to $12,000 per year of three 



TYPE-CASTING MACHINES. 187 

hundred working-days. Now, let us see what it would cost to do 
the same amount of setting by the type-casting machines. These 
are claimed by their proprietors to work at the rate of three thou- 
sand to five thousand ems per hour in regular use. Making 
allowance for the probability that operators could not keep up 
such a speed all day, that mistakes have to be corrected, and ac- 
cidental stoppages might occur, we may admit that the machines 
can set an average of twenty-five hundred ems per hour during an 
eight-hour day, or twenty thousand ems per day each, which is 
little more than half what the inventors claim as practical. Six 
machines could at this rate set one hundred and twenty thousand 
ems per day. As already said, to set this by hand would cost 
$12,000. The cost of the machine work would be — 

Six machines at $500 rent each |3,000 

Six operators at say $14 per week 4,308 

Gas, say 1,000 

Repairs, etc 500 

Total $8,868 

Or equivalent to a saving of $3,132 on the setting by hand, or 
over twenty -five per cent. The estimate of $14 per week as 
a fair rate for operators of the machines is not too low for a 
Canadian ofiice. First-class compositors certainly do not aver- 
age more. 

As a further illustration, I may give the actual figures of cost 
of a composing-room with which I am familiar. The setting 
amounts to about sixty thousand ems in a nine-hour day, done 
by ten to twelve comj)ositors. A number of the hands are paid 
by the week, and the straight setting costs only about twenty-five 
cents per thousand ; or, for sixty thousand ems, $15 per day — equal 
for three hundred days to $4,500 per year. There is also a fore- 
man at $14, an assistant foreman at $12, and a couple of lads at $3 
each. These four, costing $32 per week, or $1,G64 a year, do all the 
setting of space advertisements. There is $2,000 worth of type, 
costing for interest say $140 per year, and requiring renewal at the 
rate of say $400 per year, or complete renewal once in five years. 
The cost of the composing-room is therefore somewhat as follows : 

Composition by hand $4,500 

Foremen, etc 1,664 

Cost of type 540 

Rent, heat, light, etc., say 500 

Total $Y,204 

To set sixty thousand ems in a nine-hour day, or six thousand 
seven hundred ems per hour, would require say three type-cast- 
ing machines, which at $500 rent would cost $1,500 per year, and. 
the composing-room figures would be : 



i88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Rent of machines $1,500 

Three operators at $14 2,184 

I'oremen, etc 1,C64 

Gas for machines, say 500 

Rent, heat, light, etc 500 

Total $6,348 

The saving would apparently be some $85G, or over twelve per 
cent, while less room would be required, cleaner and better work 
would be done, the labor better paid, and a higher class of opera- 
tors employed. Later I will touch on some reasons why it might 
not be safe to depend on type-casting machines in so small a busi- 
ness. In a larger business there is little doubt in my mind that 
the use of the machines is preferable to hand composition. 

Finally, it is much easier to learn to operate the type-casting 
machine than to learn to set type. To set type at the rate of a 
thousand ems an hour requires two or three years of constant 
practice. To set a thousand ems on the type-casting machine in 
an hour requires no previous practice. It can be done the first 
time a person touches a key-board. This seems a strong state- 
ment to make, but I have the best of reasons for knowing it to be 
true. I did it, as already described. Previous to making the at- 
tempt I had never touched a key-board but once, and that was a 
dummy-board. I had never touched a type- writer or any other 
instrument the use of which might qualify one for operating the 
type-casting machine. Being in the rooms of the Linotype Com- 
pany in New York recently, I asked and received permission to 
try the machine; and picking up a printed clii^ping from which 
the operator had been setting, I went to work and in six minutes 
set one hundred and fourteen ems, equal to one thousand one 
hundred and forty ems per hour, stopping because the clipping 
then ended. I repeated similar experiments on other machines 
subsequently, with much the same average result. In short, I 
was able to do with the machine at sight and without practice 
what it would take me years to learn to do by hand. As to be- 
coming expert on the machines, a number of operators whom I 
have questioned agree that from three to six months' practice 
enables one to attain a speed of three thousand to four thousand 
ems from ordinary copy. 

In fact, as I have stated, the only limit of speed on the Lino- 
type is the rate at which the operator can move his fingers. He 
can not work quite so rapidly as a type-writer, because at the end 
of each line of matrices he must stop to touch the lever which 
sends the line off to receive a cast. Supposing we allow twenty- 
five per cent of his time for this, which is surely a large proj)or- 
tion, we can get an idea of the possible practical rate of the ma- 
chine by comparing it with the possibilities of a type-writer. 



TYPE-CASTING MACHINES. 189 

Upon a type-writer, a rate of sixty words per minute from dicta- 
tion is not very higli. The Senate Hansard reporters of Canada 
employ several type-writers who average from sixty to seventy 
words and over for considerable periods of time. Allowing the 
speed of the operator on the type-casting machine to be twenty- 
five per cent less, we have at least forty-five words per minute as 
the practical rate of the machine. This is equal to seven thousand 
one hundred and five ems per hour. As alreadj^ said, I saw one 
man at the Linotype set for half an hour from a phonograph at a 
rate of nearly eight thousand ems per hour, and the setting was 
as " clean " as that of the average compositor. 

Summing up the comparison between hand setting and ma- 
chine casting, I find : 1. The machine is much more easily learned. 

2. No type is required. 3. Less space and fewer hands are needed 
in the composing-room. 4. Setting is cleaner, and probably one 
third cheaper. 5. Justification is automatic and perfect. 6. By 
changing the matrices, which can be done in half an hour, a 
different style of type becomes available. 7. " Leading " can be 
done much more quickly. 8. There is no "pi-ing,^' or mixing up of 
type. 9. Fewer typographical errors are likely. You do not 
have inverted letters, nor mistakes due to the type having been 
wrongly " distributed " in the case, which are a source of frequent 
typographical blunders. 

Drawbacks and Possible Complications. — It will be asked, 
How is it that these remarkable machines have not at once sprung 
into popularity ? — so cheap, so rapid, so easily learned, so econom- 
ical ! How is it that so little has been heard about them ? Well, 
the patents were only perfected last year, and the machines are not 
yet being made fast enough to supply the demand. Meanwhile, 
there are many possible complications, the fear of which must 
cause the average printing-office to hesitate to try the machines. 1. 
The machines require power to drive them effectively. The fail- 
ure of power for any reason would seriously interfere with them, 
although they can be driven by foot-power in an emergency. 2. 
They require gas or gasoline for their furnaces; the failure of 
the gas from leakage, or cold, or accident, would stop the machines. 

3. The molten metal in the melting-pot must always be at a tol- 
erably even temperature ; otherwise the casting is bad, perhaps 
impossible. It is claimed that this difficulty has been overcome 
in the Linotype, and that the temperature of the molten metal 
is automatically kept at a temperature varying not more than 
10° Fahr. A column of mercury is connected with the melting- 
pot, and when the temperature causes the mercury to ascend 
beyond a certain point, it lowers the gas-jets which supply the 
heat. When the mercury descends below a certain point, it turns 
on the gas more strongly. 4. The machines are composed of many 



190 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

parts, and if tliey get out of order in a town in which expert 
mechanics are not at once available, their usefulness is gone 
for that day at least. 5. They can set only straight reading mat- 
ter, so that advertisements, display headings, cross lines, italics, 
etc., must be set by compositors. 6. If a mistake of a letter is 
made in setting by the machine, the whole line must be recast, 
unless (which is not likely) the mistake is noticed the moment it 
is made and the operator stops to rectify it by changing the 
matrix. However, a whole line can be reset and recast almost 
as quickly as a compositor can correct by hand a mistake in a 
type letter. 7. It is a more serious drawback that if, in correct- 
ing proofs, it is desired to insert additional words, a number of 
lines may have to be recast. 8. The matrices in which the casts 
are made are possibly liable to wear a little, and so to soon make 
bad casts. Of course this can be remedied by getting new 
matrices, which are not expensive. 9. In a small office where 
two or three machines might be employed, there would probably 
be only two or three expert operators ; if one took ill, the machine 
would become almost useless for the time being. 

Present Practical Availability. — A small printing-office 
is hampered in many ways with regard to the use of machines, 
nor can it safely, at present, take the chances of break- downs. 
Where only three or four machines can be used, the stoppage of 
one means a loss of twenty thousand ems of setting per day. 
That is serious enough; but if the cause of stoppage should affect 
all the machines, there must be a business dead-lock, because 
small concerns, or rather concerns in the smaller centers of popu- 
lation, can not at slight notice secure a staff of compositors to 
replace the machines, or arrange for publication elsewhere. Even, 
therefore, were the machines being manufactured as fast as 
desired, it is questionable whether they would find a market at 
present outside the large cities where expert mechanics can be 
had to attend them at a moment's notice, and where arrangements 
for special help or special publication can be made in an hour, if 
necessary. But I think that in any office setting one hundred 
thousand ems a day, or over, it would pay the proprietors to at 
once procure machines sufficient to do at least half their setting, 
retaining a certain number of compositors with them. I can see 
no reason why this should not be a fairly safe experiment and a 
financial success. 

The machines are available on a very liberal basis. Either 
company leases them at a moderate rental, agrees to take them 
back if not satisfactory, to keep them in repair while used, and 
to replace them with new machines in case of improvement of 
the patent. 

The typographical unions admit that the machines must be 



TYPE-CASTING MACHINES. 191 

accepted as a practical fact. The International Typographical 
Union, at its last annual meeting in the United States, recom- 
mended its subordinate unions, in cities in ^vlnch the machines 
"me into use, to prepare a scale of prices for the -ork done, a.d 
to urge that union compositors be employed as operatois. Ihis 
is a sensible acceptance of a new order of things. 

In conclusion, this is to be observed: There are heoretica 
obiections to the machines in many small details which have no 
been touched on in this article, partly because I wish to present 
a clear general idea of the subject unencumbered by triviali- 
ties- partly because to handle them would require complicated 
and'technical descriptions likely to confuse those who have not 
seen the machines, or who are not familiar with type-setting or 
stereotyping methods and appliances. With regard to such 
posdblf obiections, it should be remembered that the type- 
casting principle scarcely now requires to defend itself against 
fanciful opponents. It has been tried, and not found wantmg 
As was stated at the outset of this article, a large number of 
Linotypes have been successfully employed for ye^^s^^/;^ 
composing-room of a leading New York paper. I have tried to 
deal with the chief possibilities of failure m the niachme and 
it has been noticed that these possibilities seem to be chiefly m 
connection with printing establishments of limited extent and 
means Few of the drawbacks, it appears to me, would be seri- 
ous in a large office employing machines, and located m centers 
where the prompt assistance of expert mechanics can be had, and 
my conviction of this is borne out by the New York Tribune's 
experience. Such a test as the Linotype has received m that 
office during five years is the most conclusive answer to technical 
or theoretical objections to the principle of type-casting The 
real problem with a publisher should be, not whether the ma- 
chines are a success when used on a large scale, but whether his 
own business is large enough to justify him in introducing them 
into his own office. To use an exaggerated illustration, there is 
no question but that a steam-locomotive is an infinitely more use- 
ful powerful, and, on a proper scale, more economical affair than 
a wheelbarrow; but a laborer building a bit of roadway may do 
better with the wheelbarrow. 



Mr Egbert T. Hill has observed, near the springs and water-holes of the 
Cretaceous of central Texas, many workshops where the Indians manufactured 
spears and arrow-heads. Near an old Comanche trail in Travis County almost 
every flint seems to have been broken or tested. In evidence that the miplements 
have been manufactured in the present century, the author adduces the facts that 
they are always found on the surface, and that the Indians have actually used 
them in their warfare with the white men. 



192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



BREATHE PURE AIR. 

By the Rev. J. W. QUINBY. 

QNE of the saddest sights of our civilization is the spectacle of 
w disease and pam which confronts us on every side It is 
rare indeed to find even an individual perfectly well, to say noth- 
ing of families and communities. But why is it ? 

Barbarians and savages do not so suffer. May it not be in 
part, because civilized communities do not sufficiently avail them- 
selves of the sanitary influences of the air and light ^ It is in the 
hope of helping to answer this question that the followino- notes 
ot personal experience are herewith given. 

A few years ago I read an article in i\^^ Popular Science 
Monthly which seemed to prove the value of pure air as a pre- 
ventive of ^ colds." The theory suggested was that colds may be 
caused by the loss of a certain equilibrium between the oxyo-en in 
the lungs and the carbon in the blood. It is true that this may 
follow overeating, and so overcharging the blood with food ele- 
ments ; but more frequently, it was thought, the lack of pure air 
By acting upon this theory almost incredible results were said 
to have been reached. The writer of the article alluded to 
claimed that he had easily brought himself into a condition in 
which It seemed impossible to take cold. He could sit in thin 
clothing m winter at an open window. The ordinary causes of 
colds, such as wet feet, overheating, and the like, seemed power- 
less to produce their usual results. 

With these statements in mind, I remembered some curious 
facts of my own experience in the army in 1862 and 1863. I was not 
strong, and indeed was hardly fit to be in the army at all. And 
when I found myself exposed all day long to a steady rain,'and at 
night to the outdoor air, with no fire, no change of clothing, no 
shelter but a canvas covering open at both ends, through which 
the rain dripped constantly, it seemed certain that the " death o' 
cold '' so often predicted must surely follow. Why it did not 
follow was more of a mystery then, however, than it is now. For 
I was in a place where the art of man no longer excluded one of 
the prime principles of health. I breathed pure air because I 
could not help it. During a service of fifteen months, with severe 
exposures, but fresh air constantly, the same immunity from colds 
prevailed. I remembered, too, that when I came home from the 
army the blessing and the curse— at least one of the curses of 
civil life— came back together. I had comfortable rooms to eat, 
breathe, and sleep in on the one hand, but very soon colds, sore 
throats, and related troubles on the other. This was the se'cond 
count in the argument for pure air. 



BREATHE PURE AIR. 193 

Finally, after nearly twenty years of suffering according to 
the common lot of man, I resolved to try the pure-air cure, and 
from that time to this the windows of my room have been open 
almost constantly day and night. The result was immediate and 
striking, and for the last seven years I have not had one serious 
cold. My sore throats are wholly a thing of the past, and certain 
other physical derangements not usually associated with colds 
have also disappeared. 

Like others, I have often to spend hours in crowded rooms. 
It sometimes happens after such an " exposure/' as I prefer to 
call it, that I suffer for a day or two from a " head-cold." But in 
every case so far it has proved to be entirely superficial — a natural 
and easy throwing off of the poison contracted in that crowded 
room, followed by no serious effects whatever. 

At this very moment in the house where I live there are twelve 
persons, every one of whom, except myself and one other, is suffer- 
ing from the effects of a cold. It certaiidy does look as if the ex- 
emption I enjoy is due to the exceptional privilege of the pure 
air to which I constantly treat myself. Perhaps it would help 
the argument to state that nearly all of my father's large family 
died of consumption. 

It should be borne in mind that the difference between the air 
of an ordinary room in which people live and that of the air out- 
doors is far greater than is generally supposed. Do but think of 
the emanations that constantly proceed from every object in such 
a room — carpets, walls, and dra])eries. People say : " Oh, yes, we 
believe in ventilation. We ojien the windows in the morning 
and let the air draw through ; and at night we open the doors 
of our sleeping-rooms. We believe in pure air." And I feel 
like saying to them : " My dear friends, you know no more of 
really pure air than the blind mole down in the ground knows 
of sunlight." 

I w^ould not by any means advise persons who have been liv- 
ing in a close atmosphere to suddenly sit or sleej) in the draught 
of an open w^indow. It is only by degrees that such changes can 
be made with safety. But by degrees they can be made, and why 
might not most i3eoj)le begin at least to make them ? 

In the town where I live, in Massachusetts, a new system of 
ventilation required liy the State has recently been put in opera- 
tion in the high-school building. By means of it thirty cubic feet 
of air, it is said, are furnished to every pupil every minute. It 
seems to me this forward step in so vital a matter should be 
heartily approved by every lover of humanity. 

Meanwhile, it is painfully apparent that multitudes of people, 
sick with constantly recurring diseases of the lungs and related 
parts, continue to breathe the old foulness. Is it not worth while 

VOL. XL. — 16 



194 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to make some effort to change this condition of things ? Perliaps 
half the money now spent on superfluities, if devoted to a better 
system of ventilation, might very sensibly improve the health 
and increase the happiness of the community. 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 

IV. EELIGIOUS DRESS. 
By J'kof. FREDEKICK STARR. 

UNDER this subject we shall consider a variety of different 
matters — the dress of religious officers; the dress of wor- 
shipers ; the dress of victims ; the garb of mourners ; amulets 
and charms ; and the religious meaning of mutilations. 

In any society we need io hnoiv four individuals only — the 
babe, the woman, the priest, and the dead man. If we know these, 
we know the community. The ethnographer usually seeks for 
the average man in any tribe ; we believe he would better seek to 
know these four. Of the four the priest is usually the most re- 
markable. What 
an influence the 
shaman or the 
m e d i c i n e - m a n 
wields in every 
community where 
he exists ! His 
power is largely 
due to the terror 
which he causes, 
and to add to this 
he makes use of 
every auxiliary. 
Thus in his dress 
he aims at the 
wild and gro- 
tesque. By it he 
seeks to mark 
himself off as dis- 
tinct from com- 
mon men, and, al- 
though it may often be rich and costly, it must at the same 
time strike terror. The Kaffir sorcerer wears the ordinary kilt, 
but puts a gall-bladder in his hair and winds a snake's skin 
about his shoulders. A "queen of witches" wore large coils 
of entrails stuffed with fat about her neck, while her hair was 




Fig. 1. — Necklace of Sorcerer. Zululand. 



DEESS AND ADORNMENT. 



19: 



stuck over in all directions with, the gall-bladders of animals 
(Wood). In any collection of articles from. Alaska tribes a 
large proportion of the specimens will be garments or parapher- 
nalia of the shaman. A Tlingit shaman fnlly dressed for his 
professional duties is a striking and terrible sight. Over his 
shoulders he wears a neat robe of dressed skin, to which are hung 




Fu;. 2. — Shaman's C^own. Alaska. 

the beaks of puffins, ivory charms, and jingling bits of metal. 
The charms are many of them neatly carved, and possess great 
spirit power in the cure of disease and the driving out of witches. 
A waist robe of the same material is adorned in the same way. 
Upon his head the shaman wears a crown of horns. These crowns 
are endowed with great spirit power. They are particularly in- 
teresting also as an unusually fine example of our old law — that 
old patterns are copied in new materials. The oldest type of these 
crowns was made from mountain-goat horns. These were simply 
carved with some design at base and were then attached to a head- 
band — the upper ends of the horns being connected with one an- 
other by a sinew cord. From ten to fifteen horns were used in 
a single crown. Later this type was copied in mountain-sheep 
horn and in wood — the material being carved out into little 
bodies, like the horns of the mountain goat in size and shape. 
Still later copper was rolled into horn-shajjed cones, which were 
then connected in the same way. Over his face the shaman may 
wear a wooden mask skillfully carved with grotesque designs. 
These vary infinitely, but each part usually has its own mean- 
ing and spirit power. Often there was worn a head-dress of 
human hair. In the hands the shaman carries carved rattles 



196 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wliicli make a loud noise, or carved wands of wood or ivory, pow- 
erful in healing or in witchcraft. It must be noticed that here 
every article has spirit power, and all or nearly all are calculated 
to inculcate feelings of terror or dread. There are some special 
articles, at times worn or carried by the shaman, which are very 
interesting. Among them are the curiously carved hollow bone 
tubes, used by the Haida shamans, into which the soul of a sick 
man is tempted and kept prisoner until it is restored to him upon 
his recovery to health. Every Tlingit shaman would carry also a 
scratcher of stone or bone, carved neatly, which he uses in treating 
the sick. It would be unlucky — disastrous — for him to touch the 
patient with his hand, but the scratcher may touch him without 
damage. 

Turning from such savage garments to the dress of religious 
officers in civilized communities, we no longer find the chief de- 
sign to be production of ter- 
ror, but rather to impress by 
grandeur or magnificence. 
Of course, the fundamental 
idea in both is the same — to 
mark off or distinguish the 
priest from the layman. In 
the vestments of priests we 
find numerous cases of sur- 
vival. What is meant by a 
" survival " in religion is 
well shown by the sacred fire 
of various peoples. Among 
the Sacs and Foxes matches 
made by white men are com- 
monly used for the produc- 
tion of fire. On the occa- 
sion of religious ceremonies, 
however, the priest kindles 
a fire by friction of pieces 
of wood, using a sj^indle of 
cedar rapidly whirled by a 
bow between two boards of 
the same kind. Such fire is 
sacred, and is supposed to 
come direct from heaven. It is, we think, perfectly certain that 
anciently these Indians used the fire-drill as their only means of 
kindling fire. As better means, such as flints, were found, the old 
drill passed out of every-day use, but it lingered on in religious rite, 
and still survives. In the same way, in Japan to-day, we are in- 
formed by a Japanese friend, the Buddhist priests still use the flint 




Fig. 3. — Dance-rattle. Alaska. 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 



19; 



and steel in rites, although the common people use matches. What 
the Indian medicine-man in Iowa and the Buddhist priest in Japan 
have done in the matter of fire-making, the priests of the Roman 
and Greek churches have done in the matter of dress. They have 
brought down the past into the present. The garments of the 
priesthood, of the acolytes and of the choir-boys in the cathedral, 
is the civil dress 
of ancient Rome 
— modified, it is 
true, and symboli- 
cal in its modifica- 
tion, but still rec- 
ognizable. It is 
the old southern 
type of dress, pre- 
served by the sec- 
ond great con- 
servative element 
in society — the 
Church — just as 
it has been by that 
other conservator, 
woman. 

In many parts 
of the world men- 
dicants and fakirs 
are numerous. 

They are men who on account of their piety expect to be sup- 
ported by their more industrious but less pious fellows. Such 
dress in a way to be readily recognized. In the garb they wear 
two ideas are embodied : (1) individualization ; (3) extreme sim- 
plicity symbolical of the poverty of the mendicant. 

Another sort of religious dress is that worn by the worshipers 
of some special divinity by members of religious orders and by 
participants in some religious service. These are too numerous 
and varied to be more than mentioned. In some of these cases 
the dress is symbolical ; in many the symbolism has been lost. 
Monastic orders have their characteristic dress, distinguishing 
them alike from the world and from each other. Shakers, Quak- 
ers, and Dunkards all present examples of this kind of dress. 
The choir-boys in the cathedral and the acolytes might perhaps 
be better mentioned here than in the preceding group. Matthews, 
in his descriptions of Navajo ceremonies and dances, describes 
carefully the way in which the participants dress or are painted. 
Many of the masks from the South Sea Islands are used only in 
religious or society dances, and are properly a part of religious 




Fig. 4. — Carved Spikit-wands. Alaska 



198 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



dress. The same is true of many of the masks of North Amer- 
ican tribes. Similar in idea are the curious and often really beau- 
tiful neck-girdles of red cedar bark worn by the secret religious 
organizations of the Kwakiutl and their neighbors in the far 
Northwest. 

Somewhat akin to dress worn by worshipers and servants are 
those garments worn by victims who are to be sacrificed to the 
gods. At Teotihuacan in Mexico there have been and still are 
found great numbers of neatly made little terra-cotta heads of 
human beings. These are exceedingly various in design, the 
differences being most marked in the head-dresses. There is con- 
siderable uncertainty as to the purpose of these little heads, but 
Mrs. Zelia Nuttall has written an article wherein is offered an 
explanation that seems plausible. She suggests that they were 
buried with the dead, and that the head-dresses represent those 
worn by victims for sacrifice. That such victims were differently 
adorned for different gods is certain, and it may be that these 
pretty little relics really give representations of the way in which 
they were dressed. 

Some time perhaps civilized peoples will give up the wearing 
of mourning for the dead. Why should any men or women force 
their private griefs upon all about them ? Why increase the dole- 
fulness of death ? No doubt many who wear black would say 

that they do so from 
respect for the dead. 
Is it not in reality 
because fashion dic- 
tates it ? Mourning 
dress is nothing new, 
nor is it confined to 
civilized races. Nor 
is the color of mourn- 
ing a fixed thing. 
Black is very widely 
used, but some peo- 
ples use white. In 
New Zealand old people paint themselves freely with red ochre 
and wear wreaths of green leaves. Besides the wearing of a pe- 
culiar garb or of a special color to show grief, the mourners may 
disfigure themselves, or they may wear some relic of the dead 
friend. The curious practice of cutting off joints of the fingers is 
wide-spread. Among some American tribes, among Australians, 
Africans, and Polynesians it is a sign of grief. The Fijians used 
to chop off finger-joints to appease an angry chieftain, or for death 
of a relative, or as a token of affection. In Tonga finger-joints 
were cut when a superior relative was ill. In all these cases pres- 




(.'.VRVEii St"NE Charms. Alaska. 



DB^SS AND ADORNMENT. 



199 



■ent grief did not blind the mourner to future convenience, and 
the joints cut were usually from the fingers of the left hand. In 
the Andaman Islands, when a child dies it is buried under the 
house floor and the building is deserted for a time. Finally, the 
family returns ; the bones are dug up and the mother distributes 
them among friends as mementoes. These bits of bone are gen- 
erally worn as parts of necklaces. In Tasmania and Australia 
portions of the dead are prepared 
with some care and worn as sa- 
cred and loved objects. Thus 
the zygomata are broken from a 
child's skull, sinews of kangaroo 
are passed through the orbits, 
and the whole is worn about the 
mother's neck. A lower jaw 
may be carefully and neatly 
wrapped with sinew cord from 
one condyle to the other and sup- 
plied with a suspension cord. 
Long bones, entire or partial, 
were wrapped and worn in the 
same way. These objects were 
all highly prized, and Bonwick 
says, " So many skulls and liml) 
bones were taken by the poor 

natives when they were exiled, Fig. fJ.—DANCE Ornament foe Arm. Made 

that Captain Bateman tells me 
that, when he had forty with 
him in his vessel, they had quite a bushel of old bones among 
them." These were in Tasmania, but similar relics abound 
among the Andamanese. In Australia drinking-cups were made 
from the skulls of the nearest and dearest relatives and car- 
ried everywhere. The lower jaw was removed, the brain ex- 
tracted, and the skull cleaned ; a rope handle of bulrush fibers 
was added, and a plug of grass was put in the vertebral aperture. 
All these may be considered as examples of mourning dress. 
There has also been a great variety of dress for the corpse itself. 
To describe such dress in any detail would be too much. Black 
is often used for shrouds. In the Tales of Hawaii, as narrated by 
King Kalakaua, frequent reference is made to the wrapping of 
the dead in the black kapa. In the Society Islands the dead chief 
is laid out in a special dress of shell. 

In connection with relics of dead friends used as a part of cos- 
tume, it may be pertinent here to refer to curious preserved heads 
found among various tribes. They may be simply the heads 
themselves, as trophies of war or reminders of friends, or they may 





f^PaaMawBt^l^ 


• «(to> 


I^My 




^^^» 




jB'«^g 




IW^ 




^\ 




( 



from human jaw-bone and empty nutshells. 
New Guinea. 



200 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be masks made in part from the heads of the dead. The former are 
hardly a part of dress ; the latter are. Both kinds will be consid- 
ered. The Dyaks of Borneo are famous " head-h^^nters/' and 
often prepare their trophies with great care. Barnard Davis had 
several specimens in his great collection, and he describes them 
in his Thesaurus. One was a whole skull ; the lower jaw was 
stained inside to a deep red ; it was fastened to the cranium by 
rattan ; light, soft wood was fitted in the places of the teeth, into 
the nostrils, and into the ear-holes ; other inequalities were filled 
with red-brown resin. The entire skull was covered with tin-foil ; 
two cowrie-shells made the eyes ; a small tuft of beard was made 
of stiff black hair ; on the vertex and sides of the calvarium an 
ornamental, regular, and symmetrical device was cut through the 
tin-foil and painted red. These heads vary greatly in pattern and 
treatment. They were kept in head-houses, and were looked upon 
as treasures and as sacred objects. In the Solomon Islands, the 
Marquesas, and New Zealand we find heads preserved for one or 
another reason. Among the strangest of these most curious relics 

are ihe heads prepared by 
the Jivaros of South Ameri- 
ca. These are trophies of 
war. The heads are cut 
from \.\\Q bodies of slain ene- 
mies ; the brain and bones 
are removed through the 
neck ; the whole head is then 
shrunken down. The result 
is a strange, diminutive,, 
black head, with abundant 
and long hair, and with feat- 
ures all preserved, but so 
small as to be hardly recog- 
nizable as those of a human 
being. In all these Jivaros'' 
heads the lips are sewed to- 
gether with cords, and in 
some cases spiked together in 
addition. If Bollaert is to be 
trusted, this is done in order 
that tlie head may not answer the abuse that is heaped upon it at 
times ! In the same part of the world, among the Mundurucus, 
are other interesting preserved heads. These are of full size % 
they are partly shaved; ornaments of feathers are hung at the 
ears; the eye-sockets are filled with black gum, into which are 
inserted bits of shell. These heads are apparently those of friends, 
not of enemies. In some respects akin to these real preserved 




Fig. 7.— Dance-mask. South Seas. 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 



heads are the very curious skull-masks from certain South Sea 
Islands. These are built up from parts of human skulls, pieced 
out with wood, cements, hair, and ornaments into horrid repre- 
sentations of faces. These are worn in dances and hence are true 
objects of dress. 

The subject of amulets and charms would, of itself, furnish 
more material than could be used in our whole course of lectures. 
Scarcely any trinket or odd 
object exists that may not be 
worn upon the person "for 
luck," or to ward off danger 
or harm. All jjeoples use 
them. Savage, barbarian, 
and civilized man are alike 
here. Nubians are inveterate 
wearers of charms. Theirs 
usually consist of something 
done up in a red leathern 
case ; the contents must not 
be known. For what will 
charms not be worn ? I know 
American mothers who buy 
seeds — " Job's tears " — at 
drug- stores, to string them 
into a necklace to hang about 
the baby's neck to ward off 
eye troubles. The Bechuana 
mother strings beetles of a 
certain species and hangs them about the neck of her baby to lielp 
it in teething. Prof. Putnam found metacarpal bones of birds 
buried with babies in the little graves which he discovered under 
the hard clay floor of old house circles in Arkansas and Missouri. 
From analogy with modern Indian customs, he believes these were 
charms to help the child in cutting its teeth. We can not find that 
asafoetida is a specific for or a preventive of diphtheria, but we 
did find a small Afro- American who wore a little bag of it about 
his neck as a charm against the disease. Hundreds of Roman 
Catholic boys do not take off the medals they wear about their 
necks when they go in swimming, as these are a sure preventive 
against drowning. One of the most precious and beautiful amulets 
of history is that of which Moncure D. Conway tells us. It was 
a treasure from the past, owned by the Emperor Louis Napoleon 
III. It was set with a blaze of precious stones, the gifts of many 
princes. It descended to the Prince Imperial, who wore it as a watch- 
charm. He wore it when he was killed among the Zulus, and it 
is gone, no one knows where. Ah ! if he had but known the rules 




Fig. 8. — Dance -mask. South Seas. 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of amulet-weuring among those people, and had worn it about 
his neck ! No matter how precious it was, it would tlien have been 
left untouched. The dead of battle may be stripped of every gar- 
ment or ornament but that about the neck. No doubt the j)riceless 
talisman of centuries is now the choicest decoration in some neck 
ornament of claws and teeth and feathers. The most interesting- 
charm of the American Indians is the " medicine." This may be al- 
most anything to which the superstitious barbarian attributes some 
supernatural jjower. Commonly it is the skin of some animal. In 
many tribes, the boy who is approaching manhood withdraw^s to 
the woods or to some lonely place, where he undergoes a long fast. 
Weakened by his abstinence, he falls into a slumber, in which he 
dreams of some animal. With recovered consciousness he hunts 
for an individiuil of this species, kills it, and with great care re- 
moves the skin. This is his " medicine," and to increase its power 
various articles may be inclosed within it. To part with his medi- 
cine would be most unlucky; worn or carried upon the person, it 
serves as a powerful protector. We once purchased a medicine- 
bag from a Fox Indian. Its 
original owner was dead. It 
was kept in a small pouch of 
worsted, and consisted of the 
skin of a mole, carefully tied 
up and containing five different 
kinds of roots and barks. One 
of the most intelligent Indians 
in the tribe refused to look at 
the contents, assuring us that 
it would cause him bad luck, 
and was disrespect to the man 
whose protector it had formerly 
been. Among many Moham- 
medans we find amulets worn 
which consist of little pouches 
containing strips of parchment, 
on which are written jiassages 
from the Koran. This suggests 
certain practices of the Jews, 
both ancient and modern. One 
evening we had occasion to have a little Russian Jew boy try on 
some garments. Several of his young friends came with him. 
When he had removed his jacket and shirt, one of the boys eager- 
ly called our attention to a queer little knitted garment worn over 
the undershirt. At its four corners hung bits of blue worsted twist- 
ed into a sort of tassel. The garment had little corner pockets into 
which these blue twists might be tucked. " Did you ever see that 




-Terra-cotta Ukai 



J)Ji£SS AND ADORNMENT. 



203 



kind that Abraliam has on ? " asked Sammie. " No," we replied ; 
" what is it for ? " Abraham himself replied that it was some- 
thing he wore for luck and to help him, and that every morning 
when he said his prayers he kissed these blue cords. We found 
that most of the boys had these, though one said he had not, but 
his father wore a large one which he let him kiss every day. 
Sammie told us that he had a different kind which he wore on his 
arm and on his forehead ; that it was made of leather. He volun- 
teered to show us one, which 
he did a few days later. Be- 
fore he put this on for us he 
washed his hands and face 
and brushed his hair. He 
also fasted until he took it 
off, as he said he never wore 
it except before breakfast. 
Whatever the fringes of the 
garments and phylacteries 
may have been once, they 
are now, with these children 
and the more ignorant of the 
adult Jews, nothing more 
nor less than charms. It 
will here be of interest to 
quote some references to 
these things. In Numbers, 
XV, 38-41 : " And the Lord 
spake unto Moses, saying : 
Speak unto the children of 
Israel, and bid them that 
they make them fringes [tas- 
sels in the corners] in the borders of their garments throughout 
their generations, and that they put upon the fringes of each 
border a cord of blue : and it shall be unto you for a fringe, that 
ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the 
Lord, and do them. . . . That ye may remember, and do all my 
commandments, and be holy unto your God. I am the Lord 
your God, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be 
your God." 

As to the phylacteries, there is no such explicit direction as to 
their making. The details were, however, very exactly arranged 
by the religious teachers. The leathern boxes could be only made 
of cowskin ; the thongs must be applied to the left arm and fore- 
head in a particular way. The little box contains four passages 
of Scripture — Exod. xiii. 'Z-\(), 11-14; Deut. vi, 4-9, 13-22 — written 
on rolled strips of parchment. The ink used must be of a particu- 




i. JO 



Disks cut fkom Human Skui.l, uskk as 
Charms. Illinois Mound. 



204 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lar kind. Tlie purpose was to remind the Israelites of the " bring- 
ing up out of the land of Egypt." The passages refer to that 
event and also to the command, which forms the excuse for the 
phylactery itself : " And these words which I command thee this 
day shall be in thine heart : . . . And thou shalt bind them for 
a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between 
thine eyes," 

We shall close this rather rambling lecture with some sugges- 
tions relative to the religious meaning of mutilations, some of 
which were described in our first lecture, on deformations. We 
must first realize how savage and barbarous man looks upon 
blood. To begin with, he personally loves warm blood. He de- 
lights to drink it, to eat flesh reeking with it, to dip his hands 
into it, to splash his face and body with it. He has also some 
curious notions regarding it. A Brazilian bathes his infant in 
his enemy's blood, in order that the child may grow ujj a brave 
warrior. In Oceania the warrior dips his lance-tip into the blood 
of his slain foe to render himself invincible. In New Zealand the 
body of the dead foe was eaten in order that his blood might 
render the victor the heir of his bravery. Now, when savage and 
barbarous man, with his love for and his notions regarding blood, 
comes to think of higher beings, invisible but potent, whom he 
wishes to ally to himself, how can he better gain their friendship 

than by oft'ering to them blood ? 
And the best sacrifice is his own 
blood. Here we have the fun- 
damental idea of every blood 
covenant. There are of course 
in any one instance other ideas 
present. But whatever these va- 
rious significant features may 
be, in all we see a man trying 
to establish an artificial rela- 
tionship with a deity by the 
shedding of his own blood. The 
people of any one clan or family 
worshiping the same god, the 
peculiar mode of shedding blood 
prevalent among them might 
become a tribal mark or sign. 
In Jewish circumcision — not 
originally Hebraic, but Egyp- 
tian — we see a good illustration of a blood covenant giving rise to 
a characteristic tribal mutilation. We see, too, in it very clearly 
a substitute for Iniman sacrifice (see Exod. iv, 24). In Gen. xvii, 
7, 10, 11, 17, 23: "And I will establish my covenant between me 




Fift. 11. — PoKTioN OF Human Skdll from 
WHICH Chaems have been cut. Illinois 
Mound. 



DRESS AND ADORNMENT. 



and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an ever- 
lasting covenant ; to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. 
, . . This is my covenant : , . . Every male child among you shall 
be circumcised ; . . . and ye shall circumcise the flesh of your 
foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and 
you. . . . And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were 
born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every 
male among the men of Abraham's house ; and circumcised the 
flesh of their foreskin, in the self-same day, as God had said unto 
him." We have no time, nor is it pertinent here, to consider all 
that circumcision has to teach, nor to trace its wide-spread prac- 
tice in varying forms. Enough to say that everywhere we find 
underlying it the idea of sacrifice of one's own blood as a symbol 
of compact with some deity, more or less clearly. The Jew and 
the Egyptian circumcised, but many peoples do not do so. Such 
may, however, have some other bodily mutilation; for instance, a 
perforation as the 
sign of a blood 
covenant. Wher- 
ever the part of 
the body oper- 
ated upon was 
visible to every 
passer, and the 
operation itself 
was a perfora- 
tion, it might be 
that some object 
might be inserted 
in the opening to 
keep it open and 
to render it con- 
spicuous. In sucli 
a way may have 
arisen the use of 
labrets and ear- 
rings. These 
plugs, at first 
rude, may become beautiful. When tliis occurs, the original re- 
ligious idea may be lost sight of, and tlie perforation may still be 
made simply to admit of ornaments being worn. 

The history of the ear perforation is particularly interesting. 
In its origin this is no doubt as truly a sign of a blood covenant 
as is the Jewish circumcision. It seems possible that the ances- 
tors of the Jews were in compact with a god whose sign of cove- 
nant was ear-piercing. After this god was renounced and Jehovah 




Fig. 12.— Ceremonial Stone Adze with Carved Handle. 
South Seas. 



2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

accepted, ear ]nerciiig among them was heathenism. Whether 
this is so or not, it is certain that the descendants of Ishmael were 
in covenant with such a god. 

Judges, viii, 24, 25 : " And Gideon said unto them, I would 
desire a request of you, that you shouhl give me every man the 
ear-rings of his prey. For they had gohlen ear-rings, hecause they 
were Ishmaelites. And they answered. We will willingly give 
them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every 
man the ear-rings of his prey." And the suggestion of the same 
thing is very strong in Genesis, xxxv, 4 : " And they gave unto 
Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all 
their ear-rings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them 
under the oak which was by Shechem." 

This sign of covenant with some other god than Jehovah crept 
at an early day, like so many other customs of heathenism, into 
the Christian Church. It has gradually disappeared. Lippert 
says that in the early Church it was customary to have the ears 
pierced, at the same time invoking the protection of saints against 
disease. Gradually this dwindled to invocation of a single saint's 
assistance against a single class of diseases — those of the eye. A 
remnant of this still lingers among those people who, in our own 
day and land, claim that they pierce their ears to help their eye- 
sight. Such persons present us the last picture in a series the 
first of which is a savage man, whose ears are pierced merely to 
shed blood for the gratification of a deity whose aid he desires to 
secure. 

We have thus considered a large number of curious and inter- 
esting points regarding dress and adornment. We have seen how 
the curious deformations so widely practiced have arisen, and 
how they are useful. We have queried as to the motives which 
have led to dress development and its results. We have emj^ha- 
sized the influence that the desire for adornment has exercised 
upon man's progress. We have lastly shown how a large number 
of articles of dress and ornament have come to have a religious 
significance, and how many other deformaticms have begun in 
connection with acts of worship. 



The remains of an extinct species of swan are describeil by Mr. II. O. Forbes, 
Director of tlie Canterbury Museum, New Zealand, as having been found in a 
newly discovered cave near Christchiirch. Moa bones, with Maori relics — includ- 
ing implements, carvings, a lock of hnir carefully done up, and other hair— were 
found so associated as to "show incontestably " that the Maori and nioa were con- 
temporaneous. Remains of various animals and other birds than the moa, which 
had been used for food, were found, but no human bones. Some of the birds a]ipear 
to have been of species now extinct in New Zealand, and not elsewhere described. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY, 207 



SOME OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC 
BOTANY.* 

By GEOEGE LINCOLN GOODALE. 
[Concluded.^ 

m Fruits. — Botanically sjjeaking, the cereal grains of 
• which we have spoken are true fruits, that is to say, 
are ripened ovaries, but for all practical purposes they may be 
regarded as seeds. The fruits, of which mention is now to be 
made, are those commonly spoken of in our markets as fruits. 

First of all, attention must be called to the extraordinary 
changes in the commercial relations of fruits by two direct causes : 

(1) The canning industry, and — 

(2) Swift transportation by steamers and railroads. 

The effects of these two agencies are too well known to require 
more than this passing mention. By them the fruits of the best 
fruit-growing countries are carried to distant lands in quantities 
which surprise all who see the statistics for the first time. The 
ratio of increase is very startling. Take, for instance, the figures 
given by Mr. Morris at the time of the great Colonial and Indian 
Exhibition in London. Compare double decades of years : 

1845, £886,888. 

1865, £3,185,984. 

1885, £7,587,523 

In the Colonial Exhibition at London, in 1S8G, fruits from the 
remote colonies were exhibited under conditions which proved 
that, before long, it may be possible to place such delicacies as the 
cherimoyer, the sweet-cup, sweet-sop, rambutan, mango, and 
mangosteen at even our most northern seaports. Furthermore, it 
seems to me likely that, with an increase in our knowledge with 
regard to the microbes which produce decay, we may be able to 
protect the delicate fruits from injury for any reasonable period. 
Methods which will supplement refrigeration are sure to come in 
the very near future, so that, even in a country so vast as our 
own, the most perishable fruits will be transported through its 
length and breadth without harm. 

The canning industry and swift transportation are likely to 
diminish zeal in searching for new fruits, since, as we have seen 
in the case of the cereals, we are prone to move in lines of least 
resistance and leave well enough alone. 

To what extent are our present fruits likely to be improved ? 
Even those who have watched the improvement in the quality of 



* Presidential address delivered before the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science, at Washington, August, 18E1. 



2o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

some of our fruits, like oranges, can liardly realize how great has 
been the improvement within historic times in the character of 
certain pears, apples, and so on. 

The term historic is used advisedly, for there are prehistoric 
fruits which might serve as a point of departure in the consider- 
ation of the question. In the ruins of the lake-dwellings in Switz- 
erland * charred apples have been found, which are, in some 
cases, plainly of small size, hardly equaling ordinary crab-apples. 
But, as Dr. Sturtevant has shown, in certain directions there has 
been no marked change of type ; the change is in quality. 

In comparing the earlier descriptions of fruits with modern 
accounts it is well to remember that the high standards by which 
fruits are now judged are of recent establishment. Fruits which 
would once have been esteemed excellent would to-day be passed 
by as unworthy of regard. 

It seems probable that the list of seedless fruits will be mate- 
rially lengthened, provided our experimental horticulturists make 
use of the material at their command. The common fruits which 
have very few or no seeds are the banana, pineapple, and certain 
oranges. Others mentioned by Mr. Darwin as well known are the 
bread-fruit, pomegranate, azarole or Neapolitan medlar, and date 
palms. In commenting upon these fruits, Mr. Darwin t says that 
most horticulturists " look at the great size and anomalous devel- 
opment of the fruit as the cause and sterility as the result," but 
he holds the opj^osite view as more probable — that is, that the 
sterility, coming about gradually, leaves free for other growth the 
abundant supply of building material which the forming seed 
would otherwise have. He admits, however, that " there is an an- 
tagonism between the two forms of reproduction, by seeds and by 
buds, when either is carried to an extreme degree, which is inde- 
pendent of any incipient sterility." 

Most plant-hybrids are relatively infertile, but by no means 
wholly sterile. With this sterility there is generally augmented 
vegetative vigor, as shown by Nageli. Partial or complete steril- 
ity and corresponding luxuriance of root, stem, leaves, and flower 
may come about in <>ther obscure ways, and such cases are famil- 
iar to botanists.J Now, it seems highly probable that, either by 
hybridizing directed to this special end, or by careful selection of 

* Carbonized apples have been found at Wangen, sometimes whole, sometimes cut in 
two, or, more rarely, into four pieces and evidently dried and put aside for winter use. 
.... They are small and jrenerally resemble those which still ^row wild in the Swiss 
forests ; at Robenhausen, however, specimens have occurred which are of larger size, and 
probably cultivated. No trace of the vine, the walnut, the cherr}', or the damson has yet 
been met with, but stones of the wild plum and the Primus padus have been found." 
Lubbock, loe. cit., p. 217. 

f Animals and Plants under Domestication (American edition), vol. ii, p. 205-209. 

X Gray's Botanical Text Rook, vols, i and ii. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 209 

forms indicating this tendency to tlie correlated changes, we may 
succeed in obtaining important additions to our seedless or nearly 
seedless plants. Whether the ultimate profit would be large 
enough to pay for the time and labor involved is a question which 
we need not enter into ; there appears to me no reasonable doubt 
that such efforts would be successful. There is no reason in the 
nature of things why we should not have strawberries without 
the so-called seeds ; blackberries and raspberries, with only deli- 
cious pulp ; and large grapes as free from seeds as the small 
ones which we call " currants," but which are really grapes from 
Corinth. 

These and the coreless apples and pears of the future, the stone- 
less cherries and plums, like the common fruits before mentioned, 
must be propagated by bud division, and be open to the tendency 
to diminished strength said to be the consequence of continued 
bud-propagation. But this bridge need not be crossed until we 
come to it. Bananas have been perpetuated in this way for many 
centuries, and pineapples since the discovery of America, so that 
the borrowed trouble alluded to is not threatening. First we 
must catch our seedless fruits. 

Which of our wild fruits are promising subjects for selection 
and cultivation ? 

Mr. Crozier, of Michigan, has pointed out * the direction in 
which this research may prove most profitable. He enumerates 
many of our small fruits and nuts which can be improved. 

Another of our most careful and successful horticulturists 
believes that the common blueberry and its allies are very suit- 
able for this purpose and offer good material for experimenting. 
The sugar^plum, or so-called shadbush, has been improved in many 
particulars, and others can be added to this list. 

But again we turn very naturally to Japan, the country from 
which our gardens have received many treasures. Referring once 
more to Prof. Georgeson's studies,! we must mention the varieties 
of Japanese apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, and persim- 
mons. The persimmons are already well known in some parts of 
our country under the name " kaki," and they will doubtless make 
rapid progress in popular favor. 

The following are less f amilar : Actinidia arguta and volubilis, 
with delicious berries ; 

Sfaunfonia, an evergreen vine yielding a palatable fruit ; 

Mijrica rubra, a small tree with an acidulous, juicy fruit ; 

ElcBagnus umhellata, with berries for preserves. 

The active and discriminating horticultural journals in America 
and Europe are alive to the possibilities of new Japanese fruits, 

* American Garden, New York. 1890-'91. f Ibid. 1891. 

VOL. XL. — 17 



210 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

and it can not be very long before our list is considerably in- 
creased. 

It is absolutely necessary to recollect that in most cases varia- 
tions are slight. Dr. Masters and Mr. Darwin have called atten- 
tion to this and have adduced many illustrations, all of which 
show the necessity of extreme patience and caution. The general 
student curious in such matters can have hardly any task more 
instructive than the detection of the variations in such common 
plants as the blueberry, the wild cherry, or the like. It is an ex- 
cellent preparation for a practical study of the variations in our 
wild fruits suitable for selection. 

It was held by the late Dr. Gray that the variations in Nature 
by which species have been evolved were led along useful lines — 
a view which Mr. Darwin regretted he could not entertain. How- 
ever this may be, all acknowledge that by the hand of the culti- 
vator variations can be led along useful lines ; and, furthermore, 
the hand which selects must uphold them in their unequal strife. 
In other words, it is one thing to select a variety and another to 
assist it in maintaining its hold upon existence. Without the 
constant help of the cultivator who selects the useful variety, 
there comes a reversion to the ordinary specific type which is fitted 
to cope with its surroundings. 

I think you can agree with me that the p'rospect for new 
fruits and for improvements in our established favorites is fairly 
good. 

IV. Timbers and Cabinet Woods. — Can we look for new 
timbers and cabinet woods ? Comparatii^ely few of those in com- 
mon use are of recent introduction. Attempts have been made to 
bring into great prominence some of the excellent trees of India 
and Australia which furnish wood of much beauty and timber of 
the best quality. A large projDortion of all the timbers of the 
South Seas are characterized by remarkable firmness of texture 
and high specific gravity.* The same is noticed in many of the 
woods of the Indies. A few of the heavier and denser sorts, like 
jarrah, of West Australia, and sabicu, of the Caribbean Islands, 
have met with deserved favor in England, but the cost of trans- 
portation militates against them. It is a fair question whether in 
certain parts of our country these trees and others which can be 
utilized for veneers may not be cultivated to advantage. Atten- 
tion should be again called to the fact that many plants succeed 
far better in localities which are remote from their origin, but 
where they find conditions substantially like those which they 
have left. This fact, to which we must again refer in detail 
with regard to certain other classes of plants, may have some bear- 

* Useful Native Plants of Australia. By J. H. Maiden, Sydney. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 211 

ing -upon the introduction of new timber trees. Certain draw- 
backs exist with regard to the timber of some of the more rapidly 
growing hard-wood trees which have prevented their taking a 
high place in the scale of values in mechanical engineering. 

One of the most useful soft-wooded trees in the world is the 
kauri. It is restricted in its range to a comparatively small area 
in the North Island of New Zealand. It is now being cut down 
with a recklessness which is as prodigal and shameful as that 
which has marked our own treatment of forests here. It should 
be said, however, that this destruction is under protest ; in spite of 
which it would seem to be a question of only a few years when 
the great kauri groves of New Zealand will be a thing of the past. 
Our energetic Forest Department has on its hands problems just 
like this which perplexes one of the new lands of the South. The 
task in both cases is double : to preserve the old treasures and to 
bring in new. 

The energy shown by Baron von Mueller, the renowned Gov- 
ernment Botanist of Victoria, and by various forest departments 
in encouraging the cultivation of timber trees will assuredly meet 
with success ; one can hardly hope that this success will appear 
fully demonstrated in the lifetime of those now living, but I can 
not think that many years will pass before the promoters of such 
enterprises may take fresh courage. 

In a modest structure in the city of Sydney, New South Wales, 
Mr. Maiden* has brought together, under great dilficulties, a 
large collection of the useful products of the vegetable kingdom 
as represented in Australia. It is impossible to look at the collec- 
tion of woods in that museum, or at the similar and more showy 
one in Kew, without believing that the field of forest culture 
must receive rich material from the southern hemisphere. 

Before leaving this part of our subject it may be well to take 
some illustrations in passing, to show how important is the influ- 
ence exerted upon the utilization of vegetable products by causes 
which may at first strike one as being rather remote. 

1. Photography makes use of the effect of light on chroma- 
tized gelatin to produce under a negative the basis of relief 
plates for engraving. The degree of excellence reached in modi- 
fications of this simple device has distinctly threatened the very 
existence of wood-engraving, and hence follows a diminished de- 
gree of interest in box-wood and its substitutes. 

2. Iron, and in its turn steel, is used in ship-building, and this 
renders of greatly diminished interest all questions which concern 
the choice of the different oaks and similar woods. 

3. But, on the other hand, there is increased activity in certain 

* Useful Native Plants of Australia. By J. H. Maiden, Sydney. 



212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

directions, best illustrated by the extraordinary development of the 
cbemical methods for manufacturing wood-pulp. By the im- 
proved processes, strong fibers suitable for fine felting on the 
screen and fit for the best grades of certain lines of paper are 
given to us from rather inferior sorts of wood. He would be a 
rash prophet who should venture to predict what will be the 
future of this wonderful industry, but it is plain that the time is 
not far distant when acres now worthless may be covered by trees 
under cultivation growing for the pulp-maker. 

There is no department of economic botany more promising 
in immediate results than that of arboriculture. 

V. Vegetable Fibers. — The vegetable fibers known to com- 
merce are either plant-hairs, of which we take cotton as the type, 
or filaments of bast-tissue, represented by flax. No new plant- 
hairs have been suggested which can compete in any way for 
spinning with those yielded by the species of Gossijpium, or cot- 
ton, but experiments more or less systematic and thorough are 
being carried on with regard to the improvement of the varieties 
of the species. Plant-hairs for the stuffing of cushions and pillows 
need not be referred to in connection with this subject. 

Countless sorts of plants have been suggested as sources of 
good bast-fibers for spinning and for cordage, and many of these 
make capital substitutes for those already in the factories. But 
the questions of cheapness of production, and of subsequent prep- 
aration for use, have thus far militated against success. There 
may be much difference between the profits promised by a labora- 
tory experiment and those resulting from the same process con- 
ducted on a commercial scale. The existence of such differences 
has been the rock on which many enterprises seeking to intro- 
duce new fibers have been wrecked. 

In dismissing this portion of our subject it may be said that 
a process for separating fine fibers from undesirable structural 
elements, and from resin-like substances which accompany them, 
is a great desideratum. If this were supplied, many new species 
would assume great prominence at once. 

VI. Tanning Materials. — What new tanning materials can 
be confidently sought for ? In his Useful Native Plants of 
Australia, Mr. Maiden * describes over thirty species of " wattles " 
or Acacias, and about half as many Eucalypts, which have been 
examined for the amount of tanning material contained in the bark. 
In all, eighty-seven Australian species have been under examina- 
tion. Besides this, much has been done looking in the same direc- 
tion at the suggestion and under the direction of Baron von 
Mueller, of Victoria. This serves to indicate how great is the 

* Useful Native Plants of Australia. By C. H. Maiden, Sydney. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 213 

interest in this subject, and how wide is the field in onr own 
country for the introduction of new tanning plants. 

It seems highly probable, however, that artificial tanning sub- 
stances will at no distant day replace the crude matters now 
employed. 

VII. Resins, etc. — Resins, oils, gums, and medicines from the 
vegetable kingdom would next engage our attention if they did 
not seem rather too technical for this occasion, and to possess an 
interest on the whole somewhat too limited. But an allied sub- 
stance may serve to represent this class of products and indicate 
the drift of present research. 

India Rubber* — Under this term are included numerous sub- 
stances which possess a physical and chemical resemblance to each 
other. An Indian Ficus, the early source of supply, soon became 
inadequate to furnish the quantity used in the arts even when the 
manipulation of rubber was almost unknown. Later, supplies 
came from Hevea of Brazil, generally known as Para rubber, and 
from Castilloa, sometimes called Central American rubber, and 
from Maniliot Glaziovii, Ceara rubber. Not only are these plants 
now successfully cultivated in experimental gardens in the tropics, 
but many other rubber-yielding species have been added to the 
list. The Landolpliias are among the most promising of the 
whole : these are the African rubbers. Now, in addition to these, 
which are the chief source of supply, we have Willughbeia, from 
the Malayan Peninsula, Leuconotis, Chilocarpus, Alstonia, Fors- 
teronia, and a species of a genus formerly known as Urostigma, 
but now united with Ficus. These names, which have little sig- 
nificance as they are here pronounced in passing, are given now 
merely to impress upon our minds the fact that the sources of a 
single commercial article may be exceedingly diverse. Under 
these circumstances search is being made not only for the best 
varieties of these species but for new species as well. 

There are few excursions in the tropics which possess greater 
interest to a botanist who cares for the industrial aspects of plants 
than the walks through the garden at Buitenzorg in Java and at 
Singapore. At both these stations the experimental gardens lie 
at some distance from the great gardens which the tourist is ex- 
pected to visit, but the exertion well repays him for all discomfort. 
Under the almost vertical rays of the sun are here gathered the 
rubber-yielding plants from different countries, all growing under 
conditions favorable for decisions as to their relative value. At 
Buitenzorg a well-equipped laboratory stands ready to answer 
practical questions as to quality and composition of their products, 
and year by year the search extends. 



* See note (*), p. 11. 



214 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

I mention this not as an isolated example of what is being ac- 
complished in commercial botany, but as a fair illustration of the 
thoroughness with which the problems are being attacked. It 
should be further stated that at the garden in question assiduous 
students of the subject are eagerly welcomed and are provided 
with all needed appliances for carrying on technical, chemical, and 
pharmaceutical investigations. Therefore I am justified in saying 
that there is every reason for believing that in the very near fu- 
ture new sources of our most important products will be opened 
up, and new areas placed under successful cultivation. 

At this point attention must be called to a very modest and 
convenient hand-book on the Commercial Botany of the Nineteenth 
Century, by Mr. Jackson, of the Botanical Museum attached to the 
Royal Gardens, Eew, which not only embodies a great amount of 
well-arranged information relative to the new useful plants, but 
is, at the same time, a record of the existing state of things in all 
these departments of activity. 

VIII. Fragrant Plants.— Another illustration of our subject 
might be drawn from a class of plants which repays close study 
from a biological point of view, namely, those which yield per- 
fumes. 

In speaking of the future of our fragrant plants we must dis- 
tinguish between those of commercial value and those of purely 
horticultural interest. The former will be less and less cultivated 
in proportion as synthetic chemistry by its manufacture of per- 
fumes replaces the natural by the artificial products, for example, 
coumarin, vanillin, nerolin, heliotropin, and even oil of winter- 
green. 

But do not understand me as intimating that chemistry can 
ever furnish substitutes for living fragrant plants. Our gardens 
will always be sweetened by them, and the possibilities in this 
direction will continue to extend both by contributions from 
abroad and by improvement in our present cultivated varieties. 
Among the foreign acquisitions are the fragrant species of Andro- 
pogon. Who would suspect that the tropical relatives of our sand- 
loving grasses are of high commercial value as sources of per- 
fumery oils ? 

The utility to the plant of fragrance in the flower, and the 
relation of this to cross-fertilization, are apparent to even a casual 
observer. But the fragrance of an aromatic leaf does not always 
give us the reason for its being. 

It has been suggested for certain cases that the volatile oils 
escaping from the plants in question may, by absorption, exert a 
direct influence in mitigating the fierceness of action of the sun's 
rays. Other explanations have also been made, some of which are 
even more fanciful than the last. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 215 

When, however, one has seen that the aromatic plants of Aus- 
tralia are almost free from attacks of insects and fungi, and has 
learned to look on the impregnating substances in some cases as 
protective against predatory insects and small foes of all kinds, 
and in others as fungicidal, he is tempted to ask whether all the 
substances of marked odor which we find in certain groups of 
plants may not play a similar role. 

It is a fact of great interest to the surgeon that in many plants 
there is associated with the fragrant principle a marked antiseptic 
or fungicidal quality ; conspicuous examples of this are afforded 
by species of eucalyptus, yielding eucalyptol; Styrax, yielding 
styrone ; Thymus, yielding thymol. It is interesting to note, too, 
that some of these most modern antiseptics were important con- 
stituents in the balsamic vulneraries of the earliest surgery. 

Florists' plants and the floral fashions of the future constitute 
an engaging subject which we can touch only lightly. It is rea- 
sonably clear that while the old favorite species will hold their 
ground in the guise of improved varieties, the new introductions 
will come in the shape of plants with flowering branches which 
retain their blossoms for a somewhat long period, and especially 
those in which the flowers precede the leaves. In short, the next 
real fashion in our gardens is probably to be the flowering shrub 
and flowering tree, like those which are such favorites in the 
country from which the Western world has gladly taken the gift 
of the chrysanthemum. 

Twice each year, of late, a reception has been held by the 
Emperor and Empress of Japan. The receptions are in autumn 
and in the spring. That in the autumn, popularly known as the 
Emperor's reception, has for its floral decorations the myriad 
forms of the national flower, the chrysanthemum ; that which is 
given in spring, the Empress's reception, comes when the cherry 
blossoms are at their best. One has little idea of the wealth of 
beauty in masses of flowering shrubs and trees until he has seen 
the floral displays in the Imperial Gardens and the Temple grounds 
in Tokio. 

To Japan* and China also we are indebted for many of the 
choicest plants of our gardens, but th& supply of species is by no 
means exhausted. By far the larger number of the desirable 
plants have already found their way into the hands of cultivators, 
but often under conditions which have restricted their dissemi- 
nation through the flower-loving community. There are many 
which ought to be widely known, especially the fascinating dwarf 

* The Flowers of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement. By Josiah Conder, 
F. R. I. B. A., Architect to the Imperial Japanese Government. Yokohama, 1S91. See 
also two other works by the same author : Theory of Japanese Flower Arrangements, and 
Art of Landscape Gardening in Japan. (1886.) 



2i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

shrubs and dwarf trees of the far East, which are sure to find 
sooner or later a warm welcome among us. 

X. Forage Plants.— Next to the food-plants for man, there 
is no single class of commercial plants of greater interest than 
the food-plants for flocks and herds. Forage plants, wild and 
cultivated, are among the most important and highly valued re- 
sources of vast areas. No single question is of more vital con- 
sequence to our farthest West and Southwest. 

It so happens that the plants on which the pastoralist relies 
grow or are grown on soil of inferior value to the agriculturist. 
Even soil which is almost sterile may possess vegetation on which 
flocks and herds may graze; and, further, these animals may 
thrive in districts where the vegetation appears at first sight too 
scanty or too forbidding even to support life. There are im- 
mense districts in parts of the Australian continent where flocks 
are kept on plants so dry and desert-like that an inexperienced 
person would pass them by as not fit for his sheep, and yet, as 
Mr. Samuel Dixon* has well shown, these plants are of high 
nutritive value and are attractive to flocks. 

Eelegatiug to the notes to be published with this address brief 
descriptions of a few of the fodder-plants suggested for use in 
dry districts, I shall now mention the salt-bushes of various sorts, 
and the allied desert plants of Australia, as worth a careful trial 
on some of our very dry regions in the farthest West. There are 
numerous other excellent fodder-plants adapted to dry but not 
parched areas which can be brought in from the corresponding 
districts of the southern hemisphere and from the East. 

At an earlier stage of this address I have had occasion to refer 
to Baron von Mueller, whose efforts looking toward the intro- 

* Mr. Samuel Dixon's list is in vol. viii (for 1884-'85) of the Transactions and Proceed- 
ings and Report of the Royal Society of South Australia. Adelaide, G. Robertson, 1886. 
Bursaria spinosa : " A good stand-by," after the grasses dry up. Pomaderris racemosa, 
" stands stocking well." Pittosporum phyllaeroides : " Sheep exceedingly partial to its 
foliage." Casuarina quadrivalvis : *' Tenderness of fiber of wool would be prevented by it 
in our finer wool districts." Acacias, the wattles : " Value as an astringent, very great," 
being curative of a malady often caused by eating frozen grass. Acacia aneura (mulga) : 
" Must be very nutritious to all animals eating it." This is the plant which is such a 
terror to the stockmen who have to ride through the " scrub." Cassia, some of the species 
with good pods and leaves for sheep. The foregoing are found in districts which are 
not wholly arid. The following are, more properly, " dry " plants. Sida petrophila : " As 
much liked by sheep as by marsupials." Dodonwaviscosa, native hop-bush : "Likes warm, 
red, sandy ground." Lycium amirale: " Drought never seems to affect it." Kochia aphylla : 
" All kinds of stock are often largely dependent on it during protracted droughts." 
Rhagodia parabolica : " Produces a good deal of foliage." Atriplex vesicaria : " Can be 
readily grown wherever the climate is not too wet." I have transferred only those which 
Mr. Dixon thinks most worthy of trial. Compare also Dr. Vasey's valuable studies of the 
plants of our dry lands, especially grasses and forage plants (1878), grasses of the arid 
districts of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado (1886), grasses of the South (1887). 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 217 

duction of useful plants into Australasia have been aided largely 
by bis convenient treatise on economic plants.* It may be said 
in connection with the fodder-plants, especially, that much which 
the baron has written can be applied mutatis mutandis to parts 
of our own country. 

The important subject of introducing fodder-plants has been 
purposely reserved to the last because it permits us to examine a 
practical point of great interest. This is the caution which it is 
thought necessary to exercise when a species is transferred by our 
own choice from one country to another, I say by our choice, for, 
whether we wish it or not, certain plants will introduce themselves. 
In these days of frequent and intimate intercommunication be- 
tween different countries, the exclusion of foreign plants is simply 
impossible. Our common weeds are striking illustrations of the 
readiness with which plants of one country make for themselves 
a home in another, f All but two of the prominent weeds of the 
Eastern States are foreign intruders. 

There are all grades of persistence in these immigrants. Near 
the ballast grounds of every harbor, or the fields close by woolen 
and paper mills where foreign stock is used, you will observe 
many foreign plants which have been introduced by seed. For 
many of these you will search in vain a second year. A few 
others persist for a year or two longer, but with uncertain tenure 
of the land which they have invaded ; others still have come to 
stay. But happily some of the intruders, which seem at first to 
gain a firm foothold, lose their ground after a while. We have a 
conspicuous example of this in a hawkweed, which was very 
threatening in New England two years ago, but is now relaxing 
its hold. 

Another illustration is afforded by a water-plant which we 
have given to the Old "World. This plant, called in our botanies 
Anacliaris, or Elodea, is, so far as I am aware, not troublesome 
in our ponds and water-ways, but when it was carried to England, 
perhaps as a plant for the aquarium, it was thrown into streams 
and rivers with a free hand. It spread with remarkable rapidity 
and became such an unmitigated nuisance that it was called a 
curse. Efforts to extirpate it merely increased its rate of growth. 
Its days of mischief are, however, nearly over, or seem to be draw- 
ing to a close ; at least so Mr. Lynch, of the Botanic Garden in 
Cambridge, England, and others of my informants think. The 
history of the plant shows that even under conditions which, so 

* See note, p. 59. 

f The weeds of German gardens and agricultural lands are mostly from Mediterranean 
regions, but the invasions in the uncultivated districts are chiefly from America (such as 
(Enothcra^ MimuJus, Ricdheckia). Handbuch der PJlanzengeograpJiie, von Dr. Oscar 
Drude (Stuttgart), 1890, p. 97. 



2i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

far as we can see, are identical with, those under which the plant 
grew in its home, it may for a time take a fresh, lease of life and 
thrive with an undreamed-of energy. 

What did Anacharis find in the waters of England and the 
Continent that it did not have at home, and why should its energy 
begin to wane now ? 

In Australasia one of the most striking of these intruders is 
sweet-brier. Introduced as a hedge plant, it has run over certain 
lands like a weed, and disputes every acre of some arable plats. 
From the facility with which it is j)ropagated it is almost in- 
eradicable. There is something astounding in the manner in 
which it gains and holds its ground. Gorse and brambles and 
thistles are troublesome in some localities, and they prove much 
less easy to control than in Europe. The effect produced on the 
mind of the colonist by these intruding pests is everywhere the 
same. Whenever, in an examination of the plants likely to be 
worthy of trial in our American dry lands, the subject was men- 
tioned by me to Australians, I was always enjoined to be cautious 
as to what plants I might suggest for introduction from their 
country into our own. My good friends insisted that it was bad 
enough to have as pests the plants which come in witliout our 
planning or choice, and this caution seems to me one which should 
not be forgotten. 

It would take us too far from our path to inquire what can be 
the possible reasons for such increase of vigor and fertility in 
l^lants which are transferred to a new home. We should have to 
examine all the suggestions which have been made, such as fresh 
soil, new skies, more efficient animal friends, or less destructive 
enemies. We should be obliged also to see whether the possible 
wearing out of the energy of some of these plants after a time 
might not be attributable to the decadence of vigor through un- 
interrupted bud-propagation, and we should have to allude to 
many other questions allied to these. But for this time fails. 

Lack of time also renders it impossible to deal w^ith the ques- 
tions which attach themselves to our main question, especially as 
to the limits of effect which cultivation may produce. We can 
not touch the problem of inheritance of acquired peculiarities, or 
the manner in which cultivation predisposes the plant to innu- 
merable modifications. Two of these modifications may be men- 
tioned in passing, because they serve to exemplify the practical 
character of our subject. 

Cultivation brings about in plants very curious morphological 
changes. For example, in the case of a well-known vegetable the 
number of metamorphosed type-leaves forming the ovary is two, 
and yet under cultivation the number increases irregularly until 
the full number of units in the type of the flower is reached. 



POSSIBILITIES OF ECONOMIC BOTANY. 219 

Prof Bailey, of Cornell, has called attention to some further in- 
teresting changes in the tomato, but the one mentioned suffices 
to illustrate the direction of variation which plants under culti- 
vation are apt to take. Monstrosities are very apt to occur in 
cultivated plants, and under certain conditions may be perpetu- 
ated in succeeding generations, thus widening the field from which 
utilizable plants may be taken. 

Another case of change produced by cultivation is likewise as 
yet wholly unexplained, although much studied, namely, the mu- 
tual interaction of scion and stock in grafting, budding, and the 
like. It is probable that a further investigation of this subject 
may yet throw light on new possibilities in plants. 

We have now arrived at the most practical question of all, 

namely— . j j 

In what way can the range of commercial botany be extended .-' 
In what manner or by what means can the introduction of new 
species be hastened ? 

It is possible that some of you are unaware of the great amount 
of uncoordinated work which has been done and is now in hand 
in the direction of bringing in new plants. 

The competition between the importers of new plants is so 
great both in the Old World and the New that a very large pro- 
portion of the species which would naturally commend them- 
selves for the use of florists, for the adornment of greenhouses, 
or for commercial ends, have been at one time or another brought 
before the public or are being accumulated in stock. The same 
is true, although to a less extent, with regard to useful vegetables 
and fruit. Hardly one of those which we can suggest as desirable 
for trial has not already been investigated in Europe or this 
country, and reported on. The pages of our chemical, pharma- 
ceutical, medical, horticultural, agricultural, and trade journals, 
especially those of high grade, contain a wealth of material of 
this character.* 

But what is needed is this, that the promising i^lants should 
be systematically investigated under exhaustive conditions. It 
is not enough that an enthusiast here, or an amateur there, should 
give a plant a trial under imperfectly understood conditions, and 
then report success or failure. The work should be thorough and 
every question answered categorically, so that we might be placed 
in possession of all the facts relative to the object experimented 
upon. But such an undertaking requires the co-operation of many 
different agencies. I shall venture to mention some of these. 
In the first place— botanic gardens amply endowed for re- 



* The list of economic plants published by the department in Washington is remark- 
ably full, and is in every way creditable to those in charge. 



220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

searcli. The Arnold Arboretum, the Shaw Garden, and the 
Washington Experimental Garden are American illustrations 
of what is needed for this purpose. University gardens have 
their place in instruction, but can not wisely undertake this kind 
of work. 

In the second place — museums and laboratories of economic 
botany. Much good work in this direction has been done in this 
country by the National Museum and by the department in 
charge of the investigation of new plants. "We need institu- 
tions like those at Kew in England, and at Buitenzorg in Java, 
which keep in close touch with all the world. The founding of 
an establishment on a scale of magnitude commensurate with the 
greatness and needs of our country is an undertaking which waits 
for some one of our wealthy men. 

In the third place — experiment stations. These may, within 
the proper limits of their sphere of action, extend the study of 
plants beyond the established varieties to the species, and beyond 
the species to equivalent species in other genera. It is a matter 
of regret that so much of the energy displayed in these stations 
in this country, and we may say abroad, has not been more eco- 
nomically directed. 

Great economy of energy must result from the recent change 
by which co-ordination of action is assured. The influence which 
the stations must exert on the welfare of our country and the de- 
velopment of its resources is incalculable. 

In the last place, but by no means least, the co-operation of all 
who are interested in scientific matters, through their observation 
of isolated and associated phenomena connected with plants of 
supposed utility, and by the cultivation of such plants by private 
individuals, unconnected with any State, governmental, or aca- 
demic institutions. 

By these agencies, wisely directed and energetically employed, 
the domains of commercial and industrial botany will be en- 
larged. To some of the possible results in these domains I have 
endeavored to call your attention. 



The stock of diamonds, according to the calculations of Iron, has increased 
enormously during the past fifteen years. The product of the African mines, 
1,500,000 carats in 1876, was 4,000,000 carats in 1889. Still, the demand for 
diamonds increases, and the price rises every year. The traffic in diamonds is 
essentially different from all other trades in the single item that the product is 
never consumed. While there is a perceptible wear even in gold and silver, a 
diamond, once cut, is permanently added to the stock, and is liable to come upon 
the market at any time. Yet a place and eager purchasers are found for all the 
new ones. 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTICUT. 221 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTICUT. 

By Pkof. WILLIAM MOEEIS DAVIS. 

SEVERAL years ago, while walking down the lower Connecti- 
cut valley with a party of students, we chanced upon a curi- 
ous ledge of rock surmounting a low ridge hy the road that runs 
from Berlin to Meriden, about half-way between Hartford and 
New Haven. A scramble up the slope through a bushy growth 
of young trees led to the foot of the ledge— a thick bed of gray- 
greenish rock, not in layers like limestone or sandstone, not crys- 
talline like granite or gneiss, but of a loose, structureless texture, 
here and there carrying roughly rounded blocks of a dense, dark 
rock which we knew to be an old lava, from its resemblance to 
the rocks ejected from modern volcanoes. Although a ledge of 
this kind is not of ordinary occurrence, its features were so well 
marked that there could be little doubt of its nature and origin ; 
it was a bed of volcanic ashes, interspersed with blocks or bombs 
of lava that must have been thrown from some neighboring vent 
long ago in the ancient time when the rocks of the valley were 
made. The ash-bed lay upon a series of muddy sandstones that 




Fig. 1. 

had evidently been formed under water, for they were deposited 
in layers, just as sand and mud are now when they are washed 
into a pond ; and to all appearances the eruption of the ashes and 
bombs had taken place during the accumulation of the sandstones. 
The ashes had fallen into the water and settled down gently on 
the soft, sandy mud at the bottom ; one of the dense lava blocks 
was seen to have indented itself in the sandy layers, bending them 
down on either side of it, just as if it had been an early product of 



222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the eruption, arriving here before the ashes, plunging down after 
its lofty flight through the air, and sinking into the mud at the 
bottom of the water. In this it recalls the reptilian footprints 
that have made the sandstones of the valley famous. The old 
reptiles walked over the mud-flats and left their heavy j)rints on 
the surface to be buried under the next layer of mud ; the lava 
block fell into the soft sandy mud and made its print, where it 
still lies. Long may it rest undisturbed ! A poor indication of it 
is presented in Fig. 1, copied from a photograph by a friend in 
New Britain, Conn. All this was much more evident and more 
easily interpreted than those who try to learn geology from books 
are disposed to believe. Indeed, one of the students with me ex- 
claimed : " This is the most realistic thing I ever saw ; I had no 
idea that it could be so plainly made out." The ledge has been 
visited by hundreds of persons from Meriden and the surrounding 
towns, and a well-beaten j^ath now leads up to it from the road. 
I have taken parties of students there every summer since then, 
and hope to do my share toward beating down that path for 
many years to come. But although the meaning of the ash-bed 
is plain enough, there is a question suggested by it that is not so 
easily answered. Where is the volcano from which the ashes and 
bombs were blown out ? 

The same question has arisen in other countries. For example, 
in central France, in Auvergne, there are chalky beds that were 
once a soft white mud, and in these lie bombs of lava, bending 
down the layers on either side ; manifestly again the result of a 
bombardment from some adjacent volcano. In the same district 
there are beds of ashes and flows of lava, all indicating volcanic 
outbursts in their vicinity ; but when the question is there asked — 
Where are the volcanoes from which these products came ? — it is 
easily answered, for many volcanic cones still stand up in plain 
sight near by ; the lava-flows may be traced up to their bases, the 
craters are still visible at the summits, and although no record 
exists of their eruptions, it is manifest that at a relatively recent 
prehistoric period these cones exhibited a brisk activity. I 
walked over them a dozen years ago ; they make a delightful 
strolling and sketching ground, and I remember well lunching 
with a shepherd on one of their sunny slopes, and answering his 
questions about distant America (Fig. 2). 

We may look in vain for volcanic cones in the neighborhood of 
our Meriden ash-bed bluff. There are hills and ridges all around, 
butnowhere can we see the smooth and characteristic concave slopes 
of a volcanic cone. To the south, there are several symmetrically 
rounded hills, but they are convex, not concave, on the side, and 
an examination of the road-cuts made in their slopes shows them 
to be of anything but volcanic origin. They are " drumlins/' hills 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTICUT. 223 



o). They give no clew to the source 
we 2:0 west or east of the ash-bed 




COMt"^ _J.-^^-— --- 




LAUCHADtCHC 



of rubbish that were left there and given their even form when 
the whole of New England was buried in a deep sheet of moving 
ice, as Greenland is now (Fig. 
of the bombs and ashes. If 
ledge, there are high 
ridges, six or seven 
hundred feet above 
the valley, with gen- 
tle slopes on the east, 
and bold, rocky cliffs, 
descending to a long 
stony talus on the 
west. The one next 
east of us is Mount 
Lamentation ; it may 
be well seen eastward 
from the railroad be- 
tween Hartford and 
Meriden while the 
train is passing a 
pond. The ash -bed 
ledge can be seen at 
the same time under 
the southern end of 
Lamentation, but it is 
not a conspicuous ob- 
ject a mile away. 
Lamentation and its 
fellows are not the 
least like volcanoes, 

and yet they confirm the belief that volcanoes must have once 
existed hereabouts ; for these high ridges are of lava, the edges 
of great tilted lava-flows that were poured out at intervals during 
the deposition of hundreds and thousands of feet of sandstones. 
Our ash-bluff is indeed 



only a part of one of 
these parallel lava- 
ridges ; when traced 
north and south lava 
may be found lying 
on the ash -bed. Lamentation is higher, because its lava -flow 
is much thicker than that in the ash-bed ridge, and therefore 
has not been worn down so low. On the back of these flows, at 
one point and another, may be seen the slaggy, bubbly surface 
of the lava, like that poured out of Vesuvius or any other mod- 
ern volcano ; but these ancient lavas have been deeply buried in 




Fia. 2. 




Fig. 3. 



224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

sands and muds, and tilted up and worn down, during the evolu- 
tion of their present form. There is a quarry at Meriden where 
one lava-sheet may be seen lying directly upon the scoriaceous, 
ropy surface of an older one. Evidently, the region has witnessed 
volcanic action, as the ash-bed implied. Perhaps we fail to recog- 
nize the cone at the point of outburst because it has been partly 
worn away. There are many volcanic regions where the eruptive 
action is not so recent as in Auvergne, and where the cones are 
consequently somewhat out of repair ; deep gulleys furrow their 
sides and destroy their symmetrical form. Something of this may, 
indeed, be seen in Auvergne, for the volcanoes there are not all 
of the same age. Some are sadly wasted, and are recognized 
as volcanoes only because their remnants of lava-flows and ash- 
beds all slope away from a central lava-mass, which marks the 
place of the vent. It is chiefly in this way that the Madeira Islands 
differ from the Azores ; the latter possess many cones of regular 
form, but the older volcanoes on the former are deeply dissected ; 
so much so that it is difficult to reconstruct the original cones 
from which the present rugged hills and ridges have been carved 
out. The same contrast may be seen on a grand scale in the 
Hawaiian Islands, as described by Dana. The most southeastern 
of the group is the most recent. It is the largest, and is in the 
best repair; not a volcanic cone of the usual steep-sided form, 
indeed, but of long, smooth, gentle slopes, because its lavas were 
too liquid when erupted to stand on steep slopes such as are 
formed by heaps of ashes and cinders. Other islands farther to 
the northwest in the same group are mere wrecks; their edges 
are cut off by the waves, forming great sea-cliffs, their slopes are 
scored by deep ravines and canons, and their once even profiles are 
replaced now by sharply notched outlines. Yet nothing of even 
those angular forms is to be found about Meriden. If the absence 
of the cone from which the ashes came is due to wearing away, 
it must truly have been worn out. 

There is, however, another method of disposing of volcanoes 
that has been practiced in Italy. The cone has either been blown 
to pieces and scattered by violent eruptions, or has been allowed 
to sink down by the withdrawal of lava from beneath its founda- 
tions. In either case, a great basin, often holding a lake, marks 
the site of the lost cone. There are several lakes of this kind in 
Italy — Trasimeno, Bolsena, Bracciano, and others ; Sumatra pos- 
sesses some huge basins of the same pattern ; but there are no 
such basins in Connecticut. There are no lakes at all near Meri- 
den, and the lakes in the back country are only old valleys ob- 
structed by glacial drift. 

There is an account of an old volcanic region out in New Mex- 
ico that may, perhaps, guide our search. In the district of the 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTICUT. 225 




w^ 



Fig. 4. 



Zuni plateaus, Dutton describes numerous relatively small iso- 
lated buttes or sharply conical hills, steeper sided than volcanic 
cones, of a different profile, and without the crater at the top. 
They consist of dense lava, not in laj^ers spread out from a cen- 
tral vent upon the surrounding surface, but in a solid mass with 
columnar structure ; and 
at their bases it is some- 
times possible to see that 
they are inclosed on all 
sides by the country 
rock. It is believed that 
these buttes are nothing 
more than lava - plugs, 
frozen solid in the pipes up through which the lava rose at the 
time of eruption from its deep source to the surface where it 
overflowed ; but that the time of eruption is so long ago that the 
cones and all the surface outpourings are worn away, and only 
the stumps of the plugs remain to tell the tale. Fig. 6 attempts 
to show the early and late forms, one below the other. Struct- 
ures of the same kind are 

known in the Black Hills, r^^^^ 

in Scotland, and elsewhere. 
Perhaps this hint will help 
us in understanding Con- 
necticut. 

There is one thing about 
the ash-bed and lava-sheets 
in Connecticut that is cer- 
tainly favorable to the sug- 
gestion given by the Zuni buttes. The lava-sheets are not now 
level, as they undoubtedly were when they were poured out ; but 
all the series of sandstones, ash-beds, lava-sheets, and the rest have 
been lifted up together on the western side of the valley, so that 
they slant down or dip to the eastward at a moderate angle. Stand- 
ing on the bluff of the ash-bed, it is easy to trace its edge north and 
south, and to perceive that it is continued slanting underground 
on the east, and to imagine that it was once continued upward 
into the air on the west ; for on this side the uplifting exposed it 
to the patient, persistent attack of the weather, by which in the 
course of ages it may have been greatly worn away. In the same 
way, other lava-ridges in the neighborhood, such as Mount Lam- 
entation and the beautiful Hanging Hills, are simply the worn 
edges of lava-sheets that still plunge underground eastward, and 
that once rose high into the air westward. 

It follows from this new understanding that if the vent, from 
which the ashes were blown and the lavas poured, lay to the east 

VOL. XL. — 18 







Fig, 5. 




226 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Volcanic conS- 




COMDVIT AND OVERI^Lg'*Vf.D *r THIS Lo/c ■ 







of the ash-bed ridge, it must be still underground and not dis- 
coverable at present. It may be revealed to distant future ages, 
but to us it is buried. But if the vent lay to the west of the 
ridge, it may be discovered, not as the cone for which we looked 
at first, but as a pipe or neck of lava. Indeed, it must in this 
case be discoverable, for the lava and ashes must somewhere have 

risen from a deep subterranean 
reservoir, through the country 
rocks, up to the surface ; and if 
their point of escape lie west of 
the ash-bed ridge, it must be in 
sight somewhere. We may not 
now hope to find the cone where 
the lavas rose and burst out 
through the body of water in 
which the muddy sandstones 
were accumulating ; we can not 
now hope to discover the crater 
from which the ashes and bombs 
were scattered far and wide, and 
from whose flanks the lava-floods 
were poured over the low grounds 
around about it ; but we may 
hope to find a knob or hill where 
the lava -pipe has been worn 
down to an undetermined depth beneath the surface on which 
its cone was built. 

This seems to be the fact. Some ten miles southwest of Meri- 
den lie the rugged Blue Hills, one of which is known as Mount 
Carmel. These may be seen to the west of Wallingford, on the 
railroad between New Haven and Hartford, or east of Mount 
Carmel station on the New Haven and Northampton Railroad. 
They consist of a network of thick necks and dikes of lava ; not 
of loose texture like the ashes, not slaggy like the backs of the 
lava-sheets, but dense and solid, as if they had been driven there 
under great pressure. Mount Carmel and its fellows have not the 
simple outline of the Zuni buttes; they are of irregular form, 
corresponding to their complicated structure, as if a compound 
fracture had been opened to give passage to the ascending lavas, 
or as if repeated eruptions had forced their way surfaceward at 
this point, every one increasing the size and complexity of the 
lava pipes and cracks. There is no other vent of the kind to be 
found so near to the ash-bed and lava ridges of the Meriden dis- 
trict as Mount Carmel ; and while it is entirely possible that a 
vent may exist at a less distance on the east, concealed beneath 
the overlying strata in that direction, it is at least permissible 



— 








VV\fl 


Sa HOT VET 




EROoep. XHRO' 






w 


HI CM THE- 


CONJ3U/T RIS£-S 


"~" 


F"RO/vi /SM 


UAJKNOWN pEPTH. 










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Fig. 6. 



THE LOST VOLCA.VOES OF CONNECTICUT. 227 

and plausible to regard Mount Carmel and the Blue Hills as the 
source of the ashes and bombs and lava-sheets over by Meriden 
and up and down the valley. 

The Blue Hills have rough slopes to climb, but the view from 
their tops and the suggestion of ptist history that one gains there 
pay for the labor of the scramble. It is easily understood that 
the rocks are lavas and that they have ascended through the sur- 
rounding rocks from some deep source. It is manifest that they 
did not rise from below when the surface of the country had its 
present form, for in that case they must have flowed down into 
the low lands on all sides, and they must have had the slaggy 
and scoriaceous texture characteristic of surface lavas. One can 
not doubt that when the lavas of the Blue Hills were placed in 
their present relation to their surroundings they were deep un- 
derground, inclosed by rocky walls on all sides, and heavily 
pressed upon by the mass above. They forced their way upward 
from some deep reservoir of molten lava because the push upon 
them was even greater than the heavy resistance from above. 
They reached the surface at last, hundreds or thousands of feet 
above the present summit of the Blue Hills, and there burst out 
in true volcanic eruption, forming a conical island in the great 
estuary in which the valley sandstones were formed. We can 
hardly suppose that they built a grand cone, like Fujiyama, in 
Japan, twelve thousand feet above sea-level ; perhaps they only 
formed a small mound, like the little temporary volcanic island 
that appeared in the middle Mediterranean in 1831, called Graham 
Island, Isle Julia, and Nerita, by its various discoverers. But 
the Blue Hills were undoubtedly in eruption more than once. 
This may be safely inferred from the complex network of their 
pipes and dikes, as well as from the repeated occurrence of lava 
flows among the series of bedded rocks in the Meriden district. 
In this respect, as in others, the Blue Hills were like volcanoes of 
our times. Some of their outpourings were more plentiful than 
others. Mount Lamentation is part of a lava-sheet whose thick- 
ness must be from three to four hundred feet, and whose total 
original area must have been at least two or three hundred 
square miles. But the other sheets are not so massive as this 
one ; they indicate eruptions of less energy. While the erup- 
tions were going on there must have been a great scurrying 
about of the old reptiles whose tracks are found on the sandstone 
beds at various points in the valley ; perhaps the patient searcher 
may some day find one of their skeletons buried under the ashes 
of an eruption, just as the old Pompeians have been found buried 
under the mud and ashes from the outburst of Vesuvius that 
destroyed their city. During the intervals of rest between the 
eruptions a luxuriant growth of tree-ferns may have clothed the 



228 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



slopes of the volcanic island, for leaves of cycads are found in 
the neighboring beds of shales. And yet all this is gone. The 
volcanoes are only things of the imagination. The Blue Hills 
mark the conduits through which they were fed with lavas, but 
the cones are lost in the empty air above ; only the deep roots of 
the structure are now preserved for us. 

Perhaps the accompanying diagrams may aid the reader in 
gaining a fuller understanding of the geological history of the 
region. They are drawn from a wooden model that was prepared 
for exhibition before the Geological Society of America at its last 
winter meeting in Washington. The first (Fig. 7) represents a 

block of the Trias- 
sic formation, ly- 
ing horizontally on 
its deep crystalline 
foundation, the 
whole representing 
a cube of about 
ten miles on a side, 
and hence showing 
a hundred square 
miles of upper sur- 

— face. The oblique 

lines across the top 
need not be consid- 
ered for the present. 
The horizontal lines 
around the sides 
near the top are the interbedded lava-sheets, and all these, with the 
sandstones and shales, lie on the upturned eroded edges of the 
foundation of old crystalline rocks. The bedded rocks were spread 
out in the old sinking estuary in deposits of great volume, aggre- 
gating ten or twelve thousand feet in thickness at least, but al- 
ways in shallow water, for they frequently show cross-bedding 
and ripple marks, and sometimes mud-cracks and rain-drops, 
and occasionally even foot-prints of various kinds. The famous 
Hitchcock collection, in the Amherst College Museum, illustrates 
all these features in great variety. During the period of accumu- 
lation of the bedded rocks there were at least three epochs of con- 
siderable volcanic activity. About half of the total thickness of 
the strata had been deposited when the first outburst took place, 
and this is the one that yielded the ashes and bombs at Meriden. 
Its lava-flows spread many miles north and south, but gained only 
a moderate measure of thickness, generally not more than a hun- 
dred feet. These correspond to the bed marked A in Fig. 8, 
which represents a magnified view of a corner of the block seen 




Fig. 7. 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTICUT. 229 



in Fig. 7. When tliis first volcanic disturbance was over, the 
accumulation of sandstones went on again, the sands were washed 
in from the shores of the estuary and crept out over the back of 
the lava-sheet ; the finer sediments settled down into the irregular 
crevices in the surface of the flow, even filling little half-open 
vesicles. A microscopic examination of specimens from these 
contacts of lava and overlying sandstones brings back vividly the 
condition of their deposition. Loose fragments of the lava, car- 
ried a little way by the waves and more or less water-worn, were 
mixed with the sands 
for a few feet above 
the lava, but they 
were soon all buried. 
Then things went on 
for a long time about 
as before the erup- 
tion. The supply of 
sediments seems to 
have become finer 
after a while, for a 
bed of black shale is 
found, with numer- 
ous impressions of 
fossil fishes and 
plants, one of the 
few traceable fos- 
siliferous layers of 
the entire forma- 
tion. Then came 

more barren sandy shales again. It is impossible to measure the 
time of this quiet work in years, but after three or four hundred 
feet of strata had been formed, another outburst of lava (M) took 
place, and on a greater scale than the first. The lava-sheet formed 
by this eruption is three or four hundred feet thick — thick enough 
to have in all probability filled the shallow estuary wherever it 
ran, transforming it into a level lava plain, like the plain of the 
Shoshone River of to-day Bat the depression of the estuary 
trough continued ; if the lava surface was at first above water 
level, it was soon submerged and buried in sands and mud, repeat- 
ing all the significant phenomena of contact that have been men- 
tioned above. Then came another long period of quiet, broken by 
a third lava outpouring (P) ; and after that, still more sandstones 
and shales, until aqueous and igneous rocks had accumulated to a 
thickness of perhaps two miles. At some time during this long 
history a sheet of lava was driven in or intruded between the 
sandstones near the bottom of the formation (marked I in Fig. 8) ; 




Fig. 8. 



230 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



it is easily known to be an intrusion by the dense texture of its 
upper surface, and by the occasional brandies that rise from it 
into the overlying beds, and by various other features in which 
it differs distinctly from the overflow sheets or extrusions. But it 
need not be further considered now. 

In order to exhibit these relations of the igneous rocks to the 
stratified deposits in a clearer manner, the model is constructed so 
as to open on a diagonal section ( as in Fig. 9), and disclose the 




Fig. 9. 



pipe or chimney up through which the lavas rose from their deep 
source. The volcanic cones, presumably formed at the surface 
where the chimney opened at the three times of eruption, are here 
placed in their proper positions in the series of stratified deposits ; 
but even the topmost cone is supposed to have been entirely 
buried by gradual submergence and by the accumulation of sands 
and muds upon it. The intrusive sheet is shown near the bottom 
of the stratified series. The whole series may then be named as 
follows. First, a moderate thickness of bottom sandstones, often 
conglomeratic ; then, the intrusive sheet ; next, the great series of 
lower sandstones and shales, also sometimes conglomeratic ; then, 
the three extrusive sheets, with their intervening sandstones and 
shales. The first of the extrusions will be called the anterior sheet, 
the middle one is the main sheet, the third is the postorior (for 
reasons that will appear more clearly further on), and they are 
separated by the anterior and posterior shales respectively. On 
the top of all come the upper sandstones and shales. The whole 
series is probably two miles thick, as already stated. 

We may imagine in a general way that in time the estuarj^ was 
filled with the detritus that was washed into it, and thus trans- 
formed into a lowland plain, like that of the Po, between the Alps 
and the Apennines ; or like the plain of California, between the 
Sierra Nevada and the coast range. If it was not ultimately filled 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTICUT. 



231 



up so as to form n land area, it was at least a subaqueous plain of 
very even and level surface. The deeper layers of the formation 
may have sagged a little toward the middle of the estuary on ac- 
count of the progressive depression that the region had suffered 
during the accumulation of the entire mass, but their departure 
from horizontality was moderate. Yet at present the whole series, 
with but trifling exceptions, inclines at an angle of twelve, fifteen, 
or twenty degrees to the eastward. Evidently a serious disturb- 
ance has affected the original attitude of the beds. 

The eastward slant or dip of the series might be imitated by 
tilting the model over 
bodily, so that its up- 
per surface should be 
inclined to the east ; 
but this fails to rep- 
resent the dislocations 
by which the mass is 
known to be traversed. 
The model was there- 
fore made in several 
parts, each of which 
could be tilted inde- 
pendently of its neigh- 
bors, as shown in Fig. 
10, the observer look- 
ing southeast. It is 

here made clear that while the dip of the beds is to the east- 
ward, the course of the fractures by which they are dislocated 
is northeastward ; this relation prevailing in a very constant 
manner in the region of the Meriden ash-bed. The blocks into 
which the mass is thus divided, five of which are shown in the 
model, have been moved by moderate amounts on one another ; 
the movement varies from a few feet up to two thousand. This 
is called faulting, and its effect in this case is manifestly to break 
up the continuous surface of the inclined plane that would have 
been formed by simple tilting, and produce a discontinuous sur- 
face, with steps from one part to another. If we may judge by 
the angle at which the beds lie, the elevated edges of these dislo- 
cated blocks must have once risen high into the air, producing 
mountainous ridges of no insignificant relief. Yet at present 
nothing of this ancient constructional form is apparent. The tilt- 
ing and faulting were both done so long ago that no part of the 
original surface remains. It has all been worn away. The best 
evidence of the antiquity of the dislocations is found in another 
State. 

Down in New Jersey, the corresponding red sandstone forma- 




FiG. 10. 



232 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion is unconformably overlain by the Cretaceous strata of the 
coastal plain, proving that the sandstones were not only tilted but 
deeply eroded before the Cretaceous beds were laid upon them. 
The formations in New Jersey and Connecticut are so much alike 
that we may safely conclude that the period of dislocation was 
the same in both ; hence we shall suppose that the Meriden sand- 
stones and lava-sheets were tilted and faulted into the position 
illustrated in Fig. 10 during the interval between Triassic and 
Cretaceous time — that is, in the Jurassic period. From that time 
to now their history is concerned chiefly with the erosion by 
which their original constructional inclined planes have been re- 
duced to their present surface of varied topography. 

There is good reason to think that the history of the erosion is 
a double one, comprehending first a longer cycle, and second a 
shorter cycle of time. During the first cycle, the great relief of 
the uptilted beds was reduced to a lowland of denudation, a sur- 
face of a moderate relief close to the base-level of erosion, an 
almost i^lane surface, a " peneplain " — the evidence of this being 
found in the even uplands of the crystalline plateaus which now 
inclose the Triassic valley on the east and west. No explanation 
for the evenness of these plateaus can be found save the one which 
regards them as having been reduced from some greater mass by 
a long-continued process of erosion, at a time when the region 

stood somewhat low- 
er than now — low 
enough to place the 
present plateau-like 
uplands close to sea- 
level ; and the sand- 
stones, shales, and 
lava-sheets between 
the two j)lateaus un- 
doubtedly suffered 
the same denuda- 
tion. This is indi- 
cated in Fig. 11, in 
which all the ui:»per 
part of the model as 
shown in Fig. 10 has 
been removed; the obliquely beveled surface of the beds now rep- 
resents the lowland of denudation, or peneplain, to which they were 
reduced. The effect of the oblique faulting is now rendered appar- 
ent by the dislocations in the belts of the different outcrops. The 
main sheet of lava, for example, is seen in each of the blocks into 
which the formation is divided by the faults ; so is the belt of 
shales lying under it, and so on with every member of the series. 




Fig. 11. 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTICUT. 233 



Indeed, the reader must perceive that it is only because the actual 
facts of observation are thus arranged that the existence of the 
faults is inferred. Most of the faults are of moderate displace- 
ment; but just north of Meriden there is one whose movement 
amounted to two thousand feet ; it cuts off the northern end of the 
main lava-sheet in Lamentation and the southern end of the same 
in the Hanging Hills group of lava-ridges. In following along 
the line between these two dislocated portions of the sheet, every 
ridge formed by the more resistant sandstones or conglomerates 
is cut off in a most systematic manner, precisely according to the 
pattern shown in the beveled surface of the model. The railroad 
crosses this great fault about a mile above Meriden, but the trav- 
eler will see nothing there to indicate the dislocation ; its con- 
structional effects have all been worn out. 

But the region is not now a plain. It is a rolling lowland 
with occasional ridges formed on the resistant edges of the lava- 
sheets. The cause 
of this is found in 
a moderate uplift of 
the whole country 
since it was reduced 
to a peneplain, in- 
troducing the sec- 
ond chapter in the 
history of its ero- 
sion. After this up- 
lift a new cycle of 
erosive work was 
undertaken, and we 
now find ourselves 
at a moderate ad- 
vance in this division of the valley's history. The softer beds 
have wasted away into lowlands, the harder ones still stand 
up as ridges. In the adjoining crystalline areas on the east 
and west, where most of the rocks are hard, the erosion of this 
cycle has made comparatively little progress ; there the val- 
leys are narrow and the interstream spaces are rolling up- 
lands. In the Triassic belt, where most of the rocks are soft, 
the erosion of the same cycle has made much greater prog- 
ress and reduced the area nearly to a second peneplain, except 
where the edges of the hard lava-sheets still hold up their crest 
lines to give some indication of the elevation that the whole sur- 
face once had. Here the valleys are broad and the interstream 
highlands are reduced to narrow ridges. This stage is indicated 
for our ten-mile-square area in Fig. 12, produced by removing 
from the previous form of the model certain little slips by which 

VOL. XL. 19 




Fig. 12. 



234 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 




Fig. 13. 



it is transformed from a peneplain to a broken country. It is 
practically in this stage that the region now stands. It has suf- 
fered certain slight changes by glaciation, and by small vari- 
ations of level ; but its main features are explained in accordance 
with the scheme thus presented ; and from this general sketch we 

may return to the 
more especial con- 
sideration of the lost 
volcanoes. 

Fig. 13 presents a 
partial dissection of 
the tilted and fault- 
ed mass, in order to 
show the relation of 
the peneplain, pro- 
duced at the end of 
the first cycle of ero- 
sion, to the volcanoes 
from which the la- 
vas were poured out. 
The near corner 
block is stripped down to the present stage of topographic form ; 
the second represents the peneplain stage ; the other three retain 
their constructional form. It is here made apparent that by rea- 
son of the tilting, the volcanic cones were raised above the old 
base-level of erosion, and were hence doomed to destruction in the 
process of base-leveling. The further edges of their flows remain ; 
the stump of the long chimney up through which their lavas rose 
to the surface is still discoverable, but the cones, where the chim- 
ney rose to the surface and gave forth the flows, are lost. Fig. 11, 
which represents the completed peneplain, has no trace of them, 
although the edges of the flows and the stump of the chimney 
can be identified. Fig. 13. illustrating the present form of the 
surface in a general way, shows no volcanoes, but it shows the 
edges of the flows and the stump of the chimney better than be- 
fore, because they, being hard rocks, have held up their edges, 
while the surrounding weaker sandstones and shales have wasted 
away. Thus the Blue Hills have been developed ; not by lifting 
up their heavy summits above the surrounding surface, but by 
holding hard to the form that they had at the end of the previous 
cycle, while the surrounding rocks have lost it. Denudation has 
not yet progressed deep enough to reveal the connection that 
very likely exists between the chimney and the lower intrusive 
sheet; this is still buried. Fig. 14 tells tlie same sequence of 
events, but in very diagrammatic style. 

The wooden working model from which several of these fig- 



THE LOST VOLCANOES OF CONNECTLCUT. 235 

Tires are taken is a very wooden affair ; it is rigid and straight- 
lined, instead of varying in irregular curves after a natural fash- 
ion ; yet it may serve to present concrete illustrations of the suc- 
cessive stages through which the Meriden district has passed ; 
and when thus viewed, the interest of the place grows wonder- 




¥iQ. 14. — Diagrammatic View of a Faulted Monocline, between crystalline plateaus on 
east (E. PI.) and west ( W. PL), to illustrate the general structure of the Connecticut Tri- 
assic belt. Relative breadth much reduced. The supposed underground structure is 
shown in a vertical section in the foreground, and the inferred overground structure (now 
lost by erosion) in a vertical section in the background. A strip of actual surface lies be- 
tween the two sections. The even peneplain, to which the whole mass was first reduced, 
is shown by dotted lines at the level of the eastern (E. PI.) and western (W. PI.) crystal- 
line plateaus. 

fully. Its scenery is not grand or magnificent ; many other re- 
gions exceed it in height of mountains or depth of valleys ; but 
it has a fine story to tell about its lost volcanoes, and it tells the 
story with great distinctness and emphasis when the listener 
passes by. 



Important literary discoveries have attended the labors of Egyptologists dur- 
ing the present year. In January was announced the recovery of nearly a com- 
plete copy of the lost work of Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens— a docu- 
ment which throws new light on important events in Grecian history from the 
time of Solon down to the age of Pericles. The examination of the papyrus 
leaves of whicli certain coffins found at Tel Gurot, in the Fayoum, were made, 
has resulted in the recovery of several fragments of ancient literature of greater 
or less value; the most notable of which are a large part of a lost play, Antiope, 
of Euripides, and of parts of the Pheedo of Plato, of a copy nearly contempo- 
raneous with the authors, and furnishing a purer text than those from which the 
modern editions of this work are derived. Much was expected from the ])apyri 
found with the one hundred and sixty-three priestly mummies which were discov- 
ered last spring at Deir-el-Bahari, near Thebes ; but, so far as they have been ex- 
amined, they have afforded nothing more valuable than funereal texts. 



236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

THE TRAINING OF DOGS.* 

By WEf^LEY MILLS, M. D. 

AN analysis of our own psychic life, complex as mucli of it is^ 
- compared with that of the dog, shows that a great part of 
our mental processes are not concerned with abstractions and 
generalizations of a very high order, but with actual concrete 
perceptions and conceptions; that we think in pictures rather 
than words ; that our thoughts are the result of past associations ; 
that the machinery of the mind or brain is so connected that 
when one part is moved, so to speak, a whole series of connections 
are established. Hence the psychic life of every creature must 
be related essentially to its past experiences. 

If this be true — and it can not be doubted — we think, then, the 
puppy's intelligence, like our own, begins to develop, and con- 
tinues to do so exactly in relation to its environment. We can 
make that environment pretty much what we will ; and with the 
dog, his master from the first, and always, is the principal factor. 

Two extreme views have for a long period been entertained in 
regard to the training of the dog ; the one that he is a wdld, way- 
ward creature to be " broken," the other that he needs no special 
correction if properly taught from the first. Neither is quite 
correct. 

A puppy full of life tends to do exactly as his impulses move 
him, till the highest motive power, a desire to please his master, 
is substituted. It follows that a puppy can not be too soon led to 
understand that he has a master— kind, honest, intelligent, and 
firm. He must be consistent with his puppy. All caprice i& 
fatal ; it utterly confuses and demoralizes the dog. 

Remembering that principle we laid down long ago, that the 
dog is very like ourselves, we can indicate a few principles for 
training that we think will meet the test of experience. The 
puppy at one period is like a young infant, later like a two-year- 
old child, and at the best most'dogs never get beyond the intelli- 
gence of a young child in most respects, though in some qualities 
the wisest man is far behind the dog. 

For practical purposes the puppy may be treated as an infant, 
but as a rapidly developing one. He gets his information through 
his senses, and his training must be related to this, and to the fact 
that he is a creature with strong impulses but little self-control. 

It is a well-established law of the nervous system that what 
has happened once is likely to occur again under the same circum- 

* From advance sheets of the author's book. The Dog in Health and Disease, in prepa- 
ration by D. Appleton k Co. 



THE TRAINING OF DOGS. 



^37 



stances ; hence in the training of puppies first experiences are of 
much importance, and all the arrangements of the kennel, and in 
fact the whole environment, should be shaped in relation to this 
principle. 

The puppy should not be allowed to get into habits which will 
later need correction. Let him from the first be encouraged in 
cleanliness, self-respect, love of esteem, respect for the rights of 
other puppies, his fellows, etc. 

Very early begin to instill into him lessons of restraint, but 
only for the briefest periods, for the creature is as yet weak in 
brain and will power, though strong in instincts and impulses. 

The master or trainer must not be associated in his mind with 




The Smooth-coated Fox-Terkier Ch^^mpign The Belgraviak. 



unpleasantness, but with the reverse. Do not, therefore, punish 
him, but let him learn almost unconsciously that certain actions 
and certain pleasures are connected. 

He should soon learn his name, should always come when 
called, but not be summoned too often, especially if playing. It 
is well to carry a bit of biscuit, cheese, etc., to reward him for 
coming at first. Later a pat of approbation will suffice. 



238 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The trainer slioiild never undertake what he is not reasonably 
sure of accomplishing; and the first aim should always be to 
secure the dog's attention and interest, and to make the accom- 
plishment pleasant. But he must know what is wanted, and if he 
can not comprehend this, the lesson is unsuitable at this period. 
He must, however, obey if he understands; gentle compulsion. 




The Greyhound Fulleeton. Thrice winner of the Waterloo cup, the most valuable of all 

coursing prizes. 

when once the purpose is understood, may be exercised — e. g., if 
he will not come when he is called, he must not be whipped, as 
that will make the whole set of associations unpleasant, but he 
must be gently dragged by the back of the neck or bodily carried 
to where the trainer stood when the command was given ; he must 
then be very gently reprimanded, then forgiven and made to feel 
that he is forgiven, and the lesson repeated, always rewarding 
obedience in some way. 

Obedience to what is right pleasant, disobedience unpleasant, 
is the rule for us all, dogs and men. On these principles yard 
and house training is simple with well-bred dogs. They mean to 
please if they can. Make obedience and right-doing understood. 



THE TRAINING OF DOGS. 



239 



possilole, and pleasant, and it will be preferred, especially if the 
wrong-doing is followed by the reverse experiences. 

Dogs are not filthy in their habits, but some people who keep 
them are, and others do not understand what is required to enable 
a dog to follow his instincts of cleanliness. Where a dog has 
once been to respond to Nature's call, he tends to visit again, and 
this is a guide to enable us to avail of natural instinct to enable 
us to maintain cleanly surroundings. The same general princi- 
ples apply when dogs are taken afield to be worked on some sort 
of game. At first the puppy may run toward almost every form 
of life he sees. This is natural, and he would not be worth his 
keeping if he did not show some such tendency to investigate the 
world about him. 




TAIL Sheep Dog. 



But he must be restrained gradually. He must associate certain 
acts with the approval and others with the disapproval of him he 
respects, loves, and wishes greatly to j^lease if he only knows how. 

But such is the strength of the impulses of some puppies— 
now, we will suppose, six or eight months old— that they find it 
very difficult to restrain themselves. In such case we must lessen 
the stimulus or source of excitement rather than resort at once to 
the application of the principle of making the act unpleasant, as 
the use of a spiked collar or check-line. 



240 



THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



These may later be useful in a modified form, but not at first ; 
indeed, such methods are mostly quite unnecessary if a proper 
course be pursued. To illustrate : Suppose that a brace of setter 
puppies eight months old be taken to some wood where there is 
but little game. If they tend to run wild without any reference 
to the whereabouts of the trainer, and disregard his calls or his 
whistle, it surely would not be wise to whip those puppies soundly 
at once, attach a spiked collar or a check-line. To do so would 
probably confuse them, humiliate them, and retard their develop- 
ment in every way. Now, if the trainer secrete himself for a lit- 
tle while, these puppies will probably get frightened a little, feel- 
ing that they are lost, and will after this be more cautious how 
widely they range. When they do come in they may be scolded, 
but not whijDped at this stage. 




The Pointer Champion Bbacket. 

It should be pointed out that all dogs should be taught to come 
in to whistle and to " down charge," or to drop at some word of 
command or at the upraising of the hand. This applies to all 
breeds, though more especially to dogs used in shooting, A dog 
in the field should also be guided by the motions of his trainer's 
hand. In learning this, the voice, the whistle, and often a long 
cord will be useful. 

But the author wishes to avoid giving the impression that 



THE TRAINING OF DOGS. 241 

there is only one way of accomplishing these things, as many 
previous writers seem to have thought, with the result that many 
who have attempted to follow these rigid rules have disgusted 
themselves and spoiled their dogs. 

It is to be remembered that all lessons require frequent repe- 
tition. " Little and often " applies to training as a cardinal 
principle. 




The Bloodhound Champion Cromwell. 

No one should undertake the training of a dog to work on 
game who is not possessed of patience and good temper. Lack- 
ing these, the puppy is apt to cause the trainer great worrj^ and 
to get little good from him, if he be not actually spoiled. It is, in 
fact, better to go afield expecting that the puppy will do nothing 
as desired at first ; then one is prepared for the worst, and may 
soon lay his plans to accomplish what he aims at, which must 
always be done in relation both to the dog and the circumstances. 

But with dogs example is strong for good or evil. A 
steady, old trained dog is invaluable, while a disobedient, head- 
strong one will most assuredly ruin the puppy. But it is clearly 
foolish to expect a pappy under a certain age to work on game 
with an older dog — indeed, to work on game at all — though rang- 
ing, obeying the whistle, dropping, etc., should all be taught be- 



Z4Z 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



fore the puppy is introduced to game. He must learn restraint 
and obedience, though it must be confessed that a day's work on 
actual game often quite transforms some puppies. But, as a 
rule, ten or twelve months will be quite soon enough to introduce 
a puppy to actual work. 

Retrieving may be taught at home, using a soft ball of yarn, 
etc. ; and if the puppy tends to bite on this, a few wires may be 
pushed through it. He must always at first be rewarded, when 
he brings the ball when thrown, with a little meat, cheese, etc. 
The words " fetch," " seek," etc., may be employed. Soon he will 




The Irish Water-Spaniel Champion Shaun. 



understand, and seek when no ball is thrown. To get him to 
"seek dead," some article msy be hidden, and at first some meat, 
etc., must be employed, and the dog assisted to find it. Later a 
real bird may be used, or a wing. The same word of command 
should always be used. If the pujjpy will not bring the article — 
will not retrieve — take him to the spot and place it in his mouth, 



THE TRAINING OF DOGS. 



H3 



holding it there and obliging him to carry it and finally deliver 
it to his trainer ; reward him, and then try him again. 

Some dogs take to retrieving naturally, requiring no training, 
while it is almost impossible to get others, often of high intelli- 
gence, to learn this at all. 

Most puppies need a good deal of attention before they are 
perfectly steady on point, and to wing and shot, as their natural 
tendency is to secure the game when they have found it. How 
best to overcome this it is not always easy to decide. The dog 
must be encouraged to remain steady while his trainer moves up. 
Often the assistance of a second person to flush the bird will be 




The Rough-coated St. Bernard Champion Sir Bedivere. 



useful, while the dog is approached and encouraged but not 
allowed to rush on. In this case a check-cord may be useful — to 
be employed as little as possible. The examj^le of .a reliable old 
dog is invaluable. Some form of check that will make the dog 
defeat or punish himself is preferable to direct administration of 
punishment by the trainer. 

Gun-shyness is but an exaggerated form of fear of unusual 
noises, and must be treated accordingly. Let the dog be gradu- 



244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

ally introduced to louder and louder noises, never being allowed 
to escape, but being made to see that no harm is meant liim or 
can happen to him. As to whether it is worth while to attempt 
to cure the worst cases will depend much on other circumstances, 
as the dog's breeding, general intelligence, nose, etc. It may or 
may not be inherited. 

The author, in conversation with a very successful trainer of 
horses, once asked : " Can you teach any horse these things ? " 
^' I can do so, but it would not in many cases be worth while," 
was the reply. The same may be said of dogs : some of them are 
not adapted for certain kinds of work, and acquirements by 
nature to a sufficient degree, to make it worth while to persevere 
in teaching them ; just as certain boys would never become expert 
enough at certain vocations to warrant their pursuit. But before 
abandoning a well-bred dog that seems to possess courage, " go," 
and fair general intelligence, it might be well to get the advice 
of some second person of much experience. Many dogs, unprom- 
ising at first, have become a great success afterward. The ability 
to read dogs very thoroughly is given to but a few men, and 
these, i:)rovided they have patience, good temper, and persever- 
ance, must of course make the best trainers. 

Though we have sjjoken chiefly of the training of hunting 
dogs, it is simply because that is usually more elaborate. All 
training is based essentially on the same principles, for the mind 
of the trainer and that of the dog are relative constants, while the 
circumstances are the variables. 

In every instance the dog, from the earliest period, must know 
the trainer as his master, as one who knows his own mind and 
always is to be obeyed. But, in order to insure this, the princi- 
ples we have already endeavored to enforce must be faithfully 
and intelligently applied ; and it is very important, we repeat, 
that nothing be undertaken that can not be performed, and every 
advance in instruction approached by slight gradation and fre- 
quent repetition. All sound training must constantly keep in 
mind the individuality of the animal. The assumption that all 
dogs can be treated just alike is as erroneous as that all stomachs 
may have the same diet. 

A dog kept constantly in a kennel can never attain his highest 
psychical development ; and it is the author's experience that it 
does every dog good to bring him into the house occasionally for 
short periods and allow him to mingle with the family. It raises 
the animal in his own estimation, and attaches him to his master, 
for whom he will have increased respect. 



SILK DRESSES AND EIGHT HOURS' WORK. 245 
SILK DRESSES AND EIGHT HOURS' WORK. 

By J. B. MANN. 

THE remark occurs in a recent editorial article in a prominent 
religious newspaper commending the eight-liour movement 
that if all the women who want silk dresses could have work, all 
the silk factories in the country could be set in motion and would 
furnish employment to the many thousands of people then idle ; 
or words of that import. The proposition at first sight seems 
philosophical, but is it not reasoning in a circle ? Having work, 
people will buy silks. If they buy silks, the factories will run. ^ If 
the factories run, the people will have work. The old lady said : 
" This snow will never melt until the weather is warmer, and the 
weather can never be warmer until the snow has melted." Mak- 
ing the statement does not solve the problem. 

When we look at the matter with care we find, sorrowfully, 
that the women who have no silks are the very ones who do the 
hardest work ; and hence, as they are working clear up to the limit 
of human endurance to get bread, they have no time left over to 
put into silk dresses. This fact upsets the theory. Horace Greeley 
had a theory that poverty in cities could be cured by getting the 
poor to go West and engage in farming ; entirely overlooking the 
fact that the next sixpence the poor man could get, and the next, 
and so on, must go for bread, thus putting a trip to the West out 
of the question. 

But the imagining of philosophers in regard to the remedies is 
of small account, because want of work is not in this country one 
of the leading causes of poverty, as every careful observer knows. 
There are at least a dozen things which are more potent causes of 
the evil, and too much work, by which constitutions are broken 
and health ruined, is one of them. Is the remedy, therefore, not 
to be found in the eight-hour movement ? I answer, No. The 
eight-hour movement does not approach the root of the evil. It is 
assumed by the promoters of the movement that society has a 
given amount of wants which require a given amount of labor to 
supply, and hence it is inferred that if all the workers cut down 
their hours from twelve to eight, the men now out of employment 
will come up and do the work the others have relinquished. In 
that way it is claimed that there Tvill be work for all. Another 
theory is that men will accomplish as much in the long run in 
eight hours as they now do in twelve. It is evident on the face 
of it that both theories are not true, because if as much should be 
done by the present workers after the change as before, no more 
would be left for the others to do than they have now. And in 
that case the present workers would come much nearer to ex- 



246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

liausting their strength and injuring tlieir health for tlie same 
money only that they get now. They would be no richer, and 
would drive their muscles and frames at a wearing pace not con- 
sistent with the laws of health. 

But neither theory is true. Instead of there being a given 
amount of wants, as alleged, wants are found to be largely the 
result of means. 

If the community have little, they require little, but as they 
become wealthy they spread out in proportion. People can't hire 
labor if they are poor, and hence to make a demand for labor 
somebody must be rich enough to pay for it. This is perfectly 
plain. Nobody goes in search of a poor man for employment, 
only in the last resort. It follows that whatever tends to wealth- 
making tends to want-making, and to an increase in the demand 
for labor and the supply of employment. On the other hand, 
whatever tends to a diminution of wealth tends necessarily to a 
diminution of the means to pay for labor, and also to less dispo- 
sition to hire others to do the work. I think that these positions 
can not be successfully combated, and if not, we have a criterion 
by which to determine in what direction to look for improvement 
in the condition of the laboring man. Surely we shall never find 
it in anything that tends to a diminution of resources. 

What is stated above in relation to wants being increased in 
proportion to the increase of wealth does not hold good in some 
individual cases, but in general it does, and it holds good to that 
extent that the common people everywhere accept it as a basis of 
action without stopping to reason about it at all, it is so natural. 
It is the reason why people leave a country like Ireland and come 
here. They expect to find dollars so plenty that, according to the 
old story, they do not deem it worth the while to pick up the 
quarters they may see lying on the wharf where they land. The 
same thing takes the smart boys from the poor country districts 
and small villages to the large towns and cities. They feel that 
they must get to places where there is an abundance of money. 
They do not fail to note that a man who has ten thousand dollars 
will build a three thousand dollar house, while the man with 
thirty thousand will build a house costing twelve thousand prob- 
ably," and that calls for four times the labor of the other. They 
must get where such men abound, and where there are hundred- 
thousand-dollar men and millionaires, men who will build palaces, 
railroads, great warehouses, and ships. Poverty-stricken places 
are given a wide berth by all sensible folk, and so universal is the 
practice that we are not left in doubt as to the meaning of it. 

Now wealth is principally the product of labor. Some get it 
by their own labor, and some by the labor of others ; but however 
got by the individual, it is the result of personal or machine ex- 



SILK DRESSES AND EIGHT HOURS' WORK. 247 

ertion and force. This necessitates the rule, therefore : More la- 
bor, more wealth ; less labor, less wealth. This rule no one can 
escape or ignore. 

The question now comes up, whether working eight hours a 
day tends to more riches or more production than working 
twelve. That it does not, I have already stated is my belief, and 
the belief is founded upon a long experience as a mechanic, farm- 
laborer, employer, and observer. In twenty years of labor in a 
shop, I never saw the time when I could do twelve hours' work in 
eight hours, excej^t j^ossibly for a single day. I never saw the 
man that could do it, and I never heard of one that could do it. 

I never met one that said he thought it could be done for any 
length of time. It is a well-established fact that most men that 
pretend to work well have a working gait of their own, and can 
not be hurried beyond that advantageously. If they are, they do 
poor work or break down. This is so obvious that any pretense 
that as much will be accomplished in the shorter hours in farm- 
ing or physical labor of any kind borders on the ridiculous. So 
obvious is it, that the principal advocates of the eight-hour move- 
ment have ceased to put their case on this ground, and rely upon 
the other theory, that less work will be done, and consequently 
more work will be left to be given to the laborers seeking for 
something to do. 

If this latter view be adopted, it follows that the eight-hour 
men are philanthropists, who have sacrificed, or propose to sacri- 
fice, one third of their possible earnings for the good of their fel- 
low-men who have no work. This is incredible. The laborers 
themselves do not act from any such principle. They are think- 
ing all the time that, instead of making a sacrifice, they are get- 
ting more leisure and making more money. They think that, 
Instead of the work they could do in the four hours they have 
abandoned being done by the poor fellows who need help, it is 
not done at all, and, not being done at all, wages have risen, and 
thus they can get twelve hours' pay for eight hours' work. 

In other words, they propose to increase the wealth of the 
community by lessening the amount produced by the community, 
thinking that, with a smaller amount to be divided as wages by 
one third, they can get a bigger share. Not only do they suppose 
this impossible thing, but they claim it has already been accom- 
plished, and they say the advance in wages during the last thirty 
years has been caused by the reduction of hours. 

Assuming this to be true, it is perfectly legitimate to argue 
that a further reduction of hours will work in the same way, and 
they name eight as the next station on the scale, with an intima- 
tion that soon six will be the point, and later four. I believe that 
most concede that it is necessary to have some work done, not 



248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

perceiving tlie absurdity into wliicli tliey fall by the concession. 
Logically, we say that if one can earn a dollar in one hour, he can 
earn the same the next hour, and the next, and so on to the limit 
of his endurance. But, if we begin at the other end of the line 
of argument, and say that one can do as much and get as much 
pay in ten hours as in twelve, and then say that he can get as 
much pay in eight as in twelve, and then again as much in six, 
there is no logical stop anywhere till the bottom is reached. The 
stubborn fact of time is kicked out of the back door. It is the 
same as saying that a man works six hours, earns three dollars, 
and then works six more at the same work for nothing ; while the 
same i)ersons who say it have to admit that, if the man worked 
six hours in one day and six hours the next day, he would get as 
much pay for the sebond six as for the first six. Time is too tough 
a customer to be disposed of in that manner, and we must deal 
with him as a fact that has come to stay. 

I think the most stupid are now able to see that one's ability 
to provide for his wants depends primarily upon his labor, and 
that time is a principal element in the case. He must have it 
and he must use it, and his j)rosperity, other things being equal, 
will be much or little as time is wisely used or neglected. The 
law of prosperity has not been repealed by any of the edicts of 
the leagues and unions. Not a fact or princij^le has been abol- 
ished or suspended. An hour lost is the loss of the product of 
labor that might have been performed in that hour, and it falls 
on the man who owned the hour, and not on another man or set 
of men. He does not escape his loss by the absurd theory that he 
lost it after four o'clock of Monday, instead of before ten Tues- 
day morning. It is an absolute loss, whatever the day when it 
was made. If the man worked for himself, as the saying is, he 
would see it was a total loss and nothing else ; but, working for 
another, he fancies the other man is the loser, or else, by some 
hocus-pocus, it is shifted upon society. If men worked by the 
piece they would see how it is. Let two men start together in 
life as shoemakers, with a view to do their best in getting on in 
the world, as Henry Wilson did sixty years ago. They are equal 
in skill and endurance, and can work twelve hours at a fair stroke 
without impairing health. Working by the piece, they find they 
can earn sixteen and two thirds cents per hour, or at the rate of two 
dollars a day. There is no dilTerence between them in jjuri^ose, 
and only the small difference in the method of getting on, that 
James thinks he will sooner get in comfortable circumstances by 
working twelve hours a day, and John imagines that nine hours 
will answer the purpose just as well. At the end of the year of 
three hundred days they find that James has earned six hundred 
dollars, and John has earned but four hundred and fifty dollars. 



SILK DRESSES AND EIGHT HOURS' WORK. 249 

They keep on at this rate ten years, and James has laid by two 
thousand dollars, and John nothing. Now, the two thousand of 
James earns ten dollars a month for him, and is better than a 
good apprentice, because he pays the fund no wages and it costs 
nothing for board. The reason why they are "now so wide apart 
is that the extra hours of James have yielded fifteen hundred 
dollars principal in the ten years, and five hundred dollars in in- 
terest. John has nothing, because the expense of living of each 
and support of the families has amounted to four hundred and 
fifty dollars a year for each. In ten years more James will have 
interest-money sufficient to meet the family expense of four hun- 
dred and fifty dollars, and John will be with his nose still on the 
grindstone. A company of ten such men would lose in ten years 
twenty thousand dollars, and society would never make it up to 
them. Society would not pay for one hundred pairs of shoes 
when only seventy-five pairs were furnished, and the idea that it 
would is a delusion. Many workingmen have gained in the last 
half century, and the general condition has improved a great 
deal, but no part of the money gain has been due to less hours of 
labor. The people have grown rich during that time because 
they have availed themselves of the increased means of production 
which have been developed, and not because production has been 
lessened by the laborer refusing to work the former number of 
hours. Our riches are made up entirely of things produced, and 
when we say we are richer, we mean that we have more things 
which are the product of applied force. The increase of wealth, 
as was stated before, has increased the disposition to build more 
expensive houses and buy more elaborate furniture, and have an 
endless variety of things deemed needless a few years ago, caus- 
ing a demand for labor and an increase of wages that in a meas- 
ure counterbalances the loss of time. This is what has helped 
labor, and not the refusal to work more than ten hours. Had the 
other two hours a day been worked, the laborer would have been 
still richer by one sixth of the principal and all the interest on his 
extra earnings during the whole time that the ten-hour rule has 
prevailed. The workman, then, has simply exchanged the wealth 
he might have got in the extra two hours for leisure of two hours ; 
a very proper thing to do if he can afford it, but he hasn't had the 
leisure and the money he might have earned in the lost time also. 
The community is also the poorer to the same extent. It 
misses just the amount of wealth that the laborer has failed to 
produce in his idle hours. It finds on its hands a large body of 
men advanced in years who might now be comfortable, but are 
still struggling to meet the cost of increase in the style of living 
consequent on the increase of wealth, when they are more than 
one sixth short in possible resources. 

VOL. XL.- 20 



250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

The trouble with the eight-hour plan, however, is not here so 
much as in the fact that so many men who can not get a decent 
living on eight hours of labor are taught that they can earn as 
much in that time as in twelve hours, and are made to believe it, 
or else denounced as scabs and nobodies. If the laborer attempts 
to work more hours, he is called an enemy of workingmen, an 
enemy of progress, and so on, until he is forced to a life of partial 
idleness, while his children are suffering for comforts which his 
labor could furnish without injury to himself or to any mortal in 
the world. There are hosts of men somewhat deficient in skill 
who could partially make up in longer hours their lack of effi- 
ciency were they permitted to, but as they are not, they are 
forced to live on the verge of beggary all their days, and are 
taught to curse society for not giving them a better chance in 
the world. How many such there are in this country God only 
knows, but that they are numerous there can be no doubt. The 
evil is prodigious, and is not confined to this class entirely. Others 
are affected in an unfavorable way. The idea is encouraged that 
labor is an evil to be shunned like vice, and that there is a way 
to enjoy the fruits Qf labor without its exercise. The consequence 
of the prevalence of this idea is, that men are led to hope for the 
impossible, to trust in its coming, and to neglect the golden op- 
portunities for making their way which lie directly before them. 
The man who thinks he is getting richer by three or four hours 
of idleness every day is not likely to set much value on time, and 
when he does not do that, he tends to unthriftiness, and in time 
will become a good deal of an idler if not a downright loafer. 
"When the whole community becomes thus affected, the conse- 
quences will be serious. They are serious already. 

That this is a remarkable age in which we live is the general 
belief, but of the things that go to make up this belief nothing is 
stranger than the fact that when all mankind were devoting their 
best thoughts to the discovery of ways to increase resources and 
add to the general and individual wealth of society, when schemes 
of all sorts were being devised to save time in transportation of 
goods and mails and persons, in planting corn and making hay, 
in pumping water and feeding cattle, in tanning leather and mak- 
ing whisky, in mounting flights of stairs and raising broods of 
chickens — the workingmen as a body should band together and 
contrive a scheme to compel all hands to throw away absolutely 
one fourth of their chances to earn and lay up money, and provide 
for that period sure to come to all who live out the allotted years 
of man, when leisure will be not merely a luxury but a necessity ; 
yet this is exactly what they have done. They have in a con- 
siderable degree neutralized the gains to themselves to be derived 
from the use of machinery, and thus have allowed the machines 



DUST. 251 

to stand on tlie pay-rolls for the one quarter of wages they might 
have earned themselves. It was formerly supposed a wise saying 
that " the hand of the diligent maketh rich/' but the proverb has 
been strangely modified in these days. 

We are now told that the proverb was only three quarters 
true, and instead we must say, the man who works all of working 
time makes his neighbors poor, and will spend his last days in 
the work-house of the parish or on the highway as a tramp. 
Time lost is money lost to the one to whom the time belonged, 
whether he be rich or poor. The rich can lose some without 
feeling it, but the poor, alas! have none to spare. When this 
truth is fully appreciated by the destitute, a long stride will have 
been made toward the extinction of poverty. 



DUST. 

Br J. G. McPHEESON. 



SOME of the most enchanting phenomena in nature are de- 
pendent for their very existence upon singularly unimpor- 
tant things ; and some phenomena that in one form or another 
daily attract our attention are produced by startlingly overlooked 
material. What is the agent that magically transforms the leaden 
heavens into the gorgeous afterglow of autumn, when the varied 
and evanescent colors chase each other in fantastic brilliancy ? 
What is the source of the beautiful, brilliant, and varied coloring 
of the waters of the Mediterranean, or of the most extraordinary 
brilliant blue of the crystal waters of the tarns in the Cordilleras ? 
What produces the awe-inspiring deep blue of the zenith in a 
clear summer evening, when the eye tries to reach the absolute ? 
Whence come the gentle refreshing rain, the biting sleet, the 
stupefying fog, the chilling mist, the virgin snow, the glimmer- 
ing haze, or the pelting hail ? What raises water to the state of 
ebullition in the process of heat application for boiling ? What is 
the source of much of the wound putrefaction, and the generation 
and spread of sickness and disease ? What, in fact, is one of the 
most marvelous agents in producing beauty for the eye's gratifi- 
cation, refreshment to the arid soil, sickness and death to the 
frame of man and beast ? That agent is dust 

And yet no significance is given to dust unless it appears in 
large and troublesome quantities. It requires the persistent an- 
noyance of dust-clouds to excite any attention. Dust, however, 
demands to be noticed, even when not in that collected, irritating 
motion known in Scotland as siour. The dust-particles floating 
in the atmosphere or suspended in the water have a most impor- 



252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

tant influence upon the imagination, as well as upon the comfort 
of man. Though so small that a microscope magnifying 1,600 
diameters is required to discern them, they at times sorely tax 
the patience of the tidy housekeeper and the skill of the anxious 
surgeon. An aesthetic eye is charmed with their gorgeous trans- 
formation effects ; yet some are more real emissaries of evil than 
poet or painter ever conceived. 

Until the famous discovery made by Mr. John Aitken, of Fal- 
kirk, a few years ago, no one could reasonably account for the 
existence of rain. It was said by physicists that cloud-particles 
were attracted by the law of gravitation under certain conditions 
of temperature and pressure. But this famous experimentalist 
and observer found out that without dust there could be no rain ; 
there would be nothing but continuous dew. Our bodies and roads 
would be always wet. There would be no need for umbrellas, and 
the housekeeper's temper would be sorely tried with the dripping 
walls. 

A very easy experiment will show that where there is no dust 
there can be no fog. If common air be driven through a filter of 
cotton-wool into an exhausted glass receiver, the vessel contains 
pure air without dust, the dust having been seized by the cotton- 
wool. If a vessel containing common air be placed beside it, the 
eye is unable to detect any difference in the contents of the ves- 
sels, so very fine and invisible is the dust. If both vessels be con- 
nected with a boiler by means of pipes, and steam be passed into 
both, the observer will be astonished at the contrast presented. 
In the vessel containing common air the steam will be seen, as 
soon as it enters, rising in a close white cloud ; then a beautiful 
foggy mass will fill the vessel, so dense that it can not be seen 
through. On the other hand, in the vessel containing the filtered, 
dustless air, the steam is not seen at all; though the eye be 
strained, no particles of moisture are discernible; there is no 
cloudiness whatever. In the one case, where there was the ordi- 
nary air impregnated with invisible dust, fog at once appeared; 
whereas in the other case, the absence of the^ dust prevented the 
water- vapor from condensing into fog. Invisible dust, then, is 
required in the air for the production of fog, cloud, mist, snow, 
sleet, hail, haze, and rain, according to the temperature and press- 
ure of the air. 

The old theory of particles of water-vapor combining with 
each other to form a cloud-particle is now exploded. Dust is 
required as a free surface on which the vapor-particles will con- 
dense. The fine particles of dust in the air attract the vapor-par- 
ticles and form fog-particles. When there is abundance of dust 
in the air and little water-vapor present, there is an over propor- 
tion of dust-particles ; and the fog-particles are, in consequence. 



BUST. 253 

closely packed, but light in form and small in size, taking the 
more flimsy appearance of fog. But if the dust-particles are 
fewer in proportion to the number of molecules of water-vapor, 
each particle soon gets weighted, becomes visible, and falls in mist 
or rain. 

This can be shown by experiment. Let a jet of steam be 
passed into a glass receiver containing common air, and it will be 
soon filled with dense fog. Shut off the steam and allow the fog 
to settle. The air again becomes clear. Admit more steam, and 
the water-particles will seize hold of the dust-particles that pre- 
viously escaped. Fog will be formed, but it will not be so dense. 
Again, shut off the steam, and allow the fog to settle and the air 
to clear. Then admit some steam, and very likely the condensed 
vapor will fall as rain. If the experiment be often enough re- 
peated, rain instead of fog will be formed, because there are com- 
paratively few solid particles on which the moisture can condense. 
When, then, dust is present in large quantities, the condensed 
vapor produces a fog; there are so many particles of dust to 
which the vapor can adhere that each can only get a very small 
share— so small, in fact, that the weight of the dust is scarcely 
affected by the addition of the vapor— and the fog formed remains 
for a time suspended in the air, too light to fall to the ground. 
But when the number of dust-particles is fewer, each particle can 
take hold of a greater space of the water-vapor, and mist particles 
or even rain-particles will be formed. 

This principle that every fog-particle has embosomed in it an 
invisible dust-particle led Mr. Aitken to one of the most startling 
discoveries of our day — the enumeration of the dust-particles of 
the air. Thirty years ago M. Pasteur succeeded in counting the 
organic particles in the air ; these are comparatively few, whereas 
the number of inorganic particles is legion. Dr. Koch, Dr. Percy 
Frankland, and others have devoted considerable attention to the 
enumeration of the micro-organisms in the air, and Mr. A. Wynter 
Blyth, the public analyst in London, has done good service in 
counting the micro-organisms in the different kinds of water in 
the vicinity. Marvelous as are the results, still the process was 
comparatively easy. By generating the colonies in a prepared 
gelatin, the number of microbes can be easily ascertained. 

But to attempt to count the inorganic dust seemed almost 
equal in audacity to the scaling of the heavens. The numbering 
of the dust of the air, like the numbering of the hairs of the 
head, was considered as one of the prerogatives of the Deity. Yet 
Mr. Aitken has counted the " gay motes that people the sun- 
beams." Though he could not enlarge the particles by a nutritive 
process, as in the case of the organic particles, he has been able 
to enlarge them by transferring them into fog-particles, so as to 



2 54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

be within the possibility of accurate enumeration. His plan is to 
dilute a definite small quantity of common air with a fixed large 
quantity of filtered, dustless air, and allow the mixture to be 
supersaturated by water- vapor; the few particles of dust seize 
the moisture, become visible in drops, fall on a divided plate, and 
are there counted by means of a magnifying-glass. 

The instrument employed by Mr. Aitken has taken various 
forms ; in fact, he has so far improved it that it can be carried in 
the coat-pocket. But the original instrument, which we saw and 
used, is most easily described without the aid of diagrams. But, 
instead of his decimal system of measurements, we will use the 
ordinary system, that the dimensions may be more easily grasped 
by the general reader. Into a common glass flask of carafe-shape, 
and flat-bottomed, of thirty cubic inches capacity, are passed two 
small tubes, at the end of one of which is attached a square 
silver table, one inch long. A little water having been inserted, 
the flask is inverted, and the table is placed exactly one inch 
from the inverted bottom, so that the contents of the air above 
the table and below the bottom are one cubic inch. The observing 
table has been divided into a hundred equal squares, and is highly 
polished, with the burnishing all in one direction, so that during 
the observations it appears dark, when the fine mist-particles, fall- 
ing on it, glisten opal-like with the reflected light, in order that 
they may be more easily counted. The tube to which the silver 
table is attached is connected with two stop-cocks, one of which 
can admit a small measured portion of the air to be examined. 
The other tube in the flask is connected with an exhausting 
syringe, of ten cubic inches capacity. Over the flask is placed a 
covering colored black in the inside. In the top of this cover 
is inserted a powerful magnifying-glass, through which the par- 
ticles on the silver table can be easily seen and counted. A little 
to the side of this magnifier is an opening in the cover, through 
which light is concentrated on the silver table. This light, again, 
has had to pass through a spherical globe of water, in order to 
abstract the heat rays, which might vitiate the observations. 

To perform the experiment, the air in the flask is exhausted 
by the syringe. The flask is then filled with pure filtered air. 
One tenth of a cubic inch of the air to be examined is then intro- 
duced into the flask, and mixed with the thirty cubic inches of 
dustless air. After one stroke of the syringe this mixed air is 
made to occupy an additional space of ten cubic inches ; and this 
rarefying of the air so chills it that condensation of the water- 
vapor takes place on the dust-particles. The observer, looking 
through the magnifying-glass upon the silver table, sees the mist- 
particles fall like an opal shower on the table, and counts the 
number on a single square in two or three places, striking an 



DUST. 255 

average in his mind. Suppose the average number upon one of 
these squares were five, then on the whole table there would be 
500; and these 500 mist-particles contain the 500 dust-particles 
which floated invisibly in the cubic inch of mixed air above the 
table. But, as there are forty cubic inches of mixed air in the 
flask and syringe, the number of dust-particles in the whole is 40 
times 500 = 20,000 ; that is, there are 20,000 dust-particles in the 
small quantity of common air (one tenth of a cubic inch) which was 
introduced for examination ; in other words, a cubic inch of that 
air contains 200,000 dust-particles — nearly a quarter of a million. 

By this process Mr. Aitken has been able to count 7,500,000 of 
dust-particles in one cubic inch of the ordinary air of Glasgow. 
We counted with him 4,000,000 in a cubic inch of the air outside 
of the Royal Society Rooms, Princes Street, Edinburgh. Inside 
the room, after the Fellows had met for two hours, on a winter 
evening — the fire and gas having been burning for a consider- 
able time — we found 6,500,000 in a cubic inch of the air four feet 
from the floor ; but near the ceiling no fewer than 57,500,000 were 
counted in the cubic inch. He counted in one cubic inch of air 
immediately above a Bunsen flame the fabulous number of 489,- 
000,000 of dust-particles. The lowest number he ever counted 
was at Lucerne, in Switzerland : 3,500 in the cubic inch. On the 
summit of Ben Nevis the observer, using Mr. Aitken's apparatus, 
counted from 214,400 down to 840 in the cubic inch. But on the 
morning of the 21st of July last there was a most marvelous ob- 
servation made. Though at the sea-level the wind was steady, 
and the thermometer did not vary, at the summit the wind sud- 
denly veered round to the opposite direction of that below, blow- 
ing out of a cyclone, and the temperature rose ten degrees. In 
consequence the extraordinarily low mean of only thirty-four 
dust-particles to the cubic inch was observed. 

We now come to the most pleasant of the investigations in 
connection with dust. The very brilliant sunsets which began in 
the autumn of 1883, and continued during successive seasons with 
gradually decreasing grandeur, have arrested the attention of the 
physicist as well as of the general observer. What is the cause of 
the brilliant coloring in these remarkable sunsets ? What is the 
source of the immense wealth of the various shades of red which 
have been so universally admired ? Gazing on a gorgeous sunset, 
the whole western heavens glowing with roseate hues, the observer 
sees the colors melting away before his eyes and becoming trans- 
formed into different hues. The clouds are of different sizes and 
of all shapes. Some float virgin-like in silver folds, others voyage 
m golden groups ; some are embroidered with burning crimson, 
others are like " islands all lovely in an emerald sea." And when 
the flood of rosy light, as it deepens into bright crimson, brings 



256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

out into "bold relief the circlet of flaming mountain peaks, it is 
like a gorgeous transformation scene. Stranger still, when the 
sun sinks below the horizon, and a dull ashen gray has possessed 
the western heavens, what occasions the hectic flush on the east- 
ern horizon ? Gradually the clouds are tinged with light red 
from the eastern horizon all over the zenith ; whence comes the 
coloring ? 

It is a strange coincidence that these remarkably fine sun- 
sets have been since the tremendous eruptions at Krakatoa, in 
the Straits of Sunda. Along with the lava eruption there was 
ejected an enormous quantity of fine dust. The decks of vessels, 
hundreds of miles away, were covered with it. Mr. Verbreek 
computed that no less than 70,000 cubic yards of dust actually fell 
round the volcano. This will give an idea of the enormous quan- 
tity of dust still floating in the atmosphere, and drifting all over 
the world. In the upper atmosphere, too, there must always be 
dust, for without the dust no clouds could be formed to shield us 
from the sun's scorching rays ; and of cosmic dust there must be 
a considerable quantity in the air, produced by the waste from 
the millions of meteors that daily fall into it. Mr. Aitken has 
ably shown that the brilliancy and variety of the coloring are 
due to the suspended dust in the atmosphere. 

Observers of the gorgeous sunsets and afterglows have been 
most particularly struck with the immense wealth of the various 
shades and tints of red. Now, if the glowing colors are due to the 
presence of dust in the air, there must be somewhere a display of 
the colors complementary to the reds, because the dust acts by a 
selective dispersion of the colors. The small dust-particles arrest 
the direct course of the rays of light and reflect them in all direc- 
tions ; but they principally reflect the rays of the violet end of 
the spectrum, while the red rays pass on almost unchecked. 
Overhead deep blue reigns in awe-inspiring glory. As the sun 
passes below the horizon, and the lower stratum of air, with its 
larger particles of dust which reflect light, ceases to be illumi- 
nated, the depth and fullness of the blue most intensely increase. 
This effect is produced by the very fine particles of dust in the 
sky overhead being unable to scatter any colors unless those 
of short wave-lengths at the violet end .of the spectrum. Thus 
we see, above, blue in its intensity without any of the red colors. 
When, however, the observer brings his eyes down in any direction 
except the west, he will see the blue mellowing into blue-green, 
green, and then rose color. And some of the most beautiful and 
delicate rose tints are formed by the air cooling and depositing 
its moisture on the particles of dust, increasing the size of the 
particles till they are sufficiently large to stop and spread the red 
rays, when the sky glows with a strange aurora-like light. 



DUST. 257 

Tlie dust theory of the splendor of sunset coloring is strength- 
ened by the often glorious afterglows. The fiercely brilliant 
streaks of red have disappeared ; over the mountain ridge a flush 
of orange hovers, and softens the approaching blue. The western 
hills, that once stood out bronzed against the glare of light, are 
somber-hued. But suddenly, as by a fairy's wand, the roseate 
flush of beauty rises in the east, and stretches its beautiful tints 
all over the sky. As the sun sinks, but before it ceases to shine 
on our atmosphere, the temperature of the air begins to fall, and 
its cooling is accompanied by an increase in the size of the 
particles floating in it by the condensation of the water-vapor. 
The particles to the east lose the sun first, and are thus first cooled. 
Accordingly, the rays in that direction are best sifted by the 
larger water-clad particles of dust, and the roseate coloring is 
there more distinct than in the north and south. As the sun 
sinks further, the particles overhead become cooler, and attract 
the water-vapor ; thus they increase in size, and thereby reflect 
the red rays. Here the red hues, at first visible in the east, slowly 
rise, pass overhead, and descend in the west to form the charming 
afterglow. Sometimes a flood of glory will roll once more along 
the summits of the hills, entrancing the attention of the artistic 
spectator. 

All examinations of the volcanic dust lately collected from 
the atmosphere show that a great quantity of it is composed of 
small glassy crystals. An abundance of these would quite ac- 
count for the peculiarity in the visibility of the first glow ; and 
the evidence seems to indicate that the quantity of such crystals 
is sufiicient to produce the result. When these are fully illumi- 
nated, they become in turn a source of illumination, and reflect 
their reddish light all around. In winter sunsets, the water-clad 
dust-particles become frozen, and the peculiarly brilliant crimson 
is seen, coloring the dead beech leaves and red sandstone houses, 
and making them appear to be painted with vermilion. 

If, then, there were no fine dust-particles in the upper strata 
of the atmosphere, the sunset effect would be paler ; if there were 
no large particles in the lower strata., the beautiful sunset effects 
would cease. In fact, if our atmosphere were perfectly void of 
dust-particles, the sun's light would simply pass through without 
being seen, and soon after the sun dipped below the horizon total 
darkness would ensue. The length of our twilight, therefore, 
depends on the amount of dust in one form or another in our at- 
mosphere. Not only, then, would a dustless atmosphere have no 
clouds, but there would be no charming sunsets, and no thought- 
inspiring twilights. 

There is a generally prevalent fallacy that the coloring at sun- 
rise or sunset is much finer when seen from the summit of a 
TOL. XL. — 21 



258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

mountain than from a valley. To this matter Mr. Aitken has 
been giving some attention, and his observations point the very 
opposite way, corroborative of his dust-theory. From the summit 
of the Rigi Kulm in Switzerland he saw several sunsets, but was 
disappointed with the flatness and weakness of the coloring ; 
whereas in the valley, on the same evenings, careful observers 
were enchanted with the gorgeous display. The lower dusty 
humid air was the chief source of the color in the sunset effects. 
His opinon is strengthened by the fact that when from the summit 
he saw large cumulous clouds, the near ones were always snowy 
white, while it was only the distant ones that were tarnished 
yellow, showing that the light came to these clouds unchanged, 
.and it was only the air between the far-distant clouds and his eye 
that tarnished them yellow. On the mountain-top it required a 
great distance to give even a slight coloring. The larger and 
more numerous dust-particles in the air of the valley are, therefore, 
productive of more brilliant coloring in sunrise or sunset than 
the smaller and fewer particles on the mountain-top. 

It is now admitted that the inherent hue of water is blueness. 
Even distilled water has been proved to be almost exactly of the 
same tint as a solution of Prussian blue. This is corroborated by 
the fact that the purer the water is in nature, the bluer is the hue. 
But though the selective absorption of the water determines its 
blueness, it is the dust-particles suspended in it which determine 
its brilliancy. If the water of the Mediterranean be taken from 
different places and examined by means of a concentrated beam 
of light, it is seen to hold in suspension millions of dust-particles 
of different kinds. To this fine dust it owes its beautiful, brilliant, 
and varied coloring. Where there are few particles there is little 
light reflected, and the color of the water is deep blue ; but where 
there are many particles more light is reflected, and the color is 
chalky blue-green. Along its shores the Mediterranean washes 
the rocks and rubs off the minute solid particles, which make the 
water beautifully brilliant. 

That this is the case can be illustrated. If a dark metal vessel 
be filled with a weak solution of Prussian blue, the water will 
appear quite dark and void of color. But if some fine white 
powder be thrown into the vessel, the water at once becomes of a 
brilliant blue color ; if more powder be added, the brilliancy in- 
creases. This accounts for the changes of depth and brilliancy of 
color in the several shores of the Mediterranean. In Lake Como, 
where there is an entire absence of white dust-particles, the water 
is of a deep blue color, but void of brilliancy ; but, where the 
lake enters the river Adda, the increase of the current rubs down 
fine reflecting particles from the rocks ; in consequence, there the 
water is of a finer blue. When the dust-particles carried down 



DUST. 259 

by the Rhone spread out into the center of the Lake of Geneva, 
the color assumes the deeper blue, rivaling in brilliancy any 
water in the world. 

The phenomenon called a haze puzzled investigators until Mr. 
Aitken explained it on the principle of the condensing power of 
dust-particles Haze is only an arrested form of condensation of 
water- vapor. If one half of a dusty pane of glass be cleaned in 
cold weather, the clean part will remain undewed, while the dusty 
part is damp to the eye and greasy to the touch. Why is this ? 

Fit up an open box with two pipes, one for taking in water 
and the other for taking away the overflow. Inside fix a thermom- 
eter. Cover the top edge of the box with India rubber, and fix 
down with spring catches (so as to make the box water-tight) a 
glass mirror, on which dust has been allowed to collect for some 
time. Clean the dust carefully off one half of the mirror, so that 
one half of the glass covering the box is clean and the other half 
dusty. Pour cold water through the pipe into the box, so as to 
lower the temperature of the mirror, and carefully observe when 
condensation begins on each of the halves, taking a note of the 
temperature. It will be found that the condensation of the water- 
vapor appears on the dust-particles before coming down to the 
natural dew-point temperature of the clean glass. The difference 
between the two temperatures indicates the temperature above 
the dew-point at which the dust condenses the water- vapor. Mr. 
Aitken found that the condensing power of the dust in the air of 
a smoking-room varied from 4° to 8° Fahr. above the dew-point, 
whenever that of the outer air varied from 3° to 5-^°. 

Moisture is, therefore, deposited on the dust-particles of the 
air which is not saturated, and condensation takes place while 
the air is comparatively dry. before the temperature is lowered to 
the dew-point. The clearest air, then, has some haze ; and, as the 
humidity increases, the thickness of the air increases. In all haze 
the temperature is above the dew-point. And in all circum- 
stances the haze can be accounted for by the condensing power of 
the dust-particles in the atmosphere at a higher temperature 
than that required for the formation of fogs, or mists, or rain. 

But whence comes the dust ? Meteoric waste and volcanic 
debris have already been mentioned. On or near the sea the air 
is impregnated by the fine brine-dust lashed by the waves and 
broken upon the rocks and vessel-sides. But the most active of 
iall substances as a fog-producer in towns is burned sulphur. No 
less than three hundred and fifty tons of the products of the com- 
bustion of sulphur from the coal are thrown into the atmosphere 
of London every winter day. But the powerful deodorizing and 
antiseptic properties of the sulphur assist in sanitation ; and it is 
better to bear the inconvenience of fogs than be subjected to the 



26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

evils of a pestilence. At the same time it should be known that 
smoke-particles can be deposited by the agency of electricity. If 
an electric discharge be passed through a jar containing smoke, 
the dust will be deposited so as to make the air clear. Lightning 
clears the air, restoring the devitalized oxygen and depositing the 
dust on the ground. Might it not, then, be possible for strong 
enough electrical discharges from several large voltaic batteries 
to attack the smoke in the air of large cities, and especially 
the fumes from chemical works, so as to bring down the dust 
In the form of rain instead of leaving it in the form of mystify- 
ing fog ? 

Organic germs also float in the air. Some are being vomited 
into the air from the pestilential hot-beds of the lowest slums. 
In a filthy town no less than thirty millions of bacteria in a year 
will be deposited by the rain upon every square yard of surface. 
A man breathes thirty-six germs every minute in a close town, 
and double that in a close bedroom. The wonder is how people 
escape sickness, though most of these germs are not deadly. In 
a healthy man, however, the warm lung surfaces repel the colder 
dust-particles of all kinds, and the moisture evaporating from the 
surface of the air-tubes helps the prevention of the dust clinging 
to the surface. 

From this outline the reader will observe the increasing im- 
portance of careful attention to the influence of dust in the 
economy of nature. As a sickness-bearer and a death-bearer it 
must be attacked and rendered harmless ; as a source of beauty 
unrivaled we must rejoice at its existence. The clouds that 
shelter us from the sun's scorching heat, the refreshing showers 
that clear the air and cheer the soil, the brilliancy of the deep- 
blue sea and lake, the charms of twilight, and above all the glory 
of the colors of sunrise and sunset, are all dependent upon the 
existence of millions of dust-particles which are within the power 
of man's enumeration. No more brilliant achievement has been 
made in the field of meteorology than during the past few years 
by the careful observation and inventive genius of Mr. Aitken in 
connection with the importance of dust in air and water. — Long- 
man's Magazine. 



It appears, from the complete edition of the works of Huygens, now in course 
of publication at The Hague, that as soon as he had succeeded in applying the 
pendulum to the regulating of clocks, claims were set up for priority in the 
invention. The best-founded claims were those of Galileo, which were cham- 
pioned by Prince Leopold de' Medici. According to the formal statement drawn 
up by Viviani, Galileo had conceived the idea, but failed to make the application 
of it. He had a pendulum connected with wheel-work, but omitted to provide 
any weights, springs, or other means of keeping the machinery in motion. 



SKETCH OF DIMITRI IVANOVIGH MENDELEEF. 261 



SKETCH OF DIMITRI IVANOVIGH MENDELEEF. 

THE discovery of the periodic law in the atomic weights of 
the elements has furnished chemists with a new standard of 
accuracy and a new guide in research. While it must be regarded 
as Mendeleef 's most conspicuous scientific achievement, the Rus- 
sian chemist is the author of many othei labors of hardly less real 
importance. 

DiMiTRi IvANOViCH Mendeleef was born at Tobolsk, Siberia, 
February 7, 1834, the seventeenth and youngest child of Ivan 
Paulovich Mendeleef, director of the gymnasium there. Soon 
after his birth the father became blind and had to resign his 
position, leaving the care of the family upon the mother, a com- 
petent and energetic woman. She established and managed a 
glass-works, and brought up and educated her family upon its 
profits. Dimitri was sent to the gymnasium at Tobolsk, and, at 
sixteen years of age, to St. Petersburg, where he was to study 
chemistry in the university, under Zinin ; but was transferred to 
the Pedagogical Institute in the same building with the univer- 
sity, where he entered the physico-mathematical department, or 
that of the natural sciences. He studied chemistry, physics, 
mathematics, botany, zoology, mineralogy, and astronomy, under 
teachers who were most of them also professors in the university. 
Having concluded his course here, he was appointed to the gym- 
nasium at Simferopol, in the Crimea ; then, during the Crimean 
War, to a gymnasium in Odessa ; and in 1856 he became a Privat 
Docent in the University of St. Petersburg, where he had already 
received the degree of Master of Chemistry. In 1859, having ob- 
tained permission from the Government to travel, he became 
engaged at Heidelberg in the determination of the physical con- 
stants of chemical compounds. In 18G3 he was made Professor 
of Chemistry at the Technological Institute of St. Petersburg, 
and in 1836 at the university, where he received the degree of 
Doctor of Chemistry. 

Mendeleef had already^ before his engagement as a Privat 
Docent^ entered upon the career of research and publication in 
which he has so brilliantly distinguished himself. His first 
paper, on Isomorphism, was prepared while he was still in the 
Pedagogical Institute. He entered into the discussion of the 
relations between the specific gravities of substances and their 
molecular weights, and presented to the physico-mathematical 
faculty of the university a number of theses or problems relating 
to specific volumes ; and as early as 1856 he accepted Gerhardt's 
mode of determining the chemical molecule. His researches on 
specific volumes were continued till 1870, and in them, according 



262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

to Prof. T. E. Thorpe, from whose memoir in Nature we derive 
most of the material of this sketch, he extends Kopp's generaliza- 
tions, and traces the specific volumes of substances through vari- 
ous phases of chemical changes. In a paper on the thermal ex- 
pansion of liquids above their boiling-points, he showed that the 
empirical expressions given by Kopp, Pierre, and others are equally 
applicable to much higher temperatures, and that the expansion- 
coefficient gradually increases with the diminution in molecular 
cohesion of the liquid, until, in the case of some liquids, it becomes 
even greater than that of the gas. In 1883 he contributed to the 
English Chemical Society a paper giving a simple general expres- 
sion for the expansion of liquids under constant pressure between 
zero and their boiling-points — a formula analogous to that which 
expresses Gay-Lussac's law of the uniformity of expansion of 
gases ; but which, like Gay-Lussac's law, however correct in the- 
ory, is subject to deviations in application. These deviations 
were shown to be related to the molecular weights of the gases. 

Researches in thermal chemistry, made in 1882, showed him 
that the data obtained by Berthelot, Thomson, and others, regard- 
ing the " heats of formation " of hydrocarbons, stood in need of 
correction, because allowance had not been made for the physical 
changes involving absorption or evolution of heat which accom- 
pany the chemical changes considered ; and he gave a table giving 
the heats of formation from marsh-gas, carbon monoxide, and 
carbon dioxide, of a series of hydrocarbons, for chemical reac- 
tions that actually occurred, while the reactions given by Ber- 
thelot and others were not realized in practice. 

In the investigation of solutions, Mendeleef propounded in 
1884 the law that in solutions of salts the densities increase with 
the molecular weights ; but if we take, instead of the molecular 
weights, the weights of their equivalents or those of the equiva- 
lents of metals, the regularity of increase disappears ; and, though 
his research was not yet finished, he submitted an equation as 
preliminary to ulterior results promising to give a more general 
formula. The results of the determination of the specific gravity 
of aqueous ~ solutions of alcohol were applied, according to Prof. 
Thorpe's memoir, toward the elucidation of a theory of solution 
in which Dalton's doctrine of the atomic constitution of matter 
could be reconciled with modern views concerning dissociation 
and the dynamical equilibrium of molecules. "According to 
Mendeleef, solutions are to be regarded as strictly definite atomic 
chemical combinations at temperatures higher than their dissoci- 
ation temperature ; and, just as definite chemical substances may 
be either formed or decomposed at temperatures which are higher 
than those at which dissociation commences, so we may have the 
same phenomenon in solutions; at ordinary temperatures they 



SKETCH OF DIMITRI IVAKO VICE MENDELEEF. 263 

can be either formed or decomposed. In addition, tlie equilib- 
rium between tlie quantity of the definite compound and of its 
products of dissociation is defined by the laws of chemical equi- 
librium, which require a relation bet"^een equal volumes and 
their dependence on the mass of the active component parts," 

In 1881 Mendeleef turned his attention to experiments on the 
elasticity of the gases, which he continued with the aid of several 
of his pupils. They led to many interesting results, among which 
was one showing that the deviations from Marriotte's law were 
in opposite directions at pressures above and below that of the 
atmosphere ; indicating that air, for instance, as well as carbonic 
acid and sulphurous acid gases, experience a change of compressi- 
bility at certain pressures. 

The results of these experiments were used in studies of the 
physical nature of the rarefied air of the upper atmosphere and 
the application of aeronautics, and he attempted to organize 
meteorological observations in the upper atmosphere by means of 
balloons. 

The principles on which Mendeleef based the periodic law 
were first explained in a paper read before the Russian Chemical 
Society in 18G9. As repeated by the author in his Faraday lect- 
ure to the English Chemical Society, they declare that the ele- 
ments, if arranged according to their atomic weights, exhibit 
a periodicity of properties ; that elements which are similar in 
chemical properties have atomic weights that are nearly of the 
same value or which increase regularly ; that the arrangement of 
the elements or groups of elements in the order of their atomic 
weights corresponds to their so-called valencies, and, to some 
extent, to their distinctive chemical properties ; that the elements 
which are the most widely diffused have small atomic weights ; 
that the magnitude of the atomic weight determines the charac- 
ter of the element, just as the magnitude of the molecule deter- 
mines the character of a compound body ; that the discovery of 
many yet unknown elements may be expected ; that the calcu- 
lation of the atomic weight of an element may sometimes be 
amended by a knowledge of those of its contiguous elements ; 
and that certain characteristic properties of elements can be fore- 
told from their atomic weights. The theory was founded upon 
experiment, and assumed the adoption of the definite numerical 
values of the atomic weights, and the recognition that the rela- 
tions between the atomic weights of analogous elements were 
governed by some general law, with a more accurate knowledge 
of the relations and analogies of the rarer elements as necessary 
for the completing and proving of it. In accordance with the 
theory as thus developed, a table was composed by Mendeleef and 
Victor Meyer, including nearly but not quite all of the elements 



264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

— for tliere were a few of which, not enough was yet accurately 
known to determine their subjection to the rule — arranged in the 
order of their atomic weights and in groups or periods showing 
their relations and analogies. These periods might be said to be 
self -constituted ; for, without departing from the orderly arrange- 
ment which Mendeleef had declared to exist, they so fell in line 
as to exhibit the very likenesses and differences which he had 
insisted upon as a jjart of his theory. Arranging them in parallel 
columns, it appeared that the several members of each period 
were substances that showed no similarity or community of 
chemical properties with one another ; but that the members of 
the different periods showed an unmistakable parallelism with 
the corresponding members of the previous period. The columns 
also ex,hibited a regular gradation of electro-chemical properties, 
the most electro-positive elements occupying the places at their 
heads, and the extreme electro-negative elements the bottom 
places. The results of later discoveries and more accurate 
determinations have all been to confirm the correctness of the 
tabulation and the periodic theory. Thus scandium, gallium, 
and germanium, when discovered and examined, were found to 
fit into vacant places in the table, and to possess the atomic 
weights and the properties which the authors had predicted 
should belong to the elements falling in those places ; and Men- 
deleef was able to say, in his Faraday lecture, delivered twenty 
years after the first suggestion of his theory, " When, in 1871, I 
described to the Russian Chemical Society the properties, clearly 
defined by the periodic law, which such elements ought to pos- 
sess, I never hoped to live to mention their discovery to the 
Chemical Society of Great Britain as a confirmation of the ex- 
actitude and the generality of the periodic law." Up to the time 
of the formulation of this law. Prof. Thorpe says in his article : 
**The determination of the atomic value or valency of an element 
was a purely empirical matter, with no apparent necessary rela- 
tion to the atomic value of other elements. But to-day this value 
is as much a matter of a 'priori knowledge as is the very exist- 
ence of the element or any one of its properties. Striking exam- 
ples of the aid which the law affords in determining the substi- 
tuting value of an element are presented in the cases of indium, 
cerium, yttrium, beryllium, scandium, and thorium. In certain 
of these cases, the particular value demanded by the law, and the 
change in representation of the molecular composition of the 
compounds of these elements, have been confirmed by all those 
experimental criteria on which chemists are accustomed to de- 
pend. . . . The law has, moreover, enabled many of the physical 
properties of the elements to be referred to the principle of peri- 
odicity. At the Moscow Congress of Russian Physicists, in Au- 



SKETCH OFDIMITRI IVANOVICR MENDELEEF. 265 

gust, 1879, Mendeleef pointed out the relations ■wliic]i existed 
between tlie density and the atomic weights of the elements; 
these were subsequently more fully examined by Lothar Meyer, 
and are embodied in the well-known curve in his Modern The- 
ories of Chemistry. Similar relations have been observed in 
certain other properties, such as ductility, fusibility, hardness, 
volatility, crystalline form, and thermal expansion ; in the refrac- 
tion equivalents of the elements, and in their conductivities for 
heat and electricity; in their magnetic properties and electro- 
chemical behavior ; in the heats of formation of their haloid com- 
pounds ; and even in such properties as their elasticity, breaking 
stress, etc." While one may be readily inclined and many have 
been led to look for a connection between the periodic law and the- 
ories of the unitary origin of matter, Mendeleef has not allowed 
his studies in the subject to be embarrassed by any such pre- 
possession. He said in his Faraday lecture : " The periodic law, 
based as it is on the solid and wholesome ground of experimental 
research, has been evolved independently of any conception as to 
the nature of the elements ; it does not in the least originate in 
the idea of a unique matter ; and it has no historical connection 
with that relic of the torments of classical thought, and there- 
fore it affords no more indication of the unity of matter, or of 
the compound nature of the elements, than do the laws of Avo- 
gadro or Gerhardt, or the law of specific heats, or even the con- 
clusions of spectrum analysis." The periodic law is developed 
in the author's Principles of Chemistry, which was first pub- 
lished in 18G9, and appeared in a fourth edition, after a thorough 
revision, with many important additions and modifications, in 
1882. 

In a lecture before the Royal Institution in 1889, Mendeleef 
sought to apply a broader generalization and to discover a harmoni- 
ous law regulating both chemical and astronomical phenomena. 
The immediate object of the lecture was to show that, starting 
from Newton's third law of motion, it is possible to preserve to 
chemistry all the advantages arising from structural teaching, 
without being obliged to build up molecules in solid and motion- 
less figures, or to attempt to ascribe to atoms definite limited 
valencies, directions of cohesion, or affinities. He supposed that 
harmonious order reigns in the invisible and apparently chaotic 
motions of the universe, reaching from the stars to the minutest 
atoms, which is commonly mistaken for complete rest, but which 
is really a consequence of the conservation of dynamic equilibrium 
that was discovered by Newton, and has been traced by his suc- 
cessors as relative immobility in the midst of universal and active 
movement. The unseen world of chemical changes was regarded 
as analogous to the invisible world of the heavenly bodies, " since 



266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

our atoms form distinct portions of an invisible world, as planets, 
satellites, and comets form distinct portions "of the astronomer's 
universe ; our atoms may therefore be compared to the solar 
system, or to the systems of double or single stars. . . . Now that 
the indestructibility of the elements has been acknowledged, 
chemical changes can not be otherwise explained than as changes 
of motion, and the production by chemical reactions of galvanic 
currents, of light, of heat, or of steam-power, demonstrate visibly 
that the processes of chemical reaction are inevitably connected 
with enormous though unseen displacements, originating in the 
movements of atoms in molecules." 

When, in 1880, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences refused, 
in the face of strongly signed recommendations, to elect Mende- 
leef a member in its Chemical Section, other scientific societies 
hastened to express their appreciation of him by making him an 
honorary member. Among these were the University of Moscow ; 
the Russian Chemical and Physical Society, which presented him 
an address where it spoke of him as " a chemist who has no equal 
among Russian chemists " ; the University of Kiev, the Society 
of Hygiene, etc. From England he received the Davy medal of 
the Royal Society in 1882, and the Faraday medal of the Chemical 
Society in 1889. 

Prof. Mendeleef is the author of a treatise on Organic Chem- 
istry which was a standard work in its time, and which, accord- 
ing to Prof. Thorpe, exercised a great influence in spreading 
abroad the conceptions which are associated with the develop- 
ment of modern chemistry. In 1863 he published a cyclopaedia of 
chemical technology — the first really important work of the kind 
produced in Russia. He has frequently been commissioned to 
report on the progress of chemical industry as illustrated at the 
various international exhibitions. His investigations and reports 
on petroleum have been an important factor in the developing 
of the trade at Baku, and in removing the monopoly which for- 
merly dominated the market there. 

We quote again, in concluding, from Prof. Thorpe : " No man 
in Russia," he says, " has exercised a greater or more lasting in- 
fluence on the development of physical science than Mendeleef. 
His mode of work and of thought is so absolutely his own, the 
manner of his teaching and lecturing is so entirely original, and 
the success of the great generalization with which his name and 
fame are bound up is so strikingly complete, that to the outer 
world of Europe and America he has become to Russia what 
Berzelius was to Sweden, or Liebig to Germany, or Dumas to 
France." 



CORRESP ONDENCE. 



267 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



TA n 



EIGHTING THE BICYCLE. 

Editor Popular Science Monthly : 

SIR : The article What keeps the Bicycler 
Upright ? in the Monthly for last April 
was a very interesting one, especially to 
wheelmen, but I think it needs a little supple- 
mentary statement to make it comolete. Mr. 
Charles B. Warring, the author, states that 
the rider's lost equilibrium is restored by 
bringing his point of support under him, and 
gives the impression that this point can be 
moved square to the right or left, like the foot 
of Mr. Warring's A-frame, saying nothing 
about the forward movement of the wheel. 
While agreeing with the main part of this 
statement, I think the righting of a bicycle 
can be more clearly and accurately explained 
as follows: 

It is one of the elementary laws of phys- 
ics that the center of gravity of a body must 
be over some point in its base in order that 
the body may stand 
without outside sup- ^ 

port. Now, the base 
on which a bicycle 
rests is only a line 
about half an inch 
wide, which joins the 
point B, in ray figure, 
where the front wheel 
rests on the ground, 
with the point C, 
where the rear wheel 
rests. (I adopt Mr. 
Warring's lettering.) 
So long as a vertical 
line dropped from the 
center of gravity of 
the machine falls on 
some point of the line 
B C, the bicycle is 
in stable equilibrium ; 
but, when it falls out- 
side this narrow base, 
as at the point D, the 
equilibrium becomes 
unstable. In order to 
keep the machine and 
rider from coming to 
the ground, D must 

be brought upon B C ; or, what is equiva- 
lent, B C must be brought under D. The 
latter is what is actually done. As the 
rider can not slide his machine sideways 
over the ground, he steers it obliquely 
toward the side on which he tends to fall. 
Thus, if the bicycle were running in the di- 
rection C m, he turns it toward the right so 
as to go in the direction B p. The center of 
gravity of the machine and its rider, which 
had been moving parallel to the course of 



* 



the machine, is now acted on by two forces : 
(1) its acquired momentum, which tends to 
carry it on in the direction D n, and (2) the 
force constantly being received from the 
moving bicycle, which tends to carry it along 
the line D 0, parallel to the new course of 
the machine. The result is, that it takes an in- 
termediate direction, D p, in accordance with 
the law of the composition of forces. Thus, 
by being made to follow converging lines, D 
and B C are brought together at the point jo. 
As quick as this is accomplished the bicycle 
must be turned again parallel to its original 
direction, or D will pass over to the left of 
B C and make the machine tilt toward that 
side. Hence, it is seen that righting a fall- 
ing bicycle in motion involves two move- 
ments : first, a turn of the machine toward 
the side on "which it tends to fall, then a 
return to its original course. Gravity was 
not mentioned among the forces considered 
above, but its action does not vitiate ray ex- 
planation. I will add that I ride a bicycle 
myself, and so am acquainted with this mat- 
ter on the practical as well as on the theoreti- 
cal side. Very truly yours, 

Fredekik a. Fep.nald, 
L. A. W., 12,99G, N. Y. Division. 

[Substantially the same explanation as 
that given above has also been received from 
Mr. Thomas Gary Welch, of Buffalo, N. Y.— 
Editor.] 



THE KELLEY'S ISLAND GROOVE. 

Editor Popular Science Monthly : 

Dear Sir: In this month's number of 
the Science Monthly, under the " Miscella- 
neous " head, you have a notice of the work 
now in progress for the preservation of the 
great glacial groove on Kelley's Island. 

In that notice you speak of Prof. Wright 
and Dr. Sprecher as having " surveyed " the 
plot of land on which the groove is located. 
In this statement you are in error. They are 
not surveyors, and they did not survey the 
plot, and the suggestion of such an occupa- 
tion for them must seem to those who know 
them very inappropriate. Prof. Wripht is 
Professor of "New Testament Greek" at 
Oberlin, and the author of that noble book. 
The Ice Age in North America, published by 
the Appletons in 1890; and Dr. Sprecher is 
pastor of one of the largest Presbyterian 
churches in our city. And in that notice 
you make another error, which to me seems 
very absurd. You give my name as Young- 
hlood. It is not Y onn^blood, as you may learn 
from your subscription list, where it has been 
recorded from the time that the first number 
of the Science Monthly was issued. 



268 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The facts are just these : my invitation 
to Prof. Wright and Dr. Sprccher to visit 
the island with me was wholly a matter of 
courtesy. While there I consulted them as 
to the best method of protecting the groove 
from the incursions of the Vandal curiosity- 
hunters, and also as to the best form of 
conveying the title, to be held in perpetuity 
for the benefit of science ; and all of the sur- 
veying that was done by those gentlemen 
they did with their e)'es, as they stood ad- 
miring that beautiful and wonderful work of 
Nature's laws. 

I take pleasure in saying that I have 
completed the work of uncovering fifty feet 
of the groove, leaving fifty feet still covered 
to the depth of about twelve feet with clay, 
gravel, and fragments of the lime rock, just 
as it was left by Nature's laws when their 
work was finished, and the tools with which 
that work was done — granite bowlders — lie 
scattered over the island, and on the main- 
land, as far west as the Indiana line, there 
to rest, imperishable and unchanged, until 
Nature shall again take them up to do its 
work. 

Were yon to see that groove at this time 
I feel sure that you w ould pronounce it to be 
the most beautiful and wonderful evidence 
of the glacial movement that has ever been 
brought to the notice of civilized man. 

On the 237th page of Prof. Wright's Ice 
Age there is an engraving which gives an 
iniperfeet view of the easterly end of the 
great groove, as it appeared before it was 
uncovered. And on the 238th page of the 
same book there is an engraving of another 
grooved rock, which is a little north of the 
great groove, from which I had taken off 
about a hundred feet before the photograph 
was taken, and sent to various scientific in- 
stitutions. This, too, you will see is a most 



perfect and beautiful specimen of Nature's 
work. 

I beg that you will pardon me for troub- 
ling you with this letter, for I feel that 
it is due to my friends and also to myself 
that the errors which I have noted should 
be corrected. 

And, now that I have nothing further fo 
say on the subject which prompted this let- 
ter, I will add a few words regarding The 
Popular Science Monthly. I have been a 
subscriber from the time of the issue of the 
fii'st number, and I now have thirty volumes 
bound ; and I take pleasure in saying that I 
think that there are no other thirty volumes 
to be found which contain such a vast and va- 
ried amount of useful information, or which 
are so well calculated to educate men in mat- 
ters which advance our civilization, as those. 

And more — they arc a most noble monu- 
ment to "Edward L. Youmans," more beau- 
tiful and enduring than marble or granite. 
I am, sir, very respectfully yours, 

M. C. YOUNGLOVE. 

Cleveland, September 16, 1891. 

[The paragraph noticed by Mr. Young- 
love was compiled from a slip which was 
sent to the Monthly from a Cleveland paper. 
The language of the slip was followed, with- 
out supposing that the word "surveyed" 
was meant to be used in a technical sense, 
but rather perhaps in its original sense of 
looked-over, or perhaps as meaning that Drs. 
Wright and Sprccher had the ground sur- 
veyed. The change of our correspondent's 
name to Youngblood was one that we much 
regret ; but it was also one that might natu- 
rally occur in transcription or type-setting 
and be overlooked by a stranger to the per- 
son concerned ; for to a stranger no sugges- 
tion of error would be likely to occur.] 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



TEE STRONG MAN. 

FORTY years ago or less the apos- 
tle of the hour was Carlyle, the 
fashionable gospel was the gospel of 
force, and the hope of the world was 
supposed to lie in tlie advent of certain 
heroes, strong, resolute men, who were 
to heal our social and other diseases by 
the prescriptions of a benevolent des- 
potism. The gospel of force and all its 
accompanying ideas have somewhat 
fallen into discredit to-day. These latter 
times have proved very unfavorable to 
strong men, or at least to tliose who 
have tried to pose in that character. 



Louis Napoleon was a strong man : he 
greatly dared on a certain 2d of De- 
cember just forty years ago, and for a 
time he seemed to be a living justifi- 
cation of Carlylism ; but the sage of 
Chelsea lived to see the Man of Destiny 
cast down from his high pre-eminence 
and every vestige of his rule obliterated 
by an indignant people. Bismarck was 
a strong man, full of an almost reckless 
courage and utterly impatient of criti- 
cism and opposition; yet how sudden 
and complete was his fall ! Thiers 
wished to play the part of the strong 
man in France, and so did Marshal Mc- 



EDITOR'S TABLE, 



269 



Mahon after Lira ; but the country put 
both of them aside and passed on to 
policies of which they disapproved. 
Later Boulanger pranced across the 
scene in the assumed character of a sav- 
ior of society ; but as soon as the firm 
hand of lawful authority was laid on 
him he slunk into exile and dwindled 
into insignificance ; finally, wrecked 
alike in character and estate, he sought 
death at his own hand. Balraaceda 
was another would-be strong man, and 
he too fills a suicide's grave. Lastly, 
we have Parnell, a man whose courage 
was indomitable, whose fortitude could 
not be shaken, who by the sheer force 
of his personality baffled the plans and 
confused the policies of the ablest states- 
men of Great Britain ; yet who, trusting 
to his sti'ength to win him a personal tri- 
umph after he had violated the essential 
conditions of successful struggle, ended 
his career in failure and disgrace. 

Evidently there is something wrong 
with the gospel of force. Heaven sends 
the strong men in fairly liberal supply, 
men who are quite prepared to fill tlie 
Oarlylean requirements in the matter of 
doing and daring, despising small scru- 
ples and trampling on rights; but their 
success is short lived, and their failure 
points a moral which is hardly to be 
found in the Carlylean philosophy. That 
moral is that, while strength is a good 
thing in itself, and courage and resolu- 
tion are virtues, they need to be guided 
by knowledge and a careful study of 
conditions, if they are not to rush on to 
disaster. Nay, more, we see that indi- 
vidual strength is only weakness unless 
it vibrates in unison with the greater 
strength of true principles of action, the 
strength that resides in the play of great 
social forces. No man to-day can win 
any great triumph except by being in the 
right, and this is the great political lesson 
which we should strive to impress on the 
rising generation. To be sure, there are 
many false lights — mostly, however, of a 
minor kind — shining in the world and al- 
luring men to a career of selfish advent- 



ure. There are men who have climbed 
to business or political success by means 
that will not bear criticism. But the 
examples afforded by those who have 
tried such means to their own ruin are 
more striking and impressive, if not 
more numerous, than any that can bo 
quoted on the other side. 

Hero-worship is well if it simply 
means sincere admiration for noble 
qualities; but it is misleading in the 
highest degree if it causes us to tru?t for 
great results to the action of this or 
that masterful individuality. To-day 
the " common sense of most " is the 
most potent factor in all social and 
political progress, and no man is wise 
who does not bear this in mind. There 
is ample scope still for the exercise of 
the highest moral and intellectual quali- 
ties, and the true hero may yet win the 
admiration and gratitude of society ; 
only, what is required is that he should 
know the structure and laws of the 
society in which he lives, and seek 
rather to give the best expression to the 
tendencies of the time than to impose 
his own individuality on his contem- 
poraries. Only he who, in a profound 
sense, obeys possesses the secret of rule. 

The times are favorable, we think, 
for the presentation of new political 
ideals. Strong men of the old type, 
iron-handed warriors, and stern legisla- 
tors, are out of date ; on the other hand, 
the want of firmness and principle in 
connection with political affairs was 
never more conspicuous. "We want a 
new race of strong men in whom the 
gamester element shall be wholly absent, 
and who shall aim to accomplish their 
ends not by personal tours de force, 
nor yet by craft and flattery, but by 
steady adherence to principle, and 
patient efi'orts to awaken the public to 
a sense of their true interests. The 
strong man of the future will be strong 
in knowledge and in social sympathy ; 
and his strength will be spent, not in 
efforts to perpetuate his personal as- 
cendency, but in efforts to develop all 



270 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that is best in the society of the time. 
The true strong man as we conceive him 
will have no greed for power; his greed, 
if such it may be called, will be for use- 
fulness; and he will show his strength by 
his willingness to retire at any moment 
from a public to a private position rather 
than prove unfaithful to his convictions 
or do anything unworthy of a man of 
honor. Strictly speaking, a man who 
with adequate knowledge and intelli- 
gence tries faithfully to serve the public 
can never be obscure, though oflBces 
should not seek him nor caucuses make 
mention of his name. The public at 
large will recognize and honor his efforts, 
and his influence may be greater in a 
private station than that of a score of 
average legislators. We do not, how- 
ever, look to our educational institutions 
to do much to develop this new type 
of citizen ; we trust rather to general 
educative influences that are abroad in 
the world. We trust, we may say, in 
a considerable degree to such writings 
as those of Mr. Spencer, instinct as 
they are with noble views of liberty 
and of justice, and conveying at the 
same time clear and enlightened ideas 
regarding the nature and functions of 
the state. It is possible that private 
associations for the purpose of causing 
more intelligent views of citizenship 
and its duties to prevail might accom- 
plish very good work ; and we hope 
that something may be attempted in 
this way in connection with the Uni- 
versity Extension movement which is 
now making so satisfactory progress. 
We certainly do not at this moment 
know of any more useful work in which 
an intelligent man could engage, than 
this of introducing a scientific element, 
however feeble at first, into the chaotic 
welter of our State and national politics. 



POLITICAL JUSTICE. 

It is singular what diflSculty many 
intelligent persons experience in enter- 
taining the idea tliat in a democracy 
there can be political injustice. " What 



possible means can you suggest," we are 
often asked, " of deciding political ques- 
tions save the vote of the majority ? 
And what ground can any one have to 
complain so long as he exercises the 
franchise with the rest? The minority 
can not expect to rule, can it ? " These 
questions all proceed upon the assump- 
tion that there can not be a moral ele- 
ment in any political question ; where- 
as, in point of fact, there is a moral ele- 
ment in every political question. If 
two partners were trying to arrange the 
terms of a separation, and each in the 
most shameless manner were to set at 
naught all considerations of equity, and 
strive only to get the largest possible 
amount out of the business for himself, 
we should scarcely approve of the pro- 
ceeding. Every one feels that equity has 
something to say in such a matter. If 
any property whatever had to be divided, 
and if, instead of bringing considera- 
tions of right to bear, the parties were 
at once to plunge into a squabble with 
no guiding principle whatever save in- 
dividual greed, we should think as 
meanly of their intelligence as of their 
lionesty. We all feel instinctively that 
wherever moral principle can furnish a 
guide it should furnish a guide — in oth- 
er words, that to decide any question 
without reference to moral grounds 
which admits of being settled on moral 
grounds is a gross offense against both 
morality and common sense. Suppos- 
ing, then, that some one who had band- 
ed himself with others to carry by force 
a decision involving injustice to a mi- 
nority — say of stockholders — should im- 
pudently say, " We had the votes and 
we used them '" — our only conclusion 
would be that he was a hardy and cyni- 
cal villain. Things of this kind have 
sometimes been done ; but for the most 
part vice has at least paid to virtue the 
tribute of hypocrisy. 

To bring this home to the question 
before us, the nation is a great corpora- 
tion and the citizens are shareholders. 
A general election is a meeting of the 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



271 



shareholders. There is an opportunity 
for honest and well-meaning citizens to 
consult and act for the benefit of the 
great national corporation. There is 
also an opportunity for others to plot 
and plan for their private benefit, to be 
secured at the cost and to the injury of 
the corporation. A combination may 
be formed to elect a corrupt directorate 
or executive with the expectation that 
it will be the submissive creature of 
those who invested it with power. 
Some will be prepared to imperil the 
very existence of the nation in order 
that they may carry certain selfish pur- 
poses of their own into effect. Thus 
every general election and, indeed, 
every phase of political action affords 
an opportunity for the practice of po- 
litical justice or of political injustice; 
and to say that any particular deter- 
mination of the electors or of a legisla- 
tive body is just because it commanded a 
majority of votes is as absurd as to say 
that in a physical encounter right must 
rest with the conqueror. 

" What are yon going to do about 
it," say some, " if the people mani- 
fest a complete indifference to these 
considerations?" We can do nothing 
about it, we reply, but uphold the true 
principle, and trust that the apparent 
" foolishness of preaching " may in the 
end prove wiser than the wisdom of our 
practical politicians who wield votes 
precisely as they might wield clubs. It 
is all a question of the moral growth of 
the people; and we can not but hope 
that the time will come when even the 
average citizen will understand that 
right is not made by majorities, but that 
majorities are happy when they are able 
to discover what right is, and pay it the 
homage of their support. 



TRAMP COLONIES. 

There appears to be an epidemic of 
schemes for reforming shiftless people 
by wholesale. The latest reported is 
a proposal by a Mr. Heller, of Newark, 
N. J., to establish seven colonies, in as 



many States, for the benefit of old and 
unemployed people and tramps. The 
chief feature of the scheme is to be the 
reformation of tramps. Work is to be 
provided for those who will work, and 
Mr. Heller evidently expects that a large 
part of them will. He doubtless actu- 
ally believes what the tramps say of 
themselves, and accepts the familiar 
"can't get work" whine for absolute 
truth. This belief is squarely contra- 
dicted by well-known facts. Plenty of 
work can be had now, without any 
colony machinery, by those who will 
work. During the past summer workers 
have been called for all over the United 
States, to gather in this year's bountiful 
harvest. No tramp could extend his 
travels to twenty miles outside any largo 
city without coming across farmers who 
would be glad to give him fifteen or 
twenty dollars a month and board for 
faithful work. In a recent book on 
Crime and its Causes, the author, Will- 
iam Douglas Morrison, who is an Eng- 
lish prison official, puts the number of 
vagrants who are willing to work at 
not much over two per cent. To con- 
firm his view he quotes the following 
striking testimony from M. Monod of 
the Ministry of the Interior in France: 

According to M. Monod, a bcnfivolently 
disposed French citizen wished to know the 
amount of truth contained in the complaints 
of sturdy beggars that they were willing to 
work if they could get anything to do or any 
one to employ them. This gentleman entered 
into negotiations with some merchants and 
manufacturers, and induced them to olFer work 
at the rate of four francs [eijrhty cents] a day 
to every person presenting himself furnished 
with a letter of recommendation from him. 
In eight months seven hundred and twenty- 
seven sturdy beggars came under his notice, 
all complaining that they had no work. Each 
of them was asked to come the following day 
to receive a letter which would enable him to 
get employment at four francs a day in an 
industrial establishment. More than one half 
(four hundred and fifteen) never came for the 
letter ; a good many others (one hundred and 
thirty-eight) returned for the letter but never 
presented it. Others who did present their 
letter worked half a day, demanded two francs. 



272 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and were seen no more. A few worked a 
whole day and then disappeared. In short, 
out of the whole seven hundred and twenty- 
seven, only eighteen were found at work at the 
end of the third day. As a result of this ex- 
periment M. Monod concludes that not more 
than one alile-bodied beggar in forty is in- 
clined to worlv even if he is oflfered a fair re- 
muneration for his services. 

The idea of forming a community 
with such material for its citizens is ab- 
surd in the extreme. The tramp will 
not work so long as he can find soft 
hearted and softer headed people who 
will give him a subsistence in idleness. 
These self-satisfied charitable persons, 
who give indiscriminately to save them- 
selves the trouble of helping judiciously, 
really entice more unfortunates into beg- 
gary than tliey raise out of it. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 

Etolution in Science and Akt. Lectures 
and Discussions before the Brooklyn 
Ethical Association. Now York : D. 
Appleton h Co. 

The topics considered in these lectures 
include not only the special unfolding of 
each branch of science, but also sketches 
of the leading evolutionists and outlines of 
their methods. The first of the series is a 
concise and excellent review of A. R. Wal- 
lace and his work, by Prof. E. D. Cope. The 
co-author with Darwin of the theory of nat- 
ural selection is honored as a biologist, not 
for researches in anatomy or paleontology, 
but for his mastery of hexicology — the study 
of the mutual relations of living objects. 
Extensive travel tor twelve years in the 
tropics furnished him with a storehouse of 
zoological facts. From these resulted va- 
rious papers on birds' nests, protective col- 
oration, and mimicry ; while the theory of 
natural selection was drawn from his obser- 
vation of the variations of species. Besides 
his works on evolution, he has written books 
of travel and essays on political economy. 
Prof. Cope regards Dr. Wallace as a fine 
example of his own doctrine, that all force 
is will-force, and pays another tribute to 
him as typical of the intelligent spirit of 
this century, determined to know and to use 
the knowledge for the benefit of mankind. 



His explanation of force and intelligence, as 
caused by an influx of spirit, is deemed, 
however, " an unnecessary interjection in an 
otherwise continuous operation of known 
and unknown causes." 

As Dr. Wallace is so stanch a supporter 
of the theory that variations are congenital 
and environment a secondary feature, while 
Prof. Cope holds as firmly to the opposite 
view, several mooted points are discussed 
oi passant, and in conclusion a synopsis is 
given of the respective tenets of the Neo- 
Lamarckian and Neo-Darwinian schools. 

The famous zoologist and author of mon- 
ism. Prof. Ernst Haeckcl, is the theme of the 
second lecture, by Thaddeus B. Wakeman. 
The life and enthusiastic labors of the great 
naturalist are fascinating subjects. Whether 
studying at " dear Jena," or diving in the 
Indian Ocean, or waging war with Prof. 
Vircbow, his zest for knowledge is unap- 
peasable and magnetizes his followers. His 
wonderful industry has given to the world 
nearly a dozen valuable zoological works 
and several charming books of travel. It is 
his philosophy or religion, however, that es- 
pecially attracts his biographer. Mr. Wake- 
man is consumed by a monistic fervor ; and 
it is questionable whether, in his anxiety to 
rid the universe of " spooks," he does not 
create some for iconoclastic purposes. The 
" unknowable " of Herbert Spencer, or Prof. 
Huxley's limitations of knowledge, need some 
endowment of objectivity before they can be 
properly exorcised as wraiths. 

The Scientific Method is expounded by 
Dr. Francis E. Abbot in the third lecture. 
This, when tersely stated, consists of obser- 
vation, hypothesis, and verification. A con- 
firmed transcendentalist might oppose the 
first step by questioning whether one could 
observe an external world. So the lecturer 
gives an imaginary controversy between the 
realist and consistent idealist, and finally 
drives the latter logically into the comer of 
solipsism, where he is made to declare that 
the universe is within himself. The actual 
idealist always escapes this fate by allowing 
an inference of the objective which we can 
not know per se. As the idealistic individ- 
ual shut up with himself can not know, so 
he can not add to human knowledge. The 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



27? 



scientific man, on the other hand, recognizes 
an external world and positive knowledge, 
and seeks to contribute some new grain of 
truth if he may. He observes, hypothesizes, 
and verifies, and finally submits his result 
to verification by the race, the ultimate cri- 
terion being the unanimous consensus of the 
competent. 

Notwithstanding Dr. Abbot's clear state- 
ment of the scientific method, this final 
standard of knowledge seems ambiguous. 
The truth of a theory needs no further test 
than its complete verification by all the facts 
to which it applies. 

To make a synopsis of the Synthetic Phi- 
losophy of Herbert Spencer intelligible with- 
in the limits of a leciure is a difficult task, 
which Mr. B. F. Underwood has accomplished 
extremely well. Not only this, but he has 
given an introductory analysis of the oppos- 
ing philosophical systems which preceded 
the evolution hypothesis. The sensation 
philosophy of Locke and Hume, and the 
a prion speculations of Kant, representing 
hoary antagonisms of thought, were by Spen- 
cer's insight found to be different halves of 
the whole truth that knowledge is derived 
from experience, but the experience of the 
race furnishes innate ideas to the individual. 
Spencer's doctrine that we perceive only phe- 
nomena, and from these infer the noumenal 
existence which causes changes in conscious- 
ness, is known as transfigured realism ; and, 
though charged with idealistic leaning by 
rank realists, is no more transcendental than 
the views of Dr. Maudsley and Prof. Huxley. 
According to the latter, " all phenomena are, 
in their ultimate analysis, known to us only 
as facts of consciousness." But it is the " un- 
knowable reality " which proves a stum- 
bling-block to many. Theologians dislike 
this, since it excludes a knowledge of God, 
and the scientific are afraid cf it because 
Unknowable is printed with a capital, which 
suggests another sort of deity. Disciples of 
Ilaeckcl vainly impute dualism to Mr. Spen- 
cer, while he declares, " I recognize no forces 
within the organism or without the organism 
but the variously conditional modes of the 
universal immanent force." Whatever chis- 
eling time may effect in the body of Spen- 
cer's doctrine, there is good reason to believe 
with Mr. Underwood that the leading prin- 
ciples will remain intact. 
VOL. XL. — 22 



In the Evolution of Clumistry^ Dr. R. G. 
Ecclcs has skillfully traced the growth of 
chemical knowledge from the vague theories 
of the ancients to the definite, complex sci- 
ence of to-day. After the time of Aristotle 
the elemental theory or doctrine of abstract 
qualities saturated thought for fifteen hun- 
dred years. The scales first used by the 
young Scotch chemist Black weighed scho- 
lastic dogma as well as fixed air, and proved 
the hollowness of a priori reasoning. This 
step in verification made progress possible. 
Oxygen was discovered by Priestley, combus- 
tion explained by Lavoisier, and the law of 
definite and multiple proportions ascertained 
by Dalton. The idea of continuous matter 
was displaced by the atomic theory, and 
Avogadro's law regarding the volume of 
gases confirmed the hypothesis. The laws 
of specific heat, crystallography, and Men- 
delejeff's formula, each added its proof of 
atomic weight. The study of the coherence 
of groups of atoms resulted in the wonder- 
ful synthetic productions of the laboratory. 
The brilliant dyes, flavorings, perfumes, and 
medicines made by the chemist excelled 
those offered by Nature, and utilized hith- 
erto waste products. Although the detail 
of organic chemistry is now beyond the mas- 
tery of any man, the outlook is infinite, and 
problems whose solution promises the secret 
of creation itself tempt the student. The 
composition of the ferments, pepsin and 
trypsin, or of the albuminoids, and the con- 
version of starch into cane sugar, would 
unlock incalculable benefits. The author 
considers the development of chemical 
knowledge, like the habits of atoms, closely 
illustrative of evolutionary law. 

Thales suggested electricity as a con- 
dition of life, and the author of The Evolu- 
tion of Electric and Magnetic Physics is in- 
clined to agree with him. According to Mr. 
Kennelly, "it is possible, if it is not at pres- 
ent demonstrated, that electricity may be 
the active principle in the processes of ani- 
mal vitality ; . . . the relation between elec- 
tricity and vitality may be so close as to 
amount to identity." This is perhaps par- 
donable in the chief electrician of Edison's 
laboratory, but it is- doubtful if any emi- 
nent physiologist or psychologist will allow 
that nerve-fibers do more than artificially 



274 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



resemble insulated wires, or that a dynamo 
can confer any degree of immortality. The 
growth of electric knowledge is recent ; for 
twenty-two hundred years it was dormant. 
The seventeenth century witnessed investi- 
gation of electrical phenomena and of the 
properties of magnets, but for two centuries 
thereafter no connection was realized be- 
tween them. It was only after Oersted's 
discovery, in 1820, that a magnetic needle 
is deflected by the electric current, that 
electro-magnetism became a science. Its 
subsequent progress was correspondingly 
rapid, and its offspring are the crowning 
inventions of to-day. Three propositions 
are especially emphasized by Mr. Kennelly : 
1. All electricity tends to flow in closed 
curves or circuits. 2. The conductivity of 
the surrounding ether. 3. The production 
of light by electro-magnetic vibration. 

The development of botany and the brill- 
iant progress of electricity are as uniike as 
a flower and an electric spark. In his lect- 
ure upon the Evolution of Botany^ Mr. 
Wulling shows that the accumulation of 
botanic knowledge was nearly as gradual 
as vegetable growth. The primitive needs 
were food and clothing, and an acquaint- 
ance with plants supplied these. Herbs 
were also found to be noxious or healing, 
and skill in remedies was sought and vener- 
ated in the early ages. In time so many 
species were described that various attempts 
were made to classify them, and at length 
the natural system of Jussieu prevailed. 
Investigation of the structure and anatomy 
of plants followed the introduction of the 
microscope. The establishment of botanical 
gardens facilitated the study of foreign 
flora ; plant morphology and physiology 
were differentiated as branches of research ; 
and, finally, geological, paleontological, and 
pathological botany constituted separate de- 
partments of this complex science. Mr. 
Wulling refers to the labors of many 
American botanists, and applies the for- 
mula of evolution to an analysis of botani- 
cal history. 

Each of the foregoing lectures is pre- 
ceded by a list of collateral readings useful 
to the student, and followed by a brief dis- 
cussion of the subject by members of the 
Ethical Association. 



The Natural ITistort of Man, and the 
Rise and Progress of Philosophy. By 
Alexander Kinmont. Philadelphia: J. 
B. Lippincott Company. Pp. 335. Price, 
$1. 

This book comprises a series of lectures 
that were delivered and first published fifty 
years ago, or before the present methods of 
investigation were instituted, and before the 
existing theories of development had begun 
to prevail. Yet it is not antiquated, and the 
claim of the editor is supported that " the 
rapid movement of the world in all depart- 
ments of thought, the changes of opinion and 
sentiment in doctrinal theology, and in plii- 
losophy, have not distanced nor superseded 
the ideas herein presented." The author re- 
gards the study of anthropology as chiefly 
valuable as an introduction to the science of 
Deity, and tries whether he can not trace 
in man, " the image and likeness " of God, 
" some of the more majestic elements of the 
original." He does not attempt any formal 
science of human nature, or any theory which 
might deserve the name of anthropology, 
"for such theory or perfect science, I im- 
agine, would be premature still, by many 
hundreds of centuries." Yet, while he ap- 
proaches the subject from a wholly different 
point of view than that from which contem- 
porary philosophers regard it, and considers 
a different side of it, his thoughts lead him 
in the same direction as they take, and his 
work presents many foreshadowings of the 
doctrine of evolution. He might be de- 
scribed as a theological anthropologist. In 
the lecture on the origin and use of language 
he says that " the arguments drawn from the 
sacred scriptures, to establish a system of 
unifonn sounds and modifications of voice to 
designate ideas, are of a kin with the systems 
of astronomy and geology drawn from the 
same book ; all of which, after being fanati- 
cally maintained for a time by arguments 
supported by passion rather than philoso- 
phy, are compelled by degrees to give place 
to the sohd truths of observation and expe- 
rience." Not that anything in science mili- 
tates against the authority of the scriptures ; 
" but these books do not purport to deliver 
to us a system of science, but only to reveal 
the Author of Creation, and the established 
series of its epochs." Thus in the accounts 
of events, as In that of the creation, the state- 
ments are to be interpreted, not in the literal, 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



275 



physical sense, but as condensed, emphatic 
utterances of the theological truth — in this 
case of God the Creator — which in the mind 
of the author predominates over the scien- 
tific truth. The labors of modern geologists 
do not affect the truths, before announced, 
in regard to the creation of the world, for 
the simple reason that they refer not to the 
workman, but to the physical characters of 
the work. " This distinction now begins to 
be understood, and will be so more and 
more, as the truths of religion and the truths 
of science are seen to be of different orders, 
sometimes apparently blended, but never act- 
ually confounded. . . . Three thousand years 
ago or upward, Theology in the Eastern world 
stood unconfounded with science, and men 
heard from her, and were satisfied with the 
response; that 'in the beginning God cre- 
ated the heaven and the earth' — that 'God 
said, Let there be light, and there was light ' ; 
and they heard the number of the days of 
creation also, and were satisfied ; and simi- 
larly, in our times, it may be affirmed that 
Science stands on her own ground, unoccu- 
pied by theology, and expounds facts and es- 
tablishes conclusions, no longer fearing or 
being feared ; and men are now, in regard 
to science, what they used to be in regard to 
religion — free and unembarrassed, serving 
bat one master. And this is the more worthy 
of observation when we recollect the history 
of the intervening period — how science has 
been confounded with religion, and religion 
with science, to the detriment and dishonor 
of both. ... It is only when each pursues 
that order and series of truths which are pe- 
culiar to each that any mutual benefit can 
arise; but, when they encroach on each 
other's provinces, the most baleful effects 
ensue." The presentation of this branch of 
the subject, and the chapters on The Origin 
and Perpetuation of the Natural Races of 
Mankind, and Unity in Variety of the Human 
Race, are followed by studies of certain par- 
ticular nationalities. 

An Introduction to Natcral Philosophy. 
By Denison Olmsted, LL. D. Fourth re- 
vised edition, bv Samuel Sheldon, Ph. D. 
New York: The Baker & Taylor Com- 
pany. Pp. 465. Price, $2.75. 
It is nearly half a century since Olm- 
sted's Philosophy was first published, and 
although the progress of modern knowledge 



in this period has made four revisions neces- 
sary, the name and plan of the author arc 
still deemed worthy of being retained. For 
the present revision the whole book has been 
carefully gone over, the chief efforts of the 
editor being spent in rewriting the parts 
treating of Electricity and Magnetism. The 
subjects Force, Energy, Work, Wave-mo- 
tions, Organ-pipes, Spectrum Analysis, and 
Interference of Light- waves have also been 
almost entirely rewritten. Extended descrip- 
tion of apparatus has been avoided. A few 
striking experiments have been described, 
but the choice of demonstration has been 
left largely to the instructor. Many new 
drawings, chiefly in outline, have been made. 
The work is adapted to college students. It 
would be improved by the addition of an al- 
phabetical index. 

The Chapters on Electricity, written by 
Prof. Samuel Slieldon for the above trea- 
tise, are also published separately (Baker & 
Taylor Company, $1.25). This volume is 
intended for use in those colleges which de- 
vote but thirty or forty hours to the subject, 
and the principles presented in it are those 
which the author thinks every liberally edu- 
cated person should know. It has been the 
desire of the author to present each part of 
the subject in its most modern dress. This 
desire, however, has been tempered by a 
consideration of the intended functions cf 
the book. 

Chemistry of the Carbon Compounds, or 
Organic Chemistry. By Vktor ton 
RicHTER. Authorized translation by Ed- 
gar F. Smith. Second American from 
the sixth German edition. Philadelphia: 
P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 1040. 
Price, $3. 

This work is sufficiently detailed to meet 
the wants of advanced students of organic 
chemistry, and to serve as a reference-book 
for practical chemists. The present edition 
differs considerably in its arrangement and 
size from the first edition. The introduction 
contains added matter upon analysis, the de- 
termination of molecular weights, recent 
theories on chemical structure, electric con- 
ductivity, etc. The section devoted to the car- 
bohydrates has been entirely rewritten, and 
presents the most recent views in regard to 
their constitution. The sections relating to 
the trimethylene, tctramethylene, and penta- 



276 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



methylene series, the furfurane, -pyrrol, and 
thiophene derivatives, have been greatly en- 
larged, while subsequent chapters, devoted 
to the discussion of the aromatic compounds, 
are quite exhaustive in their treatment of 
special and important groups. The trans- 
lator has had the hearty co-operation of the 
author in preparing this edition. 

Topics of the Timks. By Rev. Howard 
MacQueary, Author of The Evolution of 
Man and Christianity. New York : United 
States Book Co. Pp. 238 + 51. 
In this book the Rev. Howard MacQueary 
shows that he is interested in and capable of 
discussing other than theological questions, 
for here he addresses himself to the vital 
questions of the times, in which a larger 
public will be interested than even the large 
one which has read his former book. This 
work is divided into two parts, the former 
consisting of Lectures on the Conflict be- 
tween Labor and Capital ; An Exposition of 
Nationalism ; Truths and Errors of Henry 
George's Views ; The Savages of Civiliza- 
tion ; Popular Ideas of Poverty ; Reduction 
of Hours of Labor; The Negro in America; 
The Bible in the Public Schools. The sec- 
ond part contains ten sermons, many of 
them on most important and interesting 
topics : Our Country : its Character and 
Destiny ; The Sabbath Question ; Criticism 
of the Bible; Did the Fish swallow Jonah? 
What's the Use of Praying ? What is the 
Evidence of Life after Death ? The God-filled 
JIan ; Unshaken Beliefs ; Should we have 
Creeds ? The Real Rights of Woman. 

In his preface Mr. MacQueary defends the 
pulpit for undertaking the discussion of 
Topics of the Times. There are, he says, 
two radically different ideas of the Church 
and the pulpit. Some regard the clergyman 
as a sort of religious policeman whose duty 
it is to hold up before sinners pictures of 
hell to scare them into doing their duty. 
Others, however, hold that the Church and 
the pvdpit have to do with the moral aspect 
of every question, political, social, or scien- 
tific, and that Religion and Morality are twin 
sisters. This latter point of view is justified 
by the example of the prophets of Israel, 
who denounced the social and political evils 
of their time. With regard to the papers in 
the book, the author says that they " are in- 
tended to be popular discussions of the great 



problems considered," but not to be "ex- 
haustive or original." He has evidently 
succeeded in "casting the material in his 
own mold," as he claims to have done. 

The reader of these papers will find them 
very interesting, stimulating to thought, and 
helpful to all to whom the burning questions 
of the day are serious problems. The author 
has brought to his task wide reading, an 
earnest consideration of the subjects treated, 
and an easy and agreeable style. The views 
of Henry George receive a pretty thorough 
treatment, and the paper on the Savages of 
Civilization is of thrilling interest. 

There has been added to the lectures and 
sermons a paper on ecclesiastical liberty, 
which is the able defense of Mr. MacQueary 
before the ecclesiastical court of the Episco- 
pal Church of the Northern District of Ohio 
against the charges of heresy. This paper 
is of permanent interest, although the case 
has now at length been definitely settled by 
Mr. MacQueary's withdrawal from the Epis- 
copal Church. 

The Right Hanr; Left-Handedness. By 
Sir Daniel Wilson. London and New 
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp.215. Price, 
$1.25. 

This treatise includes data originally ac- 
cumidated in a series of papers communi- 
cated to scientific institutions in Canada, in 
which the author sought to determine the 
cause of left-handcdness by a review of its 
history in its archfeological, philological, and 
physiological aspects. To these, results of 
later investigation have been added ; and 
besides the effort to trace left-handedness to 
its true source, the folly of persistently try- 
ing to repress an innate faculty of excep- 
tional attitude, and the advantages to be 
derived from the systematic cultivation of 
dexterity in both hands, are insisted upon. 
In the former chapters of the book — on " the 
educated hand," '' the willing hand," " palaeo- 
lithic dexterity,"etc. — the prevalence of right- 
handedness is shown to have been marked 
from the earliest and even the prehistoric 
ages of mankind. Its manifestation in chil- 
dren appears by the weight of evidence to be 
often spontaneous. The structure of primi- 
tive implements, ancient weapons, etc., shows 
it to have been the rule through the histor- 
ical period. Philological arguments, refer- 
ences in ancient literature to right-handed- 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



277 



ness, and to left - handed exceptions, the 
writing of ancient documents, and the posi- 
tions of the figures in drawings, bear in the 
same direction. Consideration of these evi- 
dences precludes the idea of the origin of 
right-handedness lying in any ancient custom, 
or of its development and enforcement by 
education into a nearly universal habit. The 
conclusion is therefore inevitably forced on 
the inquirer that the bias in which this law 
originates must be traceable to some special- 
ty of organic structure. This argument be- 
comes stronger when we reflect that right or 
left handedness is not limited to the hand, 
but partially affects the lower limbs, as may 
be seen in foot-ball, skating, the training of 
opera-dancers, etc., so that eminent anat- 
omists and physiologists have affirmed the 
existence of a greater developmeat through- 
out the whole right side of the body. The- 
ories have been proposed assuming stronger 
circulation, visceral predominance, or more 
vigorous muscular growth on the right side, 
but they do not seem to go to the root of the 
matter ; while the theory of cerebral localiza- 
tions on which many other human faculties 
have been found to depend seems more am- 
ple. It is understood that each hemisphere 
of the brain affects the opposite side of the 
body. In the majority of cases where the 
hemispheres have been weighed separately, 
the left hemisphere has been found heaviest. 
This would give predominance to the right 
Bide In the case of a single left-handed 
patient, Dr. Wilson and an associated physi- 
cian found the right hemisphere to weigh 
the most. "No comprehensive indications 
can be based on a single case, but its con- 
firmatory value is unmistakable at this stage 
of the inquiry; and thus far it sustains the 
conditions previously arrived at." 

Laroratory Practice. A Series of Experi- 
ments on the Fundamental Principles of 
Chemistry. By Josiah Parsons Cooke, 
LL. D. New York : D. Appleton k Co. 
Pp. 193. Price, $1. 

Teachkrs who are striving against many 
obstacles to teach science according to its 
own proper method will be glad of the help 
which the senior Professor of Chemistry in 
Harvard College offers them through this 
volume. It is a manual of directions for 
experiments in which especial care is taken 
that what the experiments teach shall not 



be lost sight of. " The student should be 
given to understand clearly," says Prof. 
Cooke in his introduction, " that experiments 
performed mechanically, without intelli- 
gence, or carelessly recorded, are worth ab- 
solutely nothing, and should be so estimated 
in any system of school or college credits." 
This book is designed as a companion to The 
New Chemistry, by the same author, which 
contains no experiments for the student, as 
the present volume contains no extended 
statement of chemical principles. The prin- 
ciple that each experiment illustrates, how- 
ever, is indicated by a heading, and in many 
cases the conclusions that the teacher should 
enforce are explicitly stated. Notes, ques- 
tions, and problems are also inserted after 
each experiment or group of experiments, 
in order to direct the student's attention 
upon the essential features of the investiga- 
tion in hand. Ample cautions accompany 
all experiments that would be dangerous if 
carelessly performed. The present issue of 
this manual has the value of a revised edi- 
tion, for the book is an enlargement of a 
list of experiments printed in pamphlet form 
that has been used for several years in Har- 
vard College and in a number of fitting 
schools. In order to make the expense less 
of an obstacle to the performance of these 
experiments by school classes, the author 
has sought to adapt to the purposes of in- 
struction common household utensils, such 
as may be made by a tinsmith or found at 
any house-furnishing store. Two figures of 
a kerosene stove applied to laboratory pur- 
poses are given, and many other definite 
suggestions in regard to apparatus are fur- 
nished. 

By the publication of Part IV, Dr. Michael 
Foster, F. R. S., has completed the fifth edition 
of his Text-book of Physiology (Macmillan, 
$1.90). This part comprises the conclusion 
of Book in, on the Central Nervous System 
and its Instruments, and Book IV, on the Tis- 
sues and Mechanisms of Reproduction. There 
is also an Appendix on The Chemical Basis 
of the Animal Body. In the portion of Book 
III here presented the special senses and 
the voice are briefly treated, and the account 
of reproduction is also brief. A little more 
than two hundred pages are given to the 
topics here enumerated, bringing the whole 



278 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



number of the pages in the work up to 1,856. 
The author hopes to begin the publication of 
a sixth and carefully revised edition of the 
whole book early in the autumn. We would 
suggest that he add an index to the forth- 
coming edition. 

Muter'' s Manual of Analytical Chemistry^ 
several previous editions of which we have 
noticed, now appears, revised by an Ameri- 
can editor, Dr. Claude C. Hamilton. This 
revision is based on the fourth English edi- 
tion. The editor has made only such changes 
as were required to adapt the book to the 
United States Pharmacopoeia except in the 
chapter on urine analysis, which has been 
enlarged, and to which cuts of microscopic 
sediments and other illustrations have been 
added. The chapter on water analysis has 
been altered to correspond with Wanklyn's 
methods, as those are most generally used in 
America. Several other processes have been 
added, such as estimation of chloral hydrate, 
of fat in milk, etc., and various minor changes 
in arrangement have been made in the inter- 
est of convenience in using the treatise. 

A volume of Elementary Lessons in Heat, 
Light, and Sound has been prepared by 
Prof. D. E. Jones (Macmillan, 70 cents). It 
is an experimental book, intended for be- 
ginners, and aims to bring out " one of the 
chief advantages of science as an educational 
subject — the training in the habit of obser- 
vation, and of learning from things at first 
hand." In the methods of reasoning, as 
well as in the choice of words and subject- 
matter, the author has endeavored to be as 
simple and clear as possible. He has also 
repeatedly tried and modified each experi- 
ment so as to present it in a simple form, 
and avoid the more usual causes of failure. 
The book is illustrated. 

Part III of the Short Course of Eorperi- 
ments in Physical Measurements, by Harold 
Whiting (D. C. Heath & Co., $1.20), deals 
with principles and methods. About half of 
its three hundred pages are devoted to some 
fifty tables, and notes on their arrangement 
and use. This material is preceded by ten 
chapters, in some of which such matters as 
Observation and Error, and Reduction of 
Results are treated, while the others deal 
respectively with the several departments of 
physics. 

A pamphlet is before us entitled The 



Universe and its Evolution, being a trans- 
lated abridgment of a five-volume work in 
Hebrew, by S. J. Silbersiein. The author 
denies the law of gravitation, and asserts 
that Kepler's laws not only are not explained 
by it, but furnish evidence against it. He 
brings forward many arguments to show 
that the planets could not have been pro- 
jected from the sun into their present orbits. 
He maintains, further, that they could not 
continue their revolutions indefinitely, for 
the attraction of the sun would draw them in 
upon that body, unless, as he affirms, motion 
begets motion. In another chapter some of 
Spinoza's ideas of God are combated, and 
the author then unfolds his conception of 
the universe. He considers the source of all 
to be the Absolute Intellect, whose offspring, 
the absolute essence, brought the atoms into 
existence, and the atoms are controlled by a 
force that he calls " centrality." This force 
resides in the center of every body, and main- 
tains the chai-acter of the body. Several 
other physical laws are laid down, and the 
larger work is referred to for a full statement 
in regard to them. The author apparently 
has not considered the modern nebular theory. 

The revision of The Chemical Analysis 
of Iro7i (Lippincott, f 4) that has just been 
made by the author, Andrew A. Blair, has 
consisted in the correction of mistakes that 
were apparent in the first edition, and the 
adding of matter called for by the advance 
in analytical chemistry during the past three 
years. The Table of Atomic Weights has 
been revised, and the Table of Factors has 
been changed to correspond to the new val- 
ues. 

A report on The Pcdiculi and Mallophaga 
affecting Man and the Lower Animah, by 
Prof. Herbert Oshorn, has been issued as a 
bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. 
It describes the various kinds of lice found 
on man, the monkey, dog, goat, ox, hog, 
horse, the rodents, poultry, and various other 
animals, giving illustrations of forty-three 
species. 

A pamphlet made up of Original Com- 
munications of the Zymotechnic Institute has 
been published by the director, Mr. /. E. Sie- 
bel (2i2 Burling Street, Chicago). The papers 
are reports of scientific investigations into a 
variety of matters connected with the brew- 
ing industry, such as the composition of the 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



279 



acrospire of barley, yield of material in the 
brewery, differentiation of subterranean wa- 
ter-supplies, etc. There are six plates, show- 
in'' different kinds of bacteria, of saccharo- 
myces, molds, and starch, microscopic aquatic 
life, and forced beer sediments. 

An Address 011 the University Extension 
Movement^ delivered by Richard G. Moulton, 
A. M., has been published by the American 
Society for the Extension of University Teach- 
ing (1602 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia). 
Mr. Moulton defines university extension as 
*' university education for the whole nation 
organized upon itinerant lines." He says 
that university education differs from school 
education in being unlimited, and that a uni- 
versity fails miserably in its duty if it does 
not give one those tastes and those mental 
habits which will lead him to go on learning 
to the end of his days. Not every person 
will get the same thing out of university in- 
struction. Each helps himself according to 
his own capacity. The extension teaching 
involves lectures, class-work, printed sylla- 
buses, weekly written exercises, examina- 
tions, and certificates. The interest that 
has been aroused in England is shown by 
the written exercises voluntarily sent in, 
changes in the character of the demands on 
the public libraries and of the conversation 
at social gatherings, traceable to courses of 
lectures, and similar indications Mr. Moul- 
ton speaks of university extension as a mis- 
sionary movement, and urges all who possess 
the benefits of culture to assist in giving 
culture to others. 

The Iowa State Medical Society has be- 
gun the publication of a bimonthly maga- 
zine. The Vis Medicatrix._ which will serve 
as the journal of the society (Des Moines, 
$1 a year). It is edited by Woods Hutchin- 
son, M. D., and the first number contains the 
proceedings at the society's fortieth annual 
session, the president's address, departments 
devoted to diseases of animals, plant diseases, 
medical colleges, notes and news, etc. 

Mr. John A. Wric/ht, of Philadelphia, 
has published a pamphlet on The Practical 
Working and Eesulfs of the Inter-State Com- 
merce Act, the purpose of which is to present 
(1) the law of distribution of the returns on 
all products that require transportation to 
a market ; (2) the policy of transporters in 
view of their duties as common carriers; 



(.3) the difficulty of estimating the cost of 
transportation; (4) a measure on which a 
just rate of profit on the stock of transporta- 
tion companies may be based. The author 
points out provisions in the law which he 
holds should be expunged as impracticable 
and dangerous. 

A treatise on The Principles of Agri- 
culture has been prepared for common 
schools by Mr. /. 0. Winslow, and is pub- 
lished by the American Book Company. It 
regards a knowledge of the subject as identi- 
cal with a knowledge of the natural laws and 
principles that underlie rural life and rural 
pursuits, and considers it an important ele- 
ment in the education of the young. Hence it 
begins at the foundation with descriptions of 
the substances of the earth, accounts of its 
geological history, and the leading facts and 
principles of the several sciences that bear 
directly on agriculture and rural life. The 
applications of the principles are then de- 
scribed in the chapters on Plants, Fertiliz- 
ers, Cultivation, and Animals. Minor and 
subordinate topics are omitted, in the belief 
that a thorough knowledge of the few main 
points is worth more to the pupil than a 
confused idea of the whole. Points not 
definitely settled are avoided, or mentioned 
only briefly. The book is designed, primarily, 
for use in the public schools, and contains no 
difficulties too great for ordinary pupils of 
twelve or fourteen years. 

A text-book on the Elements of Civil 
Government, published by the American 
Book Company, has been prepared by Alex. 
L. Peterman for use in schools, and as a 
manual of reference for teachers. It is in- 
tended to supply what is a serious want in 
many of our schools, which omit instruction 
concerning civil government and the science 
of citizenship. It begins with the family, 
the first form of government with which the 
child comes in contact. As his acquaintance 
with rightful authority increases, the school, 
the civil district, the township, the county, 
the State, and the United States are taken 
up in their order. In each case the nature 
and purposes of the Government are ex- 
plained, and its scope and methods. The 
author endeavors to present the subject in a 
simple and attractive way. 

In a curious book entitled Beyond the 
Bourn (Fords, Howard k Hulbert), Mr. Amos 



280 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



K. Fi&ke records a dream of the future 
world, and expounds his views on the des- 
tiny of man. The fiction is sustained of a 
person who was rendered insensible and to 
all appearances dead for three days by a 
railroad accident, and whose spirit sojourned 
in the other world for that time. Recalled 
to life and earth, he feels himself a stranger 
among those who were of his kind, and is 
impelled to leave a record of his experiences 
and impressions in the abode of spirits. 
Hints are given of the persistence of the 
principle of evolution throughout the uni- 
verse, and of the continued development and 
perfection of the human race in the after- 
life. 

A collection of the Rev. Henry Ward 
Bcecher's patriotic addresses, compiled a few 
years ago by Mr. John R. Howard, contained a 
review of Mr. Beecher's Personality and Influ- 
ence in Public Affairs. This is now separated 
from the original volume by the author, and 
published by itself, by Fords, Howard & Hul- 
bert, under the title of Henry Ward BeecJier : 
a Study of his Personality, Career, and Injlii- 
ence in Public Affairs. It is, in fact, an in- 
teresting and critical biography of a man 
whose influence on American thought and po- 
litical tendencies has been second to that of 
few if any others. The book is embellished 
with excellent portraits of Mr. Beecher at 
forty-three, at sixty-five, and at seventy-three. 



•PTTBLTCATIONS RECEIVED. 

Actuarial Society of America. Papers and Trans- 
actions. 1S91. Pp. 119. 

Afrrieiiltiiral Evperiment Stations, etc. Bulletins 
»nrl Reports. Connecticut Fertilizers. Pp. 40. — 
Massachusetts. Fertilizers and Feeding E.xperi- 
Tnents with Cows. Pp. 16— Ohio. Wheat and 
Whe.t Seedin?. Pp. 22.— United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, Forestry Division. Timber 
Tests. Pp. 4.— New Tork. Nos. 3.3 to 36 Fer- 
tilizers. Dairy-breeds of Cattle, Fungi and Insects 
with Preventives Small Fruits. Pp. 112. — Potash 
and Paying Crops. Pp. 39, with Plates. 

B.ardeen. C. W. The Tax payer and the Town- 
ship System. Pp. 1.5. — The Teacher as he should 
be. Pp. 15. Syracuse, N. T. 

Rrainard. F. R. The Sextant and other Reflect- 
ing Mathematical Instruments. D. Van Nostrand 
Co. Pp.120. 50 cents. 

Branner, John C. Annual Report of the Geo- 
logical Survey of Arkansas. Vol. TV. Wa.shintrton 
C'O. Plant List. Little Rock. Pp. 262. with .Maps. 

Bristol, Dr. E. L. M Before he was Born; or, 
the Scarlet Arm. 3T3 "West-end Ave., New York. 
Pp. 69. 50 cents. 

Brooklyn Institute. Third Tear-Book, 1890-'91. 
Brooklyn. Pp. 232. 

Canadav. W. P., and West, Goldsmith Bernard, 
Editors. Railway Law and Legislation. Vol. I, 
No. 1. Semi-monthly. Washiii'.'ton. Pp. 20. 

Oobb. John Storer. The Torch and the Tomb. 
Boston : New England Cremation Society. Pp. 40. 



Dake, Jabez P., M. D. 'Civil Government and 
the Healers of the Sick. Philadelphia : The Uahne- 
manniau Monthly. Pp. 19. 

Darewin, G. 8., London. Lives of Victoria C. 
WoodhuU and Tennessee Clatlin. Pp 38. 

Davis, J. Woodbridge. Dynamics of the Sun. 
New York : Woodbridge School. Pp. 97. 

Emtage, W. T. A. An Introduction to the Mathe- 
matical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism. Mac- 
mil Ian & Co. Pp, 22S. $l".90. 

English, George L , & Co., New York. Supple- 
ment to Catalogue of Minerals. Pp. 20. 

Fall, Delos. An Introduction to Qualitative 
Chemical Analysis. Albion, Mich. : V. J^. Tefft 
Pp. 71. 

Foster, Michael, and others, Editors. The Jour- 
nal of Physiology. Vol. XII, No. 4. Pp. 100, with 
Plates. 6«. 

Gilman, N. P., and Jackson, E. P. Conduct as a 
Fine Art. Houghton, Miffiin & Co. Pp. 230. $1.,')0. 

Guillemin, Amedc'e, and Thompson, Sylvaniis 
P., Editors. Eleotiicity and Magnetism. Macmil- 
lan & Co. Pp. 976. $3. 

Kolkin, N. Ethereal Matter. Electi-icity and 
Akasa. Siou.x City, Iowa : J. M. Pinckney Co. Pp. 
76. 50 cents. 

Linnsean Society of New York. Abstract of Pro- 
ceedings, 1890-'91. Pp. 11. 

Merrill. George P. Stones for Building and Deco- 
ration. John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 4.^3. 

Missouri Geolngical Survey. Bulletin No. 5. 
Age and Origin of the Crystalline Rocks (,by Erastus 
Ilaworth), and Clays and Building-stones of West- 
ern Central Counties (by G. E. Ladd). Pp. 86. 

Mitchell. Ellen M. A Study of Greek Philoso- 
phy. S C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 2S2. $1.25. 

Oxonian, An. A Little Tour in Irel.and, with 
Illustrations by John Leech. W. S. Gottsberger & 
Co. Pp. 218. 

Plympton, George W. How to become an Engi- 
neer. D. Van Nostrand Co. Pp. 218. 50 cents. 

Political Science Quarterly. September, 1891. 
Ginn & Co. Pp. 190. 75 cents ; $3 a year. 

Sadtler. Samuel P. A Hand-book of Industrial 
Organic Chemistry. J. B. Lippincott Co. Pp. 519. 
$5. 

Schuchhardt. Dr. C. Schliemann's Excavations. 
Macinillan & Co. Pp. 863. *5. 

Sidsnvick, Henry. The Elements of Politics. 
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 623. %i. 

Smith, E. F., and Keller, H. F. Experiments ar- 
ranged fcr Students in General Chemistry. Blakis- 
tons. Pp. 60. 

Snlms - Laubach. H. Graf zu. Fossil Botany. 
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 401. U- 

Stewart. John S., Philadelphia. Defects of the 
Ocular Muscles. Pp. 7. 

Thorne, R. T. Diphtheria: its Natural History 
and Prevention. Macmillans. Pp. 266. 

Tolstoi, Count Leo. Ivan the Fool New York; 
Charles L. Webster & Co. Pp. 1T2. *1. 

rniversity Extension Monthly. September. 
1891. Philadelphia: J. H. Shinn. Pp. 82. 25 
cents ; $3 a year. 

Veeder. M A., Lyons, N. Y. The Zodiacal Light. 
Pp. 10, with Plate. 

Weismann. Dr. August. Ess.ays upon Heredity 
.and Kindred Biological Problems. Macmillan & 
Co. Pp. 471. $2. 

Whelpley, Dr. H. M., St. Louis. Trichina Spira- 
lis. Pp. 6. 

Wilson. J., Newark, N. Y. Radic.il Wrongs in 
the Precepts and Practices of Civilized Man. Pp. 
413. $1. 

Woman's Medical College of the New York In- 
firmary. Catalogue and Announcement. Pp 25. 

WoodhuU. Ziila Maud. The Proposal. A Dia- 
logue. London : Norgato & Co. Pp. 32. 5 cents. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



281 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 

issotiatioa of Official Geologists.— The 

preliminary steps were taken at Washington 
during the meetings of the International 
Geolo<^ical Congress toward the formation 
of an official organization of the directors of 
State and national geological surveys. The 
more important objects of the projected 
society are the determination of the proper 
objects of public geologic work, the unprove- 
ment and unification of methods, the estab- 
lishment of the proper relative spheres and 
functions of national and State surveys, 
co-operation in works of common interest 
and the prevention of duplication of work, 
the elevation of the standard of public geo- 
logic work and the sustenance of an ap- 
preciation of its value, and the inauguration 
of surveys by States not having any now, 
which CO- operate with the other State surveys 
and with the national survey. 

Changes ia Level of the Atlantic Coast.— 

The fluctuations in height of the Atlantic 
lowland coast-lands of the United States 
were described by Prof. W J McGee in a 
paper read before the American Association. 
In the Pleistocene period the land stood 
between three hundred and eight hundred 
feet below its present level. Immediately 
afterward the land rose to from three 
hundred to six hundred feet above its pres- 
ent height, and the shores of the Atlantic 
and the Gulf retreated to from one hundred 
to five hundred miles beyond their present 
position. Afterward the land gradually 
sank, and the waters readvanced until the 
geography was much the same as to-day. 
Then came another incursion of the ocean 
and "Tilf, bringing sea-waters over nearly all 
the area upon which Washington is built, and 
over considerable portions of the North and 
the South. During this period there was 
deposited a series of loams and brick-clay 
and bowlder-beds, upon which Washington 
is located, and which has been named, from 
the District, the Columbia formation. At 
the close of the Columbia period the land 
again rose one hundred or two hundred feet 
higher than at present, and river channels 
, were cut from fifty to seventy-five miles 
beyond the present coast-line. It then began 
to sink, and this movement is yet in progress. 



South American Railroads.— Three of the 

railroads that start from the Pacific coast of 
South America and run up the valleys of the 
Andes, says President Gardner G. Hubbard, 
in his address to the National Geographic 
Society, are among the most remarkable 
roads in the world, ascend to a greater ele- 
vation than any others, and reach a height 
which in Europe and the United States would 
be above the snow-level. They were intended 
to reach the gold and silver mines between 
the Andes and Cordilleras. The first, called 
the Oroya or Central Railroad, one hundred 
and eleven miles long, starts from Callao 
and crosses the Andes at an elevation of 
nearly fifteen thousand feet. It is intended 
to extend it to the navigable waters of 
the Amazon. Three hundred miles south- 
ward of this, the second road runs from 
Mollendo, Peru, by Arequipa to Puno or 
Lake Titicaca, and thence northward on 
the plateau four hundred and seven miles 
to San Rosas, on the route to Cuzco. For 
a part of the way it runs through a country 
so destitute of water that the only supply 
for the engines and stations is by an iron 
pipe eight inches in diameter and fifty miles 
long, running from an elevation of seven 
thousand feet to the sea-coast. Seven or 
eight hundred miles south of Mollendo a 
line runs from Valparaiso, in Chili, to Buenos 
Ayres, eight hundred and seventy miles. It 
crosses the Andes through a tunnel two 
miles long, at an elevation of ten thousand 
five hundred and sixty-eight feet above the 
sea ; after leaving the mountains it runs 
over the pampas two hundred miles, without 
a curve or a grade more than three feet 
above or below the plain, and will soon be 
completed from ocean to ocean. From Rio 
Janeiro several roads have been construct- 
ed over the mountains west of that city to 
different parts of Brazil. There are now 
from six thousand to seven thousand miles 
of road in operation in the Argentine Repub- 
lic, five thousand or six thousand in Brazil, 
and three thousand or four thousand miles 
in the other states, making a total of about 
fifteen thousand miles of railroad in opera- 
tion. The apparently most feasible route 
for the proposed Pan-American Railroad to 
run from the Caribbean Sea to the Argentine 
Republic, and to connect with the others, 
starts from Cartagena, follows the valley of 



28z 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Magdalena River eight hundred miles to 
Dividal, seventeen hundred feet above tlie 
sea ; crosses the eastern Cordilleras at an 
elevation of about six thousand five hundred 
feet to the head-waters of the Caqueta or 
Yapura, a branch of the Amazon, and runs 
down that river three hundred and seventy- 
five miles to the mouth of the Engarros, five 
hundred and fifty feet above tide-water. 
From the Caqueta River the route passes 
through Ecuador to Iquitos, Peru, cross- 
ing fourteen tributaries of the Amazon. 
From Iquitos it ascends the Amazon and the 
Ucayle five hundred miles to Napal, thence 
continues across the Montana, and the nu- 
merous valleys of the Amazon about six 
hundred miles, to Santa Cruz in Bolivia, or 
twenty-four hundred miles from Cartagena ; 
while a branch will run up the Apurimac 
to Cuzco. This road would run for two 
thousand miles along the foot-hills of the 
Cordilleras, in which is probably the richest 
mining region in the world, and would 
greatly facilitate the opening and working 
of the mines. It would cross many branches 
of the Amazon, and thus connect with fifty 
thousand miles of navigable waters, at least 
nine thousand of which are above Iquitos, and 
it is claimed that the business from twenty 
thousand miles of navigable waters would 
find by this route a nearer outlet to Europe 
and American markets than by Para. There 
is every variety of climate on the route ; and 
the country, under a wise government, is 
capable of sustaining an immense population 
and giving abundant support to a railroad. 

Purification of Sewage.— The method of 
purifying sewage at "Worcester, Mass., by 
chemical precipitation was described by 
Prof. L. P. Kinnicutt at the meeting of the 
American Association. The sewage treated 
contains a notably large quantity of the waste 
products of various manufacturing establish- 
ments, and an unusually large amount of free 
acids and iron salts. The Carpenter process 
is employed for purification. By adding lime 
and the crude sulphate of aluminum the sus- 
pended matter is all removed and the total 
organic matter is reduced over two thirds. 
The effluent water is clear and colorless, 
without odor, and with only a slight alkaline 
taste, and can cause no nuisance when run 
into a stream of not more than five times its 



volume. The precipitate, or sludge, is free 
from bad odor, and when dried contains 
nearly sixty per cent of iron oxide, ten per 
cent of carbon, thirteen per cent of nitrogen, 
and four per cent of phosphoric acid. Its 
theoretical value is about forty-five dollars 
per ton. If no use is found for it, it can be 
disposed of by burning. 

Evolution of Clocks and Watches. — The 

beginning of modern clock-making may be 
dated from 1656, when Huygens attached 
the pendulum to the clock. This gave 
horology a place in the exact sciences such 
as it had not before held. The next impor- 
tant advance was the invention of the watch 
balance-spring, by Dr. Robert Hooke, of the 
Isle of Wight. lie was the author of oth- 
er valuable inventions and improvements, 
among them the " anchor " escapement and 
some ingenious tools for the making of as- 
tronomical instruments. Previous to 1691 
watches had only the hour-hand. Daniel 
Ouare, of London, added the minute-hand. 
Nine years later the horizontal escapement in 
its perfect state was made public by George 
Graham, F. R. S., and the device of jeweling 
the parts most subject to wear was introduced 
into England by M. Facio, of Geneva. The 
English Government commission on a method 
of finding the longitude, of which Sir Isaac 
Newton was a member, appointed in 1714, 
published the conclusion that an accurate 
time-keeper would furnish the best means ; 
and an offer was made by the Government for 
the discovery of a method — fixed at £10,000, 
if by it the longitude could be defined to 
one degree; £15,000, if within two thirds of 
a degree ; and £20,000, if within half a de- 
gree. John Harrison, born at Foulby, near 
Pontefract, in Yorkshire, in 1693, who de- 
vised the gridiron compensation pendulum, 
was stimulated by the offer to efforts to find a 
similar regulator for a watch, and devised an 
automatic regulator which Halley thought 
might prove to be of some value. He ap- 
plied it to a time-keeper, which, having 
stood a test in a boat on the Humber, was 
successfully taken to Lisbon. The Board of 
Longitude advanced him £500. A second 
instrument was not satisfactory to the board ; 
but a third won for the inventor the gold 
medal of the Royal Society. This instrument 
was sent on a long voyage to Jamaica. After 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



283 



being eighteen days out, a difPerence of more 
than two degrees appeared between its indi- 
cations and the shipmen's calculations. Har- 
rison insisted that his time-piece was right, 
and told the shipmen that, if they turned in 
a certain direction, they would sight a certain 
island the next morning — if the maps were 
right. They did so, and the island was seen, 
according to his prediction. Like results 
were obtained as island after island was 
passed. On arriving at Port Royal, after a 
voyage of two months, the time-keeper was 
five seconds slow ; and on returning to Eng- 
land, after five months, its error was less 
than a minute and a quarter. Harrison was 
not allowed the offered reward till more sure 
tests were made, but was given £5,000. The 
watch was tested on a second voyage, with 
triple precautions, and Harrison was allowed 
£5,000 more, and promised the rest of the 
£20,000 when he had taught others how to 
make the instruments. Having fulfilled all 
possible conditions, he was fully paid in 
1767. His time-keepers are still preserved, 
in charge of the astronomers royal, in Green- 
wich Observatory. 

Egyptian Identifieations. — Dr. Edouard 
Naville, to whom the world owes the recov- 
ery of the cities of Bubastis and Pithom, in 
Egypt, gave a summary of the results of his 
work in excavating other cities of Egypt 
before a meeting of the Victoria Institute in 
June. His explanations related principally 
to places connected with the Exodus. He had 
found that Succoth, whither the children of 
Israel journeyed from Rameses, was not a 
city, as some had supposed, but a district. 
An inscription discovered at Pithom left it 
no longer doubtful that that place was the 
ancient Heroopolis, whence, according to 
Strabo, Pliny, and other authors, merchant 
ships sailed to the Arabian Gulf. This fact 
coincided with the results of modem scientific 
surveys, which showed that there had been 
a gradual rising of the land, and that the 
Red Sea once extended up to the walls of 
Pithom. The identification of Baal Zephon 
had been aided by some papyri, which 
proved that it was not a village or a city, but 
an ancient shrine of Baal and a noted place 
of pilgrimage. Other places were Migdol 
and Pi Hahiroth, in the identification of 
which the author had again been aided by 



a papyrus, and it seemed probable that the 
Serapeum was the Egyptian Maktal or Mig- 
dol. It was greatly to be regretted that a 
bilingual tablet discovered there a few 
years ago hud been destroyed before being 
deciphered. 

Forest Reprodnction in New England.— 

The question whether our forests are dis- 
appearing is answered in one way by Mr. 
I. H. Hoskins, of Newport, Vt., who says, 
in Garden and Forest: "In northern New 
England they certainly are not. The farmer 
has a constant struggle against the persistent 
spread of seedling trees over his cleared land ; 
and if man should abandon this region I 
think in a hundred years it would hardly be 
possible for a visitor to realize that it had 
ever been inhabited by civilized man. It is 
this constant back-pressure of the forest 
upon intruding settlements that prevents 
the average farmer from taking an interest 
in forestry. He has to fight for his life 
against the forest, and the idea that the 
forests are likely to be extirpated seems to 
him quite absurd. One of the largest and 
finest sugar orchards in this towTi was seventy 
years ago a wheat-field." While this is true 
of some regions. Garden and Forest remarks, 
there are other vast areas that will never 
reforest themselves ; and the new forests are 
of inferior quality to the old ones which they 
succeed. 

Astronomy and Nnmismatics. — A curi- 
ous suggestion is made by Dr. A. Vercoutre, 
of a way in which astronomical knowlediro 
may be made of service to numismatical 
science. Stars and members of the solar 
system often figure on antique medals, 
notably on coins of the Roman republic, 
and they sometimes appear as heraldic al- 
lusions to the magistrate by whom the coin 
was struck. Thus, on a coin of L. Lucretius 
Trio, 74 B. c, the seven stars in Ursa Major 
— called by the Romans Septem Triones — 
appear in evident phonetic allusion to the 
name, Trio, of the magistrate. On a coin 
struck in B. c. 43, Dr. Vercoutre noticed 
five stars, one of which was much larger 
and more brilliant than the others. As the 
constellation Taurus contains the only 
group of five stars, with one much the 
brightest recognized by the ancients, the 



a84 



THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTHLY. 



amhor attrfbut^d the coin to P. Clodius 
l\irririu5, who u?ed the rame Taurus or 
Tauriaus as a phonetic equivalent of his 
own. A coin struci bv ilarius Aquillus, 
B. c. &4, has figured on it ihe firs; four stars 
of the constellaiion Aquila- Thev are shown 
in nearly the same relative positions they 
now occupy, and therefore contain the ear- 
liesT known representation of a pan of 
the celestial vault. 

SatiTt J»ie in Europe. — Froni the oc- 
currence of articles of jade in ancient 
graves in Europe and America, while the 
only known quarries of that mineral were in 
Asia, are>h3?ologists hare conduded that all 
the materials used by the prehistoric 
artisans must have had an Oriental origin. 
Prof. F. W. Rudler has shown that this 
conclusion is no longer necessary. Within 
the last few years Herr Traube, of Breslau, 
has discorered nephrite, or true jade, in 
places near Jordansmuhl and near Reichen- 
stein, in Silesia. Pebbles of nephrite have 
also been recently recorded by Dr. Ber- 
werth from the valleys of two rivers in 
Styria. A pebble believed to be of jadeite 
has been found by if. Damour at Ouchy. on 
the Lake of Geneva, and the same mineral 
has been recorded from ilonte Tiso, in 
Piedmont. Pr. G. M. Pa'n-son has recorded 
the discorery of small bowlders of jade, 
partially worked, in the lower part of the 
Frazer Eirer Tailey ; and Lieutenant ?ioney 
has obtained the mineral in place at the Jade 
Mountains, in Alaska, 150 miles above the 
mouth of the river Kowak. The present 
aspect of the jade question is, therefore, 
different from that which it presented when 
the la:e Prof. Fischer and others favored 
the view that the jade implements of 
America and Europ>e were of exotic oricin. 
I: seems now probable that in both conti- 
nents the material of the implements b in- 
digenous, 

f3E«f$ of 6aldDe^$>. — The probable 
causes of baldness are summed up by I>r. 
Joseph Tyson as, in their order, insufficient 
exposure of the hair; influence of hered- 
ity ; excessive mental work and great anx- 
iety ; venereal and alcoholic excesses ; and 
constant washing and want of pomade. 
IVTentive treatment is advised. Children 



should, as much as possible, do without 
caps, and their hats, when worn, should K' 
of the lightest description. A stouter hat 
may be necessary during the hot season, for 
the prevention of sunstroke. Head-cover- 
ings should not be warn indoors, in trains, 
or in closed carriages. Straw hats are 
preferable in stmimer and in still weather ; 
in winter, hats made of light felt, well ven- 
tilated and unlined. The ordinary tall hat, 
or stove-pipe, and the thick, heavy, un- 
ventilated top hat, can not be too strongly 
condemned. The second cause does not 
admit of practical treatment, while the 
course to be pursued with the third and 
fourth causes is obviously one of aroidance. 
Too constant washing of the hair is un- 
necessary as well as harmfuL Once a week 
is enough for cleanliness and for maintain- 
ing the strength of the hair. Excessive 
brushing, especially with hard brushes, 
should be avoided. The author advises the 
application of some form of simple grease or 
oil, after the hair has been washed; and, 
when the head hair is becoming rapidly 
thiimed, some stimulating material, such as 
ammonia and cantharides. applied to the oil, 
will increase its good effects. 

The Mrs«]»«tuilui Desert.— The Meso- 
potamian Desert, according to Dr. D. iloritz, 
comprises two thirds of the southern part 
of the country, forming an imbroken plain 
with little or no vegetation, except in the 
depressions where rain-water collects or the 
inundations penetrate. Piles of ruins, or 
dibris — which the inhabitants designate by 
a name signifying " sigEs " — rise from 
these perfectly level plains from the height 
of a few yards to a hundred feet, and are 
sometimes several miles in diameter. Some 
of the walls and buildings still tower aloft, 
and, in more recent ruins, lines of streets 
can yet be traced; the dams of ancient 
canals are still visible, and are sometimes 
fifty feet high. The atmosphere is murky, 
so that the highest hills are obscured at a 
distance of a few miles. Dust-storms, for 
which abundant material is furnished by 
the old crumbled walls of brick, fiU the air 
at times so that the sun is obscured ; and 
in time they have changed the appearance 
of the country by blocking up the ancient 
canals and forming long, parallel lines. 



POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



28! 



They now threaten to cover up the few ex- 
isting fields on the Tigris. While extensive 
tracts in these regions have been lost to 
cultivation from the lack of water, another 
part is suffering from its superabundance, 
and the land is swamp at the normal level 
of the streams. Such is now what was 
once the most populous region of the earth. 

Tests of Woods. — A system of tests of 
woods was described by Prof. Fernow at the 
meeting of the American Association, which 
have been undertaken at the Department of 
Agriculture for the determination of the re- 
lation of technical and physical qualities to 
each other and to conditions of growth. 
The method includes the selection of test- 
material from as many essentially different 
soil and climatic conditions as the species 
may occupy; the examination of the struct- 
ure and physical condition of the material 
down to the minutest detail ; the usual test- 
ing with special care ; and the compilation 
and comparative discussion of the results of 
the tests in connection wiih the physical 
examination and the known conditions of 
growth. Besides more reliable data than 
have been hitherto obtained of the qualities 
of our principal timbers, the investigation 
promises to furnish us with a knowledge of 
the conditions under which desirable quali- 
ties can be produced by the forest-grower. 

Phosphoras in Plants and inimals. — 

In a paper presented to the American Asso- 
ciation meeting in 1890, Mr. Walter Maxwell 
showed that a vegetable organism, during 
the initial stages of growth and under the 
action of the ferments operating in germina- 
tion, possesses the power of taking the phos- 
phorus present in seeds or in soils as min- 
eral phosphates, separating the phosphorus 
from the inorganic combination, and causing 
it to appear in the young plantlct in an or- 
ganic form as a lecithine. In a second part 
of his paper, which was read at the associa- 
tion meeting of 1891, the author showed 
that the lecithine bodies present in the ani- 
mal kingdom revert to the mineral form un- 
der the action of the ferments present in the 
animal organism. The phosphorus contained 
in a hen's egg, with which the investigations 
were conducted — both in the forms of min- 
eral phosphates and of organic phosphorus 



compounds as lecithines — was first deter- 
mined. Next, eggs were incubated, and the 
products of incubation were studied. It was 
found that the phosphorus contained in the 
natural egg as a lecithine reappeared in the 
incubation product as calcium phosphate, 
forming the bone of the chicken. It thus 
appears from the investigations that the 
lecithine bodies are a medium through which 
phosphorus conducts its circulation between 
the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms 
— passing from the mineral, through the veg- 
etable, into the animal kingdom, where it re- 
appears as a mineral compound. 

Carpet- weaving in Persia. — Few ancient 
carpets are to be found in Persia now, the 
stock having been gatherel up by European 
travelers, merchants, and cmio hunters. 
It may seem almost incredible to many peo- 
ple that among the ancient carpets ^o many 
are still in good condition and comparatively 
little worn. The secret of this is, accord- 
ing to M. G. de Vries, that not only has 
great care been bestowed on the weaving of 
the carpets and on the quality of wool used, 
but because of the custom prevailing in the 
houses of Eastern people. While we enter 
our own and other people's rooms with the 
same boots with which we walk through the 
muddy streets, a Persian never enters any 
room without leaving his boots or shoes at 
the door. The most important present man- 
ufacture of carpets is carried on at Sultana- 
bad. The weaving is done exclusively by 
women. The only share the men take in the 
work is, that to them the merchants give out 
the designs, the colors, and the money re- 
quired for the weaving. The loom is an in- 
expensive and simple structure, consisting of 
four wooden poles, which generally occupy 
the whole length of the weaving-roora. When 
weaving is going on regularly, three or four 
women work at a carpet of fairly large size, 
the weaver's wife being, as a rule, the prin- 
cipal weaver, and at the same time superin- 
tending the work of her daughters or hired 
women. The rule is, that, at each end of the 
board on which the women arc seated, there 
shall be one female overseer. For carpets 
of very large size, in the weaving of which 
seven or eight women are employed, there is 
also an overseer in the middle. At the age 
of seven years girls begin to assist in the 



286 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



weaving ; previous to that age they spend a 
year or so on the board watching the other 
women so that they may get accustomed to 
the work. If a young woman who has been 
brought up to the loom gets married, the 
first thing she docs is to try and obtain an 
order for a carpet, so that the weaving of 
carpets passes from one generation to an- 
other. Every stitch in the carpet is made 
separately, and it is afterward clipped with 
the scissors and beaten down. In a good 
carpet there are about ten thousand stitches 
to every square foot. The clipping must be 
done every time with equal care, otherwise 
when the carpet is finished the pile will be 
short in some places and longer in others. 
Upon the beating down depends tiie close- 
ness of the texture ; the more a weaver beats 
her stitches down, the finer, of course, the 
carpet is. She knows how many stitches she 
has to weave to every quarter of a Persian 
yard ; but she generally makes less, in order 
to save wool, time, and trouble. The designs 
are the individual property of the weavers, 
and are protected by law. The shades of 
color are a matter of importance, and atten- 
tion is paid to having them in harmony with 
the varying tastes of the European mar- 
kets. Besides woolen carpets, rugs are ex- 
ported, woven entirely of silk. The weaving 
of such rugs is done in the same way as the 
weaving of carpets, but the labor is far 
greater in proportion, as they are always of a 
very fine make. Such rugs can be used as 
table or sofa covers, portieres, etc., but, as 
they are made of pure silk, they are very 
costly. 

Holy Stones of Ihc East and the West. — 

A curious paper was read by Mr. Charles G. 
Leland at the International Congress of Ori- 
entalists concerning the salagrama stone of 
India and the salagrana of the Toscana Ro- 
mana, as a curious link connecting the East 
and West. The Indian salagrama is a kind 
of ammonite, the size of an orange, and hav- 
ing a hole in it. According to the legend, 
Vishnu the Preserver, when pursued by the 
Destroyer, was changed by Maya into the 
stone, through the hole of which the De- 
stroyer as a worm wound his way. The Ital- 
ian salagrana is a stalagmite, which is be- 
lieved by the people, on account of its re- 
semblance to the little mounds thrown up 



by earthworms, to be such a mound petri- 
fied. They carry it in a red bag, along with 
certain magical herbs, and pronounce over 
it an incantation to the effect that the irreg- 
ularities and cavities in it have the property 
of bewildering the evil eye and depriving it 
of its power. The author was informed by 
believers in such things that anything like 
grains, irregular and confused surfaces, in- 
terlaced serpents, or intricate works, blunted 
the evil eye. Interlaced cords are sold in 
Florence as charms. Even the convolvulus 
is grown in gardens against the evil eye. 
In the Norse mythology, Odin as a worm 
bored his head through a stone in order to 
get at "the mead of poetry." Hence all 
stones with holes in them are known as 
Odin stones, also as " holy stones," and are 
much used at the North as amulets. Hung 
at the head of the bed, they are supposed 
to drive away nightmare. Possibly there is 
a connection with the salagrana here. So 
interlacings in decoration may be originally 
designed to avert the evil eye and bad luck. 
A recent traveler in Persia was told that 
the patterns on carpets in that country were 
made intricate so that the evil eye might 
be bewildered. In the salagrana of Italy 
the number of grains or protuberances must 
be counted one by one before the witch 
can do evil. In the Arabian Nights the 
ghoul Amina must eat her rice grain by 
grain ; and in South Carolina the negroes 
protect a person who is bedridden or night- 
mared by strewing rice round his bed, which 
the witch, when she comes, must count grain 
by grain before she can touch her victim. 

Two Ancient Races. — Describing, in the 
International Oriental Congress, his excava- 
tion of the pyramid of Medum — the tomb of 
King Senefru, of the third Egyptian dynasty, 
and the oldest known building in the world 
— Mr. H. Flinders Petrie spoke of the entire 
skeletons which had been obtained of men 
of that remote period (some 4000 years b. c.) 
as providing an anatomical study of impor- 
tance for ethnology. The peculiar mode of 
interment of most of these persons shows 
that a religious difference then existed. The 
bodies of the highest class or race were in- 
terred, extended at full length, with vases of 
pottery or stone, and head-rests ; while the 
greater number of the bodies were interred 



NOTES. 



287 



contracted, with the knees drawn up to the 
breast, even when the chamber was long 
enough to hold them extended ; and they 
were not mummified No pottery was in- 
terred with them, except one or two rough 
vases in one tomb. This treatment was not 
due to neglect, for the deceased were always 
placed with great care and regularity, with 
the head to the north, the face to the east, 
and the body lying on the left side. Such 
essential differences in the mode of inter- 
ment, and the provision for the deceased, 
point to a difference of race. The contracted 
interment may have pertained to one of the 
prehistoric races, and the extended inter- 
ment with provision of vases, etc., to the 
dynastic race. The skeletons were well pre- 
served, but tender and friable ; the bones lay 
in their places, and the linen cloth wrapped 
around the body was intact. Rheumatic 
disease and other maladies of the bones 
were already well known at that period. 

Non-drinking Sheep and Cows. — The 

facility with which animals can adapt them- 
selves to altered conditions of existence is 
illustrated by Dr. A. J. Crespi in an article 
in the Gentleman's Magazine on Curiosities 
of Eating and Drinking. He quotes from 
Miss Betham Edwards's account of her ex- 
cursions in the barren, stony, wilderness-like 
region of the Gausses of France the de- 
scription of some of the interesting facts 
which it affords to evolutionists. "The 
aridity, the absolutely waterless condition of 
the Larzac has evolved a race of non-drink- 
ing animals. The sheep, browzing the fra- 
grant herbs of these plateaus, have altogether 
unlearned the habit of drinking, whilst the 
cows drink very little. The much-esteemed 
Roquefort cheese is made from ewe's milk — 
that of the non-drinking ewes of the Larzac. 
Is the peculiar flavor of the cheese due to 
this non-drinking habit ? " 



NOTES. 

Mr. H. a. Hazen maintained in the 
American Association that the opinion that 
tornadoes whirl is a mistaken one. Of the 
two ways of learning the shape of tornadoes, 
that of observing them directly is burdened 
with difficulties, and is neither satisfactory 
nor accurate ; while the study of them by 
observation of their debris is easy, and will 
lead to correct conclusions. Reports of such 



observations of between two hundred and 
three hundred tornadoes have been received 
at the Weather Bureau during the past two 
years, and the evidence from them is over- 
whelmingly favor of the view that there is 
no whirl. 

A DESCRIPTION of the methods pursued 
in the Geological Survey of the United States 
was given, with graphic illustrations, by Ma- 
jor Powell to the International Geological 
Congress. The speaker explained that, in- 
asmuch as the Survey is a national institu- 
tion, supported by taxes paid by the public, 
the results of its work are made intelligible 
to the people, and are not prepared so as to 
be understood only by men of science. 

The Committee on Forestry in the Amer- 
ican Association reported that, under a re- 
cent law authorizing the President to with- 
draw from sale or other disposal such public 
timber-lands as he may deem fit, the bound- 
aries of Yellowstone Park had been en- 
larged. A necessary enlargement of the Yo- 
semite Valley reservation was anticipated, 
and a number of other reservations in Min- 
nesota, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and Cali- 
fornia, comprising several million acres, 
would be asked for in a memorial prepared 
by the American Forestry Association. 

The next meeting of the International 
Geological Congress will be held in Berne, 
Switzerland, in 1894. The Geological Sur 
vey of Russia, supported by the Czar, in- 
vites the Congress to hold its meeting in 
1897 in St. Petersburg. 

According to a paper by G. L. Spencer 
and E. E. Ewell, in the American Associa- 
tion, wheat flour and bran mixed with mo- 
lasses seem to be the favorite materials for 
the manufacture of imitation coffees. It is 
hardly prob.ible that the manufacturer se- 
lects a good quality of flour, for a bad or 
damaged article would be cheaper. Refuse 
crackers and other waste of bakeries proba- 
bly supply a portion of the material em- 
ployed. A factory recently seized in France 
employed a mixture containing 500 grammes 
of ferrous sulphate, 15 kilogrammes of chic- 
cory, and 35 kilogrammes of flour. With 
the exception of such mixtures as this, imi- 
tation coffee is not detrimental to health, 
but especially affects the purse of the pur- 
chaser. 

A CDRious featu-e of old-time life is re- 
called in Mr. Freshfield's paper before the 
British Society of Antiquaries on the wrought- 
iron sword-stands in the churches of the city 
of London. These sword-stands, of which 
two leading and various subordinate types 
were described, appear to have come into 
fashion in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; but 
only one or two of the older ones survived 
the great fire, and most of those now exist- 
ing are of the eighteenth century. 



288 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Prof. Pptnam announced, at •the last 
meeting of the American Association, that 
the Government of Honduras had granted 
to the museum at Cambridge, Mass., the 
exclusive right to explore the scientific re- 
sources of the country for a period of ten 
years. 

A PAPER by Prof. A. N. Krassnof, read 
at the meeting of the Geological Society of 
America, traced the resemblance of the 
black soils of the Russian steppes and the 
prairies of America to their similar origin 
in the layers of successive annual crops of 
plants. 

As described by Charles B. Thwing, the 
results obtained with Lippman's process for 
color photography, though not conclusive 
at all points, seem to indicate that the mixed 
colors may be reproduced with some fair de- 
gree of accuracy. Modifications are intro- 
duced by a change of thickness of the film 
between exposure and final drying, and by 
a shortening of the distance between maxi- 
ma caused by the rays striking the reflector 
at an angle other than the normal. A sec- 
ond result is that an exposure long enough 
to give a clear image of the red is certain to 
obliterate the blue by over-exposure ; and a 
third, that an over-exposure may completely 
reverse the colors, causing the original col- 
ors to appear on the reverse and the com- 
plementary on the film side of the plate. 

Prof. Jastrow describes some curious 
tests which he made with a young man who 
had been born without the sense of smell, 
for the purpose of determining what things 
are tasted when we cat and what are smelled. 
It appears that many things which we relish 
are not tasted, but only smelled. 

A PAPER by Mr. John Watson, of Man- 
chester, England, asserts that the redevel- 
opment of lost limbs is not unusual among 
insects. He has had three specimens in 
which limbs have been redeveloped, and one 
case of complete cicatrization. " Redevelop- 
ment," he says, " can take place either in 
the larval or the pupal stage of an insect's 
metamorphosis." 



OBITUARY NOTES. 

Mr. William Terrell, an American me- 
teorologist of world-wide reputation, died in 
Kansas City, Mo., September 18th, about 
seventy-four years old. He was graduated 
from Bethany College in 1844, became as- 
sistant in the American Ephemeries and Nau- 
tical Almanac in 1857, and held the place 
for ten years ; was then appointed on the 
staff of the United States Coast Survey, 
when he invented the machine for predict- 
ing the maxima and minima of tides ; was 
made assistant, with the rank of professor, 
in the Signal-Service Bureau in 1882; and 
retired from that position in 1886 to make 
his home in Kansas City. He published 



many works, large and small, of researches 
on the tides or pertaining to meteorological 
problems ; a volume on Recent Advances in 
Meteorology (1888); a Popular Treatise on 
the Winds in 1889; and contributions to 
scientific journals and societies on such 
topics as thermal radiation, cyclones, torna- 
does, and related subjects of terrestrial 
physics. His earliest scientific writings were 
contributed in 1856 to the Nashville Journal 
of Medicine and Surgery. He was a mem- 
ber of the National Academy of Sciences, 
and an honorary member of the meteoro- 
logical societies of England, Germany, and 
Austria. 

Prof. Martin Duncan, F. R. S., whose 
death has been recently announced, was a 
special student of fossil corals and echino- 
derms, and published some valuable mem- 
oirs upon them. He was for a long time 
Professor of Geology in King's College, and 
there published an account of the Madrepo- 
ria collected during the expedition of the 
Porcupine, a description of deep-sea and lit- 
toral corals from the Atlantic and Indian 
Oceans, and a revision of the Echnoidea. 
ITc also published many popular articles, in- 
cluding Corals and their Polyps, Studies 
among Amoeba?, Notes on the Ophiurans, or 
the Sand and Brittle Stars, and a book on 
the Sea-shore in the Natural History Ram- 
bles series of the Society for Promoting 
Christian Knowledge. 

The death, by apoplexy, is announced of 
Dr. L. Just, Professor of Botany at the 
Polytechnicum, Carlsruhe, Director of the 
Botanic Garden there, and editor of the Bo- 
tanischer Jahresbericht. 

Dr. Francis Beunnow, an astronomer 
equally distinguished in America and Eu- 
rope, has recently died in Heidelberg, Ger- 
many, in his sixty-seventh year. He was 
associated with Encke in Berlin, and there 
had a part in the discovery of Neptune. He 
investigated the motion of De Vice's comet 
of short period, which, however, has never 
been seen since. He also, at Berlin and 
Ann Arbor, Mich., where he became director 
of the observatory in 1854, calculated the 
theory of some of the minor planets. He 
published at Ann Arbor a periodical. Astro- 
nomical Notices, which is now very rare. 
His Lchrbuch der spherischen Astronomic 
has passed through several editions. He 
was appointed Professor of Astronomy in 
the University of Dublin and Director of the 
Dunsink Observatory in 1865. Retiring 
from those positions in 1874, he lived the 
rest of his life in private. 

Dr. Barclay, who recently died in Simla, 
India, was a specialist in cryptogamic bot- 
any, and had acquired an extended reputa- 
tion by his researches in the diseases of In- 
dian plants He was engaged at the time 
of his death with the commission for the 
investigation of leprosy. 



^. 



\ ^ 




^^Rv 



ELIAS LOOMIS. 



THE 

POPULAR SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 



JANUARY, 1892 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 

By EDWIN ATLEE BAKBEK. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE 
COLUMBUS. XL 

THE revelations of the Centennial Exhibition set our potters 
to thinking and stimulated them to greater competition. 
Never before was such an impetus given to any industry. The 
best productions of all nations were sent here and exhibited be- 
side our own modest manufactures, and it was only too apparent 
that America had been left behind in the race. Up to that time 
there had been a few sporadic instances of attempts at originality, 
but comparatively little had been accomplished of a really artistic 
nature. The existence of a true ceramic art in this country may 
be said to have commenced with the fair of 1876, because greater 
progress has been made within the fifteen years which have 
elapsed since that important event than during the two centuries 
which preceded it. Let us see what rapid strides have been made 
in this period. 

At the United States Pottery in Bennington, Vt., was a young 
man, Mr. L. W. Clark, son of the superintendent, Mr. Decius W. 
Clark, who, on the closing of that factory, accompanied his father 
to Peoria, 111., and remained with the firm of Fenton & Clark for 
about two years, when he left to enter the army. In 1875 he went 
to Boston, and, in partnership with Mr. Thomas Gray, assumed 
control of the New England Pottery. This establishment was 
founded in 1854 by Mr. Frederick Meagher, who made Rockingham 
and yellow ware. It was afterward taken by Mr. William H. 
Horner, from whom the plant was purchased by the present pro- 
prietors, who now produce the usual lines of useful services in 
cream-colored and white granite ware. For the past five years 

VOL. XL. 23 



290 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they have been making a decorated product in colored bodies, to 
which they have given the name " Rieti " ware. This is a semi- 
porcelain, finished and decorated chiefly after the Doulton, Adder- 
ley, and Worcester methods. They also make true hard porcelain 
of an admirable quality, and their goods are characterized by an 
artistic style of decoration and excellence of glaze, their mazarine 
blue and " old ivory " finish being especially praiseworthy. The 
decorating branches are under the direct supervision of Mr. J. W. 
Phillips, who originates and engraves many of the best designs 
used in their printing processes. Most of their shapes are utilita- 
rian rather than ornamental, but they have succeeded in impart- 
ing to these a grace of outline and delicacy of coloring which 
render them objects of great beauty. Tlieir chocolate-jugs, jarcZt- 

nieres, and cuspidors com- 
pare very favorably with 
the imported wares, after 
which they are to some ex- 
tent patterned. Of the few 
purely decorative forms 
which they have attempt- 
ed, a semi-porcelain vase, 
twenty inches in height, 
made in 1880, is particular- 
ly meritorious. This is ar- 
tistically j)ainted in natural 
colors on raised paste, the 
top and base being in sol- 
id, dead gold. Mr. Bands, 
of the Royal Worcester 
Works, England, was the 
artist. 

The Ott and Brewer Com- 
pany, of Trenton, N. J., now 
operates the factory which 
was built by Messrs. Bloor, 
Ott & Booth, in 1863. Mr. 
J. Hart Brewer, president 
of the company, entered the 
firm in 18G5, and, being an 
artist himself of considerable ability, soon made his influence felt 
in the improvement of methods and elevation of standards. Until 
1876 the chief jiroducts of this factory consisted of white granite 
and cream-colored ware. At the Centennial Exhibition the com- 
pany made a display of a series of artistic Parians which had been 
designed mainly by Mr. Isaac Broome, an American artist of re- 
markable versatility and great jjromise. Of these special pieces,. 




Fio. 18. — Semi-porcelain Vase. 
New England Pottery Company, 1889. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 291 



probably the most noteworthy are a bust of Cleopatra and a vase 
with modeled figures of base-ball players. 

The first attempts in the manufacture of " Belleek " egg-shell 
china were made by Mr. Brewer in 1882, in conjunction with Mr. 
William Bromley, Jr., but these early trials were not entirely 
satisfactory. Encouraged by partial success, however, Mr. Brewer 
induced Bromley to send for his father, William Bromley, and his 
brother, John Bromley, who, with two or three other hands, came 
over in the following year from the Belleek factory in Ireland. 
Mr. William H. Goss, of Stoke-on-Trent, invented this body some 
thirty years ago, at which time the elder Bromley was acting as 
his manager. Messrs. David McBirney and Robert Williams Arm- 
strong were then attempting to make first-class ceramic goods at 
their recently established manufactory in the village of Belleek, 
county of Fermanagh, Ireland. Mr. Armstrong induced Bromley 
to take a number of Mr. Goss's best workmen to Ireland and 
introduce the egg-shell porcelain there. The ware produced at 
that factory has since become world-famous, being characterized 
by extreme lightness of body and a beau- 
tiful, lustrous glaze. 

The ware now manufactured by the 
Ott and Brewer Company is made en- 
tirely from American materials, and is a 
vast improvement over the body and 
glaze first introduced by the Bromleys 
eight years ago. In the rich iridescence 
of the nacreous glaze it is fully equal to 
the original Belleek ; in delicacy of col- 
oring and lightness of weight it is even 
superior. A dozen cups and saucers, 
making twenty-four distinct pieces of 
the ordinary size, almost as thin as pa- 
per, weigh just one pound avoirdupois, 
or an average of only two thirds of an 
ounce each. A large variety of forms 
of this porcelain are produced, in both 
ornamental and useful designs. The 
larger vases are usually simple in out- 
line and of the same comparative light- 
ness as those of smaller size. They 
often possess pierced necks, feet, and handles, and are elegant- 
ly decorated in enamels, gold relief, and chasing. 

A triumph of the potter's skill is a Belleek ostrich-egg bonbon- 
box, in two segments, which is exquisitely perforated or honey- 
combed over its entire surface. We can not here reproduce more 
than one or two examples of these beautiful fabrics. One is a 




Fig. 19. — Belleek Vase. 
Ott and Brewer Company. 



292 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



large vase of the " Bourne " pattern, decorated in raised gold and 
colors. The shape is graceful and the decoration is exceedingly 
artistic (Fig. 1!»). 

In addition to art porcelains, this factory produces a great 
quantity of granite ware and opaque china, in dinner, tea, and 
toilet sets, which are both print-decorated and hand-painted. A 
jardiniere of white granite, which we here figure, is a refined 
example of artistic decoration in quiet tones. 

One of the most extensive establishments in the Eastern States 
is that of the Willets Manufacturing Company of Trenton, N. J. 




Fig. 20. — White Granite .Jardiniere. Ott and Brewer Company. 

The present proprietors, Messrs. Joseph, Daniel, and Edmund R. 
Willets, three brothers, succeeded to the business in 1879. The 
factory was erected in 1853 by William Young and Sons, who at 
first made Rockingham and common ware. At the Centennial 
Exhibition William Young's Sons made a display of crockery 
and porcelain hardware trimmings, at which time the plant in- 
cluded only four kilns. The business has since grown to such an 
extent, under the present management, that there are now thir- 
teen large ware kilns besides those used for decorating. The prod- 
ucts from these works include sanitary earthenware, plumbers' 
specialties, white and decorated pottery, opaque china, white 
granite, and art porcelain. A specialty in dinner and toilet serv- 
ices is underglaze decoration on white bodies. 

After the Ott and Brewer Company had perfected the body 
and glaze of their Belleek ware and got it well under way, Will- 
iam Bromley, Sr., went with the Willets Manufacturing Com- 
pany and instructed them in the process. The manufacture of 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 293 



white egg-shell ware, to which they are constantly adding new 
designs, is another specialty of these works, and the company is 
now competing successfully with the Dresden and other foreign 
factories in supplying white art porcelain to decorators. In form 
their pieces are graceful 
and artistic, one of which 
is represented in Fig. 22. 

They also employ a 
number of competent art- 
ists to decorate their art 
goods, many of which are 
reproductions of the char- 
acteristic shell and coral 
forms of the Irish works. 
Fig. 23 represents a large 
Belleek vase with open- 
work handles and chrys- 
anthemum decoration in 
delicate tints on an ivory, 
gold- stippled ground. 

The Ceramic Art Com- 
pany, of which Mr. Jona- 
than Coxon, Sr., is presi- 
dent and Mr. Walter S. 
Lenox secretary and treas- 
urer, was established in 
Trenton in 1889. The first i 
named gentleman became 
superintendent at the Ott 
and Brewer Company's 
works after Bromley left, 
and the latter was former- 
ly in charge of their deco- 
rating department. Here 
they learned the processes 
of manufacturing Belleek. 
Although they have at 
present but one ware kiln 
and two decorating kilns, they are rapidly making a name by 
their constantly increasing patterns, many of which are exquisitely 
conceived and show the touch of a thorough artist. They have 
procured the best designers and painters that can be found and 
employ both the overglaze and underglaze processes in decorating. 
Their egg-shell ware is also furnished in the white to decorators. 
Fig, 24 shows one of these undecorated pieces, a graceful lily- 
shaped cup and saucer. In addition to vases and table pieces, they 




294 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



make many fancy patterns, such as thimbles, inkstands, parasol- 
handles, menu slabs, and candelabra. 

The Phcenixville (Pa.) Pottery, Kaolin, and Fire-brick Com- 
pany was organized in 1867, and a few years later was succeeded 
by Messrs. Schreiber & Co., who made yellow and Rockingham 
ware, and terra-cotta ornaments and wall-pieces. Heads of hounds 

and stags in sev- 
eral sizes, and large 
boars' heads, were 
made extensively 
here, and twenty 
years ago were in 
demand for deco- 
rating the interiors 
of public - houses. 
Many of these may 
still be seen in coun- 
try taverns. These 
were considered 
works of consider- 
able artistic merit 
when first produced. 
The antlers and 
horns of stags and 
antelopes were made 
separately and aft- 
erward inserted. 
Messrs. Beerbow- 
er & Griffen took 
the pottery in 1877 
and commenced 

the manufacture of 
white granite. In 1879 the firm name was changed to Grifi^en, 
Smith & Co., and in the following year the manufacture of " Etrus- 
can " majolica was added. From 1880 to 1890 the factory produced 
a good grade of white and decorated china, mostly in table services 
and toilet sets. Through their majolica and " stucco " productions, 
however, the firm became more widely known, and within the past 
few years they have made many decorative pieces in shell and 
dolphin patterns, after the Irish Belleek forms. Since the fire, 
which destroyed a large portion of the works recently, the manu- 
facture of majolica has been discontinued. Mr. Smith withdrew 
from the firm in 1889 and erected levigating mills at Toughkena- 
mon. Pa., near which place are large beds of kaolin. The firm 
style was then changed to Grifi^en, Love & Co. 

As early as 1882 experiments were commenced in the manu- 




. — Shell anm> ('i'pih PiTriiK!; — Hklleek. 
Willets Mauufacturing Compauy. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 295 



facture of hard porcelain, and a series of sample pieces were made 
for the New Orleans Exhibition. The quality and designs of these 
trial pieces were creditable, and the experiment has shown that 
this factory is capable of producing true porcelain of a high order. 
One of the New Orleans pieces, a pitcher of thin semi-transparent 
body, was also made in white earthenware, glazed and gilded, the 
latter of which is reproduced in Fig. 25. It is in the shape of a can- 
teen, the mouth representing the head of a Continental soldier. The 
raised designs are flesh-colored, on a solid gold ground. The three- 
cornered hat is black. Mr. Scott Callowhill, an English artist of 
ability, was employed for a while in modeling and painting, but 
recently left, to accept a position with the Providential Tile Works 
of Trenton. 

At the beginning of the 
present year a change was 
made in the proprietor- 
ship, and a new company 
has been incorporated, un- 
der the title of the Griff en 
China Company, which 
will hereafter make a spe- 
cialty of fine translucent 
French china, in plain 
white table services. The 
company will also, at an 
early day, manufacture 
fancy tiles, under the di- 
rection of Mr. A, D. Vitan, 
a practical French potter, 
formerly at Greenpoint, 
Long Island. This gentle- 
man has just perfected 
an improved machine for 
manufacturing art tiles, 
and another for making 
plates. 

The Borroughs and 
Mountford Company com- 
menced business in Tren- 
ton in 1879, in what was 
formerly the Eagle Pottery. Their specialties are vitrilied, thin, 
and hotel china, and underglaze printing on pottery and por- 
celain. The mechanical application of decorations is the distin- 
guishing characteristic of one line of their art potteries, which, 
while closely imitating the more expensive methods of hand-paint- 
ing, enables them to produce highly artistic effects at a greatly re- 




FlCi. 23. LAKliK VaSK rnRYSANTIlKMUM DECORATION. 

Willets Manufacturing Company. 



296 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 




Fig. 24. — Egg-shell Porcelain— The "Engagement 
Cup and Saucer. Ceramic Art Company. 



duced cost. The bold ornamentation of their jardinieres, umbrel- 
la-jars, punch-bowls, and vases, after the Doulton, Royal Worces- 
ter, and Adderley methods, bears a striking individuality of its 
own. Probably their most beautiful pieces are those on which 
raised gold designs are applied by hand to an exquisite mazarine 
blue. White tiles of the finest quality, with underglaze blue 

printed devices, as well as 
embossed and art tiles, are 
also made to some extent. 
The Greenwood Pottery 
Company, incorporated in 
Trenton in 1868, make a 
specialty of the manufact- 
ure of vitrified and trans- 
lucent china for hotel, 
steamship, and railway 
uses. This pottery was 
established in 1861, under 
the style of Stephens, 
Tams & Co. They are 
also making, at the pres- 
ent time, thin china table ware for domestic purposes, porcelain 
hardware trimmings, and electrical, telegraph, and telephone in- 
sulating supplies. Some years ago they added an art department 

to their extensive establishment, 
and their decorated productions 
are characterized by elegance of 
form, being decorated usually in 
the Royal Worcester style, with 
ivory finish and raised gold, sil- 
ver, and bronze effects. The plant 
of the company consists of seven- 
teen large kilns, with an annual 
producing capacity of over half a 
million dollars. 

Among the other important 
Trenton establishments is that 
of Messrs. Oliphant & Co., which 
turns out large quantities of 
plumbers' sanitary appliances, druggists' and jewelers' supplies. 
About 1886 the late Mr. Thomas Connolly, a partner in the con- 
cern, commenced experimenting in Belleek wares, having been at 
one time connected with the Irish works. He succeeded in pro- 
ducing some exquisitely thin trial pieces, and demonstrated the 
fact that these works could manufacture egg-shell ware of the 
highest grade. The few pieces which were produced, consisting 




Fig. 25. — Whitk-ware Pitcher. 
Phft'iiixville, Pa. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 297 

of small ewers, cups and saucers, were fired in the large kilns 
with the sanitary ware. For some unknown reason, however, this 




Fig. 26. — Eweb Vase. Faience Manufacturing Company. 

branch of the business was never developed beyond the experi- 
mental stage. 

The Knowles, Taylor and Knowles Company, of East Liverpool, 
Ohio, have the largest works in America, their plant covering ten 



298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

acres and including thirty-five ware and decorating kilns. Tlie 
business was started in 1854 by Mr, Isaac W. Knowles and Mr. 
Isaac A. Harvey, who, with a single kiln, made yellow ware and, 
later, Rockingham, In 1870 Mr. Knowles, who had purchased the 
interest of his former i:)artner, was joined by Messrs. John N. 
Taylor and Homer S. Knowles, and in 187:3 they commenced the 
manufacture of iron-stone china and white granite ware. The 
business of the company has had a phenomenal growth, and at the 
present time they employ about seven hundred hands in the |jro- 
duction of extensive lines of white granite and vitreous hotel 
china, which they supply to the trade. 

The Faience Manufacturing Company, of Greenj^oint, Long 
Island, prodiices white ware artistically decorated and, we believe, 
a limited quantity of porcelain. The pieces are of ornamental 
rather than of useful shapes. The engraving (Fig. 26) represents 
a ewer vase from this factory with open-work handle and molded 
figure of bird. It is unfortunate that the secrets of this factory 
should be guarded so jealously as to deprive us of all knowledge 
concerning the processes emj^loyed and the qualities of the wares 
produced. Repeated inquiries have failed to elicit any rejDly. 

To Mr. Thomas C. Smith, of Greenpoint, Long Island, belongs 
the honor of being the first American manufacturer who has been 
successful in placing upon the market a true hard porcelain as 
a commercial article. His experiments, which extended over a 
number of years, first commenced to bear fruit about 1865, when 
he j)erfected a plain white ware, and a year afterward he com- 
menced to decorate his goods. The Union Porcelain Works, of 
which Messrs. Thomas C. Smith and C. H. L. Smith are the pro- 
prietors, have produced many decorative pieces in addition to 
their staple productions of true porcelain table ware. 

This porcelain is composed in body of clay, quartz, and feldspar. 
It is fired in biscuit at a low temperature, in the second story of 
the porcelain kiln, using for its baking the surplus heat passing 
away after having done its greater work in the first story or gloss- 
kiln where the glazing is done. At this first burning the ware 
receives only sufficient fire to make it jjroperly fasten together in 
form. It is quite fragile, easily broken with the fingers, and por- 
ous, not having yet had sufficient heat to commence vitrification. 
In this condition it is what is termed porcelain biscuit, and is 
ready for the glaze-tub. The glaze of porcelain is composed of 
the same material as the body, and so compounded that those 
elements which are soonest fluxed by the influence of the heat 
are in greater proportion than they are contained in the body. 
The porous, low-fired biscuit is dipped into a liquid puddle of 
glaze. Upon being withdrawn its porosity quickly absoi'bs the 
excess of water, leaving a dry coating of the glaze compound. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 299 



which was held by the water in suspension, upon the surface of 
the piece. This piece of porous biscuit covered with glaze is now 
cleaned of glaze upon its foot, or that part upon which it rests, to 
prevent its sticking or burning fast to the clay " sagger " or firing 
case ; otherwise the glaze on the bearing parts would, at the time 
of flowing, form a cement, fastening the piece and the sagger 
together. The pieces are placed separately in the saggers. The 
heat in firing hard porcelain is carried to such a high degree that 
the ware touches the point of pliability, almost the melting-point. 
At this point of heat the body is vitrified ; at the same time the 
glaze, from its slightly softer composition, is melted into the body 
of the ware, producing 
a hard, vitreous, and 
homogeneous material 
properly known as true, 
hard porcelain. This 
is the process used at 
Sevres, Meissen, Berlin, 
and elsewhere. 

The earthenware 
method is just the re- 
verse of this. The body 
is composed of much the 
same materials as a por- 
celain body, but difiier- 
ently compounded, and 
it is baked in biscuit at 
the first firing at a great- 
er heat than is required 
for porcelain biscuit, 
and receives during that 
first burning the great- 
est heat to which it is 
subjected in the entire 
process of manufacture. 
The glaze is composed 
partly of the same ma- 
terials as compose the 
body, with the addition 
of oxide of lead and boracic acid, which latter, being soft, fluxes 
in the fire, enabling the glaze to flow at a low heat. It is fired 
the second time in the gloss-kiln at a lower temperature than 
it has previously been fired in biscuit. This results in flowing 
the soft glaze over the surface of the ware, making sul)stan- 
tially a lead-glass film or coating upon the surface of difi'erent 
compounds and materials, not homogeneous, not a part of the 




Fig. 27. 



-BrsT or Edwin Forrest as William Tell. 
Union Porcelain Works. 



300 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ware by being fused into the body as in porcelain. Tbe body and 
glaze being thus in constant antagonism to each other, produce 
sooner or later what is technically called " crazing " or cracking 
of the enamel, for the reason that the body is one thing, produced 




at a higher temperature, and the glaze another, produced at a lower 
temperature, and not as in porcelain, body and glaze produced at 
the same time, and at the last and greatest heat. 

Fig. 28 shows a tete<i4ete set, with head of Chinaman on the 
cover of the tea-pot, a negro's head on the sugar-bowl, and goat's 
head on the creamer. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 301 

The Union Porcelain Works also manufacture largely hard 
porcelain insulators and hardware trimmings. 

The exquisite fabrications of the Greenpoint works have done 
much to dispel that unreasonable prejudice which until recently 
condemned all American productions, of whatsoever merit. 

Beautiful as are many of the delicate productions of the pot- 
ter's skill which are made in molds or by the aid of machinery, 
clay is a material which yields the most subtle and satisfactory 
results to the direct touch of the human hand. While prmtmg 
processes are excellent in their way and indispensable for cheap- 
ness where large production is an element to be considered, they 
are inadequate to give that breadth and freedom of treatment 
which constitute true artistic decoration. 

While visiting the Centennial, Miss M. Louise McLaughlm, of 
Cincinnati, was strongly impressed with the beauty of the then 
novel faience from the Haviland potteries of Limoges, and on her 
return home she determined to discover, if possible, the processes 
of decoration. Her experiments, partially successful, extended 
over a period of nearly three years, and in April, 1879, she gath- 
ered around her twelve ladies who were interested m decorative 
art, and the Pottery Club, which has since exercised such an im- 
portant influence on the ceramic industry in Cincinnati, was then 
organized. Miss McLaughlin being elected president and _ Miss 
Clara Chipman Newton secretary. Experiments were continued 
at some of the city potteries, where red, yellow, and white wares 
were made. On the unburned ware colored clays were applied in 
the manner of oil paints, and some satisfactory results were ob- 
tained, . . 

The ceramic display of Japan at the Philadelphia Exhibition 
was, more than any other perhaps, the artistic impulse that in- 
spired the venture which resulted in the establishment of the 
Eookwood Pottery in 1880 by Mrs. Maria Longworth Nicholls. 
Her experiments were continued at this factory, which, through 
the liberal patronage of Mr. Joseph Longworth, her father, was 
furnished with the necessary means for carrying it on until its 
productions had found a market and it could stand financially 

alone. 

The ware produced here is a true faience, and while the shapes 
employed are mainly reproductions or variations of classic Greek 
forms, they possess a marked originality in treatment.^ The pot- 
ter's wheel is used as far as possible, on account of giving more 
freedom and greater variety to the outlines. Mr. Charles Mahar 
is the only thrower employed at the pottery, and his graceful 
creations have obtained a world-wide celebrity. The method of 
casting in vogue is that which consists in pouring liquid clay into 
plaster molds, which absorb the superabundant moisture from the 



302 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



adjacent clay. The thin slip is then emptied from the center of 
the molds, leaving a shell of uniform thickness, which is allowed 
to stand a while longer before being removed. 

The bodies are made of clays found mainly in the Ohio Valley, 
though samples are being constantly sent to Mr. Joseph Bailey' 
the superintendent, from all parts of the country. The clays 
mostly used are a red variety from Buena Vista,' Ohio ; yellow 
from Ironton, Ohio ; and a whitish or cream-colored clay from 
Chattanooga— artificially tinted bodies being also used to some 
extent. The glazing, however, is the most distinctive character- 
istic of the Rookwood Pottery, which, when applied to the tinted 




Fig. 29. -Group of Rookwood Vases. 

bodies, produces the e£eect of rich tones of black, yellow, green, 
red, brown, and amber, harmoniously blended, of great depth and 
strength. A number of competent artists are constantly employed 
m beautifying the wares, the decorations being entirely under- 
glaze. Mr. Kataro Shirayamadani, a Japanese painter of the best 
school, is doing some of the finest work in Oriental methods. 
Mr. A. R. Valentien, Mr. M. A. Daly, and others rank among the 
best American decorators in their particular lines. The above 
engraving will give a fair idea of some of the forms of vases 
produced, but no adequate conception of the great beauty of the 
glazing can be conveyed in black and white. 

It is not generally known that the Rookwood Pottery has 
produced varieties of ware other than the richly glazed pottery 
which has recently become so familiar through its exhibition in 
the prominent art-stores of the country. In the earlier years, 
commencing about 1881, cream-colored ware, with blue prints of 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 303 



fishes and reptiles, was made. One of these early plates so deco- 
rated is here figured. Yellow ware of the finest quality was also 
produced ten years ago. The highest achievements in glazing 
are the so-called tiger's-eye and gold-stone, which glisten in the 
light with an auriferous sheen and all the changing hues of the 
rainbow. 

The Rookwood Pottery was the first in this country to demon- 
strate the fact that a purely American art-production, in which 
original and conscientious work is made paramount to commer- 
cial considerations, can be appreciated by the American public ; 
for financially this enterprise has recently proved successful, and 
under the efficient management of Mr. W. W. Taylor, the entliu- 
siastic president of 
the company, experi- 
ments are being con- 
stantly prosecuted to 
discover new bodies, 
colors, and glazes. 
At the present time 
a new building, with 
improved equip- 
ments, is being erect- 
ed on the summit 
of Mount Adams, 
which, it is expected, 
will be ready for oc- 
cupancy before the 
end of the present 
year. 

Within the past 
few years other pot- 
teries have attempt- 
ed in Cincinnati to make decorated ware, with varying success. 
One founded by Mr. M. Morgan produced a faience modeled in 
low relief, in Moorish designs, and the Avon Pottery commenced 
the manufacture of a ware somewhat resembling the Rookwood ; 
but both were closed after a brief existence. 

The Cincinnati Art Pottery Company, Mr. Frank Huntington, 
president, was organized in 1870, and for several years confined 
its work to an underglaze faience after the Lambeth style. Later 
it made Barbotine ware in applied work, but soon dropped this 
and turned its attention to a more artistic style of overglaze deco- 
ration. For a time the " Hungarian faience " was popular with 
the purchasing public. We are enabled to give an engraving of 
examples of this (Fig. 31). The latest style of work produced at 
this factory is called the " Portland blue faience," which consists 




Fig. 30. — EooKWO(ii) Platk, Printed Decoration. 



304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

of gold and colored decoration on a dark, rich blue ground, of the 
color of the famous Portland vase. The name kezonta has been 
adopted to designate the wares made here. The origin of the 
word is interesting. The trade-mark used was the figure of a 
turtle, and afterward learning that the Indian name for turtle 
was kezonta, the proprietors added this name to the device which 




Fig. 31. — " Hungarian Faience." Cincinnati Art Pottery Company. 

was employed. Pottery in the biscuit and in blue and white glaze 
has been sold largely to decorators, the forms being generally 
modifications of the ancient Roman and Greek. It is with regret 
we learn that this pottery has been recently closed, the stock of 
ware on hand having been disposed of by auction. 

This, in brief, is the history of the industry which in the past 
few years has made Cincinnati noted as an art center. In the 
city Art Museum are about eighty pieces of pottery and porcelain, 
made between 1875 and 1886, commencing with a small porcelain 
plate, in blue underglaze decoration, which was painted by Miss 
McLaughlin in the former year and fired at Greenpoint, Long 
Island. This collection of early experiments also includes a 
number of interesting pieces made previous to the establishment 
of the Rookwood Pottery, by its founder, Mrs. Bellamy Storer, 
then Mrs. Nicholls. 

Some original work of high merit is also being done at the 
Hampshire Pottery of Messrs. J. S. Taft & Co., Keene, N. H. This 
pottery was started in 1871 for the manufacture of red ware. 
Lately the firm has been paying particular attention to art spe- 
cialties, in new and graceful shapes and novel decorations. The 
ware is a white, opaque body, covered with a variety of effective 
glazes. About forty hands are employed, nearly half being deco- 
rators. Prof. Edward S. Morse, of Salem, Mass., to whom I am 
indebted for valuable assistance, first called my attention to these 
productions. 

The Chesapeake Pottery, of Baltimore, Md., was started about 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 305 



ten years ago by Messrs. D. F. Haynes & Co., and was continued 
without change until 1887, when the style was altered to The 
Chesapeake Pottery Company, and again, in 1890, to Haynes, Ben- 
nett & Co. Mr. Haynes, who is a practical potter of wide experi- 
ence and an artist and designer of the highest rank, has invented 
a number of new bodies and produced a wealth of beautiful de- 
signs, which, because of the employment of the printing process 
in decoration, are to-day beautifying the homes of thousands who 
could not otherwise enjoy the possession of works of artistic 
merit. Indeed, the engravings, which have been made especiallj'- 
for these productions, possess so much excellence and are so pleas- 
ing in their application to graceful forms that they stand as the ex- 
ception which proves the rule that the best results can usually be 
obtained without the aid of mechanical processes. Of the many 
meritorious designs in high grade dinner sets and the one hundred 
styles of toilet ware in underglaze printing and overgiaze decora- 
tion made at this pottery, 
among the most charming is 
the Alsatian pattern, made 
in the new Avalon china 
body, embellished with the 
heads of peasants, drawn by 
Mr. Jesse Shepherd, or scenes 
from Shakespeare, drawn by 
Mr. A. Master especially for 
this set, and printed in vel- 
lum tints. The "Merchant 
of Venice " set is particu- 
larly attractive, in which, in 
a panel on one side, the trial 
scene is depicted, where Por- 
tia says, " The quality of 
mercy is not strained — it 
droppeth as the gentle rain 
from heaven " ; and on the 
other the scene between An- 
tonio, Bassanio, and Shy lock, 
in which the latter exclaims, 
" And for these courtesies I'll 
lend you thus much moneys." 

No less pleasing, though of an entirely different character, is 
the Arundel ware, which is made entirely from American clays. 
The body possesses no artificial coloring and is thoroughly vitre- 
ous, of a rich olive-brown tint and susceptible of fine finish and 
delicate relief work. Being made entirely of native materials, it 
has been named after one of the titles and estates of Lord Balti- 

VOL. XI,. — 24 




■■ .Mi.i:( iiANT OF Venice ' 
Chesapeake Pottery. 



3o6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



more. This body is made into many useful and decorative shapes, 
such as jugs, jmrlinieres, vases, etc. Pieces of this ware may be 
seen in Fig. 33. In addition to these productions, the Chesapeake 
Pottery has turned out ornamental flower-pots, Parian cattle-head 
plaques in high relief, modeled by Mr. James Priestman, of Bos- 
ton, from studies of typical animals in the noted herd of Mr. 
Harvey Adams ; also two interesting has - reliefs representing 
Winter and Summer, in Parian, the latter modeled by Mr. Priest- 
man and the former by an English artist. 

The Clifton ware from this manufactory belongs to the ma- 
jolica family, and is said to equal, if not surpass, in body the 

famous Wedgwood 
ware of the same 
class. 

The ivory ware 
possesses a body of 
a soft ivory tint, 
made from native 
clays, without the 
addition of coloring 
either in body or 
glaze, whose soft 
, grain and texture 
» render it peculiar- 
' ly adapted for free 
treatment and taste- 
ful decoration. Me- 
dallions in various 
colored pastes, on 
bodies of different 
tints, which are 
baked at one fir- 
ing, have been com- 
pared favorably with some of the fine Avares made at Etruria, the 
result of years of intelligent study and experiment in American 
materials. Many other bodies of equal merit have been invented 
at this factory, but we have not the space to dwell upon them. 

No one of our potters has done so much to beautify the wares 
for daily use in the household as Mr. Haynes, or accomplished 
more in the direction of elevating and refining the tastes of the 
masses, which he considers of even greater importance than the 
production of a few fine pieces which could only be within the 
reach of the wealthy. That he has succeeded in this laudable 
effort is am])ly demonstrated by the extent to which many of his 
designs have been copied both at home and abroad. 

Tiles. — The history of the ceramic art in America would not 




Fig. 33. — " Arvnuel" Ware. Chesapeake Pottery. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 307 



be complete without a brief review of the manufacture of orna- 
mental tiles and architectural terra-cotta, which, although extend- 
ing over only about two decades, furnishes an instance of marvel- 
ously rapid development. 

As early as 1832, or thereabout, plain fire-brick and tile were 
made by the American China Manufactory in Philadelphia, then 
operated by Messrs. Tucker & Hemphill. They advertised these 
products as being " of a superior quality, manufactured in part 
from the materials of which the china is composed. These have 
been proved, by competent judges, to be fully equal to the best 
Stourbridge brick," which have been celebrated for their excel- 
lence for nearly a century and a half. The fire-clays of the Stour- 
bridge district have been used for upward of three hundred years 
by British manufacturers. 

The European exhibits of fancy wall and floor tiles at the 
Philadelphia Exhibition awakened the American ceramists to a 
full realization of their insignificance in this broad field, and the 
majority of ornamental tile works 
in this country have been estab- 
lished since that great industrial 
event. With the exception of 
roofing tiles, Americans made 
there no exhibit of consequence 
in this department of the fictile 
art. As early as 1871 or 1872, 
however, Messrs. Hyzer & Lewel- 
len, of Philadelphia, had been ex- 
perimenting in geometrical tiling, 
and I have before me some in- 
teresting examples of these early 
attempts. Their first experiments 
were directed to the manufacture 
of encaustic tiles of geometrical 
shapes — square, diamond, and tri- 
angular — with natural and arti- 
ficially colored American clays, 
mainly buff, red, and black, the 
designs being inlaid to the depth 
of about a quarter of an inch. 
While these efforts proved par- 
tially successful, the wet clay 
method employed at that time was unsatisfactory, because the 
shrinkage was found to be irregular and the pieces came from 
the kiln of different thicknesses. The next experiments were made 
by the damp-dust process, which has been employed ever since. 
The accompanying illustration will show two forms of geomet- 




FiG. 34. — Some of the First Fancy Ameri- 
can Tiles. Hvzer and Lewellen. 



3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

rical wall tiles which, were made previous to 1870. They are plain 
tiles of yellow clay, of great hardness, the glaze being also hard 
and entirely free from " crazing," and fully equal to anything of 
the kind which has since been produced. The hexagonal speci- 
men figured is decorated with painted designs above the glaze, 
consisting of a green vine on a buff ground, with a red center 
outlined in black. The lozenge-shaped example is painted with a 
black device on a lemon ground. Later, several patterns of em- 
bossed unglazed mantel tiles, in conventional decoration, were 
produced, but the manufacture of ornamental tiles was only car- 
ried on a short time. At present they make plain geometrical 
floor tiles of different colored bodies and of exceeding hardness. 
The clay used is fine and homogeneous, and when burned almost 
approaches stone-ware. The firm also manufactures fire-brick, 
dental muffles, and stove-linings. 

Furnace tests of the standing-up power of the best-known fire- 
bricks, instituted by the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylva- 
nia in 1876, at Harrisburg, showed that the productions of Messrs. 
Hyzer & Lewellen were superior, in heat-resisting qualities, to all 
others that were submitted for examination. 

Scarcely two years after the Centennial, Mr. John G. Low, of 
Chelsea, Mass., who had finished a course of several years in the 
art schools of Paris, and had recently become interested in the 
manufacture of pottery, formed a copartnership with his father, 
Hon. John Low, and immediately commenced the erection of a 
tile-factory in his native place. Less than a year and a half after 
the works were started we find the firm competing with English 
tile-makers at the exhibition at Crewe, near Stoke-on-Trent, which 
was conducted under the auspices of the Royal Manchester, Liv- 
erpool, and North Lancashire Agricultural Society, one of the 
oldest societies in England. There they won the gold medal, over 
all the manufacturers of the United Kingdom, for the best collec- 
tion of art tiles exhibited. This record, probably unsurpassed in 
ceramic history, serves to illustrate the remarkably rapid develop- 
ment of an industry new in America, but old in the East, and 
shows the resources at command of the American potter. 

In 1883 Hon. John Low retired from the firm, and Mr. John F. 
Low, son of the founder, became associated with his father, under 
the style of J. G. & J. F. Low. 

Mr. Arthur (3sborne, who has designed the majority of the 
tiles produced here, is a talented artist of the older schools of art, 
whose conceptions are chaste and classic and possess marked origi- 
nality. 

A novel method was resorted to by Mr. Low in the embellish- 
ment of his earlier productions, which he has patented, and which 
be calls the " natural " process. To secure accurate impressions 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 309 




Fig. 35. — A "Low" 
Tile, "• The Flying 
Moments." By Os- 
borne. 



of delicate objects, such, as grasses, leaves, lace, etc., the article to 
be represented was j^laced on the surface of the unburned tile and 
forced into the clay by means of a press. Such intaglios, plainly 
showing every small detail of marking, were 
utilized as molds for forming the raised designs 
on tiles, which were called " natural tiles," 

In the high-relief tiles the undercutting is 
done by hand after the designs have been 
stamped in the press. Among Mr. Osborne's 
designs are ideal heads, mythological subjects, 
portraits of prominent men, Japanese sketches, 
and an almost endless variety of animal, bird, 
and floral studies. His plastic sketches, on a 
larger scale, are particularly meritorious, some 
of the most pleasing being a group of sheep in 
a pasture, a drove of swine, entitled " Late for 
Dinner," a herd of cows wending their way 
homeward, and " The Old Windmill." A beau- 
tiful conceit is the " Flying Moments," in which 
three Cupids hover around an hour-glass, one 
being depicted in the act of winging his way up- 
ward (see Fig. 35). These works also make stove tiles, calendar 
tiles, clothes-hooks, paper-weights, inkstands, and pitchers in 
plain colors, enameled, and glazed. They at one time also manu- 
factured tile stoves. 
Lately the Lows have 
been making a spe- 
cialty of the manu- 
facture of art - tile 
soda fountains, in 
which work Mr. Os- 
borne has found a 
broader field for the 
exercise of his tal- 
ents. 

The United States 
Encaustic Tile 
AVorks, of Indianap- 
olis, Ind., is the out- 
growth of the United 
States Encaustic Tile 
Company, which was 
organized shortly after the Centennial. Five years ago the 
present proprietors took charge of the works, and are now mak- 
ing encaustic geometrical and relief mantel tiles. So rapidly 
has the business grown in the past few years that the plant now 




Fi( 



-Pani:i, I 111; Son A Foix'! 



.1. (;. cV' .1. F. Low. 



310 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



includes six bisque and twelve muffle kilns, which are taxed to 
their utmost capacity. The clays used for white bodies come 
from South Carolina and Kentucky, and those for dark bodies are 
obtained from Indiana, the burning being done by means of 
natural gas. Miss Ruth Winterbotham, who is at present the 
principal modeler of this factory, has produced many beautiful 

designs, of which some three and six 
section panels are probably the most 
artistic. A series of three mantel pan- 
els, representing Dawn, Midday, and 
Twilight, are particularly deserving of 
mention, the latter one being shown in 
the annexed engraving. The method 
employed in making embossed or relief 
tiles is that used by all tile works in 
this country, which was patented by 
Richard Prosser, in England, in 1840, 
for making buttons, and shortly after 
applied by J. M. Blashfield to the manu- 
facture of tiles, called the dust i:)rocess, 
which consists in slightly moistening 
the dry powdered white clay and sub- 
jecting it to great pressure in dies con- 
taining the designs to be impressed 
upon them. They are then burned and 
afterward glazed or enameled in deli- 
cate colors. Mr. Robert Minton Taylor, 
of England, was connected with these 
works from 1881 to 1883. 

The Beaver Falls Art Tile Company, 
limited, of Beaver Falls, Pa., was organ- 
ized in 1886 by Mr. Frank W. Walker, 
the present secretary and treasurer. 
These works make a specialty of rect- 
angular and circular stove tiles and 
manufacture largely fine art relief tiles 
for wainscoting, hearths, and mantel 
facings. The present designer is Prof. 
Isaac Broome, a gentleman of rare artis- 
tic ability, a thorough potter, and a sculptor of eminence, who be- 
came connected with the works in 1890. In 1878 he was appointed 
a special commissioner on ceramics at the Paris Exposition and, 
in conjunction with General McClellan, made a thorough study of 
the ceramic art as it exists abroad. The varied and extensive 
knowledge which he has acquired through a life of study has 
especially fitted him for the work upon which he is now engaged. 




Fig. S7. — " Twii-ifwiT " Tile. 
Uniled States Encaustic Tile 
Works. Designed by Miss 
Winterbotham. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY, -u 



After leaving the Ott and Brewer Company he went in 1883 with 
the Harris Manufacturing Company, now the Trent Tile Company, 
as modeler, and afterward^ in 188G, was instrumental in establish- 
ing the Providential Tile Works, of Trenton, N. J., and designed 
many of their best works. Through his influence the Beaver Falls 
establishment has made, during the past year and a half, rapid 
strides in the development of decorative tile manufacture. A 
complete ceramic color scale has been achieved and a series of 
glazes produced, of soft, rich tones, a most important result 
obtained being entire freedom from " crazing," which has already 
given these works a high reputation Prof. Broome is an inde- 
fatigable worker and a prolific artist, his sculptures being charac- 
terized by exquisite conception and beautiful execution. While 
he has produced many more pretentious works, some of his sim- 




FiG. 38.— Hkavek 1-ai.ls Stove Tiles. 

pie designs leave nothing to be desired. One of his most highly 
admired pieces is a six-inch tile with a Grecian figure (Sappho) 
leaning on a harp. Prof. Broome has also designed some twelve 
by twelve inch tiles of great merit which will soon be submitted 
to the public. 

The American Encaustic Tiling Company, of Zanesville, Ohio, 
is the most extensive establishment of the kind in the United 
States. It manufactures artistic and encaustic tiles, and has placed 
upon the market some fine pieces of relief work, twelve by eight- 
een inches in size^ among the subjects of which we have seen 
some female water-carriers of Grecian type. This factory also 



312 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



makes an intaglio modeled tile, the effect of which, when filled 
with glaze, is that of a photograph on a smooth surface of clay. 
The different depths of the engraving regulate the degree of shad- 
ing, and portraits of individuals have been executed with great 
fidelity. It has been mainly through the intelligent management 
of Mr. George A. Stanbery, the general superintendent, with the 
assistance of Mr. Karl Langenbeck, the efficient chemist of the 
company, that such marked success has been achieved. The 




Fig. 39. — "Sappho." Beaver Falls Art Tile Company. By Broome. 

modeling and casting of the dies are the work of Mr. Hermann 
Mueller, formerly of Coburg, who studied in the Industrial Acade- 
my and Preparatory Art School of Nuremberg, and in the Art 
Academy of Munich. For geometrical designing of encaustic tiles 
used in flooring and wainscoting the factory employs several com- 
petent architects. 

The works were projected in 1875 for the manufacture of floor 
tiles, but in 1880 enameled tiles were added to the products of the 
factory, and at the present time eleven large kilns are in operation. 
The city of Zanesville has recently donated a tract of thirty acres 
to the company, on which an extensive plant is now lieing erected 
which will include twenty-eight kilns, to be ojierated in addition 
to the present establishment. 

The Trent Tile Company, of Trenton. N. J., established about 
1883, is now making dull lustered tiles in aJfo-relievo, which pro- 
cess has been patented. This style of finish forms a striking con- 
trast to the glazed and enameled varieties also made here. Effect- 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 313 

ive panels for mantel facings, six by eighteen inches, in one piece, 
are also produced. One of these is a center panel in a pastoral 
facing, which was modeled by Mr. William W. Gallimore, from a 
sketch in black and white by an artist of the name of Cooper. 
The scene represents a shepherd boy playing his pipes to his flock. 




The peculiar treatment of this piece, in which the sheep in the 
foreground are in relief and those in the distance in intaglio, is 
particularly pleasing. Mr, Gallimore, the present modeler for 
this company, was in his earlier days connected with the Belleek 
potteries in Ireland, where he lost his right arm by the bursting 
of a gun. He afterward modeled for Mr. William Henry Goss, 
at London Road, Stoke-upon-Trent, where, under the supervision 
of the latter, he produced some admirable Parian busts, including 
that of the late Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt, which serves as the frontis- 








Vn,. 41. — I'asthkal I'ankl. Trent Tile Company. 

piece to the latter 's Ceramic Art in Great Britain. Since the loss 
of his arm, Mr. Gallimore has done his modeling with his left 
hand, and he has accomplished better work with one arm than he 
did when in possession of both. He has been with the Trent Com- 
pany about four years. This comx)any has now six biscuit kilns, 
and, in addition to the wares made for the general trade, is turning 
out considerable work of a special nature. 



3H 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The Providential Tile Works, of Trenton, make glazed tiles, 
plain and in relief. At one time tliey experimented in different- 
colored glazes on the same piece, the raised portions being of a 
different tint from the ground, and some good results were obtained 
by this treatment. Underglaze decoration was also employed to 




Fig. 42. — Tile Panel, " Indolence." rrovidenti 



Works 



some extent formerly, and some fine work in that line was pro- 
duced, but both of these styles have been abandoned as unsuited to 
the market. The present designer and modeler is Mr. Scott Callow- 
hill, who came to this country about six years ago from the Royal 
Worcester Works, England, where, with his brother, Mr. James 
Callowhill, now of Roslindale, Mass., he had charge of two of the 
principal decorating-rooms in which the finer class of decoration, 
in raised paste and gold bronze, was done. He also, while in 
England, worked for the Doultons, at Lambeth. Some of their 
newest designs are relief tiles, measuring six by twelve inches, 
and among their most popular pieces are hunting panels for 
mantel facings, with such subjects as fighting bucks, stags' heads, 
sportsmen, and dogs. 

One of the most recent applicants for public favor is the Cam- 
bridge Art Tile Works, of Covington, Ky.. which commenced 
business in 1887. They are producing high grade enameled and 
embossed goods of various shapes and in size from one half inch 
square to six by eighteen inches. The glazes employed are re- 
markably free from " crazing." The designer and modeler is 
Mr. Ferdinand Mersman, who studied at the Academy of Fine 
Arts in Munich. A pair of six l^y eighteen inch panels, which 
have just been completed, are examples of exquisite modeling, 
being copies of Hans Makart's celebrated paintings " Night " and 
" Morning." 

At Anderson, Ind.. the Colunilna Encaustic Tile Company is 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 315 



producing inlaid and embossed art tiles, and at other points tile- 
factories are in operation, but we must content ourselves with 
this very incomplete sketch of the princij^al establishments in 
this country. 

In the manufacture of printed, inlaid, and relief tiles, America 
has advanced rapidly, but in the production of hand-painted art 
tiles she is sadly de- 
ficient. This is a branch 
of the art that must be 
developed through the 
influence of our me- 
chanical art schools, 
which are paving the 
way for an early revo- 
lution in the ceramic 
industry in the United 
States. 

Various tile machines 
have been designed for 
the manufacture of tiles 
from dust or semi-dry 
clay, but we are unable 
here to reproduce more 
than one. Fig. 43 shows 
a screw press, made by 
Mr. Peter Wilkes, of 
Trenton, for the Trent 
Tile Company, and will 
give an excellent idea of 
the principle on which 
the majority of such 
machines are operated. 
This forms tiles six inches to twelve inches square, the die being 
placed between the "push-up" and "plunger." It can also be 
used for making plates, oval dishes, and other ware. 

Architectural Terra Cotta. — It is interesting to note 
what the fifth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published 
in 1815, contains relative to this subject : " Worlidge, and others 
after him, have endeavored to excite brick-makers to try their 
skill in making a new kind of brick, or a composition of clay and 
sand, whereof to form window-frames, chimney-pieces, door-cases, 
and the like. It is to be made in pieces, fashioned in molds, 
which, when burnt, may be set together with a fine red cement, 
and seem as one entire piece. The thing should seem feasible." 
And so we shall find that it was. 

Terra cotta, the most enduring of all building materials, has 




Fig. 43.— The Wilkes Scbew Tile Press. 



3i6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been used to a greater or lesser extent from a liigli antiquity in 
continental Europe, and in England terra-cotta trimmings were 
used in building as early as the fifteenth, century. In the United 
States this material does not seem to have been introduced until 
after 1850. Experiments were made in this direction in 1853 by 



P*^^ 



pr 




24 * 6 S)»a. 



Fig. 44.— Three Kilns. Perth Ambnv Terra Cuttu Coiuiiauy. 

Mr. James Renwick, a prominent New York architect, but the 
innovation was not received with favor by builders. In 1870 the 
Chicago Terra Cotta Company brought over from England Mr. 
James Tavlor. superintendent of the well-known works which 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 317 




.- . / 



I 



/. 



^ 



?. 






/ / 



f<iLi^''l 



were established by Mr J. M. Blashfield in 1858. By the intro- 
duction of the English methods, the Chicago establishment soon 
turned out better work than had been produced before in the 
United States, 

The Perth Amboy ' 
Terra Cotta Company 
was incorporated in 
1879, and at once em- 
barked in the manufact- 
ure of large designs for 
architectural purposes 
from clay obtained from 
the neighboring depos- 
its. The plant of this 
company has expanded 
so rapidly that at pres- 
ent it includes twenty- 
two kilns, some of them 
measuring forty - eight 
and one third feet in 
height and twenty-four 
and one sixth in diam- 
eter, which are said to 
be the largest of the kind 
on this continent, if not 
in the world. 

The company has in 
its employ a number of 
eminent artists in this 
particular line, and has 
furnished terra - cott;i 
details for many promi- 
nent buildings through- 
out the country. Of 
these we may mention 
Young Maennerchor 
Hall, Philadelphia; 
Ponce de Leon Hotel, 
St. Augustine, Florida ; 
Biological Laboratory, 
Princeton College ; and 
Central School, Ironton, 
Ohio. Fig. 45 repre- 
sents a large panel in a 
warehouse in Jersey City, and Fi 
thony Club House, Philadelphia. 








fd 



■IG a bas-relief in the St. An- 



3i8 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 




Fk;. 46. 



Since al)out 1880 the demand for architectural terra cotta has 
rapidly increased, and to-day many mannfactories are in opera- 
tion in various parts of the country. In the latter part of 1885 

the New York Architect- 
ural Terra Cotta Com- 
pany was organized, and 
the services of Mr. James 
Taylor secured as super- 
intendent. The works at 
Long Island City have 
furnished designs for 
more than two thou- 
sand buildings, scattered 
throughout the principal 
cities of the Union. They 
have lately succeeded in 
producing a pure white 
terra cotta, which is said to be fully equal to the red in durability 
and hardness, and at present are using this latest invention, in 
combination with buff bricks, in the rebuilding of Harrigan's 
Theatre, New York. The effect 
is novel and pleasing. Other 
architectural terra-cotta works 
have also been experimenting 
recently in the same direction, 
and it is now only a question 
of a short time when the more 
perishable marble, as a build- 
ing material, will be superseded 
by this more enduring substi- 
tute. Having eliminated the 
red coloring matter from the 
composition, it would seem 
possible, by the introduction 
of other tints, to produce terra 
cotta in yellow, blue, or any 
shade desired. The possibili- 
ties in this direction appear 
almost limitless. 

The Indianapolis Terra Cot- 
ta Company, located at Bright- 
wood, Ind., commenced busi- 
ness under its present manage- 
ment in 188G. Mr. Joseph 
Joiner, a gentleman of large experience in this field, and a highly 
qualified architect, superintends the manufacturing department. 




Fig. 47. — Panel in Eesidence of Mr. George 
Alfred Townsend, Gapland, Me. New 
York Arcbiteotural Terra Cotta Company. 



RECENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 319 

In the same year Messrs. Stephens & Leach started a factory 
for architectural terra cotta in West Philadelphia, and later the 
firm name was changed to Stephens, Armstrong & Conkling. 






Fig. 48. — Finials. Indianapolis Terra Cotta Company. 

During the five years of the works' existence it has furnished ma- 
terial for hundreds of important structures in Philadelphia and 
other cities, of which particular mention may be made of panels 
and gable work in the library 
of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, and the Drexel In- 
stitute, now being erected in 
West Philadelphia. A series 
of animal-head medallions, in 
high relief, are particularly 
excellent, and some bas-relief 
portraits of eminent men, 
modeled by such sculptors as 
H. J. Ellicott, John Boyle, and 
E. N. Conkling, are among 
their best productions. A me- 
dallion of Columbus by Mr. 
Conkling, and a Cupid and 
floral panel by Thomas Rob- 
ertson, are here represented. Admirable work is also being pro- 
duced by other establishments in Boston, Chicago, and most of 
our larger cities. 




Fi(i. 49. — Medallion of Columbus. 



320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Recently considerable attention has been given to tlie con- 
struction of brick and tile kilns on scientific principles. Many 
improved kilns, lioth on tlie up-draft and the down-draft sys- 
tems, have been invented. Art tiles and architectural terra cotta 
are being burned in up-draft kilns with closed tops, or muffled 
kilns, in which " saggers," or fire-clay boxes, are used to protect 
the pieces from direct contact with the flames. Mr. W. A. Eudaly, 




Fig. 50.— Floral Panel. 

of Cincinnati, has j^erfected a down-draft kilii which is arranged 
with compartments in the bottom, which are provided with two 
separate and distinct sets of flues, one of which carries a portion 
of the heat into the kiln, and the other conducts a portion from 
the kiln to stacks or chimneys built in the main wall. The heat 
is thus divided as it enters the kiln or leaves the furnace, a por- 
tion going up through the liags to the ware at the top, while 
another part surrounds the ware at the bottom of the kiln, secur- 
ing uniformity of burning and perfect consumption of fuel and 



BE CENT ADVANCES IN THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 321 



gases. By this method tiles and architectural terra cotta, as well 
as enamel brick, enameled when green, and thus requiring only- 
one firing, are successfully burned without the use of saggers. 
Mr. Eudaly also constructs a square down-draft kiln on precisely 
the same principles, but better adapted to the manufacture of 
common brick, fire-brick, and sewer-pipe in large quantity, the 
brick-kilns having a capacity of 80,000 to 300,000, the inside ar- 
rangement being such that the heat can be driven to any part of 
the kiln without altering the fire in the furnace. Thus all the 
bricks are burned of equal hardness, a vast improvement over the 
old-fashioned clamp kilns with open tops. 

With the failure of natural gas supplies in the West, artificial 
fuel-gas is destined to become the principal agency in the firing 
of ceramic products. Its ex- 
treme cheapness and perfect 
adaptability to the needs of 
the potter will insure its exten- 
sive use in the near future. 
There seems to be no reason 
to doubt that it will, ere long, 
supersede wood and coal as a 
kiln fuel. 

At the last convention of 
the United States Potters' As- 
sociation, held in Washington 
in January, 1891, it was decided 
to open a Pottery School with 
the co-oi)eration of the Penn- 
sylvania Museum and School 
of Industrial Art, at Philadel- 
phia, under the efficient man- 
agement of Prof. L. W. Miller, 
where designing, modeling, and 

chemistry shall be taught, and the student fully equipped for 
usefulness as a practical potter and artist artisan. 

American potters have much to learn, but the day is not far 
distant when, as is the case with other industries, we shall lead 
the world in this, the oldest and most interesting of the mechan- 
ical arts. The Columbian Exposition of 1893 will serve as a 
powerful impetus toward this end, and the World's Fair Commit- 
tee appointed by the United States Potters' Association, and com- 
posed of such progressive potters as Messrs. J. N. Taylor, Homer 
Laughlin, J. H. Brewer, James Moses, E. M. Pearson, D. F. Haynes, 
and C. E. Brockman, will insure a creditable representation of 
American goods in this branch of the Exhibition. 

It is true that American manufacturers have excelled the Eng- 

i^OL. XL. — 25 




Fig. 51— The Eudaly Kiln. 



322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

lisli in branches of the art which tliey have seriously undertaken. 
Our copies of certain European wares are fully equal to the origi- 
nals, and in some directions are superior. It only requires the 
proper appreciation and encouragement of the public to furnish 
the incentive to a broader application of the principles which have 
been mastered by American artists, in order to produce the best 
that has been attempted by the older French, Italian, and German 
schools. In our reproductions of the thin Belleek ware of Ireland, 
the Limoges faience of the Havilands, and specialties of other 
Continental factories, we not only equal them, but often excel 
them, in delicacy of form and beauty of glaze and decoration. 
Our relief tiles surpass in artistic merit anytliing yjroduced abroad 
of a similar character, having won the first premium over British 
wares long before we brought them to their present state of per- 
fection. Our architectural terra cottas have, within the past few 
years, left England behind, and, could the absurd prejudice against 
home art and native work be overcome, America would soon lead 
the world in ceramic fabrics of every nature. Auiericans are 
commencing to discriminate between the meritorious and the 
meretrici<)us, and to decide in favor of American goods. Having 
the richest mines in the world, from which the best materials are 







Fig. 52. — Militai^y Panel, 6. A. R. Memorial Hall, Wilkesbaree, Pa. 
New York Architectural Terra ('otta Company. 



procured, the most talented artists, and the most highly cultured 
public, there is no reason why we should not compete with the 
entire globe in the manufacture of artistic pottery and jjorcelain. 
It has been repeatedly stated that our artists are imitative, rather 
than inventive ; but while this may, to a certain extent, be true, 
and some of our potters have been content to creditably reproduce 
the well-known wares of foreign schools, others have directed 
their attention to the perfection of distinctively original prod- 
ucts, which, for richness of glazing, excellence of body, and 
beauty of conception, will rank Avith the best productions of Eu- 
rope. The inventive genius of American jjotters has a vast and 
practically limitless field for experimenting, and the art schools 
which have sprung up in our principal cities may in time produce 
a second Robbia, a worthy successor to Palissy, or an emulator 
of that prince of potters, Josiali Wedgwood. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 323 

NEW CHAPTERS IN" THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 

XIV. THEOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

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

EX-PEESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVEESITY. 

AMONG questions on which the supporters of right reason in 
political and social science have only conquered theologi- 
cal opposition after centuries of war, is the taking of interest on 
loans. In hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the letter 
of our sacred books been more prolonged and injurious. 

Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be 
that of St. Vincent of Lerins, that it has been believed in the 
Church " always, everywhere, and by all," then on no point may 
a Christian of these days be more sure than that every savings 
institution, every loan and trust company, every bank, every loan 
of capital by an individual, every means by which accumulated 
capital has been lawfully lent even at the most moderate interest, 
to make men workers rather than paupers, is based on deadly sin. 

The early evolution of the belief that taking interest for 
money is sinful presents a curious working-together of meta- 
physical, theological, and humanitarian ideas. 

In the great center of ancient Greek civilization, the loaning 
of money at interest came to be accepted at an early period as a 
condition of productive industry, and no legal restriction was im- 
posed. In Rome there was a long process of development. The 
greed of creditors in early times led to laws against the taking 
of interest, but, though these lasted long, that strong practical 
sense, which gave Rome the empire of the world, substituted 
finally, for this absolute prohibition, the establishment of rates 
fixed by law. Yet many of the leading Greek and Roman thinkers 
opposed this practical settlement of the question, and, foremost 
of all, Aristotle. In a metaphysical way he declared that money 
is by nature "barren"; that the birth of money from money 
is therefore " unnatural " ; and hence that the taking of interest 
is to be censured and hated. Plato, Plutarch, both the Catos, 
Cicero, Seneca, and various other leaders of ancient thought 
arrived at much the same conclusion — sometimes, from sympathy 
with oppressed debtors; sometimes, from hatred of usurers; 
sometimes, from simple contempt of trade. 

From these sources there came into the early Church the germ 
of a theological theory upon the subject. 

But far greater was the stream of influence from the Jewish 
and Christian sacred books. In the Old Testament stood a mul- 
titude of texts condemning usury, the term usury meaning any 

VOL. XL. — 25* 



324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

taking of interest ; the law of Moses, wliile it allowed usury in 
dealing with strangers, forbade it in dealing with Jews. In the 
New Testament stood the text in St. Luke, " Lend, hoping for 
nothing again." These texts seemed to harmonize with the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, and with the most beautiful characteristic of 
primitive Christianity ; its tender care for the poor and oppressed : 
hence we find, from the earliest period, the whole weight of the 
Church brought to bear against the taking of interest for money.* 
The great fathers of the Eastern Church, and among them 
St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Gregory of Nyssa ; the fathers 
of the Western Church, and among them TertuUian, St. Am- 
brose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome joined most earnestly in 
this condemnation. St. Basil denounces money at interest as a 
" fecund monster," and says, " The divine law declares expressly, 
' Thou shalt not lend on usury to thy brother or thy neighbor.' " 
St. Gregory of Nyssa calls down on him who lends money at in- 
terest the vengeance of the Almighty. St. Chrysostom says: 
" What can be more unreasonable than to sow without land, 
without rain, without plows ? All those who give themselves up 
to this damnable culture shall reap only tares. Let us cut off 
these monstrous births of gold and silver ; let us stop this execra- 
ble fecundity." Lactantius called the taking of interest " rob- 
bery." St. Ambrose declared it as bad as murder. St. Jerome 
threw the argument into the form of a dilemma, which was used 
as a weapon against money-lenders for centuries. St. Anselm 
proved from the Scriptures that the taking of interest is a breach 
of the Ten Commandments. Pope Leo the Great solemnly ad- 
judged the same offense to be a sin worthy of severe punish- 
ment, f 

* On the general allowance of interest for money in Greece, even at high rates, see 
Bockh, Public Economy of the Athenians, translated by Lamb, Boston, 1857, especially 
chaps, xxii, xxiii, and xxiv of Book I. For view of usury taken by Aristotle, see his 
Politics and Economics, translated by Walford, p. 27 ; also Grote, History of Greece, vol. 
iii, chap. xi. For summary of opinions in Greece and Rome, and their relation to Christian 
thought, see Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest, translated by Smart, London, 1890, chap, 
i. For a very fuU list of Scripture texts against the taking of interest, see Pearson, The 
Theories of Usury in Europe, 1100-1400, Cambridge (England), 1876, p. 6. The texts 
most frequently cited were: Leviticus, xxv, 36, 37 ; Deuteronomy, xxiii, 19 and 26; Psalms, 
XV, 5 ; Ezekiel, xviii, 8 and 17 ; St. Luke, vi, 35. For a curious modern use of them, see 
D. S. Dickinson's speech in the Senate of New York in vol. i of his collected writings. 
See also Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii, chap, vi ; and, above all, as the 
most recent historical summary by a leading historian of political economy, Bohm-Bawerk 
as above. 

f For St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa, see French translation of these diatribes in 
Homelies contre les Usuriers, Paris, Hachette, 1861-'62, especially p. 30 of St. Basil. 
For some doubtful reservations by St. Augustine, see Murray, History of Usury. For St. 
Ambrose, see the De Officiis, lib. iii, cap. ii, in Migne, Patrologia, tome xvi ; also the 
De Tobia, in Migne, tome xiv. For St. Augustine, see De Bapt. contra Donat, lib. iv, cap. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 325 

This -unanimity of the fathers of the Church brought about a 
crystallization of hostility to interest-bearing loans into number- 
less decrees of popes and councils and kings and legislatures 
throughout Christendom during more than fifteen hundred years ; 
and the canon law was shaped in accordance with these. At first 
these were more especially directed against the clergy, but we soon 
find them extending to the laity. These prohibitions were enforced 
by the Council of Aries in 314, and a modern church apologist 
insists that every great assembly of the Church, from the Council 
of Elvira in 306 to that of Vienne in 1311, inclusive, solemnly 
condemned lending money at interest. The greatest rulers under 
the sway of the Church — Justinian, in the Empire of the East ; 
Charlemagne, in the Empire of the West ; Alfred, in England ; 
St. Louis, in France — yielded fully to this dogma. In the ninth 
century Alfred went so far as to confiscate the estates of money- 
lenders, denying them burial in consecrated ground ; and similar 
decrees were made in other parts of Europe. In the twelfth cent- 
ury the Greek Church seems to have relaxed its strictness some- 
what, but the Roman Church grew more severe. Peter Lombard, 
in his Sentences, a great source of orthodox theology, makes the 
taking of interest purely and simply theft. St. Bernard, reviv- 
ing religious earnestness in the Church, took the same view. In 
1179 the Third Council of the Lateran decreed that impenitent 
money-lenders should be excluded from the altar, from abso- 
lution in the hour of death, and from Christian burial. Pope 
Urban III reiterated the declaration that the passage in St. Luke 
forbade the taking of any interest whatever. Pope Alexander III 
declared that the prohibition in this matter could never be sus- 
pended by dispensation. 

In the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX dealt an especially 
severe blow at commerce by his declaration that even to advance 
on interest the money necessary in maritime trade was damnable 
usury. This idea was still more firmly fastened upon the world 
by the two greatest thinkers of the time: first, by St. Thomas 
Aquinas, who knit it into the mind of the Church by the use of 
the Scriptures and of Aristotle ; and next by Dante, who pictured 
money-lenders in one of the ^jorst parts of hell. 

At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Council of 

tx, in Migne, tome xliii. For Lactantius, see Lact., Opera, Leyden, 1660, p. 608. For 
Cyprian, see his Testimonies against the Jews, translated by Wallis, Book III, article 48. 
For St. Jerome, see his Com. in Ezekiel, xviii, 8, in Migne, tome xxv, pp. 1*70 et seq. For 
Leo the Great, see his Letter to the Bishops of various provinces of Italy, cited in Jus 
Can., cap. vii, can. xiv, qu. 4. For very fair statements of the attitude of the fathers on 
this question, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, London, 1884, and Smith and 
Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Hartford, 1880, in each under article 
Usury. 



326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

Vienne, presided over by Pope Clement V, declared tliat if any 
one " shall pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of in- 
terest for money is not a sin, we decree him to be a heretic, fit for 
punishment." This infallible utterance bound the dogma with 
additional force on the conscience of the universal Church. 

Nor was this a doctrine enforced only by rulers ; the people 
were no less strenuous. In 1390 it was enacted by the city authori- 
ties of London that "if any person shall lend or put into the 
hands of any person gold or silver to receive gain thereby, such 
person shall have the punishment for usurers." And in the same 
year the Commons prayed the king that the laws of London 
against usury might have the force of statutes throughout the 
realm. 

In the fifteenth century the Council of the Church at Salzburg 
excluded from communion and burial any who took interest for 
money, and this was a very general rule throughout Germany. 

An exception was, indeed, sometimes made: some canonists 
held that Jews might be allowed to take interest, since they were 
to be damned in any case, and their monopoly of money-lending 
might prevent Christians from losing their souls by going into 
the business. Yet even the Jews were from time to time punished 
for the crime of usury, and, both as regards Jews and Christians, 
punishment was bestowed on the dead as well as the living ; the 
bodies of dead money-lenders being here and there dug up and 
cast out of consecrated ground. 

The popular preachers constantly declaimed against all who 
took interest. The mediaeval anecdote books for pulpit use are 
especially full on this point. Jacques de Vitry tells us that de- 
mons on one occasion filled a dead money-lender's mouth with 
red-hot coins ; Caesar, of Heisterbacho, declared that a toad was 
found thrusting a piece of money into a dead usurer's heart ; in 
another case, a devil was seen pouring molten gold down a dead 
money-lender's throat.* 

* For an enumeration of councils condemning the taking of interest for money, see 
Liegois, Essai sur I'histoire et la legislation de I'usure, Paris, 1865, p. 78 ; also the Catho- 
lic Dictionary as above. For curious additional details and sources regarding mediasval 
horror of usurers, see Ducange, Glossarium, etc., article Caorcini. The date, 306, for the 
Council of Elvira is that assigned by Hefele. For the decree of Alexander III, see citation 
from the Latin text in Lecky. For a long catalogue of ecclesiastical and civil decrees 
against taking of interest, see Petit, Traits de I'Usure, Paris, 1840. For the reasoning at 
bottom of this, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion upon Usury, London, 1884. For the 
Salzburg decrees, see Zillner, Salzburgische Culturgeschichte, p. 232 ; and for Germany 
generally, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers im Deutschland, Halle, 1865, especially 
p. 22 et seq. ; also Roscher, National Oeconomie. For effect of mistranslation of the passage 
of Luke in the Vulgate, see Bollinger, p. 170, and especially pp. 224, 225. For the capitu- 
laries of Charlemagne against usury, see Liegois, p. 77. For Peter Lombard, see his Lib. 
Sententiarum, lib. iii, dist. XXXVII, 3. For St. Thomas Aquinas, see his works, Migne, vol. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 327 

This theological hostility to the taking of interest was imbed- 
ded firmly in the canon law. Again and again it defined usury 
to be the taking of anything of value beyond the exact original 
amount of a loan ; and under sanction of the universal Church it 
denounced this as a crime and declared all persons defending it to 
be guilty of heresy. What this meant the world knows but too well. 

The whole evolution of European civilization was greatly 
hindered by this conscientious policy. Money could only be 
loaned in most countries at the risk of incurring odium in this 
world and damnation in the next ; hence there was but little capi- 
tal and few lenders. The rates of interest became at times enor- 
mous ; as high as forty per cent in England, and ten per cent a 
month in Italy and Spain. Commerce, manufactures, and general 
enterprise were dwarfed, while pauperism flourished. 

Yet worse than these were the moral results. Doing what one 
believes is evil is only second in bad consequences to doing what 
is really evil ; hence, all lending and borrowing, even for the most 
legitimate purposes and at the most reasonable rates, tended to 
debase the character of both borrower and lender. The prohibi- 
tion of interest for the use of money in continental Europe pro- 
moted luxury and discouraged economy, the rich, who were not 
engaged in business, finding no easy way of employing their sav- 
ings productively. 

One evil effect is felt in all parts of the world to this hour. 
The Jews, so strong in will and acute in intellect, were virtually 
drawn or driven out of all other industries or professions by the 
theory that their race, being accursed, was only fitted for the 
accursed profession of money-lending.* 



iii, Paris, 1889, question 78, pp. 586 et seq., citing the Scriptures and Aristotle, and espe- 
cially developing Aristotle's metaphysical idea regarding the " barrenness " of money. For 
a very good summary of St. Thomas's ideas, see Pearson, pp. 30 d aeq. For Dante, see in 
Canto XI of the Inferno a revelation of the amazing depth of the hostility to the taking of 
interest. For the London law of 1390 and the petition to the king, see Cunningham, 
Growth of English Industry and Commerce, pp. 210 and 326; also the Abridgment of the 
Records in the Tower of London, p. 339. For the theory that Jews, being damned already, 
might be allowed to practice usury, see Li^gois, Histoire de I'Usure, p. 82. For St. 
Bernard's view, see Epist. CCCLXIII, in Migne, tome clxxxii, p. 567. For ideas and 
anecdotes for preachers' use, see Joannes de San Geminiano, Summa de Exemplis, Ant- 
werp, 1629, fol. 493, a; also an edition of Venice, 1584, pp. 132 and 159; but especially 
for multitudes of examples, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T. F. 
Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp. 203 et seq. For the canon law in relation 
to usance, see a long line of authorities cited in Die Wucherfrage, St. Louis, 1869, pp. 92 
et seq., and especially Dccret. Gregor., lib. v, lit. 19, cap. iii, and Clementin, lib. v, lit. 5, sec. 2 ; 
see also the Corpus Juris Canonici, Paris, 1618, pp. 227, 228. For the position of the Eng. 
lish Church, see Gibson's Corpus Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, pp. 1070, 1071, and 1106. 

* For evil economic results, and especially for the rise of the rate of interest in Eng- 
land and elsewhere at times to forty per cent, see Cunningham, Growth of English Indus- 
try and Commerce, Cambridge, 1890, p. 189 ; and for its rising to ten per cent a month, 



328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

These evils seemed so manifest, when trade began to revive 
throughout Europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest 
exertions were put forth to induce the Church to change its 
position. 

The first important effort of this kind was made by John Ger- 
son. His general learning made him Chancellor of the Univer- 
sity of Paris ; his sacred learning made him the leading orator at 
the Council of Constance ; his piety led men to attribute to him 
The Imitation of Christ. Shaking off theological shackles, he 
declared : " Better is it to lend money at reasonable interest, and 
thus to give aid to the poor, than to see them reduced by poverty 
to steal, waste their goods, and sell at a low price their personal 
and real property." 

But this idea was at once buried beneath citations from the 
Scriptures, from the fathers, councils, popes, and the canon law. 
Even in the most active countries there seemed to be no hope. In 
England, under Henry VII, Cardinal Morton, the lord chan- 
cellor, addressed Parliament, asking it to take into consideration 
loans of money at interest. The result was a law which imposed 
on lenders at interest a fine of a hundred pounds besides the 
annulment of the loan; and, to show that there was an offense 
against religion involved, there was added a clause " reserving to 
the Church, notwithstanding this punishment, the correction of 
their souls according to the laws of the same." 

Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various 
parts of Europe ; and just when the trade, commerce, and manu- 
factures of the modern epoch had received an immense impulse 
from the great series of voyages of discovery by such men as 
Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and the Cabots, this bar- 
rier against enterprise was strengthened by a decree from no less 
enlightened a pontiff than Leo X. 

The popular feeling warranted such decrees. As late as the 
end of the middle ages, we find the people of Piacenza dragging 
the body of a money-lender out of his grave in consecrated 
ground and throwing it into the Po, in order to stop a prolonged 
rain-storm ; and outbreaks of the same spirit are frequent in other 
countries.* 

see Bedarride, Les Juifs en France, en Italia et en Espagne, p. 220. See also Hallam's 
Middle Ages, London, 1853, pp. 401, 402. For the evil moral effects of the Church doc- 
trine against taking interest, see Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, lib. xxi, chap. xx. See 
also Sismondi, cited in Lecky. For the trifling with conscience, distinction between "con- 
sumptibles " and " fungibles," " possessio " and " dominium," etc., see Ashley, English 
Economic History, New York, 1888, pp. 152, 163. For effects of these doctrines on the 
Jews, see Milman, History of the Jews, vol. iii, p. 179 ; also Wcllbausen, History of Israel, 
London, 1885, p. 546; also Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris, 1824, B, p. 114 (on 
driving Jews out of other industries than money-lending). 

* For Gerson's argument favoring a reasonable rate of interest, see Coquelin and Guil- 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 329 

Another mode of obtaining relief was tried. Subtle theolo- 
gians devised evasions of various sorts. Two among these in- 
ventions of the schoolmen obtained much notoriety. 

The first was the doctrine of " damnum emergens " : if a man, 
in order to loan money, was obliged to withdraw it from profit- 
able business, and so suffer loss, it was claimed that he might 
demand of the borrower compensation for such loss. Equally 
cogent was the doctrine of " lucrum, cessans '' : if a man, in order 
to loan money, was obliged to diminish his income from pro- 
ductive enterprises, it was claimed that he might receive in return, 
in addition to his money, an amount exactly equal to this diminu- 
tion in his income. 

But such evasions were looked upon with little favor by the 
great body of theologians, and the name of St. Thomas Aquinas 
was cited against them. 

Opposition on scriptural grounds to the taking of interest was 
not confined to the older Church. Protestantism was led by 
Luther and several of his associates into the same line of thought 
and practice. Said Luther : " To exchange anything with any one 
and gain by the exchange is not to do a charity, but to steal. 
Every usurer is a thief worthy of the gibbet. I call those usurers 
who lend money at five or six per cent." But it is only just to 
say that at a later period Luther took a much more moderate 
view. Melanchthon, defining usury as any interest whatever, con- 
demned it again and again ; and the Goldberg Catechism of 1558, 
for which he wrote a preface and recommendation, declares every 
person taking interest for money a thief ; from generation to gen- 
eration this doctrine was upheld by the more eminent divines 
of the Lutheran Church in all parts of Germany. 

The English reformers showed the same hostility to interest- 
bearing loans. Under Henry VIII the law of Henry VII against 
taking interest had been modified for the better ; but the revival 
of religious feeling under Edward VI caused in 1553 the passage 

laumin, Dictionnaire, article Int^rSt. For the renewed opposition to the taking of inter- 
est in England, see Craik, History of British Commerce, chap. vi. The statute cited fs 
3 Henry VII, chap. vi. It is found in Gibson's Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic, p. 1071. For 
the adverse decree of Leo X, see Li6gois, p. V6. See also Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii. 
For the di-agging out of the usurer's body at Piacenza, see Burckhardt, The Renaissance in 
Italy, London, 1878, vol. ii, p. 339. For public opinion of similar strength on this subject 
in England, see Cunningham, p. 239 ; also Pike, History of Crime in England, vol. i, pp. 
127, 193. For good general observations on the same, see Stephen, History of Criminal 
Law in England, London, 1883, vol. iii, pp. 195-197. For usury laws in Castile and Ara- 
gon, see Bedarride, pp. 191, 192. For exceedingly valuable details as to the attitude of 
the mediaeval Church, see Leopold Delisle, Etudes sur la Classe Agricole en Normaudie au 
Moyen Age, Evreux, 1851, pp. 200 et seq., also p. 468. For penalties in France, see 
Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, in Master of the Rolls series, especially vol. iii, pp. 
191, 192. 



330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

of the " Bill of Usury/' In this it is said, " Forasmuch as usury 
is by the word of God utterly prohibited, as a vice most odious 
and detestable, as in divers places of the Holy Scriptures it is 
evident to be seen, which thing by no godly teachings and per- 
suasions can sink into the hearts of divers greedy, uncharitable, 
and covetous persons of this realm, nor yet, by any terrible threat- 
enings of God's wrath and vengeance," etc., it is enacted that 
whosoever shall thereafter lend money " for any manner of usury, 
increase, lucre, gain, or interest, to be had, received, or hoped 
for," shall forfeit principal and interest, and suffer imprisonment 
and fine at the king's pleasure.* 

But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin, though at times 
stumbling over the usual texts against the usance of money, turned 
finally in the right direction. He cut through the metaphysical 
arguments of Aristotle, and characterized the mass of subtleties 
devised to evade the Scriptures as " a childish game with God." 
In place of these subtleties, there was developed among Protestants 
a serviceable fiction — the statement that usury means illegal or op- 
pressive interest. Under the action of this fiction, commerce and 
trade revived rapidly in Protestant countries, though with occa- 
sional checks from exact interpreters of Scripture. At the same 
period in France, the great Protestant jurist, Dumoulin, brought 
all his legal learning and skill in casuistry to bear on the same 
side. A certain ferret-like acuteness and litheness seem to have 
enabled him to hunt down the opponents of usance through the 
most tortuous arguments of scholasticism. 

In England the struggle went on with varying fortune ; 
statesmen on one side, and theologians on the other. We have 
seen how under Henry VIII interest was allowed at a fixed rate, 
and how the development of English Protestantism having at 
first strengthened the old theological view, there was, under 
Edward VI, a temporarily successful attempt to forbid usance by 
law. The Puritans, dwelling on Old Testament texts, continued 
for a considerable time especially hostile to the taking of any 
interest. Henry Smith, a noted preacher, thundered from the 
pulpit of St. Clement Danes in London against " the evasions of 
Scripture " which permitted men to loan money on interest at all. 
In answer to the contention that only "biting " usury was oppress- 

* For Luther's views see his sermon, Von dem "Wucher, Wittenberg, 1519, also the 
Tischreden, cited in Coquelin and Guillaumin, article Inteiet. For the later more mod- 
erate views of Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, making a compromise with the needs of 
society, see Bohm-Bawerk, p. 2Y, citing Wiskercann. For Melanchthon and a long line of 
the most eminent Lutheran divines who have denounced the taking of interest, see Die 
Wucherfrage, St. Louis, 1869, pp. 94 et seq. For the law against usury under Edward VI, 
see Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. i, p. 596 ; see also Craik, History of British 
Commerce, chap. vi. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 331 

ive, Wilson, a noted upholder of the strict theological view in 
political economy, declared : " There is difference in deed between 
the bite of a dogge and the bite of a flea, and yet, though the flea 
doth lesse harm, yet the flea doth bite after hir kinde, yea, and 
draweth blood, too. But what a world this is, that men will 
make sin to be but a flea-bite, when they see God's word directly 
against them/' 

The same view found strong upholders among contemporary 
English Catholics. One of the most eminent of these, Nicholas 
Sanders, revived very vigorously the use of an old scholastic 
argument. He insisted that " man can not sell time," that time 
is not a human possession, but something which is given by God 
alone : he declared, " Time was not of your gift to your neighbor, 
but of God's gift to you both." 

In the Parliament of the period, we find strong assertions of 
the old idea, with constant reference to Scripture and the fathers. 
In one debate, Wilson cited from Ezekiel and other prophets and 
attributed to St Augustine the doctrine that " to take but a cup 
of wine is usury and damnable." Fleetwood recalled the law 
of King Edward the Confessor, which submitted usurers to the 
ordeal. 

But arguments of this sort had little influence upon Elizabeth 
and her statesmen. They re-established the practice of the taking 
of interest under restrictions, and this, in various forms, has 
remained in England ever since Most notable in this phase of 
the evolution of scientific doctrine in political economy at that 
period is the emergence from the political chaos of a recognized 
difference between usury and interest. Between these two words, 
which had so long been synonymous, a distinction now appears : 
the former being construed to indicate oppressive interest, and 
the latter just rates for the use of money. This idea gradually 
sank into the popular mind of Protestant countries, and the 
scriptural texts no longer presented any difiiculty to the people 
at large, since there grew up a general belief that the word 
" usury," as used in Scripture, had always meant exorbitant in- 
terest. Still, that the old Aristotelian quibble had not been 
entirely forgotten, is clearly seen by various passages in Shake- 
speare's Merchant of Venice. But this line of reasoning seems to 
have received its quietus from Lord Bacon. He did not indeed 
develop a strong and connected argument on the subject, but he 
burst the bonds of Aristotle, and based usance for money upon 
natural laws. How powerful the new current of thought was, is 
seen from the fact that James I, of all monarchs the most fettered 
by scholasticism and theology, sanctioned a statute dealing with 
interest for money as absolutely necessary. Yet, even after this, 
the old idea asserted itself, for the bishops utterly refused to agree 



332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

to the law allowing interest until a proviso was inserted that 
" nothing in this law contained shall be construed or expounded 
to allow the practice of usury in point of religion or conscience." 
The old view cropped out from time to time in various public 
declarations. Among these was the book of John Blaxton, an 
English clergyman, who in 1634 published his Usury Condemned. 
In this, he defines usury as the taking of any interest whatever 
for money, citing in support of this view six archbishops and 
bishops and over thirty doctors of divinity in the Anglican 
Church — some of their utterances being very violent and all of 
them running their roots down into texts of Scripture. Typi- 
cal among these is a sermon of Bishop Sands, in which he 
declares, regarding the habit of taking interest: "This canker 
that hath corrupted all England; we shall doe God and our 
country true service by taking away this evill ; represse it by 
law, else the heavy hand of God hangeth over us and will 
strike us." 

But departures from the strict scriptural doctrines regarding 
interest soon became frequent in Protestant countries. They 
appear to have been first followed up with vigor in Holland. 
Various theologians in the Dutch Church attempted to assert the 
scriptural view by excluding bankers from the holy communion, 
but the commercial vigor of the republic was too strong: Sal- 
masius led on the forces of right reasoning brilliantly and by 
the middle of the seventeenth century the question was settled 
rightly in that country. This work was 'aided, indeed, by a far 
greater man — Hugo Grotius ; but here was shown the power of 
an established dogma. Great as Grotius was— and though it may 
well be held that his book on War and Peace has wrought more 
benefit to humanity than any other attributed to human author- 
ship — he was, in the matter of usance for money, too much en- 
tangled in theological reasoning to do justice to his cause or to 
himself. He declared the prohibition of interest to be scriptural, 
but resisted the doctrine of Aristotle, and allowed usance on cer- 
tain natural and practical grounds. 

In Germany the struggle lasted longer. Of some little sig- 
nificance, perhaps, is the demand of Adam Contzen, in 1629, that 
lenders at interest should be punished as thieves ; but by the end 
of the seventeenth century Puffendorf and Leibnitz had gained 
the victory. 

Protestantism, open as it was to the currents of modern thought, 
could not long continue under the dominion of ideas unfavorable 
to economic development, and perhaps the most remarkable ex- 
ample of this was presented early in the eighteenth century by no 
less strict a theologian than Cotton Mather. In his Magnalia he 
argues against the whole theological view with a boldness, acute- 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 333 

ness, and good sense wliicb. cause us to wonder that tliis can be 
the same man who was so infatuated regarding witchcraft. After 
an argument so conclusive as his, there could have been little left 
of the old anti-economic doctrine in New England.* 

But while the retreat in the Protestant Church was hence- 
forth easy, in the Catholic Church it was far more difficult. In- 
fallible popes and councils, saints, fathers, and doctors, had so 
constantly declared the taking of any interest at all to be con- 
trary to Scripture, that the more exact though less fortunate in- 
terpretation of the sacred text relating to interest continued in 
Catholic countries. When it was attempted in France in the 
seventeenth century to argue that usury " means oppressive in- 
terest," the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne declared that 
usury is the taking of any interest at all, no matter how little, 
and the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to clinch this 
argument. 

Another attempt to ease the burden of industry and commerce 
was made by declaring that " usury means interest demanded not 
as a matter of favor, but as a matter of right." This, too, was 
solemnly condemned by Pope Innocent XI. 

Again, an attempt was made to find a way out of the difficulty 
by declaring that " usury is interest greater than the law allows." 
This, too, was condemned, and so also was the declaration that 
" usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time." 

Still, the forces of right reason pressed on, and, among them, 
in the seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon. He 
attempted to gloss over the declarations of Scripture against 
usance in an elaborate treatise, but was immediately confronted 
by Bossuet, the greatest of French bishops, one of the keenest 
and strongest of thinkers. Just as Bossuet had mingled Script- 

* For Calvin's views, see his letter published in the appendix to Pearson's Theories on 
Usury. His position is well stated in Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 28 et seq., where citations are 
given. See also Economic Tracts, No. IV, New York, 1881, pp. 34, 35; and for some 
serviceable Protestant fictions, see Cunningham, Christian Opinion on Usury, pp. 60, 61. 
For Dumoulin (Molinaeus), see Bohm-Bawerk, as above, pp. 29 et seq. For debates on 
usury in British Parliament in Elizabeth's time, see Cobbett, Parliamentary History, vol. 
i, pp. 756 et seq. The passage in Shakespeare is in the Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 
III : " If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not as to thy friend ; for when did friendship 
take a breed for barren metal from his friend ? " For the right direction taken by Lord 
Bacon, see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865, pp. 497, 498. 
For Grotius, see the De Jure Belli ac Pacis, lib. ii, cap. xii ; and for Salmasius and others 
mentioned, see Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 34 et seq., also Lecky, vol. ii, p. 256. For the saving clause 
inserted by the bishops in the statute of James I, see the Corpus Juris Eccles. Anglic, 
p. 1071 ; also Murray, History of Usury, Philadelphia, 1866, p. 49. For Blaxton, see his 
English Usurer ; or. Usury Condemned, by John Blaxton, Preacher of God's Word, Lon- 
don, 1634. Blaxton gives some of Calvin's earlier utterances against interest. For Bishop 
Sauds's sermon, see p. 11. For Cotton Mather's argument, see the Magnalia, London, 1702, 
pp. 51, 52. 



334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

ure witli astronomy and opposed the Copernican theory, so now 
he mingled Scripture with political economy and denounced the 
lending of money at interest. He called attention to the fact that 
the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the beginning, 
the popes, the fathers, had all interpreted the prohibition of 
" usury " to be a prohibition of any lending at interest ; and he 
demonstrated this interpretation to be the true one. Simon was 
put to confusion and his book condemned. 

There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. 
There stood the fact that the prohibition of one of the most sim- 
ple and beneficial principles in political and economical science 
was aifirmed, not only by the fathers, but by twenty-eight coun- 
cils of the Church, six of them general councils, and by seven- 
teen popes, to say nothing of innumerable doctors in theology 
and canon law. And these prohibitions by the Church had been 
accepted as of divine origin by all obedient sons of the Church 
in the Government of France. Such rulers as Charles the Bald 
in the ninth century, and St. Louis in the thirteenth, had riveted 
this idea into the civil law so firmly that it seemed impossible 
ever to detach it.* 

As might well be expected, Italy was one of the countries in 
which the theological theory regarding usance was most gen- 
erally asserted and assented to. Among the great number of 
Italian canonists who supported the theory, two deserve especial 
mention, as affording a contrast to the practical manner in which 
the commercial Italians met the question. 

In the sixteenth century, very famous among canonists was 
the learned Benedictine, Vilagut. In 1589 he published at Venice 
his great work on usury, supporting with much learning and 
vigor the most extreme theological consequences of the old doc- 
trine. He defines usury as the taking of anything beyond the 
original loan, and declares it mortal sin ; he advocates the denial 
to usurers of Christian burial, confession, the sacraments, abso- 
lution, and connection with the universities; he declares that 
priests receiving offerings from usurers should refrain from ex- 
ercising their ministry until the matter is passed upon by the 
bishop. 

About the middle of the seventeenth century another ponder- 

* For the declaration of the Sorbonne in the seventeenth century against any taking of 
interest, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii, p. 248, note. For the special condemnation by In. 
Decent XI, see Damnatae Theses, Pavia, 1*715, pp. 112-114. For consideration of various 
ways of escaping the difficulty regarding interest, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii, pp. 249, 
250. For Bossuet's strong declaration against taking interest, see (Euvres de Bossuet, 
edition of 1845, vol. xi, p. 330, and edition of 1846, vol. ix, p. 49 et seq. For the number 
of councils and popes who condemned usury, see Lecky, Rationalism, vol. ii, p. 255, note, 
citing Concina. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 335 

ous folio was published in Venice upon the same subject and 
with the same title, by Onorato Leotardo. So far from showing 
any signs of yielding, he is even more extreme than Vilagut had 
been, and quotes with approval the old declaration that lenders 
of money at interest are not only robbers but murderers. 

So far as we can learn, no real opposition was made in either 
century to this theory, as a theory ; as to 'practice, it was different. 
The Italian bankers and traders did not answer the theological 
argument ; they simply overrode it. Nowhere was commerce car- 
ried on in more complete defiance of this and other theological 
theories hampering trade than in the very city where these great 
treatises were published. The sin of usury, like the sin of com- 
merce with the Mohammedans, seems to have been settled for by 
the Venetian merchants on their death-beds, and greatly to the 
advantage of the magnificent churches and ecclesiastical adorn- 
ments of the city. 

But in the eighteenth century there came a change. The first 
effective onset of political scientists against the theological oppo- 
sition in southern Europe was made in Italy ; the most noted 
leaders in the attack being Galiani and Maffei. 

Here and there feeble efforts were made to meet them, but it 
was felt more and more by thinking churchmen that entirely 
different tactics must be adopted. 

About the same time came an attack in France, and, though 
its results were less immediate at home, they were much more 
effective abroad. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's Spirit of the 
Laws. In this famous book were concentrated twenty years of 
study and thought by a great thinker on the interests of the 
world about him. In eighteen months it went through twenty- 
two editions ; it was translated into every civilized language ; 
and among the things on which Montesquieu brought his wit and 
wisdom to bear with especial force was the doctrine of the Church 
regarding interest on loans. In doing this he was obliged to use 
a caution in forms which seems strangely at variance with the 
boldness of his ideas. In view of the strictness of ecclesiastical 
control in France, he felt it safest to make his whole attack upon 
those theological and economic follies of Mohammedan countries 
which were similar to those which the theological spirit had 
fastened on France.* 

By the middle of the eighteenth century the Church authori- 
ties at Rome clearly saw the necessity of a concession : the world 
would endure theological restriction no longer ; a way of escape 

* For Vilagut, see his Tractatus de Usuris, Venice, 1589, especially pp. 21, 25, and 399. 
For Leotardus, see his De Usuris, Venice, 1655, especially preface, pp. 6, 1 el seq. For 
the eighteenth century attack in Italy, see Bohm-Bawerk, pp. 48 et seq. For Montesquieu's 
view of interest on loans, see the Esprit des Lois. 



336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

must be found. It was seen even by the most devoted theologians 
that mere denunciations and use of theological arguments or 
scriptural texts against the scientific idea were futile. 

To this feeling it was due that, even in the first years of the 
century, the Jesuit casuists had come to the rescue. With ex- 
quisite subtlety some of their acutest intellects devoted them- 
seves to explaining away the utterances on this subject of 
saints, fathers, doctors, popes, and councils. These explanations 
were wonderfully ingenious, but many of the older churchmen 
continued to insist upon the orthodox view, and at last the Pope 
himself intervened. Fortunately for the world, the seat of St. 
Peter was then occupied by Benedict XIV, certainly one of the 
most gifted, morally and intellectually, in the whole line of Ro- 
man pontiffs : tolerant and sympathetic for the oppressed, he saw 
the necessity of taking up the question, and he grappled with it 
effectually. While severe against exorbitant usury, he rendered 
to Catholicism a service like that which Calvin had rendered to 
Protestantism, by quietly but vigorously cutting a way through 
the theological barrier. In 1745 he issued his encyclical, Vix 
pervenit, which declared that the doctrine of the Church re- 
mained consistent with itself ; that usury is indeed a sin, and 
that it consists in demanding any amount heyond the exact amount 
lent, but that there are occasions when on special grounds the 
lender may obtain such additional sum. 

What these " occasions " and " special grounds " might be, was 
left very vague ; but this action was sufficient. 

At the same time no new restrictions upon books advocating 
the taking of interest for money were imposed, and the Pope 
openly accepted the dedication of one of them. 

Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory 
for " convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its condem- 
nation by the Church authorities, this encyclical of Pope Benedict 
broke the spell. Turgot, Quesnay, Adam Smith, Hume, Bentham, 
and their disciples pressed on, and science won for mankind an- 
other great victory.* 

* For Quesnay, see his Observations sur I'lnt^rfit de I'Argent, in his OEuvres, Frankfort 
and Paris, 1888, pp. 399 ef .teq. For Turgot, see the Collection des ficonomistes, Paris^ 
1844, vols, iii and iv; also, Blanqui, Histoire de I'^conomie Politique, English translation, 
p. 373. For an excellent though brief summary of the efforts of the Jesuits to explain away 
the old action of the Church, see Lecky, vol. ii, pp. 256, 257. For the action of Benedict 
XrV, see Reusch, Der Index der Verbotener Biicher, Bonn, 1885, vol. ii, pp. 847, 848. For 
a comical picture of the " quagmire " into which the hierarchy brought itself in the squar- 
ing of its practice with its theory, see Dollinger as above, pp. 227, 228. For cunningly 
vague statements of the action of Benedict XIV, see Mastrofini, Sur I'Usure, French 
translation, Lyons, 1834, pp. 125 and 255. The abb6, as will be seen, has not the slightest 
hesitation in telling an untruth, in order to preserve the consistency of papal action m the 
matter of usury ; e. g., pp. 93, 94, 96, and elsewhere. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 337 

Yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway 
of scientific truth appeared among some overzealous religionists. 
When the Sorhonne, having retreated from its old position, armed 
itself with new casuistries against those who held to its earlier 
decisions, sundry provincial doctors in theology protested indig- 
nantly^ making the old citations from the Scriptures, fathers, 
saints, doctors, popes, councils, and canonists. Again the Roman 
court intervened. In 1830 the Inquisition at Rome, with the 
approval of Pius VIII, though still declining to commit itself 
on the doctrine involved, decreed that, as to practice, confessors 
should no longer disturb lenders of money at legal interest. 

But even this did not quiet the more conscientious theologians. 
The old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the Abb^ 
Laborde, Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by 
the Abbd Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbd 
Dennavit declared that he refused absolution to those who took 
interest and to priests who pretend that the sanction of the civil 
law is sufficient. 

But the " wisdom of the serpent " was again brought into requi- 
sition, and early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the Abbate 
Mastrofini issued a work on usury, which, he declared on its title- 
page, demonstrated that " moderate usury is not contrary to Holy 
Scripture, or natural law, or the decisions of the Church." Noth- 
ing can be more comical than the suppressions of truth, evasions 
of facts, jugglery with phrases, and perversions of history, to 
which the good abbate is forced to resort throughout his book in 
order to prove that the Church has made no mistake. In the face 
of scores of explicit deliverances and decrees of fathers, doctors, 
popes, and councils, against the taking of any interest whatever 
for money, he coolly pretended that what they had declared 
against was exorbitant interest. He made a merit of the action 
of the Church, and showed that its course had been a blessing to 
humanity. But his masterpiece is in dealing with the edicts of 
Clement V and Benedict XIV. As to the first, it will be remem- 
bered that Clement, in accord with the Council of Vienne, had 
declared that " any one who shall pertinaciously presume to affirm 
that the taking of interest for money is not a sin, we decree him 
to be a heretic^ fit for punishment," and we have seen that Bene- 
dict XIV did not at all deviate from the doctrines of his prede- 
cessors. Yet Mastrofini is equal to his task, and brings out, as 
the conclusion of his book, the statement put upon his title-page 
that what the Church condemns is only exorbitant interest. 

This work was sanctioned by various high ecclesiastical digni- 
taries, and served its purpose, for it covered the retreat of the 
Church. 

In 1873 appeared a book published under authority from the 



338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 

Holy See, allowing the faithful to take moderate interest under 
condition that any future decisions of the Pope should he im- 
plicitly obeyed. Social science as applied to political economy 
had gained a victory final and complete. The Torlonia family 
at Rome to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affilia- 
tions, and papal favor — all won by lending money at interest 
and by devotion to the Roman See — is but one out of many 
growths of its kind on ramparts long since surrendered and 
deserted.* 

The dealings of theology with public economy were by no 
means confined to the taking of interest for money. It would be 
interesting to note the restrictions placed upon commerce by 
the Church prohibition of commercial intercourse with infidels, 
against which the Republic of Venice fought a good fight ; to note 
how, by a most curious perversion of Scripture in the Greek 
Church, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented from 
raising and eating potatoes ; how, in Scotland, at the beginning 
of this century, the use of fanning-mills for winnowing grain was 
widely denounced as contrary to the text, " The wind bloweth 
where it listeth,'' etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is " prince of 
the powers of the air," and therefore as sufficient cause for ex- 
communication from the Scotch Church. Instructive it would 
be also to note how the introduction of railways was declared by 
an archbishop of the French Church to be an evidence of the 
divine displeasure against country innkeepers who set meat before 
their guests on fast-days, and who were now punished by seeing 
travelers carried by their doors; how railways and telegraphs 
were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of Anti- 
christ ; and how in Protestant England the curate of Rotherhithe, 
at the breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life 
and property, declared it from his pulpit a just judgment upon 
the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man. 

The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious 
men to the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, 

* For the decree forbidding confessors to trouble lenders of money at legal interest, see 
Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, as above ; also Mastrofini, as above, in the appen- 
dix, where various other recent Roman decrees are given. As to the controversy generally, 
see Mastrofini ; also La Replique des douze Docteurs, cited by Guillaumin and Coquelin ; 
also Reusch, vol. ii, p. 850. As an example of Mastrofini's way of making black appear 
white, compare the Latin text of the decree on p. 97 with his statements regarding it ; see 
also his cunning substitution of the new significance of the word usury for the old in vari- 
ous parts of his work. A good historical presentation of the general subject will be found 
in Roscher, Geschichte dcr National-Oeconomie in Deutschland, Miinchen, 18'74, under arti- 
cles Wuchcr and Zinsnehmen. For France, see especially Petit, Traite de I'TTsure, Paris, 
1840 ; and for Germany see Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland, Halle, 1865. 
For the view of a modern leader of thought in this field, see Jeremy Bentham, Defense of 
Usury, Letter X. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 339 

on account of the terms in wliicli the nnnibering of Israel is 
spoken of in the Ohl Testament. Religious scruples on similar 
grounds have also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as 
life insurance. 

Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they in- 
dicate a wide-spread tendency in the application of scriptural 
declarations to matters of social economy which has not yet ceased, 
though it is fast fading away.* 

Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the 
better modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of 
the poor; the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to 
be helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of 
indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most 
beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm atmos- 
phere of mediaeval devotion into great systems for the pauperiz- 
ing of the laboring classes. Here, too, scientific modes of thought 
in social science have given a new and nobler fruitage to the 
whole growth of Christian benevolence, f 



Prof. Riley's paper in the American Association, on the Use of Micro-organ- 
isms as Insecticides, has a tone of warning. While much may be anticipated 
from the new form of application, it is important to avoid exaggerated statements. 
There is a tendency in the public mind to take as proved what has not yet passed 
beyond the stage of possibility. In theory, the idea of doing battle against inju- 
rious insects by means of invisible germs is very tempting; but it has unfor- 
tunately been most dwelt upon by those who were essentially closet workers, and 
had but a faint realization of the practical necessities of the case. 

* For various interdicts laid on comraerce by the Church, see Heyd, Histoirc du Com- 
merce du Levant au Moyen-Age, Leipsic, 1886, vol. ii,^asMm. For the injurv done to 
commerce by prohibition of intercourse with the infidel, see Lindsav Historv of Merchant 
Shipping, London, 1874, vol. ii. For superstitions regarding the iptroduction of the potato, 
and the name "devil's root" given it, see Hellwald, Culturgeschrchte, vol. ii, p. 4*76; also 
Haxthausen, La Russie. For opposition to winnowing machines, see Burton, History of 
Scotland, vol. viii, p. 511 ; also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause Head- 
rigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii. For the case of a person debarred from 
the communion for "raising the devil's wind" with a winnowing machine, see Works of 
Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. Those doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be 
reminded that he was to the day of his death one of the strictest adherents to Scotch ortho- 
doxy. As to the curate of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir L Brunei for May 20, 1827, in 
Life of L K. Brunei, p. -SO. As to the conclusions drawn from the numbering of Israel, see 
Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws of :\Ioses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3. The author of this 
work himself witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer the questions 
of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse, N. Y. ; and this reluctance was based 
upon the reasons assigned in 2 Samuel, xxiv, 1, and 1 Chronicles, xxi, 1, for the numbering 
of the children of IsraeL 

f Among the vast number of authorities regarding the evolution of better methods in 
dealing with pauperism, I would call attention to a recent work which is especially suggest- 
ive — Behrends, Christianity and Socialism, New York, 1886. 



34° 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



REMARKABLE BOWLDERS. 

By DAVID A. WELLS. 

THE calling of attention, in The Popular Science Monthly for 
June, 1890, to the evidences of glacial action in southeastern 
Connecticut afforded by the number and great size of the bowl- 
ders in that section of the country, with accompanying illustra- 
tions from photographs, has been instrumental in creating no 
little popular interest on the subject, and in bringing to the atten- 
tion of the public many other interesting examples of like glacial 
phenomena that have hitherto almost escaped notice. 

Accepting reported measurements, the largest erratic block, or 
bowlder, as yet recognized in the United States, and probably in 
the world, is in the town of Madison, N. H., and, according to 
Prof. Crosby, of the Boston Institute of Technology, has the fol- 
lowing maximum dimensions : Length, 83 feet ; width, in excess 
of 45 feet ; height, 30 to 37 feet ; contents, 90,000 cubic feet ; and 
probable weight, 15,300,000 pounds, or 7,050 tons. 




Fig. L 

Next to this in size is undoubtedly the great rock in the town 
of Montville, New London County, Connecticut, generally known 
by its Indian designation as " Sheegan," and also as " Mohegan " 
(Fig. 1). In the opinion of some, this rock is an isolated granite 
protuberance, and not a true " erratic " or bowlder ; but recent ex- 
aminations have seemed to completely negative the first supposi- 
tion. Its approximate maximum dimensions are : Length, 75 feet ; 
width, 58 feet ; height, 60 feet ; contents, 70,000 cubic feet ; weight. 



REMARKABLE BOWLDERS, 341 

6,000 tons. If allowance be made for an immense fragment which 
has fallen from its northeast side, the dimensions and cubic con- 
tents of " Sheegan " would approximate more closely to those of the 
Madison bowlder. One point that goes far toward substantiating 
the claim on behalf of the " Sheegan "' rock that it is a true bowl- 
der, is the number of undoubted bowlders of an immense size and 
of the same granite which exist in comparative proximity. One, 
about a mile northwesterly, measures 21 feet high, 25 feet long, 
and 25 feet thick. Another, some three miles southeasterly, and 
but a short distance west of the Waterford station, on the New 
London and Northern Railroad (Fig. 2), and whose existence has 




Fig. 2. 

heretofore been only locally recognized, has almost the same 
dimensions ; with the added peculiarity of a cavity, or rather tun- 
nel, at its base, some five feet or more at the entrance, and extend- 
ing with diminishing dimensions completely through the whole 
mass of the rock, which is about 25 feet in thickness. This cav- 
ity, which is somewhat imperfectly shown in the accompanying 
picture, is of such capacity that it has been fitted up with a cook- 
ing-stove, and has served a tramp family as a summer residence. 

But one of the most curious and instructive examples of the dis- 
ruptive and motor power of moving ice during the Glacial period 
to which attention has ever been called, occurs on the line of the 
New London and New Haven or " Shore Line " Railroad, about 
midway between Guilford and Leet's Island stations, and about a 
mile and a half from either place. Here, on the top of a narrow 
ledge of rock, which might almost be characterized as a pinnacle, 
rising (nearly perpendicularly from a salt marsh, or swamp, on 
one side) to a height of about GO feet, rests a rectangular, sar- 

VOL. XL. — 26 



342 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



cophagus - looking block, 10 feet long, tapering from 7 feet 10 
inclies in width at one end to 5 feet 10 inches at the other, with 
an average thickness of 5 feet, and an approximative weight of 
about (>0 tons (see Fig. 3). 

The peculiarities of this block, which invest it with unusual 




^..^.Vl 



Fig. 3. 



interest, are : First, its apparent artificiality ; second, the surface 
on which it rests is so narrow, smooth, and rounded, that, were it 
not for the blocking of a flat slab of rock (shown in Fig. 4), ap- 
parently artificially inserted underneath in exactly the proper 




Fig. 4. 



REMARKABLE BOWLDERS. 



343 




344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

place, the block when released— i. e., by the melting of the ice— 
from the power that transported and placed it must have slid 
down and found a resting-place at the bottom of what is now a 
contiguous salt marsh; and, third, the circumstance that all the 
edges and angles of the block are as sharp and free from abrasion 
—which last is also true of its entire surface— as if it were but 
recently lifted from its original bed by the most modern and care- 
ful system of quarrying. It could not obviously, therefore, in its 
process of transportation have been rolled or tumbled about to any 
great extent ; which conclusion in turn suggests that its move- 
ment after the first displacement was a lifting up to its present 
elevation, and that it was not subsequently transported to any 
great distance laterally. The extension of the ledge on which 
this great block rests having been largely broken up and removed 
through its use as a quarry, what might have been evidence 
confirmatory of this effect is now no longer obtainable. That it 
would have been perfectly practicable, with the requisite labor 
and machinery and large expenditure, to have quarried this block, 
and then have lifted it up and blocked it in its present position' 
is not to be denied ; but the idea that any such thing has been 
done, and for no practical purpose, is perfectly untenable. The 
surroimding country is very thinly populated, and the rock was 
in position long before any quarry (for the obtaining of rough 
stone for railroad construction) was worked in any immediate 
vicinity. 

To travelers on the New London and New Haven Railroad this 
testimonial of the forces operative in a former geological age, by 
reason of its close proximity to the track, is clearly discernible on 
the right-hand side going west and the left-hand going east, and 
constitutes a most striking and picturesque object. Its obvious 
novelty, which has thus far undoubtedly saved it from destruc- 
tion or displacement at the hands of workmen and vandals, may, 
it is to be hoped, continue to constitute its protection in the 
future, although as an object of attraction and interest to tourists 
and scientific men it is eminently worthy of care by the managers 
of the railroad company. 

Figs. 5 and 6 are photographic reproductions of a huge bowl- 
der, curiously disrupted on the land of Mr. Edward Atkinson, at 
Mattapoisett, on Buzzard's Bay, Mass., and having the following 
dimensions : Maximum height, 42 feet ; measurement through 
the middle of the passage between the two fragments, from one 
side to the other in a straight line, 36 feet ; average width of the 
crack between the two fragments at the level of the ground, 3i 
feet ; present surface area of the detached fragment, which has 
in part been quarried away, 462 feet. 

To the trained geologist, the foregoing and all similar accounts 



REMARKABLE BOWLDERS. 



345 




Fig. 6. 



346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

and representations of bowlders possess but little interest other 
than what pertains to peculiarities of size, shape, and location ; 
while the agencies mainly concerned in the formation, movement, 
and distribution of the bowlder, as well as of the ordinary pebble, 
which is a miniature bowlder, have long ceased to be matters of 
controversy. With those not versed, however, in geological evi- 
dence and reasoning, the case is far different. To most of such, 
the attributing of the phenomena under consideration to the 
motor power of ice seems so fanciful and unnatural that the 
agency of the Indian (as has come within the experience of the 
writer) has appeared more reasonable. But if any one thus doubt- 
ing will but acquaint himself with the present condition of 
Greenland, where we have a continental area covered with a sheet 
of ice of immense thickness — a mile or more, doubtless, in many 
places — continually accumulating through almost constant at- 
mospheric precipitations, and moving, through the weight and 
pressure of such increments of snow and ice, with almost irresisti- 
ble force from the center of such continent to its sea or coast line, 
and then in imagination transfer and reproduce such conditions 
(which are undoubted actualities) over the whole of the northern 
United States and Canada, he will be abundantly satisfied that 
the most striking of bowlder phenomena constitute but a very 
small measure of the forces that were concerned in their produc- 
tion and were concurrently exerted to modify the earth's surface 
— even to the extent of removing mountains. 

It will also widen the sphere of interest in this subject to refer 
to the humbler but at the same time most instructive memorials 
of the Glacial period, which are, as it were, associated with the 
bowlders, and help to conceal the barrenness and desolation of 
the " drift " ; namely, the pretty flowering plants like the " dan- 
delion" and the "trailing arbutus," and others, which are be- 
lieved to have come down in the Glacial period from their natu- 
ral habitat in the far north to our present temperate zone, and 
to have remained, after the disappearance of the ice, with the 
bowlders as if to keep them company. Recent explorers of 
Greenland tell us that wherever in little sheltered nooks upon 
its dreary coast the ice and frost relax sufficiently in the brief 
summer to admit of any vegetation, these j^lants grow and flower 
most luxuriantly, while in their foreign homes they seem, as 
every one knows, to choose those times and temperatures for 
blooming and fruition — i. e., in the early spring — which are most 
in accordance with the conditions of their origin and primal ex- 
istence ; thus apparently reasserting their ferae, naturae, as did 
the old vikings when associated with the more delicate types of 
southern latitudes. 



TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 347 



TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 

AFTER THE EESEARCHES OF DR. BARTELS, PROF. ECKEE, DR. MOHNIKE, 
DR. OENSTEIN, AND OTHERS. 

TRADITIONS of tailed men are very old and wide-spread. 
Tailed races are told of in many countries, whose home is, 
however, usually placed in some little-known region ; and the 
stories of individuals who had tails can hardly be counted. A 
number of legends on the subject have been collected by Mr. S. 
Baring-Gould, and jmblished in his Curious Myths of the Middle 
Ages. This author himself was brought up in the belief that all 
Cornishmen had tails, and was not undeceived till a good Cornish 
bookseller, with whom he formed a warm friendship, assured 
him that this was not the case ; after which he satisfied himself 
that the man had sat his tail off ; and his nurse informed him 
that that was what happened to men of sedentary habits. 

Certain men of Kent were said to have had tails inflicted upon 
them in punishment for their insults to St. Thomas a Becket. 
The story runs that Avhen the saint came to Stroud on the Med- 
way, the inhabitants of the place, being eager to show some mark 
of contumely to him in his disgrace, did not scruple to cut ofif the 
tail of the horse on which he was riding ; and for this, according 
to Polydor Vergil, " it so happened, by the will of God, that all 
the offspring born from the men who had done this thing were 
born with tails like brute animals. But this mark of infamy, 
which formerly was everywhere notorious, has disappeared with 
the extinction of the race whose fathers perpetrated the deed." 
The story seems to have been applied, with variations, to other 
Englishmen, now here, now there, so that John Bale complained, 
in the time of Edward VI, " that an Englyshman now can not 
travayle in another land by Avay of marchandyse or any other 
honest occupyinge, but it is most contumeliously thrown in his 
tethe that all Englyshmen have tails." 

A Polish writer tells of a witch who transformed a bridal com- 
pany, stepping over a girdle of human skin which she had laid in 
the doorway, into wolves. She afterward, by throwing dresses 
of fur over them, gave them their human forms ; but the bride- 
groom's dress was not long enough to cover his tail, and he kept 
it ; whence it became hereditary in his family. John Struys, a 
Dutch traveler, who visited Formosa in the seventeenth century, 
relates that a member of his party got separated from the rest and 
was mangled and killed by a wild man, who was afterward caught 
and tied up for execution, when, says the traveler, '' I beheld what 
I had never thought to see. Ho had a tail more than a foot long, 
covered with red hair, and very like that of a cow. When he saw 



348 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the surprise that tliis discovery created among the European 
spectators, he informed us that his tail was the effect of climate, 
for that all the inhabitants of the southern side of the island^ 
where they then were, were provided with like appendag.es." The 
cuneiform or Chaldean deluge tablet speaks of the gods, " with 
tails hidden," crouching clown. A Culdee tombstone at Keills, 
in Argyleshire, Scotland, bears among its figures one of hu- 
man form, sitting down, and sleeking with his left hand a tail 
that curls beneath his legs. 

Various stories have 
been told of the tails 
of the Niam Niams 
of Central Africa, who 
have also been asserted 
to be cannibals. Their 
tails have been described 
as smooth and as hairy, 
as peculiar to the men, 
and as possessed by the 
men and women both. 
The most interesting and 
circumstantial account of 
this feature is given by 
Dr. Hubsch, of Constan- 
:inoi3le, who examined a 
tailed negress. Her tail 
^vas abont two inches 
Long, and terminated in a 
point. The slave-dealer 
who owned her said that 
all the Niam Niams had 
tails, and that they were 
sometimes ten inches 
long. Dr. Hubsch also 
saw a man of the same 
race who had a tail an 
inch and a half long, cov- 
ered with a few hairs ; 
and he knew at Constan- 
tinople the son of a phy- 
sician who was born with 
a tail an inch and a half long, and one of whose grandfathers had 
a like appendage. The phenomenon, he said, is regarded gener- 
ally in the East as a sign of great brute force. 

The newspapers, many years ago, had a story of a boy, who 
was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, with a tail about an inch and 




Fig. 1.— Tah.i:i) .M,.i JJov. 



TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 349 

a half long, which, when sucking, he wagged as a token of 
pleasure. 

Apparently well-authenticated instances of human tails are 
that of a Moi boy, twelve years old, who was found a few years 
ago in Cochin-China, and had a tail about a foot long — simply a 
mass of flesh — containing no bony frame (Fig. 1) ; and the case 
communicated to the Berlin Anthroijological Society in July, 
1890, by the Dutch resident at Ternate, of two natives of New 
Guinea, who had come on board his steamer in Geelvink Bay, 
in 1880 — adult male Papuans, in good health and spirits, well 
shaped and muscular, who had coccygeal bones projecting four 
centimetres, or an inch and a half in length. Dr. O. W. Holmes 
says, in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1890, that Dr. Priestley, 
of London, showed him, at the Medical Congress in Washington, 
a photograph of a boy who had " a very respectable tail." 

In The Popular Science Monthly for October, 1884, an account 
was quoted from Mr. H. W. Eaton, of Louisville, Ky,, of a female 
child that was hoxw in that city with what appeared to be a rudi- 
mentary tail. It was visible as a '* fleshy peduncular protuber- 
ance," about two inches and a quarter long, and measuring an 
inch and a quarter round the base, shaped like a pig's tail, but 
showing no sign of bone or cartilage, and was situated about an 
inch above the lower end of the spinal column. It had grown 
about a quarter of an inch in eight weeks. 

The questions, whether there exists in the human body, in a 
rudimentary state, a real homologue of the tail of animals, and 
whether it may sometimes be developed into a member of some- 
what similar outward form, have been much discussed by physi- 
ologists in recent years. Besides notes on the subject in an- 
thropological, ethnographical, and geographical periodicals, four 
larger essays have been published \\\)o\\ it, viz. : Mohnike's pam- 
phlet on Tailed Men (Miinster, 1878) ; two papers by Prof. A. 
Ecker, in the Archiv fiir Anthropologie (vol. xii, 1879), and in the 
Archiv fiir Anatomie und Physiologie (1880, No. 6) ; and a pa- 
per by Dr. Max Bartels in the Archiv fiir Anthropologie (1880) ; 
all of which go into a searching consideration of the subject. The 
late German scientific journal Kosmos, reviewing these papers a 
few years years ago, deduced the following conclusions from the 
evidence then before the world : 

The older anatomists treated the question in rather a matter- 
of-fact way. They regarded the prolongation of the human back- 
bone beyond the os sacrum, by three, four, or five vertebrae, with- 
out much thought, as the analogous feature of the animal's tail, 
and called it the tail -bone {os coccygis). The phenomenon was not 
rare to them, nor did it seem wonderful that this part of the body 
could, contrariwise to its general rule, escape being grown over. 



350 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

and project free like an animal's tail, or that it might occasionally 
be prolonged through additions to the number of vertebrae ; for 
they had a deej^er insight into the normal agreement of the fun- 
damental scheme in the structure of man and the animals most 
nearly related to him than some of the physicians and anatomists 
of our own time seem to have. 

But after the great '' fall of man," as Ecker expressively calls 
it, or after man had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge 
which Darwin offered to him, we apparently did not dare to call 
the thing any more by its right name. We did not venture, ac- 
cording to Prof. His, to speak of the tail of the human embryo, 
although we could still speak without hesitation of its gill-arch. 
Man was ashamed, as Ecker has humorously characterized the 
prudery of the learned, only of his nearer, not of his more dis- 
tant, cousins. The older anatomists and artists — we name here, 
as typical representatives of these, only Harvey, Meckel, and 
Goethe — found it natural that this taillet, instead of bending in- 
ward, as usual, toward the pelvis, and being buried in the mus- 
cular part, as though that were, of course, one of man's par- 
ticular characteristics, should occasionally jiroject outAvard and 
assume the form of an external tail. They did not regard it as 
surprising that a formation of this kind should sometimes ajj- 
pear ; and they found in the persons who possessed such growths, 
not, like the men of the preceding age, the consequences of a 
bestial intercourse or of a fault of the mother ; not even a mon- 
strous formation in the common sense of the word, but rather 
evidence of the adaptability of Nature and of a common type 
marking all the higher animals. Thus Goethe wrote on the 12th 
of September, 1787, from Rome : " The tailed men are no wonder 
to me; but are, according to the description, something quite 
natural. There are much more wonderful things before our eyes 
which we do not regard, because they are not so nearly related 
to us." 

The brief essay of Dr. O. Mohnike is based on the fact that all 
the forms of the backbone of man are related to his erect posture, 
and that the prolongation is turned inward in order to afford a 
support to the viscera, which is not needed in animals that go on 
all fours. He therefore believes that a prolongation of the coccyx 
outside of the periphery of the rump, analogous to the tail of an 
animal, would be incompatible with the typical human form, all 
the parts of which collectively point to the erect gait, and contra- 
dictory to it. 

A similar inversion is indicated in the anthropoid apes, that 
have no external tail and sometimes go erect, and is believed by 
Hyrtl to be produced gradually in dogs and bears that are taught 
to dance on their hind legs. All this goes to show, if there were 



TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 351 

any doubt on the subject, that the os coccygis of man is a real 
analogue of the animal's tail-root, while it also makes clear to us 
how the same has reached its special form. It is further confirmed 
by the fact that the inversion in which the coccyx takes part is 
not observed in the embryonal life of man nor in the earliest in- 
fancy, but first appears when the child begins to carry its body 
erect. The tail-like prolongation of the human vertebral column 
is evidently a rudimentary formation — an inheritance from the 
animal condition which, perhaps, persists simply because the in- 
turned vertebra of the os coccygis has adapted itself to a new 
function, instead of becoming useless. 

There is found in the human embryo, in the first stage of its 
embryonal life, just as in other vertebrates, a considerable and 
conformable tail-structure, which it is not hard to interpret ac- 
cording to biogenetical principles. The length of this taillet, in 
proportion to that of the rest of the body, is at first considerable. 
In embryos that have completed their third week the tail is, per- 
haps, about twice as long as the lower limbs. It is one of the 
pruderies that still live to vex us that some anatomists. Prof. His, 
of Leipsic, for example, object to calling this 
appendage a tail. But Prof. Ecker unequiv- 
ocally upholds this designation, and in the 
Archiv fiir Anatomie und Physiologie (1880, 
No. 6, p. 442) formulates the following prin- 
ciples in elucidation of the matter : 

1. The name " tail " can only be applied to j.^^_ o._Lower Pakt of 
the part of the hinder end of the body project- an Embryo 15-5 mi. 
ing over the cloacum. ^°^^' ^ 7"" "^^^^ 

^ . From Ecker. 

2. In embryos of the second class — that is, 

those which are from eight to fifteen millimetres long — the "tail" 
overtopping the cloacum appears as a free pointed projection 
upward and forward. 

3. This tail consists of a vertebra-containing and a vertebra- 
free section, the latter of which contains only a chorda and a 
marrow-tube . 

4. Only the latter section suffers a reduction, by the chorda 
dorsalis being mostly converted into a knot, while the rest dis- 
appears. 

5. The vertebra-containing section persists for a longer time 
than the so-called coccygeal lump. The latter disaxjpears grad- 
ually under the surface, chiefly in consequence of the gradually 
stronger curvature of the os sacrum and os coccygis, and partly 
of the more prominent development of the pelvic band and its 
musculature. 

We should also distinguish two processes in the gradual dis- 
appearance of the embryonal tail of man : an atrophy of the tail- 
voL. XL. — 27 




552 ^ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

point and a shrinking of the tail-root. The former process, the 
wasting of tlie hindermost section, takes place, according to the 
later researches of M. Braun in Dorpat, not only in the human 
embryo, but also in other vertebrates. " I find," says this natu- 
ralist, in his Researches in the Development-History of Parrots 
(Transactions of the Physico-Medical Society of Wiirzburg, new 
series, vol. xv), " in the embryos of swine, cats, sheep, rabbits, 
mice, and dogs, a long thread at the hinder end of the tail which is 
sharply distinguished by its tenuity from the rest of the member. 
The spinal or parted chorda end lies in it in the earlier stage ; later 
it consists only of ej)idermis cells ; and finally it disappears alto- 
gether. By this, proof is given that in mammalia as well as in 
birds the chorda, if I may use the expression, has been carried 
out too long, and no more vertebree are formed around its hinder 
end. It is a striking fact that the long-tailed mammalia are also 
in this category," 

According to Ecker, who confirms the other features of these 
observations, this attenuated prolongation, designated as a tail- 
thread, no longer appears in man ; * the tail is reduced, much more, 

according to him, than appears in 
^^' ^" the sketch, into a conical form. 

The further wasting process has 
proceeded so far by the seventh 
week of the human embryonal 
life that a tail can no longer be 
fitly spoken of. Instead of it 
there is to be seen on the hinder 
end of the body only a roundish 
process, the coccygeal lumjD (Figs. 
o and 4), on which a few minute 

Figs. 3 AND 4. -Embryos IN THE Coccygeal- excreSCences, perhaps rudiments 
LUMP rEBioD. Fig. 3, 4-1 cm. long ; Y'm. ^ ,^ , , . t . , , 

4, 14-8 cm. long. From Ecker. o^ ^li© atrophied invertebrate 

part of the tail, are visible. This 
coccygeal lump retains to the end of the third month the form 
of an acute isosceles triangle, the broad base of which rises 
in the region of the coccyx without a clear dividing line, while 
its point ends over the rectum. Two converging shallow fur- 
rows define the lateral boundaries between the coccygeal lump 
and the buttock, over the level of which it plainly rises. Beyond 
the rectum begins in the continuation of the median line of 
this triangle the suture, which in the male embryo extends as a 
plainly marked selvage over the perinaeum. What is called the 
coccygeal lump in the human foetus is a prominence so brought 

* In mammals Ecker sometimes found the tip of the tail-thread so sharp and horny that 
the name tail-spine seemed to be more appropriate, and he suggests that possibly the well- 
known tail-spine of the lion is nothing else than the persistent embryonal tail-thread. 





TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 



353 




Fig. 5. — Coccygeal Hair-tuft. From Ecker. 



forward that the point of the nearly straight-running coccyx is 
pushed against the skin and lifts it up. Inversion has at this 
time not yet taken place. 

From the third to the fourth month the human foetus receives 
its clothing of wool-hairs, which penetrate obliquely through the 
skin, and form hair-lines converging against the tips of the coc- 
cygeal lump, and represent there a vertebra. This vertebra — vertex 
coccygeus — constitutes in sev- 
eral cases observed and de- j^- ^ ' ''"* 
scribed by Ecker and other 
investigators (Fig. 5) an evi- 
dent pencil of longer hairs^ a 
real hair-taillet, such as Gre- 
cian art gave at the same point 
to fauns and satyrs. It has al- 
ready been shown by Eschricht 
that the converging hair-tuft 
in the region of the coccyx is 
analogous to the similar arrangement of hairs on the tails of the 
mammalia. Chr. A. Voight has expressly noticed the same rela- 
tion in his treatise on the direction of hairs on the human body 
(Denkschrift of the Vienna Academy, 185G). " The parts of the 
skin on which converging tufts are formed," he says, " are either 
places which were quite bare in the earlier periods of development, 
or they are spots that covered the prominent bones (or cartilages), 
the strongly growing parts, like the coccyx, the elbows, and the 
tip of the ear in animals, or every place toward which an exten- 
sion of the skin was taking place or had taken place at the time of 
the development of the hair." This author remarks especially 
of the coccyx-tuft that, as the hairs become longer, they rise over 
the surface and form spiral-shaped hair-tufts, like the brushes on 
the tips of the tails of animals. There is thus again shown a 
plain original connection between the formation of the tail-shaped 
attachment and the coccygeal hair-tuft. 

There is usually found in the human foetus, above the coccygeal 
vertebra, a hairless spot, the glabella coccygea, under which often 
appears later, and is even perceptible in persons of middle age. a 
depression of greater or less depth, i\\e foveola coccygea, over the 
origin and significance of which many and often curious hypothe- 
ses have been set forth. It was described by Lawson Tait, in a 
paper read before the Anatomical and Physiological Section of the 
British Association in 1878. He had found from the examination 
of several hundred persons that only fifty-five per cent of them 
were without traces of the depression or "sacral dimple," while 
it was faintly marked in twenty-two per cent, and well marked in 
twenty-three per cent. But it seemed to become imperceptible 



354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

again after the thirtieth year of age. Mr. Tait believes that the 
hollow is associated with the embryonal process connected with 
the neural canal and its closure. He referred to the tailless cats 
of the Isle of Man, and tailless guinea-pigs which, like man, pos- 
sess only an os coccygis with three pronged centra infolded in 
the skin ; and thought that he might conclude from certain in- 
dications that some of these animals, and perhaps also the pre- 
decessors of man, may have lost the tail in consequence of a 
malformation, probably in man through the not rarely appearing 
spina bifida. We well know how such malformations tend to 
become hereditary ; and the sacral dimple might be called the scar 
of the lost tail. The hereditability of such malformations is well 
marked. When Dr. Wilson crossed a Manx tomcat with a com- 
mon cat, seventeen out of twenty-three kittens were tailless ; but 
when female cats of the Isle of Man were crossed with common 
tomcats all the kittens had tails, though somewhat shortened. 
Prof. Ecker has suggested a less fanciful explanation of the origin 
of the sacral dimple. He supposes that the later inward curving 
of the tip of the much straighter coccyx in the foetus— which is 
connected with the skin by the caudal ligament— draws the cor- 
responding spot on the skin into a funnel shape of greater or less 
depth. On the other hand, Ecker would rather regard the glabella 
coccygea as the lower fontanel, or later point of closure of the 
sacral canal. 

The embryonal processes and normal conditions of formation 
thus briefly sketched are sufficient in general to permit most of 
the cases of so-called tail-formations in men, which occur with 
tolerable frequency, to be recognized as easily explainable irreg- 
ularities of natural growth. The case deviating least from the 
normal condition concerns only the skin-covering, and exhibits 
itself in an excessive hairiness of the sacral and coccygeal region 
(frichosis sacralis). We have seen above that this spot in the em- 
bryo reo-ularly bears a hair-twirl, which is not rarely prolonged 
into a hairy pencil or taillet. We can hardly consider it an im- 
portant variation if this hairy taillet is exceptionally not absorbed, 
but endures and grows stronger after birth. In the so-called hairy 
men we evidently have persons in whom, according to all appear- 
ance, the wool-hair of the foetus has grown to a far greater extent, 
or at least possesses the same properties of alignment and direc- 
tion. The chief physician of the Greek army, Dr. Bernhard Orn- 
stein, having observed several cases of extraordinarily abundant 
hairiness in the sacral region among Grecian recruits, has given 
continued attention to this phenomenon, and has determined some 
very remarkable cases of it. The most striking of these cases was 
that of the twenty-eight-year-old recruit Demeter Karus, of the 
eparchy of Corinth. The whole sacral region appears to be cov- 



TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 355 

ered with a thick, dark-brown hairy growth, about three inches 
in length, which spreads over on to either side. The hairs lie 
more smoothly on the border of the skin covering the sacrum, 
while in the middle they curl out into two strong tufts. The man 
is about five feet two inches high, and his yellowish-brown skin 
shows elsewhere on his wdiole body less than the usual hairiness. 
The recruit said that he was born with this unusual hair on his 
back, and that he had even in youth suffered on account of it 
from the curiosity of the people of his native village. He said 
also that the growth had once been so strong that he had braided 
the hair into queues and tied it in front, but that since then he 
had preferred to cut it from time to time. To test the accuracy 
of this assertion, Dr. Ornstein forbade his cutting the hair for a 
considerable period; and eight months afterward (December, 
1875) the sacrum-hair had grown to double its former length, or 
to six inches ; so that the recruit's assertions respecting it were 
shown not to be incredible. 

Prof. Virchow accompanied the detailed communication of 
this case to the Berlin Anthropological Society * with a few well- 
chosen words prefacing the opinion that we have perhaps to deal 
here with a spina bifida occulta, which is indicated exteriorly, as 
occurs often in the case of moles, mother's marks, etc., by aug- 
mented growth of hair. There has existed, he said, for a con- 
siderable time, a doctrine — we might call it a superstition — in 
pathological anatomy, which is called the law of the duplication 
of cases. " On the same morning that I received the letter from 
Athens, it was told me that there was a corpse in the Pathological 
Institute which exhibited an unusual hairiness on the back." 
Since we had to do in this case with a spina bifida occulta, there 
might perhaps be a similar pathological cause in the case of the 
Greek recruit. But the hair on the Berlin woman's back sprang 
from a higher spot, and did not denote the more thickly haired 
coccygeal region of the human embryo. In continuation of these 
efforts of Virchow to follow up these abnormal formations in the 
human body resembling animal shapes to their pathological 
causes, and in order to learn how to obviate them, Surgeon-Gen- 
eral Ornstein kept watch upon the parts of the body concerned in 
the eruption, and in the next year (1876) succeeded in establishing 
a second case of well-defined sacral trichosis, marked by thick, 
dark-brown hair, extending to the coccygeal region. In the next 
year (1877) ten other cases fell under his attention, by which it 
became evident that this sacral hairiness was not rare in Greece 
and the islands of the ^gean Sea ; and he was convinced that in 
all the cases the basis of it was normal and there was no question 

* Sitzungsberichte der Berliner ant')ropologiscliev Gesellsehaft in dcr Zeitschrift fur 
Ethnologie, 1875, pp. 91 and 279. 



356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

of a spina bifida. Vircliow's law of the duplication of the cases 
had not maintained itself under the first test. Of the various 
other persons of this kind whose photographs Dr. Ornstein took, 
we mention the recruit Q. G. Nikephorus, of Siphno, twenty years 
old, in whom the thick brown hair of the sacral trichosis is very 
sharply defined, and quite covers the sacrum. The hairs were in 
this case from one and a half to two and three quarter inches 
long, while no abnormal hairs were visible on the rest of his 
somewhat slender body. 

It requires no particular gift for adapting evidence or of divi- 
nation to infer from these cases of sacral trichosis, so frecjuent in 
Greece, which are easily explained by reference to the embryonic 
hairy covering, that the representations of Silenus and the fauns 
in ancient Grecian art, in which this part of the body is furnished 
with a tail-tuft of hair, may be traced back to casual observations 
of such cases in real life. A strikingly naturalistic illustration 

of this view is afford- 
/■;% . i A. ed by the Silenus with 

the Bacchus child in 
the Louvre, in which, 
instead of the isolated 
horse-tail-like pencil 
rising from the sa- 
crum, characteristic of 
most figures of the 
kind, the whole sacral 
region is represented 
as well haired, while 
the central lock is sim- 
ply more strongly 
prominent (Fig. G). 

What might be 
called " hide - bound 
tails," of which Dr. 
Bartels describes a 

Fig. 6.-PART of the Back View of the Silentts with the Well-marked case that 
Infant Bacchus, in the Louvre. From a Drawing by occurred in llis OWn 
F. Schilfer. t ^ . • 

medical practice, in- 
cline more decidedly to the order of real malformations. In a 
three-days-old child, the skin over the coccyx formed a three- 
sided lump of about the shape of the tail-termination of the em- 
bryo. This lumpwas about seven eighths of an inch long, rose 
several lines above the rest of the skin, and was separated from 
it by a plainly defined groove. The pointed lower end of the 
swelling seemed to lie directly over the anal orifice, which was 
very narrow, and must have been operatively enlarged after the 




TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 



357 




point of the excrescence had been loosed from that part. The 

formation did not contain any vertebra; the coccyx lay rather 

beneath, and there was evi- 
dently in this, as in a similar 

case observed by Labourdette, 

a question of a so-called in- 

tercejited formation from the 

coccygeal lump period. The 

hide-bound tail offers an en- /: 

larged copy of the embryonal i-' 

coccygeal lump, and exhibits i < 

that lump, which in the nor- - 

mal development reverts and \ 

is merged in the buttock, ap- \ 

parently maintained and as- \^ 

sociated, as a rule, with an \' 

imperfect development of the f|. - 

anal orifice (Fig. 7). W^T 

A third class is composed [^|. 

of the " soft tails," which de- k^v 

pend freely from the sacral i ■ 

and coccygeal region and are 

the most frequent. They have 

sometimes the form of a 

swine's tail drawn out to a point; sometimes that of a thicker 

fleshy appendage only slightly rolled at the end. Such soft tails, 
which belong to the largest of their kind and are 
both naked and hairy, have been observed and 
described, among others by Blancart, Konig, Els- 
holtz, Schenk, von Grafenberg, and Greve. The 
last author sent a tail three inches long (Fig. 8), 
which he had amputated from a boy eight weeks 
old, to Prof. Virchow for a more thorough exami- 
nation, and he found that it was not a simple 
case of skin formation, but that there lay within 
the inner cell-texture of the skin a fatty bundle 
penetrated by large vessels. In this species of 
malformation — to which the case delineated in 
Virchow's Archiv fiir pathologische Anatomie, 
vol. Ixxxiii, No. 3, seems to belong — we have to 
do, not with a simple impeded formation, such as 
the last-mentioned case is considered to be, but 
with the outgrowth of a part existing in the em- 
bryonic plan, which, however, disappears in reg- 
ular growth, into a monstrosity i)er excessum, as was the old form 

of expression. In many respects these cases are atavistic. The 



TlIEEE-DATS-OLD BoY, WITH HlDE-BOUNI; 

Tail. From Dr. Ma.\ BarteLs. 




Fig. 8. — Amputated 
Tail of a Boy 
Eight Weeks Old. 
From Greve, 



358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

surplus length of chorda persists without there being any verte- 
hrse formed upon it. 

Real vertebral tails, in which the vertebra-containing part of 
the embryonal tail remains without being grown over and the 
coccyx preserves its original straighter direction, have been, if we 
may trust the older anatomists and physicians, not very rarely 
observed. Surgeon-General Ornstein, a few years ago, carefully 
studied such a case in Athens in a Greek from Livadia, twenty-six 
yeats of age. There was in this case a conical tail, free only at 
the tip, about two inches long, within which three vertebrje might 
be felt by pressing upon it. It did not, however, hang perpen- 
dicularly down, but the coccyx was slightly, though less than in 
normal cases, bent inward. Notwithstanding its apparent firm- 
ness, this little movable tail was not distinguishable by the color 
of its skin from its surroundings. It was hairless, although 
the sacral region was very hirsute. The free part was not 
half as long as the whole.* While only three shrunken verte- 
bral fragments could be felt in this case, free tails of like char- 
acter have been described by several of the older authors in 
which the normal number of vertebrae appears to have been ex- 
ceeded by four. Dr. Thirk, of Broussa, in 1820, described the fat- 
tail of a Kurd, twenty-two years old, which formed a thick lump 
and contained four surplus vertebrae. Tliomas Bartholinus, also, 
told in the seventeenth century of a tailed boy who had more 
than the regular number of vertebrae in the coccyx. Such cases 
represent true atavistic formations, but have never been verified 
with as much exactness as is desirable, altliough the possibility of 
an appearance of the kind does not admit of reasonable doubt. 
The phenomena might, in fact, be more frequently recorded were 
it not that such formations, so long as they do not occasion dis- 
tress, are carefully concealed for fear of reproach falling upon 
those who bear them and upon their mothers. 

Dr. Bartels makes some pertinent remarks concerning the 
bearing of these exceptional but not at all rare tail formations 
among men upon the myths of " tailed races " ; and Mohnike has 
made a valuable collection of the travelers' stories on the subject 
from the most ancient times. Mohnike believes that the older 
myths generally relate to apes; but this is not very probable, for 
the erect anthropoids, which most resemble man, are as tailless as 
he. The derivation from the custom of many savages of wearing 
animal skins with the tail hanging down upon the right side is 
more probable. Schweinfurth also observed among the women 
of the Bongos a custom of wearing a palm -leaf tail, bound on so 
as to produce a naturalistic appearance. 

* A fuller description may be found in the Zeitsehrift fiir Ethnologie, vol. xi, 1879. 



TAIL-LIKE FORMATIONS IN MEN. 359 

The myths of tailed human races constantly revert to the East 
Indian islands; and the Dutch captain, L. F. W. Schulze, sent 
communications to the Berlin Anthropological Society in 1877 
concerning cases* partly observed by himself, which were re- 
garded by Dr. Bartels as fully trustworthy. These communica- 
tions tell us nothing new, for the phenomena occur in cultivated 
Europe as well as in remote deserts and lone islands. Other 
reports, like that, for example, of Julius Kogel concerning the 
Dya,ks of Borneo, speak of the frequent occurrence of tailed indi- 
viduals. Hence a low, beastly race has been supposed, in which 
atavistic formations occur still more frequently than among' 
higher races further removed from the original condition. Still 
other reports, and more recent, mention fully tailed human 
races. 

Even if a phenomenon of this kind were established we need 
not, as Dr. Bartels has justly remarked, conceive of a still living 
middle form between man and bea"st. " We must consider," he 
says, '''that we are all the time dealing with insular populations 
who have been crowded out of the possession of their coast and 
harbor regions by people of other races and driven into the 
hardly accessible interior of the country, where they have been 
compelled to practice, for a length of time we can not estimate, a 
constant inbreeding — a regular series of marriages within their 
own tribe. In this case there might, at some time in the past, as 
has happened with other men, have occurred an external tail, as 
a casual abnormity at first, but which might afterward, in the 
course of generations, become transmitted to many persons by in- 
heritance. For it has been shown by researches in this inter- 
esting field of pathological anatomy that nothing is more easily 
transmissible than malformations. In illustration of this fact we 
need only mention here the well-known inclination to the in- 
heritability of what are called mother's marks and hare-lips, and 
the large teeth of the Melanesians of the Admiralty Islands and 
the island of Agome, which have been described by Mr. Miklucho- 
Maclay.f In a similar manner Lord Monboddo, in the last 
century, explained the tailed men of Borneo as a people afflicted 
with a hereditary malformation, and compared them with six- 
fingered families. X 

In agreement with this is what the Wesleyan missionary 
George Brown related in 1870 con(;erning a formal breeding of a 
tailed race of men in Kali, off New Britain. " Tailless children," 
he says, " are slain at once, or they would be exposed to general 
ridicule." * A tailed family of princes have borne rule in Rajpoo- 
tana and are earnestly attached to the ancestral mark. Dr. 

* See Kosmos, vol. i, p. 166. % Kosmos, vol. v, p. 449. 

f Bartels, p. 4. * Mohnike, p. 3. 



360 THE POPULAR SCIUNCPJ MONTHLY. 

Qaatrefages also speaks of the appearance of such varieties of men 
as very probable. The care just mentioned as having been taken 
of the malformation is all the more striking because the tail, as 
has been shown in the European cases, is in sitting and riding no 
very pleasant feature. They tell of canoes in the East Indies that 
have holes made in the benches of the rowers. But it is not an 
idle thought in this matter to sujjpose that the benches, like the 
old German stools, were furnished with holes for ornament, or in 
order that they might be more easily handled and disposed of, 
and the incident can not be regarded as confirming the popular 
legend. The result of these investigations is, as a whole, that a 
formation, homologous even in outside appearance with an ani- 
mal's tail, is originally present in the human foetus, and loses its 
external characteristics at a later period of life through arrest of 
growth, inversion, and waste. If these processes occasionally fail 
to take place, the tail-feature is nevertheless not visible in the 
grown man, and we can not draw from such malformations, even 
if they appear frequently in a single race, any one-sided conclu- 
sions respecting there having existed a former animal-like con- 
dition. For it may be supposed with much more probability, 
from the similarity of the forms in this feature of man and the 
anthropoid apes, that their common ancestor had already shed 
the external tail ; and hence that the 2:)rolongation of the chorda 
in the embryo, wnth no vertebra contained in it, may be regarded 
as a reminiscence of a still earlier ancestral form. 



A DISCUSSION in the International Geological Congress at "Wasliington, on cor- 
relation of strata, was opened by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of our Geological Survey, 
who spoke first of local methods, where one rock lies upon another. Physical 
continuity was a means of correlation, and perhaps the best method, but was sub- 
ject to limitations. Traces were rarely possible for great distances. Indirect 
methods must be resorted to. Beds of similar lithologic formation could be re- 
garded as chronologically similar. Another method was the sequence with which 
the deposits were laid. Layers following in sequence in different localities argued 
the same conditions. There were limitations, however, to the use of both these 
methods. Physical breaks afforded a fourth method of correlation, to which the 
limitation would probably be distance. Simultaneous relations of bodies to some 
physical event often afforded valuable evidence. Tliis method had been useful, 
both at Salt Lake and on tlie Atlantic coast. Other aids in correlation were the 
relation of deposits to some geological climate and the evidence of similar pliysical 
changes. The similar action of gases in different beds showed chronological 
similarity. This method was largely limited by local climatic changes, and gen- 
erally the physical methods mentioned were all v.-duable at fhort range but of 
little use at long range. The theoretical methods, in which floral and animal life 
are called in, are perhaps more accurate. Of these are divergence from a status 
at a fixed date, and the relations of the fauna contained in the deposits to cli- 
mate. The value of a fossil species for purpose is dependent greatly on the length 
of its life and the range of its space. Long life is a drawback, that makes the cor- 



COMMUNICATION WITH THE PLANETS. 361 

relation vague. Prof. Zittell, of Municli, did not think the method of correlation 
by plants accurate. Of animals, those of the land were most valuable. He spoke 
of the difficulty of correlation in some countries where vertebrate animals are not 
found in many of the deposits. Prof. Marsh agreed with the other speakers that 
vertebrate animals afforded the best and most accurate material for correlation. 
Prof. Charles D. Walcott spoke of the advances that had been made in the study 
of correlation, and illustrated his positions by reference to the Cambrian strata of 
North America. Prof. James Hall begged tiiat geologists in search of correlations 
should not neglect physical methods, and described an early attempt at correlation 
made by himself in ti'ying to connect the rocks of western New York with the 
deposits of the West. 



COMMUNICATION WITH THE PLANETS. 

By M. AMEDEE GUILLEMIN. 

STRIKING discoveries in astronomy, of a character to excite 
the public mind, have been rare in recent years. Those who 
have kept in current with the work that has been done in that 
science are not ready to believe that this is because progress has 
not been made in it. As evidence of the new work accomplished 
by its students, and potentially fruitful work, too, we cite the 
preparation of a map of the sky, accomplished by the aid of pho- 
tography, which gives the exact position of the stars to the four- 
teenth magnitude. The co-operation of observatories certainly 
assures the success of this immense work, which is now in process 
of execution. La Nature has made known the beginnings and 
has kept its readers in the current of the very minute and pro- 
found preliminary studies, without which the undertaking of 
operations of an extreme delicacy might have been compromised. 
It has also made clear the importance of the results to be ob- 
tained, and of the various consequences that would necessarily 
accrue from them. The problems of parallax or of stellar dis- 
tances, of the proper motions of the stars, of nebulae, the search 
for minor planets and new comets, everything relative to the 
constitution of sidereal systems, may, by an attentive study of the 
plates of the new celestial maps, receive positive solutions. A 
new horizon is thus opened to science. These are not sensational 
novelties, like the appearance of a comet with a long, nebulous 
tail, which attracts the attention of idlers to the sky ; but the im- 
portance of astronomical observations is not measured by the 
noise they make in the public ear. Yet, if the prize of a hundred 
thousand francs, which an honorable lady has recently bequeathed 
to the French Academy of Sciences, should be gained by some 
one, the resultant emotion would be legitimate. To establish 
voluntary and direct communication between the earth and a 



362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

planet, or rather between its inliabitants and the inhabitants of a 
planet, would be something to sharpen the curiosity of the whole 
world. I do not see that astronomy or mankind would gain any- 
thing by it, but what conjectures, what paradoxes, what high 
fancies, we should enjoy if it were carried out ! 

The Academy is said to be disposed to accept the legacy, by 
virtue of a clause like that which makes the Brdant prize an an- 
nual recompense allotted to the authors of discoveries tending to 
advance the solution of the problem of a cure for cholera. In the 
same way, the income of the capital bequeathed by Madame 
Guzman will work in favor of investigations relating to the con- 
stitution of the heavenly bodies. I do not think I am hazarding 
much when I assert that it will be a long while before the new 
prize is awarded, in its totality at least. But this was doubtless 
not the opinion of the testatrix. Without going deeply into the 
question — for that would require a long discussion — the probable 
correctness of my prediction can be shown in a few lines. 

To any one well acquainted with the present knowledge pos- 
sessed by astronomers concerning the physical aspect of the stars 
of our system, it is evident that only two of the planets are in a 
condition to encourage the hopes of those who believe in the pos- 
sibility of interplanetary communications, to wit, the moon and 
Mars — the moon especially. Its small distance of 240,000 miles, 
the clearness of its disk, the facility with which minor features 
can be distinguished upon it with the telescope, the absence of all 
cloudiness that can conceal spots upon it, make our satellite an 
eminently fitting body to which to send signals from the earth. 
We must believe that the inhabitants of the moon have not 
thought of this, or the numerous observers of its disk, the indus- 
trious authors of the lunar maps, the Beers, Madlers, Schmidts, 
at least, would have perceived the signals. But stop. Are there, 
can there be, inhabitants in the moon, where air and water are 
absent ? If there is any point generally admitted, it is the nega- 
tive of this question. 

Under these conditions, it seems idle for us of the earth to 
trouble ourselves about means of answering the inhabitants of 
the moon, or of ourselves provoking signals thence ; and this is 
a pity, for the second heavenly body to be questioned, the planet 
Mars, is infinitely less favorable for the establishment of an inter- 
astral telegraphy. At its most favorable oppositions, Mars is still 
43,000,000 miles from us, or a hundred and sixty times farther 
than the moon ; while the diameter of its disk is only 25". Ac- 
cording to Schiaparelli, the smallest objects visible on its surface 
under the most favorable circumstances — such as a bright spot on 
a dark ground, or a dark spot on a bright ground — must have a 
diameter equal to a fiftieth part of that of the planet, or about 



COMMUNICATION WITH THE PLANETS. 363 

eighty-five miles. Tliis minimum can, it is true, be reduced by 
using large objectives permitting stronger magnifying ; but even 
then it is certain that luminous signals, for example, visible from 
the earth on Mars, must have enormous dimensions. 

The inhabitants of Mars, if more advanced in astronomical 
knowledge than we, as one of our imaginative astronomers sup- 
poses they are, would have, in case they should desire to start an 
exchange of telegraphic communications with their earthly neigh- 
bors, to give their signals diameters of miles in every direction. 
But would they think of it ? The reciprocal question to this is 
the one that puzzles me. The earth, during all the oppositions of 
Mars, is in conjunction to it. It is lost in the rays of the sun, 
and invisible from Mars, unless it .is in transit over the sun's disk. 
Then it is a little black, round spot, on which we have every 
reason to suppose the Martian astronomers will be able to distin- 
guish nothing. The earth will be better situated at the quadra- 
tures, but also at a much greater distance. 

I stop here, not desiring to discourage absolutely the candidate 
for the prize of one hundred thousand francs so generously and 
so imprudently offered to investigators. But my conclusion, 
which I have sufficiently foreshadowed, is, that the problem of 
interplanetary communication is still far from solution ; and I 
believe I shall never be contradicted by real astronomers. I have 
faith in the indefinite progress of the science, while I am con- 
vinced that there are limits to this progress ; but I believe also 
that there is no profit in letting the imagination chase chimeras, 
and I am free to avow that the desired communication is such to 
my eyes. — Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from La 
Nature. 



The compilation of a digest of the literature of the mathematical sciences was 
sugi?ested at the American Association by Prof. Alexander S. Christie. Tne 
digest should contain everything of value hitherto done in these sciences logically 
arranged, with each truth or method referred to its discoverer, and the whole 
thoroughly indexed. Mathematicians througliout the world should be invited to 
engage in the preparation of the work, and the co-operation of the British Asso- 
ciation especially should be secured. 

There is no doubt that a kind of perception of light exists even among beings 
that have no visual organs, or where such organs can not be brought into play. 
The property is perhaps not unlike that by which the growth and movemepts of 
plants are largely determined by the relations of liglit. A number of cases of such 
skin perceptions of light — which we might call dermatoptic or photodermatic — 
have been collected and described by M. Victor Willem in a French journal. 
Tremblay observed that hydras prefer the more illuminated parts of the medium 
in which they move ; and the same has been remarked by Haeckel, Pouchet, Engel- 
mann, and Loeb in Protozoa ; and other authors have observed in Bryozoa^ coelen- 
terates, Spongiaria^ worms, larvas of arthropods, and isolated organs of mollusks 



364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

that they move or are retracted under the influence of light, and in a general way 
indicate by their way of living the possession of some kind of a perception of light. 
M. Dubois has studied the contraction of the siphon of the PJioIas, and M. d'Arsonval 
has shown that the muscle of the frog is directly excitable by light. M. G. Pouchet 
observed that larvae xii Eo-y stalls tenax tried to get out of the light; and as they 
acted in the same way after their cephalic antennaiform organs had been taken 
away, he asked whether these buds of future eyes were not ada[.ted to perct-ive 
light, or whether the fore surface is not possibly sensitive to it. Engelmann found 
that certain Protozoa moved or remained still according to the character and 
intensity of the light— not on account of a direct action upon them, but because 
of the want of oxygen. M. Graber, since Darwin, has shown that the earth-worm, 
although it has no eyes, is sensitive to light and avoids it, and its sensitiveness 
seems to reside in its whole body. Finally, M. Loeb has recently made a series 
of important researches, whence he concludes in favor of a complete identity 
between the heliotropism of plants and the influence of light on animals, and that 
a number of blind forms are sensitive to light. The seat of this peculiar form of 
sensitiveness has not been clearly determined, but is probably in a pigmentary 
layer under the cuticle. We likewise know nothing certainly of the nature of the 
sensation. Some think it may be akin to sight, but vague and rudimentary ; while 
M. Forel would compare it with sensations of touch or of temperature." Photo- 
dermatic sensibility reaches to the quality as well as the quantity of light, and M. 
Graher has shown that blind animals prefer some colors to others. But the data 
on this point do not all agree. 



THE MUSK OX. 

Br HORACE T. MAETIN. 

|UR first introduction to the musk 
ox {Ovibos moscliatus) carries us 
back over one hundred and fifty 
years, when M. Jeremie made his 
voyage to the northern j^arts of 
our continent, and, returning to 
Paris, took with him a sample of 
wool obtained from an animal he 
V called the ha>uf musqiie. This 
'/'^ name was also employed by 
Charlevoix, writing from Can- 
ada in 1744. 

Scientists were thus made 
aware of the existence of a large mammal, 
which impressed them at once with its eco- 
nomic value; yet has it refused to come 
within the range of their keen observation 
with a persistence unequaled by any animal of its size and im- 
portance. It was many years later that the first scientific 




THE MUSK OX. 365 

description appeared, given by Thomas Pennant from a skin 
sent to England by Samuel Hearne, and all acquaintance with 
the creature was derived from the arctic explorers (Drage, Dobbs, 
Ellis, Hearne, Parry, and others), who in general terms describe 
its appearance and give meager accounts of its habits. Dr. Rich- 
ardson, in 1829, sums up the available information, and adds a 
few remarks of his own, which refer principally to the specimens 
then exhibited in the British Museum. Audubon, in his valuable 
history of the Quadrupeds of North America, published in 1854, 
is confined almost to a literal copy of Richardson's account ; while 
so late as 1859 Spencer F. Baird, in his ponderous volume, the 
Mammals of North America, dismisses the subject with a refer- 
ence of barely twenty lines. His words, however, are significant ; 
for, while he admits that the animal furnishes a most interesting 
study, he laments our scant knowledge of this sturdy arctic in- 
habitant. 

The special inquiry made three or four years ago by the Gov- 
ernment of Canada, as to the resources of the Great Mackenzie 
Basin, furnishes data of utmost value : the enterprise of the mod- 
ern press in ferreting out and bringing to our notice every item 
which concerns itself with the great questions of commerce and 
social economy, and the progress made in polar research during 
the last thirty years, contribute many facts in connection with 
the study of the musk ox ; and we are enabled by the gathering 
and arranging of these to give in a more complete form the his- 
tory of this animal. 

In systematic zoology the place accorded to the musk ox is 
intermediate between those of the sheep (Ovis) and the ox {Bos), 
and for its special accommodation a new genus has been created, 
" Ovibos." Most writers notice its resemblance in many ways to 
the buffalo or bison, and it undoubtedly has much affinity with 
this species. A peculiar prominence is given in all early records 
to the description of the horns of the musk ox, which, though 
valuable to the Eskimos in the making of such commodities as 
cups, spoons, etc., by no means seem to be of so much importance, 
yet in every account the most minute particular of these append- 
ages is repeated. Doubtless much of the character of the musk ox 
depends on the horns ; still, it should be noted that the descrip- 
tions above referred to apply only to the bull, whose horns meet 
on the forehea.d, bend sharply down, and curve gracefully upward 
and outward ; the cow's horns are more similar to those of the 
bison, or even may be compared to the horns of our domestic cat- 
tle. The skull of the bull musk ox is remarkable for the develop- 
ment of the eye -orbits, which project sufficiently beyond the 
plane of the frontal bones to compensate for the interruption the 
horns would otherwise make in the range of vision. The musk 



366 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 




\x^ 



ox, however, does not seem to rely greatly on keenness of sight, 
far less on acuteness of hearing, for the ears are of small dimen- 
sions, and are completely covered by the heavy growth of fur 
about them. The organs of scent are evidently more highly de- 
veloped, and they exact of the hunter his greatest cunning. Vasey 

says the hoof-prints resemble those of 
the barren-ground caribou so closely 
as to easily deceive the unaccustomed 
eye, and concludes a short description 
of the under parts of the foot with 
the illustration here reproduced. The 
external hoof is rounded, the internal 
pointed. 

Much diversity of opinion exists as 
to the size and weight of the animal, 
and it is evident some statements have 
been made from very limited observa- 
tion. Richardson compares the size of 
the musk ox to that of a Shetland pony, while others assert the 
dimensions to be quite equal to those of the bison; and whereas 
the weight has been given as from three to four hundred pounds 
in the one case, other records claim twice 
and even three times these figures as the 
weight of an adult specimen. The addi- 
tion of from three to six inches of fur on 
the back, with hair flowing from the flanks 
to the length of from eighteen to twenty- 
four inches, gives an appearance vastly 
different from that of the bison, and the 
disproportionate shortness of the legs also 

tends to mislead ; but, notwithstanding this, the measurements of 
the skin show the animal to be almost as large as the bison or 
buffalo, hence the latter approximation of weight is more 
correct. 

In connection with the color of the hair, it should be observed 
that, while the summer pelage is usually brownish and corre- 
sponds with the descriptions generally given, in winter the ani- 
mal's covering is a rich black on the head and shoulders, flanks 
and tail, the color shading beautifully into the milky-white disk 
on the back, known as the "saddle," while the face and the legs 
are prettily relieved with the whitish color. 

The musk ox is gregarious, and although all early statements 
agree in estimating the herds as composed of from twenty to fifty 
individuals, later information greatly increases these figures, and 
frequent mention is made of herds numbering from two hundred 
to five hundred. 




THE MUSK OX. 



367 



As recently as 1850 Baird says that, owing to the extreme 
scarcity of the musk ox, he knows of hut one specimen to be 
found in all the museums of the United States. This scarcity, 
however, might be accounted for more by the fact of obstacles 
in the way of entering the territories inhabited by the musk ox 
than by the actual rarity of the animal. From the evidence of 
fossil remains, it is clear that the musk ox long ago roamed west- 
ward to Siberia, and found its way eastward even to the British 




Isles ; but the accompanying map, exhibiting the boundaries of 
its present range, shows how restricted is its distribution. In the 
regions of perpetual snow it wanders, making its way northward 
in summer, being found at the highest points our expeditions 
have reached, and returning in winter to its southern haunts, 
which seldom touch latitude 60°. Over the rugged wilds the 
creature loves to ramble, and, although its appearance indicates 
awkwardness of locomotion, it is said to run fast and to climb 
precipitous cliffs with wonderful ease. Its home is the " barren 
grounds " wherein vegetation is limited almost to a few lichens 
and the stunted spruce to which they cling. On this meager diet 
the musk ox fattened and lived free from the assaults of almost 
every enemy ; for the Eskimo alone penetrated its domain, being 
urged thither by hunger and the desire to obtain the valuable 
pelt. 

The flesh is much coveted by the Eskimos, and explorers speak 
in the highest terms of the relish afforded by the meat of the cow 
and the calf, although the meat of the bull is pronounced as 
offensively musky. Till within the last five years, in our markets, 
the pelt was worth fifty dollars, and was accounted a rarity ; but 



368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

the extreme demand has led to more systematic methods of ob- 
taining it ; and whereas the total annual collection of pelts gath- 
ered by the Hudson Bay Company had not exceeded a few dozens, 

the figures have suddenly risen till the 

annual collection now is counted by thou- 
sands. 

With the last remnants of the merci- 
lessly slaughtered bison still in our mar- 
kets, and the air filled with the protesta- 
tions of theorists as to what 7night have 
been done to preserve those noble herds 
that thronged our prairies, we have history repeating itself under 
our very eyes in the case of the musk ox, and it is not venturing 
too rash a prophecy to state that the present ratio of increasing 
the catch will exhaust the supply within a decade. 




OUR POPULATION AND ITS DISTRIBUTION. 

LESSONS FROM THE CENSUS. III. 
By CAEEOLL D. WEIGHT, A.M., 

UNITED STATES COIIMISSIONEB OF LABOR. 

THE population of the United States June 1, 1890, as ascer- 
tained at the eleventh census, exclusive of white persons in 
the Indian Territory, Indians on reservations, and Alaska, was 
63,622,250. This figure, considering the imperfections of the sys- 
tem under which it was ascertained, is quite satisfactory. It 
bears out the reasonable estimates made prior to the enumer- 
ation ; it does not bear out unreasonable estimates. Barring in- 
adequate counts in a few localities, which will occur under any 
system, I believe the statement of the population of the eleventh 
census io be fairly accurate for the whole country ; it is certainly 
within a very small percentage of accuracy— a percentage which 
would largely disappear, but not wholly, under a census taken in 
accordance with the system outlined in the preceding articles of 
this series. Whether accurate or inaccurate, it is not worth while 
to quarrel with it ; it must be accepted, and the political business 
of the country and all considerations carried on in accordance 
with it. 

At the first census, taken in 1790, the population of the United 
States was 3,929,214. The following brief table shows the popu- 
lation at all the censuses, the positive increase during the inter- 
vening decades, and the percentage of increase : 



OUR POPULATION AND ITS DISTRIBUTION 369 



Ybab. 



1790 
1800 
1810 
1820 
1830 
1840 
1850 
1860 
1870 
1880 
1890 



Population. 


Positive 
increase. 


Percentage of 
increase. 


3,929,214 






5,308,483 
7,239,881 
9,633,822 


1,379,269 

1,931,398 
2,393,941 


35 
36 
33 


10 
38 
06 


12,866,020 
17,069,453 
23,191,876 
31,443,321 


3,232,198 
4,203,433 
6,122,423 
8,251,445 


32 
33 
35 
35 


51 
52 
83 
11 


38,558,371 
50,155,783 
62,622,250 


7,115,050 
11,597,412 
12,466,467 


22 
30 
24 


65 

08 
86 



The regularity of increase from 1800 to 1860 is striking, and 
tlien the influence of the war and of other elements is shown in 
the serious break in the regularity which occurs between 1860 
and 1870, the percentage dropping from 3511 in 1860 to 22*65 in 
1870. With increased industrial and commercial activity the per- 
centage rose again in 1880 to 30"08, but has now receded to 24"86. 
The influence of immigration upon this great increase in popula- 
tion, and the rate of natural increase since the decade from 1830 
to 1840, are shown as follows : 



Peeiod. 


Natural. 


Immigration. 


Total percentage. 


1830-'40 


28-87 
26 15 
23-73 
15-40 
22-79 
14-40 


4-65 
9-68 

11-38 
7-25 
7-29 

10-46 


33-52 


1840-'50 


35-83 


1850-'60 


35-11 


1860-'70 


22-65 


1870-80 


30-08 


1880-'90 


24-86 







Until the full data of the census for 1890 are available, it is 
impossible to make any careful study of the reasons why the 
natural increase of population should vary so greatly. The high- 
est natural increase during the period of immigration, as shown 
in the foregoing table, was between 1830 and 1840, it having been 
28'87 per cent, the lowest natural increase being during the last 
decade, when it was 14'40. It seems almost incredible that such a 
variation could actually occur in the natural increase of popula- 
tion ; but this matter must be left for future consideration. The 
population at the last three censuses has been distributed over the 
country, in accordance with geographical divisions, as follows : 



Geooraphioai. 


POPULATION. 


INrEEASE FROM 

1880 TO 1890. 


INCEEA8B ntoM 
1870 TO 1880. 


INCREASE FEOM 
1860 TO 1870. 


D1TI810N8. 


1890. 


1880. 


1870. 


Number. 


Per 

cent. 


Number. 


Per 
cent. 


Number. 


Per 

cent. 


The United States. 


62,622 250 


50,155.7a3 


38,558,371 


12.466,467 


24-86 


11,597,412 


3008 


7,115,050 


22-68 


North Atlantic 

Bouth Atlantic 

Northern Central 

Southern Central 

Western 


17,401,54.5 
8,a57,92() 
22.362,279 
10.972,893 
3,027,613 


14,507,407 
7,597,197 

17,364.111 
8,919,371 
1,767,697 


12,298,730' 2,894,138 
5,853,010 1 1,260.723 

12,981,111 4.998,168 

6,434,410 ' 2,053..522 

990,510 1.259.916 


19-95 
16-59 

2S-78 
28-02 
71-27 


2.208,677 
1,743,.587 
4,383,000 
2,484,961 

777,187 


17-96 
29-79 
33-76 
88-62 
78-46 


1,704,463 
438,907 

3,884,395 
665.752 
371,534 


16-09 
9-11 
42-70 
11-54 
60-02 











VOL. XL. — 28 



370 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

By this table it will be seen that the largest increase during 
the last three decades has been in the Western division, consisting 
of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, 
Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and California. This divis- 
ion increased its population from 18(J0 to 1870 by 60"02 per cent ; 
in the next decade, 78-46 per cent; and from 1880 to 1890, 71-27 per 
cent. It is natural that the greatest increase should occur in the 
division named. 

Some of the Southern States did not show as great a percent- 
age of increase as they would have shown had the census of 1870 
been more thoroughly correct ; but the imperfections of the census 
of 1870, which imjDerfections showed an enumeration probably 
much less than the real population, when compared with the 
more accurate census of 1880, resulted in an exaggerated increase 
between those years ; consequently, with the census of 1890 com- 
pared with the exaggerated increase between 1870 and 1880, the 
relative percentage of growth is apparently less ; yet, on the 
whole, the Southern divisions show very satisfactory percentages, 
as will be seen by consulting the last table. 

The increase and decrease of population during the decade of 
years from 1880 to 1890 show casually that in a very large number 
of counties the population has really decreased, and an examina- 
tion of the figures by counties gives proof that in four hundred 
and fifty -five there has been an apparent loss of inhabitants, 
arising from an actual decrease in poj^ulation or from a reduction 
of territory, the latter being the case in fifty instances, consequent 
upon the formation of new counties. A real loss occurred in only 
about one hundred and thirty counties, such losses occurring 
mainly in the central parts of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
New York, northern New Jersey and eastern Virginia, and some 
localities scattered through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, and 
Kentucky. Considerable loss has occurred in southern Michigan 
and Wisconsin, while eastern Iowa has largely experienced a 
diminution in population. The ebb and flow of mining opera- 
tions have resulted in a good deal of change in the totals of min- 
ing counties, as, for instance, such counties in Colorado have very 
generally lost in population, and with the exception of two coun- 
ties the number of inhabitants in the entire State of Nevada has 
decreased. The statement as to loss in mining regions is also true 
of California. The increase, however, in our great Western do- 
mains has been over one hundred per cent. The Great Plains 
have increased rapidly, and so have the agricultural areas of the 
Cordilleran plateau. Northern Michigan, western and southern 
Florida, Arkansas, southern Missouri, and central Texas, exhibit 
a growth that is really phenomenal, and the southern Appalachian 
region has increased its population largely. Southern New Eng- 



0^772 POPULATION AND ITS DISTRIBUTION. 371 

and, as well as the most of New York, Pennsylvania, and New 
Jersey, show the results of commerce and manufactures, where 
they are firmly established and constitute the leading occupations 
of the people, which has to a large extent been withdrawn from 
the country and been grouped in the suburbs of cities and large 
towns ; so the population, which twenty or thirty or perhaps forty 
years ago did not increase in such localities, is, under the activity 
stimulated by profitable occupations, increasing rapidly ; but in 
the central parts of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New 
York, where the transition from agriculture to commercial and 
manufacturing industries is still developing, population does not 
gain with very great strides. The changes from agriculture to 
commercial and manufacturing pursuits are indicative always of 
a transition from a permanent to an actively increasing density 
of population. This is evident in the upper Mississippi Valley 
and in Virginia, where the transition is becoming apparent. The 
areas known as the plains of the Cordilleran region are being 
peopled rapidly. This is particularly true in the northern por- 
tions. Cheap lands and easy tillage of the virgin soil are making 
the competition of Eastern agriculturists unprofitable, and so the 
farming population of the far Eastern States is recruiting the ter- 
ritory embracing the rich lands of the West. In Nevada we wit- 
ness the peculiar spectacle of a loss of population resulting from 
the low condition of the mining interests. These facts as to in- 
crease and decrease give an indication of the ever-changing feat- 
ures relating to the density of population in great areas. 

Taking the whole country, the progress of growth has been 
along the thirty-ninth parallel of latitude. The center of popula- 
tion, meaning thereby the center of gravity of the population of 
the country, each individual being assumed to have the same 
weight, was, in 1790, twenty-three miles east of Baltimore, Md, 
In 1890 it was twenty miles east of Columbus, Ind., five hundred 
and five miles west of the point at which it was located one hun- 
dred years ago. The variation of the center from latitude 39°, 
north or south, has been very slight, the extreme having been less 
than nineteen minutes, while the movement in longitude has been 
nearly 9^°, On the basis of a uniform movement on the thirty- 
ninth parallel of latitude, the westward march for the first decade 
after the census of 1790 was forty-one miles ; for the second, thirty- 
six miles ; for the third, fifty miles ; for the fourth, thirty-nine 
miles ; for the fifth, fifty-five miles ; for the sixth, fifty-five miles ; 
for the seventh, eighty-one miles ; for the eighth, forty-two miles ; 
for the ninth, fifty-eight miles ; and for the tenth, forty-eight miles, 
or an average movement each decade of fifty-five and a half miles. 
The position of the center of population at each census is accurately 
shown by the following table and the map which accompanies it : 



372 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Yeaes. 


Approximate location by important towns. 


Westward move- 
ment during 
preceding- decade. 


1790.. 

1800.. 
1810.. 
1820.. 
1830.. 
1840.. 
1850.. 
I860.. 
1870.. 
1880.. 
1890.. 








41 miles. 


40 miles northwest by west of Washington, Dist. of Columbia. . 
16 miles north of Woodstock Virginia 


36 " 

50 " 


19 miles west-southwest of Mooreiield, West Virginia 

16 miles south of Clarksburg, West Virginia . . . 


39 " 
55 " 
55 " 




81 " 




42 " 




58 " 




48 " 







The official statements as to the center of population and as to 
the distribution of population in other respects, as will be shown, 
have been very carefully prepared by Mr. Henry Gannett, the 
able geographer of the tenth and eleventh censuses ; but the