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POPULAE SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

CONDUCTED BY E. L. YOUMANS.

VOL. n.

NOVEMBER, 1872, TO APRIL, 1873.

NEW YORK :
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

649 & 551 BROADWAY.
1873.

Entebed, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,

By D. APPLETON & CO.,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at 'Washington.

A di'S

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

NOVEMBER, 1872.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

By HERBERT SPENCER.
V. Objective Difficulties {continued).

ANOTHER common cause of very serious perversion of evidence
is the unconscious confounding of observation with inference.
Everywhere, a fertile source of error is the putting down as something
perceived what is really a conclusion drawn from something perceived ;
and this is a more than usually fertile source of error in Sociology.
Here is an instance :

A few years ago Dr. Stark published the results of comparisons
he had made between the rates of mortality among the married and
among the celibate ; showing, as it seemed, the greater healthfulness
of married life. Some criticisms made upon his argument did not
seriously shake it ; and he has been since referred to as having con-
clusively proved the alleged relation. More recently I have seen
quoted from the Medical Press and Circular the following summary
of results supposed to tell the same tale :

" M. Bertillon has made a communication on this subject (the Influence of
Marriage) to the Brussels Academy of Medicine, which has been published in
the Revue Scientiftque. From 25 to 30 years of age the mortality per 1,000 in
France amounts to 6.2 in married men, 10.2 in bachelors, and 21.8 in widows.
In Brussels the mortality of married women is 9 per 1,000, girls the same, and
widows as high as 16.9. In Belgium, from 7 per 1,000 among married men, the
number rises to 8.5 in bachelors and 24.6 in widows. The proportion is the
same in Holland. From 8.2 in married men, it rises to 11.7 in bachelors, and
16.9 in widowers, or 12.8 among married women, 8.5 in spinsters, and 13.8 in
widows. The result of all the calculations is that from 25 to 30 years of age
the mortality per 1,000 is 4 in married men, 10.4 in bachelors, and 22 in widow-
ers. This beneficial influence of marriage is manifested at all ages, being always
more strongly marked in men than in women."

VOL. II. — 1

2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I will not dwell on the fallacy of the above conclusions as referring to
the relative mortality of widows — a fallacy sufficiently obvious to any
one who thinks awhile. I will confine myself to the less-conspicuous
fallacy in the comparison between the mortalities of married and celi-
bate, fallen into by M. Bertillon as well as Dr. Stark. Clearly as their
figures seem to furnish proof of some direct causal relation between
marriage and longevity, they really furnish no proof whatever. There
may be such a relation; but the evidence assigned forms no warrant
for inferring it.

We have but to consider a little the circumstances which in many
cases determine marriage, and those which in other cases prevent
marriage, to see that the connection which the figures apparently imply
is not the real connection. Where attachments exist, what most fre-
quently decides the question for or against marriage ? The possession
of adequate means. While some are so reckless as to marry without
means, yet it is undeniable that in very many instances marriage is
delayed by the man, or forbidden by the parents, or not assented to
by the woman, until there is reasonable evidence of ability to meet the
responsibilities. Of those men whose marriages depend on getting
the needful income, which are the most likely to get the needful in-
come ? Those who are best, physically and mentally — the strong, the
intellectually capable, the morally well-balanced. Often bodily vigor
achieves a success-, and therefore a revenue, which bodily weakness,
unable to bear the stress of competition, cannot achieve. Often supe-
rior intelligence brings promotion and increase of salary, while stupid-
ity lags behind in ill-paid posts. Often caution, self-control, and a
far-seeing sacrifice of present to future, secure remunerative offices that
are never given to the impulsive or the reckless. But, what are the
effects of bodily vigor, of intelligence, of prudence, on longevity, when
compared with the effects of feebleness, of stupidity, of deficient self-
control? Obviously the first further the maintenance of life, and the
second tend toward premature death. That is, the qualities which, on
the average of cases, give a man an advantage in getting the means of
marrying, are the qualities which make him likely to be a long liver j
and conversely.

There is even a more direct relation of the same general nature.
In all creatures of high type, it is only when individual growth and
development are nearly complete that the production of new indi-
viduals becomes possible ; and the power of producing and bringing
up new individuals is measured by the amount of vital power in excess
of that needful for self-maintenance. The reproductive instincts, and
all their accompanying emotions, become dominant when the demands
for individual evolution are diminishing, and there is arising a surplus
of energy which makes possible the rearing of offspring as well as the
preservation of self; and, speaking generally, these instincts and emo-
tions are strong in proportion as this surplus vital energy is great.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 3

But to have a large surplus of vital energy implies a good organization,
which is on the average of cases likely to last long. So that, in fact,
the superiority of physique which is accompanied by strength of the
instincts and emotions causing marriage is a superiority of physique
also conducive to longevity.

One further influence tells in the same direction. Marriage is not
altogether determined by the desires of men ; it is determined in part
by the preferences of women. Other things equal, women are attracted
toward men of power — physical, emotional, intellectual ; and obviously
their freedom of choice leads them in many cases to refuse inferior
samples of men; especially the malformed, the diseased, and those
who are ill-developecl, physically and mentally. So that, in so far as
marriage is determined by female selection, the average result on men
is that, while the best easily get wives, a certain proportion of the worst
are left without wives. This influence, therefore, joins in bringing into
the ranks of married men those most likely to be long-lived, and keep-
ing in bachelorhood those least likely to be long-lived.

In three ways, then, does that superiority of organization which
conduces to long life also conduce to marriage. It is normally ac-
companied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions prompting
marriage ; there goes along with, it that power which can secure the
means of making marriage practicable ; and it increases the probability
of success in courtship. The figures given afford no proof that mar-
riage and longevity are cause and consequence ; but they simply verify
the inference which might be drawn a priori, that marriage and lon-
gevity are concomitant results of the same cause.

This striking instance of the way in which inference may be mis-
taken for fact, will sufficiently serve as a warning against another of
the dangers that await us in dealing with sociological data. Statistics
having shown that married men live longer than single men, it seems
an irresistible implication that married life is healthier than single life.
And yet we see that the implication is not at all irresistible : though
such a connection may exist, it is not demonstrated by the evidence
assigned. Judge, then, how difficult it must be, among those social
phenomena where the dependencies are more entangled, to distinguish
between the seeming relations and the real relations.

Once more, we are ever liable to be led away by superficial, trivial
facts, from those deep-seated and really important facts which they
indicate. Always the small details of social life, the interesting events,
the curious things which serve for gossip, will, if we allow them, hide
from us the vital connections and the vital actions underneath. Every
social phenomenon results from an immense aggregate of general and
special causes ; and we may either take the phenomenon itself as in-
trinsically momentous, or, along with other phenomena, may take it as
indicating some inconspicuous truth of real significance. Let us con-
trast the two courses.

4. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Some months ago a correspondent of the Times, writing from Cal-
cutta, said :

" The Calcutta University examinations of any year would supply curious
material for reflection on the value of our educational systems. The prose
test in the entrance examination this year includes 'Ivanhoe.' Here are a few
of the answers which I have picked up. The spelling is bad, but that I have
not cared to give :

"Question: 'Dapper man?' (Answer 1.) 'Man of superfluous 'knowl-
edge.' (A. 2.) 'Mad.' (Q.) ' Democrat? '' (A. 1.) 'Petticoat Government.'
(A. 2.) 'Witchcraft.' (A. 3.) ' Half turning of the horse.' (Q.) 'Babylonish
jargon?' (A. 1.) 'A vessel made at Babylon.' (A. 2.) 'A kind of drink
made at Jerusalem.' (A. 3.) 'A kind of coat worn by Babylonians.' (Q.) 'Lay
brother?' (A. 1.) 'A bishop.' (A. 2.) ' A step-brother.' (A. 3.) ' A scholar
of the same godfather.' (Q.) 'Sumpter-mule? ' (A.) 'A stubborn Jew.' (Q.)
' Bilious-looking fellow ? ' (A. 1.) ' A man of strict character.' (A. 2.) 'A
person having a nose like the bill of an eagle.' (Q.) ' Cloister ? ' (A.) 'A kind
of shell.' (Q.) 'Tavern politicians? ' (A. 1.) ' Politicians in charge of the
alehouse.' (A. 2.) ' Mere vulgars.' (A. 3.) ' Managers of the priestly
church.' (Q.) 'A pair of cast-off galligaskins ? ' (A.) ' Two gallons of wine.' "

The fact here drawn attention to as significant is, that these Hin-
doo youths, during their matriculation examination, betrayed so much
ignorance of the meanings of words and expressions contained in an
English work they had read. And the intended implication appears
to be that they were proved unfit to begin their college careers. If,
now, instead of accepting that which is presented to us, we look a
little below it, that which may strike us as more noteworthy is the
amazing folly of an examiner who proposes to test the fitness of
youths for commencing their higher education, by seeing how much
they know of the technical terms, cant-phrases, slang, and even extinct
slang, talked by the people of another nation. Instead of the unfitness
of the boys, which is pointed out to us, we may see rather the unfit-
ness of those concerned in educating them.

If, again, not dwelling on the particular fact underlying the one
offered to our notice, we consider it along with others of the same
class, our attention is arrested by the general fact that examiners, and
more especially those appointed under recent systems of administra-
tion, habitually put questions of which a large proportion are utterly
inappropriate. As I learn from his son, one of our judges not long
since found himself unable to answer an examination-paper that had
been put before law-students. A well-known Greek scholar, editor of
a Greek play, who was appointed examiner, found that the examina-
tion-paper set by his ■ predecessor was too difficult for him. Mr.
Froude, in his inaugural address at St. Andrews, describing a paper
set by an examiner in English history, said, " I could myself have
answered two questions out of a dozen. And I learn from Mr. G. H.
Lewes that he could not give replies to the questions on English
literature which the Civil Service examiners had put to his son. Join-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 5

inf which testimonies with kindred ones coming- from students arid
professors on all sides, we find the really noteworthy thing to be that
examiners are concerned not so much to set questions fit for students
as to set questions which make manifest their own extensive learning.
Especially if they are young, and have reputations to make or to
justify, they seize the occasion for displaying their erudition, regard-
less of the interests of those they examine.

If we look through this more significant and general fact for the
still deeper fact it grows out of, there rises before us the question —
Who examines the examiners ? How happens it that men, com-
petent in their special knowledge but so incompetent in their general
judgment, should occupy the places they do ? This prevailing fault-
iness of the examiners shows conclusively that the administration is
faulty at its centre. Somewhere or other, the power of ultimate
decision is exercised by those who are unfit to exercise it. If the
examiners of the examiners were set to fill up an examination-paper
which had for its subject the right conduct of examinations, and the
proper qualifications for examiners, there would come out very unsatis-
factory answers.

Having seen through the small details and the wider facts down
to these deeper facts, we may, on contemplating them, perceive that
these, too, are not the deepest or most significant. It becomes clear
that those having supreme authority suppose, as men in general do,
that the sole essential thing for a teacher or examiner is complete
knowledge of that which he has to teach, or respecting which he has
to examine. Whereas a coessential thing is a knowledge of Psy-
chology; and especially that part of Psychology which deals with the
evolution of the faculties. Unless, either by special study or by daily
observation and quick insight, he has gained an approximately-true
conception of how minds perceive, and reflect, and generalize, and by
what processes their ideas grow from concrete to abstract, and from
simple to complex, no one is competent to give lessons that will
effectually teach, or to ask questions which will effectually measure the
efficiency of teaching. Further, it becomes manifest that, in common
with the public at large, those in authority assume that the goodness
of education is to be tested by the quantity of knowledge acquired.
Whereas it is to be much more truly tested by the capacity for using
knowledge — by the extent to which the knowledge gained has been
turned into faculty, so as to be available both for the purposes of life
and for the purposes of independent investigation. Though there is a
growing consciousness that a mass of unorganized information is, after
all, of but small value, and that there is more value in less informa-
tion well organized, yet the noteworthy truth is that this consciousness
has not got itself officially embodied ; and that our educational ad-
ministration is working, and will long continue to work, in pursuance
of a crude and outworn belief.

6 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE M ON TEL Y.

As here, then, so in other eases meeting us in the present and all
through the past, we have to contend with the difficulty that the
greater part of the evidence supplied to us, as of chief interest and im-
portance, is really of value only for what it -indicates. We have to re-
sist the temptation to dwell in those trivialities which make up nine-
tenths of our records and histories ; and which are worthy of attention
solely because of the things they indirectly imply or the things tacitly
asserted along with them.

Beyond those vitiations of evidence due to random observations, to
the subjective states of the observers, to their enthusiasms, or prepos-
sessions, or self-interests — beyond those that arise from the general
tendency to set down as a fact observed what is really an inference
from an observation, and also those that arise from the general ten-
dency to omit the dissection by which small surface results are traced
to large interior causes — there come those vitiations of evidence con-
sequent on its distribution in Space. Of whatever class, political,
moral, religious, commercial, etc., may be the phenomena we have to
consider, a society presents them in so diffused and multitudinous a
way, and under such various relations to us, that the conceptions we
can frame are at best extremely inadequate.

Consider how impossible it is truly to conceive so relatively simple
a thing as the territory which a society covers. Even by the aid of
maps, geographical and geological, slowly elaborated by multitudes of
surveyors — even by the aid of descriptions of towns, counties, moun-
tainous and rural districts — even by the aid of such personal observa-
tions as we have made here and there in journeys during life ; we can
reach nothing approaching to a true idea of the actual varied surface
• — arable, grass-covered, wooded ; fiat, undulating, rocky ; drained by
rills, brooks, and slow rivers ; sprinkled with cottages, farms, villas,
cities. Imagination simply rambles hither and thither, and fails utterly
to frame an adequate thought of the whole. How, then, shall we frame
an adequate thought of a diffused moral feeling, of an intellectual
state, of a commercial activity, pervading this territory ; unaided by
maps, and aided only by the careless statements of careless observers?
Respecting most of the phenomena, considered as displayed by a whole
nation, only the dimmest apprehensions are possible ; and how untrust-
worthy they are, is shown by every parliamentary debate, by every
day's newspapers, and by every evening's conversations ; which sev-
erally disclose quite conflicting estimates.

See how various are the statements made respecting any nation in
its character and actions by each traveller visiting it. There is a
story, apt if not true, of a Frenchman who, having been three weeks
here, proposed to write a book on England ; who, after three months,
found that he was not quite ready ; and who, after three years, con-
cluded that he knew nothing about it. And every one, who looks

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 7

back and compares his early impressions respecting states of things in
his own society with the impressions he now has, will see how erroneous
were the beliefs once so decided, and how probable it is that even his
revised beliefs are but very partially true. On remembering how
wrong he was in his preconceptions of the people and the life in some
unvisited part of the kingdom — on remembering how different, from
those he had imagined, were the characters he actually found in certain
alien classes and along with certain alien creeds — he will see how
greatly this wide diffusion of social facts impedes true appreciation of
them.

Moreover, there are illusions consequent on what we may call moral
perspective, which we do not habitually correct in thought, as we
correct in perception the illusions of physical perspective. A small
object close to, occupies a larger visual area than a mountain afar off;
but here our well-organized experiences enable us instantly to rectify
a false inference suggested by the subtended angles. ISTo such prompt
rectification for the perspective is made in sociological observations.
A small event next door, producing a larger impression than a great
event in another country, is over-estimated. Conclusions, prematurely
drawn from social experiences daily occurring around us, are difficult
to displace by clear proofs that elsewhere wider social experiences
point to quite opposite conclusions.

A further great difficulty to which we are thus introduced is, that
the comparisons of experiences, by which alone we can finally establish
relations of cause and effect among social phenomena, can rarely be
made between cases in all respects fit for comparison. Every society
differs specifically, if not generically, from every other. Hence it is a
peculiarity of the Social Science that parallels drawn between different
societies do not afford grounds for decided conclusions — will not, for
instance, show us with certainty what is an essential phenomenon in
a given society and what is a non-essential one. Biology deals with
numerous individuals of a species, and with many species of a genus,
and by comparing them can see what traits are specifically constant
and what generically constant ; and the like holds more or less with
the other concrete sciences. But comparisons between societies, among
which we may almost say that each individual is a species by itself,
y eld much less definite results : the necessary characters are not thus
readily distinguishable from the accidental characters.

So that, even supposing we have perfectly valid data for our socio-
logical generalizations, there still lies before us the difficulty that
these data are, in many cases, so multitudinous and diffused that we
cannot adequately consolidate them into true conceptions ; the addi-
tional difficulty, that the moral perspective under which they are pre-
sented can scarcely ever be so allowed for as to secure true ideas of
proportions; and the further difficulty, that comparisons of our vague
and incorrect conceptions concerning oue society with our kindred

8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

conceptions concerning another society, have always to be taken with
the qualification that the comparisons are only partially justifiable,
because the compared things are only partially alike in their other
traits.

An objective difficulty, even greater still, which the Social Science
presents, arises from the distribution of its facts in Time. Those who
look on a society as either supernaturally created or created by Acts
of Parliament, and who consequently consider successive stages of its
existence as having no necessary dependence on one another, will not
be deterred from drawing political conclusions from passing facts, by
a consciousness of the slow genesis of social phenomena. But those
who have risen to the belief that societies are gradually evolved in
structure and function, as in growth, will be made to hesitate ou con-
templating the long unfolding through which early causes work out
late results.

Even true appreciation of the successive facts which an individual
life presents, is very generally hindered by inability to grasp the long-
drawn processes by which ultimate effects are produced ; as we may
see in the foolish mother who, yielding to her perverse child, gains the
immediate benefit of peace, and cannot be made to realize the evil of
chronic dissension which her policy will hereafter bring about. And
in the life of a nation, which, if of high type, lasts at least a hundred
individual lives, correct estimation of results is still more hindered by
this immense duration of the processes through which antecedents
bring their consequents. In. judging of political good and evil, the
average legislator thinks much after the manner of the mother dealing
with the spoiled child : if a course is productive of immediate benefit,
that is considered sufficient justification. Quite recently an inquiry
has been made into the results of an administration which had been in
action some five years only, with the tacit assumption that, supposing
the results were proved good, the administration would be justified.

And yet to those who look into the records of the past not to revel
in narratives of battles or to gloat over court-scandals, but to find how
institutions and laws have arisen and how they have worked, there is
no truth more obvious than that generation after generation must pass
before you can see what is the outcome of an action that has been set
up. Take the example furnished us by our Poor-Laws. When vil-
leinage had passed away and serfs had no longer to be maintained by
their owners — when, in the absence of any one to control and take care
of serfs, there arose an increasing class of mendicants and " sturdy
rogues, preferring robbery to labor " — when, in Richard the Second's
time, authority over such was given to justices and sheriffs, out of
which there presently grew the binding of servants, laborers, and
beggars, to their respective localities — when, to meet the case of
beggars, " impotent to serve," the people of the districts in which thev

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. g

were found were made in some measure responsible for them (so, re-
introducing in a more general form the feudal arrangement of attach-
ment to the soil, and reciprocal claim on the soil) — it was not suspected
that the foundations were laid for a system which would, in after-times,
bring about a demoralization threatening general ruin. When, in
subsequent centuries, to meet the evils of again-increasing vagrancy
which punishment failed to repress, these measures, reenacted with
modifications, ended in making the people of each parish chargeable
with the maintenance of their poor, while it reestablished the severest
penalties on vagabondage, even to death without benefit of clergy,, no
one ever anticipated that, while the penal elements of this legislation
would by-and-by become so mollified as to have little practical effect
in checking idleness, the accompanying arrangements would eventually
take such forms as immensely to encourage idleness. Neither legisla-
tors nor others foresaw that in 230 years the poor's-rate, having grown
to seven millions, would become a public spoil of which we read that —

" The ignorant believed it an inexhaustible fund which belonged to them.
To obtain their share the brutal bullied the administrators, the profligate ex-
hibited their bastards which must be fed, the idle folded their arms and waited
till they got it ; ignorant boys and girls married upon it ; poachers, thieves, and
prostitutes, extorted it by intimidation ; country justices lavished it for popular-
ity, and guardians for convenience. . . . Better men sank down among the
worse ; the rate-paying cottager, after a vain struggle, went to the pay-table to
seek relief; the modest girl might starve while her bolder neighbor received
Is. M. per week for every illegitimate child."

As sequences of the law of Elizabeth, no one imagined that, in rural
districts, farmers, becoming chief administrators, would pay part of
their men's wages out of the rates (so taxing the rest of the rate-
payers for the cultivation of their fields) ; and that this abnormal
relation of master and man would entail bad cultivation. No one
imagined that, to escape poor's-rates, landlords would avoid building
cottages, and would even clear cottages away ; so causing overcrowd-
ing, with consequent evils, bodily and mental. No one imagined that
workhouses, so called, would become places for idling in ; and places
where married couples, habitually residing, displayed their " elective
affinities" time after time.1 Yet these, and detrimental results which
it would take pages to enumerate, culminating in that general result
most detrimental of all — helping the worthless to multiply at the ex-
pense of the worthy — finally came out of these measures taken ages
ago merely to mitigate certain immediate evils.

Is it not obvious, then, that only in the course of those long periods

i In one case, " out of thirty married couples, there was not one man then living
with his own wife, and some of them had exchanged wives two or three times since their
entrance." This, along with various kindred illustrations, will be found in tracts on the
Poor-Law, by a late uncle of mine, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, of Hinton Charterhouse,
who was chairman of the Bath Union during its first six years.

io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

required to mould national characters and habits and sentiments, will
the truly important results of a public policy show themselves ? Let
us consider the question a little further.

In a society living, growing, changing, every new factor becomes
a permanent force ; modifying more or less the direction of movement
determined by the aggregate of forces. Never simple and direct, but,
by the cooperation of so many causes, made irregular, involved, and
always rhythmical, the course of social change can never be judged of
in its general direction by inspecting any small portion of it. Each
action will inevitably be followed, after a while, by some direct or
indirect reaction, and this again by a re-reaction ; and, until the suc-
cessive effects have shown themselves, it is impossible to say how the
total motion will be modified. You must compare positions at great
distances from one another in time, before you can perceive rightly
where things are tending. Even so simple a thing as a curve of single
curvature cannot have its nature determined unless there is a con-
siderable length of it. See here these four points close together. The
curve passing through them may be a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, an
hyperbola ; or it may be a catenarian, a cycloid, a spiral. Let the
points be farther apart, and it becomes possible to form some opinion
of the nature of the curve — it is obviously not a circle. Let them be
more remote still, and it may be seen that it is neither an ellipse nor
a parabola. And, when the distances are relatively great, the mathe-
matician can say with certainity what curve alone will pass through
them all. Surely, then, in such complex and slowly-evolving move-
ments as those of a nation's life, all the smaller and greater rhythms
of which fall within certain general directions, it is impossible that
such general directions can be traced by looking at stages that are
close together — it is impossible that the effect wrought on any general,
direction, by some additional force, can be truly computed from obser-
vations extending over but a few years, or but a few generations.

For, in the case of these most-involved of all movements, there is
the difficulty, paralleled in no other movements (being only approached
in those of individual evolution), that each new factor, besides affecting
in an immediate way the course of a movement, affects it also in a
remote way by changing the amounts and directions of all other
factors. A fresh influence brought into play on a society not only
affects its members directly in their acts, but also indirectly in their
characters. Continuing to work on their characters generation after
generation, and modifying by inheritance the feelings which they bring
into social life at large, this influence alters the intensities and bearings
of all other influences throughout the society. By slowly initiating
modifications of Nature, it brings into play forces of many kinds, in-
calculable in their strengths and tendencies, that act without regard
to the original influence, and may produce quite opposite effects.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. n

Fully to exhibit this objective difficulty, and to show more clearly
still how important it is to take as our data for sociological conclu-
sions, not the brief sequences, but the sequences that extend over
centuries or are traceable throughout civilization, let us draw a lesson
from a trait which all regulative agencies in all nations have displayed.

The original meaning of human sacrifices, which is otherwise tol-
erably clear, becomes quite clear on finding that where cannibalism is
still rampant, and where the largest consumers of human flesh are the
chiefs, these chiefs, undergoing apotheosis when they die, are believed
thereafter to feed on the souls of the departed — the souls being regarded
as duplicates equally material with the bodies they belong to. And,
should any doubt remain, it must be dissipated by the accounts we
have of the ancient Mexicans, whose priests, when war had not lately
furnished a victim, complained to the king that the god was hungry ;
and who, when a victim was sacrificed, offered his heart to the idol
(bathing its lips with his blood, and even putting portions of the heart
into its mouth), and then cooked and ate the rest of the body them-
selves. Here the fact of significance to which attention is drawn, and
which various civilizations show us, is that the sacrificing of prisoners
or others, once a general usage among cannibal ancestry, continues as
an ecclesiastical usage long after having died out in the ordinary life
of a society. Two facts, closely allied with this fact, have like general
implications. Cutting implements of stone remain in use for sacrificial
purposes when implements of bronze, and even of iron, are used for all
other purposes. Further, the primitive method of obtaining fire, by the
friction of pieces of wood, survives in religious ceremonies ages after
its abandonment in the household ; and even now, among the Hindoos,
the flame for the altar is kindled by the " fire-drill." These are strik-
ing instances of the pertinacity with which the oldest part of the regu-
lative organization maintains its original traits in the teeth of influences
that modify things around it.

The like holds in respect of the language, spoken and written, which
it employs. Among the Egyptians the most ancient form of hiero-
glyphics was retained for sacred records, when more developed forms
were adopted for other purposes. The continued use of Hebrew for
religious services among the Jews, and the continued use of Latin for
the Roman Catholic service, show us how strong this tendency is,
apart from the particular creed. Among ourselves, too, a less domi-
nant ecclesiasticism exhibits a kindred trait. The English of the Bible
is of an older style than the English of the date at which the transla-
tion was made ; and in the church service various words retain obso-
lete meanings, and others are pronounced in obsolete ways. Even the
typography, with its illuminated letters of the rubric, shows traces of
the same tendency ; while Puseyites and ritualists, aiming to reenforce
ecclesiasticism, betray a decided leaning toward archaic print, as well
as archaic ornaments. In the sesthetic direction, indeed, their move-

lz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ment has brought hack the most primitive type of sculpture for monu
mental purposes ; as may be seen in Canterbury Cathedral, where, in
two new monuments to ecclesiastics, one being Archbishop Sumner,
the robed figures recline on their backs, with hands joined, after the
manner of the mailed knights on early tombs — presenting complete
symmetry of attitude, which is a distinctive trait of barbaric art,
as every child's drawing of a man and every idol carved by a savage
shows us.

A conscious as well as an unconscious adhesion to the old in usage
and doctrine is shown. Not only among Roman Catholics, but among
many Protestants, to ascertain what the Fathers said, is to ascertain
what should be believed. In the pending controversy respecting the
Athanasian Creed, we see how much authority attaches to an antique
document. The antagonism between Convocation and the lay mem-
bers of the Church — the one as a body wishing to retain the cursing
clauses and the other to exclude them — further shows that official
Protestantism adheres to antiquity much more than non-official Prot-
estantism : a contrast equally displayed not long since between the
opinions of the lay part and the clerical part of the Protestant Irish
Church.

Throughout political organizations the like tendency, though less
dominant, is very strong. The gradual establishment of law, by the
consolidation of custom, is the formation of something fixed in the
midst of things that are changing ; and, regarded under its most gen-
eral aspect as the agency which maintains a permanent order, it is in
the very nature of a State-organization to be relatively rigid. The
way in which primitive principles and practices, no longer fully in
force among individuals ruled, survive in the actions of ruling agents,
is curiously illustrated by the long retention between nobles of a right
of feud after it had been disallowed between citizens. Chief vassals,
too, retained this power to secure justice for themselves after smaller
vassals lost it : not only was a right of war with one another recog-
nized, but also a right of defence against the king. And we see that
even now, in the relations between Governments, there persists that
use of force to "remedy injuries, which originally existed between all
individuals. As bearing in the same direction, it is significant that
the right of trial by battle, which was a regulated form of the aborigi-
nal system under which men administered justice in their own cases,
survived among the ruling classes when no longer legal among inferior
classes. Even on behalf of religious communities judicial duels were
fought. Ilere the thing it concerns us to note is, that the system of
fighting in person and fighting by deputy, when no longer otherwise
lawful, remained in force, actually or formally, in various parts of the
regulative organization. Up to the reign of George III., trial by
battle could be claimed as an alternative of trial by jury. Duels con-
tinued till quite recently between members of the ruling classes, and

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 13

especially between officers ; and even now in Continental armies duel-
ling is not only recognized as proper, but is, in some cases, imperative.
And then, showing most curiously how in connection with the oldest
part of the governing organization these oldest usages survive longest,
we have, in the coronation ceremony, a champion in armor uttering by
herald a challenge to all comers on behalf of the monarch.

If, from the agencies by which law is enforced, we pass to legal
forms, language, documents, etc., the like tendency is everywhere con-
spicuous. Parchment is retained for law-deeds, though paper has re-
placed it for other purposes. The form of writing is an old form.
Latin and Norman-French terms are still in use for legal purposes,
though not otherwise in use ; and even old English words, such as
" seize," retain, in Law, meanings which they have lost in current
speech. In the execution of documents, too, the same truth is illus-
trated ; for the seal, which was originally the signature, continues,
though the written signature now practica'ly replaces it — nay, we re-
tain a symbol of the symbol, as may be seen in every share-transfer,
where there is a paper-wafer to represent the seal. Even still more
antique usages survive in legal transactions ; as in the form extant in
Scotland of handing over a portion of rock when an estate is sold, which
evidently answers to the ceremony among the ancient nations of send-
ing earth and water as a sign of yielding territory.

From the working of State-departments, too, many kindred illus-
trations might be given. Even under the peremptory requirements
of national safety, the flint-lock for muskets was but tardily replaced
by the percussion-lock ; and it was generations after tbe rifle had been
commonly in use for sporting purposes before it came into more than
sparing use for military purposes. Book-keeping by double entry had
long been permanently established in the mercantile world before it
superseded book-keeping by single entry in Government offices — its
adoption dating back only to 1834, when a still more antique sys-
tem of keeping accounts, by notches cut on sticks, was put an end to
by the conflagration that resulted from the burning of the Exchequer
tallies.

The like holds with apparel, in general and in detail. Cocked hats
are yet to be seen on the heads of officers. An extinct form of dress
still holds its ground as the court-dress ; and the sword once habit-
ually worn by gentlemen has become the dress-sword worn only on
State-occasions. Everywhere officialism has its established uniforms,
which may be traced back to old fashions that have disappeared from
ordinary life. Some of these antique articles of costume we see sur-
mounting the heads of judges ; others there are which still hang
round the necks of the clergy ; and others which linger on the legs of
bishops.

Thus, from the use of a flint-knife by the Jews for the religious
ceremony of circumcision, down to the pronunciation of the terminal

H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

syllable of the prseterite in our Church service, down to the oyez shouted
in a law-court to secure attention, down to the retention of epaulets for
officers, and down to the Norman-French words in which the royal as-
sent is given, this persistence is everywhere traceable. And when we
find this persistence manifested throughout all ages in all departments
of the regulative organization — when we see it to be the natural ac-
companiment of the function of that organization, which is essentially
restraining — when we estimate the future action of the organization in
any case, by observing the general sweep of its curve throughout long
periods of the past — we shall see how misleading may be the conclu-
sions drawn from recent facts taken by themselves. Where the regu-
lative organization is anywhere made to undertake additional func-
tions, we shall not form sanguine anticipations on the strength of im-
mediate results of the desired kind ; but we shall suspect that, after
the phase of early activity has passed by, the plasticity of the new
structure will rapidly diminish, the characteristic tendency toward
rigidity will begin to show itself, and in place of a progressive effect
there will come a restrictive effect.

The reader will now understand more clearly the meaning of the
assertion that true conceptions of sociological changes are to be
reached only by contemplating their slow genesis through centuries ;
and that basing inferences on results shown in short periods is as
illusory as would be judging of the Earth's curvature by observing
whether we are walking up or down hill. After recognizing which
truth he will perceive how great is another of the obstacles in the way
of the Social Science.

" But does not all this prove too much ? If it is so difficult to get
sociological evidence that is not vitiated by the subjective states of the
witnesses, by their prejudices, enthusiasms, interests, etc. — if, where
there is impartial examination, the conditions of the inquiry are of
themselves so apt to falsify the result — if there is so general a prone-
ness to assert as facts observed what were really inferences from ob-
servations, and so great a tendency also to be blinded by exterior trivi-
alities to interior essentials — if, even where accurate data are accessible,
their multitudinousness and diffusion in Space make it impracticable
clearly to grasp them as wholes, while their unfolding in Time is so
slow that antecedents and consequents cannot be mentally represented
in their true relations — is it not manifestly impossible that a Social
Science can be framed ? "

It must be admitted that the array of objective difficulties thus
brought together is formidable : and were it the aim of the Social
Science to draw quite special and definite conclusions, which must
depend for their truth upon exact data accurately coordinated, it
would obviously have to be abandoned. But there are certain classes
of general facts which remain after all errors in detail, however pro-

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS.

15

duced, have been allowed for. Whatever conflicts there may be
among accounts of events that occurred during the feudal ages, com-
parison of them brings out the incontestable truth that there was
a Feudal System. By implication, chronicles and laws indicate the
traits of this system ; and on putting side by side narratives and
documents written, not to tell us about the Feudal System but for
quite other purposes, we get tolerably clear ideas of these traits in
their essentials — ideas made clearer still on collating the evidence
furnished by different contemporary societies. Similarly throughout.
By making due use not so much of that which past and present wit-
nesses intend to tell us, as of that which they tell us by implication, it
is possible to collect data for inductions respecting social structures
and functions in their origin and development : the obstacles which
arise in the disentangling of such data in the case of any particular
society being mostly surmountable by the help of the comparative
method.

Nevertheless, the difficulties that have been enumerated must be
ever present to us. Throughout, we hope to depend on testimony ;
and in every case we have to beware of the many modes in which evi-
dence may be vitiated — have to estimate its worth when it has been
discounted in various ways ; and have to take care that our conclu-
sions do not depend upon any particular class of facts gathered from
any particular place or time.

■♦»»

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS.

By Dr. CAEPENTEE, P.E.S., LL.D.

A LECTURE, DELIVERED IK THE HCLME TOWN-HALL, MANCHESTER.

OUR subject to-night links itself in such a very decided manner to
the subject in which we were engaged last week, and the illus-
trations which I shall give you are so satisfactorily explained on the
scientific principle which I endeavored then to expound to you, that I
would spend a very few minutes in just going over some of the points
to which I then particularly directed your attention. My object was
to show you that, between our Mental operations and our Will, there
is something of that kind of relation which exists between a well-
trained horse and his rider; that the Will — if rightly exercised in
early infancy in directing and controlling the mental operations ; in
directing the attention to the objects to which the intellect should be
applied ; in controlling and repressing emotional disturbance ; restrain-
ing the feelings when unduly excited, and putting a check upon the
passions — that the will in that respect has the same kind of influence

1 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

over the mind, or ought to have, as the rider has upon his horse ; that
the powers and activities of the mind are to a very great degree inde-
pendent of the will; that the mind will go on of itself without any-
more than just the starting of the will, in the same manner as a horse
will go on in the direction that it has been accustomed to go with
merely the smallest impulse given by the voice, or the hand, or the
heel of the rider, and every now and then a very slight check (if it is
a well-trained horse) or guidance from the bridle, or from a touch of
the spur, and will follow exactly the course that the rider desires, but
by its own independent power. And, again, I showed you that as
there are occasions on which a horse is best left to itself, so there are
occasions when the mind is best left to itself, without the direction and
control of the will; in fact, in which the operations of the mind are
really disturbed by being continually checked and. guided and pulled
up by the action of the will, the result being really less satisfactory
than when the mind, previously trained and disciplined in that par-
ticular course of activity, is left to itself. I gave you some curious
illustrations of this from occurrences which have taken place in
Dreaming, or in that form of dreaming which we call Somnambulism :
where a legal opinion had been given, or a mathematical problem had
been resolved, in the state of sleep-waking; that is to say, the mind
being very much in the condition of that of the dreamer, its action
being altogether automatic, going on of itself without any direction
or control from the will — but the bodily activity obeying the direction
of the mind. And then I went on to show you that this activity very
often takes place, and works out most important results, even without
our being conscious of any operations going on ; and that some of
these results are the best and most valuable to us in bringing at last
to our consciousness, ideas which we have been vainly searching for —
as in the case where we have endeavored to remember something that
we have not at first been able to retrace, and which has flashed into
our minds in a few hours, or it may be a day or two afterward; or,
ao;ain, when we have been directing our minds to the solution of some
problem which we have put aside in a sort of despair, and yet in the
course of a little time that solution has presented itself while our
minds have either been entirely inactive, as in sleep, or have been
directed into some entirely different channel of action.

Now, like the well-trained horse which will go on of itself with the
smallest possible guidance, yet still under the complete domination
of the rider, and will even find its way home when the rider cannot
direct it thither, we find that the human mind sometimes does that
which even a well-trained horse will do — that it runs away from the
o-uidance of its directing will. Something startles the horse, some-
thing gives it alarm ; and it makes a sudden bound, and then, perhaps,
sets off at a gallop, and the rider cannot pull it up. This alarm often
spreads contagiously, as it were, from one horse to another, as we

EPIDEMIC DELUSIOXS. 17

lately saw in the " stampede " at Aldershot. Or, again, a horse, even
if well trained, when he gets a new rider, sometimes, as we say, " tries
it on," to see whether the horse or the rider is really the master. I
have heard many horsemen say that that is a very familiar experience.
When yon first go ont with a new horse, it may be to a certain degree
restive ; but if the horse finds that yon keep a tight hand upon him,
and that his master knows well how to keep him under control, a little
struggling may have to be gone through, and the horse from that time
becomes perfectly docile and obedient. But, if, on the other hand,
the horse finds that he is the master, even for a short time, no end
of trouble is given afterward to the rider in acquiring that power
which he desires to possess. Now, that is just the case with our
minds ; we may follow out the parallel very closely indeed. We find
that if our minds once acquire habits — habits of thought, habits of
feeling — which are independent of the will, which the will has not
kept under adequate regulation, these habits get the better of us ; and
then we find that it is very difficult indeed to recover that power of
self-direction which we have been aiming at, and which the well-
trained and well-disciplined mind will make its highest object. So,
again, we find that there are states in which, from some defect in the
physical condition of the body, or it may be from some great shock
which has affected the mind and weakened for a time the power of the
will, very slight impulses— just like the slight things that will make a
horse shy — will disturb us unduly ; and we feel that our emotions are
excited in a way that we cannot account for, and we wonder why such
a little thing should worry and vex us in the way that it does. Even
the best of us know, within our own personal experience, that when
we are excessively fatigued in body, or overstrained in mind, our
power of self-control is very much weakened ; so that particular ideas
will take possession of us, and for a time will guide our whole course
of thought, in a manner which our sober judgment makes us feel to be
very undesirable. What, for instance, is more common than for a per-
son to take offence at something that has been said or done by his
most intimate friend, or by some member of his family ; merely be-
cause he has been jaded or overtasked, and has not the power of
bringing to the fair judgment of his common-sense the question
whether tnat offence was really intended, or whether it was a thing he
ought not to take any notice of? He broods over this notion, and
allows it to influence his judgment ; and, if he does not in a day or two
rouse himself and master his feelings by throwing it off, it may give
rise to a permanent estrangement. We are all of us conscious of
states of mind of that kind.

But there are states of mind which lead to very much more serious
disorder, arising from the neglect of that primary discipline and cul-
ture on which I have laid so much stress. We find that ignorance,
and that want of the habit of self-control which very commonly ac-

VOL. II. — 2

18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

companies it, predispose very greatly indeed to the violent excitement
of the feelings, and to the possession of the mind by ideas which we
regard as essentially absurd ; and under these states of excitement of
feeling, and the tendency of these dominant ideas to acquire posses-
sion of the intellect, the strangest aberrations take place, not only in
individuals but in communities ; and it is of such that I have especial-
ly to speak to-night. We know perfectly well, in our individual ex-
perience, that these states tend to produce insanity if they are indulged
in, and if the individual does not make an earnest effort to free him-
self from their influence. But, looking back at the history of the
earlier ages, and carrying that survey down to the present time, we
have experience in all ages of great masses of people being seized upon
by these dominant ideas, accompanied with the excitement of some
passion or strong impulse which leads to the most absurd results ; and
it is of these Epidemic Delusions I have to now speak. The word
" epidemic " simply means something that falls upon, as it were, the
great mass of the people — a delusion which affects the popular mind.
And I believe that I can best introduce the subject to you by showing
you how, in certain merely physical conditions, mere bodily states,
there is a tendency to the propagation, by what is commonly called
imitation, of very strange actions of the nervous system. I suppose
there is no one of you who does not know what an hysteric fit means,
a kind of fit to which young women are especially subject, but which
affects the male sex also. One reason why young women are particu-
larly subject to it is, that in the female the feelings are more easily
excited, while the male generally has a less mobile nervous system, his
feelings being less easily moved, while he is more influenced by the
intellect. These hysteric fits are generally brought on by something
that strongly affects the feelings. Now, it often happens that a case
of this sort presents itself in a school or nunnery, sometimes in a fac-
tory where a number of young women are collected together; one
being seized with a fit, others will go off in a fit of a very similar kind.
There was an instance a good many years ago in a factory in a country
town in Lancashire, in which a young girl was attacked with a violent
convulsive fit, brought on by alarm, consequent upon "one of her com-
panions, a factory operative, putting a mouse down inside her dress.
The girl had a particular antipathy to mice, and the sudden shock
threw her into a violent fit. Some of the other girls who were near
very soon passed off into a similar fit ; and then there got to be a no-
tion that these fits were produced by some emanations from a bale of
cotton ; and the consequence was that they spread, till scores of the
young women were attacked day after day with these violent fits.
The medical man who was called in saw at once what the state of
things was ; he assured them in the first place that this was all non-
sense about the cotton ; and he brought a remedy, in the second place,
which was a very appropriate one under the circumstance — namely,

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 19

an electrical machine ; and lie gave them some good violent shocks,
which would do them no harm, assuring them that this would cure
them. And cure them it did. There was not another attack after-
ward. I remember very well that when I was a student at Bristol,
there was a ward in the hospital to which it was usual to send young
servant-girls; for it was thought undesirable that these girls should be
placed in the ward with women of a much lower class, especially the
lower class of Irishwomen who inhabited one quarter of Bristol, as I
believe there is an Irish quarter in Manchester. These girls were
mostly respectable, well-conducted girls, and it was thought better
that they should be kept together. Now, the result of this was that, if
an hysteric fit took any one of them, the others would follow suit ; and
I remember perfectly well, when I happened to be a resident pupil,
having to go and scold these girls well, threatening them with some
very severe infliction. I forget what was threatened, perhaps it would
be a shower-bath, for any one who went off into one of these fits.
Now, here the cure is effected by a stronger emotion, the emotion of
the dread of — we will not call it punishment — but of a curative meas-
ure ; and this emotion overcame the tendency to what we commonly
call imitation. It is the suggestion produced by the sight of one, that
brings on the fit in another, where there is the predisposition to it.
Now, I believe that in all these cases there is something wrong in the
general health or in the nervous system ; or the suggestion would not
produce such results. Take the common teething-fits of children.
We there see an exciting cause in the cutting of the teeth ; the press-
ure of the tooth against the gum being the immediate cause of the
production of convulsive action. But it will not do so in the healthy
child. I feel sure that in every case where there is a teething-fit, of
whatever kind, there is always some unhealthy condition of the ner-
vous system — sometimes from bad food ; more commonly from bad
air. I have known many instances in which children had fits with
every tooth that they cut, yet when sent into the country they had no
recurrence of the fit. There must have been some predisposition, some
unhealthy condition of the nervous system, to favor the exciting cause,
which, acting upon this predisposition, brings out such very unpleas-
ant results.

There are plenty of stories of this kind that I might relate to you.
For instance, in nunneries it is not at all uncommon, from the secluded
life, and the attention being fixed upon one subject, one particular set
of ideas and feelings — the want of a healthy vent, so to speak, for the
mental activity — that some particular odd propensity has developed
itself. For instance, in one nunnery abroad, many years ago, one of
the youngest nuns began to mew like a cat ; and all the others, after a
time, did the same. In another nunnery one began to bite, and the
others were all affected with the propensity to bite. In one of these
instances the mania was spreading like wild-fire through Germany, ex-

2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tending from one nunnery to another ; and they were obliged to resort
to some such severe measures as I have mentioned to drive it out. It
was set down in some instances to demoniacal possession, but the devil
was very easily exorcised by some pretty strong threat on the part of
the medical man. The celebrated physician Boerhaave was called in
to a case of that kind in an orphan asylum in Holland, and I think his
remedy was a red-hot iron. He heated the poker in the fire, and said
that the next girl who fell into one of these fits should be burnt in the
arm; this was quite sufficient to stop it. In Scotland at one time
there was a great tendency to breaking out into fits of this kind in the
churches. This was particularly the case in Shetland ; and a very wise
minister there told them that the thing could not be permitted, and
that the next person who gave way in this manner — as he was quite
sure they could control themselves if they pleased — should be taken
out and ducked in a pond near. There was no necessity at all to put
his threat into execution. Here, you see, the stronger motive is sub-
stituted for the weaker one, and the stronger motive is sufficient to
induce the individual to put a check upon herself. I have said that it
usually happens with the female sex, though sometimes it occurs with
young men who have more or less of the same constitutional tendency.
What is necessary is to induce a stronger motive, which will call forth
the power of self-control which has been previously abandoned.

Now, this tendency, which here shows itself in convulsive move-
ments of the body, will also show itself in what we may call convul-
sive action of the Mind ; that is, in the excitement of violent feelings
and even passions, leading to the most extraordinary manifestations
of different kinds. The early Christians, you know, practised self-
mortification to a very great degree ; and considered that these pen-
ances were so much scored up to the credit side of their account in
heaven ; that, in fact, they were earning a title to future salvation by
self-mortification. Among other means of self-mortification, they
scourged themselves. That was practised by individuals. But in the
middle ages this disposition to self-mortification would attack whole
communities, especially under the dominant idea that the world was
coming to an end. In the middle of the thirteenth century, about 1250,
there was this prevalent idea that the world was coming to an end ;
and whole communities gave themselves up to this self-mortification
by whipping themselves. These Flagellants went about in bands with
banners, and even music, carrying scourges ; and then, at a given sig-
nal, every one would strip off the upper garment (men, women, and
children joined these bands), and proceed to flog themselves very
severely indeed, or to flog each other. This subsided for a time, but
it broke out again during and immediately after that terrible plague
which is known as the " black death," which devastated Europe in the
reign of Edward III., about the year 1340. This black death seems to
have been the Eastern plague in a very severe form, which we have

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 21

not known in this country since the great plague of London in Charles
IL's time, and one or two smaller outbreaks since, hut which has now
entirely left us. The severity of this plague in Europe was so great
that upon a very moderate calculation one in four of the entire popula-
tion was carried off by it ; and in some instances it is said that nine-
tenths of the people died of it. You may imagine, therefore, what a
terrible infliction it was. And you would have supposed that it would
have called forth the better feelings of men and women generally ; but it
did not. One of the worst features, morally, of that terrible affliction,
was the lamentable suspension of all natural feelings which it seemed
to induce. When any member of a family was attacked by this
plague, every one seemed to desert him, or desert her ; the sick were
left, to die alone, or merely under the charge of any persons who
thought that they would be paid for rendering this service ; and the
funerals were carried on merely by these paid hirelings in a manner
most repulsive to the feelings : and yet the very people who so de-
serted their relatives would join the bands of flagellants, who paraded
about from place to place, and even from country to country — morti-
fying their flesh in this manner for the purpose of saving their own
soids, and, as they said, also making expiation for the great sins which
had brought down this terrible visitation. This system of flagellation
never gained the same head in this country that it did on the Conti-
nent. A band of about 100 came to London about the middle of the
reign of Edward IIL, in the year 1350. They came in the usual style,
with banners and even instruments of music, and they paraded the
streets of London. At a given signal every one lay down and uncov-
ered the shoulders, excepting the last person, who then flogged every
one till he got to the front, where he lay down; and the person last in
the rear stood up, and in his turn flogged every one in front of him.
Then he went to the front and lay down ; and so it went on until the
whole number had thus been flogged, each by every one of his fellows.
This discipline however, did not approve itself to the good citizens of
London, and it is recorded that the band of flagellants returned without
having made any converts. Whether the skins of the London citizens
were too tender, or whether their good sense prevailed over this reli-
gious enthusiasm, we are not informed ; at any rate, the flagellants went
back very much as they came, and the system never took root in this
country ; yet for many years it was carried on elsewhere. One very
curious instance is given of the manner in which it fastened on the
mind — that mothers actually scourged their new-born infants before
they were baptized, believing that in so doing they were making an
offering acceptable to God. Now all this appears to us perfectly ab-
surd. We can scarcely imagine the state of mind that should make
any sober, rational persons suppose that this could be an offering ac-
ceptable to Almighty God ; but it was in accordance with the religious
ideas of the time ; and for a good while even the Church sanctioned

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and encouraged it, until at last various moral irregularities grew up,
of a kind that made the Pope think it a very undesirable thing, and it
was then put down by ecclesiastical authority ; yet it was still prac-
tised in secret for some time longer, so that it is said that even until
the beginning of the last century there were small bands of flagellants
in Italy, who used to meet for this self-mortification.

That was one form in which a dominant idea took possession of the
mind and led to actions which might be called voluntary, for they
were done under this impression, that such self-mortification was an ac-
ceptable offering. But thei-e were other cases in which the action of the
body seemed to be in a very great degree involuntary, just about as
involuntary as an hysteric fit, and yet in which it was performed
under a very distinct idea ; such was what was called the " Dancing
Mania," which followed upon this great plague. This dancing mania
seemed in the first instance to seize upon persons who had a tendency
to that complaint which we now know as St. Vitus's dance — St. Vitus
was, in fact, the patron saint of these dancers. St. Vitus's dance, or
chorea, in the moderate form in which we now know it, is simply this,
that there is a tendency to jerking movements of the body, these move-
ments sometimes going on independently of all voluntary action, and
sometimes accompanying any attempt at voluntary movement ; so that
the body of a person may be entirely at rest until he desires to exe-
cute some ordinary movement, such as lifting his hand to his head to
feed himself, or getting up to walk ; then, when the impulse is given
to execute a voluntary movement, instead of the muscles obeying the
will, the movement is complicated (as it were) with violent jerking ac-
tions, which show that there is quite an independent activity. The
fact is, that stammering is a sort of chorea. We give the name of
chorea to this kind of disturbance of the nervous system, and the action
of stammering is a limited chorea — chorea limited to the muscles con-
cerned in speech, when the person cannot regulate the muscles so as to
bring out the words desired ; the very strongest effort of his will can-
not make the muscles obey him, but there is a jerking, irregular action
every time he attempts to pronounce particular syllables. And the
discipline that the stammerer has to undergo in order to cure or alle-
viate his complaint is just the kind of discipline I have spoken of so
frequently — the fixing the attention on the object to be gained, and
regularly exercising the nerves and muscles in proceeding from that
which they can do to that which they find a difficulty in doing. That
is an illustration of the simpler form of this want of definite control
over the muscular apparatus, connected with a certain mental excite-
ment ; because every one knows that a stammerer is very much affected
by the condition of his feelings at the time. If, for example, he is at
all excited, or if he apprehends that he shall stammer, that is enough
to produce it. I have known persons who never stammered in ordi-
nary conversation, yet when in company with stammerers they could

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 23

scarcely avoid giving way to it ; and even when the subject of stam-
mering was talked about, when the idea was conveyed to their minds,
they would begin to hesitate and stutter, unless they put a very strong
control upon themselves. It is just in this way, then, only in the most
exaggerated form, that these persons were afflicted with what was
called the dancing mania. They would allow themselves to be pos-
sessed with the idea that they must dance; and this dancing went on,
bands going from town to town, and taking in any who would join them.
Instances are recorded in which they would go on for twenty-four or
thirty-six hours, continually dancing and jumping and exerting them-
selves in the most violent manner, taking no food all this time, until at
last they dropped on the ground almost lifeless ; and in fact several per-
sons, it is said, did die from pure exhaustion, and this just because they
were possessed with the idea that they must dance. They were drawn
in, as it were, by the contagion of example ; and, when once they had
given way to it, they did not seem to know when to stop. This was
kept up by music and by the encouragement and excitement of the
crowd around ; and it spread among classes of persons who (it might
be supposed) would have had more power of self-restraint, and would
not have joined such unseemly exhibitions. The extraordinary capa-
city, as it were, for enduring physical pain, was one of the most curi-
ous parts of this condition. They would frequently ask to be struck
violently ; would sometimes lie down, and beg persons to come and
thump and beat them with great force. They seemed to enjoy this. —
In another case that I might mention this was shown still more.
The case was of a similar type, but was connected more distinctly
with the religious idea, and it occurred much more recently. The
case was that known in medical history as the Convulsionnaires of
St.-Mudard. There was a cemetery in Paris in which a great saint
had been interred, and some young women visiting his tomb had been
thrown into a convulsive attack which propagated itself extensively ;
and these convulsionnaires spreading the contagion, as it were, into
different classes of French society, one being seized after another till
the number became very great in all grades. Here, again, one of the
most curious things was the delight they seemed to take in what
would induce in other persons the most violent physical suffering.
There was an organized band of attendants, who went about with
clubs, and violently beat them. This was called the grand secours,
which was administered to those who were subject to these convulsive
attacks. You would suppose that these violent blows with the clubs
would do great mischief to the bodies of these people ; but they only
seemed to allay their suffering.

This, then, is another instance of the mode in which this tendency
to strange actions under the dominance of a particular idea will spread
through a community. Here you have the direct operation of the per-
verted mind upon the body. But there are a great many cases in

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which the perversion shows itself more in the mental state alone, lead-
ing- to strange aberrations of Mind, and ultimately to very sad results
in the condition of society where these things have spread, but not
leading to any thing like these convulsive paroxysms. I particularly
allude now to the epidemic belief in Witchcraft, which, more or less,
formerly prevailed constantly among the mass of the population, but
every now and then broke out with great vehemence. This belief in
witchcraft comes down to us from very ancient periods ; and at the
present time it is entertained by the lowest and most ignorant of the
population in all parts of the world. We have abundant instances of
it still, I am sorry to say, in our own community. We have poor, ig-
norant servant-girls allowing themselves to be — if I may use such a
word — " humbugged " by some designing old woman, who persuades
them that she can predict the husbands they are to have, or tell where
some article that they have lost is to be found, and who extracts money
from them merely as a means of obtaining a living in this irregular
way, and I believe at the bottom rather enjoying the cheat. Every
now and then we hear of some brutal young farmer who has pretty
nearly beaten to death a poor old woman, whom he suspected of caus-
ing; a murrain amonsr his cattle. This is what we know to exist among
the least cultivated of the savage nations at the present time, and
always to have existed. But we hope that the progress of rationalism
in our own community will, in time, put an end to this, as it has in the
middle and upper ranks of society during the last century or century
and a half. It is not very long since almost every one believed in the
possession of these occult powers by men and women, but especially
by old women. This belief has prevailed generally in countries which
have been overridden by a gloomy fanaticism in religious matters. I
speak of it simply as a matter of history. There is no question at all that
this prevailed where the Romish Church was most intolerant, espe-
cially in countries where the Inquisition was dominant, and its powers
were exerted in such a manner as to repress free thought and the free
exercise of feeling ; and, again, where strong Calvinism has exercised
an influence of exactly the same kind — as in Scotand, a century and a
half ago, and in New England, where there was the same kind of
religious fanaticism. It is in these communities that belief in witch-
craft has been most rife, has extended itself most generally, and has
taken possession of the public mind most strongly ; and the most ter-
rible results have happened. Now, I will only cite one particular in-
stance, that of New England, in the early part of the last century and the
end of the century before. Not very long after the settlement of New
England, there was a terrible outbreak of this belief in witchcraft. It
began in a family, the children of which were out of health ; and cer-
tain persons whom they disliked were accused of having bewitched
them. Against these persons a great deal of evidence that we should
now consider most absurd was brought forward, and they were actually

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 25

executed : and some of them under torture, or under moral torture —
for it was not merely physical torture that was applied ; in many cases
it was the distress and moral torture of being so accused, the dread,
even if found not guilty, of being considered outcasts all their lives, or
of being a burden to their friends — made confessions which any sober
persons would have considered perfectly ridiculous ; but, under the
dominant idea of the reality of this witchcraft, no one interfered to
point out how utterly repugnant to common-sense these confessions
were, as well as the testimony that was brought forward. And this
spread to such a degree in New England, one person being accused
after another, that, at last, even those who considered themselves God's
chosen people began to feel, " Our turn may come next ; " they then
began to think better of it, and so put an end to these accusations,
even some who were under sentence being allowed to go free ; and to
the great surprise of those who were entirely convinced of the truth of
these accusations, this epidemic subsided, and witchcraft was not
heard of for a long time afterward ; so that the belief has never pre-
vailed in New England from that time to the present, excepting among
the lowest and most ignorant class. In Scotland, these witch-persecu-
tions attained to a most fearful extent during the seventeenth century.
They were introduced into England very much by James I., who came
to England possessed by these ideas, and he communicated them to
others, and there were a good many witch-persecutions during his
reign. After the execution of Charles I., and during the time of the
Commonwealth and the Puritans, there were a good many witch-per-
secutions ; but I think, after that, very little more was heard of them.
And yet the belief in witchcraft lingered for a considerable time
lono-er. It is said that even Dr. Johnson was accustomed to remark
that he did not see that there was any proof of the non-existence of
witches ; that, though their existence could not be proved, he was not
at all satisfied that they did not exist. John Wesley was a most de-
vout believer in witchcraft, and said on one occasion that, if witchcraft
was not to be believed, we could not believe in the Bible. So you see
that this belief had a very extraordinary hold over the public mind. It
was only the most intelligent class, whose minds had been freed from
prejudice by general culture, who were really free from it; and that
cultivation happily permeated downward, as it were; so that now I
should hope there are very few among our intelligent working-class in
our great towns — where the general culture is much higher than it is
in the agricultural districts — who retain any thing more than the linger-
ing superstition which is to be found even in the very highest cir-
cles— as, for instance, not liking to be married on a Friday, or not
liking to sit down thirteen at the dinner-table. These are things
which even those who consider themselves the very aristocracy of in-
tellect will sometimes confess to, laughing at it all the time, but say-
ing, " It goes against the grain, and I would rather not do it." These,

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I believe, are only lingering superstitions that will probably pass away
in another half century, and we shall hear nothing more of them ; the
fact being that the tendency to these delusions is being gradually
grown out of.

Now, this is the point I would especially dwell upon. To the child-
mind nothing is too strange to be believed. The young child knows
nothing about the Laws of Xature ; it knows no difference between
what is conformable to principles, and what, on the other hand, is so
strange that an educated man cannot believe it. To the child every
new thing that it sees is equally strange; there is none of that power
of discrimination that we acquire in the course of our education — the
education given to us, and the education that we give ourselves. We
gradually, in rising to adult years, grow out of this incapacity to dis-
tinguish what is strange from what is normal or ordinary. We grad-
ually come to feel — " Well, I can readily believe that, because it fits
in with my general habit of thought ; I do not see any thing strange in
this, although it is a little unusual." But, on the other hand, there
are certain things we feel to be too strange and absurd to be believed ;
and that feeling we come to especially, when we have endeavored to
cultivate our Common-Sense in the manner which I described to you
in my last lecture. The higher our common-sense — that is, the gen-
eral resultant of the whole character and discipline of our minds — the
more valuable is the direct judgment that we form by the use of it.
And it is the growth of that common-sense, which is the most remark-
able feature in the progress of thought during the last century. The
discoveries of science ; the greater tendency to take rational and sober
views of religion ; the general habit of referring things to principles ;
and a number of influences which I cannot stop particularly to de-
scribe, have so operated on the public mind, that every generation is
raised, I believe, not merely by its own culture, but by the acquired
result of the experience of past ages ; for I believe that every gener-
ation is born, I will not say wiser, but with a greater tendency to wis-
dom. I feel perfectly satisfied of this, that the child of an educated
stock has a much greater power of acquiring knowledge than the child
of an uneducated stock ; that the child that is the descendant of a
race in which high moral ideas have been always kept before the mind,
has a much greater tendency to act uprightly than the child that has
grown up from a breed that has been living in the gutter for genera-
tions past. I do not say that these activities are born with us, but the
tendency to them — that is, the aptitude of mind for the acquirement
of knowledge, the facility of learning, the disposition to act upon right
principles — I believe is, to a very great degree, hereditary. Of course
we have lamentable examples to the contrary, but I am speaking of
the general average. I am old enough now to look back with some
capacity of observation for forty years, and I can see in the progress of
society a most marked evidence of the higher general intelligence, the

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 27

greater aptitude for looking at things as they are, and for not allowing
strange, absurd notions to take possession of the mind ; while, again,
I can trace, even within the last ten years, in a most remarkable man-
ner, the prevalence of a desire to do right things for the right's sake,
and not merely because they are politic. And I am quite sure that
there is a gradual progress in this respect, which has a most important
influence in checking aberrations of the class of which I have spoken.
Still we see these aberrations, and there is one just now which is
exciting a good deal of attention — that which you have heard of un-
der the name of " Spiritualism." Now, I look upon the root of this
spiritualism to lie in that which is a very natural, and in some respects
a wholesome disposition of the kind — a desire to connect ourselves in
thought with those whom we have loved and who are gone from us.
Nothing is more admirable, more beautiful, in our nature than this
longing for the continuance of intercourse with those whom we have
loved on earth. It has been felt in all nations and at all times, and
we all of us experience it in regard to those to whom we have been
most especially attached. But this manifestation of it is one which
those who experience this feeling in its greatest purity and its greatest
intensity feel to be absurd and contrary to common-sense — that the
spirits of their departed friends should come and rap upon tables and
make chairs dance in the air, and indicate their presence in grotesque
methods of this kind. The most curious part of it is that the spirits
should obey the directions of the persons with whom they profess to
be in communication — that when they say, " Rap once if you mean yes,
and raj) twice if you mean no," and so on, they should just follow any
orders they receive as to the mode in which they will telegraph re-
plies to their questions. It seems to me repugnant to one's common-
sense ; but the higher manifestations of these spiritual agencies seem
to me far more repugnant to common-sense ; and that is when persons
profess to be able to set all the laws of Nature at defiance ; when it is
said, for instance, that a human being is lifted bodily up into the air
and carried, it may be, two or three miles, and descends through the
ceiling of a room. One of the recent statements of this kind, you
know, is that a certain very stout and heavy lady was carried a dis-
tance of about two miles from her own house, and dropped plump
down upon the table round which eleven persons were sitting; she
came down through the ceiling, they could not state how, because they
were sitting in the dark, and that darkness has a good deal to do with
most of these manifestations. Now, let us analyze them a little. I
am speaking now of what I will call the genuine phenomena — those
which happen to persons who really are honest in their belief. I ex-
clude altogether, and put aside the cases, of which I have seen num-
bers, in which there is the most transparent trickery, and in which the
only wonder is, that any rational persons should allow themselves to
be deceived by it.

28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I have paid a great deal of attention during the last twenty years
to this subject, and I can assure you that I have, in many instances,
known things most absurd in themselves, and most inconsistent with
the facts of the case as seen by myself and other sober-minded wit-
nesses, believed in by persons of very great ability, and, upon all ordi-
nary subjects, of great discrimination. But I account for it by the
previous possession of their minds by this dominant idea — the expecta-
tion they have been led to form, either by their own earnest desire for this
kind of communication, or by the sort of contagious influence to which
some minds are especially subject. I say " the earnest desire," for it
is a very curious thing that many of those who are the most devout
spiritualists are persons who have been themselves previously rather
skeptical upon religious matters ; and many have said to me that this
communication is really the only basis of their belief in the unseen
world. Such being the case, I cannot wonder that they cling to it
with very strong and earnest feeling. A lady, not undistinguished in
the literary world, assured me several years ago that she had been
converted by this spiritualism from a state of absolute unbeHef in
religion ; and she assured me, also, that she regarded medical men and
scientific men, who endeavored to explain these phenomena upon ra-
tional principles, and to expose deception, where deception did occur,
as the emissaries of Satan, who so feared that the spread of spiritualism
would destroy his power upon earth, that he put it into the minds of
medical and scientific men to do all that they could to prevent it.
Now that, I assure you, is a fact. That was said to me by a lady of
considerable literary ability, and I believe it represents, though rather
extravagantly, a state of mind which is very prevalent ; the great
spread of the intense materialism of our age tending to weaken, and in
some instances to destroy, that healthful longing which we all have, I
believe, in our innermost nature, for a higher future existence, and
which is to my mind one of the most important foundations of our be-
lief in it. We live too much in the present ; we think too much of the
things of the world as regards our material comfort and enjoyment,
instead of thinking of them as they bear upon our own higher nature.
I believe that this tendency, which I think is especially noticeable in
America — or at least it was a few years ago — from all that I was able
to learn, had a great deal to do with the spread of this belief in what is
called Spiritualism. The spiritualists assert that in America they are
numbered by millions, and that there are very few people of any kind
of intellectual culture who have not either openly or secretly given in
their adhesion to it. I believe that is a gross exaggeration ; still, there
can be no doubt, from the number of periodicals they maintain, and
the advertisements in them of all kinds of strange things that are done
— spirit-drawings made, drawings of deceased friends, and spiritual in-
struction given of various kinds — that there must be a very extended
belief in this notion of communication with the unseen world through
these " media."

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 29

I can only assure you for myself that, having, as I have said, de-
voted considerable attention to this subject, I have come to the conclu-
sion most decidedly — with, I believe I may say, as little prepossession
as most persons, and with every disposition to seek for truth simply —
to allow for our knowledge, or I would rather say for our ignorance, a
very large margin of many things that are beyond our philosophy —
with every disposition to accept facts when I could once clearly satisfy
myself that they were facts — I have had to come to the conclusion that
whenever I have been permitted to employ such tests as I should em-
ploy in any scientific investigation, there was either intentional decep-
tion on the part of interested persons, or else self-deception on the part
of persons who were very sober-minded and rational upon all ordinary
affairs of life. Of that self-deception I could give you many very curi-
ous illustrations, but the limits of our time will prevent my giving you
more than one or two. On one occasion I was assured that, on the
evening before, a long dining-table had risen up and stood a foot high in
the air, in the house in which I was, and to which I was then admitted
for the purpose of seeing some of these manifestations by persons about
whose good faith there could be no doubt whatever. I was assured by
them — " It was a great pity you were not here last night, for, unfor-
tunately, our principal medium is so exhausted by the efforts she put
forth last night that she cannot repeat it." But I was assured, upon
the word of three or four who were present, that this table had stood
a foot high in the air, and remained suspended for some time, without
any hands being near it, or at any rate with nothing supporting it ;
the hands might be over it. But I came to find, from experiments per-
formed in my presence, that they considered it evidence of the table
rising into the air, that it pressed upward against their hands ; that
they did not rest upon their sense of sight ; for I was looking in this
instance at the feet of the table, and I saw that the table upon which
the hands of the performers were placed, and which was rocking about
upon its spreading feet, really never rose into the air at all. It would
tilt to one side or to the other side, but one foot was always resting on
the ground. And when they declared to me that this table had risen
in the air, I said, " I am very sorry to have to contradict you, but I
was looking at the feet of the table all the time, and you were not ;
and I can assert most positively that one of the feet never left the
ground. Will you allow me to ask what is your evidence that the
table rose into the air ? " " Because we felt it pressing upward against
our hands." I assure you that was the answer I received ; their con-
clusion that the table rose in the air being grounded on this, that their
hands being placed upon the table, they felt, or they believed, that
the table was pressing upward against their hands, though I saw all
the time that one foot of the table had never left the ground. Now,
that is what we call a " subjective sensation ; " one of those sensations
which arise in our own minds under the influence of an idea. Take,

3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for instance, the very common case — when we sleep in a strange bed,
it may he in an inn that is not very clean, and we begin to be a little
suspicions of what other inhabitants there may be in that bed ; and
then we begin to feel a " creepy, crawly " sensation about us, which
that idea will at once suggest. Now, those are subjective sensations ;
those sensations are produced by the mental idea. And so in this case
I am perfectly satisfied that a very large number of these spiritual
phenomena are simply subjective sensations ; that is, that they are the
result of expectation on the part of the individual. The sensations are
real to them. You know that, when a man has suffered amputation of
his leg, he will tell you at first that he feels his toes, that he feels his limb ;
and, perhaps to the end of his life, every now and then he will have
this feeling of the limb moving, or of a pain in it ; and yet we know
perfectly well that this is simply the result of certain changes in the
nerve, to which, of course, there is nothing answering in the limb that
was removed. These subjective sensations, then, will be felt by the
individuals as realities, and will be presented to others as realities,
when, really, they are simply the creation of their own minds, that
creation arising out of the expectation which they have themselves
formed. These parties believed that the table would rise ; and, when
they felt the pressure against their hands, they fully believed that the
table was rising.

Take the case of Table-turning, which occurred earlier. I dare say
many of you remember that epidemic which preceded the spiritualism ;
in fact, the spiritualism, in some degree, arose out of table-turning.
My friend the chairman (Dr. Noble) and I hunted in couples, a good
many years ago, with a third friend, the late Sir John Forbes, and we
went a great deal into these inquiries ; and I very well remember sitting
at a table with him, I suppose twenty-five years ago, waiting in solemn
expectation for the turning of the table ; and the table wont round.
This was simply the result of one of the party, who was not influenced
by the philosophical skepticism that we had on the subject, having a
strong belief that the phenomenon would occur ; and when he had sat
for some time with his hands pressed down upon the table, an involun-
tary muscular motion, of the kind I mentioned in my last lecture, took
place, which sent the table turning. There was nothing to the Physi-
ologist at all difficult in the understanding of this. Prof. Faraday
was called upon to explain the table-turning, which many persons set
down to electricity ; but he was perfectly satisfied that this was a most
untrue account of it, and that the explanation was (as, in fact, I had
previously myself stated in a lecture at the Royal Institution) that the
movements took place in obedience to ideas. Movements of this class
are what I call " ideo-motor," or reflex actions of the brain ; and the
occurrence of these movements in obedience to the idea entertained is
the explanation of all the phenomena of table-turning. Prof. Faraday
constructed a very simple testing apparatus, merely two boards, one

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS.

3»

over the other, and confined by elastic hands, but the upper board
rolling readily upon a couple of pencils or small rollers ; and resting
on the lower board was an index, so arranged that a very small mo-
tion of this upper board would manifest itself in the movement of the
index through a large arc. He went about this investigation in a
thoroughly scientific spirit. He first tied together the boards so that
they could not move one upon the other, the object being to test
whether the mere interposition of the instrument would prevent the
action. He had three or four of these indicators prepared, and he put
them down on the table so fixed that they would not move. He then
put the hands of the table-turners on these ; and it was found, as he
fully expected, that the interposition of this indicator under their hands
did not at all prevent the movement of the table. The hands were
resting on the indicator ; and when their involuntary pressure was ex-
erted, the friction of the hands upon the indicators, and of the indica-
tors upon the table, carried round the table just as it had done before.
Now, if there had been any thing in the construction of the instrument
to prevent it, that would not have happened. Then he loosened the
upper hoard and put the index on, so that the smallest motion of the
hands upon the board would manifest itself, before it would act on the
table, in the movement of the index ; and it was found that when the
parties looked at the index, and watched its indications, they were
pulled up as it were, at the very first involuntary action of their hands,
by the knowledge that they were exerting this power, and the table
then never went round. One of the strangest parts of this popular
delusion was, that even after this complete exposure of it by Faraday,
there were a great many persons, including many who were eminently
sensible and rational in all the ordinary affairs of life, who said : " Oh,
but this has nothing at all to do with it. It is all very well for Prof.
Faraday to talk in this manner, but it has nothing at all to do with it.
We know that we are not exerting any pressure. His explanation
does not at all apply to our case." But then Prof. Faraday's table-
turners were equally satisfied that they did not move the table, until
the infallible index proved that they did. And if any one of these
persons, who know that they did not move the table, were to sit down
in the same manner with those indicators, it would have been at once
shown that they did move the table. Nothing was more curious than
the possession of the minds of sensible men and women by this idea
that the tables went round by an action quite independent of their own
hands ; and not only that, but that really, like the people in the dan-
cing mania, they must follow the table. I have seen sober and sensi-
ble people running round with a table, and with their hands placed on
it, and asserting that they could not help themselves — that they were
obliged to go with the table. Now, this is just simply the same kind
of possession by a dominant idea, that possessed the dancing maniacs
of the middle ages.

32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Then the Table-tilting came up. It was found that the table
would tilt in obedience to the directions of some spirit, who was in the
first instance (I speak now of about twenty years ago) always believed
to be an evil spirit. The table-tilting first developed itself in Bath, un-
der the guidance of some clergymen thei*e, who were quite satisfied
that the tiltings of the table were due to the presence of evil spirits.
And one of these clergymen went farther, and said that it was Satan
himself. But it was very curious that the answers obtained by the
rappings and tiltings of the tables always followed the notions of the
persons who put the questions. These clergymen always got these
answers as from evil spirits, or satisfied themselves that they were evil
spirits by the answers they got. But, on the other hand, other per-
sons got answers of a very different kind ; an innocent girl, for instance,
asked the table if it loved her, and the table jumped up and kissed her.
A gentleman who put a question to one of these tables got an extremely
curious answer, which affords a very remarkable illustration of the
principle I was developing to you in the last lecture — the unconscious
action of the brain. He had been studying the life of Edward Young,
the poet, or at least had been thinking of writing it ; and the spirit of
Edward Young announced himself one evening, as he was sitting with
his sister-in-law — the young lady who asked the table if it loved her.
Edward Young announced himself by the raps, spelling out the words
in accordance with the directions that the table received. He asked,
" Are you Young, the poet ? " " Yes." " The author of the ' Night
Thoughts ? ' " " Yes." " If you are, repeat a line of his poetry." And
the table spelled out, according to the system of telegraphy which had
been agreed upon, this line:

" Man is not formed to question, but adore."

He said, "Is this in the 'Night Thoughts?'" "No." " Where is
it ? " "JO B." He could not tell what this meant. He went home,
bought a copy of Young's works, and found that in the volume con-
taining Young's poems there was a poetical commentary on Job which
ended with that line. He was extremely puzzled at this ; but two or
three weeks afterward he found he had a copy of Young's works in
his own library, and was satisfied from marks on it that he had read
that poem before. I have no doubt whatever that that line had re-
mained in his mind, that is, in the lower stratum of it ; that it had been
entirely forgotten by him, as even the possession of Young's poems
had been forgotten ; but that it had been treasured up as it were in
some dark corner of his memory, and had come up in this manner, ex-
pressing itself in the action of the table, just as it might have come up
in a dream.

These are curious illustrations, then, of the mode in which the
minds of individuals act when there is no cheating at all — this action
of what we call the subjective state of the individual dominating these

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 33

movements ; and I believe that that is really the clew to the interpre-
tation of the genuine phenomena. On the other hand, there are a great
many which we are assured of — for instance, this descent of a lady
through the ceiling — which are self-delusions, pure mental delusions,
resulting from the preconceived idea and the state of expectant atten-
tion in which these individuals are. Here are a dozen persons sitting
round a table in the dark, with the anticipation of some extraordinary
event happening. In another dark seance one young lady thought she
would like to have a live lobster brought in, and presently she began
to feel some uncomfortable sensations, which she attributed to the
presence of this live lobster ; and the fact is recorded that two live lob-
sters were brought in ; that is, they appeared in this dark seance —
making their presence known, I suppose, by crawling over the persons
of the sitters. But that is all we know about it — that they felt some-
thing— they say they were two live lobsters, but what evidence is
there of that ? — the seance was a dark one. We are merely told that
the young lady thought of a live lobster ; she said they had received
so many flowers and fruits that she was tired of them, and she thought
of two live lobsters ; and forthwith it was declared that the live lob-
sters were present. I certainly should be much more satisfied with
the narration, if we were told that they had made a supper off these
lobsters after the stance was ended.

Now, it has been my business lately to go rather carefully into the
analysis of several of these cases, and to inquire into the mental con-
dition of some of the individuals who have reported the most remark-
able occurrences. I cannot — it would not be fair — say all I could say
with regard to that mental condition ; but I can only say this, that it
all fits in perfectly well with the result of my previous studies upon
the subject, viz., that there is nothing too strange to be believed by
those who have once surrendered their judgment to the extent of ac-
cepting as credible things which common-sense tells us are entirely
incredible. One gentleman says he glories in not having that scien-
tific incredulity which should lead him to reject any thing incredible
merely because it seems incredible. I can only say this, that we might
as well go back to the state of childhood at once, the state in which
we are utterly incapable of distinguishing the strange from the true.
That is a low and imperfect condition of mental development ; and all
that we call education tends to produce the habit of mind that shall
enable us to distinguish the true from the false — actual facts from the
creations of our imagination. 1 do not say that we ought to reject
every thing that to us, in the first instance, may seem strange. I could
tell you of a number of such things in science within your own expe-
rience. How many things there are in the present day that we are
perfectly familiar with — the electric telegraph, for instance — which
fifty years ago would have been considered perfectly monstrous and
incredible. But there we have the rationale. Any person who chooses
VOL. 11. — 3

34. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to study the facts may at once obtain the definite scientific rationale y
and these things can all be openly produced and experimented upon,
expounded and explained. There is not a single thing we are asked
to believe of this kind, that cannot be publicly exhibited. For instance,
in this town, last week, I saw a stream of molten iron coming out from
a foundery ; I did not see on this occasion — but the thing has been
done over and over again — that a man has gone and held his naked
hand in such a stream of molten iron, and has done it without the
least injury ; all that is required being, to have his hand moist, and if
his hand is dry he has merely to dip it in water, and he may hold his
hand for a certain time in that stream of molten iron without receiving
any injury whatever. This was exhibited publicly at a meeting of the
British Association at Ipswich many years ago, at the foundery of
Messrs. Ransome, the well-known agricultural implement makers. It
is one of the miracles of science, so to speak ; they are perfectly credi-
ble to scientific men, because they know the principle upon which it
happens, and that principle is familiar to you all — that if you throw a
drop of water upon hot iron, the water retains its spherical form, and
does not spread upon it and wet it. Vapor is brought to that con-
dition by intense heat, that it forms a sort of film, or atmosphere, be-
tween the hand and the hot iron, and for a time that atmosphere is not
too hot to be perfectly bearable. There are a number of these mira-
cles of science, then, which we believe, however incredible at first
sight they may appear, because they can all be brought to the test of
experience, and can be at any time reproduced under the necessary
conditions. Houdin, the conjurer, in his very interesting autobiog-
raphy— a little book I would really recommend to any of you who are
interested in the study of the workings of the mind, and it may be
had for two shillings — Houdin tells you that he himself tried this ex-
periment after a good deal of persuasion ; and he says that the sensa-
tion of immersing his hand in this molten metal was like handling
liquid velvet. These things, I say, can be exhibited openly — above-
board ; but these Spiritual phenomena will only come just when cer-
tain favorable conditions are present — conditions of this kind, that
there is to be no scrutiny — no careful examination by skeptics ; that
there is to be every disposition to believe, and no manifestation of any
incredulity, but the most ready reception of what we are told. I was
asked some years ago to go into an investigation of the Davenport
Brothers ; but then I was told that the whole thing was to be done in
the dark, and that I was to join hands and form part of a circle ; and
I responded to the invitation by saying that in all scientific inquiries I
considered the hands and the eyes essential instruments of investiga-
tion, and that I could not enter into any inquiry, and give whatever
name I possess in science to the result of it, in which I was not allowed
freely to use my hands and my eyes. And, wherever I have gone to
any of these Spiritual manifestations, and have been bound over not

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 35

to interfere, I have seen things which, I feel perfectly certain, I could
have explained if I had only heen allowed to look under the table, for
instance, or to place my leg in contact with the leg of the medium.
And it has been publicly stated within the last month, that the very
medium whom I suspected strongly of cheating on an occasion of this
kind, was detected in the very acts which I suspected, but which I was
not allowed to examine. I cannot, then, go further into this inquiry at
the present time, but I can only ask you to receive my assurance as
that of a scientific man, who has for a long course of years been ac-
customed to investigate the curious class of actions to which I have
alluded, and which disguise themselves under different names. A
great number of the very things now clone, by persons professing to
call themselves Spiritualists, were done thirty years ago, or professed
to be done, by those who call themselves " Mesmerists ; " thus the lift-
ing of the whole body in the air was a thing that was asserted as pos-
sible by mesmerists, as is now done by Mr. Home and his followers.
These things, I say, crop up now and then, sometimes in one form,
sometimes in another; audit is the same general tendency to credu-
lity, to the abnegation of one's common-sense, that marks itself in
every one of these epidemics.

Thus, then, we come back to the principle from which we started —
that the great object of all education should be to give to the mind
that rational direction which shall enable it to form an intelligent and
definite judgment upon subjects of this kind, without having to go
into any question of formal reasoning upon them. Thus, for example,
is it more probable that Mr. Home floated out of one window and in
at another, or that Lord Lindsay should have allowed himself to be
deceived as to a matter which he admits only occurred by moonlight f
That is the question for common-sense. I believe, as I stated just now,
that the tendency to the higher culture of the present age will mani-
fest itself in the improvement of the next generation, as well as of our
own ; and it is in that hope that I have been ericouraged on this and
other occasions to do what I could for the promotion of that desire for
self-culture, of which I see so many hopeful manifestations at the
present day. When once a good basis is laid by primary education, I
do not see what limit there need be to — I will not say the learning of
future generations — but to their icisdom, for wisdom and learning are
two very different things. I have known some people of the greatest
learning, who had the least amount of wisdom of any persons who
have come in my way. Learning, and the use that is made of it, are
two very different things. It is the effort to acquire a distinct and
definite knowledge of any subject that is worth learning, which has
its ultimate effect, as I have said, upon the race, as well as upon the
individual.

But there are great differences, as to their effects upon the mind,
among different subjects of study; and I have long been of opir

3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ion that those studies afford the best discipline, in which the mind is
brought into contact with outward realities — a view which has late-
ly been put forth with new force by my friend Canon Kingsley. You
know that Canon Kingsley has acquired great reputation as an his-
torian. He held the Professorship of History at the University of
Cambridge for many years, and, in fact, has only recently withdrawn
from it. Canon Kingsley also early acquired a considerable amount
of scientific culture, and he has always been particularly fond of Natu-
ral History. Now, he lately said to the working-men of Bristol that
he strongly recommended them to cultivate Science, rather than
study History; having himself almost withdrawn from the study of
history, for this reason, that he found it more and more difficult to
satisfy himself about the truth of any past event ; while, on the other
hand, in the study of science, he felt that we were always approaching
nearer to the truth. A few days ago I was looking through a maga-
zine article on the old and disputed question of Mary Queen of Scots,
which crops up every now and then. She is once more put upon her
trial. Was Mary Queen of Scots a vicious or a virtuous woman ?
The question will be variously answered by her enemies and by her
advocates ; and I believe it will crop up to the day of doom, without
ever being settled. Now, on the other hand, as we study scientific
truth, we gain a certain point, and may feel satisfied we are right up
to that point, though there may be something beyond; while the ele-
vation we have gained enables us to look higher still. It is like
ascending a mountain ; the nearer we get to the top, the clearer and
more extensive is the view. I think this is a far better discipline to
the mind than that of digging down into the dark depths of the past,
in the search for that which we cannot hope ever thoroughly to bring
to light. It so happened that only a fortnight ago I had the oppor-
tunity of asking another of our great historians, Mr. Froude, what he
thought of Canon Kingsley's remark. He said, "I entirely agree with
it ; " and, in some further conversation I had with him on the subject,
I was very much struck with finding how thoroughly his own mind
had been led, by the very important and profound researches he has
made into our history, to the same conclusion — the difficulty of arriv-
ing at absolute truth upon any historical subject. Now, we do hope
and believe that there is absolute truth in Science, which, if not at
present in our possession, is within our reach ; and that, the nearer we
are able to approach to it, the clearer will be our habitual perception
of the difference between the real and the unreal, the firmer will be
our grasp of all the questions that rise in the ordinary course of our
lives, and the sounder will be the judgment we form as to great politi-
cal events and great social changes. Especially will this gain be ap-
parent in our power of resisting the contagious influence of " Mental
Epidemics."

THE PRACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTRUCTIVE. 37
THE PEACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTEUCTIYE.1

By F. J. BKAMWELL, C. E.

IN" prosperous times those engaged in manufactures are too busy-
earning and saving money to attend to a reorganization of their
plant ; in had times they are too dispirited and too little inclined to
spend the money, that in better times they have saved, in replacing old
and wasteful appliances by new and economical ones, and one feels
that there is a very considerable amount of seeming justification for
their conduct in both instances, and that it requires a really compre-
hensive and large intelligence and a belief in the future, possessed by
only a few out of the bulk of mankind, to cause the manufacturer to
pursue that which would be the true policy, as well for his own in-
terests as for those of the community. But there is a further and a
perpetual bugbear in the way of such improvements, and that bugbear
is the so-called " practical man," and he was in my mind when, in
previous parts of this address, I have hinted at the existence of an
obstacle to the adoption of improvement.

I do not wish the section for one moment to suppose that I, brought
up as an apprentice in a workshop, and who all my life have practised
my profession, intend to say one word against the truly practical man.
On the contrary, he is the man of all others that I admire, and by
whom I would wish persons to be guided, because the truly practical
man is one who knows the reason of that which he practises, who can
give an account of the faith that is in him, and who, while he possesses
the readiness of mind and the dexterity which arise from long-con-
tinued and daily intercourse with the subject of his profession, possesses
also that necessary amount of theoretical and scientific knowledge
which would justify him in pursuing any process he adopts, which in
many cases enable him to devise new processes, or which, at all events,
if he be not of an inventive quality of mind, will enable him to appre-
ciate and value the new processes devised by others. This is the truly
practical man, about whom I have nothing to ' say except that which
is most laudatory. But the practical man as commonly understood
means a man who knows the practice of his trade, and knows nothing
else concerning it; the man whose wisdom consists in standing by,
seeing but not investigating the new discoveries which are taking place
around him ; in decrying those discoveries ; in applying to those who
invent improvements, even the very greatest, the epithet of " schemes ; "
and then, when he finds that beyond all dispute some new matter is
good and has come into general practice, taking to it grumblingly, but
still taking to it, because if he do not he could not compete with his

1 Extract from the opening address of the chairman of the Mechanical Section of the
British Association, at Brighton.

3 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

co-manufacturers, the aim and object of such a man being to insure
that he should never make a mistake by embarking his capital or his
time in that which has not been proved by men of large hearts and
large intelligence. It is such a practical man as this who delays all
improvement. For years he delayed the development in England of
the utilization of the waste gases of blast-furnaces, and he has done it
so successfully that, as I have already had occasion to remark, this
utilization is by no means universal in this kingdom. It was such
men as these who kept back surface condensation for twenty years. It
is such a man as this who, when semaphores were invented, would have
said, "Don't suggest such a mode to me of transmitting messages; I
am a practical man, sir, and I believe that the way to transmit a mes-
sage is to write it on paper, deliver it to a messenger, and put him on
horseback." In the next generation his successor would be a believer
in semaphores, and when the electrical telegraphist came to him and
said, " Do you know that I can transmit movement by invisible elec-
trical power through a wire, however long, and it seems to me that if
one were to make a code out of this movement I could speak to you at
Portsmouth at one end of the wire while I was in London at the other,"
what would have been the answer of the practical man ? " Sir, I don't
believe in transmitting messages by an invisible agency ; I am a prac-
tical man, and I believe in semaphores, which I can see working." In
like manner when the Siemens' regenerative gas-furnace was introduced,
what said the practical man ? " Turn your coals into gas and burn
the gas, and then talk of regeneration ! I don't know what you mean
by regeneration, except in a spiritual sense. I am a practical man, and
if I want heat out of coals I put coals on to a fire and burn them ; "
and for fifteen years the practical man has been the bar to this most
enormous improvement in metallurgical operations. The practical man
is beginning slowly to yield with respect to these furnaces, because he
finds, as I have already said, that men of greater intelligence have now
in sufficiently large numbers adopted the invention to make a formi-
dable competition with persons who stolidly refuse to be improved.
The same practical man for years stood in the way of the development
of Bessemer steel. Now he has been compelled to become a convert.
I will not weary you by citing more instances ; but one knows, and
one's experience teaches one that this is the conduct of the so-called
practical man ; and his conduct arises not only from the cause which I
have given (his ignorance of the principles of his profession), but from
another one which I have had occasion to allude to when speaking
upon a different subject, and that is, you offend his pride when you
come to him and say, " Adopt such a plan ; it is an improvement on
the process you carry on." His instinct revolts at the notion that you,
a stranger, very likely his junior, and very probably, if the improve-
ment be an original and radical one, a person not even connected with
the trade to which that improvement relates, should dare to assert that

THE PRACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTRUCTIVE. 39

you can inform him of something connected with his business that he
did not know. It may he said that employers and the heads of manu-
factories are, as a rule, in these days, educated gentlemen, and that
therefore it is wrong to impute to them the narrow-mindedness of the
practical man. I agree that in numerous instances this would he
wrong ; but the fact is that, in many cases— I think I may say in most
cases— the head of the establishment, the moneyed man, the man who,
by his commercial ability (that most necessary element in all estab-
lishments), keeps the concern going by finding lucrative orders, is not
intimately acquainted with the practice of the business carried on by
his firm ; he relies upon some manager or foreman, who, too commonly,
is not the real, but the so-called practical man. It is such men as
those who simply practise that which they have seen, without know-
ing why they practise it. To them the title of practical man has most
improperly been attributed, and it is on the advice of such men that
the true heads of the firm too commonly regulate their conduct as to
the management of their business, and as to the necessary changes to
be made in the way of improvement.

As I have said, the practical man derides those who bring forward
new inventions, and calls them schemers. No doubt, whatever they
do scheme — and well it is for the country that there are men who do
so — it also may be true that the majority of schemes prove abortive ;
but it must be recollected that the whole progress of art and manufac-
ture has depended and will depend upon successful discoveries which,
in their inception, were and will be schemes just as much as were those
discoveries that have been and will be unfruitful ; but the successful
discoveries, because they are successful, are taken out of the category
of schemes when years of untiring application on the part of the invent-
ors have, so to speak, thrust them down the throat of the unwilling
practical man. Take the instance of Mr. Bessemer, who was beset for
years by difficulties of detail in his great scheme of improvement in the
manufacture of steel. As long as he was so beset the practical men
chorused, " He is a schemer ; he is one of the schemers ; it is a
scheme." Supposing that these practical difficulties had beaten Mr.
Bessemer, and that they had not been overcome to this day ? The
practical man would have derided him still as a schemer, although the
theory and groundwork of his invention would have been as true un-
der these circumstances as it now is. Fortunately for the world, and
happily for him, he was able to overcome these most vexatious hin-
drances and make his invention that which it is. No one now dares
apply the term " schemer " to Mr. Bessemer, or " scheme " to his in-
vention, but it is as true now that he is a " schemer " and his inven-
tion a " scheme " as it would have been had he failed up to the present
to conquer the minor difficulties. It is a species of profanation to sug-
gest, but I must suggest it, for it is true, that Watt, Stephenson, Fara-
day, and almost every other name among the honored dead to whose

4o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

inventive genius we owe the development that has taken place within
the last century in all the luxuries, the comforts, even the bare neces-
sities of our daily existence, would, in their day, and while struggling
for success, have been spoken of as schemers, even in respect of those
very inventions of which we are now enjoying the fruits. But I feel
I need not labor this point further at a meeting of the Mechanical Sec-
tion of the British Association, an association established for the ad-
vancement of science. I know I shall be accused of decrying the prac-
tical man and of upholding the " schemers." I say most emphatically
that I do not decry the practical man ; I plead guilty to the charge of
decrying the miscalled practical man, and I glory in my guilt, while I
readily accept that which I consider the. praise of upholding "schem-
ers," and I do so for this simple reason, that, if there were no schemers,
there would be no improvement. I think it becomes a scientific body
like the British Association to laud the generous effort of the unsuc-
cessful inventor, rather than to encourage the cold selfisnness of the
man who stands by and sees others endeavor to raise the structure of
improvement without lending a hand to help, and even sneers at the
builders, but, when the structure is fully raised and solidly established,
claims to come in to inhabit, and, being in, probably essays, cuckoo-
like, to oust the builders and to take possession for his own benefit.

■♦»»■

DEVELOPMENT EN" DEESS.

By GEOEGE H. DAE WIN.

THE development of dress presents' a strong analogy to that of
organisms, as explained by the modern theories of evolution ; and
in this article I propose to illustrate some of the features which they
have in common. We shall see that the truth expressed by the prov-
erb, " Natura non facit saltum," is applicable in the one case as in the
other; the law of progress holds good in dress, and forms blend into
one another with almost complete continuity. In both cases a form
yields to a succeeding form, which is better adapted to the then sur-
rounding conditions ; thus, when it ceased to be requisite that men in
active life should be ready to ride at any moment, and when riding
had for some time ceased to be the ordinary method of travelling,
knee-breeches and boots yielded to trousers. The " Ulster coat," now
so much in vogue, is evidently largely fostered by railway-travelling,
and could hardly have flourished in the last century, when men either
rode or travelled in coaches, where there was no spare room for any
very bulky garment.

A new invention bears a kind of analogy to a new variation in

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 41

animals ; there are many such inventions, and many such variations ;
those that are not really beneficial die away, and those that are really
good become incorporated by " natural selection," as a new item in
our system. I may illustrate this by pointing out how macintosh-
coats and crush-hats have become somewhat important items in our
dress.

Then, again, the degree of advancement in the scale of dress may
be pretty accurately estimated by the extent to which various " organs "
are specialized. For example, about sixty years ago, our present
evening-dress was the ordinary dress for gentlemen; top-boots, always
worn by old-fashioned " John Bull " in Punch's cartoons, are now re-
served for the hunting field ; and that the red coat was formerly only
a best coat, appears from the following observations of a " Lawyer of
the Middle Temple," in No. 129 of the Spectator: "Here (in Corn-
wall) we fancied ourselves in Charles II.'s reign — the people having
made little variations in their dress since that time. The smartest of
the country squires appear still in the Monmouth cock ; and when they
go a-wooing (whether they have any post in the militia or not) they
put on a red coat." *

But besides the general adaptation of dress above referred to, there
is another influence which has perhaps a still more important bearing
on the development of dress, and that is fashion. The love of novelty,
and the extraordinary tendency which men have to exaggerate any
peculiarity, for the time being considered a mark of good station in
life, or handsome in itself, give rise, I suppose, to fashion. This influ-
ence bears no distant analogy to the "sexual selection," on which so
much stress has recently been laid in the " Descent of Man." Both
in animals and dress, remnants of former stages of development sur-
vive to a later age, and thus preserve a tattered record of the history
of their evolution.

These remnants may be observed in two different stages or forms :
1. Some parts of the dress have been fostered and exaggerated by
the selection of fashion, and are then retained and crystallized, as it
were, as part of our dress, notwithstanding that their use is entirely
gone (e. g., the embroidered pocket-flaps in a court uniform, now sewn
fast to the coat). 2. Parts originally useful have ceased to be of any
service, and have been handed down in an atrophied condition.

The first class of cases have their analogue in the peacock's tail, as
explained by sexual selection ; and the second in the wing of the
apteryx, as explained by the effects of disuse.

Of the second kind of remnant Mr. Tylor gives very good instances
when he says : a " The ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's
coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd
rudiments ; but the English clergyman's bands no longer convey their

1 See p. 356 of Fairholt's " Costume in England," London, 1846.
4 " Primitive Culture," vol. i., p. 16, London, 1871.

+2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the
intermediate stages through which they came down from the more
serviceable wide collars, such as Milton wears in his portraits, and
which gave their name to the ' band-box' they used to be kept in."
These collars are, curiously enough, worn to this day by the choristers
of Jesus College, Cambridge.

According to such ideas as these, it becomes interesting to try to
discover the marks of descent in our dresses, and in making this at-
tempt many things apparently meaningless may be shown to be full
of meaning.

Women's dress retains a general similarity from age to age, togeth-
er with a great instability in details, and therefore does not afford so
much subject for remark as does men's dress. I propose, therefore, to
confine myself almost entirely to the latter, and to begin at the top of
the body, and to work downward through the principal articles of
clothing.

Hats. — Hats were originally made of some soft material, probably
of cloth or leather, and, in order to make them fit the head, a cord was
fastened round them, so as to form a sort of contraction. This is
illustrated on p. 524 of Fairholt's " Costume in England," in the
figure of the head of an Anglo-Saxon woman, wearing a hood bound
on with a head-band ; and on p. 530 are figures of several hats worn
during the fourteenth century, which were bound to the head by rolls
of cloth ; and all the early hats seem provided with some sort of band.
We may trace the remnants of this cord or band in the present hat-
band. A similar survival may be observed .in the strings of the
Scotch-cap, and even in the mitre of the bishop.1

It is probable that the hat-band would long ago have disappeared
had it not been made use of for the purpose of hiding the seam join-
ing the crown to the brim. If this explanation of the retention of the
hat-band is the true one, we have here a part originally of use for one
purpose applied to a new one, and so changing its function ; a case
which has an analogy to that of the development of the swimming-
bladders of fishes, used to give them lightness in the water, into the
lungs of mammals and birds, used as the furnace for supporting ani-
mal heat.

The duties of the hat-band have been taken in modern hats by two
running strings fastened to the lining, and these again have in their
turn become obsolete, for they are now generally represented by a
small piece of string, by means of which it is no longer possible to
make the hat fit the head more closely.

The ancestor from which our present chimney-pot hat takes most

of its characteristics is the broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat, with an

immense plume falling down on to the shoulder, which was worn during

the reign of Charles II.1 At the end of the seventeenth, and during

1 For the origin of this curious head-dress, see Fairholt, p. 564. 2 Ibid., p. 540.

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 43

the eighteenth century, this hat was varied by the omission of the
plume, and by giving of the brim various " cocks." That these " cocks "
were formerly merely temporary is shown by Hogarth's picture of
Hudibras beating Sidrophel and his man Whacum, where there is a
hat, the brim of which is buttoned up in front to the crown with three
buttons. This would be a hat of the seventeenth century. After-
ward, during the eighteenth century, the brim was beut up in two or
three places, and, notwithstanding that these " cocks " became perma-
nent, yet the hats still retained the marks of their origin in the button
and strap on the right side. The cockade, I imagine, took its name
from its being a badge worn on one of the " cocks."

The modern cocked-hat, apparently of such an anomalous shape,
proves, on examination, to be merely a hat of the shape above referred
to ; it appears further that the right side was bent up at an earlier
date than the left, for the hat is not symmetrical, and the " cock " on
the right side forms a straight crease in the (quondam) brim, and that
on the left is bent rather over the crown, thus making the right side
of the hat rather straighter than the left. The hat-band here remains
in the shape of two gold tassels, which are just visible within the two
points of the cocked-hat.

A bishop's hat shows the transition from the three-cocked hat to
our present chimney-pot ; and because sixty years ago beaver-fur was
the fashionable material for hats, we must now needs wear a silken
imitation, which could deceive no one into thinking it fur, and which
is bad to resist the effects of weather. Even in a lady's bonnet the
elements of brim, crown, and hat-band, may be traced.

The " busby " of our hussars affords a curious instance of survival.
It would now appear to be merely a fancy head-dress, but on inspec-
tion it proves not to be so. The hussar was originally a Hungarian
soldier, and he brought his hat with him to our country. I found the
clew to the meaning of the hat in a picture of a Hungarian peasant.
He wore a red nightcap, something like that worn by our brewers'
men, or by a Sicilian peasant, but the cap was edged with so broad a
band of fur that it made in fact a low "busby." And now in our
hussars the fur has grown enormously, and the bag has dwindled into
a flapping ornament, which may be detached at pleasure. Lastly, in the
new "busby" of the Royal Engineers the bag has vanished, although
the top of the cap (which is made of cloth and not of fur) is still blue,
as was the bag formerly ; the top cannot, however, be seen, except
from a bird's-eye point of view.

It appears that all cockades and plumes are worn on the left side
of the hat, and this may, I think, be explained by the fact that a large
plume, such as that worn in the time of Charles II., or that of the
modern Italian Bersaglieri, would impede the free use of the sword ;
and this same explanation would also serve to show how it was that
the right side of the hat was the first to receive a " cock." A London

14 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

servant would be little inclined to think that he wears his cockade on
the left side to give his sword-arm full liberty.

Coats. — Every one must have noticed the nick in the folded collar
of the coat and of the waistcoat ; this is of course made to allow for
the buttoning round the neck, but it is in the condition of a rudi-
mentary organ, for the nick would probably not come into the right
place, and in the waistcoat at least there are usually neither the requi-
site buttons nor button-holes.

" The modern gentleman's coat may be said to take its origin from
the vest, or long outer garment, worn toward the end of the reign of
Charles II." ! This vest seems to have had no gathering at the waist,
and to have been buttoned all down the front, and in shape rather like
a loose bag ; to facilitate riding it was furnished with a slit behind,
which could be buttoned up at pleasure ; the button-holes were em-
broidered, and, in order to secure similarity of embroidery on each side
of the slit, the buttons were sewn on to a strip of lace matching the
corresponding button-hole on the other side. These buttons and but-
ton-holes left their marks in the coats of a century later in the form of
gold lacing on either side of the slit of the tails.

In about the year 1700, it began to be the fashion to gather in the
vest or coat at the waist, and it seems that this was first done by two
buttons near the hips being buttoned to loops rather nearer to the
edge of the coat, and situated at about the level of the waist. Our
soldiers much in the same manner now make a waist in their loose
overcoats, by buttoning a short strap to two buttons, placed a consid-
erable distance apart on the back.

This old fashion is illustrated in a figure dressed in the costume of
1696, in an old illustration of the " Tale of the Tub," and also in the
figure of a dandy smelling a nosegay, in Hogarth's picture, entitled
"Here Justice triumphs in his Easy-Chair," etc., as well as elesewhere.
Engravings of this transition period of dress are, however, somewhat
rare, and it is naturally not common to be able to get a good view of
the part of the coat under the arms. This habit of gathering in the
waist will, I think, explain how it was that, although the buttons and
button-holes were retained down the front edges, the coat came to be
worn somewhat open in front.

The coat naturally fell in a number of plaits or folds below these
hip-buttons ; but in most of Hogarth's pictures, although the buttons
and plaits remain, yet the creases above the buttons disappear, and
seams appear to run from the buttons up under the arms. It may be
worth mentioning that in all such matters of detail Hogarth's accuracy
is notorious, and that therefore his engravings are most valuable for
the study of the dress of the period. At the end of the seventeenth,
and at the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, coats seem very com-
monly to have been furnished with slits running from the edge of the

1 Fairholt, p. 479.

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 45

Blurt, up under the arms, and these' were made to button up, in a man-
ner similar in all respects to the slit of the tails. The sword was
usually worn under the coat, and the sword-hilt came through the slit
on the left side. Later on these slits appear to have been sewed up,
and the buttons and button-holes died away, with the exception of two
or three buttons just at the tops of the slits ; thus in coats of about
the year 1705, it is not uncommon to see several buttons clustered
about the tops of all three slits. The buttons at the top of the centre
slit entirely disappeared, but the two buttons now on the backs of our
coats trace their pedigree up to those on the hips. Thus it is not im-
probable that, although our present buttons represent those used for
making the waist, as above explained, yet that they in part represent
the buttons for fastening up these side-slits.

The folds which we now wear below the buttons on the back are the
descendants of the falling plaits, notwithstanding that they appear as
though they were made for, and that they are in fact commonly used
as, the recesses for the tail-pockets ; but that this was not their original
object is proved by the fact that during the last century the pockets
were either vertical or horizontal, placed a little in front of the two
hip-buttons (which have since moved round toward the back), and
had highly-embroidered flaps, buttons, and button-holes. The hori-
zontal pockets may now be traced in the pocket-flaps of court-dress
before alluded to ; and the vertical pocket is represented by some
curious braiding and a row of buttons, which may be observed on the
tails of the tunics of the Foot-Guards. The details of the manner in
which this last rudiment became reduced to its present shape may be
traced in books of uniforms, and one of the stages may now be fre-
quently seen in the livery of servants, in the form of a row of three or
fonr buttons running down near the edge of the tail, sewn on to a scal-
loped patch of cloth (the pocket-flap), which is itself sewed to the coat.

In the last century, when the coats had large flapping skirts, it be-
came the custom (as may be seen in Hogarth's pictures) to button
back the two corners of the coat, and also to button forward the inner
corners, so as to separate the tails for convenience in riding.1 This
custom left its traces in the uniform of our soldiers down to the in-
troduction of the modern tunic, and such traces may still be seen in
some uniforms, for example, those of a lord-lieutenant and of the
French gensdarmerie. In the uniforms of which I speak, the coats
have swallow-tails, and these are broadly edged with a light-colored
border, tapering upward and getting broader downward ; at the bot-
tom of the tail, below where the borders join (at which joining there
is usually a button), there is a small triangle of the same color as the
coat with its apex at this button. This curious appearance is explained
thus : the two corners, one of which is buttoned forward and the

1 It seems to have been in actual use in 1760, although not in 1794. See Cannon's
" Hist. Rec. of British Army" (Loudon, 1837), the Second Dragoon Guards

4.6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other backward, could not be buttoned actually to the edge of the
coat, but had to be fastened a little inland as it were ; and thus part
of the coat was visible at the bottom of the tail: the light-colored
border, although sewn to the coat, evidently now represents the lining,
which was shown by the corners being turned back.

It was not until the reign of George III. that coats were cut back
at the waist, as are our present evening-coats ; but since, before that
fashion was introduced, the coats had become swallow-tailed in the
manner explained, it seems likely that this form of coat was suggested
by the previous fashion. And, indeed, stages of development of a
somewhat intermediate character may be observed in old engravings.
In the uniforms of the last century the coats were double-breasted, but
were generally worn open, with the flaps thrown back and buttoned
to rows of buttons on the coat. These flaps, of course, showed the
lining of the coat, and were of the same color as the tails ; the but-
ton-holes were usually embroidered, and thus the whole of the front
of the coat became richly laced. Toward the end of the century the
coats were made tight, and were fastened together in front by hooks,
but the vestiges of the flaps remained in a double line of buttons, and
in the front of the coat being of a different color from that of the rest,
and being richly laced. A uniform of this nature is still retained in
some foreign armies. This seems also to explain the use of the term
" facings " as applied to the collar and cuffs of a uniform, since, as we
shall see hereafter, they would be of the same color as these flaps.
It may also explain the habit of braiding the front of a coat, as is
done in our hussar and other regiments.

In a " History of Male Fashions," published in the London Chronicle
in 1762, we find that "surtouts have now four laps on each side, which
are called ' dog's ears ; ' when these pieces are unbuttoned, they flap
backward and forward, like so many supernumerary patches just
tacked on at one end, and the wearer seems to have been playing at
backswords till his coat was cut to pieces. . . . Very spruce smarts
have no buttons nor holes upon the breast of these their surtouts,
save what are upon the ears, and their garments only wrap over their
bodies like a morning-gown." These dog's ears may now be seen in a
very meaningless state on the breasts of the patrol-jackets of our
officers, and this is confirmed by the fact that their jackets are not
buttoned, but fastened by hooks.

In early times, when coats were of silk or velvet, and enormously
expensive, it was no doubt customary to turn up the cuffs, so as not to
soil the coat, and thus the custom of having the cuffs turned back
came in. During the latter part of the seventeenth and during the
eighteenth century, the cuffs were very widely turned back, and the
sleeves consequently very short, and this led to dandies wearing large
lace cuffs to their shirts.

The pictures of Hogarth and of others show that the coat-cuffs

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 47

were buttoned back to a row of buttons running round the wrist.
These buttons still exist in the sleeves of a Queen's Counsel, although
the cuffs are sewed back and the button-holes only exist in the form
of pieces of braid. This habit explains why our soldiers now have
their cuffs of different colors from that of their coats ; the color of
the linings was probably determined for each regiment by the colonel
for the time being, since he formerly supplied the clothing ; and we
know that the color of the facings was by no means fixed until re-
cently. The shape of the cuff has been recently altered in the line
regiments, so that all the original meaning is gone.

In order to allow of turning back with ease, the sleeve was gen-
erally split on the outer side, and this split could be fastened together
with a line of buttons and embroidered holes. In Hogarth's pictures
some two or three of these buttons may be commonly seen above the
reversed cuff; and notwithstanding that at first the buttons were out
of sight (as they ought to be) in the reversed part of the cuff, yet after
the turning back had become quite a fixed habit, and when sleeves
were made ti^ht ao-ain, it seems to have been usual to have the button
for the cuff sewed on to the proper inside, that is to say, the real out-
side of the sleeve.

The early stage may be seen in Hogarth's picture of the " Guards
marching to Finchley," and the present rudiment is excellently illus-
trated in the cuffs of the same regiments now. The curious buttons
and o-old lace on the cuffs and collars of the tunics of the Life-Guards
have the like explanation, but this is hardly intelligible without ref-
erence to a book of uniforms, as for example Cannon's "History of the
Second Dragoon Guards."

The collar of a coat would in ordinary weather be turned down
and the lining shown; hence the collar has commonly a different
color from that of the coat, and in uniforms the same color as have
the cuffs, which form, with the collars, the so-called " facings." A pict-
ure of Lucien Bonaparte in Lacroix's work on Costume shows a collar
so immense that were it turned up it would be as high as the top of
his head. This drawing indicates that even the very broad stand-up
collars worn in uniforms in the early part of this century, and of a
different • color from that of the coat, were merely survivals of an
older form of turn-down collar. In these days, notwithstanding that
the same difference in color indicates that the collar was originally
turned down, yet in all uniforms it is made to stand up.

The pieces of braid or seams which run round the wrist in ordinary
coats are clearly the last remains of the inversion of the cuffs.

Trousers. — I will merely observe that we find an intermediate
stage between trousers and breeches in the pantaloon, in which the
knee-buttons of the breeches have walked down to the ankle. I have
seen also a German servant who woi*e a row of buttons running from
the knee to the ankle of his trousers.

43 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Boots. — One of the most perfect rudiments is presented by top-
boots. These boots were originally meant to come above the knee;
and, as may be observed in old pictures, it became customary to turn
the upper part down, so that the lining was visible all round the top.
The lining being of unblacked leather, formed the brown top which is
now worn. The original boot-tag may be observed in the form of a
mere wisp of leather sewn fast to the top, while the real acting tag
is sewn to the inside of the boot. The back of the top is also fastened
up, so that it could not by any ingenuity be turned up again into its
original position.

Again, why do we black and polish our boots? The key is found in
the French czrage, or blacking. We black our boots because brown
leather would, with wet and use, naturally get discolored with dark
patches, and thus boots to look well should be colored black. Now,
shooting-boots are usually greased, and that it was formerly custom-
ary to treat ordinary boots in the same manner is shown by the follow-
ing verse in the ballad of " Argentile and Curan : "

"He borrowed on the working daies
His holy russets oft,
And of the bacon's fat to make
His startops black and soft."

Start ops were a kind of rustic high shoes. Fairholt in his work
states that "the oldest kind of blacking for boots and shoes appears
to have been a thick, viscid, oily substance." But for neat boots a
cleaner substance than grease would be required, and thus wax would
be thought of; and that this was the case is shown by the French word
cirer, which means indifferently to " wax " or to " polish boots. "
Boots are of cour-e polished because wax takes so good a polish.
Lastly, patent-leather is an imitation of common blacking.

I have now gone through the principal articles of men's clothing,
and have shown how numerous and curious are the rudiments or " sur-
vivals," as Mr. Tylor calls them ; a more thorough search proves the
existence of many more. For instance, the various gowns worn at the
universities and elsewhere, afford examples. These gowns were, as
late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, simply upper garments,1 but
have survived into this age as mere badges. Their chief peculiarities
consist in the sleeves, and it is curious that nearly all of such pecul-
iarities point to various devices by which the wearing of the sleeves
has been eluded or rendered less burdensome. Thus the plaits and
buttons in a barrister's gown, and the slit in front of the sleeve of the
B. A.'s gown, are for this purpose. In an M. A.'s gown the sleeves ex-
tend below the knees, but there is a hole in the side through which the
arm is passed ; the end of the sleeve is sewed up, but there is a kind
of scallop at the lower part, which represents the narrowing for the

1 See figures, pp. 254, 311, Fairholt.

DEVELOPMENT IX DRESS. 49

wrist. A barrister's gown has a small hood sewed to the left shoulder,
which would hardly go on to the head of an infant, even if it could be
opened out into a hood-shape.

It is not, however, in our dress alone that these survivals exist ;
they are to be found in all the things of our every-day life. For in-
stance, any one who has experienced a drive on a road so bad that
leaning back in the carnage is impossible, will understand the full
benefit to be derived from arm-slings such as are placed in first-class
railway-carriages, and will agree that in such carriages they are mere
survivals. The rounded tracery on the outsides of railway-carriages
shows the remnants of the idea that a coach was the proper pattern on
which to build them; and the word "guard" is derived from the man
who sat behind the coach and defended the passengers and mails with
his blunderbuss.

In the early trains (1838-'39) of the Birmingham Kailway there
were special "mail" carriages, which were made very narrow, and to
hold only four in each compartment (two and two), so as to be like the
coach they had just superseded.

The words dele, stet, used in correcting proof-sheets, the words sed
vide or s. v., ubi sup., ibid., loc. cit., used in foot-notes, the sign " &,"
which is merely a corruption of the word et, the word finis, until re-
cently placed, at the ends of books, are all doubtless survivals from
the day when all books were in Latin. The mark A used in writing
for interpolations appears to be the remains of an arrow pointing to
the sentence to be included. The royal " broad-arrow" mark is a sur-
vival of the head of " a barbed javelin, carried by sergeants-at-arms
in the king's presence as early as Richard the First's time."1 Then,
again, we probably mount horses from the left side lest our swords
should impede us. The small saddle on the surcingle of a horse, the
seams in the backs of cloth-bound books, and those at the backs of
gloves, are rudiments — but to give a catalogue of such things would
be almost endless. I have said enough, however, to show that by re-
membering that there is nihil sine causa, the observation of even
common things of every-day life may be made less trivial than it
might, at first sight appear.

It seems a general rule that on solemn or ceremonial occasions men
retain archaic forms ; thus it is that court-dress is a survival of the
every-day dress of the last century ; that uniforms in general are
richer in rudiments than common dress ; that a carriage with a pos-
tilion is de rigueur at a wedding; and that (as mentioned by Sir John
Lubbock) the priests of a savage nation, acquainted with the use of
metals, still use a stone knife for their sacrifices — just as Anglican
priests still prefer candles to gas.

The details given in this article, although merely curious, and per-
haps insignificant in themselves, show that the study of dress from an

1 Fairholt, p. 580.

VOL. II,

5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

evolutional stand-point serves as yet one further illustration of the al-
most infinite ramifications to which natural selection and its associated
doctrines of development may be applied. — Macmillan's Magazine.

-♦♦♦-

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY.

By WILLIAM SPOT TIS WOODE, F. E. S.

THERE are many ways in which men have looked at life, the higher
kind of life, that ideal which each of us forms in his own mind,
' to which we each hope that we are always tending. But all these va-
rious ideas may for the most part be grouped under two heads : the
Ideal of Rest and the Ideal of Work. " Rest, rest ! " said a brave old
German worker, "shall I not have Eternity to rest in? " That repre-
sents one view. " "Work, work ! " said another ; " must I not work now,
that I may the better work in Eternal Life ? " That represents the
other. But, without entering upon the somewhat transcendental ques-
tion of a future life, these ideas and aspirations have a meaning and
reality even in the life which we now live. How do we hope to spend
the leisure which old age may some day bring ? Or, nearer still, when
the day's work is done, and the day itself is not quite spent ; or when
such holiday as may befall each of us comes round, how do we hope to
spend the time? Do we long for mere rest, for that

" land
In which it seemed always afternoon ? "

Do we desire to sit us

"down upon the yellow sand
Between the sun and moon upon the shore,"

and sing with the lotus-eaters :

" All things have rest ; why should we toil alone,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm,
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings.
There is no joy but calm ? "

Or do we rather with Ulysses say :

" How dull to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
"Were all too little, and of one to me
Too little remains ; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things ; and vile it were
For some [few] suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star
Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought."

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. Si

To which of these two ideals I myself lean has perhaps already be-
trayed itself; and that being so, I shall venture to consider your pres-
ence here a pi-oof that, for this evening at least, you side with me,
and that you are willing to spend an hour of your leisure in an intel-
lectual effort to see a little deeper into those phenomena which Nature
in this place and at this season displays with such profusion and
splendor.'

But at the outset I must warn you that we are met by a difficulty,
for the surmounting of which you must rely upon yourselves rather
than upon me. It is this : the phenomena to which I propose to draw
your attention, although taking place nearly every day, and all day
long, and in almost every direction, are veiled from our eyes ; and it is
only by the use of special appliances to aid our eyes that they can be
made visible. It will be my business to supply these appliances, and,
reproducing on such scale as may be possible within these four walls
the optical processes which are going on in the sea and sky outside, to
exhibit the hidden phenomena of which I am speaking. But it must
be your part to transport yourselves mentally from the mechanism of
the lecture-room to the operations of Nature, and by a " scientific use
of the imagination " (to adopt what has now become a household word
at these meetings) to connect the one with the other.

Now the main point in question is this : that light, when subjected
to the very ordinary processes of reflection from smooth surfaces, such
as a window, a mahogany table, or the sea itself, or when scattered to
us from the deep clear sky, undergoes in many cases some very pe-
culiar changes, the character and causes of which we have come here
to investigate. The principal appliance which will be used to detect
the existence of such changes, as well as to examine their nature, con-
sists of this piece of Iceland sj>ar, called — from the man who first con-
structed a compound block of the kind — a Nicol's prism, and this plate
of quartz or rock crystal ; both of which, as you will observe when
the light passes through them, are clear, transparent, and colorless,
and both of which transmit the direct light from the electric lamp with
equal facility, however they may be turned round about the beam of
light as an axis.

If, however, instead of allowing the beam to fall directly upon the
Nicol, we first cause it to be reflected from this plate of glass, we shall
find that the process of reflection has put the light into a new condi-
tion. The light is no longer indifferent to the rotation of the Nicol ;
in one position of the Nicol the light passes as before, but as the in-
strument is turned round the light gradually fades, and when it is
turned through a right angle the light is extinguished. Beyond this
position the light reappears, and the same changes of fading and re-
vival are observed in the light for every right angle through which
the instrument is turned.

But these phenomena are susceptible of a very beautiful modifica-

52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion by the interposition of this plate of quartz between the reflecting
surface and the Nicol. The changes in the light are no longer mere
alterations of brightness, but exhibit a succession of colors resem-
bling in their main features those of the rainbow or spectrum.

The peculiar condition to which light must be brought in order
that these phenomena may be produced is called polarization ; and, al-
though an explanation of its nature must be reserved until later, I beg
you to notice that it is effected in this instance by reflection from a
plate of glass. A similar effect is produced if light be reflected from
many other substances, such as the leaves of trees, particularly ivy,
mahogany furniture, windows, shutters, and often roofs of houses, oil-
paintings, etc., and last, but not least, the surface of water. In each
of these cases the alternations of light and darkness are most strongly
marked, and the colors (if a quartz plate be used) are most vivid, or,
in technical language, the polarization is most complete, when the light
is reflected from each substance at a particular angle. In proportion
as the inclination of the light deviates from this angle the colors be-
come fainter, until, when it deviates very greatly, all trace of polariza-
tion at last disappears. Without occupying the time necessary to
shift our apparatus so as to exhibit this with the glass plate, we may
alter the reflecting surface from glass to water, and, by projecting on
the screen the beautiful phenomena of liquid waves, make visible the
different degrees of polarization produced at the variously-inclined
portions of the surfaces of those waves. A tea-tray will serve as well
as any thing else to form our little sea, and a periodic tap at one corner
will cause ripple enough for our present purpose. The waves now ap-
pear bright on the screen, and, although brighter in some parts than
in others, they are nowhere entirely dark. But on turning round the
Nicol the contrast of light and darkness becomes much stronger than
before. Here and there the light is absolutely extinguished ; in these
parts the polarization is complete, in others incomplete in various de-
grees. And if the quartz plate be again introduced we have the beau-
tiful phenomena of iris-colored rings playing over the surface of our
miniature sea.

Now, that which you see here produced by our lamp and tea-tray,
you may see any day under the bright sky of this southern coast.
By using an apparatus such as we have here, or a simpler one which
I will immediately describe, you may bring out for yourselves these
phenomena of color, and thereby detect the profusion of polarization
which Nature sheds around us. But, before describing it, there is one
peculiar feature of all these experiments which must be noticed —
namely, that the same results would be produced if we changed the
positions of the lamp and the screen. The light which is now polar-
ized by the glass or the water, and examined by the Nicol, might
equally well be polarized by the Nicol and examined by the glass or
the water. And, therefore, if we find that any contrivance will serve

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 53

for the one piu'pose, we may conclude that it will serve equally well
for the other.

And now a word about that simpler apparatus. When light falls
upon a transparent substance, part is reflected, part transmitted. If,
therefore, the reflected part is polarized (and you have already seen
that this is sometimes the case), it is not surprising that the transmit-
ted part should be so also. And further, if the polarization by a single
reflection or transmission is incomplete, it will become more and more
complete by a repetition of the processes. This being so, if we take
a pile of glass plates — say half a dozen, more or less, the thinner the
better — and hold them obliquely before our eye at an angle of about
30° (say one-third of a right angle) to the direction in which we are
looking, we shall have all that is necessary to detect the presence of
polarization ; and if, further, we hold a piece of talc or mica, such as
is commonly used as a cover to the globes of gas-burners, beyond the
pile of plates, color will be produced in the same general manner as
with the quartz, although with some essential difference in detail.

Suppose that we now turn our attention from the sea to the sky,
and that on a clear, bright day we sweep the heavens with our appara-
tus, or polariscope, as it is called, we shall find traces of polarization
colors brought out in a great many directions. But if we observe
more closely we shall find that the most marked effects are produced
in directions at right angles to that of the sun, when, in fact, we are
looking across the direction of the solar beams. Thus5 if the sun
were just rising in the east or setting in the west, the line of most
vivid effect would lie on a circle traced over the heavens from north to
south. If the sun were in the zenith, or immediately overhead, the
most vivid effects would be found round the horizon ; while at inter-
mediate hours the circle would shift round at the same rate as the
clock, so as always to retain its direction at right angles to that of the
sun.

Now, what is it that can produce this effect — or what even pro-
duces the light from all parts of a clear sky? The firmament is not a
solid sphere or canopy, as was once supposed ; it is clear, pure space,
with no contents, save a few miles of the atmosphere of our earth,
and beyond that the impalpable fluid or ether, as it is called, which is
supposed to pervade all space, and to transmit light from the further
limits of the stellar universe. But, apart from this ether, which is
certainly inoperative to produce the sky appearance as we see it, a
very simple experiment will suffice to show that a diffusion, or, as it
has been better called, a scattering of light, is due to the presence of
small particles in the air. If a beam from the electric lamp, or from
the sun if we had it, be allowed to pass the room, its track becomes
visible, as is well known by its reflection from the motes or floating
bodies, in fact by the dust in the air. But if we clear the air of dust,
as I now do by burning it with a spirit-lamp placed underneath, the

S4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beam disappears from the parts so cleared, and the space becomes
dark. If, therefore, the air were absolutely pure and devoid of matter
foreign to it, the azure of the sky would be no longer seen, and the
heavens would appear black ; the illumination of objects would be
strong and glaring on the one side, and on the other their shadows
would be deep, and unrelieved by the diffused light to which we are
accustomed.

Now, setting aside the dust, of which we may hope that there is
but little on the downs behind your town, or out to sea in front, there
are always minute particles of water floating in the atmosphere.
These vary in size from the great rain-drops which fall to earth on a
sultry day, through the intermediate forms of mist and of fine, fleecy
cloud, to the absolutely invisible minuteness of pure aqueous vapor
which is present in the brightest of skies. It is these particles which
scatter the solar rays, and suffuse the heavens with light. And it is a
curious fact, established by Prof. Tyndall while operating with minute
traces of gaseous vapors (which I can only notice in passing, because
it belongs only in part to our present subject), that while coarse par-
ticles scatter rays of every color equally — in other words, scatter
white light — finer particles scatter fewer rays from the red end of the
spectrum, while the finest scatter only those from the blue end. And,
in accordance with this law, clouds are white, clear sky is blue.

But besides this fact, viz., that light scattered laterally from fine
particles is blue, the same philosopher perceived that light so scattered
is polarized ; and by that observation he again connected the celestial
phenomena described above with laboratory experiments.

By a slight modification of his experiment, due to Prof. Stokes, I
hope to make this visible to the audience. It will probably be in your
recollection that when polarized light passed through a Nicol, its
intensity is unaltered when the Nicol is in one position, but it is de-
stroyed when it is in another at right angles to the first. I now pass
the beam from the electric lamp through a tube of water containing a
few drops of mastic dissolved in alcohol. The mixture so formed holds
fine particles of mastic in a state of suspension ; these scatter the light
laterally, so as to be visible, I hope, to the entire audience. And if we
were to examine with a Nicol this scattered light, we should find the
phenomena of polarization. But, better still, we can cause the light
to pass through the Nicol before being scattered, and produce the
same effect, not only upon the particular part to which our eye is
directed, but upon the whole body of scattered light. As the Nicol is
turned, the light seen laterally begins to fade ; and when the instru-
ment has been turned through a right angle, the only parts remaining
visible are those which are reflected from the larger impurities floating
in the water independently of the mastic. An effect still more beauti-
ful, and at the same time more instructive, can be produced by inter-
posing, as was done in the case of reflection, a plate of quartz between

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 55

the Nicol and the medium which causes polarization. The whole beam
is now suffused with color, the tint of which changes, as did the tints
on the waves, while the Nicol is turned round. And not only so, but
while the Nicol remains at rest, the tints are to be seen scattered in a
regular and definite order in different directions about the sides of the
beam. This may be shown by reflecting from a looking-glass a side
of the beam not visible directly, and by comparing the tint seen by
reflection with that seen direct. But this radial distribution of colors
may also be shown in a more striking manner, by putting together
two half-plates of quartz of the kinds which have the property of dis-
tributing the colors in opposite orders, and by observing the result
along the line of junction. The compound plate here used is known
by the name of a biquartz, and affords one of the most delicate tests
of the presence of polarized light. In this case, when the Nicol is
turned round, the colors of the two halves follow one another in op-
posite orders ; and as each series is completed twice in a revolution of
the Nicol, the halves of the quartz will be of the same color four times
in a revolution — twice of one color and twice of its complementary.

The colors which wre have here seen are those which would be
observed, as before remarked, upon examining a clear sky in a position
at right angles to that of the sun : and the exact tint visible will de-
pend upon the position in which we hold the Nicol, as well as upon
that of the sun. Suppose, therefore, we direct our apparatus to that
part of the sky which is all day long at right angles to the sun, that
is, to the region about the north-pole of the heavens (accurately to the
north-pole at the vernal and autumnal equinox) ; then, if on the one
hand wre turn the Nicol round, say in a direction opposite to that of
the sun's motion, the colors will change in a definite order; if, on the
other, we hold it fixed, and allow the sun to move round, the colors
will change in a similar manner. And thus, in the latter case, we
might conclude the position of the sun, or, in other words, the time of
day, by the colors so shown. This is the principle of Sir Charles
Wheatstone's polar clock ; one of the few practical applications which
this branch of polarization has yet found. The action of such a clock
may be thus roughly shown : There is now projected upon the screen
a dial-plate, in which the hours are arranged in their usual order, but
are crowded together into half their usual space, viz., twelve hours
occupy half instead of the entire circle. The inner part of the disk is
covered with a plate of selenite (mica would serve the purpose equally
well), which is capable of revolving about its centre, and which, as
you see, in a particular position shows color more strongly than in
any other. An hour-hand is roughly drawn upon the plate. The
apparatus here used is furnished with two Nicol's prisms, the hinder
one of which imitates the polarizing effect of the sun, while that in
front is the instrument with which we should examine the north-pole
of the sky. The whole is now so arranged that when the plate shows

5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

brightest color the hand points to XII., say noon. As the back Nicol
is turned round, say as the sun begins to sink, the color fades ; and
when the plate is turned so as to restore the color, the hand points to
I. Similarly, as the back Nicol is turned gradually farther, represent-
ing the passage of the sun westward during the afternoon, the position
of the plate giving the strongest color, as indicated by the hand, cor-
responds to the successive hours of the dial ; and when the Nicol has
been turned through 90°, that is, when the sun has reached the horizon,
the hand has moved from XII. to VI. In this way, as its inventor has
remarked, a dial may be constructed which will work equally well in
sunshine or in shade, or even when the sun itself is overcast, provided
only that there be a patch of clear sky to the north.

Up to this point we have reproduced in an experimental fashion
the general every-day phenomena, both celestial and terrestrial, which
give rise to polarization ; and we have given such general account of
them as will serve to connect them together, and to show that they
all belong to one system of laws affecting the nature of light. I
should, however, regret, and I feel confident that you would share in
that regret, if we were to leave the subject with its surface as it were
merely scratched, and without any attempt to penetrate deeper into
its substance. With your permission, therefore, we will devote such
time as you may be still willing to grant me to a few elementary ex-
periments in polarization, which, while certainly not less beautiful than
those which you have already seen, will, perhaps, better illustrate the
nature of the processes wThich we are now trying to investigate.

Polarized light, as indicated at the outset, is distinguished from
common light by the presence of certain peculiarities not ordinarily
found, and these peculiarities are to be detected only by means of
special instruments. Light which has been reflected or transmitted
at particular angles from various substances, light wdiich has been
scattered by small particles, is found to be in this peculiar condition.
So likewise is light which has passed through this transparent piece
of Iceland spar, or Nicol's prism, as it is called. Yet the light which
has so passed through, and which is now projected on the screen, is to
the unaided eye in no way different from the same light before its
passage. Nevertheless, if we examine or analyze it by means of a
second Nicol, we shall find the peculiarity of its condition revealed.
For if either of the Nicols be turned gradually round (and remember
that they are both transparent, colorless blocks of crystal) the light
gradually fades until, when it has been turned through a right angle,
the light is absolutely extinguished. On turning the Nicol farther the
light revives, and afterward again fades, in such a manner that in a
complete revolution the light is twice at its brightest, and twice is
extinguished. Now, light is due to extremely small and rapid vibra-
tions of a very subtle medium, which is snpposed to pervade all space.
The fact that vibrations (i. e., motions to and fro) in one direction can

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 57

produce waves advancing in another will be familiar to all of you who
have watched the movement of a cork floating on the sea. You will
have noticed that the cork has simply moved up and down, or nearly
60, while the waves have passed, as it were, under it, along the surface
of the water.

Now, in order to make clearer to our minds how this wave-motion
is produced, I will throw the electric light upon a machine devised for
the purpose. You now see a horizontal row of knobs. As the slider
is pushed in, the knobs at one end begin to rise in succession until each
has in turn attained its greatest elevation. Immediately after reach-
ing its highest position it begins to descend; so that the knobs first
rise and then fall in regular succession, and continue to rise and fall
in the same manner so lonsr as the motion is continued. Each of the
knobs, beginning from number one, is thus successively at the highest
position, while at the same moment those immediately before and be-
hind it are at lower positions. And as the knob which is at the highest
position represents what we call the crest of the wave, the crest will
pass successively along all the knobs, beginning from the first. Thus
the waves are transmitted along the line, While the vibrations take
place across it. If the line of knobs represent the direction of a ray,
their motions will represent the vibrations and waves to which the
light is supposed to be due. In ordinary light these vibrations may
take place in any directions perpendicular to the ray ; and the effect
of the crystal of which the Nicol is made, is to restrict these vibrations
to a particular direction. In the arrangement now before you the first
Nicol causes the vibrations to be altogether horizontal. When the
second Nicol is placed similarly to the first, it will obviously have no
further effect upon the light ; but if it be turned through an angle, it
will transmit only vibrations inclined to the horizontal at that angle ;
that is, only such part of the original horizontal vibrations as can be
brought into the inclined direction ; in other words, it will transmit
only part of the light. And as the inclination is increased the part of
the light transmitted will diminish, until, when the second Nicol is in
a position to transmit only vertical vibrations (i. e., when it has turned
through a right angle), the light will vanish. Such is an explanation
of this fundamental experiment in polarization on the principle of what
is called the Wave Theory of Light ; and I have ventured to give it in
some detail, because it is the key to all others, and forms a starting-
point for any who may desire to go further in the subject ; and it is a
remarkable feature in this Wave Theory of Light that the results of
many other experimental combinations, to some of which we will now
proceed, might be predicted upon the principles already laid down.

If a plate of crystal, such as selenite, be placed between the two
Nicols, and turned round in its own plane, it will be found that in
certain positions at right angles to one another no effect is produced.
These may be called neutral positions. In all other positions the field

58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is tinted with color, which is most brilliant when the plate has been
turned through half a right angle from a neutral position. If one of
the Nicols be turned, the selenite remaining still, the color will fade
and entirely vanish when the Nicol has turned through half a right
angle. After this position the complementary color will begin to
appear, and will be brightest when the Nicol has completed a right
ano-le.

The oolors so produced depend upon the thickness of the plate ;
thus, if we take a plate of selenite merely split and not ground to a
uniform thickness, we shall have a variety of tints indicating the thick-
ness of each particular part ; or we may, by a careful arrangement of
suitable thicknesses, produce a colored pattern of delicacy and variety
dependent only upon the skill with which the pieces have been worked.

A plate of the same crystal worked into a concave form is interest-
ing as showing not only that the colors are dependent upon the thick-
ness, but also that when, with an increasing or diminishing thickness
of crystal, they have run through their cycle, they begin again ; in
other words, that the phenomenon is periodic. The field is then
covered with a series of concentric rings, each of which is tinted with
colors in a regular order.

In all these instances it is clear, from the experiments themselves,
as well as from other experiments which form no part of our present
subject, that the modifications which light undergoes are due to the
internal structure of the crystals used. And it becomes a question of
interest whether it be not possible, by some mechanical process, per-
formed upon a non-cystalline substance, such as glass, so far to imitate
a crystalline structure as to reproduce some of the optical results
already shown. For this purpose let us take a bar of glass. On inter-
posing it in its natural state between the Nicols when crossed, we find
that no effect is produced in the dark field upon the screen. If, how-
ever, I merely press it as though with the intention of bending or
breaking it, there will be at once brought about a condition of strain
capable of affecting the vibrations of the ray falling upon it, to such a
degree that some of them will find their way through the screen. And
this result may be explained on precisely the same mechanical princi-
ples as in the case of the crystal. The effect may be heightened by
placing the piece of glass in a vice, and screwing it up so as to bend
or compress it to a greater degree than wras possible by the hand alone.
"When this is done the direction and even the relative amount of
torsion or compression of the different parts will be noted down as it
were by the forms and hues of the figures thrown upon the screen.

The same kind of effect is shown by a piece of glass unevenly
heated; but better still by glass which has been rapidly and unevenly
cooled — unannealed glass, as it is called. In the pieces now before
you, the outside, having become first cooled and solidified, has formed
a rigid framework, to which all the interior has been obliged to con-

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 59

form. The interior parts have consequently undergone strains and
pressures in different directions and in different degrees, in accordance
with which each part has become the subject of a definite internal
molecular arrangement ; and these, by each in its own way, modifying
the light which they transmit, give rise to the figures now before you.

I will conclude this series of experiments by one which, although
not so beautiful or striking as those which you have already seen, is
still interesting as bringing the subject home to us, and as the only
application of polarization to commercial life which has yet been made.
You will recollect the brilliant sequence of color shown by a quartz
plate when submitted to polarized light. Well, the effects produced
by that quartz plate are also produced by not only some other crystals,
but, what is very remarkable, also by many of their solutions, e. g., by
that of sugar. Into this tube I have put a solution of sugar ; when it
is placed before the lamp, polarization colors are shown on the screen,
while the liquid itself remains colorless. If the solution be strength-
ened by the addition of more sugar, the tints vary; and, by accurate
observation of the colors for different positions of the Nicol, the
strength of the solution may be determined. An instrument con-
structed with proper means of registering these phenomena with ac-
curacy is called a saccharometer.

These experiments may be multiplied almost indefinitely, and many
a long winter evening might be spent in following polarization into
other branches of science upon which it has something to Say. For
example, on examining a variety of vegetable and animal tissues, slices
of wood, fronds of fern, scales of fish, hair, horn, mother-of-pearl, etc.,
with'a suitable polariscope, we should find that they exhibit, internally,
definite structural characters, capable of affecting the light, which they
transmit in the same general way as do crystals. Or again, if we were
to apply the principles established in an early part of this lecture to
the conditions of sky, aspect, and time of day under which the pho-
tographer notices that he can obtain the most perfect image in his pict-
ure, we should find that they correspond with those which will furnish
him with daylight in the most perfectly polarized condition.

Once more, among the many and curious phenomena which are
visible during a solar eclipse, there is one which has longer than any
other refused to lift its veil to the solicitations of science. I mean that
halo of light, or corona as it is called, which extends beyond the dark
disk of the moon, beyond those red flames of burning gas which the
researches of Lockyer, of Janssen, and of others, have brought almost
home to us, far away for millions of miles into distant regions of space.
It was preeminently to investigate this phenomenon that the last
Eclipse Expedition, furnished with funds by her Majesty's Govern-
ment at the instance of this British Association, was sent out. And
upon this investigation all the powers of the twin instruments of mod-
ern times, the spectroscope and the polariscope, were turned. The

60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

spectroscope could tell us the nature of the substances to the combus-
tion of which the light is due, and even the conditions of temperature
and of pressure under which the combustion is taking place ; but it
could not disentangle those parts of the phenomenon which are due to
direct, from those which are due to reflected or to scattered light. It
was for the polariscope to tell us whether the corona is a terrestrial
effect — a mere glare, in fact, from our own atmosphere — or a true solar
phenomenon ; and in the latter issue, whether any of it is due to direct
rays from incandescent matter, or all of it to rays originating in such
incandescent matter below, but scattered laterally from gases which
have cooled in the upper regions surrounding the sun. This question
has not even yet received a definitive answer. But the brief account
given within the last few days by Mr. Lockyer, in anticipation of his
more complete digest of the voluminous reports from the various
branches of the Expedition, seems to justify us in the conclusion that
the corona is substantially a solar phenomenon due not to direct but
to reflected or scattered rays.

The principle upon which the polariscope enables us to make these
refined distinctions in such far-off phenomena is, after all, very simple.
If the corona were due wholly to the effect of our atmosphere on such
light as reaches us during a total eclipse of the sun, the whole of that
light would be similarly affected, because it comes very nearly from
the same part of the heavens. In other words, its polarization would
be uniform, and the corona, when examined by a Nicol and quartz,
would appear of a uniform color. But if the phenomenon were wholly
due to the sun and its surroundings, the light would be affected, if at
all, differently in different directions drawn outward (like spokes or
radii of a wheel) from the sun as a centre. In other words, its polari-
zation would be arranged spokewise, or, to use the technical term,
radially; and the corona, when examined as before, would vary in
color on different sides of the sun.

I have already drawn largely, perhaps too largely, upon your
patience. But it will not have been without purpose that, besides
witnessing the exhibition of a few experiments, you should have seen,
at least in outline, what manner of thing a scientific investigation is.
"Well, whatever it is (and I will not weary you with a dry statement
of its processes), the foundation of it must always be laid in careful,
accurate, and intelligent observation of facts. And it is a considera-
tion which may well stir the hearts of us outsiders of science, especially
on an occasion when we come face to face with some of the greatest
philosophers of our time, that any one of us, by practising his eye and
riveting his attention, may contribute some natural fact, some fragment
of knowledge, to the common stock. And surely has not this a particu-
lar significance and importance to us, at a period when, by shortening
the hours of labor, more leisure, as we may hope, will be at the com-
mand of many? It will, I take it, be our own fault if we spend that

SMOKELESS GUNPOWDER. 61

leisure in walking through dry places seeking rest ; for, to those who
have the eyes to see and the spirit to discern, the world is neither dry
nor barren ; but rather, it is like the mountain as it appeared to the
servant of the prophet when his eyes were opened, full of beauty and
wonder, of mystery and power — full of hosts from all nations, striving
manfully onward to promised lands of knowledge and of truth, and
waging ceaseless warfare against ignorance and prejudice, and the
long train of evils which are consequent upon them. And if, as the
eventide of life draws on, our eye wax dim, and our step grow weary,
so that we can no longer follow, we may still lay us down to rest in
some unknown spot, in the full confidence that others will not be want-
ing to fill our places and gain fresh ground, though we may not live
to see it. — Nature.

SMOKELESS GTTXPOWDER.

IT is very often the case that one bird falls to the right barrel, and
" the rest unhurt " go on their way, rejoicing no doubt at having
escaped a deadly volley from the left barrel. There is, however, a
reason for their having got off scot-free, well known to all sportsmen ;
i. e., the smoke from the first barrel obscured the birds from the sports-
man's second aim, until they were out of range. Science, however,
has discovered a panacea for this oft-recurring disappointment, in
Schultze's wood-powder, a smokeless explosive which we wish to in-
troduce to those of our readers who are not already conversant with
its merits. Of course, every one knows our " dear, dirty old friend,"
Black Gunpowder ; the acquaintance of which we made in early youth,
turning it into a "devil "to frighten our grandmother ; but we have
cut our " dear, dirty old friend," and our gun is now loaded with
Schultze's wood-powder instead. " How is this ? " you inquire. " Why
abandon an explosive with which Colonel Hawker, and the never-to-be-
forgotten Maxwell of 'Wild Sports of the West' celebrity, killed so
many head of game ? " To this we reply, Schultze's wood-powder was
not invented in their day, or they would have used it, and for these
reasons :

For seven hundred years and more, even granting the invention to
have been Roger Bacon's, the dull-black mixture of sulphur, nitre, and
charcoal — it is only a mixture, not a chemical compound — has had the
monopoly of guns, large and small. It has answered every purpose
moderately well, perhaps more than moderately. Nevertheless, from
time to time the desire has arisen to evolve out of chemical stores some
new compound, mechanical or chemical, that should do better duty.
Somewhat extraordinary, indeed, the case seems that, amid all the
improvements of guns and gunnery, all the advancement of chemistry

62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and mechanism, the gaseous motor for gun-projectiles should be com-
posed as at first. The explanation is difficult. Gunpowder occupies
a sort of half-way ground between things innocent and things danger-
ous; a medium quality favoring its many applications. Exploding
readily enough for all convenient needs, it never spontaneously ex-
plodes— a great point in its favor. Then its power of water-absorption
not being very great, it stores tolerably well. But, more than any thing
else, gunpowder has held its long and almost exclusive sway over gnns
and gunners owing to the two following circumstances : it can be
made of any desired percentage composition, and it may be corned or
grained to any degree of coarseness or fineness. As employed for dif-
ferent purposes, it is necessary that gunpowder should have various
strengths. To a considerable extent the strength of gunpowder, by
varying the relative amount of its components, can be modified ; but
the great adjustive resource consists in increasing or lessening the di-
mension of its grains.

Having taken account of certain special good qualities of gun-
powder, we now come to certain of its bad qualities. Safe it indeed is
in the sense of not igniting spontaneously; but it deteriorates by keep-
ing, the more especially if in a moist atmosphere. If gunpowder be
thoroughly wetted, then may it be considered wholly spoilt. In burn-
ing, gunpowder evolves much heat, much smoke ; it also dejwsits much
foulness. On the debtor side of gunpowder must be reckoned, also, the
danger attendant on manufacture. It would be a great advantage if
possible to devise a gunpowder that should acquire its usefully-danger-
ous qualities with the very last manufacturing touch, whereby in every
incipient stage it might be stored without possibility of risk.

It will have been gathered, then, that gunpowder, ordinary black
gunpowder, though it has seen some service and done some hard duty
in its time, is not so perfect as to fulfil all requisitions desired ; where-
fore from time to time experiments have been directed to the manufac-
ture of a substitute.

The only substitute yet invented which has met with favorable no-
tice from practical sportsmen is Schultze's wood-powder, which, from
its being granulated, and consequently permeated by air, can never
generate fire of itself. This explosive, invented by Captain Schultze,
a Prussian officer, was originally manufactured at Potsdam, near Berlin,
and the factory catching fire in 1868, instead of exploding — ruining the
neighborhood, and leaving many widows and orphans, like the recent
gun-cotton explosion at Stowmarket — burned quietly to the ground. A
company of English gentlemen, fond of field-sports, foreseeing the ad-
vantages to be derived from its introduction into England, purchased
a site for its production in the New Forest, and thither we must carry
our readers on " a visit to the Schultze Gunpowder manufactory," at
Iiedbridge near Southampton.

Here and there, at intervals wide apart, are various buildings of

SMOKELESS GUNPOWDER. 63

light structure, from one of which rises a tall chimney, instrumental in
raising steam to drive a 10-horse-power sawing-machine, which rapidly
creates the " wood-powder " to be turned into use for the gun by the
following process:

The grains, being collected in a mass, are subjected to a treatment
of chemical washing, whereby calcareous and various other impurities
are separated, leaving hardly any thing behind save pure woody
matter, cellulose or lignine. The next operation has for its end the
conversion of these cellulose grains into a sort of incipient xyloidine,
or gxin-cotton material, by digestion with a mixture of sulphuric and
nitric acids. Practically it is found that absolutely perfected xyloidine
(of which ordinary gun-cotton is the purest type) not only decomposes
spontaneously by time, the chief products of combustion being gum
and oxalic acid, but it is, moreover, liable to combustion of a sort that
may be practically called spontaneous, so slight and so uncontrollable
are the causes sufficing to bring it about. Cellulose or woody matter,
otherwise termed lignine, partially converted to xyloidine is, the in-
ventor affirms, subject to neither of those contingencies. Our readers
will understand that, inasmuch as the wood used as a constituent of
the Schultze gunpowder is not charred, its original hydrogen is left,
and by-and-by, at the time of firing, will be necessarily utilized
toward the gaseous propulsive resultant. Next, washed with carbon-
ate-of-soda solution and dried, an important circumstance is now recog-
nizable.

The grains, brought to the condition just described, are stored away
in bulk, not necessarily to be endowed with final explosive energy
until the time of package, transport, and consignment. Only one treat-
ment has to be carried out, and it is very simple. The ligneous grains
have to be charged with a certain definite percentage of some nitrate,
which is done by steeping them in the nitrate solution and drying.
Ordinarily a solution of nitrate of potash (common saltpetre) is em-
ployed ; but, in elaborating certain varieties of white powder, nitrate
of baryta is preferred.

Having traced the new powder to its final stage, we may contem-
plate it under the light of two distinct scrutinies — theoretical and prac-
tical. Review of the chemical agencies involved, or that may be
evolved, suggests the reaction, especially under prolonged moisture, of
the sulphur and nitre of ordinary powder, whereby sulphide of potas-
sium should result. Practice is confirmatory : under the condition in-
dicated sulphide of potassium, more or less, does result, and propor-
tionate to the extent of decomposition is the powder deteriorated. In-
asmuch as the Schultze gunpowder is wholly devoid of sulphur, so is
the particular decomposition adverted to impossible ; and theory, at
least, fails to suggest any other decomposition as probable or even pos-
sible.

All the buildings requisite for manufacturing this explosive are cheap

64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTIILY.

and flimsy, so that if it did catch fire no loss would ensue. The " plant
of machinery " is of small cost in comparison with that used for mak-
ing black gunpowder, and Schultze's wood-powder is sold at a price
commensurate with its cheap production. An explosive is often " better
known than liked," such as gun-cotton ; but Schultze's wood-powder
requires only " to be known to be liked," as a trial of it, lately made
for the satisfaction of its readers by the conductors of the Land and
Water journal, recently showed. Indeed, it was proved to give more
penetration than gunpowder, and it costs less. There is also no smoke,
and consequently the second barrel can always be used at once, in-
stead of waiting for the smoke to clear away, as when using black
powder. — Belgravia.

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BKAIN.

By CLAUDE BEENAED,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.
TRANSLATED FEOM THE EEVTJE DES DEUX MOXDES, BY A. E. MACDONOTJGH, ESQ.

THE first task of physiology was to localize the functions of life in
the various organs of the body which serve as their instruments.
Thus digestion was assigned to the stomach, circulation to the heart,
respiration to the lungs ; thus, too, the seat of intelligence and thought
was placed in the brain. Still, with regard to the latter organ, a
reservation was thought proper, excluding the idea that the metaphysi-
cal expression of the intellectual and moral powers was the manifesta-
tion, simply and merely, of the cerebral function. Descartes, who is
to be classed among the promoters of modern physiology, because he
thoroughly understood that the explanation of vital phenomena must
depend on the general laws of physics and of mechanism, expressed
himself very plainly on this matter. Adopting Galen's ideas on the
formation of " animal spirits " in the brain, he assigns them the task
of distribution by means of the nerves throughout the animated ma-
chine, so as to carry to each of the parts the impulse needed for its
special activity. Yet, above and apart from this physiological function
of the brain, Descartes admits the soul, which gives man the faculty of
thinking : it was supposed to have its seat in the pineal gland, and to
direct those " animal spirits " which issue from and are subject to it.

Descartes's opinions as to the function of the brain would not bear
the slightest examination by modern physiology ; his explanations,
founded on imperfect anatomical knowledge, produced nothing but
hypotheses marked by the coarsest mechanical conceptions. Yet they

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN 65

have an historic value for us, in the proof that this great philosopher
recognized two things in the brain : first, a physiological mechanism ;
and then, above and beyond that, the thinking faculty of the soul.
These ideas are nearly the same with those that afterward prevailed
among many philosophers and some naturalists ; the brain, in which
the most important functions of the nervous system are performed,
was for them not the real organ of thought, but simply the substratum
of intelligence. Indeed, the objection was often enough expressed,
that the brain forms a physiological exception to all the other organs
of the body, in that it is the seat of metaphysical manifestations, which
the physiologist has no concern with. It was perceived how digestion,
respiration, movement, etc., could be referred to the phenomena of
mechanism, of physics, and chemistry ; but it was not allowed that
thought, intelligence, and will, could be subjected to like explanation.
There is, it was said, a chasm between the organ and the function,
because the question is about metaphysical phenomena, and not at
all about physico-chemical mechanism. De Blainville, in his lectures
on zoology, laid great stress on the distinction between the organ and
the substratum. "In the organ," he said, "there is a visible and
necessary connection between anatomical structure and function ; in
the heart, the organ of circulation, the form and arrangement of valves
and orifices account perfectly for the circulation of the blood. In the
substratum, nothing like this is observable ; the brain is the substratum
of thought ; thought has its seat in the brain, but it cannot be inferred
from the brain's anatomy." Such considerations served as a founda-
tion for the belief that, in cases of insanity, the reason might be affected
essentially, as it was termed ; that is, without the existence of any
lesion in the substance of the brain. Even the converse was asserted,
and cases are cited in physiological treatises of the unimpaired mani-
festation of intelligence in persons with softened or indurated brains.
The progress of modern science has destroyed all such doctrines; yet
it must be admitted that those physiologists who have drawn from the
most delicate recent researches into the structure of the brain the con-
clusion that thought must be localized in a particular substance, or in
nerve-cells of a determinate form and order, have equally failed to
solve the problem, since they have done nothing more, in reality, than
to oppose materialistic theories to other spiritualistic theories.

From what has been said, I shall draw the only conclusion which
legitimately results ; namely, that the mechanism of thought is unknown
to us — a conclusion with which every one will probably agree. None
the less the fundamental question I have suggested exists ; for what
concerns us is to know whether our present ignorance on this subject
is a relative ignorance which will vanish with the progress of science,
or an absolute ignorance in the sense of its relating to a vital problem
which must forever remain beyond the ken of physiology. For myself,
I reject the latter opinion, because I deny that scientific truth can thus

VOL. II. — 5

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be divided into fractions. How, indeed, can one understand that it is
permitted to the physiologist to succeed in explaining the phenomena
that occur in all the organs of the body, except a pai-t of those that
occur in the brain ? Such distinctions cannot exist amoniy vital
phenomena. Unquestionably they present very different degrees of
complexity, but they are all alike in being either soluble or insoluble
by our examination; and the brain, marvellous as those metaphysical
manifestations that take place in it appear to us, cannot form an ex-
ception among the other bodily organs.

II.

From a physiological point of view, those metaphysical phenomena
of thought, consciousness, and intelligence, which serve for the various
manifestations of the human soul, are nothing but ordinary vital
phenomena, and can result from nothing but the action of the organ
that expresses them. We shall show that, in fact, the physiology of
the brain, like that of all the other bodily organs, is deduced from
anatomical observations, from experiments conducted physiologically,
and from the teachings of pathological anatomy.

In its anatomical development the brain follows the general law;
that is, it increases in volume whenever the functions which it controls
increase in energy. In the graduated orders of animals we find the
brain gain in development in proportion to the greater manifestation
of intelligence ; and in man, with whom the phenomena of mind have
reached their highest expression, the cerebral organ presents the
largest volume. The intelligence of the various animals can be read-
ily inferred from the shape of the brain, and the number of creases or
folds that extend its surface. But not only does the outward appear-
ance of the brain change with the modification of its functions ; it
presents in its inner structure also a complexity that increases with
the variety and intensity of the mental manifestations. As regards
the texture of the brain, we are long past the days of Buffon, who con-
sidered the brains, as he contemptuously called them, a mucous sub-
stance of no importance. The advance of general anatomy and of
histology has taught us that the cerebral organ possesses a texture
more delicate as well as more complex than that of any other nerve-
arrangement. The anatomical elements that make it up are nerve-
elements in the shape of tubes and of cells variously joined and inter-
laced. These elements are alike in all animals as to their physiological
properties and histologic character ; they differ as to their number,
net-work, and connection, in a word their arrangement, which in the
brain of various species presents a disposition peculiar to each. In
this the brain again follows a general law, for in all organs the ana-
tomical element has fixed characteristics by which it may be known ;
the completeness of the organ consists chiefly in the arrangement of
these elements, which presents in every animal species its own peculiar

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 6j

form. Every organ is in fact, then, an instrument whose constituent
elements remain identical, while their grouping grows more and more
involved in the same degree as the function itself displays more variety
and complexity.

Reflecting, now, on the organic and physico-chemical conditions
required fur the support of life and the discharge of its functions, we
find that they are the same in the brain as in all the other organs.
The blood acts on the anatomical elements of all the tissues by supply-
ing- their indispensable conditions of nutrition, temperature, and humid-
ity. When a diminished supply of blood flows to any organ, its
activity of function declines, and the organ rests; but if the blood is
quite cut off, the elementary properties of the tissue slowly change,
while at the same time its function perishes. It is precisely the same
as to the brain's anatomical elements : as soon as the blood ceases to
flow to it, its nerve-properties are affected, as well as its function,
which gradually disappears, if the blood remains wholly withheld. A
simple modification of the temperature of the blood, in its pressure,
is enough to produce grave disturbances in the sensibility, the power
of motion, or the will.

All the bodily organs present alternate states of rest and of activity
in which the phenomena of circulation differ essentially. Numerous
observations, made upon the most different structures, place these facts
beyond doubt. When, for instance, we examine the alimentary canal
of a fasting: animal, we find the mucous membrane that lines the inner
face of the stomach and intestines, pale and but little supplied with
blood; during digestion, on the contrary, we learn that the same
membrane is highly colored, and swollen with the blood which flows
energetically into it. These two phases of circulation, in a state of
rest and a state of activity, have been brought under direct investiga-
tion in the stomach of a living man. All physiologists recollect the
story of a young Canadian accidentally wounded by a leaden musket-
ball which struck him almost point-blank on the left side. The ab-
dominal cavity was laid open by an immense contused wound, and the
stomach, extensively perforated, allowed the food which he had last
taken, to escape. The patient was attended by Dr. Beaumont, a sur-
geon of the United States Army ; he recovered, but retained a fistulous
wound, opening with a circumference of about an inch and a half
through which different substances could be introduced, and the action
of the stomach easily examined. Dr. Beaumont, anxious to study this
remarkable case, employed the young man as a servant, after the com-
plete restoration of his health and particularly of his digestive powers.
He was able to keep him in his service for seven years, during which
he made a great number of observations of the highest interest to phys-
iology. On looking into the interior of the stomach while empty of
food, the lining membrane could be plainly seen, lying in uneven folds,
with its surface of a pale rose-color, motionless, and lubricated by noth-

68 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

ing whatever but mucus. As soon as articles of food made their way
iuto the stomach, and touched the mucous membrane, its circulation
grew rapid and its color lively, while peristaltic movements became evi-
dent. The mucous papillae then poured out their gastric juice, a clear and
transparent fluid, designed to dissolve the food. On wiping away the
mucus that covered the villous membrane, with a sponge or fine cloth,
the gastric juice was soon seen reappearing and gathering in little
drops that ran along the walls of the stomach like perspiration on the
face. What we have just seen as to the mucous membrane is known
to occur alike throughout the intestine, and in all the glandular organs
connected with the digestive apparatus. The salivary glands and the
pancreas, in the intervals of the act of digestion, present a pale and
bloodless tissue, the secretions of which are wholly suspended. During
the period of digestion, on the contrary, these same glands are swollen
with blood, as if inflamed and erectile, while their vessels pour out the
secreted fluids abundantly.

Two orders of circulation, then, must be .recognized in the organs :
one, the general circulation, known since Harvey's day ; and the other,
local circulation, only discovered and studied in recent times. In the
phenomena of general circulation the blood may be said to do nothing
more than traverse the parts, to pass from the arteries into the veins ; in
the phenomena of local, which is the true functional circulation, the
blood penetrates all the folds of the organ, and gathers closely about its
anatomical elements, to arouse and excite their special mode of activity.
The nervous system, sensitive in its action through the vessels, gov-
erns all those phenomena of local circulation which attend organic ac-
tivity ; thus, the saliva flows copiously when a sapid substance makes
an impression on the nerves of the mucous membrane of the mouth,
and the gastric juice forms under the influence of contract between
food and the sensitive surface of the stomach. But, for this mechani-
cal excitement of the peripheral nerves of sensation, influencing the
organ by reflex action, a purely psychic or cerebral excitement can be
substituted. A simple experiment proves this : If a horse is taken
while fasting, and the excretory duct of the parotid gland upon the
side of the jaw is exposed and divided, nothing flows from it ; the
gland is at rest. If, now, oats are shown to the animal, or, still better,
if, without any thing being shown, a movement is made which leads
him to think he is about to have food given him, immediately a con-
tinuous flow of saliva issues from the duct of the parotid, and at the
same time the tissue of the gland is injected, and becomes the seat of
a more active circulation. Dr. Beaumont remarked similar phenomena
in his Canadian. The idea of savory food not only solicited a secretion
from the salivary glands, but provoked, besides, an immediate flow of
blood to the mucous membrane of the stomach.

What we have just said as to the local or functional circulations,
applies not only to those secreting organs in which there takes place

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 69

the separation of a liquid, to the formation of which the blood must
more or less give its aid ; it rather expresses a phenomenon generally
remarked in all the organs, whatever the nature of their function may-
be. The muscular system, which produces nothing but mechanical
work, is in this regard like the glands, which act chemically. At the
instant of muscular action the blood circulates with greater activity,
which relaxes when the organ begins to rest. The peripheral nervous
system, the spinal marrow, and the brain, which serve to manifest the
phenomena of innervation and intelligence, are equally subject to this
law, as we are about to see.

The relations existing between the phenomena of circulation in the
brain and the functional activity of that organ have long remained
obscure, owing to mistaken ideas of the conditions of sleep, which is
rightly considered the state of rest of the cerebral organ. The ancients
suppose! that sleep resulted from compression exerted on the brain by
the blood when its circulation declined. They imagined that this press-
ure was chiefly exerted at the back part of the head, at the point
where the veined folds of the dura mater unite in a common confluent,
which is still called the torcular or compress of Herophilus, from the
name of the anatomist who first described it. These conjectural ex-
planations have been handed down to us ; and it is only of late years
that experiment has succeeded in proving their falsity. In fact, it has
been shown by direct experiment that, during sleep, the brain, instead
of being congested, is on the contrary pale and bloodless ; while in a
state of wakefulness the circulation, becoming more active, provokes a
flow of blood proportioned to the intensity of cerebral activity. In this
respect natural sleep and the anaesthetic sleep of chloroform are alike ;
in both cases, the brain, sunk into rest or inactivity, presents the same
paleness and relative bloodlessness.

The experiment is made in this manner : A part of the bony cover-
ing of an animal's skull is carefully removed, and the brain laid bare
so as to study the circulation at the surface of this organ. Then chloro-
form is administered to produce insensibility. In the first exciting stage
of the action of the chloroform, the brain is observed to grow con-
gested and to lap over at the edges ; but as soon as the stage of anaes-
thetic sleep is reached, the substance of the brain sinks in and grows
paler, presenting a languid movement of capillary circulation, which
lasts as long as the state of sleep or cerebral rest continues. For the
study of the brain in natural sleep a circular trepan is made on a dog's
head, and the piece of bone removed is replaced by a watch-glass care-
fully adjusted to the exact opening, so as to prevent the irritating
action of the air. The animals subjected to the operation survive it;
and observations on their brain through this sort of window, while
awake and when asleep, prove that when the dog is asleep the brain is
always paler, and that a fresh afflux of blood is regularly noticed on
his awaking, when the functions of the brain resume their activity.

7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Facts analogous to those observed in animals have been studied
directly in the human brain. Upon a person injured by a frightful
railroad accident the effect of a considerable loss of brain-substance
was examined. The brain was visible over a surface of three by six inch-
es. The patient suffered frequent and severe attacks of epilepsy and
coma, during which the brain invariably expanded. Sleep succeeded
these attacks, and the cerebral hernia gradually subsided. When the
patient awoke, the brain again projected and rose to the level of the
surface of the external, bony table. In the case of another person in-
jured in consequence of a fracture of the skull, the cerebral circulation
was studied during the administration of anaesthetics. With the first
inhalations, the surface of the brain became branchy and filled with
blood ; the flow of blood and throbbing of the brain increased, and
then, at the instant of sleep, its surface subsided by degrees below the
opening, while at the same time growing relatively pale and blood-
less.

Briefly, then, the brain is governed by the common law that con-
trols blood-circulation in all the organs. By virtue of this law, when
the organs are at rest and their action suspended, the circulation in
them grows languid ; and it increases, on the contrary, as soon as activ-
ity is resumed. The brain, I repeat, is no exception to this general law,
as had been supposed, for it is now demonstrated that the state of
sleep coincides not with congestion, but, on the contrary, with blood-
lessness of the brain.

If we seek now to understand the relations that may exist between
great activity of blood-circulation and the functional condition of the
organs, we shall readily see that this increased flow of the sanguineous
fluid corresponds with greater intensity in the chemical alterations
going on within the tissues, as also with an exaltation in the phenomena
connected with heat which are their necessary and immediate conse-
quence. The production of heat in living beings is a fact established
from remote antiquity ; but the ancients had erroneous ideas as to the
origin of heat : they attributed it to an innate organic power that had
its seat in the heart, that ardent centre of ebullition for the blood
and the passions. At a later date the lungs were regarded as a sort
of furnace to which the mass of the blood repaired successively to gain
the heat which circulation was bidden to distribute throughout the
body. The advance of modern physiology has proved that all these
absolute consignments of vital conditions to special jx>ints are chimeras.
The sources of animal warmth exist everywhere, and in no region
exclusively. It is only through the harmonious functional play of the
various organs that the temperature is kept nearly constant in man
and the warm-blooded animals. There are, in truth, as many heat-pro-
ducing centres as there are special organs and tissues, and we are
obliged always to connect evolving heat with functional labor of the
organs. When a iruscle contracts, when a mucous surface or a gland

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 7i

secretes, production of heat invariably takes place at the same time
with increased activity in the phenomena of local circulation.

Is the case the same with the nervous system and the brain?
Modern experiments forbid us to doubt it. Whenever the spinal
marrow and the nerves exhibit sensibility or movement, whenever an
intellectual effort takes place in the brain, a corresponding quantity
of heat is evolved in it. We must, then, regard heat in the animal
economy as a resultant of the organic labor of all the parts of the
body ; but at the same time it becomes also the principle of activity
for each of these parts. This correlation is, above all, indispensable for
the brain and the nervous system, which hold all the other vital actions
under their control. Experiments have demonstrated that the tissue
of the brain exhibits a higher temperature than any other organ of the
body. In man and the warm-blooded animals the brain itself produces
the heat required for the manifestation of the peculiarities of its tissue.
If this were not so, it would infallibly grow cooler, and we should at
once see all the functions of the brain become torpid, and intelligence
and will perish. This does, in fact, occur in cold-blooded animals, in
which the function of heat-production is not energetic enough to sus-
tain the organism in resistance to external causes of refrigeration.

III.

With respect to the organic or physico-chemical conditions of its
activity, the brain, then, presents nothing exceptional. If we *:rn to
experiments made upon it by physiologists, we shall find that they
have succeeded in analyzing cerebral phenomena in the same way as
those of all the other organs. The experimental process usually em-
ployed to determine the functions of organs consists in removing them
or in destroying them either gradually or suddenly, so as to determine
the uses of the organ according to the special disturbances thus caused
in vital phenomena. This method of the removal or destruction of
organs, which forms a sort of brutal vivisection, has been applied on
a great scale to the study of the whole nervous system. Thus, aftei a
nerve is cut, when the parts to which it had been distributed lose their
sensibility, we conclude from this that it is one of the nerves of sensa-
tion ; if it is motion that ceases, we infer thence that we are dealing
with one of the nerves of motion. The same method has been applied
in examining the functions of the different parts of the encephalic organ,
and, though the complexity of the parts has occasioned novel difficulties
of execution, the method has yielded results that are not to be con-
tested. Every one has long known that, without the brain, intelligence
is not possible, but experiment has discovered exactly the part that
is played by each portion of the organ. It teaches us that conscious-
ness, or intelligence properly so called, resides in the cerebral lobes,
while the lower portions of the brain contain nervous centres destined

72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for organic functions of a lower kind. This is not the place to describe
the special functions of these different sorts of nervous centres which
are superposed and in a manner ranged along quite into the spinal
marrow; it is enough to say that we owe the knowledge of them to
that method of vivisection by organic removal which is adopted in a
general way in all physiological inquiries. Here the brain behaves in
exactly the same way as all the other bodily organs, in this sense,
that every lesion of its substance produces characteristic disturbances
in its functions, which always correspond with the mutilation effected.

By means of the cerebral lesions he produces, the physiologist does
not stop at the creation of local paralysis, which suspends the action
of the will on certain organic instruments ; he is able also, by merely
disturbing the equilibrium of cerebral action, to produce a suspension
of freedom in voluntary motion. Thus, by injuring the peduncles of
the cerebellum, and different points of the brak, the experimenter can
make an animal move as he chooses, to right or left, forward or back-
ward, or can make it turn, sometimes by leaps, sometimes by rotary
movement on the axis of its body. The will of the animal persists,
but power to guide its motions is gone. In spite of its efforts of
will, it moves necessarily in the direction determined by the organic
lesion. Pathologists have remarked numerous similar instances in
man. Lesions of the peduncles of the cerebellum create rotary move-
ments in men as in animals. Some patients could walk only straight
onward. In one case, cruel in its irony, a brave veteran general could
only move backward. Therefore the will, which proceeds from the
brain, does not take effect on our organs of locomotion themselves ; it
impresses itself on secondary nervous centres, which need to be kept
harmoniously balanced by a perfect physiological equilibrium.

There is another and more delicate experimental method, which
consists in introducing into the blood various poisonous substances
intended to exert their action upon the anatomical elements of the
organs, while these are left undisturbed and kept uninjured. Aided
by this method, we can extinguish separately the properties of certain
nervous and cerebral elements, in the same way that we can also sever
the other organic elements, whether muscular or sanguine. Anaes-
thetics, for instance, destroy consciousness and depress sensibility,
while they leave the power of movement untouched. Curare, on the
other hand, destroys the power of movement, and leaves sensibility
and will unimpaired; poisons affecting the heart, suspend muscular
contractility, and the oxide of carbon destroys the oxidizing properties
of the blood- globules, without at all affecting the properties of the
nerve-elements. As we see, by this method of investigation or ele-
mentary analysis of organic properties, the brain and those phenomena
that have their seat in it may also be affected in the same manner as
all the other functional instruments of the body.

There is yet a third method of experimenting, which may be called

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 73

that of experiment by reproduction. This method, to some extent,
combines physiological analysis and synthesis, and enables us to estab-
lish by evidence and counter-evidence those relations which unite the
organ with the function in cerebral manifestations. When the brain
of the inferior animals is removed, the function of the organ is neces-
sarily suppressed; but the persistence of life in these beings allows the
brain to grow again, and, in proportion as the organ reproduces itself,
we observe its functions reappear. The like experiment succeeds in
the same way with superior animals, such as birds, in whom intelli-
gence is much more developed. For instance, when the cerebral lobes
of a pigeon have been removed, the animal at once loses its senses,
and the power of seeking its food. Yet if the animal is artificially
fed, it can survive, because its functions of nutrition continue unim-
paired so long as their special nervous centres are left unharmed.
Little by little the brain renews itself with its particular anatomical
elements, and in the degree in which this restoration takes place we
observe the animal's use of its senses, and its instincts and intelligence
return. Here, I repeat with emphasis, the experiment is complete :
there has been as it were both analysis and synthesis of the vital func-
tion, because the successive destruction of the different parts of the
brain has successively extinguished its different functional manifesta-
tions, and because the successive reproduction of the same parts has
caused the same manifestations to reappear. It is hardly necessary
to add that the same thing happens as to all the other parts of the
body which are susceptible of reproduction.

Diseases, which are at bottom nothing but vital perturbations caused
by Nature instead of being produced by the hand of the physiologist,
affect the brain according to the usual laws of pathology ; that is to say,
by occasioning functional troubles which always correspond to the na-
ture and seat of the injury. In a word, the brain has its pathological
anatomy exactly as all the organs of the economy have, and the pa-
thology of the brain has its special series of symptoms, just as the
other oro-ans have theirs. In mental alienation we observe the most
remarkable disturbances of the reason, furnishing in their study a rich
mine for' the researches of the physiologist and the philosopher ; but
the various forms of lunacy or madness are nothing more than disturb-
ances of the normal function of the brain, and these alterations of func-
tion in the cerebral organ, as in all the rest, are combined with inva-
riable anatomical alterations. If, under many circumstances, these are
not yet understood, the blame must be laid wholly on the imperfection
of our means of investigation. Besides, do we not find that certain
poisons, such as opium and curare, paralyze the nerves and the brain,
without being able to discover any visible alteration in the nerve-sub-
stance ? Yet we are sure that such alterations exist ; for, to admit the
contrary, would be to admit an effect without a cause. "When the poi-
son has ceased to act, we find the mental disturbances disappear, and

74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the normal condition return. It is the same when pathological injuries
are healed ; the trouble in the intelligence ceases, and reason comes
back. Pathology here, too, furnishes us with a kind of functional
analysis and synthesis, just as may be observed in experiments of re-
production. Disease, in a word, suppresses the function more or less
entirely, by changing more or less completely the texture of the organ,
and the cure restores the function by reestablishing the normal organic
condition.

If the manifestations of the brain's functions were the earliest to
attract the attention of philosophers, they will assuredly be the last to
receive explanation from physiologists. We believe that the progress
of modern science allows us now to approach the subject of the phys-
iology of the brain ; but, before beginning the study of the cerebral
functions, we must clearly understand our point of departure. In this
essay, we have attempted to state only one term of the problem, and
to show how untenable is the opinion that the brain forms an excep-
tion in the organism, and is the substratum of intelligence instead of
being its instrument. This idea is not merely an obsolete conception,
but an unscientific one, injurious to the progress of physiology and
psychology. Indeed, what sense is there in the notion that any appa-
ratus of Nature, whether in its lifeless or its living domain, can be the
seat of a phenomenon without being its instrument ? Preconceived
ideas clearly have a great influence in discussing the functions of the
brain, and a solution is combated by arguments used for the sake of
their tendency. Some refuse to allow that the brain can be the organ
of intelligence, from fear of being involved by that admission in mate-
rialistic doctrines ; while others eagerly and arbitrarily lodge intelli-
gence in a round or fusiform nerve-cell, for fear of being charged with
spiritualism. For ourselves, we are not concerned about such fears.
Physiology tells us that, except in the difference and the greater com-
plexity of the phenomena, the brain is the organ of intelligence in ex-
actly the same way that the heart is the organ of circulation, and the
larynx that of the voice. We discover everywhere a necessary bond
between the organs and their functions ; it is a general principle, from
which no organ of the body can escape. Physiology should copy the
example of more advanced sciences, and free itself from the fetters
of philosophy that would impede its progress ; its mission is to seek
truth calmly and confidently, its object to establish it beyond doubt
or change, without any alarm as to the form under which it may make
its ajjpearance.

ON METEORIC STONES. 75

ON METEORIC STONES.1

By PROFESSOR N. S. MASKELYNE, M. A., F. E. S.

THE substantial unity of the celestial objects distinguished in
common language by the names shooting or falling stars, fire-
balls, and meteorites, and further, the coincidence in many important
respects of these with comets, and possibly with the zodiacal light,
were suggestions made by Humboldt in the " Cosmos," which have
received much confirmation from the subsequent advance of science.

The greater apparent velocity with which the ordinary meteors
traverse the atmosphere as compared with that with which the less
frequent larger bodies are seen to move, the marked periodicity that
attends the recurrence of the former in several, and especially in two,
notable cases of meteor-showers, offer an apparent contrast between
these classes of meteors ; it is not, however, in all probability, a real
contrast, for the one class passes into the other by every gradation in
the magnitude of the mass or masses of which the meteor consists, and
consequently in the grandeur of the phenomena which accompany its
advent. If of the material composing the ordinary falling star we
have never yet been able to recognize any vestiges as reaching the
earth, of the meteorite, on the other hand, the mineral collections of
Europe contain numerous carefully-collected specimens, which are the
fragments that have escaped the fiery ordeal of the transit through
our earth's atmosphere, and in these we recognize masses composed
either of iron (siderites), or of stones (aerolites), or of a mixture of
the two (siderolites). The phenomena associated with such falls of
meteoric matter have been described in very similar language by
those who have witnessed them in various parts of the world, and
these accounts, whether coming from European observers or from
Hindoo herdsmen (of which some were read by the lecturer), concur
generally in the approach of the meteorite as a fiery mass, emanating
from a cloud when seen by day and exploding often with successive
detonations that are heard over a great extent of country, even in
certain cases at points more than 60 miles distant, but finally reaching
the earth with a velocity little higher than what might be due to the
motion of a falling body. Externally these meteoric masses are gen-
erally hot when they fall; sometimes, however, they are not so; the
discrepancies in the accounts being explained by one authenticated
case in which the mass was internally intensely cold, though at first
hot externally. The fallen meteorite is invariably coated with an
incrustation, sometimes shining as an enamel, generally black, but
occasionally colorless where the aerolite is free from ferrous silicates ;
and this incrustation is seen to have been formed in the atmosphere,

1 Read before the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

since it is found coating surfaces of fragments that have been severed
by the explosions in the air.

Aerolites frequently fall simultaneously in large numbers, many
thousands of them being in such cases spread over a surface of the
country some miles in extent ; and such showers of stones seem to have
entered the atmosphere as a group, though their numbers must sub-
sequently have been greatly increased by the division accompanying
their detonation.

The explanation of the incrustation and of the cloud left by the
meteorite, or out of which it seems to emerge, is found in the trans-
formation into heat of the energy actuating a body that enters our
atmosphere with a motion of 12 to 40 miles a second. The velocity
of the body is almost instantaneously arrested by the atmospheric
resistance, and in a very few seconds the mass becomes, comparatively
speaking, stationary. Its surface must, as a consequence, be imme-
diately fused, and the melted matter would be flung off from it into
the surrounding air, fresh surfaces continually affording new fused
material to form the cloud of, so to say, siliceous spray that lingers
along and around the path of the meteorite.

When the mass is small — and in the case of meteoric showers and
ordinary falling stars it cannot exceed a few ounces, and may often
be but a few grains — the whole material is thus consumed, and must
ultimately fall as an unperceived, because widely-scattered, dust. The
meteorite is the residue that survives this wastinsr action where the
magnitude of the mass is more considerable. The cause of the violent
and often successive explosions is probably to be sought in the expan-
sion of the outer portions of the mass, while the interior retains the
contracted volume due to the intense cold of space with which the
meteorite enters the atmosphere.

From time to time these contending conditions of volume may, as
in a Prince Rupert's drop, produce explosion, the heated shell in the
case of the meteorite flying off in fragments from the internally cold
inner core, which if sufficient velocity remain to the mass will undergo
a recurrence of the same conditions of surface fusion and explosion.
The loudness of the detonation is also probably enhanced by the
simultaneous collapse of the air on the vacuum that would follow the
rapidly-moving mass.

The pitted surface characteristic of meteorites probably bears
witness to a similar effect of unequal dilatation operating more espe-
cially in the freshly-broken surfaces of the mass, small fragments
splintering off in this way from the cold and brittle stone under the
sudden influence of intense heat.

A remark made by Humboldt, that light and meteorites are the
only sources of our knowledge regarding the universe external to our
world, points to the true ground for our interest in the waifs and strays
of extra-telluric matter that thus fall upon our globe.

OX METEORIC STOXES. 77

In physical as well as in chemical characters aerolites resemble at
the first aspect some terrestrial volcanic rocks.

The minerals of which they are composed are nearly entirely
crystalline, as is evinced by the colors in polarized light of such as are
transparent. These minerals are usually aggregated with slight cohe-
sion, and they present in by far the greatest number of cases a peculiar
spherular or " chondritic " structure.

In these the spherules are composed of similar minerals to those
which enclose them, and even contain metallic iron sometimes in
microscopically fine grains disseminated through them.

A section of an aerolite was exhibited by the microscope in which
some of the spherules had been broken before being cemented by the
surrounding mass, and in another fissures were seen which had been
filled with a fused material after one side of the fissure had slidden
along the other ; facts pointing to events in the history of the meteorite
subsequent to its first formation.

The chemical composition and the mineral constitution of aerolites
were illustrated by tables showing the elements met with in these
bodies, and the minerals in which they were distributed. The former
comprised about one-third of the known elements ; among them
magnesium, iron, silicon, oxygen, and sulphur, were conspicuous ; cal-
cium, aluminium, nickel, carbon, and phosphorus, coming next in im-
portance, the basic elements of most importance by their amount being
the same as those which are found by spectroscopic analysis to be
present in the sun — and in those stars which have been the best ex-
amined.

The minerals most frequent in aerolites besides nickeliferous iron
or troilite (iron monosulphide) and graphite, are bronzite (a ferriferous
enstatite) and olivine, both of the latter being essentially magnesium
silicates. Augite and anorthite also occur (more particularly in the
eukritic aerolites of Rose) and some minerals unknown in terrestrial
mineralogy have also been met with ; such are the different varieties
of Schreibersite (phosphides of iron and nickel) ; calcium sulphide,
asmanite (a form of silica crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and
having the specific gravity of fused quartz), and a cubic mineral with
the composition of labradorite. The crystalline form of bronzite was
first determined from the crystals in a meteorite, and was found to
confirm the conclusion Descloizeaux had arrived at as regards its
system from observations on the distribution of the optic axes in the
terrestrial bronzite and enstatite.

The question as to whence the meteorites come is one that we are
not yet in a position to answer with certainty. The various hypotheses
which suppose for them an origin in lunar volcanoes, or in our atmos-
phere, or again in a destroyed telluric satellite, or that would treat
them as fragments of an original planet of which the asteroids are
parts, or as masses ejected from the sun; all these hypotheses seem to

72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be more or less precluded by the known velocities, the retrograde
motion so frequently characterizing meteors and meteoi'ites, or else by
the chemical conditions that, for instance, are involved in the passage
of the meteorite through the sun's chromosphere. Whether meteorites
move or do not move in circumsolar orbits is at present impossible to
say ; because, while with our incomplete knowledge we cannot to-day
attach the character of periodicity to any known class of meteorites,
we are not justified in founding any conclusion on a negative result
with so limited a foundation.

But even if all or some of them may have been, on their encounter-
ing the earth, members temporarily or permanently of the solar system,
we may with considerable probability consider them as having origi-
nally entered our system from the interstellar spaces beyond it. Such
at least must be our conclusion if we are to admit the unity of the
whole class of phenomena of meteorites and falling stars. For, since
the orbits of the two best-known meteoric streams, those namely of
August and November, have been identified with the orbits of two
comets, and since in regard to one of these (that of November) Lever-
rier has shown, with great probability, that as a meteoric cloud it
entered and became a member of our system only some 1,700 years
ago in consequence of the attraction of Uranus, while the August
meteoric ring only differs in this respect from it, that it had at a much
more remote period found an elliptic orbit round the sun : we are con-
strained on the assumption with which we started to recognize also in
a meteorite a visitor from the regions of remote space. And so far as
it goes, the observation by Secchi that the November falling stars
exhibit the magnesium lines is in harmony with this view.

It may, however, further be said that the tendency of scientific
conviction is in the direction of recognizing the collection toward and
concentration in definite centres, of the matter of the universe, as a
cosmical law, rather than the opposite supposition of such centres being
the sources whence matter is dispersed into space. In the meteorites
that fall on our earth (certainly in considerable numbers) we have to
acknowledge the evidence of a vast and perpetual movement of space,
about which we can only reason as part of a great feature in the
universe which we have every ground for not supposing to be confined
within the limits of the solar system.

That this matter, whether intercepted or not by the planets and
the sun, should to an ever-increasing amount become entangled in the
web of solar and planetary attraction, and that the same operation
should be collecting round other stars and in distant systems such
moving " clouds " of star-dust as have been treated by Schiaparelli,
Leverrier, and other astronomers, or individual masses of wandering
stone or iron, is a necessary deduction from the view that we have
assumed regarding the tendency of cosmical matter to collect toward
centres. But in order to trace the previous stages of the history of

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 79

any meteorite, and, in particular, to determine the conditions under
which its present constitution as a rock took its origin, we have only
for our guide the actual record written on the meteoric mass itself;
and it is in this direction that the mineralogist is now working.

But the progress is necessarily a gradual one. We may indeed
assert that the meteorites we know have, probably all of them, been
originally formed under conditions from which the presence of water
or of free oxygen to the amount requisite to oxidize entirely the ele-
ments present were excluded ; for this is proved by the nature of the
minerals constituting the meteorites, and by the way in which the
metallic iron is distributed through them.

And one suggestive and significant fact remains to be alluded to ;
the presence, namely, in some few meteorites of combinations of hydro-
gen and carbon, which if met with in a terrestrial mineral would with
little hesitation be assigned to an organic origin. A few grains were
exhibited to the audience of such a body, crystallized from ether,
which solvent had extracted it to the amount of about 0.25 per cent,
from six ounces of the Cold Bokkveldt meteorite.

Similar substances have been extracted by Wohler, Roscoe, and
other chemists, from this and other meteorites. It was, however, ob-
served, as pointing to the probability of the comparatively porous
meteoric stone having in this case taken up the hydrocarbon as a sub-
stance extraneous to it (possibly when in the state of a vapor), that
ether extracted it entirely from the solid lumps of the meteorite ; pul-
verization not in any way adding to the amount obtained, or facilitating
in any appreciable degree the separation of the substance.

-♦-»♦-

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

By PROFESSOR TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S.

THE editor of the Contemporary Review is liberal enough to grant
me space for a few brief reflections on a subject, a former reference
to which in these pages has, I believe, brought down upon him and me
a considerable amount of animadversion.

It may be interesting to some if I glance at a few cases illustrative
of the history of the human mind in relation to this and kindred sub-
jects. In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes was deemed un-
scriptural and heretical. The pious Lactantius was as angry with the
people who held this notion as my censors are with me, and quite as un-
sparing in his denunciations of their " Monstrosities." Lactantius was
irritated because, in his mind, by education and habit, cosmogony and
religion were indissolubly associated, and therefore simultaneously dis-
turbed. In the early part of the seventeenth century the notion that

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the earth was fixed, and that the sun and stars revolved round it daily,
was interwoven in a similar manner with religious feeling, the separa-
tion then attempted by Galileo arousing animosity and kindling per-
secution. Men still living can remember the indignation excited by
the first revelations of geology, regarding the age of the earth, the
association between chronology and religion being for the time indis-
soluble. In our day, however, the best-informed clergymen are pre-
pared to admit that our views of the Universe, and its Author, are not
impaired, but improved, by the abandonment of the Mosaic account
of the Creation. Look, finally, at the excitement caused by the pub-
lication of the " Origin of Species," and compare it with the calm attend-
ant on the appearance of the far more outspoken, and, from the old
point of view, more impious " Descent of Man."

Thus religion survives after the removal of what had been long
considered essential to it. In our day the Antipodes are accepted, the
fixity of the earth is given up, the period of Creation and the reputed
age of the world are alike dissipated, Evolution is looked upon without
terror, and other changes have occurred in the same direction too
numerous to be dwelt upon here. In fact, from the earliest times to
the present, religion has been undergoing a process of purification,
freeing itself slowly and painfully from the physical errors which the
busy and uninformed intellect mingled with the aspiration of the soul,
and which ignorance sought to perpetuate. Some of us think a final
act of purification remains to be performed, while others oppose this
notion with the confidence and the warmth of ancient times. The
bone of contention at present is the physical value of prayer. It is
not my wish to excite surprise, much less to draw forth protest by the
employment of this phrase. I would simply ask any intelligent person
to look the problem honestly and steadily in the face, and then to say
whether, in the estimation of the great body of those who sincerely
resort to it, prayer does not, at all events upon special occasions,
invoke a Power which checks and augments the descent of rain, wdiicb
changes the force and direction of winds, which affects the growth of
corn, and the health of men and cattle — a Power, in short, which,
when appealed to under pressing circumstances, produces the precise
effects caused by physical energy in the ordinary course of things.
To any person who deals sincerely with the subject, and refuses to
blur his moral vision by intellectual subtleties, this; I think, will
appear a true statement of the case.

It is under this aspect alone that the scientific student, so far as
I represent him, has any wish to meddle with player. Forced upon
his attention as a form of physical energy, or as the equivalent of such
energy, he claims the right of subjecting it to those methods of ex-
amination from which all our present knowledge of the physical uni-
verse is derived. And, if his researches lead him to a conclusion adverse
to its claims — if his inquiries rivet him still closer to the philosophy

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 8i

enfolded in the words, " He maketh his sun to sbine on the evil and
on the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust " —
he contends only for the displacement of prayer, not for its extinction.
He simply says, physical Nature is not its legitimate domain.

This conclusion, moreover, must be based on pure physical evidence,
and not on any inherent unreasonableness in the act of prayer. The
theory that the system of Nature is under the control of a Being who
changes phenomena in compliance with the prayers of men, is, in my
opinion, a perfectly legitimate one. It may of course be rendered
futile by being associated with conceptions which contradict it, but
such conceptions form no necessary part of the theory. It is a matter
of experience that an earthly father, who is at the same time both
wise and tender, listens to the requests of his children, and, if they
do not ask amiss, takes pleasure in granting their requests. We know
also that this compliance extends to the alteration, within certain
limits, of the current of events on earth. With this suggestion offered
by our experience, it is no departure from scientific method to place
behind natural phenomena a universal Father, who, in answer to the
prayers of His children, alters the currents of those phenomena. Thus
far Theology and Science go hand in hand. The conception of an
ether, for example, trembling with the waves of light, is suggested
by the ordinary phenomena of wave-motion in water and in air ; and
in like manner the conception of personal volition in Nature is sug-
gested by the ordinary action of man upon earth. I therefore urge no
impossibilities, though you constantly charge me with doing so. I do
not even urge inconsistency, but, on the contrary, frankly admit that
you have as good a right to place your conception at the root of
phenomena as I have to place mine.

But, without verification, a theoretic conception is a mere figment
of the intellect, and I am sorry to find us parting company at this
point. The region of theory, both in science and theology, lies behind
the world of the senses, but the verification of theory occurs in the
sensible world. To check the theory we have simply to compare the
deductions from it with the facts of observation. If the deductions be
in accordance with the facts, we accept the theory : if in opposition,
the theory is given up. A single experiment is frequently devised by
which the theory must stand or fall. Of this character was the deter-
mination of the velocity of light in liquids as a crucial test of the
Emission Theory. Accoiding to Newton, light travelled faster in
water than in air ; according to an experiment suggested by Arago,
and executed by Fizeau and Foucault, it travelled faster in air than
in water. The experiment was conclusive against Newton's theory.

But while science cheerfully submits to this ordeal, it seems im-
possible to devise a mode of verification of their theory which does
not arouse resentment in theological minds. Is it that, while the
pleasure of the scientific man culminates in the demonstrated harmony

VOL. II. — 6

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between theory and fact, the highest pleasure of the religious man has
been already tasted in the very act of praying, prior to verification,
any further effort in this direction being a mere disturbance of his
peace? Or is it that we have before us a residue of that mysticism
of the middle ages which has been so admirably described by Whewell
— that " practice of referring things and events not to clear and distinct
notions, not to general rules capable of direct verification, but to
notions vague, distant, and vast, which we cannot bring into contact
with facts; as when we connect natural events with moral and historic
causes. . . . Thus," he continues, "the character of mysticism is that
it refers particulars, not to generalizations, homogeneous and immedi-
ate, but to such as are heterogeneous and remote ; to which we must
add that the process of this reference is not a calm act of the intellect,
but is accompanied with a glow of enthusiastic feeling."

Every feature hex-e depicted, and some more questionable ones,
have shown themselves of late ; most conspicuously, I regret to say,
in the " leaders " of a weekly journal of considerable influence, and one,
on many grounds, entitled to the respect of thoughtful men. In the
correspondence, however, published by the same journal, are to be
found two or three letters well calculated to correct the temporary
fiightiness of the journal itself.

It is not my habit of mind to think otherwise than solemnly of
the feeling which prompts prayer. It is .a potency which I should
like to see guided, not extinguished, devoted to practicable objects
instead of wasted upon air. In some form or other, not yet evident,
it may, as alleged, be necessary to man's highest culture. Certain it
is that, while I rank many persons who employ it low in the scale of
being, natural foolishness, bigotry, and intolerance, being in their case
intensified by the notion that they have access to the ear of God, I
regard others who employ it as forming part of the very cream of the
earth. The faith that simply adds to the folly and ferocity of the one,
is turned to enduring sweetness, holiness, abounding charity, and self-
sacrifice, by the other. Christianity, in fact, varies with the nature
upon which it falls. Often unreasonable, if not contemptible, in its
purer forms prayer hints at disciplines which few of us can neglect
without moral loss. But no good can come of giving it a delusive
value by claiming for it a power in physical Nature. It may strengthen
the heart to meet life's losses, and thus indirectly promote physical
well-being, as the digging of JEsop's orchard brought a treasure of
fertility greater than the treasure sought. Such indirect issues we all
admit ; but it would be simply dishonest to affirm that it is such issues
that are always in view. Here, for the present, I must end. I ask no
space to reply to those railers who make such free use of the terms
insolence, outrage, profanity, and blasphemy. They obviously lack
the sobriety of mind necessary to give accuracy to their statements, or
to render their charges worthy of serious refutation. — Advance Sheets.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 83

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

THE appearance of the long-promised work of Dr. Bastian on the
" Beginnings of Life " l will be welcomed by the students of
natural history as an important step forward in the progress of an
old and interesting controversy. Whether all the life of the earth came
from some primordial spark in the dim beginning, that has spread
in multitudinous diversity through earth, sea, and air ; or whether all
forms of living things sprang into perfect existence after their dis-
tinctive kinds by a supernatural fiat ; or whether the origination of liv-
ing things is still within the compass of natural operations, are ques-
tions equally fascinating to pursue and difficult to determine. But the
radical problem of the origin of life is now accepted as legitimate in
the field of science, and much of the world's ablest talent is profoundly
occupied with its investigation. "We propose to give a brief account
of Di\ Bastian's contribution to the inquiry, or rather to point out his
line of research, referring those who are interested in the subject to
his able work, which is now accessible to American readers.

The doctrine that certain forms of living things originate directly
in the operations of Nature, without the agency of parentage, is an
ancient speculation. _ Three centuries before the Christian era, Aris-
totle believed in the spontaneous origination of eels and other fish out
of the slimy mud of rivers and marshes; also, that certain insects
took origin from the vernal dew on plants ; and that lice were sponta-
neously engendered in the flesh of animals. He believed also that
animals might proceed from vegetables — that the caterpillars of cer-
tain butterflies, for instance, were actually the products of the plants
upon which they fed. To the authority of Aristotle, which was des-
potic in the schools for nearly two thousand years, was added in this
case the influence of poetry by which the Aristotlean science was pop-
ularized. Ovid, who is reputed to have been forty-three years old at
the Christian era, sung of spontaneous generation as follows — Dryden
being responsible for the English :

" The rest of animals from teeming earth
Produced, in various forms received their hirth.
The native moisture, in its close retreat
Digested by the sun's ethereal heat
As in a kindly womb, began to breed,
Then swelled and quickened by the vital seed ;
And some in less, and some in longer space,
Were ripened into form and took a several face.

1 " The Beginnings of Life ; being some Account of the Nature, Modes of Origin, and
Transformations of Lower Organisms." By H. Charlton Bastian, M. A., II. D., F. R. S.
In two volumes, pp. 1200 ; with numerous Illustrations.

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Thus when the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,
And seeks, with ebbing tide, his ancient bed,
The fat manure with heavenly fire is warmed,
And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are formed ;
These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find;
Some rude, and yet unfinished in their kind.
Short of their limbs, a lame, imperfect birth ;
One half alive, and one of lifeless earth."

Crude ideas of this kind prevailed universally until the seventeenth
century. The celebrated physiologist, Dr. William Harvey, the dis-
coverer of the circulation of the blood, has the credit of first propound-
ing the modern view expressed in the maxim " Omne vivum ex vivo,"
which being interpreted signifies, " No life without antecedent life."
He maintained that all living beings proceed from eggs ; but exactly
what he meant by " eggs," that is, whether they were always derived
from parental organisms, or might originate in some other way, is con-
sidered uncertain.

The first distinct announcement of the doctrine that all living matter
has sprung from preexisting living matter, was made by Francesco
Redi, an Italian physician, who published his views just two hundred
and four years ago. His position is thus stated by Prof. Huxley :
" Here are dead animals, or pieces of meat ; I expose them to the
air in hot weather, and in a few days they swarm with maggots.
You tell me that these are generated in the dead flesh ; but, if I put
similar bodies, while quite fresh, into ajar, and tie some fine gauze over
the top of the jar, not a maggot makes its appearance, while the dead
substances, nevertheless, putrefy just in the same way as before. It is
obvious, therefore, that the maggots are not generated by the corrup-
tion of the meat, and that the cause of their formation must be a some-
thing which is kept away by gauze. But gauze will not keep away
aeriform bodies or fluids. This something must, therefore, exist in the
form of solid particles too big to get through the gauze. Nor is one
left long in doubt what these solid particles are ; for the blow-flies, at-
tracted by the odor of the meat, swarm round the vessel, and urged by
a powerful but in this case misleading instinct, lay eggs out of which
maggots are immediately hatched upon the gauze. The conclusion,
therefore, is unavoidable : the maggots are not generated by the meat,
but the eggs which give rise to them are brought through the air by
the flies."

These experiments were unanswerable ; but the doctrine of sponta-
neous generation had been too long and firmly believed, to be surren-
dered merely because of the demonstrated falsity of its grounds. It
was held to have the sanction of the Bible, which affirmed that bees
were generated from the carcass of a dead lion : Dr. Redi was there-
fore called upon to defend himself against the charge of impugning
Scripture authority.

SP ONTANEO US GENERA TION.

85

The views of Redi prevailed for a century, and the hypothesis of
spontaneous generation had become completely discredited. But
meantime the microscope had been improved, and a new world of life
revealed. When animal or vegetable substances are infused for a time
in water, swarms of creatures are produced in it, called infusorial ani-
malcuhe, and which are so small that they can only be seen with a pow-
erful magnifier. This was a new aspect of the production of life,
and favored the view of its spontaneous origin. In the middle of the
eighteenth century, an Englishman named Needham took the ground
that, although putrefying meat may not engender insects, it may yet
give rise to animalculce. " If," said JSTeedham, " these animalcuke come

Fig. 1.

Q O 9
>•> or 9 „

A

• Q

V

-V

.0, "

W\

K <V%*

Some op the Most Common Primordial Forms op Life. ( x 800.)
A. Plastide-particles ; B. Bacteria ; C. Torula ; D. Vibriones ; E. Spirilla ; F. Leptothrix.

from germs, these germs must exist, either in the infused substance,
the water, or the adjacent air. All germs are killed by heat ; if, there-
fore, I boil the infusion, seal it up, and then heat the whole vessel, I
shall destroy the germs." He did this ; but, after waiting for a time,
the anirnalculse still appeared in the closed vessel. The experiment
seemed conclusive in favor of spontaneous generation, or life without
germs ; but, again, a learned Italian appeared and attacked the hypothe-
sis. Spallanzani repeated Needham's experiments with more vigilant
precautions. He closed the tubes more effectually, and exposed them
to a greater heat, after which the anirnalculse failed to appear. The
real issue in the case was thus fairly reached, and the question became
one of the existence of atmospheric germs, and of their power of resist-
ing heat. The results of Spallanzani were generally held conclusive
against the hypothesis of spontaneous generation ; but, toward the
middle of the present century, the question was again opened, and
it has been assiduously investigated and hotly discussed by men of
science for the last forty years. We cannot even mention the numer-
ous contributions to it that have been made by eminent scientists, but

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

must refer the reader to Dr. Bastian's work, where the history of re-
cent investigations upon the subject is given in detail.

The growth of new distinctions and more precise ideas in science re-
quires the use of new terms to mark them, while, at the same time, old
terms have to be discarded, as conveying erroneous ideas. The term
" spontaneous generation," although so long applied to the subject, that
it will be apt to continue in popular use, has lost its place in biological
science, as it is too indefinite, and conveys a false idea. Those who
hold that life originates directly from non-living matter do not con-
sider that its production in this way is any more truly "spontaneous"
than its usual production from parental germs. Several words have
been introduced by different writers to define their ideas, which it is
desirable here to explain.

Biogenesis is the term applied by Prof. Huxley to the derivation
of life from previously-existing life ; and Abiogenesis to the produc-
tion of'life from non-living matter. The latter term, therefore, corre-
sponds to what is commonly meant by " spontaneous generation."

LTomogenesis, or Homogeny, are terms that have been long applied
to the production of like from like ; that is, the common case in which
the living parent gives rise to offspring which pass through the same
changes as itself.

Heterogenesis, or Heterogeny, is the name applied to processes by
which living things arise from the matter of preexisting organisms,
belonging to a totally different species. It has, however, had different
meanings, and its use has created some obscurity, but it is customary
to apply it to the so-called cases of " spontaneous generation ; " and
those who hold this doctrine are therefore known as Ileterogenists.

Panspermy is the name given to the doctrine of diffused atmos-
pheric germs, as the sources of infusorial life, and those who hold to
this view are called Panspermists. " Spontaneous generation," so
called, or the production of living creatures without parentage, may
take place in two ways : either from preexisting living matter (hetero-
genesis), or from not-living matter. This production of living forms
from inorganic materials is termed by Dr. Bastian Archebiosis, which
literally means " beginning to live."

It was in the course of some investigations upon the microscopical
characters of the blood of persons suffering from acute diseases that
Dr. Bastian's attention was first drawn to the question of the origin
of life. He soon became interested in it as an independent scientific
problem, and pursued the inquiry experimentally for three years, the
results being recorded in the present work. In Part I. he aims to
show that the now commonly-accepted doctrine of the Correlation of
Forces favors the independent origin of living matter. In this part,
also, he has an elaborate chapter showing that the cell cannot be re-
garded as the ultimate organic unit. In Part II., under the head of
Archebiosis, he takes up the real issue of the spontaneous generation

SP ONTANE 0 US GENERA TION.

87

of new matter endowed with living properties. The question is tlms
stated : " It must be considered to turn almost wholly upon the possi-
bility of the de novo origin of bacteria ; since, if such a mode of ori-
gin can be proved for them, it must also be conceded for other allied
fungoid and algoid units. Evidence, which is of the most convincing
character when looked at from all sides, now shows that bacteria are
hilled by a temperature of 140° Fahr. Yet similar organisms will con-
stantly appear and rapidly multiply within closed flasks containing
organic fluids, although the flasks and their contents have -been pre-
viously exposed for some time to a temperature of 212° Fahr."

As it will be impossible in this article to give the details of Dr.
Bastian's experiments, we will try to convey to our readers some no-
tion of these living organisms, which it is now claimed can be pro-
duced when all germs are destroyed. When a fluid containing an or-
ganic substance in solution is left to itself for a time, which may be
variable in different circumstances, the infusion gradually becomes
turbid, and there forms upon its surface a thin, semi-translucent scum,

Fig. 2.

Representation op Haeckel's Group Monera. ( x 800.) The Common Amceba.

a. Minute Specks of Protoplasm from Fine Surface Mud of Fresh-water Ponds ; b. Protomoeba Primitiva,
two Individuals resulting from a Recent Fission ; o. Vampyrella Pendula ; d. Amoeba Porreta, a Form
of Protomcoba.

or pellicle, that soon thickens into a membrane. If the fluid be ob-
served by a microscope of the highest power, when it first begins to
grow clouded, it will be found swarming with multitudes of moving
specks or spherical particles (Fig. 1, A),varying from 2 0 \ Q 0 to 10q00q
of an inch in diameter. These specks have been variously named.

39

They have been called " monads," or " mycrozimes," or " micrococci,
and are termed by Dr. Bastian piastre particles. They are regarded
by him as the primordial particles of living matter, and as giving ori-
gin to organisms of a higher grade.

Among these are the infusorial objects known as bacteria (Fig. 1, B).
These are minute, rod-like, jointed bodies, varying in size according to

38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

circumstances, but pretty uniform in the same solution. They are in
length from -j-g^g-g- to ao*06 of an inch, and in thickness from -gu-jj-g-Tr to
4iro~o o" °f an inch. The rods are formed of a series of granules placed
end to end, and their appearance has been likened to a number of fine
needles embedded in a thin film of glue. They often present a joint
or line in the middle, dividing them into two equal parts. " Their
movements are frequently of a more or less rapid, oscillating, or irregu-
larly rotating character; though at other times they maybe seen dart-
ing from place to place, either directly or in curves of various descrip-
tions. All gradations exist, in fact, between movements which suffice
at once to stamp them as living things, and mere slow oscillations, the
presence of which alone may make us doubtful as to whether we have
to do with living or dead organisms."

Along with the plastide-particles and the bacteria, there appears
one of the lowest and simplest of organic bodies — the Torula, or yeast-
plant (Fig. 1, C). The torula is a simple cell, possessing a cell-wall
formed of a thin, homogeneous membrane, and containing a soft forma-
tive layer composed of protoplasm. These cells are about ^oVo °f
an inch and smaller, and multiply by budding or gemmation, being
usually seen in chains, or clustered groups. Vibriones (Fig. 1, D) are
described as jointed bodies, composed of long, rod-like segments, bent
at various angles, which exhibit certain slow movements — either as
mere bending of the body, or else an actual undulating progression.
In size they may vary from that of the largest bacteria, up to a body
j-J7 of an inch in length, by l7^00 in breadth, though there is no defi-
nite limit to their dimensions. The Spirilla (Fig. 1, E) are less common
organic forms, characterized by the most active movements, and in
which the body is thread-like, though twisted into the form of a helix,
or spiral. Leptothrix (Fig. 1 F) is a name applied to certain filamen-
tous objects that are generally motionless, and often not much thicker
than vibriones. They may be either straight or undulating in outline,
and perfectly plain, or marked by minute segmentations, after the
fashion of the larger fungous filaments, into which it is said they some-
times develop.

Within a few years past, attention has been called by Prof. Haeckel
to certain of the lowest forms of organic life, which he considers inter-
mediate between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and by which
they are connected. These he calls the Protista, meaning, first of all,
primordial. This primordial organic kingdom, Haeckel divides into
ten groups, the lowest of which he names the Monera, which includes
certain minute jelly-specks termed protomceba and protogenes. Prof.
Haeckel says : " I have called these forms of life standing at the lowest
grade of organization monera. Their whole body, in a fully-developed
and freely-moving condition, consists of an entirely homogeneous and
structureless substance, a living particle of albumen capable of nourish-
ment and reproduction. These simplest and most imperfect of all

SP ONTANEO US GENERA TION.

89

organisms are, in many respects, of the highest interest. For the
albumen-like, organic matter meets us here as the material substratum
of all life-phenomena, apparently not only under the simplest form as
yet actually observed, but also under the simplest form which can
well be imagined. Simpler and more incomplete organisms than the
monera cannot be conceived. . . . Indeed, the whole body of the
monera, however strange this may sound, represents nothing more
than a single, thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen, in a firmly
adhesive condition. The external form is quite irregular, continually
changing, globularly contracted when at rest. Our sharpest discrimina-
tion can detect no trace of an internal structure, or of a formation from
dissimilar parts. As the homogeneous, albuminous mass of the body
of the moner does not even exhibit a differentiation into an inner
nucleus and an outer plasma, and as, moreover, the whole body con-
sists of a homogeneous plasma or protoplasma, the organic matter here
does not even reach the importance of the simplest cell. It remains in
the lowest imaginable grade of organic individuality." Prof. Haeckel
afterward says : " The monera are indeed protista. They are neither
animals nor plants. They are organisms of the most primitive kind ;
among which the distinction between animals and plants does not
exist."

Fig. 3.
S e

Transformations of Chlorophyll Corpuscles, (x 600.)

a, Pale, unaltered Chlorophyll Corpuscles of Nitella ; 6, Others lying side by side with former, but larger,
of a darker green, and slightly granular; c, Decolorization advancing — a few granules still green;
d, Similar corpuscles after the protrusion of motionless rays, and formation of a vacuole ; e. Similar
corpuscles completely decolorized and converted into sluggish specimens of Actinophrys ; /, First stage
in transformation of Actinophrys. some of which are converted into Amoebae (g), and others into Monads
(Ji) with two flagella ; j, Enchelys-like organisms, probably derived from further development of some
Monads and Amuebae.

The common amoeba is described as a microscopic animal at the
very bottom of the scale of living things. It is a minute, shapeless,
structureless mass of semi-fluid jelly or protoplasm, without organs of
any kind, but it has the marvellous power of extemporizing organs as
it requires them. Thus, if it wishes to move, it shoots out a part of
its body as a temporary foot, and retracts it when no longer wanted.

9o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

If it desires to seize any thing, it protrudes an arm for the purpose;
and, when it has in this way got possession of the needed nutriment,
becoming all stomachy it wraps itself round its food, and absorbs or
digests it.

Dr. Carpenter describes it as " changing itself into a greater variety
of forms than the fabled Proteus, laying hold of its food without mem-
bers, swallowing it without a mouth, digesting it without a stomach,
appropriating its nutritious material without absorbent vessels or a
circulating system, moving from place to place without muscles, feel-
ing (if it has any power to do so) without nerves, multiplying itself
without eggs, and not only this, but, in many instances, forming shelly
coverings of a symmetry and complexity not surpassed by those of any
testaceous animal."

Fig. 4.

T^ Co o . <-s_ o „ t> :

Modes of Origin and Development of Ciliated Inffsoeia. (x600.)

a, Transforming Buglena. with red '•eye-speck" still visible; &, A similar body, having many of its chlo-
rophyll corpuscles still green, fringed with almost motionless cilia ; c, A completely decolorized sphere
derived from a transformed Eugiena. provided with a few partly-motionless cilia; d and e, More ad-
vanced forms of a similar embryo developing into a Dileptus (?) ; /, Vorticella. soon after its emergence
from a cyst of Eugiena origin, which subsequently develops into a striated variety (g); h, A large Chlo-
rocoecus-vesicle, whose contents gradually undergo decolorization ( j). and at last becomes converted
into an annualized mass (k). which gradually shapes itself into the form of an Oxytricha (I). This
after a time ruptures its cyst and soon takes on the characteristics shown at m ; n, A form of Ploesco-
nia derived from an embryo produced within other, apparently similar, Chlorococcus-vesieles.

The experiments of Dr. Bastian force upon him the conclusion that
the several organisms here considered, bacteria, torula, vibriones,
fungus-filaments, protomoeba, and monads, are products of the direct
development of new-born specks of living matter. His experiments
seem to have been conducted with extreme precautions. He hermet-
ically closed the narrow necks of his flasks during violent ebullition,
thus producing an almost perfect vacuum above the infusion. After

SP OCTANE 0 US GENERA TIOX.

91

this he subjected the flasks to a heat of from 212° Fahr. to over 400°
Fahr. After being left a few days under favorable situations, and then
examined, they were found to contain the living creatures we have
described. The only remaining question is, Could these organisms or
their o-erms survive this degree of heat ? The alternative to which the
opponents of spontaneous generation seem to be driven, by these in-
vestigations, is thus pointedly stated by Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace,
in a late review of Dr. Bastian's book, in Nature. He says : " The only
way of escaping from the resnlts of such a series of experiments as
that here recorded is by asserting that, although the organisms which
are produced in the flasks are killed by a temperature much below that

Fig. 5.

c m

c-.li'

a r

W-s^-.i^j^1

TRANSFORMATION OF A MASS OP ChLOROCOCCTTS CORPUSCLES INTO THE SO-CAT.LED "WdJTER-EQG" OP

Hydatina senta. ( x 250.)

a, Ovoid mass of bright-green Chloroooccus Corpuscles, about ^ in Ion? diameter : b. Such a mass after
its transformation into a brown granular body, without distinct bounding wall (should have been
intermediate in tint between a and o) ; c, A similar body at a later stage, when a limiting envelop has
made its appearance, upon which villous outgrowths had been produced; d. Later stage, constituting
the so-called •'winter-egg" of Hydatina ; e, Ilydatina senta which is produced from such a body —
almost adult.

to which the flasks have been subjected, the germs from which they
have been produced are not so killed. We are asked, therefore, to
accept as facts three pure suppositions : first, that such excessively
minute and simple organisms as bacteria, whose only mode of multi-
plication is by fission or gemmation, have germs which possess differ-
ent physical properties from themselves ; secondly, that these germs,
as well as many others, are omnipresent in the atmosphere; and,
thirdly, that they are not injured by an exposure for four hours to
vapor heated to over 300° Fahr. ; and, finally, we are to accept all

92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these suppositions as facts in order to avoid admitting that species of
living protoplasm are originated de novo in some fluids just as specks
of crystalline matter originate in other fluids, and although some
organisms can be seen to make their appearance in fluids independently
of all preexisting visible germs, just as crystals do."

In Part III., Dr. Bastian takes up the processes of heterogenesis,
whereby the matter of already existing living units gives birth to
other living things, wholly different from themselves, and having no
tendency to revert to the parental type. The transformations and
developments represented in Figs. 3, 4, and 5, will mainly interest
those familiar with the objects delineated, but they are of a very
remarkable character. It is alleged that the cells of conferva give
rise to euglena, a beautiful green organism which abounds in stagnant
water, while this undergoes still further transformation into amceba,
and ciliated infusoria. And still more surprising, if possible, is the
transformation of the minute algoid chlorococcus into the large, com-
plex, and well-known rotifer, Hydatina senta (Fig. 5).

As Dr. Bastian remarks : " The fact that animals with such distinct
and specific organs should arise in this definite manner, from the re-
productive products of the plant, will doubtless seem to many to flavor
more of fable than of fact." This is undoubtedly true. Dr. Bas-
tian's views contravene general experience. The derivation of organ-
isms from preexisting germs is the actual method which we know that
Nature employs in all grades from the top to the bottom of the scale
of life. We know, moreover, that infusorial germs do exist, and float
about, in the atmosphere. Besides, all our past knowledge of life
implies the slow operation of the forces of evolution. As for the
appearance of infusorial organisms in liquids, which a few hours before
did not contain them, they must be explained in accordance with
known modes of action, until some other method is demonstrated.
To this, Dr. Bastian replies — 1. That science now admits that, at some
period in the earth's history, the lower forms of life have arisen by the
operation of natural causes. 2. That all the considerations bearing
upon the case favor the view that such organisms may be produced
now, and that it is little else than absurd to suppose that " the simplest
and most structureless amoeba of the present day can boast a line of
ancestors stretching back to such far-remote periods that in comparison
with them the primeval men were but as things of yesterday ; " and
3. That the de novo origin of living matter, and the transformation
of low vegetable organisms into infusoria and animalcula are facts that
must now be considered as experimentally established. The whole
question will therefore turn on the future testing of these remarkable
processes. The subject cannot be allowed to rest here ; and, if Dr.
Bastian's experiments shall be verified, the publication of his work will
constitute an epoch in the progress of biological science. It may be
remarked that the " Beginnings of Life " is written in a popular and

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 93

intelligible style, but, as it was composed while the doctor was absorbed
in his investigations, it is somewhat defective in classification and
condensation. This is to be regretted, yet it is quite a secondary
matter. Mr. Wallace deprecates its literary defects, but cordially
concedes its scientific importance. He says : " It is so full of curious
and novel facts and experiments, it contains so much excellent reason-
ing and acute criticism, and it opens up such new and astounding views
of the nature and origin of life, that one feels it ought to and might
have ranked with such standard works as the ' Origin of Species ' and
the ' Principles of Biology,' if equal care had been bestowed upon it
as a literary composition."

•»<»

AIMS AND INSTRUMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.1

By Professor W. KINGDOM CLIFFOED,

OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
I.

IT may have occurred (and very naturally, too, to such as have had
the curiostity to read the title of this lecture) that it must neces-
sarily be a very dry and difficult subject ; interesting to very few, intel-
ligible to still fewer, and, above all, utterly incapable of adequate treat-
ment within the limits of a discourse like this. It is quite true that a
complete setting forth of my subject would require a comprehensive
treatise on logic, with incidental discussion of the main questions of
metaphysics ; that it would deal with ideas demanding close study for
their apprehension, and investigations requiring a peculiar taste to
relish them. It is not my intention now to present you with such a
treatise.

The British Association, like the world in general, contains three
classes of persons. In the first place, it contains scientific thinkers ;
that is to say, persons whose thoughts have very frequently the char-
acters which I shall presently describe. Secondly, it contains persons
who are engaged in work upon what are called scientific subjects, but
who in general do not, and are not expected to, think about these sub-
jects in a scientific manner. Lastly, it contains persons who suppose
that their Avork and their thoughts are unscientific, but who would
like to know something about the business of the other two classes
aforesaid. Now, to any one who, belonging to one of these classes,
considers either of the other two, it will be apparent that there is a
certain gulf between him and them ; that he does not quite understand
them, nor they him ; and that an opportunity for sympathy and com-

1 A Lecture delivered before the members of the British Association, at Brighton,
August 19, 1872.

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

radesliip is lost through this want of understanding. It is this gulf
that I desire to bridge over, to the best of ray power. That the scien-
tific thinker may consider his business in relation to the great life of
mankind ; that the noble army of practical workers may recognize
their fellowship with the outer world, and the spirit which must guide
both ; that this so-called outer world may see in the work of science
only the putting in evidence of all that is excellent in its own work ;
may feel that the kingdom of science is within it : these are the objects
of the present discourse. And they compel me to choose such por-
tions of my vast subject as shall be intelligible to all, while they ought
at least to command an interest universal, personal, and profound.

In the first place, then, what is meant by scientific thought ? You
may have heard some of it expressed in the various sections this morn-
ing. You have probably also heard expressed in the same places a
great deal of unscientific thought ; notwithstanding that it was about
mechanical esergy, or about hydrocarbons, or about eocene depos-
its, or about malacopterygii. For scientific thought does not mean
thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no sci-
entific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe ; that
is to say, every thing that is, or has been, or may be, related to man.
Let us, then, taking several topics in succession, endeavor to make
out in what cases thought about them is scientific, and in what cases
not.

Ancient astronomers observed that the relative motions of the sun
and moon recurred all over again in the same order about every nine-
teen years. They were thus enabled to predict the time at which
eclipses would take place. A calculator at one of our observatories
can do a great deal more this. Like them, he makes use of past expe-
rience to predict the future ; but he knows of a great number of other
cycles besides that one of the nineteen years, and takes account of all
of them ; and he can tell about the solar eclipse of six years hence — ex-
actly where it will be visible, and how much of the sun's surface will
be covered at each place, and, to a second, at what time of day it will
begin and finish there. This prediction involves technical skill of the
highest order ; but it does not involve scientific thought, as any as-
tronomer will tell you.

By such calculations the places of the planet Uranus at different
times of the year have been predicted and set down. The predictions
were not fulfilled. Then arose Adams, and from these errors in the
prediction he calculated the place of an entirely new planet, that had
never yet been suspected ; and you all know how the new planet was
actually found in that place. Now, this prediction does involve scien-
tific thought, as any one who has studied it will tell you.

Here, then, are two cases of thought about the same subject, both
predicting events by the application of previous experience, yet we
sav one is technical and the other scientific.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 95

Now, let us take an example from the building of bridges and roofs.
When an opening is to be spanned over by a material construction,
which must bear a certain weight without bending enough to injure
itself, there are two forms in which this construction can be made, the
arch and the chain. Every part of an arch is compressed or pushed by
the other parts ; every part of a chain is in a state of tension, or is
pulled by the other parts. In many cases these forms are united. A
girder consists of two main pieces or booms, of which the upper one
acts as an arch and is compressed, while the lower one acts as a chain
and is pulled ; and this is true even when both the pieces are quite
straight. They are enabled to act in this way by being tied together,
or braced, as it is called, by cross-pieces, which you must often have
seen. Now, suppose that any good, practical engineer makes a bridge
or roof upon some approved pattern which has been made before. He
designs the size and shape of it to suit the opening which has to be
spanned ; selects his material according to the locality ; assigns the
strength which must be given to the several parts of the structure ac-
cording to the load which it will have to bear. There is a great deal
of thought in the making of this design, whose success is predicted by
the application of previous experience ; it requires technical skill of a
very high order; but it is not scientific thought. On the other'
hand, Mr. Fleeming Jenkin ' designs a roof consisting of two arches
braced together, instead of an arch and a chain braced together ; and,
although this form is quite different from any known structure, yet be-
fore it is built he assigns with accuracy the amount of material that
must be put into every part of the structure in order to make it bear
the required load, and this prediction may be trusted with perfect
security. What is the natural comment on this ? Why, that Mr.
Fleeming Jenkin is a scientific engineer.

Now, it seems to me that the difference between scientific and
merely technical thought, not only in these, but in all other instances
which I have considered, is just this : Both of them make use of expe-
rience to direct human action ; but while technical thought or skill en-
ables a man to deal with the same circumstances that he has met with
before, scientific thought enables him to deal with different circum-
stances that he has never met with before. But how can experience
of one thing enable us to deal with another quite different thing ? To
answer this question we shall have to consider more closely the nature
of scientific thought.

Let us take another example. You know that if you make a dot
on a piece of paper, and then hold a piece of Iceland spar over it, you
will see not one dot but two. A mineralogist, by measuring the an-
gles of a crystal, can tell you whether or no it possesses this property
without looking through it. He requires no scientific thought to do
that. But Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the late Astronomer-Royal

1 " On Braced Arches and Suspension Bridges." Edinburgh, Neill, 1870.

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

i

of Ireland, knowing these facts and also the explanation of them which
Fresnel had given, thought about the subject, and he predicted that,
by looking through certain crystals in a particular direction,' we should
see not two dots, but a continuous circle. Mr. Lloyd made the experi-
ment, and saw the circle a result which had never been even sus-
pected. This has always been considered one of most signal instances
of scientific thought in the domain of physics. It is most distinctly an
application of experience, gained under certain circumstances, to entirely
different circumstances.

Now, suppose that, the night before coming down to Brighton, you
had dreamed of a railway accident, caused by the engine getting
frightened at a flock of sheep, and jumping suddenly back over all the
carriages ; the result of which was that your head was unfortunately
cut off, so that you had to put it in your hat-box, and take it back
home to be mended. There are, I fear, many persons, even at this day,
who would tell you that, after such a dream, it was unwise to travel
by railway to Brighton. This is a proposal that you should take expe-
rience gained while you are asleep, when you have no common-sense —
experience about a phantom-railway — and apply it to guide you when
you are awake, and have common-sense, in your dealings with a real
railway. And yet this proposal is not dictated by scientific thought.

Now, let us take the great example of biology. I pass over the
process of classification, which itself requires a great deal of scientific
thought, in particular when a naturalist, who has studied and mono-
graphed a fauna or a flora rather than a family, is able at once to pick
out the distinguishing characters required for the subdivision of an
order quite new to him. Suppose that we possess all this minute and
comprehensive knowledge of plants and animals and intermediate or-
ganisms, their affinities and differences, their structures and functions
— a vast body of experience, collected by incalculable labor and devo-
tion. Then comes Mr. Herbert Spencer; he takes that experience of
life which is not human, which is apparently stationary, going on in
exactly the same way from year to year, and he applies that to tell us
how to deal with the changing characters of human nature and human
society. How is it that experience of this sort, vast as it is, can guide
us in a matter so different from itself? How does scientific thought,
applied to the development of a kangaroo-foetus, or the movement of
the sap in exogens, make prediction possible for the first time in that
most important of all sciences, the relations of man with man ?

In the dark or unscientific ages men had another way of applying
experience to altered circumstances. They believed, for example, that
the plant called jew's-ear, which does bear a certain resemblance to
the human ear, was a useful cure for diseases of that organ. This doc-
trine of " signatures," as it was called, exercised an enormous influence
on the medicine of the time. I need hardly tell you that it is hope-
lessly unscientific ; yet it agrees with those other examples that we have

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 97

been considering in this particular : that it applies experience about
the shape of a plant — which is one circumstance connected with it — to
dealings with its medicinal properties, which are other and different
circumstances. Again, suppose that you had been frightened by a
thunder-storm on land, or your heart had failed you in a storm at sea ;
if any one then told you that, in consequence of this, you should al-
ways cultivate an unpleasant sensation in the pit of your stomach, till
you took delight in it — that you should regulate your sane and sober
life by the sensations of a moment of unreasoning terror ; this advice
would not be an example of scientific thought. Yet it would be an
application of past experience to new and different circumstances.

But you will already have observed what is the additional clause
that we must add to our definition in order to describe scientific
thought, and that only. The step between experience about animals
and dealings with changing humanity is the law of evolution. The
step from errors in the calculated places of Uranus to the existence of
Neptune is the law of gravitation. The step from the observed behav-
ior of crystals to conical refraction is made up of laws of light and
geometry. The step from old bridges to new ones is the laws of elas-
ticity and the strength of materials.

The step, then, from past experience to new circumstances must be
made in accordance with an observed uniformity in the order of events.
This uniformity has held good in the past in certain places ; if it should
also hold good in the future, and in other places, then, being combined
with our experience of the past, it enables us to predict the future, and
to know what is going on elsewhere, so that we are able to regulate our
conduct in accordance with this knowledge.

The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to
new circumstances : the instrument is an observed uniformity in the
course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information
transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have
not seen from things that we have seen ; and the evidence for the truth
of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds
good beyond our experience. I now want to consider this uniformity
a little more closely, to show how the character of scientific thought
and the force of its inferences depend upon the character of the uniform-
ity of Nature. I cannot, of course, tell you all that is known of this
character without writing an encyclopaedia, but I shall confine myself
to two points of it, about which, it seems to me, that just now there is
something to be said. I want to find out what we mean when we say
that the uniformity of Nature is exact ; and what we mean when we
say that it is reasonable.

When a student is first introduced to those sciences which have

come under the dominion of mathematics, a new and wonderful aspect

of Nature bursts upon his view. He has been accustomed to regard

things as essentially more or less vague. All the facts that he has

VOL. 11. — 7

98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hitherto known have been expressed qualitatively, with a little allow-
ance for error on either side. Things which are let go fall to the
ground. A very observant man may know also that they fall faster
as they go along. But our student is shown that, after falling for one
second in a vacuum, a body ia going at the rate of thirty-two feet per
second ; that after falling for two seconds it is going twice as fast ;
after going two and a half seconds, two and a half times as fast. If
he makes the experiment, and finds a single inch per second too much
or too little in the rate, one of two things must have happened: either
•the law of falling bodies has been wrongly stated, or the experiment is
not accurate — there is some mistake. He finds reason to think that
the latter is always the case : the more carefully he goes to work, the
more of the error turns out to belong to the experiment. Again, he
may know that water consists of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen,
combined ; but he now learns that two pints of steam at a temperature
of 150° centigrade will always make two pints of hydrogen and one
pint of oxygen at the same temperature, all of them being pressed as
much as the atmosphere is pressed. If he makes the experiment and
gets rather more or less than a pint of oxygen, is the law disproved ?
No ; the steam was impure, or there was some mistake. Myriads of
analyses attest the law of combining volumes ; the more carefully they
are made, the more nearly they coincide with it. The aspects of the
faces of a crystal are connected together by a geometrical law, by
which, four of them being given, the rest can be found. The place of
a planet at a given time is calculated by the law of gravitation ; if it is
half a second wrong, the fault is in the instrument, the observer, the
clock, or the law ; now, the more observations are made, the more of
this fault is brought home to the instrument, the observer, and the
clock. It is no wonder, then, that our student, contemplating these
and many like instances, should be led to say : " I have been short-
sighted ; but I have now put on the spectacles of science which Nature
had prepared for my eyes ; I see that things have definite outlines, that
the world is ruled by exact and rigid mathematical laws ; nai ov, deoc,
yewfierpetc." It is our business to consider whether he is right in so
concluding. Is the uniformity of Nature absolutely exact, or only
more exact than our experiments ?

At this point we have to make a very important distinction. There
are two ways in which a law may be inaccurate. The first way is
exemplified by that law of Galileo which I mentioned just now : that
a body falling in vacuo acquires equal increase in velocity in equal
times. No matter how many feet per second it is going, after an
interval of a second it will be going thirty-two more feet per second.
"We now know that this rate of increase is not exactly the same at
different heights, that it depends upon the distance of the body from
the centre of the earth ; so that the law is only approximate; instead
of the increase of velocity being exactly equal in equal times, it itself

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 9g

increases very slowly as the body falls. We know also that this varia-
tion of the law from the truth is too small to be perceived by direct
observation on the change of velocity. But suppose we have invented
means for observing this, and have verified that the increase of velocity
is inversely as the squared distance from the earth's centre. Still the
law is not accurate ; for the earth does not attract accurately toward
her centre, and the direction of attraction is continually varying with
the motion of the sea; the body will not even fall in a straight line.
The sun and the planets, too, especially the moon, will produce devia-
tions ; yet the sum of all these errors will escape our new process of
observation, by being a great deal smaller than the necessary errors
of that observation. But when these again have been allowed for,
there is still the influence of the stars. In this case, however, we only
give up one exact law for another. It may still be held that if the
effect of every particle of matter in the universe on the falling body
were calculated according to the law of gravitation, the body would
move exactly as this calculation required. And if it were objected
that the body must be slightly magnetic or diamagnetic, while there
are magnets not an infinite way off; that a very minute repulsion,
even at sensible distances, accompanies the attraction ; it might be
replied that these phenomena are themselves subject to exact laws,
and that, when all the laws have been taken into account, the actual
motion will exactly correspond with the calculated motion.

I suppose there is hardly a physical student (unless he has specially
considered the matter) who would not at once assent to the statement
I have just made; that, if we knew all about it, Nature would be
found universally subject to exact numerical laws. But let us just
consider for another moment what this means.

The word " exact " has a practical and a theoretical meaning.
When a grocer weighs you out a certain quantity of sugar very care-
fully, and says it is exactly a pound, he means that the difference be-
tween the mass of the sugar and that of the pound-weight he enqrioys
is too small to be detected by his scales. If a chemist had made a
special investigation, wishing to be as accurate as he could, and told
you this was exactly a pound of sugar, he would mean that the mass
of the sugar differed from that of a certain standard piece of platinum
by a quantity too small to be detected by his means of weighing,
which are a thousandfold more accurate than the grocer's. But what
would a mathematician mean, if he made the same statement? He
would mean this. Suppose the mass of the standard pound to be
represented by a length, say a foot, measured on a certain line ; so
that half a pound would be represented by six inches, and so on. And
let the difference between the mass of the sugar and that of the stand-
ard pound be drawn upon the same line to the same scale. Then, if
that difference were magnified an infinite number of times, it would
still be invisible. This is the theoretical meaning of exactness ; the

ioo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

practical meaning is only very close approximation ; how close, depends
upon the circumstances. The knowledge, then, of an exact law in the
theoretical sense would be equivalent to an infinite observation. I do
not say that such knowledge is impossible to man ; but I do say that
it would be absolutely different in kind from any knowledge that we
possess at present.

I shall be told, no doubt, that we do possess a great deal of knowl-
edge of this kind, in the form of geometry and mechanics ; and that it
is just the example of these sciences that has led men to look for exact-
ness in other quarters. If this had been said to me in the last century,
I should not have known what to reply. But it happens that about
the beginning of the present century the foundations of geometry were
criticised independently by two mathematicians, Lobatschewsky 1 and
the immortal Gauss ; a whose results have been extended and general-
ized more recently by Riemann 3 and Helmholtz.4 And the conclusion
to which these investigations lead is that although the assumptions
which were very properly made by the ancient geometers are practi-
cally exact — that is to say, more exact than experiment can be — for
such finite things as we have to deal with, and such portions of space
as we can reach ; yet the truth of them for very much larger things,
or very much smaller things, or parts of space which are at present
beyond our reach, is a matter to be decided by experiment, when its
powers are considerably increased. I want to make as clear as possible
the real state of this question at present, because it is often supposed
to be a question of words or metaphysics, whereas it is a very distinct
and simple question of fact. I am supposed to know, then, that the
three angles of a rectilinear triangle are exactly equal to two right
angles. Now, suppose that three points are taken in space, distant
from one another as far as the sun is from a Centauri, and that the
shortest distances between these points are drawn so as to form a
triangle. And suppose the angles of this triangle to be very accurately
measured and added together ; this can at present be done so accurately
that the error shall certainly be less than one minute, less therefore
than the five-thousandth part of a right angle. Then I do not know
that this sum would differ at all from two right angles ; but also I do
not know that the difference would be less than ten degrees, or the
ninth part of a right angle.6 And I have reasons for not knowing.

This example is exceedingly important as showing the connection

1 " Geomdrische Untermchungen zur Theorie der Parallell'mien" Berlin, 1840. Trans-
lated by Houel, Gauthier-Villars, 1866.

2 Letter to Schumacher, November 28, 1846 (refers to 1792).

3 " Ueber die HypotJiesen welche der Oeometrie zu Grunde liegev," Gottingen AbhandL,
1866-67. Translated by Houel in Annali di Matematica, Milan, vol. lit.

4 " The Axioms of Geometry," Academy, vol. i., p. 128 (a popular exposition).

6 Assuming that parallax observations prove the deviation less than half a second for
a triangle whose vertex is at the star and base a diameter of the earth's orbit.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT, 101

between exactness and universality. It is found that the deviation, if
it exists, must he nearly proportional to the area of the triangle. So
that the error in the case of a triangle whose sides are a mile long
would be obtained by dividing that in the case I have just been con-
sidering by four hundred quadrillions ; the result must be a quantity
inconceivably small, which no experiment could detect. But between
this inconceivably small error and no error at all, there is fixed an
enormous gulf — the gulf between practical and theoretical exactness,
and what is even more important, the gulf between what is practically
universal and what is theoretically universal. I say that a law is
practically universal which is more exact than experiment for all cases
that might be got at by such experiment as we have. We assume
this kind of universality, and we find that it pays us to assume it.
But a law would be theoretically universal if it were true of all cases
whatever; and this is what we do not know of any law at all.

I said there were two ways in which a law might be inexact.
There is a law of gases which asserts that when you compress a perfect
gas the pressure of the gas increases exactly in the proportion in which
the volume diminishes. Exactly; that is to say, the law is more accu-
rate than the experiment, and experiments are corrected by means of
the law. But it so happens that this law has been explained; we
know precisely what it is that happens when a gas is compressed.
We know that a gas consists of a vast number of separate molecules,
rushing about in all directions with all manner of velocities, but so that
the mean velocity of the molecules of air in this room, for example, is
about twenty miles a minute. The pressure of the gas on any surface
with which it is in contact is nothing more than the impact of these
small particles upon it. On any surface large enough to be seen there
are millions of these impacts in a second. If the space in which the gas
is confined be diminished, the average rate at which the impacts take
place will be increased in the same proportion ; and, because of the
enormous number of them, the actual rate is always exceedingly close
to the average. But the law is one of statistics ; its accuracy depends
on the enormous numbers involved ; and so, from the nature of the case,
its exactness cannot be theoretical or absolute.

Nearly all the laws of gases have received these statistical expla-
nations; electric and magnetic attraction and repulsion have been
treated in a similar manner ; and an hypothesis of this sort has been
suggested even for the law of gravity. On the other hand, the man-
ner in which the molecules of a gas interfere with each other proves
that they repel one another inversely as the fifth power of the dis-
tance; so that we here find, at the basis of a statistical explanation, a
law which has the form of theoretical exactness. Which of these
forms is to win ? It seems to me, again, that we do not know, and that
the recognition of our ignorance is the surest way to get rid of it.

The world, in general, has made just the remark that I have attrib-

102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

uted to a fresh student of the applied sciences. As the discoveries of
Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Dalton, Cavendish, Gauss, displayed ever-
new phenomena following mathematical laws, the theoretical exact-
ness of the physical universe was taken for granted. Now, when peo-
ple are hopelessly ignorant of a thing, they quarrel about the source
of their knowledge. Accordingly, many maintained that we know
these exact laws by intuition. These said always one true thing, that
we did not know them from experience. Others said that they were
really given in the facts, and adopted ingenious ways of hiding the
gulf between the two. Others, again, deduced from transcendental
considerations sometimes the laws themselves, and sometimes what,
through imperfect information, they supposed to be the laws. But
more serious consequences arose when these conceptions derived from
physics were carried over into the field of Biology. Sharp lines of
division were made between kingdoms, and classes, and orders ; an
animal was described as a miracle to the vegetable world ; specific
differences, which are practically permanent within the range of his-
tory, were regarded as permanent through all time ; a sharp line was
drawn between organic and inorganic matter. Further investigation,
however, has shown that accuracy had been prematurely attributed to
the science, and has filled up all the gulfs and gaps that hasty observers
had invented. The animal and vegetable kingdoms have a debatable
ground between them, occupied by beings that have the characters of
both, and yet belong distinctly to neither. Classes and orders shade
into one another all along their common boundary. Specific differ-
ences turn out to be the work of time. The line dividing organic
matter from inorganic, if drawn to-day, must be moved to-morrow to
another place ; and the chemist will tell you that the distinction has
now no place in his science except in a technical sense for the con-
venience of studying carbon compounds by themselves. In geology
the same tendency gave birth. to the doctrine of distinct periods,
marked out by the character of the strata deposited in them all over
the sea ; a doctrine than which, perhaps, no ancient cosmogony has
been further from the truth, or done more harm to the progress of
science. Refuted many years ago by Mr. Herbert Spencer,1 it has
now fairly yielded to an attack from all sides at once, and may be left
in peace.

When, then, we say that the uniformity which we observe in the
course of events is exact and universal, we mean no more than this :
that we are able to state general rules which are far more exact than
direct experiment, and which apply to all cases that we are at present
likely to come across. It is important to notice, however, the effect
of such exactness as we observe upon the nature of inference. When
a telegram arrived stating that Dr. Livingstone had been found by Mr.
Stanley, what was the process by which you inferred the finding of
1 "Illogical Geology," in Essays, voL i. Originally published in 1859.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

103

Dr. Livingstone from the appearance of the telegram ? You assumed
over and over again the existence of uniformity in Nature. That the
newspapers had behaved as they generally do in regard to telegraphic
messages ; that the clerks had followed the known laws of the action
of clerks ; that electricity had behaved in the cable exactly as it be-
haves in the laboratory ; that the actions of Mr. Stanley were related
to his motives by the same uniformities that affect the actions of other
men ; that Dr. Livingstone's handwriting conformed to the curious
rule by which an ordinary man's handwriting may be recognized as
having persistent characteristics even at different periods of his life.
But you had a right to be much more sure about some of these in-
ferences than about others. The law of electricity was known with
practical exactness, and the conclusions derived from it were the
surest things of all — the law about the handwriting, belonging to a
portion of physiology which is unconnected with consciousness, was
known with less, but still with considerable accuracy. But the laws
of human action in which consciousness is concerned are still so far
from being completely analyzed and reduced to an exact form, that
the inferences which you made by their help were felt to have only a
provisional force. It is possible that by-andby, when psychology has
made enormous advances and become an exact science, we may be able
to give to testimony the sort of weight which we give to the infer-
ences of physical science. It will then be possible to conceive a case
which will show how completely the whole process of inference
depends on our assumption of uniformity. Suppose that testimony,
having reached the ideal force I have imagined, were to assert that a
certain river runs up-hill? You could infer nothing at all. The arm
of inference would be paralyzed, and the sword of truth broken in its
grasp ; and reason could only sit down and wait until recovery re-
stored her limb, and further experience gave her new weapons. — Ad'
vance Sheets from Macmillan.

-+—+-

SKETCH OF PEOFESSOE TYNDALL.

THE Tyndall or Tyndale family emerged into history about the
same time as the American Continent. The first of whom we
hear was William Tyndale, a contemporary of Columbus, and who was
just of age when this country was discovered. It was the epoch of
intellectual awakening in Europe, and the impulse was felt equally in
geographical exploration and in religious reform. Tyndale took to
the latter, and translated the Bible into English for the people. But
he found worse navigation on the theological sea than Columbus en-

to4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

countered on the Atlantic, and was burned at the stake for his opinions
in 1536.

About the middle of the seventeenth century some of the offshoots
of the martyr's family emigrated from Gloucestershire, England, to
Ireland, on the eastern or Saxon fringe of which some of their descend-
ants are still scattered. Among these was John Tyndall, the Pro-
fessor's father, who, although unknown to the public, was a man of
unusual intellectual power and force of character. The Tyndall blood
seems to have been rather fiery, as Prof. Tyndall's father had a " dif-
ference " with his grandfather, which cost him the inheritance that
he would have otherwise received as the eldest son. He was there-
fore left to struggle without means, and learned a trade, but sub-
sequently took a position on the police force of Ireland. But, being
denied the usual facilities of education, he taught himself upon various
subjects, and especially he became an able student of history. Prof.
Tyndall's father inherited from his ancestors a taste for religious con-
troversy, and threw himself zealously as an anti-Romanist into the
Protestant and Catholic warfare. The fathers of the English Church,
Chillingworth, Tillotson, Faber, Poole, Jeremy Taylor, and a host of
others, were at his finger's ends. Young Tyndall's early intellectual
discipline consisted almost wholly of exercises in theological contro-
versy, on the doctrines of infallibility, purgatory, transubstantiation,
and invocation of the saints. The boy knew the Bible almost by
heart, and, with reference to this knowledge, his father used to call
him Stillingfieet. But he had also an early interest in natural things,
and his father flattered this tendency by calling him Newton, and by
teaching him lines concerning the great natural philosopher, before he
was seven years old, that are still remembered. The father of Prof.
Tyndall was not only intellectually gifted, but he was a man of cour-
age, independence, mental delicacy, and scrupulous honor. By the
silent influence of his character, by example as well as by precept, he
inspired the intellect of his boy, and taught him to love a life of manly
independence. He died in May, 1847, quoting to his son the words of
Wolsey to Cromwell — " Be just and fear nothing."

The subject of our present sketch was born in the village of Leigh-
lin Bridge, Ireland, in 1820, and his earliest education was received at
a school in that neighborhood. Through the influence of one of his
teachers, he acquired an early taste for geometry. In 18.39 he quitted
school and joined the Irish Ordnance Survey. He acquired a practical
knowledge of every branch of it, becoming in turn a draughtsman, a
computer, a surveyor, and trigonometrical observer. In subsequent
years he turned this experience to admirable account in ids investiga-
tions of alpine glaciers. In 1841 an incident occurred which, although
apparently trivial, had a powerful effect upon the young man's career.
One of the officials, who had become interested in Tyndall's work,
asked him one day how his leisure hours were employed. The answer

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 105

not being satisfactory, he rejoined, " You have five hours a day at
your disposal, and this time ought to be devoted to systematic study.
Had I, when at your age, had a friend to advise me, as I now advise
you, instead of being in a subordinate position, I might have been at
the head of the Survey." Next morning Tyndall was at his books be-
fore five o'clock, and for twelve years never swerved from the pratice.

In 1844, seeing no definite prospect before him, Mr. Tyndall re-
solved to go to America, whither, in the early part of the present cen-
tury, some members of his father's family had emigrated, and who now
reside in Philadelphia.1 This was, however, opposed by his friends, and,
an opening occurring, he entered upon the vocation of a railroad en-
gineer. To five years upon the Ordnance Survey succeeded three
years of railway experience. But, this proving unpromising, and ani-
mated by a strong desire to augment his knowledge, Mr. Tyndall re-
signed his position, and accepted an appointment in Queenswood Col-
lege, Hampshire — a new institution devoted partly to a junior school
and partly to the preliminary technical education of agriculturists and
engineers. Prof. Tyndall here developed a remarkable capacity as a
teacher. Although totally inexperienced in this field, such was his
magnetic influence over the students, that he was invariably called
upon to compose their disturbances, which he did by moral influences
and pure force of character. It was his experience in this institution
that gave him the groundwork of his masterly address on education
before the Royal Institution.2

In 1848, in company with his friend Frankland (now Prof. Frank-
land, of the Royal School of Chemistry), Tyndall quitted England,
and, attracted by the fame of Prof. Bunsen, repaired to the University
of Marburg, in Hesse-Cassel. Prof. Tyndall had the free use of the
laboratory and cabinets of this institution, with the instructions of
Bunsen, Gerling, Knoblauch, and Stegman. His first scientific paper
was a mathematical essay on screw-surfaces, which formed the subject
of his inaugural dissertation when he took his degree. But the investi-
gation which first made him known to the scientific world was " On the
Magne-optic Properties of Crystals, and the Relation of Magnetism
and Diamagnetism to Molecular Arrangement." This investigation
was executed in connection with Prof. Knoblauch, and was published
in the Philosophical Magazine for 1850.

In 1851 Mr. Tyndall went to Berlin, and continued his researches
in the laboratory of Prof. Magnus. He soon, however, returned to
London, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1852. He
was invited to give a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institu-
tion, which he delivered February 14, 1853, and was so successful that

1 One of these is Hector Tyndale, who distinguished himself as an officer in the late
war. At Antietam he fought as major, and for his gallant behavior was subsequently
made brigadier-general.

* See "Culture demanded by Modern Life." D. Appleton & Co.

io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he was at once offered a position in that establishment. His election
to the appointment which he now holds, ol' Professor of Natural Phi-
losophy at the Royal Institution, was unanimously made in June, 1853.
The first three years of his residence in London he devcted to an ex-
haustive investigation of diamagnetism, the results of which were pub-
lished in various memoirs that have since been collected in a volume.

Prof. Tyndall was first attracted to the Alps in 1849, for the sole
object of healthful recreation and exercise. But he could not be long
in the presence of the grand physical phenomena there displayed with-
out becoming interested in the scientific questions they present. Ac-
cordingly, for more than twenty years, the Alps have served the double
purpose to Prof. Tyndall of physical and mental reinvigoration, after
being run down by his London work ; and, at the same time, they have
furnished him with a series of the most interesting scientific problems.
In company with his friends Prof, Huxley and Prof. Hirst (an old and
favorite pupil of Tyndall's, and to whom he dedicated his " Hours of
Exercise in the Alps"), and often alone, usually in summer, but some-
times in winter,' he has climbed the mountains and explored the Gla-
ciers, to clear up the various questions that have arisen, arid extend
our knowledge of the subject. The description of his adventures and
the results of his researches were embodied in his volume on " The
Glaciers of the Alps," but which is now out of print. The reader will,
however, find the records of adventure, and the results of study in the
mountains, embodied in the " Hours of Exercise," published last year,
and in a neat little volume on the "Forms of Water," now just
issued from the press.

As we remarked last month, Prof. Tyndall's proclivity is for philo-
sophic physics, and all his various lines of research, since he began in
the Marburg laboratory, twenty-four years ago, have converged upon
the great question of the molecular constitution of matter. The differ-
ent forces of Nature, and the several divisions of physics, can only be
brought into scientific harmony as they are harmonized in Nature, by
arriving at some clear understanding of the common constitution of
matter and how it is related to the action of forces. Prof. Tyndall has
been a profound student of the correlation of these forces, and of the
mechanism of that material substratum through which they are mani-
fested. Taking up matter in its free or vaporous condition, his chief
problem has been to explore or to sound it by the action of the radiant
forces. In his work on " Heat as a Mode of Motion," published in
1863, he develops that modern view of the nature of heat which in-
volves a molecular conception of the bodies displaying it. The results
of his original researches into the relations of radiant heat to gases and
vapors are there summarized, and his full memoirs upon these investi-
gations have just been published in a companion volume to the work
on diamagnetism. His interesting little volume on "Sound," although
not designed as a statement of original work, takes up the subject of

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 107

acoustics from the same general point of view, and deals with atmos-
pheric wave-motion in connection with the properties and constitution
of the various forms of matter. The researches on the formation of
clouds in tubes filled with various gases and vapors under the influence
of the electric beam, and the resulting inquiry into the subject of atmos-
pheric dust, were but parts of the same comprehensive investigation
into molecular conditions and transformations.

Prof. Tyndall has won his scientific reputation as an explorer in the
field of experimental physics, but he has also a commanding position as
a philosophic thinker. The questions that can be resolved by experiment
lead on to questions that can be resolved only by reason. Philosophy
is old and easy, and the human mind has overflowed with it from the
beginning ; but philosophy grounded in the knowledge and method of
science is as yet. rare, though it is nevertheless a glorious reality.
If scientific thinking is the result of an apprenticeship of centuries in
the management of the intellect, and if the mind's scientific action is
its most perfect action, then must scientific men, as the world goes on,
be more and more trusted in their opinions. Such is undoubtedly
the present tendency. This is shown generally in the increasing rec-
ognition of the scientific school of philosophy, and it is specially exem-
plified, in the present case, by the interest that is taken in whatever
Prof. Tyndall has to say to the public, and whatever the subject on
which, he speaks. This high scientific position gives acknowledged
weight and force to his views. But Prof. TyndalPs philosophic cast
of mind not only attracts him to the deeper questions of the time, but
his courageous temper leads him to deal with them candidly and fear-
lessly. First of all, a devotee of science and a lover of truth, he gives
to these his sole allegiance. An independent and intrepid inquirer,
tolerant of honest error, but contemptuous of that timid and calculat-
ing spirit which would protect men's prejudices from the light of
investigation, he is without fear in the free and manly expressions
of his opinions. That these should often contravene prevailing beliefs
is inevitable. A Protestant by hereditary instinct and in his blood,
and long drilled in the severities of scientific logic, it is impossible
that he should not find much in current opinion to excite continued
and trenchant protest.

Allied with this cherished freedom of thought and utterance, there
is in Prof. TyndalPs character an intense love of justice, and a passion
for fair dealing that is quite chivalric. This temper has been displayed
on various occasions, but in none more conspicuously than in his generous
defence of the German physicist, Mayer, whose scientific claims he con-
sidered to be depreciated by English scientists. Mayer's had been a
hard fate. An undoubted pioneer in establishing the important doc-
trine of the correlation of forces, working out its several lines of proof
with marvellous sagacity and an amount of exhausting labor that re-
sulted in mental derangement, and with little sympathetic recognition

io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the part of his own countrymen, Prof. Tyndall was indignant that
Englishmen, who pride themselves upon fair play, should detract one
iota from the just fame of the unfortunate foreigner. The man was
unknown to him, but the rights of the discoverer and the honor of
science were involved, and against the attacks of Professors Thomson,
Tait, and others, Prof. Tyndall made a defence so effectual that the
claims of the German philosopher will hardly be brought in question
again.

Of Prof. Tyndall as an author, it is hardly necessary to speak, as
his various works have been widely circulated, and the reading public
is familiar with them. Yet his genius as a wx*iter is so marked that it
cannot be omitted even in the briefest sketch of his character. Among
scientific writers he stands almost alone in the poetic vividness, force,
and finish of his style. His descriptions and narrations are enriched
by a bold and striking pictorial imagery, which presents the subject
with almost the perspective and " coloring of reality." No man better
understands the high office of imagination in science, or can more
effectively employ it to fascinate and illuminate the minds of others.
Of an ardent and poetic temperament, and at home among the
grandeurs of natural phenomena, there is often an inspiration in his
words that rouses and thrills our highest feelings.

Prof. Tyndall is now among us, to speak upon science in several
of the chief cities of the country, and it is therefore as a lecturer that
the public will be chiefly interested in him. We quote an excellent
account of his characteristics as a public teacher from the October
Galaxy :

" Prof. Tyndall's manner as a lecturer is in a remarkable degree individual
and unique. He never reads, but holds bis audience by the power of lucid and
forcible extemporaneous statement. He is not what would be called a fluent or
even speaker, who keeps up a continuous strain of agreeable utterance. He is
not an elegant declaimer, whose measured cadences are accompanied by
graceful and appropriate gestures. He is irregular and sometimes hesitating in
speecb, and unstudied in gestures and movements. His babit of speaking ha9
been formed in connection with bis babit of experimenting, and this latter is so
essential a feature of bis platform exercises that it greatly influences bis manner
of public address. Clearness, force, vividness of description, felicity of illustra-
tion, and the eloquence inspired by grand conceptions are the striking features
of his style. Of a poetic and imaginative temperament, but with these traits
under thorough discipline, he gives vivacity and attractiveness to accurate and
solid exposition. Prof. Tyndall is a thoroughly-trained and well-poised enthu-
siast in science. He is intensely in earnest, and is always as much interested
in the subject and the proceedings as the audience he carries with him. He is
a remarkable example of self-forgetfulness upon the platform, being always
absorbed in his subject. Strongly sympathetic with his audience, he seems
animated by but one purpose : to make them understand the question before
them, to make them see it and feel it as he sees and feels it. As an original
and skilful experimenter Prof. Tyndall is unrivalled. Fertile and ingenious in
contrivances for bringing out his points, the effects are always telling and im-

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 109

pressive. Yet the experiments are never the main things; they are always
subordinate to the idea with which he is dealing — helps to its presentation.
He is never eclipsed by his own pyrotechny, but holds the attention of his
listeners closely to the question under examination. Prof. Tyndall is remark-
able for the combination of two traits which are but rarely united in a
single individual. He is an original explorer of scientific truth, and a skilful
and effective public teacher. Holding the truths of science to be divine, he is
impelled to dedicate his life to their discovery ; but holding them also to be a
means of salvation to man, he is impelled also to the duty of their public inter-
pretation. The Royal Institution, in which he is professor, is admirably con-
stituted for the attainment of this twofold end ; providing equally for carrying
out systematic original researches and for expounding their results to the select
audiences that gather in its lecture-room. Sir Humphry Davy first gave it a
world-wide reputation in both these departments; he was a fertile discoverer
and an eloquent lecturer. Dr. Faraday succeeded him, and probably surpassed
him in 'both of these accomplishments. The mantle of Faraday has fallen upon
Tyndall, and the fame of the establishment has not suffered from the change."

Prof. Tyndall has long desired to visit the United States, to see his
many friends, and to observe the aspects of American life; while mul-
titudes in this country have reciprocated the desire, that they might
have the opportunity of listening to his lectures. Yielding to their
numerous appeals, he has prepared a course of six lectures, and
"brought with him a large amount of new and delicate apparatus, for
illustrating them. The lectures will embrace the phenomena and
laws of light : reflection, refraction, analysis, synthesis, the doctrine
of colors, and the extension of radiant action in both directions, be-
yond the light-giving rays into the region of invisible action. Then
will follow the principles of spectrum analysis, the polarization • of
b>ht, the phenomena of crystallization, the action of crystals upon
light, the chromatic phenomena of polarized light, and the parallel
phenomena of light and radiant heat. These lectures will be a source
of rare intellectual enjoyment to those who will have the good fortune
to listen to them, and of which our citizens will not be slow to avail
themselves.

We give, in the present number of the Monthly, the best likeness
we have ever seen of Prof. Tyndall. He is a man of medium stature,
lithe-built, highly vitalized, alert and noiseless in his movements ; a
ready and effective talker, but an excellent listener, and his manners
are genial and attractive. He is socially strong, a man of the world,
as well as a philosopher, and at home in all relations. But, with all
his passion for experiment, he has not yet made the experiment of
matrimony.

110

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TILE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.

THE editor of Scribner's Magazine,
in a leading article in the October
number, attempts to bring The Popu-
lar Science Monthly into reproach for
its obnoxious opinions. There is a cer-
tain doctrine lately much talked about
that is known to be odious among a
great number of magazine-buying peo-
ple. It is charged (on what authority
is not stated) that the editor of The
Popular Science Monthly is an irre-
pressible partisan of this doctrine, and
that, having made certain specious
promises to its readers to furnish them
with good, sound, scientific reading, he
has betrayed their confidence by set-
ting his pages ablaze with expositions
of this doctrine, that so many people
are known to regard with detestation.
The little game here undertaken is old,
and has been often played with suc-
cess; but, with the growth of intelli-
gence and liberality, it is getting dis-
reputable, and our neighbor is welcome
to all he can make by it. It is cus-
tomary in such cases not to be very
scrupulous about the means resorted
to for effecting the object, and the
present instance is no exception to the
custom. The editor commences by try-
ing to be ironical about the claims of
science in culture, and quotes from
our prospectus the remark that it is
" of the highest concern that thought
should be brought into the exactest
harmony with things." "We are still
of opinion that the neglect of this re-
quirement is the fundamental defect
of education, and we venture to inti-
mate to our critic that this is exactly
" what's the matter with him." His
statements not only fail to harmonize
with the things he is talking about,
but they grossly misrepresent them.

After quoting some sentences from our
prospectus, the editor says :

" It is therefore painful to find that, when
we pass from the well-taken prospectus to
the actual monthly, the strict inductive in-
quiry fades softly away, as in a dissolving
view, and in its place blazes out one of the
most high-flown of human speculations.
The strong bias of the editor as an evolu-
tionist cannot be repressed, and the attempt
is made to educate the public mind-into the
phraseology and methods of what is at best
a speculation, under the name of science 1
If this were called the Youmans, or Evolu-
tion Monthly, the mischief would be cir-
cumscribed ; but, as the doctrine of Evolu-
tion, with its offspring, Darwinism, is noth-
ing more yet than a provisional hypothesis,
based on a priori reasonings, and not on
any valid induction of facts, the attempt to
clothe it in the imperial garb of science, and
set it for an arbiter of all beliefs, is greatly
to be deprecated in the interest of true cul-
ture."

The statement here made, tnat
under editorial bias our pages have
been set ablaze with evolution spec-
ulations in violation of prospective
pledges, is simply not true. "We prom-
ised our readers to represent the pres-
ent state of thought on the leading
questions that are agitating the scien-
tific world. The doctrine of evolu-
tion, as everybody knows, is one of
these questions, and had we avoided
it we should have broken our prom-
ise, and broken faith with our read-
ers. Nor has the subject received the
excessive attention that is charged.
Our first volume, just completed, con-
tains about a hundred main or lead-
ing articles, and of these but three deal
with the subject of Evolution or Dar-
winism, and one of them is an attack
upon its fundamental principle. Of
the articles contributed by the editor,
not one has been devoted to the object
alleged — "that of educating the pop-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

in

nlar mind into the phraseology and
methods of this speculation." Nor is
there a single article in the whole
volume that gives any explanation of
either the phraseology or the methods
of the doctrine of Evolution. A few
references to it there have been, as in
the addresses of Dr. Carpenter and
Prof. Gray, before eminent scientific
bodies, and as occurs in the able arti-
cle of Prof. Clifford in the present
number; but these references are in-
cidental and unavoidable: they result
from the prominence of the question
in the scientific world, and its conse-
quent recognition in current scientific
literature. And yet it pleases the edi-
tor of Scribner's to tell his readers that
under an uncontrolled personal bias our
pages are so fired with this mischievous
doctrine that the name of the Monthly
ought to be changed to prevent its evil
influence.

It now remains to consider the
more serious imputation, that our pages
have been perverted to the diffusion
of spurious science. According to the
editor of Scrihier^s, the doctrine of
evolution is not a result of true sci-
ence— not an induction from facts, but
a "high-flown," "a priori" "specula-
tion." And here, again, we have to
note that this writer is not very par-
ticular to make his thought harmonize
with the things he is talking about.
His statement is as wrong as he could
get it — just 180° from the truth; and,
if the ignorance he evinces be any
measure of the general ignorance, we
cannot too quickly begin the neglected
work of " educating the popular mind "
into the rudiments of the subject. "We
purpose now to show that the Hypoth-
esis of Evolution is not an a priori
speculation, but a true scientific in-
duction ; and not only so, but it is the
antagonist and successor of a priori
speculations which had been in vogue
for many centuries before the inductive
method arose.

"What is the fundamental concep-

tion of the doctrine of Evolution ? It is
" that the universe and all that it con-
tains did not come into existence in the
condition that we now know it, nor in
any thing like that condition." It im-
plies that the heavens as they appear
above us, the earth as it exists beneath
us, the hosts of living creatures that oc-
cupy it, and humanity as we now know
it, " are merely the final terms in an im-
mense series of changes, which have
been brought about in the course of
immeasurable time." It affirms vast
changes in past periods ; that these
changes have been according to a meth-
od, and that this method has been of the
nature of an unfolding. The essential
changes of evolution have been compre-
hensively formulated as from the simple
to the complex, from the homogeneous
to the heterogeneous, from the general
to the special. Is this an a priori spec-
ulation, that is, an idea formed before
observation and experience of the facts
to which it applies; or is it a scientific
induction, that is, an idea formed after
the facts are known, and based upon
them ?

As regards the stellar and planetary
universe, its origin from an all-diffused
nebulous mist was taught by Kant a
century ago. This view was subse-
quently elaborated by Laplace the
mathemetician, and Herschel the as-
tronomer, into the Nebular Hypothesis,
which was the outcome of the whole
body of known astronomical facts. This
hypothesis affirmed the progressive
condensation and differentiation of the
nebulous mass through successive
stages to more and more concrete and
specialized groups, systems, and orbs.
That the solar system was gradually
formed in the way the nebular hypoth-
esis implies, and that its facts can be
explained by that hypothesis and no
other, is now the general belief of
astronomers. Consisting of more than
one hundred and fifty bodies, revolv-
ing and circulating according to one
grand method, it has been pointed ont

112

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

by Prof. Leconte that there are no
less than three hundred and seveuty
facts concerning the distribution, form,
and motions, of the sun and planets,
which are the simple consequences of
the nebular hypothesis, and can be ac-
counted for in no other way. The
nebular hypothesis is the doctrine of
to-day, in its application to tbe most
perfect of the sciences, and it is nothing
less or other than an hypothesis of as-
tronomic evolution. Are we to be told
that it is but an a 'priori speculation?
On the contrary, has it not replaced an
a priori cosmogony that swayed the
human mind for thousands of years be-
fore the solar system was discovered?

As regards the earth, it has been
studied by the method of science for
more than a century, and the result is,
a vast mass of facts and inductions
which make up our knowledge of geol-
ogy. All these go to establish one
proposition, viz., that our planet is not
what it was millions of years ago, but
has undergone a series of developing
changes resulting in the present order
of things. Our eminent geologist, Prof.
Dana, in his manual, says : " This law of
specialization — the general being before
the special — is the law of all develop-
ment. The egg is at first a simple unit,
and, gradually, part after part of the
new structure is evolved, that which is
most fundamental appearing earliest,
until the being is complete in all its
outer and minor details. The principle
is exhibited in the physical history of
the globe — which was first a featureless
globe of fire, then had its oceans and
dry land, in course of time received
mountains and rivers, and finally all
those diversities of surface which now
characterize it. Again, the climates
began with universal tropics; and at
last the diversities of the present day."
Is this to be accounted a high-flown
a priori speculation, or a vast and valid
induction from a hundred years' study
of the facts of Nature ? Let it be re-
membered that, according to the high-

est authorities, inductive geology was
put back two centuries by the en-
slavement of the human mind to an
old a priori speculation in regard to
the age of the world.

The study of the course of life upon
the earth shows that it conforms to the
same great plan. The life of the globe
a few millions of years ago was a very
different thing from what it is now.
Different races of plants and animals
have appeared and disappeared in slow
succession, and their remains are found
entombed in successive rock-forma-
tions. The facts are a part of geology,
and have been arrived at by the same
processes of observation and induction
that have revealed the order and his-
tory of the stratified systems. The
course of life upon the earth has con-
formed to a method, and that method
is universally described as a progress
and a development. It shows an ad-
vance from the simpler to the more
complex, from the general to the
special, from the lower to the higher;
in short, it is an evolution in the strict-
est sense. There was, first, a period
of no life — the azoic age ; then ap-
peared the lower forms of life, vegeta-
ble and animal ; then higher and higher
kinds, until man, the highest of all, ap-
peared last. The progress evinces con-
tinuity, harmony, and gradation. As
remarked by Mr. Dana, "the begin-
ning of an age will be in the midst of a
preceding age; and the marks of the
future coming out to view are to be
regarded as prophetic of that future.
The age of mammals was foreshadowed
by the appearance of mammals long
before in the course of the reptilian
age, and the age of reptiles was prophe-
sied in types that lived in the earlier
Carboniferous age." The lower forms
that perish do not reappear, and, as Mr.
Wallace observes, " no group or species
has come into existence twice," but
" every species has come into existence
coincident, both in space and time, with
a preexisting, closely-allied species."

EDITOR'S TABLE.

"3

That the great advancing movement of
life has been a divergence, an opening
out, or an evolution, is incontestable,
and is admitted by the highest biologi-
cal authorities. It is proved by the
fact tbat, if we go back a million of
years or so, there is an obvious con-
vergence of types, or the different kinds
of animals will have to be represented
as nearer together in cbaracters, and,
as we recede still farther into the past,
tbe approximation becomes still closer.
Prof. Owen says be has "never omit-
ted a proper opportunity for impress-
ing tbe results of observations show-
ing tbe more generalized structures of
extinct, as compared with tbe more
specialized form of recent animals."
Prof. Agassiz takes a similar position,
insisting strongly that " The more
ancient animals resemble the embry-
onic forms of existing species." Mr.
Wallace says : " As we go back into
past time and meet with the fossil re-
mains of more and more ancient races
of extinct animals we find that many
of them actually are intermediate be-
tween distinct groups of existing ani-
mals." Prof. Cope remarks: "That
the existing state of the geological rec-
ord of organic types should be regarded
as any thing but a fragment is, from
our stand-point, quite preposterous.
And more, it may be assumed with
safety, that when completed, it will
furnish us with a series of regular suc-
cessions, with but slight and regular
interruptions, if any, from the species
which represented the simplest begin-
nings of life at the dawn of creation, to
those which have displayed complica-
tion and power in a later or in the
present period. For the labors of the
paleontologist are daily bringing to
light structures intermediate between
those never before so connected, thus
creating lines of succession where be-
fore were only interruptions." Is the
great conclusion of an unfolding method
in the order of life which is based upon
a vast body of biological facts, and

VOL. II. — 8

supported by the powerful analogies of
an unfolding order in other parts of
nature, to be characterized as a high-
flown a priori speculation ? or is it a
result of strict inductive inquiry, which
replaces an a priori hypothesis of life
that prevailed for ages before science
had entered upon its study?

Again, humanity is not now what
it was in ages long past. That man's
existence upon earth dates back to a
far profounder antiquity than has for-
merly been believed, is a clear induc-
tion from an extensive array of facts.
Be the time longer or shorter, an im-
mense series of changes has taken place
in the history of the race. A few
thousand years ago Europe was bar-
barous, and its inhabitants warred and
worked with implements of stone.
Society was rude, low, homogeneous,
and undeveloped. Its movement has
been a slow unfolding into diversity
and specialty. There has been an in-
crease of human capabilities, a rise in
intelligence, an advance of morals, a
growing capacity of social cooperation,
a multiplication of arts and industries,
augmented power over Nature, an
emergence of institutions, and in short
an evolution of civilization. This is a
broad induction, from the facts of his-
tory, from the facts of prehistoric
archaeology, and from the facts of an-
thropology, and it is fast taking the
place of the old a priori speculation
that the course of humanity has been a
degeneracy, and which was firmly be-
lieved until science reversed the method
of studying the subject.

Sir Charles Lyell, it will hardly be
denied, is one of the most learned and
able of living geologists. His pains-
taking conscientiousness as an observer
and his judicial caution and calmness
as an inductive reasoner are beyond
question. For fifty years he has studied
the subject of life in connection with
the past changes of the globe, and has
embodied his conclusions in his various
geological works. In the earlier of

u4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these works, which passed through
many editions, he accepted the old tra-
ditional view of the origin of life. But,
as his studies enlarged, that view broke
down so completely that he has for-
mally abandoned it. In the tenth edition
of his " Principles of Geology," pub-
lished in 1867, and in the eleventh
edition of the same work now just
issued, he has adopted the theory of
evolution in its application to the phe-
nomena of terrestrial life. The presi-
dents of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, Grove,
Hooker, Huxley, and (Jarpenter, in
their inaugural addresses, and Prof.
Gray in his late address as president
of the American Scientific Associa-
tion, have proclaimed their adherence
to the doctrine of evolution. Prof.
Cope, one of the most able and ac-
complished of American zoologists,
affirms that the truth of the develop-
ment hypothesis is held "to be infi-
nitely probable by a majority of the
exponents of the natural sciences, and
is held as absolutely demonstrated by
another portion." It has been widely
accepted by the younger naturalists of
this country, more generally by those
of England, and still more extensively
by those of Germany, as a guiding prin-
ciple in the work of investigation. An
intelligent German naturalist said to
Prof. Giekie, of the Edinburgh Uni-
versity: "You are still discussing in
England whether or not the theory of
Darwin can be true. We have got a
long way beyond that here. His the-
ory is now our common starting-
point."

Facts like these will have weight
with thoughtful persons, but the editor
of Scribbler's sees through the illusion.
All these masters of science and work-
ing-students of Nature have been lured
from the path of true induction by the
ignis fatuus of a high-flown a priori
speculation.

We have shown the separate estab-
lishment of a principle of evolution

by independent workers in different
branches of science. On the broad
basis of the facts and inductions that
have been reached by three centuries
of investigation in the several domains
of natural phenomena, rests the hypo-
thesis of universal evolution. The co-
ordination of these diverse and alien
orders of facts, and the synthesis of in-
ductions, by which the grand generali-
zation was arrived at, we owe to the
genius of Herbert Spencer. With a
knowledge of modern science that John
Stuart Mill has pronounced " encyclo-
pedic," with a grasp of method and a
capacity of organization which, on the
authority of the Saturday Review, has
not been equalled in England since
Newton, and with the power of a
"giant mind," as Dr. McCosh declares,
to wield and shape his extensive scien-
tific materials, Mr. Spencer has worked
out the principle of universal evolution
by the rigid logic of inductive science.
In each division of his exposition the
first step has been to marshal the facts ;
to sift and methodize the data. The
next step has been to generalize the
facts, or to establish the inductions
warranted by the data. Finally he
verifies these inductions by showing
that they follow from previously estab-
lished principles, and harmonize with
them. The conditions by which all
science has been created are thus
strictly complied with. The concep-
tion of all nature, as in a slow process
of movement to a higher state — of an
ever-advancing and ever-perfecting
order — of a universe in evolution, is no
fantastic speculation brought down to
us by tradition from the dreaming
childhood of the race, but it is a defi-
nite verifiable principle educed from a
more comprehensive range of facts than
any other generalization ever attempted
— the outgrowth of the ripest knowl-
edge, and which is coercing the assent
of the most disciplined intellects of the
world. The principle in question is no
barren formula to be classed with the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

"5

empty a priori speculations which have
figured so largely in the past career of
the human mind. It is the result of
the steady concentration of the intellect
of man fur hundreds of years upon the
realities that surround us, and is the
profoundest answer yet given to man's
questionings of the mystery of being.
It is the latest interpretation of the on-
goings of the world, and brings with
it the possibility of a new and more
stable philosophy of things than we
have yet known — a philosophy not
spun from mystical a priori fancies, but
constructed from the valid truths of
science, and anchored in the depths of
demonstrated knowledge.

An able writer in the Quarterly .Re-
view (London) for July, in discussing
the modern school of thought and Her-
bert Spencer's relation to it, says :
" The two deepest scientific principles
now known of all those relating to ma-
terial things are, the law of gravitation
and the law of evolution." The prin-
ciple is here recognized as more than a
hypothesis and more even than a
theory, it is a law in the same sense
that gravitation is a law. The proof
of evolution indeed is very far from be-
ing so complete as that of gravitation.
But its claims as an established law
are not therefore invalidated, for the
accepted truths of science by no means
rest upon equal amounts of evidence.
From the newness of the systematic
investigation of the principle, from the
imperfection of knowledge in many
spheres of its application, and from the
stupendous reach of its operation, it is
impossible that there should not be
many deficiencies in its proof. It has
its outstanding and unresolved diffi-
culties which it may take long to clear
up. Truths grow — they are examples
of evolution. All great generaliza-
tions have been arrived at gradually;
never at once by complete demonstra-
tion. There are first long foreshadow-
ing preludes in which a principle is dis-
cerned as emerging into increasing dis-

tinctness. It is then accepted on
grounds of probability, and preponder-
ating proofs, and as an advance on pre-
vious beliefs. If a theory becomes in-
creasingly consonant with facts, and
steadily makes way against inexorable
criticism, though it has grave difficul-
ties, it will be accepted, and these diffi-
culties will be left to the future. It was
so with the law of gravitation. " The
Newtonian theory was beset by palpa-
ble contradictions in its results till
many years after Newton's death, yet
all sound philosophers embraced it. The
motion of the apsides of the moon's
orbit was with singular honesty con-
fessed by Newton to be, in fact, nearly
twice as great as calculation from
theory made it ; and this contradiction
remained an outstanding, palpable ob-
jection, yet without occasioning any
misgiving as to the general truth of
gravitation, until the error was ex-
plained and the calculation rectified by
Clairault."

And so it is in other branches of
science. The undulating theory of
light is accepted by all physicists, but
still has its difficulties. The theory of
heat is not without its anomalies. The
chemical theory of respiration is gener-
ally adopted, but there are facts that
still oppose it. It is claimed by none,
that the evidence of the law of evolu-
tion is complete, but it is a growing con-
viction of those who know the subject
best, that the evidence in its favor pre-
ponderates overwhelmingly. Nor is it
dependent upon any of its special in-
terpretations. Darwin may be in er-
ror, Huxley may be wrong, Mivart may
be wide of the mark, Haeckel may be
mistaken, Cope may misjudge, and
Spencer be at fault ; but, in common
with a large and increasing body of
scientific men, they are all agreed as
to one thing, that evolution is a great
and established fact — a wide and valid
induction from the observed order of
Nature, the complete elucidation of
which is the grand scientific task of the

n6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

future. It is in this sense that we hold
to the doctrine of evolution.

In our prospectus we referred to
the increasing number of those who
desire to know whither inquiry is tend-
ing, what old ideas are perishing, and
what new ones are rising into accept-
ance ; and we said that our periodical
was commenced with the intention of
meeting the wants of these more per-
fectly than any other. The editor of
Scribner^s refers to this as a "magnifi-
cent promise," and dilates upon the
transcendent editorial attributes re-
quired to realize it. To this we reply,
"Not if the specimen of Scribnerian sci-
ence we have here considered is to be
taken as the standard." And if we may
be permitted to imitate the bad exam-
ple of Scribner's editor, and meddle for
a moment with what is none of our
business, we should say that he had
better stick to his fiction and his verse-
making, and not deviate into that for-
eign field where nothing is to be gained
by cajoling public ignorance or cater-
ing to public prejudice, and where " the
supreme concern is, to bring thought
into the exactest harmony with things."

LITERARY NOTICES.

Spectrum Analysis in its Application to
Terrestrial Substances, and the Phys-
ical Constitution of the Heavenly

- Bodies. By Dr. H. Schellen. D. Apple-
ton & Co., 1872.

The following able notice of Dr. Schel-
len's book is abridged from an article in Na-
ture : It is not difficult to deliver interest-
ing lectures or to write an instructive book
on spectrum analysis. The rapid succession
of brilliant discoveries in this new branch of
science, the amount of fundamental facts
added by it to human knowledge, especially
in the field of the cosmical world, assure the
lecturer or writer, appealing to the intelli-
gent but not scientific public, of useful and
legitimate success. But what is not so easy
to do is, to interest at the same time the^ws
du monde and scientific men, by offering a
selection of the most recent discoveries in

a bright and literary form attractive to the
former, and yet keeping for the latter the
appearance of precision, and exactness of
the numerical results. All these conditions
are very happily filled in " Sehellen's Spec-
trum Analysis," edited by Mr. W. Huggins
from the second German edition.

The first part, introductory, is occupied
by a description of the artificial sources of
high degrees of heat and light, of which the
study is so intimately connected with the
chemical and astronomical phenomena em-
braced in the field of spectrum analysis ;
various apparatus, for instance, the gas-
burner, the magnesium lamp, the Drummond
lime-light, the electric spark of the induc-
tion coil, the Geissler's tube, and the electric
light produced by voltaic batteries, are de-
scribed, and_ the practical adjustments are
briefly but sufficiently referred to for a good
understanding of the subject.

The second part is devoted to an ele-
mentary abstract of the geometrical and
mechanical properties of light. The fun-
damental analogy between light and sound
is developed, in order to explain to a reader
unlearned in optics how the color of a ray
is the corresponding element of the pitch of
a musical sound, and how it is possible to
define a colored ray by the time of its lumi-
nous vibrations. The description of refrac-
tion phenomena, especially the paths of
rays through a prism, leads naturally to the
separating process of the different colors on
which spectrum analysis is founded.

A considerable number of chapters is
devoted to the construction of the simple
and compound spectroscope. The chief
points of this construction, especially the
contrivances for the simultaneous compari-
son of two spectra, the determination of the
position of lines in the spectrum, are care-
fully described. Afterward a practical ac-
count of the methods for exhibiting spectra
of terrestrial substances, for instance, me-
tallic salts volatilized in a gas-burner, etc.,
will certainly interest chemists.

An interesting chapter contains the
theoretical and experimental explanation of
the reversal of the spectra of gaseous sub-
stances. This phenomenon, studied inde-
pendently by Foucault and Angstrom, and
definitely generalized by Kirchhoff, is per-
haps the chief point of the history of spec-

LITERARY NOTICES.

117

*rum analysis, and certainly the beginning
of its utilization as a powerful method of
investigation.

The third part of the book, the most im-
portant in extent and results, is devoted to
the application of the spectrum analysis to
the heavenly bodies.

The sunlight, according to its bright-
ness and to the peculiarities of its spectrum,
is the best and easiest example to study.
The dark lines in infinite number which it
shows, called " Frauenhofer lines," from the
discoverer, deserve special attention ; there-
fore the author has illustrated the descrip-
tion of the sun-spectrum with two sets of
maps. The first is a reduction of Kirchhoff ' s
maps engraved on wood, representing in
several tints the lines from A to G ; the
second series is a reduction to about half
size of the admirable normal solar spectrum
of Angstrom, in which the Frauenhofer lines
from a to Hi H2 are coordinated according
to their wave-lengths. The accuracy of
these lithographic plates is really wonderful ;
they will have the great merit of introduc-
ing among physicists and astronomers the
wave-length scale for the designation of
lines instead of KirchhofFs scale, which is
an arbitrary one ; and in any case they will
facilitate the transformation of the data
from one to another. I must add that
Angstrom's maps have been introduced into
the present edition by the English editor,
and that such an addition is certainly one of
the greatest attractions of this book for
scientific men.

A good abstract of KirchhofFs and
Angstrom's memoirs on the coincidence of
the dark solar lines with the bright lines of
metallic vapors leads to the hypothetical
constitution of the sun ; this problem is so
difficult, that it is necessary to leave to ev-
ery one the responsibility of his own ideas
on this subject.

The remaining part of the book is en-
tirely devoted to the most delicate applica-
tions of spectrum analysis to astronomy. A
preliminary description of the sun-spots,
faculse, and other peculiarities of the sur-
face of the sun, of the prominences round
the disk, and so on, is given before the
spectroscopic process for analyzing these
appearances is introduced, and enables the
reader to understand very well the diffi-

culties of the problem and the interest of
its solution. I must mention especially the
interesting account of the three total solar
eclipses of 1868, 1869 and 1870. A large
series of drawings and photographic fac-
similes give the best idea of the phenomena,
and show the improvements due to pho-
tography and spectroscopy ; the relatively
great extent devoted to this account is justi-
fied by the importance of the subject ; the
spectrum analysis of the prominences is in
fact one of the most considerable results ob-
tained for a long time in the science of cos-
mogony.

The spectroscope, as it is known, is able
to give an exact measurement of the
proper velocity of the luminous bodies. A
German physicist, Doppler, deserves to be
mentioned as the first who called the atten-
tion of astronomers to this subject, though
a good number of his assertions may be in-
correct. After him, Fizeau, a French phys-
icist, to whom we are indebted for the first
determinations of the velocity of light on
the surface of the earth, showed the errors
of Doppler in a little paper not very well
known, published in 1849, and calculated
the apparent change of refrangibility which
would be produced by the proper mo-
tion of some heavenly bodies ; but no direct
experiment was made before the complete
application of spectrum analysis to the
sidereal phenomena. In this way Schellen's
book gives a good abstract of the works of
Huggins and SecchL In these researches the
velocity of rotation of the sun was to be
tested as a verification of the general law of
the phenomenon. I ought to say that the
rather discordant results want a theoretical
analysis, because the problem seems to me,
in the case of the sun, more complicated
than it appears at first sight. However, the
influence of the velocity of the gas streams,
especially of hydrogen, which constitute the
greater part of the prominences, is unques-
tionably verified by Lockyer's observations.
In the same way Huggins has proved and
determined the proper motion of Sirius by
the apparent change of refrangibility of the
Fline.

The remaining part of the book is devoted
to stellar and meteoric spectrum analysis.
It is impossible to give a superficial notice
of the beautiful researches of Huggins and

n8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Secchi, researches which are always going
on ; the reader will find with interest va-
rious important results of these studies — for
instance, the existence in many stars of a
^ood number of terrestrial substances— hy-
drogen, nitrogen, magnesium, sodium, etc.

One of the most interesting facts is the
observation of the temporary star which ap-
peared in May, 1866; the great brightness
of the star was due, as indicated by the
spectroscope, to an immense mass of incan-
descent hydrogen.

At the end of the work the author gives
some very important observations of Hug-
gins and others on the spectrum of nebulas ;
the chief result is the possibility, with the
aid of the spectroscope, of distinguishing by
the composition of their light the true neb-
ulas from the clusters of stars.

Finally, a description of the spectrum
of the aurora borealis, the identification of
its bright lines with some bright lines of
the solar corona, a description of various
meteors, lightnings and their spectra, show
into what difficult objects this new branch
of science has pushed its investigations.

On the whole, this book must be con-
sidered as a good type of a " popular
work ; " it deserves the attention of the
public, and the esteem of scientific men ;
and, finally, it recommends itself by a gra-
cious side. It was translated into English
by two ladies, who have had the double
merit of giving a proof of their good scien-
tific taste, and of showing an example of
the help which their sex is able to afford to
science.

Life in Nature. — Man and his Dwell-
ing-Place. By James Hinton. New
York : D. Appleton & Co.

These works are unique in the scientific
literature of the present time, and, although
treating of different topics, are so charac-
terized by a common spirit and method,
that they may properly be considered to-
gether. Their author is a London surgeon
in busy practice, but who has not permitted
the pressure of professional duties to pre-
vent him from giving close attention to the
grave questions by which the mind of the
age is agitated. Nor is Mr. Hinton a mere
amateur who recreates with philosophy ; he
is a pioneer investigator in the field of sci-

ence, and has occupied himself much with
those new and large dynamical questions,
and their various applications, with which
scientific philosophers have been so intently
engaged during the last quarter of a cen-
tury. His inquiry into the physical condi-
tions of vegetable growth, showing that it
is governed by definite and traceable forces,
and takes place in the direction of least re-
sistance, like all mechanical effects, forms
an important contribution to biological sci-
ence, and was arrived at independently by
Mr. Hinton and Herbert Spencer. Yet the
author of these works has not dedicated
himself to any line of special research (al-
though from the fertility of his ideas, and
the acuteness and originality of his views,
he might, undoubtedly, have done so with
eminent success) ; but, having mastered the
more vital and comprehensive principles of
modern research, he takes them as the
starting-point for still larger views. Sci-
ence, indeed, in its ordinary acceptation, is
not to him an end. Though deeply imbued
with its spirit, and equipped with its latest
results, he is not satisfied to rest in this
sphere of ideas : it is as leading to some-
thing beyond, or as furnishing a basis for
something higher, that they have to him
their principal value. As Bacon holds sci-
ence subordinate to the ends of utility, and
the practical service of humanity, Mr. Hin-
ton would make it subordinate to the un-
folding of man's spiritual nature. He prizes
science chiefly for its religious uses, or as
an interpretation of the divine order of the
world. Maintaining the fundamental har-
mony of all truth, and that religion repre-
sents a verity of the universe as much as
astronomy, he has taken it as his task to
elucidate the harmonies that must prevail
among the different aspects of truth in or-
der that religious faith may be grounded in
scientific principles. The results of science,
and the knowledge we have of man and the
external world, are the author's postulates ;
and from these he aims to pass, by un-
broken logic, to the spiritual order of be-
ing. Holding Nature to be a sphere divine-
ly designed for man's highest development,
he admits no breaks in the order, and in-
sists that the former must be understood
before the latter can be determined. Sci-
ence, therefore, according to Mr. Hinton, is

LITERARY NOTICES.

119

the foundation and prerequisite of man's
true spiritual unfolding.

It has been made a criticism of Mr.
Hinton's books, that their arguments are
not fully sustained ; or that, while their first
portions are clear and cogent, the latter
parts are indefinite and less conclusive.
But this criticism, attributes to defect in
discussion that which is due to the nature
of the subject-matter, for the ideas succes-
sively dealt with are so different as almost
to appear contrasted. In the sphere of
physical Nature, there are a definiteness, a
quantitative sharpness, and a kind of tan-
gibleness in the truths established, which
disappear as we pass into the domain of
moral and religious conceptions. This con-
trast of the phenomena in the two spheres,
which are precisely conceived in the one
case and not in the other, has been made
the ground for denying that there can be
any true science in the higher realm of
man's moral and spiritual activity. But
the objection is not valid ; for, wherever
there is an orderly and coherent body of
truths, though they cannot be formulated
with exactness, there is the legitimate basis
of science. It may be long before the rec-
onciliation and unification of unlike ideas
and diverse systems of opinion will be com-
pletely accomplished ; but it is no longer
regarded as impossible, and every able at-
tempt to realize it brings us a step nearer
to the final and desirable residt. Much is
said, in these times, of the conflict of sci-
ence and faith, and many maintain that
they are invincibly hostile and must be per-
manently alienated. Mr. Hinton holds that
this is an error due to the incompleteness
and imperfection of present knowledge which
the advance of thought is certain to correct,
and all who read his works must confess
that they are able and original contribu-
tions to this end.

" Life in Nature," aside from the higher
purpose for which it was written, is one of
the most charming studies in biology that
our language affords. It abounds in inter-
esting facts illustrating the beautiful laws
of vital phenomena, and stated with unri-
valled clearness, and is marked by keen
and original insight into the old obscurities
of the subject. The first chapter treats of
"Function, and how we act;" the second

of " Nutrition, and why we grow." The
subsequent chapters take up the " Vital
Force and Laws of Form," the " Univer-
sality of Life," " The Living World," " The
Phenomenal and True," the "Organic and
the Inorganic," and " Nature and Man." The
volume is neatly illustrated, and we recom-
mend it to all who care either for the strict
science of the subject, or for the larger ques-
tions to which it leads.

" Man and his Dwelling - Place " was
written fifteen years ago, has been recast,
condensed, and. made to embody the au-
thor's maturer views. Its perusal should
follow that of " Life in Nature," as it deals
with a higher range of questions, and is of a
more speculative and metaphysical quality.

Mr. Hinton writes in a lucid, attractive,
and eloquent style, and his books contain
many passages of remarkable impressive-
ness and beauty. In the felicity of his de-
lineations he often reminds one of Ruskin ;
but, unlike the great Rhapsodist of art, he
is never run away with by his rhetoric.
The intensity of his convictions and the
earnestness of his feelings give warmth and
force to his language, which is still chast-
ened and restrained by the discipline of
refined scholarship.

BOOKS EECEIVED.
Intermembral Homologies. The Correspon-
dence of the Anterior and Posterior
Limbs of Vertebrates. By Burt G.
Wilder, S.B., M. D. Boston, 1871.

Apparatus for Electric Measurement, with
Rules and Directions for its Practical ap-
plication. By L. Bradley. Jersey City,
1872.

Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting of
the Free Religious Association. Held
in Boston, May 30 and 31, 1872.

Papers relating to the Transit of Venus in
1874, prepared under the Direction of
the Commission authorized by Congress,
and published by Authority of the Hon.
Secretary of the Navy. Washington,
1872.

A Classified Catalogue of the Birds of Cana-
da, including every Species known to
visit the Several Provinces which now
form the Dominion of Canada. By Alex-
ander Milton Ross. Toronto, 1872.

120

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A Classified Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of
Canada. By Alexander Milton Ross.
Toronto, 1872.

Report submitted to the Trustees of Cornell
University in behalf of a Majority of the
Committee on Mr. Sage's Proposal to en-
dow a College for Women. By Andrew
D. White. Ithaca, 1872.

Report on the Climatology and Epidemics of

Minnesota. By Charles N. Hewit, M. D.

Philadelphia. 1872.
Short-hand and Reporting. A Lecture. By

Charles A. Sumner, with Appendix. San

Francisco, 1872.

MISCELLANY.

The Ground Connection of Lightning-
Rods. — It is asserted, by all the later author-
ities on the subject of lightning-rods, that a
proper ground termination of the rod is of
the very first importance to its efficiency as
a protection against accidents by lightning.
The electricity of the cloud will select the
easiest path into the earth, or, as it is tech-
nically stated, follow the line of least resist-
ance ; and it is to furnish a path less resist-
ing than the building itself that the light-
ning-rod is erected. But it is not enough
that the rod have a sufficient conducting
capacity. The current must be able to
leave it, at the place where it terminates in
the ground, as fast as it passes along the
rod, else there is an accumulation, or dam-
ming up as it were, in the rod, which, when
it has attained a certain volume or intensity,
will relieve itself with explosive violence;
and thus the appliance becomes an actual
source of danger to the building, rather
than a means of protection. Mr. David
Brooks, in an able paper on " Lightning
and Lightning-rods," published in the Au-
gust number of the " Journal of the Frank-
lin Institute," says on this point : "I do
not say that a greater proportion of build-
ings having lightning-rods are destroyed or
injured than of those not having them, al-
though those making careful observations
do give that as a result of their statistics.
I shall undertake to show that this difficulty
consists in the defective connection of these
plates with the earth, and also that with a
proper connection with the earth they are

almost, if not an absolute, means of protec-
tion." Says Prof. John Phin, in his admi-
rable brochure on " Lightning-Rods and how
to construct Them : " " Upon the perfection
of the ground termination mainly depends
the value of the lightning-rod. If this be
defective, no other good features can pos-
sibly make up for it. And yet, so little is
it understood, that a careful examination of
a very large number of rods leads us to be-
lieve that fully one-half the lightning-rods
in existence are defective in this respect,
and consequently furnish but an insufficient
protection."

All objects may be said to conduct elec-
tricity, but they vary greatly in their con-
ducting capacity. Copper conducts six
times as well as iron, and iron thousands
of times better than water, and water again
thousands of times better than dry earth.
That is to say, a rod of iron, to have the
same conducting capacity as a rod of cop-
per, would require to be of six times the
sectional area, while, if a rod or column of
water were employed, it would require to be
many thousands of times greater in section-
al area than the iron, and dry earth again
many thousands of times larger than the
column of water. In connecting a rod with
the ground, allowance has to be made for
this difference in conducting capacity, suffi-
cient earth-surface being joined to the rod
to give a conducting capacity approaching
to or equalling that of the rod. Otherwise
the lightning discharge, unable to find a
free passage into the ground, accumulates
until the tension becomes so great that it
bursts from the rod with explosive violence,
taking the track which affords the readiest
means of escape, and often doing serious
damage in its progress.

Accidents of this character are by no
means rare. Mr. Henry Wilde, in a com-
munication to the Mechanic s Magazine,
gives two cases of fire, resulting from the
ignition of the gas by lightning in buildings
where it left the conductor and took to the
gas-pipes. In one instance, the discharge
passed down a wire rope suspended by the
side of a tall chimney, and, leaving the
lower end of the rope, which was some ten
feet from the ground, darted across a space
of sixteen feet to a gas-meter in the cellar
of an adjoining cotton-warehouse, where it

MISCELLANY.

121

fused the lead-pipe connections, and set fire
to the gas. In another instance, that of a
church, provided with a lightning-rod, a
lightning discharge left the rod at a point
in close proximity to the gas-pipes, ignited
the gas in the vestry, and the church was
consumed. In a third case, the discharge
descended a rod on a church-steeple, and,
when within five feet of the ground, left the
conductor, pierced a wall four feet thick,
and disappeared in the gas-pipe under the
floor of the church. Sillimau's " Physics "
gives a similar example, where, in a church
in Xew Haven, the lightning has twice pene-
trated a twenty-inch brick wall at a point
opposite a gas-pipe twenty feet above the
earth, although the conductor, of three-
quarter-inch iron, was well mounted, but its
connection with the earth was less perfect
than that of the gas-pipe.

It being established that the light-
ning will take the easiest track into the
ground, it follows, from what occurred in
each of the above cases, that the least-
obstructed path was by way of the gas-
pipes, with their extended ground con-
nections. In the first example, although
there was a lightning-rod on the chimney,
the lightning took to the rope, and, instead
of leaving it at the lower end for the rod,
which was near by, found an easier passage
through the air to the gas-pipes of the
cotton-factory, which differed from the rod
in having an extensive ground contact.
The same was true in the other cases — the
gas-pipes furnishing a readier path to the
ground than the rods themselves. On ac-
count of the great surface contact with the
ground, which gas and water pipes present,
it has been recommended that lightning-rods
be connected with these, as affording an ex-
cellent means for the escape of the electric
discharge. At first glance, this might seem
a dangerous expedient so far as gas-mains
are concerned, the accidents above men-
tioned pointing to the danger of setting fire
to the gas. This accident arose from the use
of lead-pipe in making the connections with
the meter. Had the gas-pipe throughout
been of iron or brass, nothing of the kind
could have occurred. Unmixed with atmos-
pheric air, gas will not burn, and it was only
through the melting of the lead-connections
by the lightning that the gas was liberated

and then ignited. Brass or iron pipes would
have carried off the discharge without be-
coming fused, no gas would have been liber-
ated, and no fire could have occurred. Com-
menting upon these accidents, Mr. Wilde
says : " In my experiments on the electri-
cal condition of the terrestrial globe, I have
already directed attention to the powerful
influence which lines of metal, extended in
contact with moist ground, exercise in pro-
moting the discharge of electric currents of
comparatively low tension into the earth's
substance, and also that the amount of the
discharge from an electro-motor into the
earth increases conjointly with the tension
of the current and the length of the con-
ductor extended in contact with the earth.
It is not, therefore, surprising that atmos-
pheric electricity, of a tension sufficient to
strike through a stratum of air several hun-
dred yards thick, should find an easier path
to the earth by leaping from a lightning-
conductor through a few feet of air or stone
to a great system of gas or water mains,
extending in large towns for miles, than by
the short line of metal extended in the
ground which forms the usual termination
of a lightning-conductor."

But in the country no such system of
gas and water pipes is at hand — the con-
nection of the rod with the earth must
therefore be made in some other way. On
this point Mr. Brooks remarks : " Unless a
hundred square feet of metal can be laid
in the bed of a spring or body of water, I
believe the building is safer without the
lightning-rod." The advice generally given
is to bury the lower end of the rod in char-
coal or coke. Prof. Phiu says, use coke,
not charcoal ; and, " whether iron or copper
is employed, it will be well to sprinkle the
coke copiously with a strong solution of
washing-soda, for the purpose of neutraliz-
ing any acids that might corrode the metal.
If a trench ten feet long be sunk to the
depth of permanent moisture, and filled to
a depth of twelve inches with coke, it will
be ready to receive the end of the rod, and
will furnish a path for all the electricity
that will ever tend to escape from the
clouds to the earth."

Fonl Air. — The condition of the air com-
monly breathed in the workshop and school-

122

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

room is fairly indicated by the following
statistics, the result of a large number of
observations made by Mr. Richard Weaver
in the schools and manufactories of Lei-
cester, England : As carbonic-acid gas is
usually the chief impurity in rebreathed air,
being produced in large quantities by both
breathing and combustion, Mr. Weaver
takes it as the measure of aerial contami-
nation, the amount present under ordinary
circumstances enabling us to judge of the
degree of vitiation caused by the other prod-
ucts of respiration and combustion. Set-
ting out with the established fact that free
or what is commonly called pure air con-
tains, for every thousand parts, very nearly
four-tenths of one part of carbonic acid, Mr.
Weaver found in the air of a room where
six persons worked at boot and shoe finish-
ing, each person having 51 cubic feet of
space, that the proportion of carbonic acid
was 5.28 parts per thousand, or more than
thirteen times as much as Nature, when let
alone, allows. In another instance, where
the air-space to each of fourteen individ-
uals was 186 cubic feet, with fourteen
gas-lights burning, the amount of carbonic
acid, to a thousand parts of air, was 5.32.
In a class-room of one of the national
schools, and the science class-room at that,
seventeen pupils, each with 200 cubic feet
of space, were breathing an atmosphere
containing 2.41 parts per thousand of car-
bonic acid, or six times as much as the air
contains in exposed situations. In no case
examined was the proportion of carbonic
acid as low as one part in a thousand of
air ; the average in fifteen places being 3.14
per thousand, or nearly eight times as much
as in pure air. It is hardly necessary to
add that the provisions for ventilation,
where any thing of the kind was attempted,
were of the most imperfect character. But
what may be effected by ventilation was
strikingly shown in the instance of a
boy's day-room in one of the national
schools, where there were one hundred
pupils, each with 236 cubic feet of air-
space. The ventilators were placed in the
roof, and, though very far from perfect,
the air in the room contained only 1.16
parts of carbonic acid to the thousand,
the lowest proportion observed in any of the
fifteen cases examined. Mr. Weaver states

that the atmosphere in several of the rooms
was very offensive, and in every case a
pleasurable sense of relief was experienced
on entering the outer air. Large space,
without ventilation, he considers of little
avail, as it has no advantage over a small
room except that the air is a little longer in
attaining the same degree of contamination.

Careless Disinfection. — In cleansing and
disinfecting rooms that have been occu-
pied by persons sick with contagious dis-
eases, mere exposure to disenfecting va-
pors is not enough to thoroughly rid the
apartment of danger to future inmates. The
floors and wood-work require thorough
scouring with some disinfecting fluid, and
the walls and ceiling should also be careful-
ly cleaned. If the walls are covered with
paper, nothing short of its removal will be
effectual, as it unquestionably has the
power of absorbing and retaining contagious
matters, that are not reached by the ordi-
nary processes of disinfection. And its re-
moval is all the more necessary where sev-
eral thicknesses are plastered on the wall,
for then the deeper layers are quite beyond
any possibility of being cleansed ; and, apart
from the danger of contagion, the presence
of paste in such quantities, as several thick-
nesses of paper involve, liable in warm
weather to ferment and decompose, and at
all times furnishing a nest for hosts of vermin,
is certainly most objectionable. That wall-
paper does actually furnish lodgment for con-
tagion, and the paste with which it is stuck
on food for vermin, is proved by the following
cases reported in the Lancet: The work-
men engaged in stripping the paper from
the walls of a house in Manchester, that had
previously been occupied by persons ill with
fever, nearly all came down with the same
fever, although previous to their visit the
house had been disinfected with chlorine
and carbolic acid. In the Knightsbridge
barracks, where numerous layers of paper
and paste had been allowed to accumulate,
the walls when examined were found to be
literally swarming with maggots, that were
leading a most flourishing existence while
subsisting on the paste between the several
thicknesses of paper. The practice of fresh-
ening the walls of rooms by covering up, in-
stead of removing the filth, has become ex-

MISCELLANY.

123

tremely common, hundreds of houses in this
city being yearly rejuvenated in this way,
to the serious injury, no doubt, of their sub-
sequent inmates.

Trees and Rain. — A correspondent writes
thus to the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical
Club : " The influence of trees upon rain and
the general moisture of the atmosphere, which
has been much discussed of late, receives a
strong illustration from the island of Santa
Cruz, West Indies. A friend who spent the
months of February, March, and April last,
upon this island, informs me that, when he
was there twenty years ago, the island was a
garden of freshness, beauty, and fertility.
Woods covered the hills, trees were every-
where abundant, and rains were profuse and
frequent. The memory of its loveliness
called him there at the beginning of the
present year, when, to his astonishment, he
found about one-third of the island, which
is about twenty-five miles long, an utter
desert. The forests and trees generally had
been cut away, rainfalls had ceased, and a
process of desiccation, beginning at one end
of the land, had advanced gradually and ir-
resistibly upon the island, until for seven
miles it is dried and desolate as the sea-
shore. Houses and beautiful plantations
have been abondoned, and the people watch
the advance of desolation, unable to arrest
it, but knowing almost to a certainty the
time when their own habitations, their
gardens, and fresh fields, will become a part
of the waste. The whole island seems
doomed to become a desert. The inhabi-
tants believe, and my friend confirms their
opinion, that this sad result is due to the
destruction of the trees upon the island some
years ago."

Poisonous Paper-Hangings. — In his val-
uable paper " On the Evil Effects of the Use
of Arsenic in Certain Green Colors," pub-
lished in the third annual report of the Mas-
sachusetts State Board of Health, Dr. Frank
W. Draper gives the following, among other
startling cases of arsenical poisoning from
green-colored paper-hangings :

In 1862, a case of fatal poisoning under
the conditions in question occurred in the
suburbs of London, the victim being a child.
The cause of death was made the subject of

an investigation before a coroner's jury. In
the course of the evidence, it transpired that
the deceased was the last of four children
who had died within a period of two
months, under exposure to the poison con-
tained in the paper-hangings of the room
they habitually occupied. They had all been
attacked in the same manner, the prominent
symptoms being referred to the throat. The
color was loosely applied, having no glazing.
It was very deliquescent ; at 50° it was
quite damp, and the stain came off on the
hand like paint. Three grains of arsenic
were found in a square foot of the paper.
The symptoms were attributed by the sur-
geon in attendance, Mr. Orton, and by Dr.
Letheby, who made the post-mortem chemi-
cal examination, to arsenical poisoning.

But greens are not the only colors which
contain arsenic, nor wall-paper the only
fabric colored with arsenical pigments. A
correspondent of the Chemical News, who
is in a position to know, states that the
French use the following-named pigments,
containing arsenic, in calico-printing, and
that they are equally suitable, and doubtless
used, in the color of paper-hangings : LigM
scarlet pigment contained alumina, arseni-
ous oxide, and aurine ; scarlet ponceau
contained carbonate cf lime in addition to
above ingredients ; dark green, a prepara-
tion of aniline green and arsenious oxide ;
steam chocolate, and catechu pigment, both
contained arsenious oxide. Halhvachs ha3
demonstrated the presence of arsenic in red,
as well as in green-colored wall paper.

Volcanic Dnst. — The dust discharged at
the last eruption of Vesuvius, though very
heavy, was carried in one direction to a dis-
tance of twenty-five miles, where it fell in
quantities sufficient to cause great annoy-
ance to the inhabitants. It consisted of
aggregations of crystallized quartz, dotted
over with the magnetic oxide of iron. The
grains were very uniform in size, and would
pass through a wire gauze the apertures of
which measured the sixteen thousandth of
a square inch. By boiling in hydrochloric
acid, the whole of the iron can be removed,
and nothing but crystals of fine white quartz
remain. Its composition is the same as that
of the iron-sand which is found in the soil
in some parts of the country round Yesu-

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vius, and which is the product of former
eruptions; the latter, however, cor tains a
larger relative proportion of iron, and the
grains show a water-worn appearance under
the microscope. Neither of the Vesuvian
specimens contains titanium, which is found
in the magnetic iron-sand of New Zealand,
which has most likely been ejected from the
great volcano of Mount Egmont.

Transfusion of 151 (tod. — Dr. Aveling re-
ports in the Lancet a case where life was
saved by the transfusion of blood, by what
is known as the " immediate " method. The
patient was a lady dying from hiemorrhage.
Her pulse had become imperceptible both
at the wrist and in the temporal arteries ; the
heart's action was very feeble, and steadily
growing more so ; she was insensible, with
dilated pupils that refused to contract on
the approach of a light; the extremities were
cold, and the lips and face blanched. Blood
was pumped, by means of a suitable ap-
paratus, directly from a vein in the arm of a
man, into a vein of the lady's arm, without
exposure to the air, and in a duly-regulated
stream. Some eight ounces of blood were
thus transfused. As the operation pro-
ceeded, the pulse at the wrist became per-
ceptible, the lips less blanched, and warmth
returned to the hands. In a few hours con-
sciousness returned, the patient took nourish-
ment, and afterward fully recovered.

Habits of the Opossum. — We gather from
the American Naturalist, for September, the
following interesting particulars concerning
the habits of the opossum : The animal is
widely distributed in the United States. It
dwells in hollow logs, stumps, and in holes
at the roots of trees, does not burrow, but
takes possession of holes that it finds ready
made. Into these it will carry leaves — using
its tail for the purpose — and provide itself
with a comfortable bed, when bad weather
threatens. It does not hibernate, but hunts
its food at all seasons, is slow of foo^, and
not very wild. It will eat bacon, dry beef,
carrion, any kind of fowl, rabbits, any sort
of small game, almost all the insects, and
fruits of every variety, being especially fond
of muskmelons ; and is eaten in turn by
many people, the flesh being considered de-

licious. This has a flavor resembling that
of the flesh of the young hog, but is sweeter
and less gross. Negroes and others are ex-
ceedingly fond of it ; dogs, however, hold a
very different opinion, and will sooner starve
than consume it. The animal is habitually
incautious, and when attacked seems to pos-
sess little power of resistance ; literally suf-
fering itself to be eaten alive by the turkey-
buzzards, while it lies on its side and pro-
tests against the proceeding by a succession
of grunts. Exceedingly tenacious of life, it
will survive a vigorous crunching by the
dogs, when it seems as though every bone
in its body had been cracked. Although
sometimes found concealed under the floors
of houses and out-buildings, it refuses to be
domesticated, and is believed to dwell but a
short time in any one place.

Dr. Carpenter against Materialism. — Dr.

Carpenter, having been charged with at-
tacking the philosophy of Profs. Huxley
and Tyndall in his late address, replies, in
a letter to tbe London Echo, as follows :

"Nothing was further from my inten-
tion than either to give a theological turn
to my address, or to make any attack upon
the philosophy of my two valued friends,
whom I believe to be, in regard to most, if
not all, of the philosophical questions I
have treated, at one with me.

" But I did set myself to combat a mode
of thought on scientific subjects which I
know to be very prevalent among half-
educated scientific men, who have never
studied the constitution and working of
their own minds, and which has been car-
ried out most fully by a certain school of
(so-called) Nature Philosophers in Ger-
many. Of the tenets of this school, a
small work by Dr. Buchner, entitled
'Kraft und Stoff' — Force and Matter —
which has run through many editions, and
has been translated into French, may be
considered an exponent. The tenets are
(I write from recollection, not having the
book at hand) somewhat as follows :

" 1. That we know, and can know,
nothing of the external save matter, and
the laws of matter.

" 2. That these ' laws ' are fixed, un-
changeable, and self-acting.

" 3. That there is consequently no ne-

MISCELLANY.

12?

eessity for a God, since Nature can do very
well without one.

" 4. That, if there be a God, he is lim-
ited in his action — just as man is — by the
' laws of matter,' which he can no more
control than man can ; and that he is,
therefore, in his relation to Nature, only a
higher kind of man.

"Now, my object was to show :

"1. That what we call ' laws of Nature '
are simply our own expressions of the or-
derly sequence which we discern in the
phenomena of the universe ; and that, as
all the history of science shows how erro-
neous these have been in the past, so we
have no right to assume our present con-
ceptions of that sequence to be either uni-
versally or necessarily true.

" 2. That these so-called ' laws ' are of
two kinds, one set being mere generaliza-
tions of phenomena, of which Kepler's
1 laws of planetary motion ' or the ' laws of
chemical combination ' are examples, while
another set express the conditions of the
action of a force, of which the existence is,
or may be, made known to us by the direct
and immediate evidence of our own con-
sciousness— our cognition of matter being
indirectly formed through the medium of
force.

" 3. That ' laws ' of the first kind (which
we may for convenience term phenomenal)
do not really explain or account for any
thing whatever. Nothing is more common
than to hear scientific men speaking of
such laws as ' governing phenomena,' or of
a phenomenon being ' explained ' when it
is found to be consistent with some one of
such laws ; though the fact is that the law
is a law merely because it is a generalized
expression of a certain group of phenom-
ena ; and to say that any new phenomenon
is 'explained,' by its being shown to be in
conformity to a 'law' is merely to say (as
Prof. Clifford well put in his lecture) that
a thing previously unknown is ' explained '
by showing it to be like something pre-
viously known.

"4. That, on the other hand, every
'law 'of the second kind (which we may
distinguish as dynamical) is based on the
fundamental conception of a force or pow-
er; so that if the existence of such a force
(as that of gravity or electricity) be ad-

mitted, and the conditions of its action can
be accurately stated, then the law which
expresses them may be said to ' govern '
the phenomenon; and any phenomenon,
which can be shown to be necessarily de-
ducible from it, may be said to be ' ex-
plained,' so far as science can explain it.
But the utmost that science can positively
do, as I stated toward the conclusion of
my address, is to demonstrate the unity of
the power of which the phenomena of Na-
ture are the diversified manifestations, and
to trace the continuity of its action through
the vast series of ages that have been occu-
pied in the evolution of the universe.

" 5. I expressed the opinion that science
points to (though at present I should be
far from saying that it demonstrates) the
origination of all power in mind ; and this
is the only point in my whole address
which has any direct theological bearing.
When metaphysicians, shaking off the bug-
bear of materialism, will honestly and cou-
rageously study the phenomena of the
mind of man in their relation to those of
his body, I believe that they will find in
that relation their best arguments for the
presence of infinite mind in universal Na-
ture.

" Now, the only expression I have ever
met with, in our own language, of the phi-
losophy which (as I have said) worships
the order of Nature as itself a God, was ut-
tered by Miss Martineau, in the book on
' Man's Nature and Development,' which
she produced some twenty years ago in
conjunction with Mr. Atkinson. Not hav-
ing the book at hand, I cannot cite any
passage from it ; but I well remember the
general drift of its argument (putting aside
mesmerism, phrenology, etc.) to have been
that, whereas mankind formerly believed
the phenomena of Nature to.be expressions
of the will of a Personal God, modern sci-
ence, by reducing every thing to ' laws,'
had given a sufficient ' explanation ' of
these phenomena, and made it quite un-
necessary for man to seek any further ac-
count of them.

" This is precisely Dr. Buchner's posi-
tion ; and it seems to me a legitimate in-
ference from the very prevalent assumption
(which is sanctioned by the language of
some of our ablest writers) that the so-

126

THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

called laws of Nature 'govern' the phe-
nomena of which they are only generalized
expressions. I have been protesting
against this language for' the last quarter
of a century; and, as I know that Dr.
Buchner's views are extensively held
among the younger thinkers of Germany
and France, and have reasons to fear their
extension to this country, I thought it well
to take the opportunity which has been re-
cently afforded me of calling the attention
both of scientific men and of the general
public to what I consider the true functions
of man as the scientific interpreter of Na-
ture. It was not because I had any thing
to say on this subject that would be new
either to men of science or to theologians,
who have already gone through a like
course of thought with myself, but because
I hoped to lead some to think upon it who
have never so thought before, and to help
others to a clearer view of it than they
might have themselves attained, that I
chose it as the topic of my address. And,
so far as I have the opportunity of judg-
ing, my hope is being fully realized."

Artificial Bntter. — At the request of the
victualling department of the French Navy
for some wholesome substitute for butter
that would keep well, Mege Mouriez, after
a long course of experiments, has suc-
ceeded in producing an excellent substitute
for genuine butter, that does not become
rancid with time, and is otherwise highly
recommended. Experiments made with
cows, submitted to a very severe and scanty
diet, led to the discovery that they continue
to give milk, though in greatly diminished
quautity, and that this milk always contains
butter ; whence it was inferred that this
butter was formed from fat contained in the
animal tissues, the fat undergoing conver-
sion into butter through the influence of the
milk-secreting glands. Acting on this hint,
Mouriez's process begins with splitting up
the animal fats. Finely divided fresh beef-
suet is placed in a vessel containing water,
carbonate of potash, and fresh sheep's
stomachs, previously cut up into small frag-
ments. The temperature of the mixture is
then raised to about 112° Fahr., when, under
the joint influence of the pepsin and the
heat, the fat becomes separated from the

cellular tissue. The fatty matter floating on
the top is decanted, and after cooling sub-
mitted to very powerful hydraulic pressure.
The semi-fluid oleo-margarine is thus sepa-
rated from the stearine, and becomes the
basis of the butter to be afterward produced.
One hundred pounds of this oleo-margarine,
along with about twenty-two quarts of milk
and eighteen quarts of water, are poured
into a churn, and to this mixture are added
a small quantity of annatto and about three
ounces of the soluble matter obtained by
soaking for some hours in milk cows'
udders and milk-glands. The mixture is
then churned, and the butter obtained,
after being well washed with cold water
and seasoned, is ready for use. If required
to be kept for a long time, it is melted by a
gentle heat in order to eliminate all the
water.

Ventilation and Warming. — In a lecture
on ventilation, lately delivered before the
Franklin Institute, Mr. L. W. Leeds, after
detailing the abominations he encountered
in his examination of the ventilating arrange-
ments of the Treasury Building at Wash-
ington, gives the following practical direc-
tions concerning provisions for ventilation
and warming in the construction of build-
ings. First, never have long underground
fresh -air ducts. Second, never allow a
sewer, soil-pipe, foul-air flue, or smoke-flue,
to come near the fresh-air supply-flue, for
fear of some connection being made between
them by carelessness or accident. Third,
never heat a building exclusively by currents
of warm air. Fourth, always put the heat-
ing flues on the outside walls instead of on
the inside walls. Fifth, endeavor strenuously
to avoid the fresh-air chamber becoming a
common receptacle for all the rubbish of a
filthy cellar.

Sardines. — Mr. N. S. Dodge has given a
very complete and interesting account of
the " Natural History and Preparation of
Sardines " in Hearth and Home, from which
we gather the following : In natural history
the sardine is the young of the pilchard, a
fish resembling the herring in size, but
thicker. They get the name of sardines,
from having been formerly found in great
quantities off the coast of Sardinia. They

MISCELLANY.

127

make their appearance about the coast of
the Armorican Peninsula early in spring,
and succeed each other in countless shoals
throughout the summer months. These
shoals are marvellous for their size and the
number of fish they contain. Each one
takes the shape of a huge fish, bulging out
toward the middle and tapering toward
either end. The shoals vary from ten to
thirty yards in width and from fifty yards to
half a mile in length. The fish are some-
times so closely packed that numbers are
constantly being shoved out of water. They
are caught with nets, much in the same way
as herrings, only the nets are provided with
much smaller meshes. Although nets are
employed, bait is also used. This bait is
called rogue ; and is imported in barrels
from Norway.

In catching the fish, several boats go to-
gether, a man standing in the bow of each
to give notice of the approach of a shoal.
Upon the cry of " Voila I " the boats make
for the head of the shoal, the nets are cast,
and bait is thrown overboard. The fish in
their eager pursuit after the bait get en-
tangled in the net, when a second net is
thrown out and the first one hauled in.
When a boat is loaded, the fish are taken
ashore and immediately sold. The process
of preserving is as follows : As soon as the
sardines are landed the greatest activity is
necessary to get them " sain et saw/*," since
exposure to the air depreciates their fresh-
ness and much handling impairs their flavor.
First, the fish are thoroughly washed and
scraped, so as to free them from every im-
purity. They are then sprinkled with fine
salt which crystallizes upon the surface and
is almost immediately removed. Heads and
gills are then taken off, a new washing
undergone, and the fish laid to dry in the
sunshine, on frames of wire or green withes.
After drying they are thrown into caldrons
of boiling olive-oil and cooked for two
hours, when, after a second drying, they are
transferred to the tables to be packed.
Here women only do the work. To put the
fish nicely in their places, to smother them
with boiling oil, to fit the lid of the tin box,
turn a jet of hot steam on the joints, and
toss it hermetically sealed to the inspector,
is but the work of a moment. Perhaps the
one essential element in the curing of sar-

dines is perfect olive-oil. If it be not en-
tirely tasteless, it destroys what the Sar-
dinians call the "wama/o," the delicate,
volatile flavor of the fish.

Sprats, shiners, roach, herrings, dace, and
carp, when young, and with their heads off,
have sufficient resemblance to sardines to
pass for the genuine article. They are put
up at various places on the southwestern
coast of Prance, and are largely exported,
probably comprising three-quarters of all
that are sold in the United States under the
name of sardines. When well cured, pre-
served in good oil, and hermetically sealed,
these small fry are savory and palatable,
but they lack the delicate volatile flavor of
the real fish.

Ancient Engineering Among the Chinese.—

The most remarkable evidence of the
mechanical science and skill of the Chinese
so far back as 1,600 years ago is to be found
in their suspended bridges, the invention of
which is assigned to the Han dynasty. Ac-
cording to the concurrent testimony of all
their historical and geographical writers,
Sangleang, the commander of the army under
Baou-tsoo, the first of the Hans, undertook
and completed the formation of the roads
through the mountainous province of Shense,
to the west of the capital. Hitherto its lofty
hills and deep valleys had rendered the com-
munication difficult and circuitous. With a
body of one hundred thousand laborers he
cut passages over the mountains, throwing
the removed soil into valleys, and, where
this was not sufficient to raise the road to
the required height, he constructed bridges
which rested on pillars or abutments. In
another place he conceived and accom-
plished the daring project of suspending a
bridge from one mountain to another across a
deep chasm. These bridges, which were called
by the Chinese writers, very appropriately,
flying bridges, and represented to be nu-
merous at the present day, are sometimes so
high that they cannot be traversed without
alarm. One still existing in Shense stretches
four hundred feet from mountain to moun-
tain, over a chasm of five hundred feet.
Most of these flying bridges are so wide that
four horsemen can ride on them abreast, and
balustrades are placed on each side to pro-
tect travellers. It is by no means improba-

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

blc (as M. Panthier suggests), as the mis-
sionaries to China made known the fact
more than a century ago that the Chinese
had suspended bridges, that the ideas may
have been taken thence for similar con-
struction by European engineers.

NOTES.

The Spectator, in its notice of M. Tou-
chet's work, " The Universe," says : " Man
generally flatters himself that his anatomy
is about the highest effort of Divine skill ;
yet that of the insect is far more compli-
cated. No portion of our organism can
compare with the proboscis of the common
fly. Man can boast 270 muscles. Lyonet,
who spent his whole life in watching a
single species of caterpillar, discovered in
it 4,000. The common fly has 8,000 eyes,
and certain butterflies 25,000. M. Touchet
treats it as an established fact that so fine
are the sensory organs of ants that they
converse by means of their antenna?. Con-
sequently the strength and activity of in-
sects far surpass ours in proportion. In
the whole field of natural science there is
nothing more astounding than the number
of times a fly can flap its wings in a second ;
it must in that point of time vibrate its
wings five or six hundred times. But in
rapid flight we are required to believe that
3,600 is a moderate estimate."

The following, according to Prof. Pal-
mieri, are the signs of an approaching erup-
tion of Vesuvius : When the crater tills up
and the vapor from it diminishes in quanti-
ty ; when the vapor from the crater yields
a* heavy deposit of iron or sodium; when
the water sinks in some of the springs of
the neighborhood. The phenomena more
nearly preceding an eruption are, the oc-
currence of earthquakes, increasing in in-
tensity and frequency for some days before-
hand ; also the irregularity of the diurnal
variations of the magnetic needle. One of
the remarkable attendants of an eruption
is the frequence of lightning flashes ac-
companying the condensation of vapor of
water from the crater ; just as in an ordi-
nary thunder-storm lightning occurs at the
time the vapor is condensing, as is proved
by the rain that follows.

Prof. Muir has been investigating the
effects of various saline solutions on lead
by suspending pieces of bright lead of
of known area, each in a solution of known
composition, for a given time, and then
estimating the amount of lead dissolved, by
Wanklyn and Chapman's color-test. He
finds the greatest solvent power exerted by
solutions of the nitrates, ammonium nitrate
being especially active. The carbonates,

as was before known, have the greatest
protecting power, and next to them come
the sulphates ; so that, when either of these
are present, even if the water contain a
considerable proportion of nitrates, the
solvent action on the lead is very slight.

It is well known that all alloys contain-
ing copper, even in minute proportions, are
readily acted on by acids, which makes them
dangerous when used for household utensils.
M. Helouis has proposed an alloy, under the
name of platinum bronze, which is entirely
inoxidizable. It is a nickel alloy, prepared
from nickel made thoroughly pure by various
processes and maceration in concentrated
nitric acid. The proportions employed are
nickel 100, tin 10, and platinum 1— the two
latter metals being added to the fused nickel
in the proportion of 4 of tin to 1 of plat-
inum, and the remaining six parts of tin
added subsequently. For bells and sono-
rous articles the proportions are slightly va-
ried, viz., nickel 100, tin 20, silver 2, and
platinum 1.

M. Kenault has lately brought to the
attention of the Paris Academy of Sciences
a simple and effective method for reproduc-
ing drawings. The drawing is first made
with sticky ink on highly-glazed paper, and
afterward dusted with bronze - powder.
Sheets of sensitized paper are then pressed
upon the former, when the lines of the draw-
ings are reproduced upon the paper by the
chemical action which takes place between
its sensitive surface and the metal. Impres-
sions may be taken at any time, by soften-
ing the ink on the original with vapor of
alcohol, and then redustiug with the bronze-
powder.

Sulphuric acid, according to Dr. L. de
Martin, when added to the sweet juice of
the grape {must) in the proportion of from
fifteen to forty-five grains of the concentrated
acid to twenty-two gallons of must, exerts a
favorable influence on the process of fer-
mentation. The process is hastened and
rendered more complete, and a better and
more beautiful color is given to the wine.
Analysis shows no more sulphuric acid in
this wine than in samples not so treated.
When the must is alkaline, as it sometimes
is, the process of fermentation produces
lactic acid instead of alcohol ; hence the
utility of sulphuric acid, which sets up the
alcoholic fermentation of the sugar.

Dr. Virchow has been experimenting
with reference to the influence of coal-gas
on vegetation, when diffused through the
soil. He finds, after a long series of care-
fully-conducted researches, that coal-gas is
an active poison to vegetation, trees, shrubs
and ornamental plants, being killed by it
when it is allowed to permeate the soil
about their roots.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1872.

B

THE EAKLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND.1

Bt WALTER BAGEHOT, Esq.

Y far the greatest advantage is that on which I observed before
— that to which I drew all the attention I was able by making
the first of these essays an essay on the Preliminary Age. The first
thing to acquire is, if I may so express it, the legal fibre ; a polity
first — what sort of polity is immaterial ; a law first — what kind of law
is secondary ; a person or set of persons to pay deference to — though
who he is, or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies.

" There is," it has been said, " hardly any exaggerating the differ-
ence between civilized and uncivilized men ; it is greater than the dif-
ference between a tame and a wild animal," because man can improve
more. But the difference at first was gained in much the same way.
The taming of animals, as it now goes on among savage nations, and
as travellers who have seen it describe it, is a kind of selection. The
most wild are killed when food is wanted, and the most tame and easy
to manage kept, because they are more agreeable to human indolence,
and so the keeper likes them best. Captain Galton, who has often
seen strange scenes of savage and of animal life, had better describe
the process : " The irreclaimably wild members of every flock would
escape and be utterly lost ; the wilder of those that remained would
assuredly be selected for slaughter whenever it was necessary that one
of the flock should be killed. The tamest cattle — those which seldom
ran away, that kept the flocks together, and those which led them
homeward — would be preserved alive longer than any of the others.
It is, therefore, these that chiefly become the parents of stock and be-
queath their domestic aptitudes to the future herd. I have constantly

1 From advance-sheets of " Physics and Politics," forming vol. ii. of " The Interna-
tional Scientific Series." The present article is a portion of Mr. Bagehot's chapter on
"The Use of Conflict."

VOL. II. — 9

i3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

witnessed this process of selection among the pastoral savages of
South Africa. I believe it to be a very important one on account of
its rigor and its regularity. It must have existed from the earliest
times, and have been in continuous operation, generation after genera-
tion, down to the present day." '

Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest ; he
was obliged to be his own domesticator ; he had to tame himself.
And the way in which it happened was, that the most obedient, the
tamest tribes are, at the first stage in the real struggle of life, the
strongest and the conquerors. All are very wild then ; the animal
vigor, the savage virtue of the race has died out in none, and all have
enough of it. But what makes one tribe — one incipient tribe, one bit
of a tribe — to differ from another is their relative faculty of coherence.
The slightest symptom of legal development, the least indication of a
military bond, is then enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes
win, and the compact tribes are the tamest. Civilization begins, be-
cause the beginning of civilization is a military advantage.

Probably if we had historic records of the ante-historic ages —
if some superhuman power had set down the thoughts and actions
of men ages before they could set them down for themselves — we
should know that this first step in civilization was the hardest step.
But, when we come to history as it is, we are more struck with the dif-
ficulty of the next step. All the absolutely incoherent men — all the
" Cyclopes " — have been cleared away long before there was an au-
thentic account of them. And the least coherent only remain in the
" protected " parts of the world, as we may call them. Ordinary civ-
ilization begins near the Mediterranean Sea ; the best, doubtless, of
the ante-historic civilizations were not far off. From this centre the
conquering swarm — for such it is — has grown and grown ; has widened
its subject territories steadily, though not equably, age by age. But
geography long defied it. An Atlantic Ocean, a Pacific Ocean, an
Australian Ocean, an unapproachable interior Africa, an inaccessible
and undesirable hill India, were beyond its range. In such remote
places there was no real competition, and on them inferior, half-com-
bined men continued to exist. But in the regions of rivalry — the re-
gions where the better man pressed upon the worse man — such half-
made associations could not last. They died out, and history did not
begin till after they were gone. The great difficulty which history
records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step.
What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but
getting out of a fixed law ; not of cementing (as upon a former occa-
sion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of cus-
tom ; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking
through it, and reaching something better.

This is the precise case with the whole family of arrested civiliza-

1 " Ethnological Society's Transactions," vol. Hi., p. 137.

THE EARLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 131

tions. A large part, a very large part, of the world seems to be ready-
to advance to something good — to have prepared all the means to ad-
vance to something good — and then to have stopped, and not advanced.
India, Japan, China, almost every sort of Oriental civilization, though
differing in nearly all other things, are in this alike. They look as if
they had paused when there was no reason for pausing — when a mere
observer from without would say they were likely not to pause.

The reason is, that only those nations can progress which preserve
and use the fundamental peculiarity which was given by Nature to
man's organism as to all other organisms. By a law of which we
know no reason, but which is among the first by which Providence
guides and governs the world, there is a tendency in descendants to
be like their progenitors, and yet a tendency also in descendants to
differ from their progenitors. The work of Nature in making genera-
tions is a patchwork — part resemblance, part contrast. In certain re-
spects each born generation is not like the last born; and in certain
other respects it is like the last. But the peculiarity of arrested civ-
ilization is to kill out varieties at birth almost ; that is, in early child-
hood, and before they can develop. The fixed custom which public
opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it suits them
or not. In that case the community feel that this custom is the only
shelter from bare tyranny, and the only security for what they value.
Most Oriental communities live on land which in theory is the prop-
erty of a despotic sovereign, and neither they nor their families could
have the elements of decent existence unless they held the land upon
some sort of fixed terms. Land in that state of society is (for all but
a petty skilled minority) a necessary of life, and, all the unincreasable
land being occupied, a man who is turned out of his holding is turned
out of this world, and must die. And our notion of written leases is
as out of place in a world without writing and without reading as a
House of Commons among Andaman-Islanders. Only one check, one
sole shield for life and good, is then possible — usage. And it is but
too plain how in such places and periods men cling to customs because
customs alone stand between them and starvation.

A still more powerful cause cooperated, if a cause more powerful
can be imagined. Dryden had a dream of an early age, " when wild
in woods the noble savage ran ; " but " when lone in woods the cring-
ing savage crept " wovdd have been more like all we know of that
early, bare, painful period. Not only had they no comfort, no conven-
ience, not the very beginnings of an epicurean life, but their mind
within was as painful to them as the world without. It was full of
fear. So far as the vestiges inform us, they were afraid of every thing ;
they were afraid of animals, of certain attacks by near tribes, and of
possible inroads from far tribes. But, above all things, they were
frightened of " the world ; " the spectacle of Nature filled them with
awe and dread. They fancied there were powers behind it which must

i3 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be pleased, soothed, flattered, and this very often in a number of hide-
ous ways. We have too many such religions, even among races of great
cultivation. Men change their religions more slowly than they change
any thing else ; and accordingly we have religions " of the ages " (it
is Mr. Jowett who so calls them) — of the " ages before morality; " of
ages of which the civil life, the common maxims, and all the secular
thoughts, have long been dead. "Every reader of the classics," said
Dr. Johnson, " finds their mythology tedious." In that old world,
which is so like our modern world in so many things, so much more
like than many far more recent, or some that live beside us, there is a
part in which we seem to have no kindred, which we stare at, of which
we cannot think how it could be credible, or how it came to be thought
of. This is the archaic part of that very world which we look at as
so ancient; an " antiquity" which descended to them, hardly altered,
perhaps, from times long antecedent, which were as unintelligible to
them as to us, or more so. How this terrible religion — for such it was
in all living detail, though we make, and the ancients then made, an
artistic use of the more attractive bits of it — weighed on man, the
great poem of Lucretius, the most of a nineteenth-century poem of any
in antiquity, brings before us with a feeling so vivid as to be almost a
feeling of our own. Yet the classical religion is a mild and tender
specimen of the preserved religions. To get at the worst, you should
look where the destroying competition has been least — at America,
where sectional civilization was rare, and a pervading coercive civiliza-
tion did not exist; at such religions as those of the Aztecs.

At first sight it seems impossible to imagine what conceivable func-
tion such awful religions can perform in the economy of the world.
And no one can fully explain them. But one use they assuredly had :
they fixed the yoke of custom thoroughly on mankind. They were
the prime agents of the era. They put upon a fixed law a sanction so
fearful that no one could dream of not conforming to it.

No one will ever comprehend the arrested civilizations unless he
sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had no law at
all, and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had
to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those who
surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in their
way who did not. And then they themselves were caught in their
own yoke. The customary discipline, which could only be imposed on
any early men by terrible sanctions, continued with those sanctions,
and killed out of the whole society the propensities to variation which
are the principle of progress.

Experience shows how incredibly difficult it is to get men really to
encourage the principle of originality. They will admit it in theory,
but in practice the old error — the error which arrested a hundred civil-
izations— returns again. Men are too fond of their own life, too cred-
ulous of the completeness of their own ideas, too angry at the pain of

THE EARLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 133

new thoughts, to be able to bear easily with a changing existence ; or
else, having new ideas, they want to enforce them on mankind — to
make them heard, and admitted, and obeyed before, in simple compe-
tition with other ideas, they would ever be so naturally. At this very
moment there are the most rigid Comtists teaching that we ought to
be governed by a hierarchy — a combination of savants orthodox in
science. Yet who can doubt that Comte would have been hanged by
his own hierarchy ; that his essor materiel, which was, in fact, troubled
by the " theologians and metaphysicians " of the Polytechnic School,
would have been more impeded by the government he wanted to
make ? And then the secular Comtists, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Beesly,
who want to " Frenchify the English institutions " — that is, to intro-
duce here an imitation of the Napoleonic system, a dictatorship found-
ed on the proletariat — who can doubt that, if both these clever writers
had been real Frenchmen, they would have been irascible anti-Bona-
partists, and have been sent to Cayenne long ere now ? The wish of
these writers is very natural. They want to " organize society," to
erect a despot who will do what they like, and work out their ideas ;
but any despot will do what he himself likes, and will root out new
ideas ninety-nine times for once that he introduces them.

Again, side by side with these Comtists, and warring with them —
at least, with one of them — is Mr. Arnold, whose poems we know by
heart, and who has, as much as any living Englishman, the genuine
literary impulse ; and yet, even he wants to put a yoke upon us — and,
worse than a political yoke, an academic yoke, a yoke upon our minds
and our styles. He, too, asks us to imitate France.

Asylums of commonplace, as Beranger hints, academies must ever
be. But that sentence is too harsh ; the true one is, the academies are
asylums of the ideas and the tastes of the last age. " By the time," I
have heard a most eminent man of science observe, " by the time a
man of science attains eminence on any subject, he becomes a nuisance
upon it, because he is sure to retain errors which were in vogue when
he was young, but which the new race have refuted." These are the
sort of ideas which find their home in academies, and out of their dig:-
nified windows pooh-pooh new things.

I may seem to have wandered far from early society, but I have
not wandered. The true scientific method is to explain the past by
the present — what we do not see by what we see. We can only com-
prehend why so many nations have not varied, when we see how hate-
ful variation is ; how everybody turns against it ; how not only the
conservatives of specidation try to root it out, but the very innovators
invent most rigid machines for crushing the " monstrosities and anom-
alies," the new forms, out of which, by competition and trial, the best
is to be selected for the future. The point I am bringing out is sim-
ple : one most important prerequisite of a prevailing nation is that
it should have passed out of the first stage of civilization into the sec-

i34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ond stage — out of the stage where permanence is most wanted, into
that where variability is most wanted ; and you cannot comprehend
why progress is so slow, till you see how hard the most obstinate ten-
dencies of human nature make that step to mankind.

Of course the nation we are supposing must keep the virtues of its
first stage as it passes into the after-stage, else it will he trodden out ;
it will have lost the savage virtues in getting the beginning of the
civilized virtues; and the savage virtues which tend to war are the
daily bread of human nature. Carlyle said, in his graphic way, " The
ultimate question between every two human beings is, ' Can I kill
thee, or canst thou kill me ? ' " History is strewn with the wrecks of
nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a
great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for
destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for
it. But these nations have come out of the " preeconomic stage " too
soon ; they have been put to learn while yet only too apt to unlearn.
Such cases do not vitiate, they confirm, the principle — that a nation
which has just gained variability, without losing legality, has a singu-
lar likelihood to be a prevalent nation.

No nation admits of an abstract definition ; all nations are beino-s
of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illus-
trates any one principle ; every cause is intertwined and surrounded
with a hundred others. The best history is but like the art of Rem-
brandt : it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those
which were best and greatest ; it leaves all the rest in shadow and un-
seen. To make a single nation illustrate a principle, you must exag-
gerate much and you must omit much. But, not forgetting this
caution, did not Rome — the prevalent nation in the ancient world —
gain her predominance by the principle on which I have dwelt ? In
the thick crust of her legality there was hidden a little seed of adap-
tiveness. Even in her law itself no one can fail to see that, binding
as was the habit of obedience, coercive as use and wont at first seem,
a hidden impulse of extrication did manage, in some queer way, to
change the substance while conforming to the accidents — to do what
was wanted for the new time, while seeming to do only what was
directed by the old time. And the moral of their whole history is the
same : each Roman generation, so far as we know, differs a little — and
in the best times often but a very little — from its predecessors. And,
therefore, the history is so continuous as it goes, though its two ends
are so unlike. The history of many nations is like the stage of the
English drama : one scene is succeeded on a sudden by a scene quite
different — a cottage by a palace, and a windmill by a fortress. But
the history of Rome changes as a good diorama changes : while you
look, you hardly see it alter; each moment is hardly different from
the last moment ; yet at the close the metamorphosis is complete, and
scarcely any thing is as it began. Just so in the history of the great

THE EARLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 135

prevailing city : you begin with a town and you end with an empire,
and this by unmarked stages. So shrouded, so shielded, in the coarse
fibre of other qualities, was the delicate principle of progress, that it
never failed, and it was never broken.

One standing instance, no doubt, shows that the union of progres-
siveness and legality does not secure supremacy in war. The Jewish
nation has its type of progress in the prophets, side by side with its
type of permanence in the law and Levites, more distinct than any
other ancient people. Nowhere in common history do we see the two
forces — both so necessary, and both so dangerous — so apart, and so
intense : Judea changed in inward thought, just as Rome changed in
exterior power. Each change was continuous, gradual, and good.
In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military ad-
vantage ; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish
advantage never did so ; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand
analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them ; from
that have issued endless consequences. But I cannot deal with such
matters here, nor are they to my purpose. As respects this essay,
Judea is an example of combined variability and legality not investing
itself in warlike power, and so perishing at last, but bequeathing,
nevertheless, a legacy of the combination in imperishable mental
effects.

It may be objected that this principle is like saying that men walk
when they do walk, and sit when they do sit. The problem is, Why
do men progress ? And the answer suggested seems to be, that they
progress when they have a certain sufficient amount of variability in
their nature. This seems to be the old style of explanation by occult
qualities. It seems like saying that opium sends men to sleep because
it has a soporific virtue, and bread feeds because it has an alimentary
quality. But the explanation is not so absurd. It says : " The begin-
ning of civilization is marked by an intense legality ; that legality is
the very condition of its existence, the bond which ties it together;
but that legality — that tendency to impose a settled customary yoke
upon all men and all actions — if it goes on, kills out the variability
implanted by Nature, and makes different men and different ages fac-
similes of other men and other ages, as we see them so often. Progress
is only possible in those happy cases where the force of legality has
gone far enough to bind the nation together, but not far enough to
kill out all varieties and destroy Nature's perpetual tendency to
change." The point of the solution is not the invention of an imagi-
nary agency, but an assignment of comparative magnitude to two
known agencies.

136 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS.

By Kev. S. LOCKWOOD, Ph. D.

SAILORS from South America occasionally, among other pets, hring
a small animal, which, because of its long nose, they invariably
tall an Ant-eater. Thus was a little stranger introduced to our care a
few years ago. A glance was enough to see that it was no ant-eater
at all, but a pretty female Coati-Mondi. Gallant Jack Tar, her master
on ship, unconscious of the incongruity, had made a namesake of her
and called her Jack. Science had already named her Nasua, and in a
matter-of-fact way, for the word interpreted just means — Nosie. The
animal was about the size of a cat, with a thick, coarse fur, of a
brownish hue on the back and sides, and underneath shades from yel-
low to orange. The long tail was ornamented by a series of black
and yellowish-brown rings. Her nasal prominence reminded me of a
queer Spaniard, once employed in the government service to detect
spurious coin. His "counterfeit detector" was a sensitive proboscis.
By sticking this organ into the glittering heaps he literally " nosed "
out the bad from the good. To that man his nose was the instrument
of his profession ; and to Nasna her nose was equally important. It
even prompted a nick-name and a juvenile pun — " Nosie's nose knows
too much ! " Inappeasably inquisitive, she was incessantly intruding
that organ into every thing. Having made no allowance for an extra-
tropical temperature, this little South American made a failure in an
attempt to lift with her nose the lid of a pot in the cook's domain.
The next attempt, a successful one, was on the knife-box, whose closely-
fitting lid was pried open, and every article inspected, in happy igno-
rance of the proverb about edged tools. It was enough that any
thing was hollow to excite her curiosity, which was of a thoroughly
simian type. The dinner-bell was turned over ; but, unable to detach
the clapper and chain, it was soon abandoned in disgust. A round
sleigh-bell received more persevering attention. Unable to cret her
nose or paws into the little hole at the side, the clatter within set her
wild with excitement, and evoked a desperate attack on the little an-
noyance with her teeth. She then gave it up as a bootless job. A
bottle of hartshorn was next made the subject of investigation. We
had purposely loosened the cork, and promised ourselves a " nice sell • "
and we got it— not Nosie. She was not in the least disconcerted by
the drug. In fact, she had a strong nose for such things. A man
gave her his tobacco-box. Resting it on the floor between her two
paws, which possessed uncommon flexibility, she turned it over and
over, round and round, exercising alternately her nose, claws, and
teeth upon it with great energy, but to no avail. It seemed that the
smell of its contents infatuated her, as she showed no disposition to

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS.

»37

stop. The man opened the box for her. She was in rapture. In went
the nose, also both front paws. Very soon that wonderfully mobile
organ had separated every fibre, so that the mass seemed trebly in-
creased. The same man let her have his dirty pipe, when her velvety
nose was instantly squeezed into the rank nicotian bowl.

It would be wrong to infer that Nasua's prying propensity never
got her into trouble. In the following instance, speaking metaphori-
cally, she put her foot into it : The old cat had just finished her nap,
and was stretching herself, an operation which means that she stood
with her four feet close together, the limbs elongated, the back rounded
up like that of a camel, the head erect and drawn back, and the mouth
widely

yawning

Such a sight Nosie had never seen, hence it must

Fig. 1.

Coati-Mondi (Nasua fusca) A native of South America. The full-jrrown animal is about the size of the
domestic cat. Compare its bear-like step with Fig. 4.

be looked into. So in a trice, erect, and resting flatly on her hind-
feet like a little bear, she put her arms round Tabbie's neck, and, reek-
ing with nicotine, down went that inquisitive nose into the depths of
the feline fauces. This unwarrantable intrusion was met by a recep-
tion more feeling than felicitous, judging from the haste in which
Nasua withdrew to a corner of the room to ruminate on the untoward
incident. Her method of relieving the injured member was itself origi-
nal. She placed it between her paws, holding it tightly, then jerked
it through them, giving a violent sneeze every time it came out. That

^3

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sneezing was genuine, because it was involuntary. Both hartshorn
and nicotine had signally failed to get up any thing respectable in
that line; but that cat-nip, pure and simple, did the business finely.

Quite pretty was the pattern of the animal's ears — they were so
clean, trim, soft, and small. Though rather pert, they had an air about
them that was really amiable, and such as the canine fancier would
pronounce elegant. She was not averse to a little fondling, and I well
remember the first time she climbed wpon my lap. Those pretty ears
suddenly quivered. The ticking of my watch had excited her. Down
goes that uhiquitous utilitarian organ into the watch-pocket. Failing
with the nose, she makes a desperate effort with that and both fore-
feet all at once. Still unable to evict that case of mystery, she thrusts
her nose down by its side, and for several minutes, with simian quaint-
ness, listens to the ticking of mortal Time.

Fro. 2.

Coati-Monfli n^een. (Ori^innl ) Compare the snout with those of the three pachyderms, Figs. &. 6, and
i. It aarees functionally, and. in the main, structurally, with that of the Swine Fig. <i, and with that
of the Peccarv. Fig. 5. ' The Peccary snout, too. approaches it in flexibility. Rut the Tapir. Fig-. 1,
surpasses it in this particular. In the cut, which is excessively foreshortened, the sleeping animal is
using its tail as a cushion for the head.

On the above occasion Coati was allowed the liberty often taken
by the little dog, of going to sleep on my lap, while I gave myself up
to the enjoyment of my book. Her nap finished, I did not notice
when she left my lap. Soon a noise was heard like the tearing of pa-
per. The wonderful little beast had abstracted my pocket-diary, and
in violation of all propriety was making heavy extracts in a litter-ary
way. Those keen incisors were scissoring away — a full leaf at a time !
She had even filched a five-dollar note out of the pouch of the book,
and, by way of change, had converted it into fractional currency.

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS. 139

In the same manner, though not to the same extent, the nose of the
Nasua, like the same organ of the elephant, projects far beyond the
mouth. At our first acquaintance with the animal, we were anxious
to see if it could drink out of a deep, narrow vessel. So a mug, con-
taining about a gill of milk, was set before her. She instantly turned
up the proboscis toward her forehead, and, in the easiest way imagina-
ble, lapped the vessel dry. The organ was not even wet. The sight,
though comical, was really pretty. It was the only time that I had
ever seen the turning up of the nose at one's friends so deftly and
gracefully done. And she could turn the same organ in a contrary
way quite as easily. The first time she confronted a mirror, startled
at beholding her own counterfeit presentment, instantly her counte-
nance fell — very low indeed ; for her nose bent downward, and act-
ually curved under the chin. Of course the word chin is not here
anatomically correct. Her proboscis now looked like that of a tapir
in repose. This singular grimace, with its squeaky little grunts, pre-
sented a very funny manifestation of surprise.

Fig. 3.

Raccoon (Proeyon lotor). A near allv of the Coati-Mondi, having the same plantigrade, or bear-like step,
and certain other resemblances of for .n and habit. The tail is too short in the cut, which is due to
the foreshortening.

Sometimes for an airing the animal was tied by a long tether to a
flower-stand on the lawn. It should have been mentioned that she
was literally omnivorous. She would catch a mouse and eat it all up.
The heads of poultry given her in the kitchen would be eaten raven-
ously. The same is true of sweetmeats, which she occasionally got by
stealth. She would drink every thing, not even stopping at brandy.
She had nearly all the appetencies of the domestic swine ; and the end
of her proboscis was essentially a swine's snout. I now beheld the
use of this singularly-tipped organ. And an interesting sight it was
to see that little thing plough up the greensward with the tip of her
nose — and so easily. Here appeared the veritable swinish acuteness
of scent for insects and worms, and the swinish facility for rooting in
the ground. With surprising rapidity furrow after furrow was made,
of about the width of a man's thumb. "Whenever a worm or insect
was discovered, as when drinking, the nose was curved up, so that the
mouth could extract the object from the furrow.

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The tail of Nasua is quite suggestive of the raccoon ; but Nasua's
tail is a much handsomer affair — longer, and with rings more numerous
and of gayer colors. With admirable intelligence, our pet put this
beautiful appendage to a remarkable use. She was tethered by a
string to a chair, and an egg was put on the floor at a tantalizing dis-
tance. She could just touch it with a paw, and that touch caused the
coveted prize to roll out of reach. She then turned her hind-feet tow-
ard it, pulling hard so as to stretch her neck ; still even with a hind-
foot she could not touch it. The logic of events was now, " Get it if
you can ! " All this Nasua well understood, for she turned tail on the
subject altogether — not, however, as did Reynard on the grapes, but
strategically. She gathered herself up, and looked at the coveted ob-
ject with speculative eyes. Then she swung herself round again, pull-
ing hard on the tether by the neck. She then curved the tip of the
tail so as to make a little hook. Now she grasps the base of the tail

Fig. 4.

Brown Bear (TTrsns aretes). This cnt shows the plantigrade step, in which the entire sole of the foot is
put down at once. The same step characterizes the Coati-Mondi and Raccoon. In the Bear this
characteristic finds its highest expression.

with one paw, as with a hand, thus stiffening and steadying the organ.
She next slowly and cautiously rolled the egg, by the curved tip of the
tail, through a section of a circle, until it was brought within reach of
one of the front-feet. The egg now seized, sitting on her hind-feet,
like a bear, she cracks it, extracts the contents, and neither spills a

THE C0AT1-M0NDI AND ITS COUSINS. 141

drop on the floor, nor so much as soils that wonderful nose ; for, among
her many gifts, is her soft and extensile tongue. This caudal expedi-
ent is sometimes found with the American show-monkey, when a bit
of gingerbread is put by the roguish boys at an inconvenient distance ;
but, as, in such instance, the tail is prehensile, is in fact the monkey's
fifth hand, such feat is no great shakes after all, but is quite in keeping
with what the organ is cut out for. It is, at most, but little more than
that instinct which structural or functional capacity might evolve.
But, in Nasua's case, it is animal contrivance, pure and simple. There
is, too, a latent fact which peeps out here : for this bending of the
caudal tip looks to the faculty possessed by its cousin, the Kinkajou,
the extremity of whose tail has a prehensile or grasping faculty of
high perfection.

Fig. 5.

TThiie-Itpped Peccary (Dicotyles labiatus). Snout hog-like, but flexible.

She showed considerable attachment — her preference being the
ladies. She would often, when tied up in the kitchen, sit for many
minutes, her little black eyes looking wistfully at the door through
which the mistress of the house had passed, and all this time crying
pitifully. It was a plaintive cry, in the minor key, and yet a little
funny, for it greatly resembled the chirping of a cricket, though not
quite so shrill, and the intervals between the notes were a little longer.
This tiny cry required for every note a muscular exertion, extending
far down the sides of the body, which led to the suggestion that " the
plaint came from the depths of the heart."

Though at times somewhat irascible, this little animal was very
playful with those who could understand and humor her ways. And
her method in play was a good deal like that of a dog. She would
take my fingers into her mouth, and make believe to bite, and would
roll on her back in manifest glee. It required at first some courage to
take part in her gambols. On one occasion, thinking that she gave me
too hard a nip with her teeth, I returned her a smart slap in the face.
This experience was novel and startling, and caused her to open her
mouth and chatter as a terrified monkey does. On one occasion she
so far forgot herself as to bite me quite severely. It was but one snap

142

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the mouth — a more spurt of temper. I gave her such punishment
as I considered judicious. For a while she kept up a snapping at me,
accompanied by a monkey-like chattering of rage and fear. At last
she laid down her head in submission. I then stroked and patted her.
It was now all made up, and we were friends again. On this subject

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of punishment I soon learned an important fact. You might slap
and shake this little thing quite severely, when her will was crossed,
or a slight fit of temper was upon her, without subduing her. She
had, however, a wholesome dread of the rod. A twig not thicker
than a straw was sufficient. A blow from this, although it scarcely
ruffled the fur, would reduce her to instant and complete submis-
sion. The exhibitor of wild animals understands the virtue of his
little whip.

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS.

l43

The attachment of this interesting animal to her new home was in-
tense. I frequently caused her to be taken to the commons and set at
liberty among the trees. Considering that the coati is a thoroughly
arboreal animal, and such its agility that it descends trees head first,
one would suppose that this would awaken the dormant natural hab-
its ; but she would invariably hasten home by the shortest route pos-
sible ; and, if, on her return, she found the door closed, would sit on
the steps and cry.

ikh

Mi

o
o

C3 p.

S o
»5

■■s

^ a,

oh

s

c
. a

I

One morning, at an early hour, ccati was missed from the kitchen.
A search was set up. The ringing voice of our little boy was heard,
with the occasional word, " Jack." And so it was — Jack was in bed
with the little three-year-old, and they were having a high time to-
gether. This trick she played whenever opportunity allowed. Often,

i44

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

at an early hour before the child was awake, have we found Jack self-
ensconced in the arms of his little master. Of course, prudence dic-
tated that this should not be permitted ; but Jack would steal up-
stairs so noiselessly that the thing was often done before we had time
to suspect.

Fig. 8.

Asiatic Ekphant (Elephas Indicus). Here the snout (proboscis) has attained the perfection of flexibility

and prehensility.

A word is necessary as to the peculiar temerity of this animal.
From two points it was liable to give way to extreme impulsiveness —
the excitement of opposition, or of inquisitiveness. If any thing at-
tacked her, whatever the object or the odds might be, she would face
the assailant, and close in with her shrill little squeaks of rage, and in
a wild sort of dash. If one slapped her, whatever might be her ter-
ror, she would rush upon and snap at the hand. The dog-like saga-
city of running under the table or chair was not her way. Hers was
the peccary instinct of running upon danger. No monkey could be a
more importunate or impertinent teaser than was our coati; but Jocko
shows sagacity with his jokes — for he always adroitly leaps aside of
consequences. I have watched our pet tease the cat with imperturba-
ble persistency, until Tabbie, unable to tolerate matters any longer, has
struck her sharp claws into that soft proboscis, then moved away, leav-

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSIN'S.

141,

ing her persecutor dazed with astonishment. Then, in a moment, for-
getting all, she would turn her attention to the setter-dog, and, despite
his growls and menacing teeth, would keep up a systematic worrying,
catching at his tail, nipping at his legs, and even poking her nose into

Fig. 9.

Ring-tailed Lemur (Lemur eatta). The Lemurs constitute the lowest family of the Monkeys. A little
animal of South America, known as the Kinkajou. is, in external aspect and general habit, very like
the Lemurs, and yet is placed by systematists close to, and in the same family with, the Coati-Mondi.
to whom its plantigrade feet show its near relationship. But this first-cousin of Coati-Mondi is also
not unlike the Sapajous, or hijar monkeys, for it has a head like them, and also their accomplish-
ment of a long prehensile taiL (See Fig-. 10.) Coati-Mondi has Lemurine traits also.

his ears. At length, the poor brute, fairly goaded into mge, seized her
like a rat, and, but for my prompt interference, that would have been
the last display of Nasua's rashness. One morning she got into the
as we were at breakfast. She took possession of mad-

TOL. II. — 10

dining-room

146

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

am's lap. Her first act was to poke her nose at the coffee-urn. This
evoked a squeak of pain. It was supposed that she had had enough.
Not quite. Her next essay was on a cup of hot coffee, with a similar
result. She now smelt the contents of the sugar-bowl. This discovery
so excited that "sweet will" of hers that instant removal became im-
perative. Later in the day she tried to capture a wasp. She struck
it down, and held it a second under her foot. This was met by an ap-
peal addressed solely to her understanding, of so pointed a nature as
made her chatter with distress. Disabled in one wing, the insect could
not fly away. Although still smarting from the wounded foot, the
moral of the lesson is only half learned. Coati cannot give "little
yellow-jacket " up. So she tries the wasp again — this time with her
nose. Alas, that sting ! Miss Nasua now finds that other little folks,
besides herself, can utilize their tails ; for, in px*oof of this, she receives

Fig. 10.

is

*■-,'

5 X2ft ;#;// ,

2^

T7te Sai (Cebus capucinus). One of the South American Papajous. The tail prehensile, but probably
not more so than that of the Kinkajou, the close ally of Coati-Mondi.

not merely a duplicated, but an intensified experience, such as exacts
a staccato out gush of agony, of truly simian expression. We can re-
call but one lesson which she took sincerely to heart. The old cow
was quietly ruminating near the house. With her usual temerity, for
she was always ready to " go it blind," Coati made an attempt to climb
one of Cushie's legs. The cow raised her foot to shake the annoyance
off, and in setting it down she put her hoof on Nasua's tail, and there
standing, gravely ruminating, held her fast to the ground. Her rapid,
chattering cry brought one of the ladies to her rescue. The tail was
very badly hurt. Ever after, between Coati and Cushie, a respectful
distance was maintained.

We now call attention to one of the most interesting facts in
modern zoology. Agassiz pointed out, with much precision, the ex-

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS. 147

istence in certain animals, both fossil and recent, of two sets of traits
— one proper to, and marking their peculiar individuality as members
of an order, tribe, or family ; and the other set, although found in
them, yet destined to a fuller unfolding in animals yet to be created,
and to mark their peculiarities. In a word, the species in question
was regarded as looking forward to or foreshadowing, in these seem-
ingly eccentric traits, the characteristics of tribes yet to come. As,
for example, take the ancient Ganoids, or fishes, covered with shining,
bony scales, as the word signifies. Their common representative,
now, is the sturgeon, which, though a fish, has structural and physio-
logical points that belong to the reptiles. Regarding these curious
traits as put together in one individual, and in a sense to be yet sepa-
rated from it, and specialized in other and higher animals, Agassiz in-
vented, felicitously, as we think, a term to express these facts, namely,
" synthetic type." Dana prefers the phrase " comprehensive type,"
and Guyot uses the term " undivided type."

The study of this almost grotesque little animal has proved singu-
larly suggestive of certain points of structure and habit, usually re-
garded as peculiarities of other animals. In Nasua are found features
whicli elsewhere are sufficiently dominant to warrant generic distinc-
tion— as the architect can specify certain points in the Composite order
which are derived from several other orders. To designate the parts
that make up this strange unity in our subject may not be easy. The
botanist is, at times, perplexed in his effort to formulate the specific
distinctions of a simple plant. Let him take an oak, for example — and
it may be that the analysis is unsatisfactory ; yet the specific concep-
tion of the tree, taken from its contour and entirety, may, for all that,
be quite trustworthy. To the writer, the Nasua, viewed as a whole in
the matter of structure, form, and habit, has appeared to be a syn-
thetic, or comprehensive type — not, perhaps, a composite, as made up
of what had been before, but possibly typical of what was to come.
Limited strictly to anatomical analysis, the typical range would be
narrowed; but, studied in the above more exhaustive method, the diag-
nosis must, we think, be highly significant. It may appear a super-
ficial resemblance that is presented in the ornamentation of the respec-
tive tails of the coati and the raccoon. But these animals have also
anatomical parallels of structure. Both have a similar dental arrange-
ment, and both have plantigrade limbs. Here, again, the coati, with
the coon, becomes cousin to the bear, for all three have that structure
which compels that setting down at once the entire great sole of the
foot, and that walking thereon, which the books denominate planti-
grade. The three, also, have similarly-shaped heads, similar small
eyes, small, trim ears, and peculiar claws, which are, all and several,
known as ursine traits. They have also not unlike appetencies
of food. They are plantigrade carnivora, and have in common a
striking habit which removes them from the pure or digitigrade car-

i48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nivora, namely, that of raising their food with the paws toward the
mouth, and bowing the head to meet it half-way. The coati and rac-
coon will tear the food into fragments, and sticking into it the claws,
like an improvised fork, will thus convey it to the mouth. Who ever
saw a dog or cat raise its food from the ground, except by its mouth ?
Our Nasua, then, has elements of ursine structure, aspect, and habit.

But this little animal has also something of the appetency, struct-
ure, and habit of the swine. Look only at the cut of Nasua asleep,
and mark the resemblance of the end of its proboscis to the snout of
the hog. The engraving is from a photograph, and gives an admi-
rable foreshortening of the organ. We have shown that in function it
is identical ; for the animal roots precisely as a hog. Here it looks tow-
ard the swine through the peccary, that hog-like animal of its own
country. We have also noticed that, in a common recklessness, they
—the coati and the peccary — bear a psychic similitude. Both have a
habit of wildly confronting danger, and both have been known to
overcome great perils, and to repulse superior enemies, by actual te-
merity— real sauciness, or sheer effrontery of dash.

And there is that remarkable proboscis, which actually supplies
the generic name — an organ so mobile, and so effective, and so facile
of disposition and adjustment. Herein, through the tapir, appears an
elephantine expression point of relationship.

Then come those traits so simian — that inappeasable inquisitive-
ness, and that capacity for quasi-human expedients, and that monkey
vice of incessant teasing, and that monkey chattering, expressing terror
or distress. It is true that here we seem to stand entirely on meta-
physical ground, as we cannot demonstrate any anatomical points of
structure related to these traits. And we admit that, in these matters,
we have no right to demand conviction unless from logic so formu-
lated. Still the traits are there; and we feel that these traits, physi-
oo-nomical and psychic, cannot stand unrelated to some important
physiological data, which may perhaps place Nasua a little below
the Lemurs in rank, through which inchoate monkeys it may look
toward the Cebidce, to its distant relatives, the South American Sapa-
}ous. And what striking resemblances to these well-known monkeys
are noticeable in the Kinkajou, first cousin of the Coati-Mondi.

We close with a great truth which this little creature unfolds, of
surpassing interest. As a synthetic type, this little being is very
ancient, even on the geological record. Its lineage goes high up the
stream of animal life. The first coati-mondi told off certain points of
the treat zoological plan yet to be unfolded. It typified the raccoon
yet to come, and the peccary, and the swine, and the bear, the tapir,
and the elephant ; and, as a faint, yet expressive signification, it told,
on its psychic side, at least, of the monkey, as the crown of the dumb
creation. And by the same record we read the superior antiquity of
the so-called New World to the Old: for the ancestors of Nasua were

WEATHER PROPHECIES. i49

pursuing their prey in the American woods ere Asia and Europe had
risen from their baptism under the sea.

And not zoological only, but may we not read, in this " compre-
hensive type," a geological prophecy also, that, in the far-off future,
our continent shall again sink into the transforming waters, when His
behest cometh, who maketh all things new ?

■♦»»

WEATHER PROPHECIES.

THE science of the weather may be said to have sprung up within
the last half century, and we must not therefore wonder that, until
very recently, meteorological science has rather been concerned with
the weather as it has been, than in prophesying what kind of weather
may be expected. Indeed, this is almost the case at the present day ;
for, were it not for the telegraph, storm-signals would be of little avail.
Much was gained when, from the conclusions drawn from a large num-
ber of observations, a storm could be telegraphed from any place as
coming, instead of as happened. This stage of the science is perhaps
as far as can be usually attained in the present day ; in some future
time, from the careful study of the laws, it may be possible to predict,
with average certainty, the state of the weather from day to day, or
even for several days to come. It remains to be seen how far this
power has been attained ; and it may not be uninteresting to notice, in
passing, the very unstable ground upon which weather predictions
were founded before meteorology included this second division.

Whether we take as type the old dame's faith in the gambols of
her cat, the high flight of some birds and the low flight of others, the
" camel " in the clouds, or the chirruping of grasshoppers, we have
much the same arbitrary system, or, rather, want of system, although
these signs may not be without some definite cause, more or less
remotely connected with coming changes in the weather. In many
country places it is common to hear it remarked that " the rain will
soon clear up, for the birds are singing ; " the coming change is per-
haps already sensible to their more delicate organization. There is
also the appearance of the clouds ; and to this indication even the
lamented Sir John Herschel attached somewhat of a reliance, in that
" anvil-shaped clouds " portended a gale of wind. But, as a rule, the
moon may be considered to hold the first place of influence upon
weather predictions. Halos round the moon are the phenomena most
commonly observed, and are readily explained by the laws of the re-
flection of light from the particles of aqueous vapor suspended in the
atmosphere. When these halos are colored, we may infer the presence
of watery particles in the higher regions of the atmosphere; when the

,bo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

halos are white, we may conclude that the particles are frozen, and ex-
pect cold weather. Crossed halos, mock moons, or highly-developed
phenomena, indicate larger crystals of ice, and probably frost, hail,
snow, or heavy rain, after three or four days, according to the season
of the year. Similarly the laws of reflection of light indicate that
the cause of a deep-purple morning or evening sky is the large
amount of moisture present in the atmosphere. Another effect of the
moon, when at the full, is to clear the sky of cloud, traceable, says Sir
John Ilerschel, to a distinct physical cause, the warmth radiated from
its highly-heated surface ; though, why the effect should not continue
for several nights after the full, remains, in the opinion of the same
accurate observer, problematic. Other lunar prognostics, founded on
arbitrary rules, as to the time of the day or night at which the changes
or quarterings take place, are worse than useless, for they are calcu-
lated to mislead, and are generally included in almanacs or note-books
intended for sale only, being in some cases attributed to an eminent
meteorologist or astronomer — Sir W. Herschel or others.

It is of course far from our purpose to enter here into a disquisition
on the theory of the trade and anti-trade winds, and their barometri-
cal indications — subjects that can be usefully discussed only in a trea-
tise on meteorology : we limit ourselves to the present position of
weather prognostics, although it must be admitted that any advance
yet made or likely to be made in prognosticating the weather arises
from the study of such recurrent phenomena, the investigation being
much aided by the highly-developed character of the laws of the ex-
pansion of gases, upon which laws the theory of the wind is founded.
Thus we know that a rise in the barometer, together with a fall in tem-
perature, as shown by the thermometer, indicates the approach of a
cold, northerly current of air ; while a fall of the mercury in the ba-
rometer, with a rise of that in the thermometer, indicates that a south-
erly or warm air-current is on its way. Northerly currents may in-
clude winds from the northwest and northeast, as well as from the
north ; similarly, southerly currents may include winds from the south,
southeast, or southwest. When the barometer rises while a northeast
wind is blowing, with prevalent hail, rain, or snow, there may be no
change. Of barometrical indications alone, it is generally known that
a rapid rise portends changeable weather; a slow rise, the contrary ;
a rapid fall, heavy wind, rain, and snow ; while a fluctuating height of
the column of mercury indicates unsteady weather. With a heavy gale
of wind in the east or southeast, changing south, the barometrical col-
umn may fall until the wind shifts its quarter. Upon such observa-
tions did Admiral Fitzroy base his code of instructions, now to be
found by the side of every barometer, his forecasts depending on the
indications of the barometer and thermometer, with observations as to
the direction and force of the wind with regard to time and place, and
its previous course taken altogether. These indications are thus not

WEATHER PROPHECIES. i5i

aosolute, but relative to the preceding state of the weather. But also
these indications are valid for only a short interval before the actual
advent of the storm ; and in some instances, as in the Hyperborean
storm of the 2d and 3d of October, 1860, the interval is too short for any
advantage to be taken of the notice. The particulars of this storm,
which present in true character the difficulties which the meteorolo-
gist must encounter, are too interesting to be omitted, and we shortly
recount them from the complete and admirably-conducted investiga-
tion published by Prof. C. Piazzi Smyth, in the " Annals of Scottish
Meteorology for 1856 to 1871." The term Hyperborean has been em-
ployed to prevent confusion with tropical hurricanes ; it has also been
called, from its essential locality, the Edinburgh storm. We have to
consider only the practical lessons to be deduced from the observations
of this storm ; the account of the actual observations must be read
from the before-mentioned report of Prof. Piazzi Smyth. First, then,
the barometric notice was insufficient and too local to be of service,
while the storm was too quick in its movements. St. Hilda is the
most westerly station; and, even if the storm could have been tele-
graphed thence, the message would have allowed only two hours for
preparation, and would have arrived while the eastern men were sound
asleep. If a message could have been sent from Iceland the day pre-
vious to the arrival of the storm, many wrecks would have been pre-
vented. So that we see the present system of meteorology necessitates
not only diligent but earnest watching of the signals that should be
afforded by a net-work of cables and overland wires, for it is by a series
of connected observations, extended over a large area, that the useful-
ness of this branch of meteorology is alone likely to be advanced.

But, it may be asked, what definitive knowledge can be gained,
say not of storms, but of average weather for some future period ?
Here we must again refer to Prof. Piazzi Smyth's report on the rock-
thermometers at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, and to the Pro-
ceedings of our own Royal Society for the 2d of March, 1870, in which
predictions of the weather during the winters of 1871-'72 are attempted.
The rock-thermometers have by their readings shown some well-
marked supra-annual cycles, the relation of which to the sun-spot cy-
cles will be known to our readers. And on this point it may be stated
that the Radcliffe astronomer announces, in his report for 1871, that
the mean azimuthal direction of the wind at Oxford, rigorously com-
puted from automatic records during the last eight years, varies year
by year through a range of 58° on the whole, between maximum and
minimum of visible sun-spots, the tendency of the wind to a westward
direction increasing with the number of spots, and with such west
wind, it is to be presumed, the amount of rain also. " The most strik-
ing and positive feature of the whole series of observations," continues
Prof. Piazzi Smyth, " is the great heat-wave which occurs every eleven
years and a fraction, and nearly coincidently with the beginning of

152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the increase of each sun-spot cycle of the same eleven-year duration.
The last observed occurrences of such heat-wave, which is very short-
lived, and of a totally different shape from the sun-spot curve, were in
1834.8,1846.4, 1857.8, and 1868.8; whence, allowing for the greater
uncertainty of the earlier observation, we may expect the next occur-
rence of the phenomenon in or about 1880.0. The next largest feature
is the extreme cold close on either side of the great heat-wave : this
phenomenon is not quite so certain as the heat-wave, partly on account
of the excessive depth and duration, of the particular cold-wave which
followed the hot season of 1834.8. That exceedingly cold period, last-
ing as it did through the several successive years 1836, 1837, and
1838, was, however, apparently a rare consequence of an eleven-year
minimum, occurring simultaneously with the minimum of a much lon-
ger cycle of some forty or more years, and which has not returned
within itself since our observations began. Depending, therefore,
chiefly on our later observed eleven-year periods, or from 1846.4 to
1857.8, and from the latter up to 1868.8, we may perhaps be justified
in concluding that the minimum temperature of the present cold-wave
was reached in 1871.1; and the next similar cold-wave will occur in
1878.8." Between the dates of these two cold-waves there are located,
according to all the cycles observed, even including that earlier one
otherwise exceptional, three moderate and nearly equidistant heat-
waves, with their two intervening and very moderate cold-waves, but
their characters are quite unimportant. With regard to all the waves,
it may be just to state that there has been in observation more uni-
formity, and will be therefore in prediction more certainty, for their
dates than for their intensities.

We have thus very briefly surveyed the position of meteorology,
and little remains to be said beyond that the results are highly in
favor of the hopes of physicists to render meteorology an exact science.
— Quarterly Journal of Science.

♦»»-

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT.

HARTMANN'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON DUMONT, BY A. R. MACDONOUGH, ESQ.

I.

FN an age like ours, when philosophical criticism, applied to all ideas,
J- has dissipated most of the fictitious charms lent to existence by the
imagination of mankind — when the advance of science leads us more
and more to look on the world as it is — when, no longer able to find
consolation in creeds and myths, we grow more closely and constantly

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 153

familiar with inflexible reality, there is no reason for surprise if, in the
moment of reaction from the illusions of the past, certain spirits, un-
able to keep the golden mean, permit themselves to be led captive by
exaggerations of quite another kind, and, taking the leap over realism,
fall into a pessimism which shows things to them, no longer such as
they are, with the impress of facts, hard and brutal enough already,
upon them, but even more sad and evil than the reality. But we may
well think it strange that such exaggerations, heavy discouragements
as they are to humanity, should win their growth and start into theories
in the very country of Leibnitz, and of systematic optimism — the coun-
try seemingly destined, by the political events of our times, to lead all
others in giving brightness and cheer to all judgments of the aspect
of the world.

There has arisen in Germany a philosophic school built on the be-
lief that, in existence taken as a whole, evil prevails over good — a
school that sighs for the annihilation of being as the sole relief from
its miseries. It is one of Cousin's most just remarks that the path ot
German metaphysics, opened by Kant, must find its logical issue in
nihilism. Indeed, the romantic writers, relying on Schelling's half-
mystical system, did not hesitate to preach a sort of quietist indolence
as the highest aim given to man to reach. Thus Schlegel, with other
critics of the same school, was led to envy for man " the divine idle-
ness and happy life of plants and flowers ; " and, in his famous work
" On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians " (Heidelberg, 1808), to
admire the calm and passionless life of Oriental ascetics. Homer,
whom romanticism had already sacrificed to Ossian, saw himself ere
long dethroned by Buddha. The political events of this lower world
had no power to shake souls permeated by so lazy a wisdom. Yet it
was the hour of storms raging everywhere — the hour for the crash
and downfall of the old Germanic edifice, when Austria and Prussia
trembled for their threatened successive overthrow under the blows of
Napoleon ; but all this mattered little to those mystic spirits who per-
sisted in living in an ideal world, careless of French bayonets, or the
embargo, or the Confederation of the Rhine. They averted their looks,
especially from those low creatures who struggle on the earth's surface
to win their bread, and proclaimed that the perfection of the science
of life is to do nothing. It is true these fine theories were put forth in
a highly-emphatic style, which provoked Richter's raillery, and gave a
flat contradiction to the quietist doctrines they upheld.

In 1819, Schopenhauer's great work appeared, "The World re-
garded as a Manifestation and a Will." Though this philosopher was
an independent thinker, disconnected with any school, he too had
yielded to the influence of Eastern studies. " I have been fortunate
enough," he said, " to be initiated into the Vedas, access to which was
opened to me by the Upanishad's, a great enlargement of my mental
vision, for I believe this age is destined to receive from Sanscrit litera-

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ture as strong an impulse as the sixteenth century owed to the revival
of the Greeks." Foucher de Careil, who had occasion to visit Schopen-
hauer, relates that " he had imported at great expense a Buddha, and
showed it to his visitors with mischievous pride. He had no patience
with English missionaries who undertake to convert their elders in re-
ligion." According to Schopenhauer, there is nothing but wretched-
ness in the world ; evil alone is positive ; pleasure is a mere negation
of pain, and thus has no reality. As to happiness, it is an empty word
— progress, a sheer Utopia ; history, nothing more than the long-drawn-
out torment of humanity's nightmare. What is life ? A fabric that
is not worth what it costs — an endless hunt in which, sometimes pur-
suing, sometimes pursued, men fight over the fragments of their slain
victims — a war of all against all, helium omnium contra omnes— death
discounted, Parmenides called it — and, to sum up all, a sort of natural
history of misery, that may be thus rendered in brief: " To wish with-
out a motive; always to suffer; always to strive; and then to die,
and so over and over again ' in srecula sreculorum,' till the crust of
our planet scales away into little bits." What are the practical conse-
quences of such teaching ? That the mere fact of being born is a mis-
fortune, and that to give life to a new being is a bad action. Hence,
this strange analysis of modesty : " See these two beings whose
glances seek each other. Why that mystery they shroud themselves in ?
Why their timid and shamefaced air ? Because they are two traitors,
who fly to the darkness to perpetuate in another all those tortures and
sorrows that would reach a speedy end but for their treachery. And
there will always be such criminals, who will ogle and caress after the
same fashion, to perpetuate life, to live again in another being." And
what is the moral principle of the system? Pity; nothing else than
pity. The ascending series of living beings ends with man, because a
being superior to man, and more intelligent, would not consent to live
and keep up this wretched comedy a single day. The aim of philoso-
phy is to enlighten man as to his deplorable condition — to inspire him
with longing to be annihilated, and never again to live after death,
under any form whatever, and to unfold to him at length the means
of gaining this annihilation. Remark that in all these teachings there
is not a trace of sportiveness, none of the ironic sallies of the humorist,
the inspiration of a misanthropic fit ; temperament has nothing to do
in producing them. We are brought face to face with a profoundly
and learnedly elaborated system, one that criticism must treat with
all gravity. Is this the dawn of a Western Buddhism ? Are the
European offshoots of the Aryan race, like their brothers of the East,
about to aspire to the supreme Nirvana, and petrify themselves in as-
ceticism ?

It is a fact that Schopenhauer did not remain an isolated phenome-
non. The pessimist doctrine gathered a school, and we might name
its distinguished disciples— the Frauenstadts, the Gwiners, the Ashers.

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 155

The book before us is one full of vigorous discussion, first published in
1869, repeated in the fourth edition already, which has made a power-
ful impression in Germany, and would assuredly have been heard of in
France if the deplorable events of later years had not distracted atten-
tion from speculative studies. The book we speak of is the " Philoso-
phy of the Unconscious," by Edward de Hartmann.

Though Hartmann adopts a very different system of metaphysics
from Schopenhauer's, he admits having borrowed from that philosopher
the point of departure of his system ; his moral views are similar, if
not identical ; he has the same fellow-feeling with Eastern philosophies,
the same pessimist color in his view of the world and of existence in
general. Besides, Hartmann announces himself as a disciple of Schel-
ling, and thus links himself with the romantic school. Just as he has
a strongly-marked leaning toward eclecticism, and fancies he can rec-
oncile the two systems of Hegel and of Schopenhauer, so too he attempts
to fuse together optimism and pessimism : but it is for the sake of
maintaining that even in the best of possible worlds, which naturally
is our own, evil still prevails immeasurably over good. For him, as
for Plato, for the old religions, existence is a fall. The human race,
like all beings in the universe, is the prey of many miseries while tasting
but few joys, and the advance of philosophy consists in gaining an ever-
clearer conviction of this sad truth. Meanwhile, man is deluded by
instincts that make him cling to life, and urge him to cares for its
preservation and reproduction. These instincts are a divine blessing,
since they were necessary to keep life going, to make civilization pos-
sible, to give man time for climbing toward philosophic intelligence,
and in a word to invest triumphant science with the power to unseal
his eyes to the wretchedness of his state : man at the outset must needs
be sustained by the delusive love of life, that he might some clay win
the power of willing, not merely his own non-existence, which Schopen
hauer contented himself with, but the non-existence of the whole race
too, and even, if we clearly take in Hartmann's doctrine, the annihilation
of all real being. When sufficiently enlightened, man will acknowledge
the vanity of his desires, and let himself die of disgust. If high intel-
lects, great poets, thinkers of genius, are for the most part melancholy,
it is because they draw nearer to the truth than the ignorant crowd,
ruled wholly by its instincts. The discovery that life is unendurable
is pregnant perhaps with awful catastrophes for the future ; the masses
will grow more and more restive in their misery ; formerly they felt
little of it except when their stomachs grumbled, but the older the
world gets, the more threateningly the spectre of pauperism rises. The
social question of our time rests, in the last analysis, only on the
stronger sense of their sufferings that has seized the working-classes,
although their situation is a golden one compared with what it was two
centuries ago, when the social question had no existence. And yet the
rich are even more to be pitied than the poor, the educated classes

156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more than the ignorant, for the same reason that fools are generally
happier than people of sense, and the savage happier than the civilized
races. Happiness, in fact, is in an inverse ratio to the quantity of ex-
istence, and the more developed, the less coarse, a man's nervous sys-
tem is, the more he suffers ; now, the progress of humauity, wealth,
culture of mind, multiply man's needs and refine his nervous sensibility.
Wretchedness grows, then, with the consciousness of wretchedness.
But, thanks to the sovereign wisdom of the unconscious principle that
rules the universe, the world will at last arrive, through social cata-
clysms and by force of that very conviction of its misery, at annihila-
tion, which will be the term of all its woes.

Hartmann seems, therefore, to concede the position to those who
argue that religions and creeds in general are all that has made human
life endurable and civilization possible. There will be more minds
ready to accept his testimony in favor of the usefulness of illusions
than there will be to adopt that Utopia of annihilation which in his
view must take their place in the future. Three grand illusions have
in turn sustained humanity, up to this day: The first, the illusion of
childhood and the ancient world, consisted in the dream that happiness
might be actually attained by the individual, and during the present
life. The second illusion, which replaced this, was the fancy that the in-
dividual will attain happiness after his death, in a life transcending the
present. The last is the grand modern illusion, that of progress, which
teaches that happiness, as it cannot be the individual's aim, either in
this life or in another, must be sought for the species in the future of
humanity, in the evolution of the world. To all these illusions suc-
ceeds the deception of humanity's old age, reaching the term of its de-
velopment of consciousness, and recognizing at last that happiness is
nothing else than the absence of pain, and can only be realized by the
annihilation of being.

Hartmann takes care to warn his readers that they deceive them-
selves if they look for consolation and hope in philosophy. For such
objects, books of religion exist. But philosophy pursues truth exclu-
sively, careless whether its acquirement sustains or contradicts the
sentiments inspired by the illusions of instinct. Philosophy is hard,
cold, insensible as stone. Floating in the ether of pure thought, it
gravitates toward the icy knowledge of existence, its causes, and its
nature. And if man fails in the moral strength to endure the over-
whelming results of his thought, if his heart yields to the spasm of
despair, if he gives himself up to desolation, what will philosophy do ?
Will it revive his courage ? No ! it will merely note down these facts
of despair and desolation as a precious contribution to its materials for
physiological observation. And when, on the other hand, meditation
upon the truth fills stronger souls with sacred indignation and noble
rage, a repressed wrath against this empty masquerade of existence
or if that wrath breaks into bursts of Mephistophelian humor, or pours

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. i57

its disdainful pity, mingled with irony, upon the unfortunates cheated
with the shows of happiness as upon those who yield to despair — when,
at last, the soul, bracing its strength to fight this fatality, discerns a
plain escape and issue from this hell — these again are but facts which
philosophy, still calm and impassive, verifies and records, and its work
is done.

We readily admit that there is a grandeur in these ideas of hu-
manity and philosophy. But the critic's duty is, to ascertain whether
they are correct, and do not merely create still a new illusion to add
to those the world has hitherto been cradled in — one equally empty
with the rest, and only perhaps differing from them by the disadvan-
tage of being far less cheerful and helpful to humanity. As it relates
to the world's progress, all these systems may be reduced to two
classes : on the one side, those which hold up the universe as tending
toward a designed aim, and guided by an intelligent principle toward
a providential end, such as the realization of happiness for the indi-
vidual, or a certain perfection of humanity, or, still more generally,
some kind of cosmic condition: on the other side must be placed all
those systems according to which the world is not moving toward a
foreseen and chosen end, and is ruled only by the force of things, in-
telligence itself, wherever it is manifested, being nothing more than a
resultant and a particular phenomenon. According to these latter sys-
tems, if humanity and our world were to come to an end, these results
would only flow from the necessary relations between the facts of the
universe; and these systems, if they are pantheistic ones, can find a
very clear exj:>ression for their doctrine in the formula that the occur-
rences of the universe have as their principle not a divine will, but
merely the eternal nature of God.

Hartmann, who belongs, at several points, to the traditioned spir-
itualistic philosophy, displays a strong attachment to the idea of an
intelligence presiding over the destiny of the world. Although a
pantheist, he continually reasons as a mere deist, a contradiction which
seems to us to be the source of most of his errors. His God, who is
supremely wise, omniscient, and prescient, but who is not omnipotent,
for he had not the power to prevent the production of this evil world,
ought a priori to govern every thing toward the best end. Now, this
end cannot be individual happiness, for the individual dies, and Hart-
mann does not admit the survival of personality. It cannot be the
perfection of the race, for humanity is doomed to perish whenever the
burnt-out sun shall cease to furnish its conditions of existence. Must
the end proposed by Providence be sought for in the destiny of our
world itself? But modern science teaches us that the world also is
doomed to inevitable destruction. Thus, from the necessity of reject-
ing all these positive ends, nothing remained but to seek the solution
of the problem in a purely negative end, and this is what Hartmann,
following Schopenhauer, has undertaken. The best possible end for

158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the world is its annihilation, and it is toward this term of all evils that
the supreme intelligence is leading us.

To establish the truth of this doctrine, Hartmann has elaborated
his theory of the unconscious. Is it science? or is it really nothing
else than a metaphysical romance ? It is this that we propose in the
next part to investigate.

■♦»»

HOW THE FEELINGS AFFECT THE HAIE.

By DANIEL H. TUKE, M. D.

THE influence of grief or fright in blanching the hair has been
generally recognized.

" For deadly fear can Time outgo,

And blanch at once the hair." — Maemion.

It has been a popular rather than a physiological belief that this
can occur "in a single night." No one doubts that the hair may turn
gray, gradually, from moral causes, and this is sufficient proof of the
mind's influence upon the nutrition of the hair. I have known alter-
nations in the color of the hair (brown and gray) corresponding to
alternations of sanity and insanity. Some entertain doubts as to sud-
den blanching of the hair, but I do not believe them well founded, and
can vouch for the truth of the following interesting; cases •

"Thomas W., about twenty years of age, the son of a milkman, was tall,
fleshy, good looking, slightly bronzed, hair intensely black, stiff, wiry, and rather
inclined to curl. His general appearance was that of a healthy and well-formed
man, used to light work, but much exposure in the open air. In the year 18 —
one of his thoughtless companions told him (what was not true) that a girl in
the town was going before the magistrate on the morrow to swear him father
of her child. Poor W. was dumfounded. The announcement had given his
whole frame a severe shock; the gall of bitterness had entered his heart, and
the mind was under the baneful influence of its power. He hastened home, and
sought relief in his bedroom. Sleep was denied him, for his brain was on fire.
He saw nothing but disgrace coming from every angle of the room. Such was
the mental agitation produced by a silly trick. Early morning brought no re-
lief; he looked careworn, distressed, and his hair was changed from its natural
tint to that of a light ' iron-gray color.' This, to him, was a great mystery. In
the course of the following day the stupid trick was explained, but the ill effects
of it lasted for a long period. Nearly twenty years after, although his health
was fair, the mental powers retained signs of the severe shock they had re-
ceived; his hair was perfectly gray, and a medical friend of mine who met him
received the impression that he would carry the marks of this folly to his
grave.

" I know of a captain of a vessel, under forty years of age, who suffered ship-
wreck twice. On the first occasion (in which he lost all hope) his hair quickly
turned gray; and on the second, some considerable time afterward, his hair be-

HOW THE FEELINGS AFFECT THE HAIR. 159

came still further blanched. He resolved never to go to sea again, and kept
his resolution.

" A lady, travelling in France subsequently to the Franco-Prussian War,
heard of a considerable number of cases of hair blanching (more or less marked)
in consequence of fright."

Dr. Laycock, in speaking of pigmentation of the hair, asks whether
grayness and baldness are due to loss of tone of the hair-bulbs solely,
or are ultimately associated with trophic nervous debility of certain
unknown nerve-centres. He points out that the regional sympathy
which characterizes trophesies is well marked, and that, as regards
baldness, it extends from two points, the forehead and the vertex,
ending at a line which, "carried round the head, would touch the oc-
cipital ridge posteriorly, and the eyebrows anteriorly." So with the
beard, etc. In connection with a succeeding remark, that the eyebrows
are a clinical region in brow-ague, herpes, and leprosy, the case already
referred to, of a woman who suffered in the night from a severe attack
of tic, and found in the morning that the inner half of one eyebrow
and the corresponding portion of the eyelashes were perfectly white,
may be mentioned. Laycock points out the fact that the hair over the
lower jaw is almost always gray earlier than that over the upper jaw,
and that tufts on the chin generally turn white first. — {Op. cit.,
May 13.)

" Mr. Paget, in his ' Lectures on Nutrition,' has recorded the case of a lady
with dark-brown hair, subject to nervous headache, who always finds, the
morning afterward, patches of her hair white, as if powdered with starch. In
a few days it regains its color. Dr. Wilks says he has on more than one occa-
sion had a lady visit him with jet-black hair, and on the morrow, when seen in
bed, it had changed to gray. Bichat, opposing the skepticism of Haller, as-
serted that he had known at least five or six examples in which the hair lost
its color in less than a week ; and that one of his acquaintance became almost
entirely blanched in a single night, on receiving some distressing news. There
is no reason to call in question the statement that Marie Antoinette's hair
rapidly turned gray in her agony. We have it on the authority of Montesquieu
himself that his own hair became gray during the night, in consequence of re-
ceiving news of his son which greatly distressed him. Dr. Laudois, of Griefs-
walde, reported not long ago a case in 'Virchow's Archives,' in which the
hair rapidly turned white. But I have not any particulars at hand beyond the
fact that, on carefully examining the hair, he found that there was ' an accumu-
lation of air-globules in the fibrous substances of the hair.' Erasmus Wilson
read a paper at the Royal Society in 1867 on a case of much interest, a resume
of which I subjoin in a note." '

1 Every hair of the head was colored alternately brown and white from end to end.
The white segments were about half the length of the brown, the two together measuring
about one-third of a line. Mr. Wilson suggested the possibility of the brown portion
representing the day-growth of the hair, and the white portion the night-growth, and this
opinion was corroborated by the remarks of Dr. Sharpey and others of the Fellows who
took part in the discussion. Under the microscope, the colors of the hair were reversed,
the brown became light and transparent, the white opaque and dark ; and it was further

160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The falling off of the hair is too frequent a result of anxiety, or
other depressing emotion, to escape common observation. A case re-
ported in the Lancet, of May 4, 18G7, forms an excellent illustration :

" A man of nervous temperament began business as a draper in 1859. At
that time he was twenty-seven years of age, in good health, though not very
robust, unmarried, and had the usual quautity of (dark) hair, whiskers, and
beard. For two years he was in a state of perpetual worry and anxiety of
mind., and his diet was very irregular. Then his hair began to come oft', lie
declares that it literally fell off", so that when he raised his head from his pillow-
in the morning, the hair left on the pillow formed a kind of cast of that part of
his head which rested on it. In a month's time he had not a single visible hair
on any part of his body — no eyebrows, no eyelashes; even the short hairs of
his arms and legs had gone ; but on the scalp there could be seen, in a good
light, patches of very fine, short down. This was in 1861. Medical treatment
proved of no avail, and he was finally advised to do nothing. So long as his
anxiety continued, the hair refused to grow, but by the latter part of 1805 his
business became established, and, coincidently, his hair reappeared ; and when
Mr. Churton, of Erith, reported the case, he had a moderately good quantity
of hair on the head, very slight whiskers, rather better eyebrows, and the eye-
lashes pretty good."

The influence of painful emotions in causing gray or white hair and
alopecia has been sufficiently illustrated, and it would have been inter-
esting to adduce a reverse series showing the opposite effects of joy.
But it is a very different thing to restore to its healthy habit the func-
tion of a tissue whose pigment has been removed by slow mal-nutri-
tion, or by sudden shock. I may adduce such a circumstance as the
following, however, to show that hair, which has turned gray in the
natural course of life, may, by the stimulus of specially-favorable
events, become dark and plentiful again :

" An old man (aged seventy-five), a thorough out-and-out radical — even the
cancelli of his bones were so impregnated with a thorough disgust of the Govern-
ment of George IV. that he threw up a lucrative situation in one of the royal
yards, and compelled his youngest son to follow his example — insisted that his
wife, also aged (about seventy), toothless for years, and her hair as white as the
snow on Mont Blanc, should accompany them to the land where God's creatures
were permitted to inhale the pure, old, invigorating atmosphere of freedom.

obvious that the opacity of the white portion was due to a vast accumulation of air-
globules, packed closely together in the fibrous structure of the hair, as well as in the
medulla. There was no absence of pigment, but the accumulation of air-globules veiled
the normal color and structure. Mr. Wilson observed that, as the alteration in structure
which gave rise to the altered color evidently arose in a very short period, probably less
than a day, the occurrence of a similar change throughout the eutire length of the shaft
would explain those remarkable instances, of which so many are on record, of sudden
blanching of the hair ; and he ventured to suggest that, during the prevalence of a violent
nervous shock, the normal fluids of the hair might be drawn inward toward the body,
in unison with the generally contracted and collapsed state of the surface, and that the
vacuities left by this process of exhaustion might be suddenly filled with atmospheric
air.— Lancet, April 20, 1867.

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS. 161

About six or seven years after their departure, a friend living in New York gave
an excellent account of their proceedings. Not only could the old man puff away

in glorious style, and the son do well as a portrait-painter, but old Mrs.

had cut a new set of teeth, and her poll was covered with a full crop of dark-
brown hair ! "
— Journal of Mental Science.

■4»»

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS.

By Dk. SACC,

PROFESSOR IN THE ACADEMY OF NEUFCHATEL.1

COTTON owes its kingship quite as much to the tenacity with
which its fibres adhere to one another, as to their length or fine-
ness ; and were it not that the fibre produced by the bombax, or silk-
cotton tree, is too smooth, cotton would find in it a powerful rival.
Cotton-wool is the downy bed in which the seeds of the cotton-plant
are enveloped, and is the product of hot countries. It has several
varieties, that cultivated in Algeria and in Southern Europe seldom
attaining a height of over twelve inches, while at the equator the plant
grows as high as an apple-tree, and bears a fruit twice as large as that
of the Algerian species. The cotton grown in the East Indies is of
very inferior quality, its fibre being short and hard ; yet it was largely
used in manufacture, during the war in the United States. Chinese
cotton is yellow, and hence the peculiar color of the fabric called
nankeen.

The cotton-plant is probably a native of Africa, and Livingstone
found it in the interior of that country along the banks of all the rivers.
The ancient Egyptians doubtless imported from Abyssinia their cotton
cloths for mummy-wrappings and for the garments of priests and nobles,
and from them the Jews inherited the employment of that texture
for the robes of their priests : for, where the Bible makes mention of/me
linen, we must read cotton, as flax does not grow in hot climates.
From Africa cotton-culture passed into Persia and Georgia ; then into
India, and from India into China. In the latter empire all the clothing
of the poorer classes is of cotton, of extremely firm texture. Indeed, so
strong is the cotton cloth manufactured by the Chinese, that it is im-
possible for a man to tear a piece of it across ; and the people of China
and India refuse to buy European cotton manufactures, calling them
mere spiders' webs.

If the true aim of prudent industry be to produce good fabrics at

1 Translated and abridged from the Annates du Genie Civil. Dr. Sacc is the grand-
Bon of Dupaaquier, who introduced into Switzerland the English process of printing
calico. The author is responsible for his own political economy.

VOL. II. — 11

1 6a THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the lowest price, then the cotton manufacture is a failure. Instead of
even studying to improve the fabric, manufacturers have, ever since
the manufacture of carding and spinning machines, thought only of
the problem of cheapness. The fabrics they produce are of the worst
quality, and quickly wear out ; and it may be doubted if there can be
found in all Europe, to-day, a single piece of such cotton cloth as used
to be manufactured twenty years ago, which gave many times as much
wear as the present textures.

The United States annually produce 4,000,000 bales of cotton for
the European market, or 1,200,000,000 of pounds, which sells at an
average price of one franc per pound. Europe thus pays to the United
States 1,200,000,000 of francs every year, simply for cotton, and the
1,200,000,000 pounds of cotton is spun by 50,000,000 of spinning-jen-
nies and wove by 625,000 looms. In, the process of manufacture there
is a waste of 25 per cent. ; hence 1,200,000,000 pounds of raw material
give only 900,000,000 pounds of manufactured cotton goods, worth
two and one-half francs per pound, being a total of about 2,250,000,000
francs. The process of manufacturing, therefore, does not even double
the value of the raw material.

If, now, we estimate the number of workmen engaged in the cotton
manufacture from beginning to end, on the basis of six workmen to
every 160 spinning-jennies, we shall have 1,875,000 hands so employed.
Add to this the number of those employed in raising the cotton-crop,
and the crews of the ships which bring it to Europe, and it will be no
exaggeration if we estimate the number of employes at 3,000,000, and
the amount of capital at 3,000,000,000 francs. No other industry
can compare with this for magnitude, and the epithet King Cotton is
well deserved. If we do not take care, this industry will prove the
ruin of Europe, whence it annually drains 1,200,000,000 francs, without
making any return. Cotton alone is answerable for the ever-increasing
wealth of the United States, and the relative misery of European coun-
tries. It is full time to put an end to this state of affairs, by compel-
ling the manufacturers hereafter to produce only firm and durable tex-
tures. But, inasmuch as the state can scarcely interfere in such ques-
tions, it remains for individuals to apply the remedy. It is in the
power of the consumer to apply this remedy, as he alone is accountable
for the present painful crisis of the cotton-manufacturing industries of
Europe.

We have grown so accustomed to cheap cotton fabrics, that, when
prices are advanced, we turn to linen, hempen, or woollen textures, and
then the manufacturer is forced to adulterate his products, the con-
sumer shutting his eyes to all defects, provided the article is cheap. It
will scarcely be believed, and yet it is the simple truth, that, whereas
ten years ago the piece of cotton weighed eight pounds, it now weighs
but six, or even less, and thus is 25 per cent, less strong than it used
to be. But, further, instead of employing good United States cotton,

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS. 163

which is high-priced, the manufacturers make large use now of the
wretched cottons of India, which are cheap, but which make a weak
texture, mere cobweb. An appearance of firmness is given to these
worthless fabrics by a liberal use of sizing, which deceives the eye ;
but, apply a little lye-water, and the material will be found to be mere
lint.

The evil consequences flowing from the false principles which
govern the manufacture of cotton are enormous, and it is time to apply
a remedy. If Europe goes on thus, ever giving, and receiving from the
United States nothing in return, our material prosperity will soon be
at an end. The ladies of Austria would appear to stand alone in justly
appreciating this danger, and have resolved to eschew cotton fabrics,
and use linen in place of muslin. Let Europe follow their example ;
let muslin be banished from our households, and the immediate result
will be, that Europe will stand at the head of civilized nations.

As it is at present carried on, the cotton industry is the oppro-
brium of humanity and the curse of Europe. Why is it that this
manufacture has come to be regarded as a prime necessity of the civil-
ized world ? Simply because fashion has backed it, and preached it
up : and fashion i* a puwer before which we all bow in submission.

"When Indian tapestries and those admirable Mosul textures were
first imported into Europe, there arose a universal demand for them,
nor could all the looms of the East furnish the supply required. In
time the raw material was brought hither, and we spun and wove it by
hand ; we printed and dyed it. At first no evil consequences flowed
from the new industry, because cotton goods, being yet too costly to be
used by the poor, were bought only by the rich, who found them really
cheap, on account of their great durability. It was only at the begin-
ning of the present century that we first experienced the evils of which
we here speak. Then it was that the invention of machinery for the
manufacture of the raw material enabled cotton to drive all other tex-
tile fabrics out of the market, and forced on Europe the most deplora-
ble of economies.

But our eyes are at last opened to see the calamities which threaten
us, and there is now very little danger that this industry will expand
any further. It has owed its past prosperity to frauds of the most
consummate nature, and now it is undergoing a crisis which cannot
fail to turn to the advantage of other textures, and from which it is not
likely to recover. We have reason to rejoice at the fall of King
Cotton ; and now let us keep for Europe all its own resources, by pur-
chasing only fabrics of hemp and flax, wool and silk, instead of muslin ;
thus shall we give a mighty impetus to home agriculture and home in-
dustry.

For certain purposes, however, cotton cloth is indispensable ; thus
printed fabrics will ever be of cotton, for no other textile fibre takes
colors so well. This is due to the fact that cotton-fibre is flat, while

164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that of flax and hemp is cylindrical ; then, too, cotton is more readily
bleached than hemp or flax. The manufacture of calico came, as the
name implies, from India ; and the first printed textures thence brought
to Europe were very coarsely printed, with figures in black, red, or blue,
the colors being dull, but very fast. Imitation calico was first manufac-
tured at Bordeaux, and from that city the industry passed over into
Switzerland and Germany, with the Protestants who were driven from
France by the dragonnades of Louis XIV. It quickly attained excep-
tional importance at Neufchatel and at Miihlhausen, which then be-
longed to Switzerland ; but it is in Alsace that it has made most prog-
ress, and taken the lead of all other industries.

Chaptal, the famous Minister of Commerce under Napoleon I., said
that the manufacture of calico is the most difficult of industries, for it
requires most capital, most patience, the longest training, and the
largest amount of good sense and intelligence. Chaptal was in the
right ; for all the great manufacturers of cotton-prints take rank
among men of note. I need only cite a few names. In Switzerland
we have our Dupasquiers, Bovets, and Verdans ; France has her
Haussmanns, Schlumbergers, Koechlins, and Dolfus ; and this roll is
sufficient to show the justice of Chaptal's assertion. Every year, every
day, has witnessed some new improvement in the manufacture of calico ;
the dull colors of former times have been superseded by a series of
novel shades, and coarse patterns have given way before artistic de-
signs which may well compare with the finest designs on paper.

The fixation of colors was the result of chance, aided more or less
by the manufacturer's experience, which was not unfrequently non-
plussed by a change of the atmosphere, or by a variation in the quality
of the drugs employed. In such a state of things, which threatened
to ruin the manufacture, recourse was had to science, and the dyers
became chemists and physicists. But then the charm was broken :
there was no more chance, no more tentative ; the fabrication of
printed tissues was now a science, and soon, in addition to liquid dyes,
we had our dye-stuffs in the shape of vapor, which yield brilliant tints
indeed, but not very stable. Finally, besides cotton fabrics, we began
to print textures of silk and of wool, or of mixed wool, silk, and cot-
ton, which have given rise to an entirely new class of tissues called
chalys or bareges, when they contain wool and silk, and cotton Avarp
when they are comprised of cotton and wool.

In order to form some idea of the cotton industry, let us go back
to the gathering-in of the crop. The cotton-wool, when it starts from
the pod, contains three times its own weight in large oily seeds.
These are separated from the cotton by means of machines which are
in fact cards, and which seize the cotton, suffering the seeds to drop
out. During this process the seeds will be more or less crushed, and
give out an oil, which is absorbed by the cotton. If, now, there flows
in a current of hot air, the cotton takes fire. This is the cause of the

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS. 165

fires which so frequently break out in cotton-factories, always originat-
ing in the rooms where the raw material is set to dry. The minute
quantity of oil contained in raw cotton is also the reason of its turn-
ing yellow in store, though it was white when gathered in. The fabric
has, therefore, to be lixiviated and bleached before being printed.
The process of bleaching begins by washing the cotton in lime-water,
after which the fabric is passed through a weak acid solution, in order
to remove the lime, which else would burn the tissue. It is then thor-
oughly washed, treated anew with soda, then with a soap of colo-
phony, and finally passed through water.

The cloth is then free from oily matter, but not yet bleached, and
it must yet pass through a solution of chloride of lime, and then
through another solution of hydrochloric acid. These last two opera-
tions take but a moment, and they constitute the very crisis of the
process ; for, if the solutions be too strong, the tissues are burnt, and
considerably weakened, a thing of very frequent occurrence. For-
merly, the cloth used to be bleached in the sun ; but this tedious and
costly process, where the present one requires only a few days, took
up weeks, and yet did not bleach the fabric so thoroughly.

Next the white cloth is sent to the printer, who gives it the fig-
ures desired. At first plates of wood with the figures in relief were
employed in the printing ; this was the infancy of the art. Later,
plates of copper were used, having the figures cut into their surface;
this was a step in advance. Finally the English, whose industrial ge-
nius is most fruitful of useful applications, originated the idea of print-
ing with copper cylinders, beneath which the cloth would pass, receiv-
ing impressions ad infinitum.

Dupasquier introduced from England into the Continent this beau-
tiful invention, which is even yet in process of improvement. From
that moment printed cottons grew ever cheaper, although the printing
was executed far better than formerly ; and the fall in prices became
simply enormous when machinery took the place of human hands.
Then calico came into universal use, without, however, superseding tex-
tures of hemp and flax, which were still employed for table and body
linen ; it was only at a later day, and when prices were still further
reduced, that the less opulent classes began to wear muslin instead of
linen. This example was soon followed by the wealthy classes, who
little suspected the snare that they were walking into, nor understood
that, in substituting cotton for flax and hemp, they were selling out to
America one of our most abundant sources of wealth, and of agricul-
tural and industrial prosperity.

Such was the state of the textile market in Europe, when the Uni-
ted States war broke out ; a war brought about by Palmerston, who
wished England to receive the 1,200,000,000 francs annually paid
by Europe for cotton. "We know too well how far he was successful
in his hateful design; for, ever since that time the East Indies share

166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with the United States in the privilege of carrying off our millions,
under the pretext of selling us cotton. Never was there a more per-
fect act of piracy ; never was piracy better organized than this, or
more kindly received, to our shame be it said.

As now the price of cotton was increased, muslin was rejected, and
fabrics of hemp and flax used instead; for the latter textures could be
had for the same price as cotton goods, while they were of far better
quality. Then it was that certain ingenious swindlers conceived the
idea of weaving the threads wider apart, so as to yield an increase of
•25 per cent, of cloth, with the same amount of cotton ; and, to conceal
this base fraud, recourse was had to a paste of starch, soap, and pipe-
clay, stopping up thus the interstices, and giving the article the ap-
pearance of a first-class fabric.

This abominable invention once introduced, cotton fabrics fell to
their former price, and found a market. During the ten years which
have passed away since public credulity was first duped in this way,
every one has to his cost learned of the trick. Hence I suppose I am
addressing an audience already convinced ; and I repeat again my ad-
vice, Buy only linen.

Textures intended for printing were deteriorated in the same pro-
portion, and hence it became very difficult to print or to wash them,
and they had to be heavily starched in order to find purchasers, so
flimsy were they. But people soon quit using them, and bought mixed
textures of wool and cotton, or wool and linen, which came into fash-
ion, and which gave such satisfaction that they will not again be laid
aside.

"We now come to speak of the lighter tissues — the finest grades of
muslin, jaconets, and organdies.

All these tissues are very costly, because they require cotton of the
best quality, and it is upon these that the manufacturer of printed
goods displays all his artistic skill — all the magic of design. He stops
at nothing, for these brilliant artistic effects give him a reputation, and
serve as a letter of introduction for his products. I have seen as many
as thirty-five different colors, or shades of color, in the large bouquets
printed on certain fabrics. But, like natural flowers, these printed
flowers quickly fade.

Only the very costliest of textures are now printed by hand — that
process being so tedious and so difficult that but few workmen are
qualified to perform it. The printing, therefore, is usually done by
means of a roller of copper or brass. This roller has the figures cut
into its surface either directly by the burin, or by an acid ; or, as is
more usual, it gets the required impress from the molette. Engraving
with the burin being very costly, it is employed only in the manufac-
ture of the very choicest fabrics. Engraving with acid is done as fol-
lows : The roller is first coated with asphaltum, and on this is counter-
drawn with the burin the figure required. The burin may be worked

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 167

by hand, or may be guided by means of a pantograph. The figure
having been thus traced on the roller, the latter is plunged into a bath
of nitric acid, which cuts into the metal at all points where the asphalt
coating has been displaced. Finally, the asphalt is washed off with
essence of turpentine.

But the figures are usually produced on the roller by means of the
molette. This is a small cylinder of steel, into the surface of which
the engraver first cuts the design. This cylinder then gives to another
an impress in relief; and, finally, from this latter a concave impress is
taken on the large copper roller of the printing-press. It is plain that
as many rollers will be required as there are colors to print ; and, ow-
ing to the difficulty of preventing the colors running into one another,
not more than four are commonly employed — black, red, rose, and
violet ; or black, brown, red, and cashew. In twelve hours, 100 to
120 pieces, of 50 yards each, may be printed in one color, though not
more than 60 to 80 could be printed in four.

The capital employed in the manufacture of printed goods of mixed
fibre is enormous, and yields a large return. This manufacture gives
also good remuneration to the operatives, and there is every reason
why it should be as zealously fostered as the manufacture and employ-
ment of muslins and calicoes are to be discouraged, as tending to
draw off to America all the wealth of Europe.

-+*+-

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO.

Br W. E. A. AXON, M. E. S. L.

IN" speaking of the physiological position of tobacco, we have to deal
with the action of the essential principles of that plant upon the
human system. The peculiar effects of tobacco are due to the action
of the essential oil of tobacco in the case of chewing and snuffing,
and to that combined with the empyreumatic oil in smoking. Nico-
tine, as this essential principle is called, is so deadly an alkaloid, that
the amount of it contained in one cigar, if extracted and administered
in a pure state, would suffice to kill two men. According to the experi-
ments of "Vohl and Eulenberg, the nicotine is decomposed, in the pro-
cess of smoking, into pyridine, picoline, and other poisonous alkaloids,
which can also be obtained in varying quantities by the destructive dis-
tillation of other vegetable substances.

Nicotine, as for convenience we may continue to call the poisonous
principles of tobacco, can enter the body through various channels — by
the stomach, by the lungs, by subcutaneous injection, and by the skin
itself. But, in whatever manner it enters the human system, its effects
are, in the main, uniform.

The most immediately noticeable symptom following smoking is the

1 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

undue acceleration of the laboring forces of the heart. Under the stim-
ulus of tobacco the heart beats more quickly, as is evidenced by the
rising pulse. We have not the mass of detailed evidence as to this fact
which exists in relation to alcohol, but the experiments made by Dr.
Edward Smith, and related to the British Association in 1864, are full
of interest. " The experiments were made at 10 p. m., when the rate
of pulsation naturally declines (as he had proved by hourly experi-
ments published in his work on the ' Cyclical Changes of the Human
System'), and at least four hours after any fluid or solid food had been
taken. They were made in the sitting posture, after it had been main-
tained fifteen minutes, and with the most absolute quietude of body
and mind ; and thus all influences were eliminated but those due to the
tobacco. The rate of the pulsation was taken every minute for a period
beginning two or three minutes before the smoking began, and continu-
ing during twenty minutes, or until the pipe was exhausted.
The following are the chief results obtained :

Experiment 1.
Pulsation before smoking was 74-J per minute.
Smoking 6 minutes — 79, 77, 80, 78, 78, 77 per minute=78.1 average.
Smoking 7 minutes — 83, 87, 88, 94, 98, 102, 102 per minute = 93.4

average.
Smoking 8 minutes — 105, 105, 104, 105, 105, 107, 107, 110 per minute

= 106 average.
After smoking 11 minutes— 112, 103, 107, 101, 101, 100, 100, 100, 100,
98, and 91.
There was thus a maximum increase of 37^ pulsations per minute.

Experiment 2.
(Smoking through camphor julep in a hookah.)
Pulsation before smoking, 79£ per minute.
Smoking 6 minutes — 81, 81, 81, 83, 82, 82 per minute = 81.6 average.
Smoking 17 minutes— 85, 89, 89, 93, 96, 90, 94, 94, 93, 92, 95, 95, 95
96, 94, 97, 93 = 93.
The maximum increase was 17-J pulsations per minute.

Experiment 3.
(Smoking an empty pipe.)
Pulsation before smoking, 78 pulsations per minute.
Smoking 11 minutes— 76, 78, 77, 76, 79, 79, 80, 80, 79, 78, and 79.

There was no increase in the rate of pulsations from the effort of
smoking, or from its interference with the respiration.

Experiment 4.
(To ascertain if, after smoking 6 minutes, during which the effect is
very small, and then ceasing smoking, any increase in the effect
would follow.)

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 169

Pulsation before smoking, 75 pulsations per minute.
Smoking 6 minutes— 76, 75, 79, 79, 76, 78.
Smoking 1 minute — 82. Cease smoking.
Smoking 10 minutes— 81, 88, 83, 82, 84, 83, 83, 80, 82.

The rate of pulsations was maintained, but was not materially in-
creased.

Experiment 5.

(To prove if the rapidity of smoking causes a variation in increase ofj

pulsation.)

a. Greater volume of smoke.
Pulsation before smoking, 70^ per minute.

Smoking 6 minutes— 68, 70, 71, 70, 72, 74 = 70.8 average.
Smoking 6 minutes— 76, 77, 86, 89, 91, 94 = 85.5 average.
Smoking 4 minutes — 98, 05, 96, 95 = 96.0 average.

The maximum effect was thus 27^ pulsations per minute.

b. Smoking faster.

Pulsation of the last minute in the previous part of this experiment,
viz., 95 per minute — smoking 3 minutes, 94, 49, 96.

c. The pipe recharged.
Smoking 5 minutes— 87, 93, 96, 96, 96.

There was, therefore, a large effect upon the pulsation, but probably
not more than would have occurred with ordinary smoking.

Numerous other experiments were made with tobaccos of different
reputed strengths and upon different persons, and the author gave
minute directions as to the proper method of making such inquiries. "

The heart, then, during the act of smoking, was doing extra work ;
in some of the experiments this additional labor amounting to more
than 50 per cent.

The effect upon the heart is not caused by direct action upon that
organ, but by paralyzing the minute vessels which form the bat-
teries of the nervous system. Thus paralyzed, they can no longer offer
effectual resistance, and the heart, freed from their control, increases
the rapidity of its strokes, expanding the vessels, with an apparent ac-
cession, but real waste of force.

Its effect in lowering the animal temperature is very striking.
"When the walls of the blood-vessels are distended with that fluid, the
increase in volume decreases the rapidity of the circulation and aug-
ments the local warmth. When the walls partially collapse, the cir-
culation becomes quicker, but the heat diminishes. The heat, in fact,
is transformed into motion.

The action of nicotine upon the iris is well known, yet, while some
consider it to produce dilatation, others affirm its effect to be contrac-
tion. The iris is composed of two orders of muscular tissue. The
circular fibres influenced by the motor oculi, and the radiating fibres
obeying the great sympathetic, perform the two functions of the iris,

70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dilatation and contraction. The stimulation of the third pair of nerves
causes a contraction of the pupil ; a larger dose of nicotine destroys
its susceptibility and dilatation follows, the upper lid falls, strabismus
ensues, the eyeball becomes fixed — in short, the motor power of the eye
is paralyzed. M. Blatin considers that the muscular fibre of the eye is
not at all affected by the poison.

Blatin proposes to divide tobacco-poisoning into two classes, acute
and chronic. The first is the result of a large or unaccustomed dose ;
the second, the accumulative consequences of doses, perhaps small, but
continually repeated.

The unpleasant experiences of the first pipe will enable most
smokers to understand the nature of this acute poisoning. Children
have even been made ill by sucking at pipes, empty, but already
coated with tobacco-juice. Sometimes a very slight dose exercises a
fatal effect upon systems in which tolerance has not been established.
Thus a youth of fourteen, having smoked fifteen cents' worth of to-
bacco as a remedy for toothache, fell down senseless and died the
same evening.1 Blatin also tells us of a medical student, aged twenty-
two, who, after smoking a single pipe, fell into a frightful state — the
heart became nearly motionless, the chest constricted, his breathing
was extremely painful, the limbs contracted, the pupils insensible to
light, one dilated, the other contracted. These symptoms gradually
lessened, but did not disappear until four days after.2

But it is chronic nicotism which has the greatest interest for us.
The poisonous effects of tobacco in larger doses are too evident for
denial, and need scarcely be insisted upon. Far more important is it
to learn whether tobacco, in the quantities daily consumed by its ha-
bitual users, has a permanently injurious effect upon the human system.

It is often only after a number of years that nicotic symptoms ap-
pear, as though the poison acted by a process of accumulation, until
the system was charged to satiety. And thus any thing which dis-
turbs the equilibrium of the functions, and so diminishes the elimina-
tion of the poison, may give rise to morbid phenomena.

There is a theory not unknown, even among medical men. that
the toxic influences of tobacco are only transitory, and that all the
poison is ultimately expelled from the system. But it is certain, from
an experiment of M. Morin,3 that the nicotine can be detected in the
tissues of the lungs and liver after death.

M. Blatin regards the various local affections as trifling, when
compared with the gradual saturation of the system with nicotine,
which, accumulating in the tissues, waits for the opportunity, varying,
according to individual habits and constitution, of declaring its poi-
sonous nature.

The trembling, which is one of the usual symptoms of acute, is

' Druhen, p. 44. * Blatin, p. 76.

3 Year Book of Medicine (New Sydenham Society), 1861, p. 447, and Blatin, p. 93.

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 171

also a common result of chronic, nicotism. A very distinguished
Parisian physician had hands which shook so much that he could not
write. Whenever he remained without tobacco for any length of
time, these tremblings disappeared. Another case mentioned by
Blatin is noteworthy. A man of forty-five years consulted him re-
specting violent and numerous attacks of vertigo. When he felt
one of them approaching, he was obliged to lie down wherever he
might be, in order to avoid falling. In the country, where he had
plenty of exercise, they were less frequent than in the town, where his
occupation was sedentary. Cessation from tobacco and a tonic regi-
men quickly restored him.

A physician of fifty-two was afflicted with similar disagreeable
symptom's, and was also cured by abstinence. Habit had become so
strong that he could not resist at times the temptation to slight indul-
gence. Finding that these returns to tobacco were immediately fol-
lowed by his old painful attacks, he renounced it forever.

The circulatory system presents in chronic nicotism similar symp-
toms to those found in acute poisoning. The most noticeable of these
is the intermittent pulse, of which many cases have been collected by
Decaisne and others.

Decaisne speaks of narcotism of the heart, but Blatin does not
consider the action to be directly upon that organ, but considers the
effects described to result from an irregular relaxation of the ganglia
of the great sympathetic nerve.

When a person suffering from intermittent pulse was carefully ex-
amined, Blatin found the stoppage in the heart's beat followed a series
of apparently normal movements. The systole and diastole succeeded
in due regularity, and nothing in the play of the central organ indi-
cated trouble, when the heart suddenly stopped in diastole, sometimes
for the space of three arterial pulsations. When it awakens from this
syncope its action is abnormally quick, as if it wished to make up for
the lost time, and force the mass of blood across the organs at one
stroke. But, with force insufficient for this purpose, it is exhausted in
fruitless efforts, hesitates, wavers, acquires fresh power, commences
again, now violent, now feeble, and fulfils very imperfectly the duties
which it should perform. Gradually it calms ; a foreign element seems
to appease the tumult, the heart again becomes regular. The expla-
nation appears to be that the irritation of the sympathetic nerve stops
short the movements of the heart, and thus causes the intermittence ;
then the susceptibility of the nerve is lessened or paralyzed, and the
cardiac functions are left to the sole direction of the auto-motor gan-
glia ; hence the disordered beats, which decrease as the nervous force
coming afresh from the pneumogastric moderates and regularizes it.

From intermittent pulse to angina pectoris the distance is not far.
That tobacco may produce all the usual symptoms of that painful dis-
ease has been abundantly shown by Beau. To the cases which he has

i72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cited may be added an epidemic of this nature noted by M. Gelineau.
with which a great part of the crew of the Embuscade were struck.
The patients were all great smokers. It is worthy of notice that this
disease is much more common among men than women.

Difficulty of breathing approaching asthma has also been recorded.
Blatin gives a case of a young officer whose asthma could be attrib-
uted to no other cause, and who was cured by a simple abstinence and
tonic medicines.1

Tobacco, acting upon the cardiac and pulmonary branches of the
pneumogastric, is not likely to leave untouched its gastric termina-
tions. In an animal under the influence of small doses of nicotine the
gastric juice is secreted with increased rapidity, and the action of the
walls of the stomach is more noticeable. With strong doses or long-
continued usage this secretion is very considerably diminished, and
the peristaltic motion enfeebled. That is to say, the tobacco acts
upon the pneumogastric, excites it in small, and paralyzes it in large,
doses. The smoker takes his after-dinner pipe or cigar to aid diges-
tion. Undoubtedly, it excites the par vagum, increases the gastric
secretion, and accelerates the peristaltic motion. Undoubtedly, also,
this daily stimulation enfeebles the nerve, and digestion becomes more
difficult. The swing back from the excitement causes a reaction,
which only an increase in the doses can overcome. The nerve is par-
tially paralyzed. The appetite fails, nutrition is impeded, dyspepsia
reigns conqueror.

A military man of thirty-seven years fell into a consumption with-
out any other affection antecedent or concomitant than distaste for
food, and salivation. Dr. Roques, after various essays, learned that
he was a great user of tobacco, which had led to a sort of chronic
fluxion of the salivary glands, and an almost total cessation of the di-
gestive functions, and consequently caused the feeble and consump-
tive state into which he had fallen. Gradual diminution and ultimate
abandonment of tobacco led to a cure in about three months.2

The influence of tobacco upon vision is well known. One of the
symptoms produced in acute nicotism is blindness, and chronic nico-
tism gives rise to similar affections. Thus Mackenzie found that pa-
tients afflicted with amaurosis were mostly lovers of tobacco in some
form. Sichel found cases of complete amaurosis, which, incurable by
other means, were easily conquered by cessation from the weed.
Hutchinson found, out of thirty-seven patients, twenty-three were in-
veterate smokers. The observations of Wordsworth and others have
so clearly established the fact that the continued excitement of the
optic nerve by tobacco sometimes produces amaurosis, that it is now
generally cited in text-books as one of the causes of that disease.

We have completed our brief examination of the physiological ac-

1 Blatin, p. 159, from l'Abcille M6d., t. Hi., 1846.

* Ibid., p. 265, from Memoire de Med., et de Chir. Prat., t. v.

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 173

tion of tobacco, but in concluding it may be well to point to some
portions of the evidence which are especially noteworthy. '

The fact that tobacco reduces the animal temperature is an impor-
tant one. It shows the fallacy of those who smoke to keep the cold
out, and proves conclusively that tobacco is neither a generator nor
conserver of vital heat, but, on the contrary, a wasteful destroyer
of it.

The influence of tobacco, in liberating the heart from those re-
straints which regulate its healthy action, naturally leads to the con-
clusion that in frequent doses that organ must, sooner or later, undergo
a structural transformation. Although when thus excited it has less
pressure to overcome than when in a normal condition, yet the extra
exertion cannot but be evil in its results, since it causes an irregularity
in the supply of blood, and thus degrades tissue.

Tobacco belongs to the class of narcotic and exciting substances,
and has no food-value. Stimulation means abstracted, not added,
force. It involves the narcotic paralysis of a portion of the functions,
the activity of which is essential to healthy life.

It will be said that tobacco soothes and cheers the weary toiler,
and solaces the overworked brain. Such may be its momentary ef-
fects, but the sequela? cannot be ignored. All such expedients are fal-
lacious. When a certain amount of brain-work or hand-work has
been performed, Nature must have space in which to recuperate, and
all devices for escaping from this necessity will fail. It is bad policy
to set the house on fire to warm our hands by the blaze. Let it, then,
be clearly understood that the temporary excitement produced by to-
bacco is gained by the destruction of vital force, and that it contains
absolutely nothing which can be of use to the tissues of the body.

Tobacco adds no potential strength to the human frame. It may
spur a weary brain or feeble arm to undue exertion for a short time,
but its work is destructive, not constructive. It cannot add one mole-
cule to the plasm out of which our bodies are daily built up. On the
contrary, it exerts upon it a most deleterious influence. It does not
supply, but diminishes, vital force.

It has been denied that tobacco leads to organic disease, but the
evidence is very strong the other way, and it would be very remark-
able if continued functional derangement did not ultimately lead to
chronic derangement of the organs ; that it causes functional disturb-
ance no one dreams of denying ; indeed, it has been remarked that no
habitual smoker can be truly said to have a day's perfect health. — Ab-
stract from the Quarterly Journal of Science.

i74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

AIMS AND INSTRUMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.

By Professor W. KINGDON CLIFFOED,

OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
II.

I WANT, in the next place, to consider what we mean when we say
that the uniformity which we have observed in the course of
events is reasonable as well as exact.

No doubt the first form of this idea was suggested by the marvel-
lous adaptation of certain natural structures to special functions. The
first impression of those who studied comparative anatomy was, that
every part of the animal frame was fitted with extraordinary com-
pleteness for the work that it had to do. I say extraordinary, because
at the time the most familiar examples of this adaptation were manu-
factures produced by human ingenuity ; and the completeness and mi-
nuteness of natural adaptations were seen to be far in advance of
these. The mechanism of limbs and joints was seen to be adapted,
far better than any existing iron-work, to those motions and combina-
tions of motion which were most useful to the particular organism.
The beautiful and complicated apparatus of sensation caught up indi-
cations from the surrounding medium, sorted them, analyzed them,
and transmitted the results to the brain in a manner with which, at
the time I am speaking of, no artificial contrivance could compete.
Hence the belief grew among physiologists that every structure which
they found must have its function and subserve some useful purpose ;
a belief which was not without its foundation in fact, and which cer-
tainly (as Dr. Whewell remarks) has done admirable service in pro-
moting the growth of physiology. Like all beliefs, found successful
in one subject, it was carried over into another, of which a notable ex-
ample is given in the speculations of Count Rumford about the phys-
ical properties of water, to which the President has already called
your attention. Pure water attains its greatest density at a tempera-
ture of about 39^° Fahr. ; it expands and becomes lighter whether it
is cooled or heated, so as to alter that temperature. Hence it was
concluded that water in this state must be at the bottom of the sea,
and that by such means the sea was kept from freezing all through ;
as it was supposed must happen if the greatest density had been that
of ice. Here, then, was a substance whose properties were eminently
adapted to secure an end essential to the maintenance of life upon the
earth. In short, men came to the conclusion that the order of Nature
was reasonable in the sense that every thing was adapted to some
good end.

Further consideration, however, has led men out of that conclusion
in two different ways : First, it was seen that the facts of the case

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 175

had been wrongly stated. Cases were found of wonderfully compli-
cated structures that served no purpose at all; like the teeth of that
whale of which you heard in Section D the other day, or of the Du-
gong, which has a horny palate covering them all up and used instead
of them ; like the eyes of the unborn mole, that are never used,
though perfect as those of a mouse until the skull-opening closes up,
cutting them off from the brain, when they dry up and become inca-
pable of use ; like the outsides of your own ears, which are absolutely
of no use to you. And when human contrivances were more advanced
it became clear that the natural adaptations were subject to criticism.
The eye, regarded as an optical instrument of human manufacture,
was thus described by Helmholtz — the physiologist who learned phys-
ics for the sake of his physiology, and mathematics for the sake of hi"
physics, and is now in the first rank of all three. He said, " If an op-
tician sent me that as an instrument, I should send it back to him with
grave reproaches for the carelessness of his work, and demand the re-
turn of my money."

The extensions of the doctrine into physics were found to be still
more at fault. That remarkable property of pure water, which was
to have kept the sea from freezing, does not belong to salt-water, of
which the sea itself is composed. It was found, in fact, that the idea
of a reasonable adaptation of means to ends, useful as it had been in
its proper sphere, could yet not be called universal, or applied to the
order of Nature as a whole.

Secondly, this idea has given way because it has been superseded
by a higher and more general idea of what is reasonable, which has
the advantage of being applicable to a large portion of physical phe-
nomena besides. Both the adaptation and the non-adaptation which
occur in organic structures have been explained. The scientific thought
of Dr. Darwin, of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and of Mr. Wallace, has de-
scribed that hitherto unknown process of adaptation as consisting of
perfectly well-known and familiar processes. There are two kinds of
these: the direct processes, in which the physical changes required to
produce a structure are worked out by the very actions for which that
structure becomes adapted — as the backbone or notocord has been
modified from generation to generation, by the bendings which it
has undergone ; and the indirect processes, included under the head
of Natural Selection — the reproduction of children slightly different
from their parents, and the survival of those which are best fitted to
hold their own in the struggle for existence. Naturalists might give
you some idea of the rate at which we are getting explanations of the
evolution of all parts of animals and plants — the growth of the skele-
ton, the nervous system and its mind, of leaf and flower. But what,
then, do wre mean by explanation f

We were considering just now an explanation of a law of gases —
the law according to which pressure increases in the same proportion

i76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in which volume diminishes. The explanation consisted in supposing
that a gas is made up of a vast number of minute particles always
flying about and striking against one another, and then showing that
the rate of impact of such a crowd of particles on the sides of the
vessel containing them would vary exactly as the pressure is found to
vary. Suppose the vessel to have parallel sides, and that there is only
one particle rushing backward and forward between them ; then it is
clear that if we bring the sides together to half the distance, the par-
ticle will hit each of them twice as often, or the pressure will be
doubled. Now, it turns out that this would be just as true for millions
of particles as for one, and when they are flying in all directions
instead of only in one direction and its opposite; provided only
that they interfere with each other's motion. Observe, now : it is a
perfectly well-known and familiar thing that a body should strike
against an opposing surface and bound off again ; and it is a mere
every-day occurrence that what has only half so far to go should be
back in half the time; but that pressure should be strictly propor-
tional to density is a comparatively strange, unfamiliar phenomenon.
The explanation describes the unknown and unfamiliar as being made
up of the known and the familiar ; and this, it seems to me, is the true
meaning of explanation.1

Here is another instance : If small pieces of camphor are dropped
into water, they will begin to spin round and swim about in a most
marvellous way. Mr. Tomlinson gave, I believe, the explanation of
this. We must observe, to begin with, that every liquid has a skin
which holds it ; you can see that to be true in the case of a drop, which
looks as if it were held in a bag. But the tension of this skin is
greater in some liquids than in others ; and it is greater in camphor-
and-water than in pure water. When the camphor is dropped into
water, it begins to dissolve and get surrounded with camphor-and-
water instead of water. If the fragment of camphor were exactly
symmetrical, nothing more would happen; the tension would be
greater in its immediate neighborhood, but no motion would follow.
The camphor, however, is irregular in shape ; it dissolves more on one
side than the other ; and consequently gets pulled about, because the
tension of the skin is greater where the camphor is most dissolved.
Now, it is probable that this is not nearly so satisfactory an explana-
tion to you as it was to me when I was first told of it ; and for this
reason : By that time I was already perfectly familiar with the no-
tion of a skin upon the surface of liquids, and I had been taught by
means of it to work out problems in capillarity. The explanation was
therefore a description of the unknown phenomenon which I did not

1 This view differs from those of Mr. J. S. Mill and Mr. Herbert Spencer, in requiring
every explanation to contain an addition to our knowledge about the thing explained.
Both those writers regard subsumption under a general law as a species of explanation.
See also Ferrier's " Kemains," vol. ii., p. 436.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. \77

know how to deal with as made up of known phenomena which I did
know how to deal with. But to many of you possibly the liquid skin
may seem quite as strange and unaccountable as the motion of cam-
phor on water.

And this brings me to consider the source of the pleasure we de-
rive from an explanation. By known and familiar I mean that which
we know how to deal with, either by action in the ordinary sense, or
by active thought. When, therefore, that which we do not know how
to deal with is described as made up of things that we do know how
to deal with, we have that sense of increased power which is the basis
of all higher pleasures. Of course, we may afterward by association
come to take pleasure in explanation for its own sake. Are we, then,
to say that the observed order of events is reasonable, in the sense
that all of it admits of explanation ? That a process may be capable
of explanation, it must break up into simpler constituents which are
already familiar to us. Now, first, the process may itself be simple,
and not break up ; secondly, it may break up into elements which are
as unfamiliar and impracticable as the original process.

It is an explanation of the moon's motion to say that she is a fall-
ing body, only she is going so fast and is so far off that she falls quite
round to the other side of the earth, instead of hitting it ; and so goes
on forever. But it is no explanation to say that a body falls because
of gravitation. That means that the motion of the body may be re-
solved into a motion of every one of its particles toward every one of
the particles of the earth, with an acceleration inversely as the square
of the distance between them. But this attraction of two particles
must always, I think, be less familiar than the original falling body,
however early the children of the future begin to read their Newton.
Can the attraction itself be explained ? Le Sage said that there is an
everlasting hail of innumerable small ether-particles from all sides, and
that the two material particles shield each other from this, and so get
pushed together. This is an explanation ; it may or may not be a
true one. The attraction may be an ultimate simple fact ; or it may
be made up of simpler facts utterly unlike any thing that we know at
present ; and in either of these cases there is no explanation. We
have no right to conclude, then, that the order of events is always-
capable of being explained.

There is yet another way in which it is said that Nature is reason^
able ; namely, inasmuch as every effect has a cause. What do we
mean by this ?

In asking this question wre have entered upon an appalling task.
The word represented by " cause " has sixty-four meanings in Plato,
and forty-eight in Aristotle. These were men who liked to know as
near as might be what they meant ; but how many meanings it has
had, in the writings of the myriads of people who have not tried to
know what they meant by it, will, I hope, never be counted. It would

VOL. II — 12

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not only be the height of presumption in me to attempt to fix the
meaning of a word which has been used by so grave authority in so
many and various senses ; but it would seem a thankless task to do
that once more which has been done so often at sundry times and in
divers manners before. And yet without this we cannot determine
what we mean by saying that the order of Nature is reasonable. I
shall evade the difficulty by telling you Mr. Grote's opinion.1 You
come to a scarecrow and ask, " "What is the cause of this ? " You find
that a man made it to frighten the birds. You go away and say to
yourself: "Every thing resembles this scarecrow. Every thing has a
purpose." And from that day the word " cause " means for you what
Aristotle meant by " final cause." Or you go into a hair-dresser's
shop, and wonder what turns the wheel to which the rotatory brush is
attached. On investigating other parts of the premises, you find a
man working away at a handle. Then you go away and say : " Every
thing is like that wheel. If I investigated enough I should always
find a man at a handle." And the man at the handle, or whatever
corresponds to him, is henceforth known to you as " cause."

And so generally. When you have made out any sequence of
events to your entire satisfaction, so that you know all about it, the
laws involved being so familiar that you seem to see how the begin-
ning must have been followed by the end, then you apply that as a
simile to all other events whatever, and your idea of cause is deter-
mined by it. Only when a case arises, as it always must, to which
the simile will not apply, you do not confess to yourself that it was
only a simile and need not apply to every thing, but you say, " The
cause of that event is a mystery which must remain forever unknown
to me." On equally just grouuds, the nervous system of my umbrella
is a mystery which must remain forever unknown to me. My um-
brella has no nervous system ; and the event to which your simile did
not apply has no cause in your sense of the word. When we say, then,
that every effect has a cause, we mean that every event is connected
with something in a way that might make somebody call that the
cause of it. But I, at least, have never yet seen any single meaning
of the word that could be fairly applied to the tchole order of Nature.

From this remark I cannot even except an attempt recently made
by Mr. Bain to give the word a universal meaning, though I desire to
speak of that attempt with the greatest respect. Mr. Bain a wishes to
make the word " cause " hang on in some way to what we call the law
of energy ; but, though I speak with great diffidence, I do think a care-
ful consideration will show that the introduction of this word "cause"
can only bring confusion into a matter which is distinct and clear
enough to those who have taken the trouble to understand what
energy means. It would be impossible to explain that this evening ;
Ibut I may mention that "energy" is a technical term out of mathe

1 Flato, vol. ii. (Phscdon). s '•' Inductive Logic," chap. iv.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. i79

matieal physics, which requires of most men a good deal of careful
study to understand it accurately.

Let us pass on to consider, with all the reverence which it demands,
another opinion, held by great numbers of the philosophers who have
lived in the brightening ages of Europe : the opinion that, at the basis
of the natural order, there is something which we can know to be un-
reasonable, to evade the processes of human thought. The opinion is
set forth first by Kant, so far as I know, in the form of his famous
doctrine of the antinomies or contradictions, a later form \ of which I
will endeavor to explain to you. It is said, then, that space must
either be infinite or have a boundary. Now, you cannot conceive
infinite space ; and you cannot conceive that there should be any end
to it. Here, then, are two things, one of which must be true, while
each of them is inconceivable; so that our thoughts about space
are hedged in, as it were, by a contradiction. Again, it is said that
matter must either be infinitely divisible, or must consist of small
particles incapable of further division. Now, you cannot conceive a
piece of matter, divided into an infinite number of parts, while, on the
other hand, you cannot conceive a piece of matter, however small,
which absolutely cannot be divided into two pieces ; for, however great
the forces are which join the parts of it together, you can imagine
stronger forces able to tear it in pieces. Here, again, there are two
statements, one of which must be true, while each of them is sepa-
rately inconceivable ; so that our thoughts about matter also are
hedged in by a contradiction. There are several other cases of the
same thing, but I have selected these two as instructive examples.
And the conclusion to which philosophers were led by the contempla-
tion of them was, that on every side, when we approach the limits of
existence, a contradiction must stare us in the face. The doctrine has
been developed and extended by the great successors of Kant ; and
this unreasonable, or unknowable, which is also called the absolute
and the unconditioned, has been set forth in various ways as that
which we know to be the true basis of all things. As I said be-
fore, I approach this doctrine with all the reverence which should be
felt for that which has guided the thoughts of so many of the wisest
of mankind. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to show that, in these
cases of supposed contradiction, there is always something which we
do not know now, but of which we cannot be sure that we shall
be ignorant next year. The doctrine is an attempt to found a
positive statement upon this ignorance, which can hardly be re-
garded as justifiable. Spinoza said, " A free man thinks of nothing
so little as of death;" it seems to me we may parallel this max-
im in the case of thought, and say, "A wise man only remem-
bers his ignorance in order to destroy it." A boundary is that

1 That of Mr. Herbert Spencer, " First Principles." I believe Kant himself would
have admitted that the antinomies do not exist for the empiricist.

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which divides two adjacent portions of space. The question, then,
" Has space (in general) a boundary ? " involves a contradiction in
terms, and is, therefore, unmeaning. But the question, "Does space
contain a finite number of cubic miles, or an infinite number ? " is a
perfectly intelligible and reasonable question which remains to be
answered by experiment.1 The surface of the sea would still contain
a finite number of square miles, if there were no land to bound it.
Whether or no the space in which we live is of this nature remains to
be seen. If its extent is finite, we may quite possibly be able to assign
that extent next year ; if, on the other hand, it has no end, it is true that
the knowledge of that fact would be quite different from any knowledge
we at present possess, but we have no right to say that such knowledge
is impossible. Either the question will be settled once for all, or the
extent of space will be shown to be greater than a quantity which will
increase from year to year with the improvement of our sources- of
knowledge. Either alternative is perfectly conceivable, and there is
no contradiction. Observe especially that the supposed contradiction
arises from the assumption of theoretical exactness in the laws of
geometry. Now, the other case that I mentioned has a very similar
origin. The idea of a piece of matter the parts of which are held
together by forces, and are capable* of being torn asunder by greater
forces, is entirely derived from the large pieces of matter which we
have to deal with. "We do not know whether this idea applies in any
sense to the molecules of gases even ; still less can we apply it to the
atoms of which they are composed. The word " force " is used of two
phenomena : the pressure, which when two bodies are in contact con-
nects the motion of each with the position of the other ; and attraction
or repulsion ; that is to say, a change of velocity in one body depending
on the position of some other body which is not in contact with it. We
do not know that there is any thing corresponding to either of these
phenomena in the case of a molecule. A meaning can, however, be
given to the question of the divisibility of matter in this way. We may
ask if there is any piece of matter so small that its properties as matter
depend upon its remaining all in one piece. This question is reason-
able ; but we cannot answer it at present, though we are not at all sure
that we shall be equally ignorant next year. If there is no such piece
of matter, no such limit to the division which shall leave it matter, the
knowledge of that fact would be different from any of our present
knowledge ; but we have no right to say that it is impossible. If, on
the other hand, there is a limit, it is quite possible that we may have
measured it by the time the Association meets at Bradford. Again,
when we are told that the infinite extent of space, for example, is some-
thing that we cannot conceive at present, we may reply that this is
only natural, since our experience has never yet supplied us with the

1 The very important distinction between unboundedncss and infinite extent is made by
Riemann, Joe. cit.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 181

means of conceiving such things. But, then, we cannot be sure that
the facts will not make us learn to conceive them ; in which case they
will cease to be inconceivable. In fact, the putting of limits to human
conception must always involve the assumption that our previous ex-
perience is universally valid in a theoretical sense ; an assumption
which we have already seen reason to reject. Now, you will see that
our consideration of this opinion has led us to the true sense of the as-
sertion that the order of Nature is reasonable. If you will allow me
to define a reasonable question as one which is asked in terms of ideas
justified by previous experience, without itself contradicting that ex-
perience, then we may say, as the result of our investigation, that to
every reasonable question there is an intelligible answer, which either
we or posterity may know.

We have, then, come somehow to the following conclusions : By
cientific thought we mean the application of past experience to new
circumstances, by means of an observed order of events. By saying
that this order of events is exact, we mean that it is exact enough to
correct experiments by, but we do not mean that it is theoretically or
absolutely exact, because we do not know. The process of inference
we found to be in itself an assumption of uniformity, and that, as the
known exactness of the uniformity became greater, the stringency of
the inference increased. By saying that the order of events is reasona-
ble, we do not mean that every thing has a purpose, or that every thing
can be explained, or that every thing has a cause ; for neither of these
is true. But we mean that to every reasonable question there is an in-
telligible answer, which either we or posterity may know by the exer-
cise of scientific thought.

For I especially wish you not to go away with the idea that the
exercise of scientific thought is properly confined to the subjects from
which my illustrations have been chiefly drawn to-night. When the
Roman jurists applied their experience of Roman citizens to dealings
between citizens and aliens, showing by the difference of their actions
that they regarded the cicumstances as essentially different, they laid
the foundations of that great structure which has guided the social
progress of Europe. That procedure was an instance of strictly
scientific thought. When a poet finds that he has to move a strange
new world which his predecessors have not moved ; when, nevertheless,
he catches fire from their flashes, arms from their armory, sustentation
from their footprints, the procedure by which he applies old experi-
ence to new circumstances is nothing greater or less than scientific
thought. When the moralist, studying the conditions of society and
the ideas of right and wrong: which have come down to us from a time
when war was the normal condition of man and success in war the
only chance of survival, evolves from them the conditions and ideas
which must accompany a time of peace, when the comradeship of
equals is the condition of national success — the process by which he

i8a THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

does this is scientific thought and nothing else. Remember, then, that
it is the guide of action ; that the truth which it arrives at is not that
which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we
may act upon without fear ; and you cannot fail to see that scientific
thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but
human progress itself. And for this reason the question what its
characters are, of which I have so inadequately endeavored to give
you some glimpse, is the question of all questions for the human race.
— Advance- sheets from Macmillan.

-+++-

INTRODUCTION TO "THE GREAT PROBLEM."1

By HOWAED CROSBY, D.D., LL.D.,

CHANCELLOR OP THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK.

THE royal Psalmist said, " The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament showeth his handy work." The modern
Huxleys respond : " The heavens declare nothing at all, and the firma-
ment is ultimately but eternal protoplasm." In this happy and hope-
ful response the materialists are as much traitors to science as enemies
to religion. They ignore all the facts of mind. This whole depart-
ment of cognitions is neglected in arranging their premises. The very
first canon of science is thus violated, which demands that all facts be
collated as data. Then, a second fallacy of which they are guilty is,
leaving scientific proof and leaping, by the imagination, to the conclu-
sion that life is merely matter. They find an ultimate matter (only
ultimate, however, owing to the limited power of the microscope), and
straightway say, " This is life" although it is known to exist without
life, and has not a single characteristic of life in it. By such unscien-
tific methods these scientific men, whose names are now so famous,
have imposed upon the unlearned and credulous, and made men lose
their faith in the eternal truths of God. Darwinism is another form
of the same infidelity, working its evil by the same unscientific meth-
ods. Darwin leaps to his conclusions against every axiom of science,
and Darwinism is, instead of science, mere theory. Science and Re-
ligion are at one. They both come from God and lead to God. "The
heavens declare the glory of God," and " the statutes of the Lord are
right, rejoicing the heart," are accordant strings of the same harp.
We need sensible and learned men to come forward and show the

1 " The Great Problem : The Higher Ministry of Nature viewed in the Light of Modern
Science ; and as an Aid to Advanced Christian Philosophy." By John R. Leifchild, A.
M., Author of " Our Coal-Fields and our Coal- Pits," " Cornwall ; its Mines and Miners,"
etc., etc., with an Introduction by Howard Crosby, D. D., LL. D., Chancellor of the Uni-
versity of New York. 543 pages. G. P. Putnam & Sons.

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 183

world what fools these pseudo-scientists are, and thus break the spell,
which is as groundless as the Cock-lane Ghost, but which holds so
many all-agape at their fantastic tricks.

Mr. Leii'child's book is popular, and yet sound and thoughtful.
Its style is terse and clear. He represents the materialists and pan-
theists (the extremes are one) with fairness, and exposes the core of
their absurdities, showing the higher ministry of Nature in declaring
the glory of God, vindicating the equal authority of our intuitions
and our senses, and the separateness, yet intimate connection, of mind
and matter. It is a book that should find its way to every parlor,
where the materialistic poison has been scattered, to straighten and
strengthen the weak knees, and give color to the pallid cheek, letting
the light uj)on the frightful spectre, and showing it to be but a man
of straw. It is high time that this buffoonery in the name of science
were played out. Scientific and religious men must join to put out
the intruder, with a brand upon his back. To hold serious talk with
him is only to set him up in his assumption. Mr. Leifchild's book ex-
poses hirn to the world, pulls off the lion's skin, and turns the public
fear into laughter. Let the voice of Truth be heard through a thou-
sand such books, and the cant of materialism shrink into silence.

-♦-•-*-

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART.

By COKNELIUS BLACK, M. D. Lond., M. K. C. P.

IF the question were asked, " Which side of the heart is the more
frequently affected by disease ? " the answer, in perhaps nine cases
out of ten, would be, the left. This answer would not, however, em-
brace the whole truth. It would be true of the aggregate of cases of
cardiac disease without reference to age ; but it would be untrue if the
occurrence of cardiac disease were referred to the later periods of life.
If a man lives to the age of forty years without having suffered from
cardiac disease, and, if after that period the heart becomes affected,
the mischief will, as a rule, be found to exist on the right side. If, on
the contrary, cardiac disease should occur before that age, the disease
will, almost invariably, be found to exist on the left side. Hence, it
follows that the right side of the heart is the seat of cardiac disease
occurring after middle age — the left side of the heart the seat of car-
diac disease occurring before middle age.

As in time, so it is with respect to the nature of the diseases which
affect the right and left sides of the heart respectively. Those of the
right side are the result of tissue-degeneration, or of mere mechanical
influences ; those of the left side are almost invariably the product of

i84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

inflammation. The former are diseases which tend to widen the val-
vular apertures, and to dilate the right side of the heart ; the latter
are diseases which tend to contract the valvular apertures, and to in-
crease the size and bulk of the left side of the heart.

Disease of the right side of the heart is essentially passive and
secondary in its character ; disease of the left side of the heart is es-
sentially active and primary in its character. I speak now of disease
when it occurs, not when it has existed for some time. Active inflam-
mation of the left chambers of the heart arises ; it progresses to a cer-
tain extent ; treatment subdues it ; the patient recovers ; but a certain
amount of damage is left behind. Years pass on ; the patient during
this time appears none the worse for his previous illness ; but at length
pulmonary symptoms suddenly manifest themselves, and then it is that
the physician discovers that the left side of the heart is permanently
damaged, and that the present condition of the lungs is traceable to
this cause.

In this instance the mischief in the heart inducing: this condition of
the lungs is not, strictly speaking, active. The first step of the cardiac
disease was active ; but the second step was chronic. Bit by bit — in-
crement by increment — after the patient's apparent recovery from the
primary attack, is the valvular lesion left by such attack added to, not
perhaps constantly, but intermittingly, until at length the aggregate
increments of addition so hamper, oppress, obstruct, and distort the
mitral, or the mitral and aortic valves, that secondary consequences
begin to follow.

Why are the affections of the two sides of the heart essentially dif-
ferent in their nature ? Why do those of the left side of the heart
point to an inflammatory origin ; those of the right side of the heart,
with but few exceptions, to a non-inflammatory origin ? There must
be some cause for this difference. What is it ? The reason is found
in the difference which exists between the constitution of the blood
which reaches the left side of the heart from the lungs, and that which
reaches the right side of the heart from the general system. The
blood reaching the left side of the heart from the lungs has been
replenished with all the elements necessary for the growth of the tis-
sues ; it has been purified, renovated, and vivified by its oxygenation
in the lungs, and it is thus rendered in the highest degree stimulating
to the left heart. The blood reaching the right side of the heart from
the general system has been deprived, by the requirements of growth,
of the chief portion of its nutrient materials ; it has been fouled by the
debris of tissue-waste ; it has been further poisoned by its impregna-
tion with carbonic-acid gas : it is therefore a depressant, rather than a
healthy excitant, to the right heart. True, it brings with it to the
chambers of the right heart the products of the digestion of food ; but
what are they, either as nutrients or excitants, when they reach that
point ? They are no more than inert, unusable, passive elements. Not

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 185

until they have passed to the lungs, and have there received the vivi-
fying influence of oxygen, can they enter into the real composition of
the blood, and thus become active, exciting, disposable constituents
of it.

" Like begets like " in very many instances. This axiom is true in
relation to diseases of the heart. The rich, stimulating blood of the
left ventricle urges, feeds, and actively supports any disease which
may arise at that point ; while the poor, impoverished, fouled, tainted,
and attenuated blood which flows through the cavities of the right
heart favors disease of a correspondingly low and degenerate char-
acter.

So long as the body is rapidly built up and as rapidly pulled down,
disease of the left heart maintains an active character ; but when the
balance between nutrition and waste is destroyed — when nutrition be-
comes less active, while waste remains the same, or is more active than
before — disease of the left heart loses more and more of its active char-
acter, and approximates more and more in its nature to disease of the
right heart. In many this change begins at the age of forty ; in others,
not until five or ten years after that period. Thenceforward the ten-
dency to inflammatory disease of the left heart declines — the tendency
to degeneration increases. "With the gradual declination of the one
tendency and the gradual increase of the other, a period is at length
reached when active inflammatory disease ceases, as a rule, to affect
the left heart. At this juncture the left and right sides of the heart,
hitherto dissimilar in their tendencies, are in this respect almost as
one. The active tendency of early life has given place to the passive
tendency of advancing years — inflammation to degeneration.

Acute rheumatism — a fruitful cause of cardiac disease in the earlier
periods of life — is seldom seen beyond the age of fifty. I have, how-
ever, attended a case of acute articular rheumatism at the age of sev-
enty-five ; but such an instance was an exception to the rule. After
fifty, acute rheumatism gives place to a form of rheumatism which
slowly produces rigidity of the coats of the blood-vessels, hardens and
contracts the tendons, thickens and renders stiff and rigid the liga-
ments of the joints, hardens and lessens the articular cartilages.

Thus, then, according to a law of Nature, the ultima linea of life
ends in — degeneration.

Apart from the influence of this law, can any accidental, casual, or
avoidable circumstance 'favor this immutable tendency to degeneration,
speaking more particularly in reference to the heart ? Yes ; many cir-
cumstances are daily, hourly, momentarily doing this. Thousands
annually perish from heart-disease, whose lives might and would have
been prolonged had but proper attention been given to the simple
laws of Nature. These laws demand attention to the three great vital
functions — the action of the brain and nervous system, respiration, and
circulation.

:86 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE' MONTELY.

None of these functions must be overworked, as none of them must
fall short of their proper duty. Healthy, regular, daily action is their
law of life. If the brain and nervous system are overworked, vitality
is lowered, the resisting power of the body is diminished, disease is
easily produced. If *he brain and nervous system are underworked,
the generation of nervous power is low and deficient, the vitality of
the tissues becomes low in proportion, and disease is easily excited.
Overwork exhausts, ruins, kills the body, just as the continued gen-
eration of the galvanic current exhausts the acid and wears out the
zinc plate. The weakest point of the body has to bear the result of
this violation of Nature's laws. If the heart is that point, disease falls
upon it, and death before the legitimate term of man's existence is the
consequence.

To keep the body in perfect health it must be duly oxygenated.
There must be free and ample interchange between the blood in the
lungs and the air entering the pulmonary cells. The life-stream must
be purified by its elimination of carbonic acid ; it must be vivified by
the absorption of oxygen. The fulfilment of these conditions demands
a full, free, and constant admission of pure air into the lungs. This full,
free, and constant admission of pure air cannot be obtained in badly-
ventilated houses, crowded buildings, schools as at present constructed,
theatres, manufactories, pits, underground railways, and the like.

When the body has reached that age at which natural decay or
degeneration has begun, the absence of pure air hastens and increases
the degenerative tendency. Where the heart is more prone than other
organs to disease, the want of pure air falls with powerful effect upon
the tissues of the right heart. Their nutrition is defective by reason
of the impurity of the blood with which they are fed, their vital force
is lowered, their muscular fibre loses its tonicity, degeneration and de-
bility take the place of active nutrition and power. If in this condi-
tion any stress is thrown upon the heart by hurried walking, by lifting,
climbing, violent declamation, passional expression, singing, laughing,
or by any unusual exercise of the voice, the tricuspid valve gives way,
it henceforth fails to close its aperture, and the results of a back-flood-
ing of blood upon the venous system of the body begin to follow. If
none of these exciting causes occur, the continued breathing of impure
air is followed by constantly-progressing degeneration of the tissues
of the valves and muscular structure of the right heart ; they become
soft and feeble, their atoms shrink ; the segments of the> tricuspid are
at length unable to meet in their attempt to close their aperture; a
small chink or slit is left between them ; through this the blood finds
its way into the auricle above at every contraction of the heart ; and
soon regurgitation is followed by the secondary consequences produced
in the general system — congestion of the liver, stomach, spleen, kid-
neys, bowels — by haemorrhoids, general dropsy, and occasionally by
cerebral mischief.

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 187

I hold that the breathing of impure air is a fruitful source of disease
of the right heart occurring after middle age. How many people igno-
rantly favor its occurrence by confining themselves to closely-shut,
non-ventilated, hot, stifling rooms, in which the carbonic acid has ac-
cumulated to 2 or 3 per cent, of the air they respire 1 How many are
thus destroyed by being compelled, through the exigencies of life, to
pass the greater part of their time in pits and manufactories where
ventilation is defective, ok in which the air respired is poisoned by nox-
ious fumes and offensive emanations from the materials undergoing the
process of manufacture ! How many are falling victims to the poison-
ous influence upon the heart of the atmosphere of an underground rail-
way ! What do these facts suggest ? How are these evil results to
be prevented ? The simple answer is — Let the rooms in which you
live be effectually ventilated by an incoming current of air filtered
from all adventitious impurities, and so divided that no draught shall
be felt ; and by an outgoing current which shall remove from the
apartments the carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, sulphurous-acid gas, sul-
phuretted hydrogen, and other noxious compounds, as rapidly as they
are generated. Apply the same principle to public buildings, theatres,
schools, manufactories, pits, and to all places in which people are ac-
customed to congregate.

As to underground railways, the best plan is to avoid them.
True, the time passed in their polluted atmosphere is usually very
short ; but it is, nevertheless, sufficiently long to paralyze occasionally
the heart's action, and always, by its pollution of the blood and by its
direct effect upon the nervous system, to favor degeneration of the
structures of the heart.

It often occurs to a medical man to visit a patient for the first time,
and to find him suffering from a dilated right heart. He may for some
short time have been sensible of a change in his breathing on walking
rather quickly, or in mounting the stairs, or he may never have felt, or
at least recognized, any such sensations. His attention was first ar-
rested by observing that his feet and ankles were swollen, especially
at night on going to bed. This sign it is which gives him the first
alarm, and which causes him to seek the aid of his physician. An ex-
amination of his case detects a dilated right heart, with incompetency
of the tricuspid valve. How has this condition of the heart been
brought about ? There is no history of previous cardiac disease ;
there has been no illness ushering in the present condition of things ;
there has never been, nor is there now, any affection of the lungs, and
yet the right heart has suffered a lesion fatal to life ! The answer is,
that every such case has passed the age of forty, that the tissues of the
right heart have entered upon the period of degeneration, and that
this degeneration has, with very few exceptions, been hastened by the
breathing of an impure air, either during the pursuit of the ordinary
occupations of life, or in the patient's own dwelling.

188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

When the degeneration of the right heart has progressed to a cer-
tain extent, incompetency of the tricuspid valve follows either with or
without the aid of an exciting cause. Hence it is easy to understand
why dilatation of the right heart and tricuspid incompetency are often
found to exist apart from any previous history of cardiac disease.

The third great vital function which influences the degenerative
tendency of the heart is that of the circulation of the blood. To pre-
serve the health of the tissues, the blood mtist not only be pure and
rich in the materials of growth, but it must flow with a certain speed
through all the blood-vessels. If the speed with which the blood
moves is on the side of either plus or minus of the standard of health,
disease will shortly arise. If it is on the side of plus, active disease
of the heart, where that organ is the one to suffer, will follow. If on
the side of minus, tissue degeneration will ensue. Active disease will
be the consequence before middle age ; degeneration after that period.

These facts teach that all violent and long-continued efforts of the
body should be avoided. They hurry the heart's action to an inordi-
nate degree, they cause it to throw the blood with great force into the
extreme vessels, and, as there is almost always one organ of the body
weaker than the others, the vessels of this organ become distended,
and, remaining distended, the organ itself becomes diseased. Run-
ning, rowing, lifting, jumping, wrestling, severe horse-exercise, cricket,
football, are fruitful causes of heart-disease. Those which require the
breath to be suspended during their accomplishment are more fruitful
causes in this respect than those which require no such suspension of
the breathing. Rowing, lifting heavy weights, wrestling, and jump-
ing, do this ; and, of these, rowing is the most powerful for evil. At
every effort made with the hands and feet, the muscles are strained to
their utmost ; the chest is violently fixed ; no air is admitted into the
lungs ; blood is thrown by the goaded heart with great force into the
pulmonary vessels ; they become distended ; they at length cannot
find space for more blood ; the onward current is now driven back
upon the right heart ; its cavities and the blood-vessels of its walls
become in like manner distended ; the foundation of disease is laid.
Hypertrophy, haemoptysis, inflammatory affections of the heart and
lungs, are the consequences in the young ; valvular incompetency, rup-
ture of the valves or of the muscular fibres of the heart, pulmonary
apoplexy, and cerebral haemorrhage, are too frequently the immediate
consequences in those of more mature years.

If the flow of blood is minus the standard of health, the heart's
walls are imperfectly nourished, by reason of a deficient supply of food
within a given time ; the blood itself, receiving less aeration, is, in con-
sequence, more impure ; degeneration of the heart's walls is thus in-
duced, if it does not already exist — hastened, if it is present.

I propose now to consider the influence of an increasng quantity of

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 189

carbonic acid in the air respired upon the contractility of the muscular
fibres of the heart.

I take for my example the newly-hatched trout. During the win-
ters of 1869-'70 and 1870-'71, I hatched some thousands of this fish,
many of which I daily submitted to microscopical examination. The
result of my investigations, in reference to the action of the "heart and
to the influence upon it of a decreasing quantity of oxygen and an in-
creasing quantity of carbonic acid in the water in which the fish was
confined, shows —

That, on placing the fish in a glass trough containing a quantity of
water, the heart is seen, under the microscope, to be affected in the
following manner:

In the first few moments of examination the venous blood, collected
by the veins from the head, back, and yelk-bag (the first two of which
unite to form a bulbous vessel into which the third opens), is seen to
be projected with considerable force and rapidity into the upper (au-
ricle) of the two cavities of which the heart is composed, and thence
as instantaneously into the lower (ventricle) cavity, which contracts
with equal rapidity, and forces the blood into the branchial artery,
which conveys it to the gills. The projection of the blood into the
auricle, its passage into the ventricle, and its expulsion therefrom, are
but the work of an instant. As the blood enters the auricle, both it
and the ventricle seem to anticipate the charge of blood ; but espe-
cially is this the case with the ventricle. Before the blood well touches
the valve which guards the entrance from auricle to ventricle, the lat-
ter is observed to shorten its longitudinal diameter, to visibly meet,
as it were, the coming charge of blood from the auricle, and to force
it instantly into the branchial artery. There is no delay whatever of
the blood in the auricle or ventricle. It is shot in a straight line from
the vena cava through the auricle and the auriculo- ventricular valve,
caught by the contracting ventricle, and deflected and forced, without
a moment's delay, into the branchial artery.

From these observations it was evident that the contraction of the
heart was not excited by the distention of its cavities, but that it was
induced by the mere impingement of the blood upon its lining mem-
brane. In contracting, the ventricle was seen to roll about one-third
upon its axis, by which a portion of that part of it which was pre-
viously out of sight was brought into view. As soon as it had deliv-
ered its blood into the branchial artery, it relaxed, and increased again
its longitudinal diameter, recoiling from systole with an energy and a
rapidity equal to those of its contraction.

In three or four minutes the heart is observed to contract both less
quickly and less energetically. A very short time after this the blood
can be seen gently pouring into the auricle, and thence into the ven-
tricle, which latter now allows itself to be about one-fourth filled be-
fore it contracts. It now expels its blood, and again dilates ; but its

1 9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dilatation, like its contraction, is not so instantaneous as it was when
first observed under the miscroscope. In a short time longer the sen-
sibility of the heart is greatly diminished, for the blood is seen to be
accumulating in both the auricle and ventricle, but especially in the
former, from both of which cavities it is now only partly expelled by
the contraction of the heart.

At length, just before death, the blood is seen to flow from tue
auricle into the ventricle, thence into the branchial artery and along
it, the heart being passive during this time, and only now and then
at long intervals manifesting a very slight and partial contraction.
During the whole of this time the blood is coagulating more and more
in the auricle and ventricle, but especially in the former ; and, when
at length the heart has ceased to beat, the auricle and the vena cava
opening into it are fully distended, while the ventricle is only partly
distended with black-red blood. In the last moments of life, after the
heart has ceased to beat, the branchial artery is seen to be pushing
forward its slender current of blood, and to become at length quite
empty and transparent.

Here, then, as the oxygen dissolved in the water in which the fish
is confined becomes exhausted, and as the carbonic acid increases, the
sensibility and contractility of the heart are diminished, and at length
entirely destroyed. The negation of oxygen, and the increase of car-
bonic acid, have culminated in the death of the fish.

Precisely the same effect is produced upon the human heart by an
accumulation of carbonic acid in the air respired.

In the ordinary condition of the atmosphere, in which carbonic
acid does not exceed one part in a thousand parts of that medium, its
effects upon the heart are inappreciable. When, however, the car-
bonic acid has accumulated to the extent of 1 per cent, of the ah
respired, it begins to produce a slight feeling of faintness, and some
degree of uneasiness across the brow. At 2 per cent, the heart's ac-
tion is quickened, the sense of faintness is greater, there is slight gid-
diness, with heaviness and constriction of the head, together with
nausea. At 3 per cent, all these symptoms are increased. There are
vertigo, fluttering of the heart, nausea and sickness, followed by an
overwhelming sense of muscular prostration. At this moment the
contractions of the heart become very feeble, the skin relaxes, and is
bedewed with a cool, clammy perspiration. These symptoms deepen
with the increasing quantity of carbonic acid in the air respired until
the utmost limit of toleration is reached, beyend which life can no
longer be maintained. At this stage lethargy supervenes ; and, at the
moment of its occurrence, the heart begins to beat less frequently
and much less powerfully than before. This condition is the parallel
of that observed in the young trout, when the blood begins to accu-
mulate and to coagulate in the auricle and ventricle, and when the
heart's sensibility and contractility are reduced in the greatest degree.

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 191

From these effects it is certain tbat confinement to an atmosphere
impregnated with carbonic acid, even to the extent of one per cent,
only, quickly deranges the function of the heart, and ultimately dete-
riorates the tissues themselves of that organ.

The greater the percentage of carbonic acid in the air respired,
the more quickly and the more profoundly are these effects produced.
The constant breathing of air containing one per cent, only of car-
bonic acid proves fatal to life ; but, if it is respired for a short time
only, functional disturbance alone is then and there produced. It is,
however, certain that in this functional disturbance lie the germs of
organic mischief, and that frequent repetition of the cause will un-
doubtedly end in organic disease. Hence the impure atmosphere of the
bedrooms of the poor, and, indeed, of many of the middle class, proves
a sharp spur to the degenerative tendency manifested by the heart, and
especially by the right side of the heart, after the age of forty. Such
bedrooms are generally small in their superficial area, low-pitched,
and often lighted by a diminutive window, which at night is kept
constantly closed; and having a door which opens to the interior of
the house, but which is also closed during the occupation of the rooms.
Nay, to prevent the slightest admission of fresh air, the crevices of
both window and door are most carefully stopped ; and, to render the
matter still worse, a fire is not unfrequently kept burning during the
winter nights.

What must be the effect produced upon the air of such rooms un-
der the conditions named ? I take, for example, an average-sized bed-
room in the cottages of the poor — say, a room twelve feet long, ten
feet wide, and eight feet high. This gives a cubical space of 960 feet,
which is not more than half the cubical space allowed each patient in
our best-arranged hospitals. In this room, with its diminutive win-
dow and door constantly closed, three, four, and frequently a greater
number of persons pass the night of eight or ten hours' duration.
No provision has been made for the admission of fresh air — none for
the escape of the carbonic acid exhaled during respiration. What lit-
tle provision did exist in the crevices formed by the badly-fitting door
and window has been carefully abrogated by sand-bags, rolls of rags,
and stuffing of every description. Thus the air of the room becomes
poisoned with carbonic acid, and in this condition it is breathed and
rebreathed, to the manifest injury of the heart.

A simple calculation will enable us, if not to determine with ex-
actitude, at least to approximate to the amount of carbonic acid ex-
haled by each sleeper, and consequently to the degree of vitiation
which the air of the apartment undergoes. I fix the number of respi-
rations at its minimum — 14 per minute ; the quantity of air exhaled at
each expiration at 20 cubic inches ; the quantity of carbonic acid con-
tained in the expired air at 4 per cent. ; and the duration of the night
at 8 hours. Hence, 14x20x8x60=134,400 cubic inches, or 77.77

i92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cubic feet, of air expired by each sleeper during the night of eight
hours. This expired air contains 4 per cent, of carbonic acid.
.•.100: 7 7. 7 7 :: 4 = 3.11 cubic feet of carbonic acid exhaled by each sleeper
during the night. Suppose the number of sleepers occupying the bed-
room to be four, this will give 3.11 x 4 = 12.44 cubic feet as the quan-
tity of carbonic acid which is exhaled by the four sleepers during the
eight hours of night. The room itself contains 960 cubic feet of air,
and through this 12.44 cubic feet of carbonic acid would have been
diffused by the termination of the night. It therefore follows that, if
no fresh air entered the room, and if in consequence the carbonic acid
had no means of escape, the air of the apartment would, at the end of
the eight hours of night, contain 1.29 per cent, of this gas: a quantity
sufficient to produce serious results.

This statement, however, does not represent all the facts of the
case. It must be remembered that the oxygen contained in the air of
the room would be constantly undergoing reduction by respiration
during the night. If the quantity thus consumed were determined
from the quantity of carbonic acid exhaled, allowing for the fact that
15 per cent, more oxygen is taken into the blood than is contained in
the carbonic acid of the air expired, it will be found that from one-
third to one-half of the oxygen originally contained in the air of tbe
room would have been consumed by the end of the night. This re-
duction in the quantity of oxygen, and the great increase of carbonic
acid, would affect the body in two ways : firstly, by a deficiency of
oxygen ; and, secondly, by an excess of carbonic acid, in the air re-
spired. Hence the reduction of the one and the increase of the other
would render the air far more injurious than if only one of these
changes in its constitution had taken place.

The actual result is not, however, in strict accordance with this
calculation, because fresh air, although in limited quantity, does find
its way into the room, and carbonic acid does, to a limited extent, find
its way out. These, therefore, would modify the constitution of the
air of the room at the close of night ; but they would still leave it
with an excess of carbonic acid injurious to life.

It is found that when air moderately impregnated with carbonic
acid is inspired it greatly impedes the exhalation of more from the
lungs ; and that the greatest quantity of carbonic acid which exists in
prebreathed air never exceeds 10 per cent. It is much to be feared
that to this degree of vitiation the air of the bedrooms of the poor
and of others not unfrequently rises by the too prevalent system of
excluding fresh air, and by the frequent absence of provision for the
escape of that which has already passed through the lungs.

Can it then be a matter of surprise that death from diseased heart
should so often occur during the night ?

In thousands of instances of cardiac disease life is thus sacrificed,
where, had but proper ventilation of the bedrooms been observed, the

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 193

subjects of such disease might, despite the cardiac mischief, have con-
tinued to live for an indefinite time.

It has frequently been my duty, during a practice of nearly thirty
years in the midst of a large community prone by the habits and par-
ticular avocations of the people to heart-disease, to investigate cases
of " found dead " in bed, and I have often been compelled to refer the
immediate cause of death to the effect of carbonic acid liberated by
respiration and confined to the apartment, in destroying the sensibil-
ity and contractility of the heart, rather than to the direct influence
of the diseased heart itself.

I remember that on one occasion I was summoned to a case which
had occurred in a bedroom fifteen feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight
feet high. In this room, with the door and window closed, no fewer
than twenty persons slept night after night ! Can any one doubt that
the air of such a room would be charged to excess with carbonic acid
exhaled by respiration? Those who perished in this manner were be-
yond the age of forty ; and, in every instance examined, the right side
of the heart was either primarily affected by tissue-degeneration, or
by disease consecutive to mischief in the left side of the heart and
lungs.

Often indeed in the dwellings of the middle and higher classes of
society the provisions for ventilating both their bedrooms and their
day-rooms are miserably inadequate to preserve health. The conse-
quence is, that cai'diac disease is promoted to an inconceivable extent.
There is no other disease in ichich the demand for cold, fresh air is so
urgently pressed by the patient as in cardiac disease. There is none in
which a constant supply of pure air is more needed — none in which it
is more grateful to the patient, or in which it has a more immediately
beneficial effect. At all times and seasons — in the depth of winter — by
day and by night — a patient suffering from a paroxysm of cardiac
asthma will hurry to the open door or window, and there, with his
body hanging half out, will remain, with scarcely any vestments upon
him, breathing the cold air until the paroxysm has ceased. Ought not
this urgent, this powerful supplication of Nature to teach us the impor-
tance of ventilation, and of a full supply of fresh air in the treatment
of heart-disease?

I hesitate not to say that free ventilation — the free admission of
pure air into the apartment by day and by night — is one of the most
important remedial measures which can be adopted in the treatment of
this disease.

Where this means is defective, but where, nevertheless, the vitia-
tion of the air of the bedroom does not exceed 1 per cent, of carbonic
acid, a sensible effect is produced upon those who have slept within its
influence. They complain, on leaving their bed, of weakness ; their
limbs tremble ; they feel somewhat giddy, and their head feels heavy,
or it aches. The least effort disturbs the heart's action, which is some-

TOL. II. — 13

i94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

what quick and feeble ; their countenance is pale ; the lips are not un-
frequently somewhat "blue ; and the tongue is covered with a thin,
whitish, and somewhat slimy fur. The appetite is in abeyance ; there
is a feeling of nausea ; and the first evacuation is generally dark in
color.

What is the pathological condition of such patients at this mo-
ment? Simply this: The blood contains an excess of carbonic acid,
which, circulating with the blood through every organ, disturbs the
natural action of every organ, blunting its sensibility, vitiating its par-
ticular function, and interfering with those molecular changes which
constitute healthy nutrition.

A person thus affected does not usually die. The body, removed
to a pure atmosphere, begins at once to excrete the carbonic acid by
the lungs, the liver, the skin, the kidneys, and the bowels, and in the
course of a few. hours the more visible manifestations of its baneful
effects have passed away. It, however, often happens that a sense of
weariness and muscular debility is felt for days afterward. Night,
too, frequently places such subjects in the same condition as before.
The same bedroom is occupied ; the same inadequate means of ventila-
tion continue ; the same accumulation of carbonic acid takes place ;
and the same effects upon the bodily organs are repeated. Blood
charged with an excess of carbonic acid again pervades every tissue of
the heart, diminishing its vitality, lowering its sensibility, and assimi-
lating its nutrition to that of the reptilian heart. But the low char-
acter of the nutrition of the reptilian heart does not accord with the
■comparatively quick circulation, rapid nutrition, vital power, and
•energy of action required by the human heart. The one cannot be sub-
stituted for the other. In man the change results in disease where
disease does not exist — aggravates disease where it is already present.
— Lancet.

«*♦

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING.

By J. STAEL PATTERSON, Esq.

FRUIT has become a necessary of life — a great variety of fruit
indeed, and a great deal of it ; and this will become more and
more the case with the increase of intelligence and thrift. The great
abundance of most kinds of fruit for the last two or three years may
cause us to feel a security, which is not well grounded, with regard to
the conditions of climate necessary to the unfailing production of fruit.
Only within a few years past have there been seasons wThen the fruit-
crop was very light, and not at all adequate to the demand. One of
the causes of this is the capriciousness of the seasons, and this capri

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. 195

1

ciousness, I believe, is becoming constantly greater as the country-
grows older.

An inquiry, then, of much scientific interest, and of great material
importance, has reference to what may be the cause of this increasing
uncertainty of the fruit crop. In the early settlement of the country,
it was easy to grow peaches, even in localities where growing peaches
now seldom gladden the eye. In Ohio between the parallels of 40° and
41°, for example, peach-buds were seldom injured by winter or spring
frosts, and the crop was abundant almost every year when the country
was " new." For the last twenty-five years peaches miss oftener than
they hit, and in many parts this has told so fearfully against the enter-
prise of production that scarcely a peach-tree is now to be seen.

The clearing of the country had made this change. The continued
clearing of the country will increase the mischief still more. The grow-
ing of peaches and of most other fruits will be driven, as indeed it
already has been, to special localities and special soils. It is now for
such localities to look out m time and preserve as far as possible the
favorable conditions they now have, and if possible to increase them.

More especial reference is here had to that part of our country
which lies north of the fortieth parallel, where most of the fruit-locali-
ties are to be found in the vicinity of considerable bodies of water.

The water absorbs heat during the summer, which it slowly gives
off on the approach of cold weather, warming the atmosphere in its
vicinity, and preventing the occurrence of early frosts in the fall along
the shore-border from five to ten miles wide. This gives the wood
and buds a chance to mature thoroughly, so that they will endure a
harder freeze in the winter than wood and buds which were sudden-
ly stopped in the course of maturing by an early frost in the fall.
In the spring the waters warm more slowly than the land, and the
atmosphere thus chilled along this same shore-belt keeps back vege-
tation and fruit-buds so as greatly to lessen the danger from late
frosts ; and what may seem to be a contradiction, but is nevertheless
true, spring frosts are usually lighter within than they are outside this
shore-belt.

These several advantages from the proximity of a considerable
body of water are well understood. There is another, however, that
may be of some value. During the heated term of summer there is
always a cool breeze from the water which modifies the temperature of ■
the hottest part of the day along this otherwise favored border of shore-
land, and may act beneficially in various wTays : first, by promoting
a more active circulation of air among the leaves and young branches,
thereby favoring the healthy action of the organic surfaces — hence,
greater immunity from blight and mildew in this region ; secondly, by
affording protection against the injuiy to which growing fruit is liable
from excessive heat ; thirdly, by maintaining a greater uniformity of
heat between night and day. The experiments of Koppen have shown

19.6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that change of temperature alone is deleterious to vegetable growth ;
and we may, perhaps, justly infer that uniformity of temperature,
when it lies at or near that degree which is most favorable to healthy
vegetable activity, is a desirable point in a fruit-growing climate for
the even, early, and better maturing of fruit.1

The influence of forests on rainfall is still an unsettled question.
It is a very general impression that forests, in some way, promote the
fall of rain when it would not occur if the same region was bare of
trees. A great array of authorities may be quoted in favor of this
view. It is believed that Spain, parts of France, Switzerland, and the
Tyrol, Northern Africa, Persia and Palestine, Egypt and India, the
islands Malta and Mauritius, the Cape Verd Islands, and most of the
West Indies, have either been turned into deserts or greatly injured
by the destruction of their forests, and the blight and droughts which
have followed. It is alleged, too, that the planting of forests has in
some instances, as in Scotland, Egypt, and St. Helena, caused a more
abundant rainfall. But these alleged results, though supported by
great names in science, are disputed. Forests may affect rainfall for
any thing positively known, but the evidence that they do so is not
such as science can accept." But, however this may be, they have
doubtless much to do with the benefit which vegetation receives from
the rain that does fall.

In a country quite destitute of timber the surface would dry off
much more quickly, in consequence of the free sweep afforded to the
winds. The water from rains would also pass over the surface more
freely into the brooks, and be thus lost to vegetation. The spongy
surface of the forest absorbs a larger proportion of rain than the open
fields, and thus retains it in the soil as a source from which the neigh-

1 Both De Vries and Sachs ascertained that every kind of plant has its special degree
of temperature at which it makes most growth in a given time ; but, while Koppen rec-
ognized this, his investigations have made an addition to our knowledge of the subject,
hi3 point being that the plant grows more when kgpt at a uniform temperature than if it
had varied between extremes of which this temperature is the mean, thus showing that
variation of temperature acts as a check on growth.

According to Karsten, great and sudden changes injure the health and hardiness of
plants; while De Vries comes to a directly opposite conclusion. This, however, does
not affect Koppen's result, which has reference to rapidity of growth. Moreover, even if
great daily variation of temperature should not affect the health of plants, it might,
nevertheless, be not wholly harmless to the tenderer fruits.

The preceding paragraphs have been suggested by the kinship between forests and
lakes in their influence on climate and fruit-growing.

8 Since writing the above, we have happened to fall upon several statements in favor
of the influence of forests on rainfall, some of them from respectable scientific sources,
Proctor, Bryant, Colver, etc. I learn, however, that Prof. Henry, of the Smithsonian
Institution, has recently reported that observations for the last twenty years in this coun-
try show no appreciable influence of forests on the amount of rainfall. This should
carry much more weight with it than the mere fashion of opinion about forests causing
rain.

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. xg7

boring streams receive a continual supply, while its evaporation from
the surface and its transpiration through the leaves of the trees afford
moisture to the atmosphere.

The moisture thus imparted to the atmosphere mitigates the sever-
ity of a drought in various ways: First, by lessening evaporation
from the surface, as this is accelerated by a dry atmosphere, and re-
tarded by a moist one ; secondly, by affording to the soil a greater pro-
portion of moisture for condensation, when the surface cools at night.
Thirdly, by affording moisture for direct absorption by the leaves.
This is a disputed point among men of science ; but the late researches
of Cailletet promise a reconciliation of the conflicting views, as usual,
by showing that both were wrong and both right. He found that,
when a plant was abundantly supplied with moisture in the soil, the
leaves never absorb ; but that they do absorb whenever the soil is de-
ficient in moisture, and the leaves begin to droop.

Hence, there might be evidence of drought in a country without
forests, while there were no such evidences in a country sufficiently
guarded by forests, though the amount of rain had been the same in
both.

These considerations are not altogether without value in regard to
fruit-growing. It is true that grapes do best in rather a dry climate ;
but most kinds of fruit require considerable moisture, especially at
the time of transplanting, and also when the fruit is maturing. In af-
fording some mitigation of the extreme effects of dry weather, forests
may be regarded as having a beneficial influence on the growing of
most fruits.

Of far greater concern to the fruit-interests of any locality is the
influence of woodland on temperature. On this subject there is quite
a general unanimity of opinion. Certain forms of the evidence are so
familiar that the conviction produced is general. Every one, who has
travelled through woodlands and open fields during cold weather, has
readily perceived how much warmer was the atmosphere of the wood
than that of the field. It is said that engineers on our railroads find
that it requires less fuel to keep up steam in passing through a long
stretch of woodland (Marsh). But the warming influence of the
forest has been subjected to more rigid tests than these. Boussin-
gault proved that, within several parallels of the equator on either
side, the temperature of cleared land is about two degrees higher than
that which is covered with forest. But we are more directly con-
cerned with results in our temperate climate.

The researches of Becquerel, Krutsch, and Berger, had appeared to
prove, first, that a wooded region would have a cooler summer and a
warmer winter than a region almost destitute of woods ; and, secondly,
that during the daytime the temperature of the atmosphere in the for-
est would always be lower, and during the night always higher, than
in the open field ; the difference between the diurnal maximum and

198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

minimum of the forest being less than that of the field ; in other words,
the diurnal temperature is more uniform.

But this is a matter involving sueh complicated and varying con-
ditions, that absolute propositions are. open to question, however true
they may be with proper qualifications. Rivoli has very recently
done much to make our knowledge of this subject definite. His ob-
servations were carefully made, under circumstances which eliminated,
as much as possible, all disturbing conditions ; there being no body
of water near, the country level, and the wind having a fair sweep in
all directions. We will state the results of his investigations as briefly
as possible.

Influence of Forests on Winter Temperature.— 1xl the winter-time,
the simplest relations of the forest to temperature prevail. During
this season of the year, when the wind passes into the north and be-
comes colder, the forest warms it ; when it passes into the south and
becomes warmer, the forest cools it. During winter the forest plays
the role of a bad conductor, and acts as an equalizer of temperature.

Influence of Forests on Summer Temperature. — In summer the
case is not so simple, owing to evaporation from the surface, tran-
spiration through the leaves, and radiation from them. At this season
of the year the atmosphere in the forest is usually warmer during the
nights and colder during the day than in the open field. The night is
warmer in consequence of the obstruction which the mass of foliage
presents to radiation from the surface beneath it ; the day is cooler in
consequence of the transpiration of vapor from the leaves, and the
obstruction interposed between the surface and the direct rays of the
sun. In the summer, as well as in the winter, the forest usually acts
as an equalizer of the temperature of the atmosphere.

While, however, this is usually the case, there are exceptions.
During nights when it is calm, radiation from the leaves of the trees
may cool particles of air, which, descending toward the surface, form
just before daybreak a stratum of the atmosphere below, which is
colder than if the region had been destitute of trees. It is within the
experience of most cultivators of the soil that frosts sometimes strike
hardest near a wood.

To the fact that under certain circumstances a forest may cause
frost in the fields near by, we may add the qualification that this can
only occur in the case of white frosts, and that whenever there is mo-
tion of the atmosphere, and the wind a cold one, the influence of the
forest is always protective. An orchard sheltered by a wood may
escape unhurt, while another in the same neighborhood not so protect-
ed may suffer the loss of its entire crop. This is believed to be not a
very uncommon occurrence in the case of peaches.

If the fruit-growing interest of the country were to state its ac-
count with the forest, we should suppose it to be something like the
following :

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. i99

The Count against Forests. — 1. Unfavorable to the free circula-
tion of the atmosphere in summer-time ; in this respect the influence
of the forest is directly the opposite to that of an adjacent body of
water. 2. Imparting moisture to the atmosphere, whereby, under
certain conditions of the weather, the heat may become too great for
the good of growing fruit. 3. Causing an occasional late frost in the
spring. 4. Affording a harbor for birds and birds'-nests. This is no
small consideration in some localities, where birds have to be slausrh-
tered by the ten thousand to save certain kinds of fruit, as cherries,
blackberries, and Delaware grapes. I speak advisedly, being well
aware of the sentimentalism against which I offend. Some kinds of
birds are, of course, only innocent and useful. I make no charge
against them (nor against the forest which protects them). Let them
live and sing ! But, that birds which prey so remorselessly on fruits
destroy insects enough to pay for the fruit they waste and consume, is
very improbable, and we let the count stand against the trees and
bushes that shelter them.

The Count in favor of Forests. — 1. Usually equalizing the tem-
perature between night and day during the summer-season — uniformi-
ty of temperature being a condition which is favorable to vegetable
development. 2. Equalizing the effects of rainfall by storing up the
waters to be given off gradually to the streams and the atmosphere,
thus favoring the development of most kinds of fruit. 3. Imparting
moisture to the atmosphere by transpiration through the leaves, and
thus profiting the fields in various ways during a drought. This moist-
ure may also contribute to the warmth of the atmosphere when
warmth is beneficial. 4. Intercepting the sweep of the winds, and
thereby lessening the mechanical injury to plants and trees, and
weakening the cooperation for mischief of wind and cold. As a screen
for protection against the wind, trees are not without appreciation,
and it is generally understood that, even if they imparted no warmth
to a cold wind passing through them, the mechanical resistance they
afford prevents it from taking the warmth so readily out of vines,
trees, and the soil. 5. Cooling the warm winds of winter and spring,
thereby keeping back vegetation out of the way of late spring frosts.
6. Warming the cold winds in winter. The last three on the list be-
ing by far the most important ; and by their cooperation they might
very easily, and often do, make the difference, at a critical time, of a
crop or no crop, as this often depends on a degree or two of tempera-
ture.

It will be readily perceived that all the better influences of wooded
lands are of very much the same character as the influence of a body
of water. It is when these two classes of conditions meet in the same
locality that general fruit-growing has its best chances of success.

What proportion of woodland should remain in the interest of
protection for agricultural and horticultural purposes, might be difficult

zoo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to ascertain. Different localities would no doubt require a different
proportion. Rentzsch (quoted by Marsh) estimates that for the interior
of Germany about 23 per cent., and along the coast 20 per cent., is
necessary for the needed protection. The case hardly admits of such
precision ; more would no doubt be better, and in a dry climate like
ours, more than anywhere else.

So rapidly is the destruction of timber going on in this country
that many localities originally covered with forest have not so great
a proportion as this remaining, and other localities are in a fair way
soon to be in the same condition. This is becoming, or at least should
become, a real cause of apprehension to those who have the welfare
of the farming interest, and especially of the fruit-growing interest, at
heart. This continuous destruction of timber must eventually result
in injury to the market value of lands in certain neighborhoods, espe-
cially lands for fruit-growing purposes.

The remnants of forests in the States have another enemy as inex-
orable and remorseless as the woodman's axe. Many forest-trees, like
the wild Indian, do not seem to flourish in the midst of civilization.
They first show signs of decay at the top. This takes place after the
underbrush has been cleared away and the surface has lost that perfect
mulch of decayed leaves which belongs to native forests. The trees
are now liable to suffer from extremes of drought as never before.
This change is equal to a change of habitat, and the consequence to
some varieties of trees is loss of health and vitality.

According to the experiments of Prof. Pfaff made on an oak-tree,
the amount of moisture lost by transpiration during the summer-
season was more than eight times the quantity of rainfall on the same
area for the same time. Dr. Hahn, who thinks this estimate quite too
high, says, nevertheless, that " Herr Pfaff 's results show us what an
enormous quantity of water is required by isolated trees in a com-
paratively dry and free (bewegten) atmosphere, and how much they
need the protection which they afford to each other in their combined
capacity as a forest." Whenever the balance and integrity of the
original forest is broken, the supply of water during droughts not
being equal to the demand of trees now suffering the double disadvan-
tage of needing more moisture and less of it available than before,
death begins in the topmost branches, that part of the tree which is
most exposed to the conditions of active transpiration and farthest
removed from the source of moisture.

What should we do about this blight ? Save the timber by using
it before it is injured, and plant enough to make up for the loss.

For the application of the facts as now ascertained, let us take the
southern shore of Lake Erie, which is a good fruit-region lying mid-
way between the Eastern and Western cities, and affording to both part
of their supply of fruit. Fruit does not do so well here now as it did
in the early settlement of the country. Cut off the timber which still

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. 201

remains, and the injury to fruit-growing would be still greater ; and so
far as this result would have an effect, it would be to depreciate the
market value of land. What this region especially needs is a protec-
tion of woodland against the cold westerly and southwesterly winds
to cooperate with the benign influence of the lake in other regards.
The more forest to the south of this belt of shore-land the better. The
more frequently blocks and belts of woodland intervene throughout
its entire extent for immediate local shelter and a general screen against
westerly winds, the better for the farming and fruit growing interests
of this region.

But, so long as it pays an immediate profit to cut down the forest,
it will be done. It is not within the province of legislation to stop it.
There is no hope from voluntary concert of action. A certain per-
centage of timbered lands might be exempted from taxation ; but this
innovation, though talked of, is slow in coming about.1 To a certain
extent tree-destruction should be offset by tree-planting. The planter
might not receive his profits so quickly as the destroyer, but never-
theless, wherever timber is likely soon to bcome scarce, and that is
almost everywhere, profits would be sure to accrue from direct sales
as well as from the value thus added to the land generally — and,
besides the profits in dollars and cents, that accruing from the con-
sciousness of having done a beneficent action.

There are a great many purposes for which timber, and timber only
can be used ; and for these purposes it should be religiously conserved.
I once heard a gentleman say, " I don't worship my timber ; " he sac-
rificed it to gain, in a perfectly legitimate manner it is true. Still the
writer must say that he has a sincere respect for the " worship of
timber ; " it is not a bad kind of religion, so far as it goes.

Immense quantities of timber are slaughtered every year for fuel,
and this, too, in a country where there is more coal than anywhere else
in the world. There is but one way to stop this branch of the destroy-
ing process, and that is by increasing railroad facilities so as to make
our coal-fields accessible to every part of the country. Cheap coal
will save the timber. When no longer consumed in the millions of
household fires in city and country, or in furnaces for the driving
power of locomotives and mills, great will be the saving of timber for
the necessary purposes for which timber must be used, and for the
protection of our cultivated fields and gardens.

The burning of Chicago must make an immediate draft on timbered
lands for certain purposes of building for which timber is still largely
used. But this great fire, in proving the absolute necessity of building
cities of brick, stone, and iron, will operate eventually to the saving of
timber and the longer continuance of the protection which our northern

1 Only Missouri, Nebraska, and Illinois, have legislative enactments to encourage the
planting of timber. New York, Massachusetts, and California, do something in the same
direction through their agricultural societies.

202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

forests afford against northern winds to the great agricultural districts
which lie to the south of them.

And here I cannot but refer to a most short-sighted policy which
our Government has been pursuing in giving a factitious value to
lumber made from our own timber, by a so-called protective tax on
.foreign lumber. While this has operated directly against the building
interests of our own people, it, at the same time, has led to the more
rapid destruction of our own forests ; and, in thus giving protection to
the capital employed in lumbering, it is removing the protection which
our forests afford to the American agriculturist, thus damaging the
people at large in a twofold manner. This must be the case just so
far as the forests belonging to the United States afford greater protec-
tion to our cultivated fields than is afforded by the forests of Canada.
We do not realize the benign influence which our forests to the west
and east of the great lakes exercise upon the climate and agricul-
ture of the country. Imagine them all removed ; the cold winds from
the northwest and northeast, having unobstructed sweep, would reach
us with greater force, and, passing over a bleak and treeless region,
they would come to us absolutely colder. Our Government, by its
protective policy, has been doing something to bring about this un-
desirable result. It is high time that a wiser policy should prevail,
and that the Government should protect by taking its hands off.1 (It
is gratifying to record that, since the above was written, the duty on
lumber has been greatly reduced.)

There is no need of attributing more to forests than is their due.
There are storms against which they afford no protection — avalanches
of cold which rush down upon the country, killing fruit-buds, and even
vines, shrubs, and trees. But these are exceptional. It is in the case
of somewhat milder cold-storms that forests save, when without them
there would be ruin. The great fact of the increasing uncertainty of
fruit and agricultural crops with the continued clearing of the country,
is a fact so patent, and of import so significant, that it alone is sufficient
to prove the great value of forests for protection, and to put us on
guard against their wanton destruction.

1 According to an estimate in the Report of the Department of Agriculture for 1870,
all the pine-timber in the region between the Mississippi on the west and Lakes Superior
and Michigan on the north and east, will, at the present rate of consumption, disappear
within the next twelve years, while the hard wood will last only about twelve years longer.
Lumbermen do not take all, but what they leave is consumed by the fires which generally
follow. About 330,000 acres are denuded annually in this region. This is only a part,
perhaps, about half the annual consumption of timber in the northwestern section of our
country. To compensate for this loss only about 150,000 acres are annually planted in
timber throughout the entire West.

This destruction of timber is general. Even fruit-localities are not spared, as the
writer has had abundant opportunity to witness, where the demand for railroad ties at
high prices has created almost a furor for coining money out of the great oaks, regardless
of consequences to climate and culture.

The alarm about the destruction of timber in this country is only too well founded.

A NEW THEORY OF VOLCANOES. 203

A NEW THEORY OF VOLCANOES.

THERE are few subjects less satisfactorily treated in scientific
treatises than that which Humboldt calls the Reaction of the
Earth's Interior. We find, not merely in the configuration of the
earth's crust, but in actual and very remarkable phenomena, evidence
of subterranean forces of great activity, and the problems suggested
seem in no sense impracticable, yet no theory of the earth's volcanic
energy has yet gained general acceptance. While the astronomer
tells us of the constitution of orbs millions of times farther away than
our own sun, the geologist has hitherto been unable to g'ive an account
of the forces which agitate the crust of the orb on which we live.

A theory has just been put forward respecting volcanic energy,
however, by the eminent seismologist Mallet, which promises not
merely to take the place of all others, but to gain a degree of accept-
ance which has not been accorded to any theory previously enunciated. •
It is, in principle, exceedingly simple, though many of the details (into
which we do not propose to enter) involve questions of considerable
difficulty.

Let us, in the first place, consider briefly the various explanations
which had been already advanced. There was first the chemical
theory of volcanic energy, the favorite theory of Sir Humphry Davy.
It is possible to produce on a small scale nearly all the phenomena due
to subterranean activity, by simply bringing together certain sub-
stances, and leaving them to undergo the chemical changes due to
their association. As a familiar instance of explosive action thus oc-
casioned, we need only mention the results experienced when any one,
unfamiliar with the methods of treating lime, endeavors over-hastily
to "slake" or "slack" it with water. Indeed, one of the strong
points of the chemical theory consisted in the circumstance that vol-
canoes only occur where water can reach the subterranean regions —
or as Mallet expresses it, that " without water there is no volcano."
But the theory is disposed of by the fact, now generally admitted, that
the chemical energies of ou'r earth's materials were almost wholly ex-
hausted before the surface was consolidated.

Another inviting theory is that according to which the earth is re-
garded as a mere shell of solid matter surrounding a molten nucleus.
There is every reason to believe that the whole interior of the earth
is in a state of intense heat ; and if the increase of heat with depth
(as shown in our mines) is supposed to continue uniformly, we find
that at very moderate depths a degree of heat must prevail sufficient
to liquefy any known solids under ordinary conditions. But the con-
ditions under which matter exists a few miles only below the surface
of the earth are not ordinary ; the pressure enormously exceeds any

204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which our physicists can obtain experimentally. The ordinary dis
tinction between solids and liquids cannot exist at that enormous
pressure ; a mass of cold steel could be as plastic as any of the glu-
tinous liquids, while the structural change which a solid undergoes in
the process of liquefying could not take place under such pressure
even at an enormously high temperature. It is now generally admit-
ted that, if the earth really has a molten nucleus, the solid crust must,
nevertheless, be far too thick to be in any way disturbed by changes
affecting the liquid matter beneath.

Yet another theory has found advocates. The mathematician
Hopkins, whose analysis of the molten-nucleus theory was mainly ef-
fective in rendering that theory untenable, suggested that there may
be isolated subterranean lakes of fiery matter, and that these may be
the true seat of volcanic energy. But such lakes could not maintain
their heat for ages, if surrounded (as the theory requires) by cooler
solid matter, especially as the theory also requiros that water should
have access to them. It will be observed also that none of the theo-
ries just described affords any direct account of those various features
of the earth's surface — mountain-ranges, table-lands, volcanic regions,
and so on — which are undoubtedly due to the action of subterranean
forces. The theory advanced by Mr. Mallet is open to none of these
objections. It seems, indeed, competent to explain all the facts which
have hitherto appeared most perplexing.

It is recognized by physicists that our earth is gradually parting
with its heat. As it cools it contracts. Now, if this process of con-
traction took place uniformly, no subterranean action would result.
But, if the interior contracts more quickly than the crust, the latter
must in some way or other force its way down to the retreating nu-
cleus. Mr. Mallet shows that the hotter internal portion must contract
faster than the relatively cool crust ; and then he shows that the
shrinkage of the crust is competent to occasion all the known phe-
nomena of volcanic action. In the distant ages when the earth was
still fashioning, the shrinkage produced the irregularities of level
which we recognize in the elevation of the land and the depression of
the ocean-bed. Then came the period when, as the crust shrank, it
formed corrugations ; in other words, when the foldings and elevations
of the somewhat thickened crust gave rise to the mountain-ranges of
the earth. Lastly, as the globe gradually lost its extremely high tem-
perature, the continuance of the same process of shrinkage led no
longer to the formation of ridges and table-lands, but to local crush-
ing down and dislocation. This process is still going on, and Mr.
Mallet not only recognizes here the origin of earthquakes, and of the
changes of level now in progress, but the true cause of volcanic heat.
The modern theory of heat as a form of motion here comes into play.
As the solid crust closes in upon the shrinking nucleus, the work ex-
pended in crushing down and dislocating the parts of the crust is

A NEW THEORY OF VOLCANOES. 205

transformed into heat, by which, at the places where the process goes
on with greatest energy, "the material of the rock so crushed and of
that adjacent to it are heated even to fusion. The access of water to
such points determines volcanic eruption."

Now, all this is not mere theorizing. Mr. Mallet does not come
befoi-e the scientific world with an ingenious speculation, which may
or may not be confirmed by observation and experiment. He has
measured and weighed the forces of which he speaks. He is able to
tell precisely what proportion of the actual energy which must be de-
veloped as the earth contracts is necessary for the production of ob-
served volcanic phenomena. It is probable that nine-tenths of those
who have read these lines would be disposed to think that the con-
traction of the earth must be far too slow to produce effects so stu-
pendous as those which we recognize in the volcano and the earth-
quake. But Mr. Mallet is able to show, by calculations which cannot
be disputed, that less than one-fourth of the heat at present annually
lost by the earth is sufficient to account for the total annual volcanic
action, according to the best data at present in our possession.

This would clearly not be the place to follow out Mr. Mallet's ad-
mirable theory into all its details. We must content ourselves with
pointing out how excellently it accouuts for certain peculiarities of the
earth's surface-configuration. Few that have studied carefully-drawn
charts of the chief mountain-ranges can have failed to notice that the
arrangement of these ranges does not accord with the idea of upheaval
through the action of internal forces. But it will be at once recog-
nized that the aspect of the mountain-ranges accords exactly with
what would be expected to result from such a process of contraction
as Mr. Mallet has indicated. The shrivelled skin of an apple affords
no inapt representation of the corrugated surface of our earth,. and,
according to the new theory, the shrivelling of such a skin is precisely
analogous to the processes at work upon the earth when mountain-
ranges were being formed. Again, there are few students of geology
who have not found a source of perplexity in the foldings and over-
lappings of strata in mountainous regions. No forces of upheaval
seem competent to produce this arrangement. But by the new theory
this feature of the earth's surface is at once explained ; indeed, no
other arrangement could be looked for.

It is worthy of notice that Mr. Mallet's theory of volcanic energy
is completely opposed to ordinary ideas respecting earthquakes and
volcanoes. We have been accustomed vaguely to regard these phe-
nomena as due to the eruptive outbursting power of the earth's inte-
rior; we shall now have to consider them as due to the subsidence
and shrinkage of the earth's exterior. Mountains have not been up-
heaved, but valleys have sunk down. And in another respect the new
theory tends to modify views which have been generally entertained
in recent times. Our most eminent geologists have taught that the

206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

earth's internal forces may be as active now as in the epochs when the
mountain-ranges were formed. But Mr. Mallet's theory tends to show
that the volcanic energy of the earth is a declining force. Its chief
action had already been exerted when mountains began to be formed ;
what remains now is but the minutest fraction of the volcanic energy
of the mountain-forming era; and each year, as the earth parts with
more and more of its internal heat, the sources of her subterranean
energy are more and more exhausted. The thought once entertained
by astronomers, that the earth might explode like a bomb, her scattered
fragments producing a ring of bodies resembling the zone of asteriods,
seems further than ever from probability ; if ever there was any dan-
ger of such a catastrophe, the danger has long since passed away. —
Spectator.

♦»»•

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS.

BY JOHN TROWBRIDGE,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHTSICS 1ST HARVARD COLLEGE.

THE belief that great fires are followed invariably by rain-storms is
wide-spread, and the great fires of the present year in America,
it is claimed, afford no exception to the law. The attitude of scientific
men in regard to so-called popular fallacies and superstitions is not,
in general, a praiseworthy one. A belief needs often only to be wide-
spread among the people at large to be denounced. Science is but an-
other word for truth, and even popular traditions deserve to be ex-
amined with care. The difficulties, however, in the way of an investiga-
tion of the effects of fires in producing rain-storms are manifold. Our
knowledge of the science of meteorology is, at the best, very imper-
fect ; and we have no series of observations from which we can draw
trustworthy conclusions. A careful search into the narratives of great
fires and into the accounts of great naval and land fights gives nothing
which a scientific man would accept for a moment. One who is ready
and determined to believe, it is true, will find in history many curious
and apparent corroborations of the truth of his belief. Thus in Pepys's
" Diary" there is a quaint and circumstantial account of the great fire in
London. In speaking of the progress of the fire, he says : " So as we
were forced to begin to pack up our own goods, and prepare for their re-
moval; and did by moonshine {it being brave dry and moonshine and
icarm weather) carry much of my goods into the garden ; " and in another
place : " But Lord ! what a sad sight it was by moonlight to see the
whole city almost on fire that you might see it plain at Woolwich, as
if you were by it." In still another place, in speaking of the poor suf-
ferers made homeless by the fire : "A great blessing it is to them that
it is fair weather for them to keep abroad night and day." He thus

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS. 207

concludes : " Sunday. — So to my office, there to write clown my
journall, and take leave of my brother, whom I send back this after-
noon, though raining ; which it hath not done a good icJvile before."

After reading this, we turn to the account of the burning of Moscow.
But this occurred in September, and the equinoctial gales were blowing
fiercely at the time. If we look into the history of land and sea fights,
we find many striking and apparent confirmations of the truth of the
popular belief. Froude concludes his description of the fight at Flores,
1591, as follows: "Nor did the matter end without a sequel awful as
itself." Sea-battles have been often followed by storms, and without
a miracle ; but with a miracle, as the Spaniards and the English
alike believed, or without one, as we moderns would prefer believing.
"There ensued on this action a tempest so terrible as was never seen
or heard the like before." The human mind is undoubtedly prone to
connect great calamities together, and to believe that the one follow-
ing depended in some mysterious way upon the one preceding.

We turn now to the great fire at Chicago. It was telegraphed to
London, England, that " this fire was chiefly checked on the third or
fourth day by the heavy and continuous down-pour of rain, which, it is
conjectured, was partly due to the great atmospheric disturbances
which such an extensive fire would cause, especially when we are told
that the season just previous to the outbreak of the fire had been par-
ticularly dry." In an article published in the " Journal of the Franklin
Institute," July, 1872, by Prof. I. A. Lapham, assistant to the Chief-
Signal Officer II. S. A., entitled "The Great Fires of 1871 in the North-
west," we find the following in regard to the burning of Chicago :
" During all this time — twenty-four hours of continuous conflagration
upon the largest scale — no rain was seen to fall, nor did any rain fall
until four o'clock the next morning ; and this was not a very consider-
able ' down-pour,' but only a gentle rain, that extended over a large dis-
trict of country, differing in no respect from the usual rains. The
quantity, as reported by meteorological observers at various points,
was only a few hundredths of an inch. It was not until four days
afterward that any thing like a heavy rain occurred. It is therefore
quite certain that this case cannot be referred to as an example of the
production of rain by a great fire. Must we therefore conclude," says
Prof. Lapham, "that fires do not produce rain, and that Prof. Espy was
mistaken in his theory on that subject ? By consulting his reports
(Fourth Report, 1857, p. 29), it will be found that he only claimed that
fires would produce rain under favorable circumstances of high dew-
point, and a calm atmosphere. Both of these important conditions
were wanting at Chicago, where the air was almost entirely destitute
of moisture, and the wind was blowing a gale. To produce rain, the
air must ascend until it becomes cool enough to condense the moisture,
which then falls in the form of rain. But here the heated air could
not ascend very far, being forced off in nearly an horizontal direction

208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by the great power of the wind. The case therefore neither confirms nor
disproves the Espian theory, and we may still believe the well-authen-
ticated cases where, under favorable circumstances of very moist air
and absence of wind, rain has been produced by large fires." Prof.
Lapham also remarks, " The telegraph-wires indicated no unusual dis-
turbance of the electrical condition of the atmosphere." Upon reading
this last remark, the question occurs to us, Can there not be a change
in the electrical state of the atmosphere which, although too small to
manifest itself upon telegraph-wires, may occasion storms ?

Some experiments made by the writer in the physical laboratory of
Harvard College, on the influence of flames upon the electrical state of
the air, may throw some light upon this subject. Two pieces of ap-
paratus were used, one of them " the new quadrant electrometer " of
Sir William Thomson, and the other a " water-dropper," also an in-
vention of that distinguished philosopher. The electrometer is a Aery
complicated piece of apparatus. Let me describe it in as clear a man-
ner as possible. I do not know that I shall succeed in conveying to the
uninitiated any idea of that instrument, for it has many parts. I shall
endeavor merely to explain its principles roughly. Conceive of a light
aluminum needle, suspended by two single cocoon threads in the centre
of a glass jar, which is filled to nearly one-sixth of its capacity with
strong sulphuric acid. A very fine platinum thread drops from the
aluminum needle and dips in the acid. Let us see what we have now.
An aluminum needle suspended in mid-air by two filaments of silk
very near each other, and so fine that they can hardly be perceived by
the naked eye. Further, this needle has an extremely fine metallic
wire running down from it and terminating in a little weight, also of
the metal platinum, which is immersed in the sulphuric acid. Thus we
see that the needle is very free to swing in a horizontal plane, and it
will be readily perceived that, if there were but one filament of silk
supporting it, it might swing round a complete circumference, or in-
deed make many revolutions under the influence of a strong repellant
or attractive force ; the two filaments by their torsion allow the needle
to swing only to a certain distance, and compel it to return to its
original position when the force is removed. One can readily conceive
of this by suspending a bar in an horizontal position by two vertical
ropes, and then endeavoring to turn it in an horizontal plane.

Let us now charge the aluminum needle with positive electricity.
To do this, we shall conduct into the sulphuric acid by means of a
metallic wire a slight positive charge, and the acid, being a good con-
ductor, will convey this charge by the extremely fine metallic wire to
the aluminum needle suspended above the acid in mid-air. Now, if
we present a substance charged with negative electricity to the needle,
it will, as is well known, be speedily attracted ; and if the substance
presented has a positive charge it will be repelled : the unlike charges
attracting and the like repelling each other. Thus, we see that we

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS. 209

have a very delicate test for the character of the electricity in the body
which we bring into the neighborhood of the needle. But, the needle
being only about two inches in length, slight movements in it can
hardly be detected. How is this to be remedied*? We are going to
deal with delicate impulses, and it is necessary to have some means of
observing them. Standing at this window, through which the sun
sti*eams brightly, with a little mirror, we can, as any school-boy knows,
throw the image of the sun in almost any direction that we. please.
Now it rests upon the brick wall across the street, a hundred feet or
more distant from us. Let us turn the glass slightly : see how small a
movement suffices to make the sun's imao-e on the wall dart over at least
twenty feet ! Why can we not attach a little mirror, which shall not
weigh more than a feather, just above our needle, and let it reflect, in-
stead of the sun, a little point of light from a kerosene-lamp upon yonder
wall which is four feet from it ? We have done so. We allow the light
of the lamp to stream through a small opening in a screen of blackened
paper, and to fall upon the mirror. Upon presenting this metallic
plate, which has been charged with positive electricity, the spot of light
darts along the scale pasted on the wall ; it has gone over nearly six
inches of the scale, while the motion of the needle and the mirror was
hardly perceptible. We have now an extremely delicate test for the
presence of electricity — so delicate that even the small charge ever
present in our bodies is sufficient when we approach the instrument
to make the spot of light dart to and fro. It is only necessary now to
have some convenient means of presenting the body to be examined
to the needle ; for it will be seen that all movements of the air in its
neighborhood must be avoided. To accomplish this end, we surround
the needle with four plates of brass, which are carefully separated from
the needle. They are in the form of sectors of a circle and lie in an
horizontal plane, the suspension fibres of the needle going through a
round hole in the centre of the circle of which the sectors form a part.
These sectors are separated from each other at first ; the opposite pairs
can, however, be connected at will. It is not necessary to dwell upon
their peculiar construction : their object is to prevent the charge, led
to them by these copper wires, running to any part of the room, and
thereby to influence the needle. It will be seen that this instrument,,
of which we have explained only the principal features, is wonderfully
delicate, and far superior to the old electrometers which showed elec-
trical attraction and repulsion by the divergence of two suspended
gold leaves.

It remains now to describe the " water-dropper." This consists
merely of a tin vessel carefully insulated at the base, with a long glass
tube projecting from an orifice near the bottom. The water runs
through this tube and issues in a fine stream from its end, breaking
into drops about fourteen inches below it. A collecting-plate connected
with one of the brass plates which we have described in the electrom-

TOL. II. — 14

zio THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eter stands under this stream of water. Now the drops of water in
their fall upon the plate remove by their impact the charge which the
plate has by itself — for all bodies have a greater or less electrical con-
dition, and the piaffe then takes the electrical condition of the air in
which it is immersed.

Let us place our water-dropper on the window-sill with its tube
projecting into the open air ; and, having placed the collecting-plate
so that the drops of water may strike upon it, let us notice our little
spot of light. It is a clear day in early summer; there are no clouds
to be seen, save a rift away on the horizon in the west. The spot
of light moves gradually over the scale, indicating that there is a slight
positive charge of electricity in the atmosphere. Now it is stationary,
and we are about to record the reading of the scale, when the spot
of light gives a quick jump and then returns to nearly its original posi-
tion. Perhaps some movement of ours has deranged the instrument.
We look at it carefully, and return to our position of observation.
A low rumble, as if of distant thunder, is heard. We do not mind this
at first ; presently the spot of light darts again along the scale, and
again returns to its original position. We stand in silence, waiting
for further developments. Now, we hear again a rumble, and a low
muttering, as if of thunder in the west. Can this movement of the
spot of light have any connection with the distant lightning ? At
least five minutes must have elapsed between the time of the move-
ment of the spot of light and the moment when the thunder was heard.
Again the spot moves, again follows a low peal of thunder ; again and
again the same phenomenon is observed. There can be no doubt of
it: the electrical discharges of the approaching storm, yet miles away,
■are registered by this little instrument in our laboratory. Now the
storm approaches nearer. We hear the wind in the trees ; a few drops
fall upon the tinned roof; the lightning darts hither and thither, and
the spot of light leaps responsively to it.

Such, then, is the delicacy of our instrument. By allowing the spot
of light to fall upon sensitive paper, which moves along by clock-work,
we shall have all of its motions recorded by photography. This
registration has been accomplished by Sir William Thomson, to whom
we owe so many beautiful electrical instruments. It would be well
if our Signal Service should make contemporaneous observations in
different parts of the country by means of these instruments. Such
observations could not fail to throw light upon the connection of
electrical storms with rain-storms, and extend our knowledge of
meteorology.

Let us now, having proved our instruments, approach the question
<of the influence of flames upon the electrical state of the atmosphere.
Our observations must be made in the laboratory, and are necessarily
of a somewhat general character from the nature of the subject. It is
a cold, clear day in early winter, with the wind blowing freshly from

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS. 211

the northwest. "We know by various indications that the air is highly
electrified. The wind blows too freshly to place our water-dropper
out-of-doors ; accordingly, it is placed upon a table in the laboratory,
and we notice the indication of the instrument. The air is indeed
highly charged — the spot of light is thrown to a greater distance upon
the scale than we have often noticed. Let us record the reading ; it is
as much as the positive pole of twelve Daniell cells gives. Now,
lighting our Bunsen gas-burner, and placing it near our water-dropper,
let us observe the spot of light ; it does not change its position mate-
rially at first.

Now, after the lapse of a few minutes, it falls to a lower position
upon the scale, now it goes down to zero. Now it mounts again, but
in a contrary direction to its first indication, showing a slight nega-
tive charge in the air, which before was strongly charged positively.
Can this be due to the presence of the flame ? And, if it is due to the
flame, are not great fires capable of influencing the electrical state of
the atmosphere, to a greater or less extent ? Such are the questions
which force themselves upon us. We must, in the first place, examine
our flame. Soldering a platinum wire to the copper connecting wire,
and dispensing with the water-dropper, we examine the outer and
inner cone of the flame. At all points in the luminous portion of the
flame an indication of negative electricity is obtained ; at all points in
the immediate neighborhood of the flame, but exterior to it, there are
signs of a positive charge in the heated air. The inner cone of partly-
consumed gas is neutral, or slightly negative.

The flame, therefore, is negative, and it tends by its presence to
reduce the positive charge of electricity which generally characterizes
the air of fine weather to zero, or to change it to a feebly negative-
charge. We learn from various writers upon meteorology that the
normal electricity of the atmosphere is positive. Herschel in his
work on Meteorology says, p. 125 : " Out of 10,500 observations made
at the Kew Observatory in 1845-47, 10,176 showed positive, and only
364 negative electricity — the latter being almost always accompanied
with heavy rain." Sir William Thomson, in the proceedings of the
Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, March, 1862, relates
some experiments which tend to show that clearing-up weather is
preceded, and in many cases foretold, by a change in the atmosphere
from a negative to a positive charge of electricity.

We can, therefore, conclude with some probability of truth that
great fires, by changing the electrical state of the atmosphere, have an
influence upon the production of rain. The state of our knowledge,
however, in regard to the part that electricity plays in atmospheric
changes, is very meagre. The question of the truth of the popular
belief that great fires are followed by rain still remains unanswered ;
and we can only hope that we have thrown a little more light upon it
by our research.

212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S TOPICS.

THAT the expectation of pleasure and profit from the course of
lectures which Prof. Tyndall has prepared for delivery in this
country is not likely to he disappointed, will apj:>ear from the follow-
ing careful analysis of his theme, Light and Heat, as he has arranged
it for six nights :

He hegins in a prefatory way, and dwells upon the introduction of
the experimental method into Science — speaks of the ardor of inves-
tigators and of their rewards. He seeks to show that most of them
wrought for the sake of knowledge, and with no practical end in view,
though their discoveries travelled to the most astonishing practical ap-
plications. After dwelling on the importance of original inquiry, he
takes up the real subject of the lectures. The instruments are ex-
plained, and the principles upon which they depend. He points out
the proximate cause and action of the electric light which is to he used
in the illustrations. The laws of reflection are demonstrated, and one
or two striking practical applications adduced. Then he goes on to
refraction. These elementary subjects are really touched upon in or-
der to enable him, in a subsequent lecture, to reveal the workings of
Newton's mind when he theorized upon the subject of light. Refrac-
tion is followed by an inquiry into the constitution of light, its analysis
and synthesis. This occupies the first lecture.

In the second lecture the demonstrated constitution of light is ap-
plied to the doctrine of colors. He goes very thoroughly and plainly
into this matter, making perfectly evident the causes on which ordinary
colors depend ; winding up by the experimental proof that yellow and
blue light, when mixed together, produce ichite and not green. Hav-
ing exhausted the ordinary spectrum, he describes the difference be-
tween the emissions from solids and their vapors. Metallic vapors are
produced and shown with their characteristic colors. Their light is
then analyzed, and it is shown to be distinctive of the substance from
which it comes. Spectrum analysis is dwelt upon, and copiously illus-
trated.

In his third lecture, Tyndall deals with solar light, dwelling upon
the distinction between the bright lines of the metallic vapors, and the
dark lines of Frauenhofer. The reciprocity of radiation and absorption
is demonstrated, and it is shown experimentally that an incandescent
vapor absorbs the light which it emits. This leads up to the theory
of the physical constitution of the sun. Then he goes on to show the
extension of the spectrum beyond its visible range, performing with
quartz prisms and lenses Stokes's experiments on Fluorescence, and the
rendering visible of invisible rays. Then the other side of the spec-
trum is handled ; its extension as heat beyond the limits of light is

PROFESSOR TTNDALVS TOPICS. 213

demonstrated. Numerous experiments on the total heating power of
the rays from the electric light are made ; fusion and combustion "be-
ing thus effected. Here he hopes to perform the famous Florentine
experiment of the ignition of a diamond in oxygen, using, however, a
purely terrestrial source of radiant heat. He also hopes to produce
combustion by rays concentrated by a lens of ice. The heat-rays are
then filtered from the light-rays, and it is shown that all the foregoing
effects are produced by rays totally beyond the range of vision ; fu-
sion, combustion, and explosion, being produced at foci perfectly dark,
and, as far as the air is concerned, pei-fectly cold. It is also proved
that these dark rays perform the work of evaporation in the tropical
ocean, and the work of fusion upon the Alpine ice and snows. The
rays, moreover, are shown to be competent to raise platinum to a white
heat, so that by its intervention you may extract from the dark rays
all the colors of the spectrum. This brings him to the end of the third
lecture.

In the fourth lecture he shows the irresistible tendency of the hu-
man mind to seek for governing principles which rule facts and correct
them, rendering them, so to say, organic. He dwells upon the exercise
of the theorizing faculty, taking Newton as an example. He tries to
show how naturally his optical theory grew out of his previous knowl-
edge. The doctrine of colors is now extended by the introduction of
the colors of thin plates, of striated surfaces, etc., and he unravels the
subtle additions which Newton made in his theory, in order to fit it to
these new facts. The theory of emission is then contrasted with the
theory of undulation. The latter is rendered familiar to the mind by
preliminary considerations regarding water-waves, and by experiments
regarding sound. He dwells upon the labors of Thomas Young, and
the effect of Brougham's attacks in the Edinburgh Review. This will
be his most difficult lecture, but he has wrought hard to make it clear,
and it is essential to the comprehension of the subsequent ones.

In the fifth lecture Tyndall enters upon the phenomenon of crystal-
lization, and seeks to give an intelligible explanation of crystalline
architecture. The process of crystallization is experimentally illus-
trated. This is done with a view to the action of crystals upon light.
In the first experiments he deals with crystals solely with reference to
the polarization of light. This is explained and illustrated by numer-
ous experiments. Double refraction and the state of the two halves
of the divided beam are dwelt upon. Then come the chromatic phe-
nomena of polarized light. Basing himself upon the principles ex-
plained in the fourth lecture, he hopes to make these effects compre-
hensible by all intelligent persons. The effects of mechanical strains
and pressures in producing a quasi crystalline structure are exhibited.
Then the similar phenomena of unannealed glass. He hopes to show
these effects in a very splendid fashion. They will more than fill the
fifth lecture.

2 H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The sixth lecture is devoted to the further illustration of the action
of crystals upon light ; uniaxal and biaxal crystals, circular polariza-
tion, and the chromatic effects produced by rock-crystals ; the confer-
ring of double refractory power by sonorous vibrations ; and the mag-
netization of light. Although the syllabus is short, it covers a good
deal.

We have sketched the course of six lectures. The materials
touched upon are ample to fill the six to overflowing, allowing an hour
and a half for each lecture. A seventh very striking lecture might be
given, he says, on the identity of light and heat — every experiment
made in the optical lecture being shown capable of repetition with pure
lightless radiant heat, the thermo-electric pile and galvanometer be-
ing substituted for the eye. He has made an arrangement for the pro-
jection of the galvometer-dial upon a screen, which renders it visible
to any number of people.

As he worked at the subject, the desire grew upon him to do it
more and more thoroughly, and to spare no expense as regards appa-
ratus. He has accordingly purchased between three and four hundred
pounds sterling worth of new instruments ; and has gone oyer all the
experiments, so as to render every thing sure, and in a manner worthy
of the subject and of the occasion. — United States Railroad and Min-
ing Register.

•♦»»•

' THE COCOA-NUT PALM, AND ITS USES.

By C. E. LOW.

C" CASTING along Ceylon and the Malabar littoral, the voyager
will notice the tall palm-trees, which appear as if growing in
the sea, and will learn, on inquiry, that they are of the variety Cocos
nucifera, or the loving cocoa-nut tree.

Though the sight of these never-ending groves may at length pall
upon the eye of the traveller, yet he will do wisely if at eventide, while
the ship is becalmed, he should take the "jolly" boat and land on the
silent beach. In a few minutes he will stand in a " grove of palms,"
and must be of a somewhat stolid temperament if he does not feel
something like a new sensation, as he looks aloft and listens to the
rustle of the first breath of the sea-breeze, as it gently waves the grace-
ful fronds or leaves overhead. Those who have been in the East will,
as they read these lines, recall the sound, and with it, perhaps, may be
brought to mind many pleasant days and the faces of old friends who
sleep beneath the southern cross. Those who have not strolled under
the welcome shade afforded by the fern-like canopy, will remember
Thomson's lines :

THE COCOA-NUT PALM, AND ITS USES. 215

" Sheltered amid the orchards of the sun,
Where high palmettos lift their graceful shade,
Give me to drain the cocoa's milky howl,
And from the palm to drain its freshing wine.''

There are many varieties of the palm. Among them the Caryota
urens is the most ornamental, with its long, pendulous clusters of dark-
red, succulent, acrid berries. The pith of this tree yields a species of
sago, and the sap is commonly employed in the Deccan as yeast for
raising or fomenting bread. There is also the travellers' palm, or
crab-tree, from which a watery juice is extracted, and which, crowning
the summits of hills, forms a picturesque object on the landscape, with
its broad, fan-shaped leaves. The date-trees of India and Ceylon
neither possess the loftiness nor the beauty of foliage of those growing
in such luxuriance on the banks of the Shatt-al-Arab, in Mesopotamia,
and indeed seldom bear fruit. The areca-palm, which is cultivated in
most parts of India, and is indigenous on the Malabar coast, furnishes
the " betel-nut," which, mixed with " paun," forms a composition which
the Hindoos are in the constant habit of chewing.

There are five well-marked varieties of the cocoa-nut.1 The Tembili,
of which there are different descriptions, is a very well-formed, hand-
some nut, of oval form and bright-orange tint. The Buddhist priests
of Southern India and Ceylon generally contrive to keep a store of the
choicest kinds of the Tembili in their temples as offerings to the passer-
by, who is expected to make a return. The Nawasi is slightly heart-
shaped, of lighter color than the preceding, and bears an edible husk.
On stripping off the outer rind, the inner skin turns to a pale-red color,
and is fit for use. There is a third variety of nut, somewhat small and
round, and in color much resembling the Tembili. Then there is the
common cocoa-nut, so well known to every urchin ; and, lastly, we have
the double (Zadoicea Seychellorum), which, as its name implies, is a
product of the Seychelles, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean.

In old times the most marvellous medicinal virtues were attributed
to nuts of this description, and they were considered unfailing antidotes
to all kinds of poison. As their origin was veiled in obscurity — those
obtained being either caught-up fioatings at sea or on the coasts of
the Maldive Islands, where they were thrown up by the tides and
currents — the most extravagant sums were asked and obtained for
them. Thus it is recorded that the Emperor Rudolph II. offered 4,000
florins for one which chanced to be for sale, but, the bidding being
considered insufficient, the precious nut passed into other hands. It
is even said that a merchant-ship, with her freight and stores complete,
has been bartered in exchange for one.

The natives believed that the trees producing these nuts grew at
the bottom of the sea, and were enchanted palms, which vanished the
instant the adventurous diver attempted to reach them. Death was
1 " The Cocoa-nut Palm," by W. B. Lord, R. A.

216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

awarded to any one who, having found one of these nuts on the shore,
failed to make it over to his sovereign. The kernel was the part sup-
posed to possess miraculous medicinal qualities, and with it were mixed
such anomalous ingredients as pounded antlers of deer, ebony-raspings,
and red-coral dust.

At the present day, when these cocoa-nuts are exported from the
Seychelles Islands, cups made from the shells are mounted by the
wealthy natives of India with gold and precious stones ; the religious
mendicants of Ceylon also set a high value on the shells, and use them
as alms-boxes to attract the contributions of the faithful.

The palm bearing the common cocoa-nut attains, in situations
favorable to its growth, a height of from 60 to 80 feet, but rarely
exceeds a diameter, at the base, of from one to two feet. The rough-
ness of the bark is caused by the progressive falling off of the fronds,
as the tree shoots upward. But this roughness and the crookedness
of the tree (for a straight palm is rare indeed) are compensated by
the beauty of the foliage of the crown. " Here," says Mr. Lord, " the
graceful, fern-like leaves may be seen in every stage of development —
the lower tiers drooping, those above spreading out feather-like, while
the centre stands up plume-like in all its beauty." The nuts grow in
clusters, and the number on one tree varies from 40 to 200 in different
stages of development. The " spathes," which are thrown up among
the young leaves of the cocoa-palm, and on which grow the blossoms,
are often nearly four feet in length and six inches in circumference. In
favorable seasons these spathes or plumes of flowers are shot forth
every four or five weeks, and as the blossoms drop off the young nuts
are formed, affording a store of food and drink all the year round.
When the sap of the palm is sought for the manufacture of toddy, or
some other products, the young fronds, together with the flower-spathe,
are bound together with ligatures, in order to prevent the development
of the blossoms ; a puncture is then made at the foot of the spathe with
a toddy-knife, and numerous taps administered to the part adjoining
the cut, with the handle, to set the sap flowing ; a chatty, or earthen
pot, is then suspended in a suitable position to receive the cool, sweet
juice of the tree.

To ascend the lofty palm various methods are employed, and often
has the writer watched the agile natives swarming up with rapidity
by inserting the great-toe into a series of notches cut into the bark.
Another method is by casting a band round both tree and toddy-
drawer, who then plants the soles of the feet against the trunk, and
literally walks up, " hand over fist." They also traverse the space
between the top of the trees on coir-ropes, thrown across from one to
the other. Early in the morning, before the sun is up, the toddy-
drawer with monkey-like agility ascends the tree, lowers down his
well-filled pot, which is received by a companion, who replaces it by
an empty one. From one to three Quarts is the general result of one

THE COCOA-NUT PALM, AND ITS USES. 217

night's drawing ; but the trees thus treated become1 barren, and yield
no fruit. Immediately after collection the toddy is sweet and deli-
ciously cool, but in the course of a few hours this is changed for an
agreeable acidity. It forms a refreshing drink in this state, but in
twenty-four hours becomes quite sour. Toddy, when fermented, is
made into arrack, a liquor which, being cheap and fiery, is greatly
consumed by the poorer class of Europeans at Bombay, and is the bane
of our soldiers and sailors in the presidency town.

Vinegar is made by allowing the toddy to stand for about a month
in earthen jars fitted with covers. The liquid is then carefully strained,
and replaced in the jars, in which is thrown a little red pepper, a small
piece of the fruit of the gamboge-tree, and a pod of the horseradish,
which in the East attains the dimensions of a tree. In about five
weeks vinegar of a most excellent quality is the result. Not only
spirits and vinegar are made from the juice, but the material known
as jaffery, or native sugar, is produced before fermentation by boiling
the sap to a syrup with quicklime, when it is roughly crystallized.
Large quantities of this are exported, and used for sweetmeats, in the
manufacture of which in great variety the natives of India are con-
summate adepts.

The cocoa-nut is consumed in a greater variety of ways than even
the sap, and not a portion of it, or of the palm on which it grows, is
without its special use. Besides the refreshing drink extracted from
the young undeveloped nut, which is also made into a dye, the pulp
inside the soft crust is considered a delicacy, and is used in the prepara-
tion of various dishes. The kernel, when ripe, is also treated in a
variety of ways for food, and forms an important ingredient of curry.
Cocoa-nut oil is also extracted from the ripe fruit by the natives with
their primitive contrivances, in which bullocks are the motive power.
When under European manipulation, iron machinery driven by steam
expresses about 2^ gallons from 100 nuts. Besides its more practical
and prosaic virtues of supplying food and clothing, the poets of the
East have from time immemorial assigned as one of the attributes of
the cocoa-nut palm-tree that it "loves to "hear the sound of footsteps
and pleasant voices."

In moderately favorable situations, says a writer, this species of
the palm commences bearing fruit at from ten to thirteen years of age,
and remains at full maturity for between sixty and eighty years, pro-
ducing, on an average, about 100 nuts annually. The tree then begins
to deteriorate and fall off in its yield, continuing in this declining con-
dition for about twenty years, when it ceases bearing altogether, and
dies. It is curious that while in this moribund state the famous " por-
cupine-wood " of commerce is obtained from its trunk ; so that even
in death the cocoa-nut palm is man's faithful friend, and ministers to
his wants.

Many are the uses to which the tree is put while in maturity. The

218 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thatch covering the houses is made with the prepared mid-rihs of its
leaves, and secured with cord twisted from the cocoa-fibre, from which
also nets and fishing-lines are made. The plaited strips of the leaf
supply material for baskets in which the freshly-gathered nuts are
stored. Cocoa-cloth is . an article of manufacture. Torches are made
by twisting together a sufficient number of dry leaflets, the end of the
mid-rib serving as the handle ; from these leaflets, when split, mats are
woven. As to the fibrous husk of the nut known as coir, its utility is
without limit. Besides floor-cloths and mats, which are generally
employed in this country for offices, and from their strength of texture
are unrivalled, the coir is manufactured into rope, and is extensively
used on board ship ; and in the " country " trading-ships of India it
entirely supersedes manila and hemp, as being equally strong and
durable, and infinitely cheaper.

Pipes, bottles, and drinking-vessels for native use, oftentimes
polished and handsomely- mounted, are made of cocoa-nuts, from which
the white meat is extracted, without injuring the shell, by pouring out
the milk, filling it with salt, and burying it in the hot sand until the
kernel is decomposed, when it is removed from one of the three holes
in the " monkey's " face. Thus countless are the benefits conferred on
man by the palm, forming, as it does, one of the most useful of all the
gifts of Providence. The South-Sea Islanders, we are informed by
those who have been among them, make books out of the leaf-strips
similar to the papyrus of the ancient Egyptians. Canoes are built of
the pliable planks, which, when grooved and bored, are stitched to-
gether with coir-twine, are propelled by cocoa-wood paddles, masted
with a slender young palm, and rigged with coir-cordage, which car-
ries a mat-sail ; thus, ready for sea, freighted with a cargo of nuts, oil,
lamp-black, vinegar, sugar, and arrack (all the produce of the palm),
and finally stored with nut-food for the voyage, the sole remaining
requisite to make a successful commercial venture, but one that man
cannot command, is a propitious breeze. — Food Journal.

■■♦» »

HUMANITY AND INSANITY.

FROM THE FRENCH OF MAXIME DU CAMP.

IN studying the history of insanity, we are surprised to find that
the same mild treatment now universally adopted was very clearly
prescribed by the chief professors of medical science in the beginning
of our era. Thus, Aretaeus the Cappadocian recommends the use only
of the supplest cords, to restrain violent maniacs, " for," says he, " to
resort to any cruel measures of restraint will increase rather than
allay the over-excitement." Galen was the first to maintain that all

HUMANITY AND INSANITY

219

disorders of the mental faculties are produced by a lesion of the or-
gans of thought, which are situate in the brain. Yet we are not to
imagine that in Galen's day the art of healing was faultless ; indeed,
so far is this from being the case, that we find his contemporaries
making large use of philters, charms, and magical formulae. In the
seventh century Paulus of iEgina reasserted the principles maintained
by Galen and by Areta3us ; but with him the line of rational medical
tradition comes to a close, and henceforth, for centuries, it would seem
as if the doctors shared in the disorder which they assumed to cure.
The madman was now no longer regarded as a sick patient, nor even
as a human being. He was treated as a wild-beast — half brute, half
demon ; soon his disorder was called " satanic possession," and he him-
self burned at the stake.

The middle ages were a period of upheaval, when every thing was
swallowed up in the bottomless abyss of scholasticism and demon-
ology, and medicine became a routine of superstitious practices.1
Such and such a plant was considered beneficial, if gathered at the
new moon; but deadly poison, if at the moon's wane. Science, art,
and literature, went down in the storm, and wars, battles, pestilence,
and famine, were the order of the day. As God was invoked in vain,
men turned to Satan. The belief in the devil was universal, and the
world became a hell. Now both science and experience show tl at
the prevailing notions of a given period are very rapidly taken up by
the insane, and by them distorted into grotesque shapes, with a uni-
formity resembling the symptoms of epidemic disorders. This phe-
nomenon is of daily occurrence. Thus, accordingly as France is ruled
by a king, an emperor, or a president, those insane persons who im-
agine themselves to be somebody, claim the rank of president, emper-
or, or king, as the case may be. Just now, respectable women patients
at the Salpetriere, Ste.-Anne, Vaucluse, and Ville-FJvard asylums sol-
emnly assure the physicians in charge that they are p&troleuses /
while men of unquestionable patriotism will tell you that they guided
the Prussians up the heights of Sedan. The phenomenon therefore
of diabolic possession in the middle ages is perfectly natural. The
calamities attendant on continual wars had so enervated the people,
that they were fit subjects for all manner of mental disorder ; and
this, taking form from the prevailing ideas of the times, found expres-
sion in demoniacal possession.

1 Borden, who lived in the seventeenth century, and was a man of keen intelligence,
tells us of a monk he knew, who practised bloodletting to an unlimited extent. After
three bleedings, he would add a fourth, for the reason that there are four seasons, four
quarters of the globe, and four cardinal points. After the fourth he took a fifth, because
there are five fingers on the hand. To the fifth he would add a sixth, for did not God
create the world in six days ? But the number must be made seven, there being seven
days in the week, and seven sages of Greece. An eighth bleeding had to follow, eight
being a round number ; and a niuth, because numero Deus impare gaudet — God loves odd
numbers.

zzo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

During the middle ages the devil was everywhere — ubique dwrnon.
There was one religious sect whose adepts were ever spitting, hawking,
and blowing the nose, with a view to expel the devils they had swal-
lowed. A trace of this still remains in some localities, where one who
sneezes is saluted with " God bless you ! " Such beliefs were universal.
Thus a certain prior of a convent had around him constantly a guard
of two hundred men, who hewed the air with their swords, so as to
cut to pieces the demons who were assailing him. Demons were even
cited to appear before ecclesiastical tribunals. — A curious and a pitiful
epoch, when the possessed and their exorcists were madmen alike !

This view of insanity was favored by the philosophical, or rather
the theological ideas of the time. According to these, man was of a
twofold nature. On the one hand was the flesh, mere matter ; on the
other, the soul, a direct emanation from Deity, passing through this
vale of tears, on its way to the ineffable glory of heaven. The body
is but the soul's dwelling-place — a temple or a den, accordingly as its
invisible inhabitant is the servant of God or of Satan. Therefore,
when the soul is diseased, the treatment must regard the soul alone,
which is governed by laws of its own, and is merely in juxtaposition
with the body for a moment. No doubt the ideal of purity thus held
up was sublime ; yet the result of it was the upsetting of the body's
equilibrium ; and this reacted on the mind. But this theory led to
still more serious consequences ; for it was admitted into science, and
checked the progress of the medical art. When in 1828 Broussais
attacked it, he was accused of blasphemy, and of " sapping the foun-
dations " of society. Now, however, we know that the faculties of
the mind are not independent of the conditions of the body. Take a
slight dose of sulphate of quinine, and you lose, for the time being,
the faculty of recollection; swallow a little hashish, and you are
transiently insane.

In 1453 Edelin, a priest and doctor of the Sorbonne, preached
against the cruelty of putting to death poor creatures who were the
dupes of their own diseased imaginations. On being cited to defend
himself before a tribunal, he became suddenly insane, and was im-
mured for life, that is, shut up between four walls, without food, drink,
or light. In the sixteenth century Europe literally blazed with the
fires lighted to punish witches and sorcerers, who were simply mad-
men. Luther had a visit from the devil. Pico della Mirandola tells
of Savonarola's visions, and Melanchthon holds converse with spirits.
Even Ambroise Pare, the Hippocrates of modern times, believed in
possession, in compacts with the devil, and the like. The same is to
be said of Fernel, famous for his calculation of the earth's dimensions,
and of Bodin, the great jurisconsult. These great men, with all their
sagacity, with all their learning, would seem never to have heard of
the monk Bacon's dictum : " We cannot determine by speculation or by
imagination what Nature will do, or what endure ; all that must be

HUMANITY AND INSANITY. 221

made out by experiment." When illustrious savants like these were
firm believers in deinonism, it need not cause us any surprise to see eight
hundred sorcerers burnt at the stake within sixteen years in Lorraine
alone, or five hundred at Geneva in three months.

The first effective blow was aimed at this superstition by Wier, a
physician of Cleves, who was the true founder of mental pathology.
Knowing well the temper of his time, he moved with extreme cau-
tion. He classes demons in sundry categories, and reckons their num-
ber by millions. Having thus given an exhibition of his orthodoxy,
he next throws all the blame on the devil. It is he, and not the witch
or the sorcerer, that is to be punished. As possession is simply a form
of disease, the possessed should rather be treated medically than
burned at the stake. Wier brings facts to show that the phenomena
of possession are all explainable without supposing any diabolic inter-
ference. His was the period of the invention of printing, of the dis-
covery of America, of the Protestant Reformation — the age of Galileo
and of Kepler. It might have been supposed that the sixteenth cen-
tury would have seen the end of demonism in Europe. But no ; the
princesses of the house of Medici brought in their train to France a
horde of astrologers, necromancers, disciples of Locusta, fortune-tell-
ers, etc. Three famous cases of possession marked the beginning of
the seventeenth century : that at Labourd in 1609 ; that of the Ursu-
lines at Aix in 1611 ; and of the Ursulines at Loudun, from 1632 to
1639.

The phenomenon of insensibility to pain is one of not very rare
occurrence. This insensibility may be confined to a single member, or
some particular locality, or it may extend to the whole body. During
the middle ages all sorcerers were supposed to bear the mark of the
devil, viz., the spot touched by the fiend when taking possession of
his subject. This spot was insensible to pain, and was discovered by
prodding the unfortunate culprit with a long needle, here and there, all
over the body until it was found.

So general was the prevalence, among the inmates of convents, of
a peculiar form of hysteria, that it got the name of possession des
nonnains {ixonnain, nun). Its pathology is clear: melancholia at-
tended by hallucinations, illusions of the sense of touch, and an irre-
sistible desire of suicide. Take the remarkable case of the nuns of
Saint-Louis de Louviers (1642), which engaged the attention of the
Parliament of Rouen. The principal heroine of this sad history was
Madeline Bavent, who, on being shut up in a dungeon, spent four
hours in endeavoring to put an end to her life, by driving a large nail
into her bowels, and turning it round and round. She was clearly the
subject of hystero-melancholia, but her judges decided that she was
possessed of a devil. But at length the belief in demonism was forced
to give way before the gradual advance of science, and in 1672 Col-
bert induced Louis XIY. to sign the famous ordinance forbidding the

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Parliament any longer to prosecute sorcerers. But this was not until
over twenty thousand individuals had perished at the stake simply for
having been insane.

> Thus ended what we may call the thaumaturgic era of insanity,
and now follows the era of repression. There were as yet no hospi-
tals to receive the insane, who were confined in convents or in prisons,
according to the violence of their disorder. They were fettered, beat-
en, suffered to wallow in straw, exhibited to sight-seers, to gratify idle
curiosity, or to afford amusement. This treatment was far from being
such as medical science requires ; but, still, it at least was a great im-
provement on the stake, and was less calculated than the exorcisms of
the previous period to over-excite the patient. A last effort was made
by the clergy and the Parliaments in 1713 to recover the powers of
which they had been deprived by the ordinance of Louis XIV., but
they were unsuccessful ; and, consequently, when the Jansenist miracles
and diableries became the talk of Paris, the government was content
with simple measures of police repression. Finally, in 1768, the Par-
liaments declared that possession is a disease. Cagliostro was afforded
every facility for summoning up the devil and putting h'im en rapport
with the Cardinal Rohan ; and Mesmer might now assemble at his
famous banquet all the nervous subjects in Paris, without any hin-
drance on the part of king, clergy, or police.

Science meanwhile was not idle. While justice was growing more
lenient toward the insane, the study of the principles to be applied in
the treatment of insanity engaged the earnest attention of all the great
physicians of Switzerland, England, Holland, Germany, Italy, and
France, and the various phenomena of -mental pathology were carefully
described by Plater, Willis, Boerhaave, Fleming, Fracassini, Morgagni,
Boissier de Sauvages, Lieutard, Lorry, and others. As regards the
question of treatment, however, these learned writers nearly all fell
into error, because they started out with false premises. In their time
the famous theory of hurnorism held undivided sway, and according
to this all disease came from the humors, the blood, lymph, bile, etc. ;
and a person was diseased to a greater or less degree, according to
the higher or lower degree of crudity or of coction in which his
humors were found. Hence there were two universal remedies,
which were expected to answer every malady : purging and blood-
letting. Violent insanity had its seat in the blood ; melancholy
madness, in the bile ; exalted mania, in the spleen. Baglivi, who
died in 1707, introduced into medicine the doctrine of solidism,
which attributes the cause of disease to the solid parts of the body.
Baglivi's writings were translated into French by Pinel, who was him-
self a reformer in the best sense of that word, and who introduced the
mild treatment of the insane in modern times. In 1791 he published
his "Medico-philosophical Treatise on Insanity," and 1792 was ap-
pointed physician-in-chief of the Bicetre Asylum.

HUMANITY AND INSANITY. 223

We can imagine what Bicetre must have been when Pinel took
charge — a jail, house of correction, penitentiary, and hospital, all in one ;
and its inmates — assassins, debauchees, sick patients, paupers, idiots —
lived in fearful promiscuousness ; it was, in fact, a moral cess-pool. The
insane, as being no better than wild-beasts, were kept separate, shut up in
pens six feet square, to which light and air were admitted only through
a small opening in the door. There was a bed of loose straw, renewed
every month. The patient had a chain around the waist, besides be-
ing manacled and fettered. He received neither care nor medical
treatment, but was left to exhaust himself in his paroxysms, affording
amusement to curious visitors, who nocked to witness the strange
antics of the madmen. Pinel had the invaluable assistance, in carry-
ing out his reforms, of a humble hospital attendant, who had himself
by practical experience arrived at Pinel's own conclusions years before.
" When the insane patients become too violent, what do you do ? "
asked Pinel. " I take off their chains, they then become quiet." Pinel
ordered the irons to be struck offf all the patients. Among them was
an old soldier of the guards, a man of herculean strength, and a violent
lunatic. The physician had his irons taken off, and then bade him re-
move the chains off all the other patients. The old soldier's gratitude
was such that he remained for the rest of his life attached to the
personal service of Pinel. As Colbert, in persuading Louis XIV. to
publish his famous ordinance, had brought. the thaumaturgic ' era to a
clese, so Pinel put an end to the era of repression. After a protracted
contest, victory declared in favor of common-sense and humanity.
Esquirol followed after Pinel, and showed that the physician who would
treat mental disorders, must study the various symptoms ; and this
he can do only by daily contact with the insane. Ferrus discovered
the importance of giving to the insane employment of some kind, as a
means of restoring them to a healthy condition of mind. While thus,
in France, science was engaged in establishing the moraj bases of the
disease, Roller was founding a model establishment in Germany, on
the principle of surrounding the patient with all those influences which .
could bring his thoughts back into their normal courses. His long ex-
perience went to show the advantage of employing opium and its de-
rivatives in the treatment of mental disorders. These are the founders
of the science of Mental Alienation : others have developed their prem-
ises and added to their teachings, but to Pinel, Esquirol, Ferrus, and
Roller, the human race owes a debt of everlasting gratitude for having
first opened the way. — Abridged from the Revue des Deux Mondes.

1 Thaumaturgic, working miracles, exciting wonder.

224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

DRIFTING OF THE STARS.

By kichaed a. pkoctor, b. a.,

HON. SECRETARY OF THE EOTAL ASTKONOMICAL SOCIETY.

FROM time to time, during the last three years, I have brought
before the readers of this magazine the various arguments and
considerations on which I have based certain new views respecting the
constitution of the sidereal universe. In so doing I have had occasion
to deal chiefly with facts already known, though not hitherto viewed
in that particular light in which I sought to place them. Indeed, it is
an essential part of my general argument that much that is contained
in observations already made has been escaping us. In the eagerness
of astronomers to ascertain new facts, they have been neglecting the
interpretation of facts already ascertained.

But I have long felt that it would greatly tend to advance the new
views which I have advocated, if some process of research, pursued by
one of those astronomers of our day who possess the requisite means
and leisure for prolonged inquiries, should confirm in a clear and deci-
sive way some definite point of my new theories. Thus, if new obser-
vational evidence should be found in favor of my theory that the nebu-
las are not external to our galaxy, or if new evidence should be ob-.
tained to show that the stars are aggregated in certain regions within
our system and segregated from others ; or, again, if my theory of
star-drift should be confirmed by new and striking evidence, I felt that
a greater measure of confidence in my analysis of former evidence
would thenceforward be accorded. I had no occasion, indeed, to com-
plain of cavil or opposition ; in fact, a degree of attention had been
given to the new opinions I advocated which was certainly much
greater than I had looked for. But there must always be such an
inertia in the general weight of opinion in favor of accepted views,
that only a steady reiteration of reasoning during a long period, or else
some striking and impressive discovery, can cause the weight of opin-
ion to tend in the contrary direction.

I cannot but regard myself as most fortunate in finding the first
confirmation of my views (1) coming from one of the most eminent
astronomers and physicists of the day, (2) bearing upon one of the
most definite and positive of my vaticinations, and (3) relating to one
of the most interesting subjects in the whole range of recent astro-
nomical research.

It will be in the remembrance of many readers of this magazine
that, nearly four years ago, Dr. Huggins succeeded in showing that
the bright star Sirius is travelling at an enormously rapid rate away
from us. In other words, besides that rapid thwart-motion which is
shifting the place of this star upon the heavens, the star has a rapid

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 225

motion of recession. In the paper called " Are there any Fixed Stars ? "
in the Popular Science Review for October, 1868, the nature of the
means by which this discovery was effected was fully described and
explained. It may be permitted to me to mention, also, that while Dr.
Huggins's researches were still unannounced (or rather incomplete) I
was so far fortunate as to indicate the possibility of employing the
very method of research which Dr. Huggins was then engaged (un-
known to me) in applying to Sirius. I propose here briefly to describe
and explain the method, referring the reader, who desires fuller infor-
mation on these preliminary points, to the paper of October, 1868, men-
tioned above. I am the more desirous of doing this, because I find
the principle of the method not readily grasped, and that I conceive
the explanation I am about to offer may remove certain difficulties not
uncommonly experienced.

Conceive that a person, standing on the edge of a steadily-flowing
stream, throws corks into it at regular intervals — say one cork per
second. These would float down the stream, remaining always sepa-
rated by a constant distance. Thus, if the stream were flowing three
feet per second, the corks would be a yard apart (supposing, for con-
venience of illustration, that each cork was thrown with exactly the
same force and in exactly the same direction). Now, if a person a
mile or so down the stream saw these corks thus floating past, he
could infer that they had been thrown in at regular intervals ; and,
moreover, if he knew the rate of the stream, and that the corks were
thrown in by a person standing at the river's edge, he would know
that the interval between the throwing of successive corks was one
second. But, vice versa, if he knew the rate of the stream, and that
the corks were thrown in at intervals of one second, he could infer that
the person throwing them was standing still. For let us consider
what would happen, if the cork-thrower sauntered up-stream or down-
stream while throwing corks at intervals of one second. Suppose he
moved up-stream at the rate of a foot per second ; then, when he has
thrown one cork, he moves a foot up-stream before he throws the
next ; and the first cork has floated three feet down-stream ; hence the
second cork falls four feet behind the first. Thus the common distance
between the corks is now four feet instead of three feet. Next, sup-
pose he saunters down-stream at the rate of a foot per second ; then,
when he has thrown one cork, he moves a foot down-stream before he
throws the next ; and the first cork has floated three feet down-stream ;
hence the second cork falls only two feet behind the first. Thus the
common distance between the corks is now two feet instead of three
feet. It is clear, then, that the person standing a mile or so down-
stream, if he knows that the stream is flowing three feet per second,
and that his friend up-stream is throwing one cork in per second, can
be quite sure that his friend is standing still if the corks come past
with a common interval of three feet between them. Moreover, he

VOL. II. — 15

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

can be equally sure that his friend is sauntering up-stream, if the corks
come past with a common interval exceeding three feet; and that he
is sauntering down-stream, if the common interval is less than three
feet. And, if, by some process of measuring, he can find out exactly
how much greater or how much less than three feet the interval is, he
can tell exactly how fast his friend is sauntering up-stream or down-
stream. It would not matter how far down-stream the observer might
be, so long as the stream's rate of flow remained unchanged ; nor, in-
deed, would it matter, even though the stream flowed at a different
rate past the observer than past the cork-thrower, so long as neither
of these two rates was liable to alteration.

Now, we may compare the emission of light-waves by a luminous
object to the throwing of corks in our illustrative case. The rate of
flow for light-waves is indeed infinitely faster than that of any river,
being no less than 185,000 miles per second. The successive light-
waves are set in motion at infinitely shorter time-intervals, since for ex-
treme red light there are no less than 458,000,000,000,000 undulations
per second, and for extreme violet no less than 727,000,000,000,000 ;
but these specific differences do not affect the exactness of the illus-
tration. It is obvious that all that is necessary to make the par-
allel complete is that the flow of light-waves shall reach the observer
at a constant rate (which is the actual case), and that he shall know,
in the case of any particular and distinguishable kind of light, what
is the rate at which the wave-action is successively excited, and be
able to compare with this known rate the rate at which they succes-
sively reach him. If they come in quicker succession than from a lu-
minous body at rest, he will know that the source of light is approach-
ing, as certainly as our observer down-stream would know that his
friend was sauntering toward him if the corks came two feet apart in-
stead of three feet. If, on the contrary, the light-waves of a particu-
lar kind come in slower succession than from a body at rest, the ob-
server will know that the source of light is receding, precisely as the
river-side observer would know that his friend was travelling away
from him if the corks came past him four feet apart instead of three.

Now, the stellar spectroscopist can distinguish, among the light-
waves of varied length which reach him, those which have a particular
normal length. He analyzes star-light with his spectroscope, and gets
from it a rainbow-tinted streak crossed by dark lines. These dark
lines belong to definite parts of the spectrum ; that is, to such and
such parts of its red, or orange, or yellow, or green, or blue, or indigo,
or violet portion. Thus they correspond to light having a particular
wave-length. And many of these lines in stellar spectra are identifi-
able with the lines due to known elements. For instance, in the spec-
trum of Sirius there are four strong dark lines corresponding to the
known bright lines of the spectrum of hydrogen. Thus the wave-
length corresponding to any one of these dark lines is perfectly well

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 227

known to the spectroscopist from what he has already learned by ex-
amining the bright lines of hydrogen. Now, if Sirius were receding
very rapidly, the wave-length corresponding to one of these lines
would be lengthened ; it would correspond, in fact, to a part of the
spectrum nearer the red end, or the region of longer light-waves, and
thus the dark line would be shifted toward the red end of the spec-
trum ; whereas, on the contrary, if Sirius were very rapidly approach-
ing, the dark line would be shifted toward the violet end of the spec-
trum. All that would be necessary would be that the rate of approach
or recession should bear an appreciable proportion to the rate at which
light travels, or 185,000 miles per second. For, reverting to our cork-
thrower, it is clear that, if he travelled up-stream or down-sti'eam at a
rate exceedingly minute compared with the stream's rate of flow, it
would be impossible for the observer down-stream to be aware of the
cork-thrower's motion in either direction, unless, indeed, he had some
very exact means of measuring the interval between the successive
corks.

Now, the spectrum of a star can be made longer or shorter, accord-
ing to the disjDersive power employed. The longer it is, the fainter its
light will be ; but, so long as the dark lines can be seen, the longer
the spectrum is, the greater is the shift due to steller recession or ap-
proach ; and, therefore, the more readily may such recession or ap-
proach be detected. But, with the instrument used by Dr. Huggins
four years ago, it was hopeless, save in the case of the brilliant Sirius
(giving more than five times as much light as any other star visible in
our northern heavens), to look for any displacement due to a lower
rate of recession than some hundred miles per second (little more than
the two-thousandth part of the velocity of light). What was to be
done, then, was to provide a much more powerful telescope, so that
the stellar spectra would bear a considerably greater degree of disper-
sion. With admirable promptitude, the Royal Society devoted a large
sum of money to the construction of such an instrument, to be lent to
Dr. Huggins for the prosecution of his researches into stellar motions
of approach and recession. This telescope, with an aperture of fif-
teen inches, and a light-gathering power somewhat exceeding that
usual with that aperture, was accordingly completed, and provided
with the necessary spectroscopic appliances. Many months have not
passed since all the arrangements were complete.

In the mean time, I had arrived at certain inferences respecting the
proper motion of the stars, on which Dr. Huggins's researches by the
new method seemed likely to throw an important light.

More than three years ago, I had expressed my conviction that,
whenever the recorded proper motions of the stars were subject to a
careful examination, they would confirm the theory I had enunciated,
that the stars are arranged in definite aggregations of various forms —
star-groups, star-streams, star-reticulations, star-nodules, and so on.

228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Making leisure, in the summer of 1869, for entering upon such an ex-
amination, I was led to several results, which not only confirmed the
above-mentioned theory, hut suggested relations which I had not hith-
erto thought of. Some of these resvdts are discussed in the article
called " Are there any Fixed Stars ? " already referred to ; others are
presented in an article called " Star-drift," in the Student for Octo-
ber, 1870. The special results on which Dr. Huggins's recent discov-
eries throw light, were first publicly announced in a paper read before
the Royal Society, on January 20, 1870.

I had constructed a chart in which the proper motions of about
1,200 stars were pictured. To each star a minute arrow was affixed,
the length of the arrow indicating the rate at which the star is moving
on the celestial vault, while the direction in which the arrow pointed
shows the direction of the star's apparent motion. This being done, it
was possible to study the proper motions much more agreeably and
satisfactorily than when they were simply presented in catalogues.
And certain features, hitherto unrecognized, at once became apparent.
Among these was the peculiarity which I have denominated " Star-
drift ; " the fact, namely, that certain groups of stars are travelling in
a common direction.1 This was indicated, in certain cases, in too sig-
nificant a manner to be regarded as due merely to chance distribution
in these stellar motions ; and I was able to select certain instances in
which I asserted that the drift was unmistakable and real.

Among these instances was one of a very remarkable kind. The
"seven stars" of Ursa Major — the Septentriones of the ancients — are
known to all. For convenience of reference, let us suppose these seven
divided as when the group is compared to a wagon and horses. Thus,
there are four wagon-wheels and three horses. Now, if we take the
wagon-wheels in sequence round their quadrilateral (beginning with
one of the pair farthest from the horses), so as to finish with the one
which lies nearest to the horses, these are named by astronomers, in
that order, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, of the Great Bear. Thus,
Alpha and Beta are the well-known pointers (Alpha nearest the pole),
and Delta is the faintest star of the Septentrion set. The three horses
are called in order Epsilon, Zeta, and Eta ; Ejisilon being nearest to
Delta. Now, when the proper motions of these seven stars had been
mapped, I found that, whereas Alpha and Eta are now moving much
as they woidd if the sun's motion were alone in question, the other five
are all moving at one and the same rate (on the star-sphere, that is) in
almost the exactly opposite direction. Moreover, a small star close by

1 I include this among " features hitherto unrecognized," though Michell had already
noted the fact that the stars are arranged into systems. " We may conclude," he said,
" that the stars are really collected together in clusters in some places, where they form a
kind of systems ; while in others there are few or none of them, to whatever cause this
may be owing, whether to their mutual gravitation or to some other law or appointment
of the Creator."

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 229

Zeta (the middle horse), a star known to the Arabian astronomers as
the " Test," because to see this star was held a proof of good eyesight,
is moving in the same direction and at the same rate as Zeta and the
rest of this set. And besides this star (which has also been called
Jack by the middle horse), Zeta has a telescopic companion which also
accompanies him in his motion on the celestial sphere.

After a careful consideration of these circumstances, and an analy-
sis of the probabilities in favor of and against the theory that the con-
currence of apparent motion was merely accidental, I came to the
conclusion that the five large stars and the two smaller ones form a
true drifting set. I found, on a moderate computation, that the odds
were upward of half a million to one against the concurrence being ac-
cidental ; and, since I had recognized other instances of concurrence
not less striking, I felt that it was morally certain that these stars be-
long to one star-family.

The reader will perhaps not be surprised to learn, however, that
before publishing this conclusion I submitted it (in July, 1869) to one
who was, of all men, the best able to pronounce upon its significance
— the late Sir John Herschel. I have the letter (dated August 1,
1869), which he sent in reply, before me as I write. The part relating
to my discovery runs as follows : " The considerations you adduce
relative to the proper motions of the stars are exceedingly curious and
interesting. Of late years catalogues have gone into much detail, and
writh such accuracy that these motions are of course much better known
to us than some twenty or thirty years ago. The community of proper
motion over large regions (of which you give a picture in Gemini and
Cancer) is most remarkable, and the coincidence of proper motion in
Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta Ursae Majoris, most striking.
Your promised paper on this subject cannot fail to be highly inter-
esting." 1

In a letter written on May 11, 1870, and referring not to another
letter of mine, but to my " Other "Worlds," Sir John Herschel remarked,
"The cases of star-drift such as that in Ursa Major are very striking,
and richly merit further careful examination."

My first public expression of opinion respecting the star-drift in
Ursa Major was conveyed in the following terms : " If these five stars
indeed form a system (and I can see no other reasonable explanation

1 He proceeds as follows (the passage is removed from the main text, as relating to a
different branch of the subject): "I cannot say that I am at all surprised at its being
found that the average proper motions of stars of small magnitudes are not less than those
of large, considering (as I have always done) that the range of individual magnitude (i. e.,
lustre) must be so enormous that multitudes of very minute stars may in fact be our very
near neighbors." Compare my paper on " The Sun's Journey through Space," above re-
ferred to, which paper also deals with the point touched on in the next sentence of Sir John
Herschel's letter : " Your remark on the conclusion I have been led to draw, relative to
the small effect of the correction due to the sun's proper motion, will require to be very
carefully considered, and I shall of course give it every attention."

230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of so singular a community of motion), the mind is lost in contemplat-
ing the immensity of the periods which the revolutions of the compo-
nents of the system must occupy. Madler had already assigned to the
revolution of Alcor around Mizar (Zeta Ursse) a period of more than
7,000 years. But, if these-stars, which appear so close to the naked eye,
have a period of such length, what must be the cyclic periods of stars
which cover a range of several degrees upon the heavens?" (From
Zeta to Beta is a distance on the heavens of about 19°.) "The pecu-
liarities of the apparent proper motions of the stars," I added, " lend a
new interest to the researches which Dr. Huggins is preparing to make
into the stellar proper motions of recess and approach."

But a few months later, in a lecture delivered at the Royal Institu-
tion, I pointed out more definitely what result I expected from Dr. Hug-
gins's researches. " Before long," I said, " it is likely that the theory
of star-drift will be subjected to a crucial test, since spectroscopic
analysis afibrds the means of determining the stellar motions of recess
and approach. The task is a very difficult one, but astronomers have
full confidence that in the able hands of Dr. Huggins it will be suc-
cessfully accomplished. I await the result with full confidence that it
will confirm my views."

It will be manifest that if the five large stars in Ursa are really
travelling in the same direction, then, when Dr. Huggins applied the
new method of research, he would find that, so far as motion in the
line of sight was concerned, these stars were either all receding or all
approaching at the same rate, or else that they were all alike in show-
ing no signs of any motion, either of recess 01 approach.

But in the mean time there was another kind of evidence which the
spectroscope might give, and on which I formed some expectations.
If these stars form a single system, it seemed likely that they would all
be found to be constituted alike — in other words, that their spectra
would be similar. Not, indeed, that associated stars always display
such similarity. Indeed, the primary star of a binary system not un-
frequently exhibits a spectrum unlike that of the small companion.
But the five large stars in Ursa, being obviously primary members of
the scheme they form, might be expected to resemble each other in
general constitution. Moreover, since the stars not included in the set
— viz., Alpha and Eta — might be regarded as probably very much
nearer or very much farther away, it was to be expected (though not
so confidently) that these two stars would have spectra unlike the
spectrum common (on the supposition) to the five stars.

Now, Secchi announced that the stars of the Great Bear, with the
exception of Alpha, have spectra belonging to the same type as the
spectrum of the bright stars Sirius, Vega, Altair, Regulus, and Rigel.
This result was in very pleasing accordance with the anticipations I
had formed, except that I should rather have expected to find that the
star Eta had a spectrum unlike that of the remaining five stars of the

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 231

Septentriones. Moreover, as the stars belonging to this particular
type are certainly in many cases, and probably in all, very large orbs '
(referring here to real magnitude, not to apparent brilliancy), the in-
ference seemed fairly deducible that the drifting five stars are not
nearer than Alpha, and therefore (since we have seen that it is unlikely
that all the Septentriones lie at nearly the same distance) the inference
would be that the drifting stars lie much farther away than the rest.

It remained, however, that the crucial te»st of motion-measurement
should be applied.

In the middle of May last I received a letter from Dr. Huggins an-
nouncing that the five are all receding from the earth. In all, the hy-
drogen line called F is " strong and broad." In the spectrum of Alpha
the line F is "not very strong " (so faint, indeed, Dr. Huggins afterward
informed me, that he preferred to determine the star's motion by one
of the lines due to magnesium in the star's atmosphere). He found
that Alpha is approaching. As to Eta, Dr. Huggins remarked that
the line at F is " not so strong or so broad " as in the spectrum of
" the five." He was uncertain as to the direction of motion, and men-
tioned that " the star was to be observed again." He subsequently
found that this star is receding. But, whereas all the five are receding
at the enormous rate of thirty miles per second, Eta's recession was
so much smaller that, as we have seen, Dr. Huggins was unable to
satisfy himself at a single observation that the star was receding at alL

It will be seen that my anticipations were more than fulfilled.
The community of recessional motion was accompanied by evidence
which might very well have been wanting — viz., by the discovery that
neither Eta nor Alpha shared in the motion. Moreover, the physical
association between the five stars was yet further evidenced by the
close resemblance found to exist between the spectra of the five stars.
Dr. Huggins remarked in his letter : " My expectation had nothing to
do with the above results. At the moment, I thought Alpha was in-
cluded in the group, and was therefore a little disappointed when I
found Beta going the opposite way."

We have at length, then, evidence, which admits of no question —
so obviously conclusive is it — to show not only that star-drift is a re-
ality, but that subordinate systems exist within the sidereal system.
We moreover recognize an unquestionable instance of a characteristic
peculiarity of structure in a certain part of the heavens. For, though
star-drift exists elsewhere, yet every instance of star-drift is quite dis-
tinct in character — the drift in Cancer unlike that in Ursa, and both
these drifts unlike the drifts in Taurus, and equally unlike the drift in
Aries or Leo. Much more, indeed, is contained in the fact now placed

1 Sirius demonstrably gives out much more light than our sun, and according to the
best determinations of his distance he must (if his surface is of equal intrinsic lustre)
be from 2,000 to 8,000 times larger than the sun. Vega, Altair, and Rigel, are also cer-
tainly larger and may be very much larger than our sun.

23 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beyond question, than appears on the surface. Rightly understood, it
exhibits the sidereal system itself as a scheme utterly unlike what has
hitherto been imagined. The vastness of extent, the variety of struct-
ure, the complexity of detail, and the amazing vitality, on which I
have long insisted, are all implied in that single and, as it were, local
feature which I had set as a crucial test of my theories. I cannot
but feel a strong hope, then, that those researches which my theories
suggest, and which I have advocated during the last few years, will
now be undertaken by willing observers. The system of star-gauging,
which the Herschels did little more than illustrate (as Sir W. Herschel
himself admitted), should be applied with telescopes of different power
to the whole heavens,1 not to a few telescopic fields. Processes of
charting, and especially of equal surface charting, should be multi-
plied. Fresh determinations of proper motions should be systemati-
cally undertaken. All the evidence, in fine, which we have, should be
carefully examined, and no efforts should be spared by which new evi-
dence may be acquired. Only when this has been done will the true
nature of the galaxy be adequately recognized, its true vastness
gauged, its variety and complexity understood, its vitality rendered
manifest. To obtain, indeed, an absolutely just estimate of these mat-
ters, may not be in man's power to compass ; but he can hope to ob-
tain a true relative interpretation of the mysteries of the stellar sys-
tem. If any astronomer be disposed to question the utility or value
of such researches, let him remember that Sir W. Herschel, the great-
est of all astronomers, set "a knowledge of the constitution of the
heavens" as "the ultimate object of his observations." — Popular Sci-
ence Review.

-+++-

HOW WAS HERCULANEUM DESTROYED?

By M. BEULE, of the French Institute.

TRANSLATED FROM THE REVUE DES DEUX SONDES.

HISTORY points out marked differences between Herculaneum
and Pompeii. The first, settled by the Greeks, was devoted to
intellectual culture and refined leisure ; the latter, of Oscan origin,
concerned itself solely about commerce ; one was inhabited by Ro-
mans of fortune, and loaded with favors ; the other endured the hos-
tility of Rome, and often incurred her chastisement. There is reason
to believe that Herculaneum gave a model for many details of civili-
zation to Pompeii, and we may safely assert that Pompeii taught Her-
culaneum nothing. Besides, the earthquake which was so fatal to

1 This is a work in which telescopes of every order of power would be useful. The
observations, also, would be very easily made and would tell amazingly.

HOW WAS HERCULANEUM DESTROYED? 233

Pompeii in the year 63, under Nero, did ITerculaneum no injury ; so
that there a part of the buildings anterior to the empire, and houses
of earlier style, which implies purer taste, must have been preserved.
This conclusion is strengthened at the present day by the beauty of
those objects collected at Herculaneum, and will be settled beyond
question whenever the city itself shall be restored to light.

What was the fate of Herculaneum during the eruption of A. d.
79 ? What special phenomena were displayed on that side of Vesu-
vius ? What causes buried a nourishing city in an instant out of sight
of the inhabited world ? It has been proved that Pompeii suffered an
interment so incomplete that after a few days its inhabitants could
recognize their dwellings, could encamp above and clear them out ;
Herculaneum, on the contrary, was buried so deep that the next day
it was impossible to trace a vestige of it. The ready answer to all
these questions usually is : " Lava worked all the ruin. Herculaneum
was swallowed up under eighty feet of lava. If works of art, bronzes
and pictures have been miraculously preserved, it was due to the im-
penetrable shield of lava, yielding only to a cutting tool, that pro-
tected them from the ravages of time." The explanation is tempt-
ing. Fancy pictures waves of fire rolling upon the city, rising like
the tidal swell, surging in through doors and windows, sweeping around
and moulding every thing, then slowly cooling, and preserving for
posterity treasures that labor must unveil, repaid by their recovery
in unharmed beauty.

This is really the opinion that all Europe holds, and even at Na-
ples almost all visitors of Herculaneum declare that they hav'5 ■'-"■ ^ed
the lava with their own hands ; and, in books written on the^^M^vian
cities, more than one traveller affirms as positively that the difficulty
of cutting the lava presents the chief obstacle to the disinterment of
Herculaneum. How can one venture to meet such convictions by as-
serting that watei-, not fire, overwhelmed Herculaneum ; that it was
not a torrent of glowing lava, but a flood of mud and wet ashes that
filled the city ? How uproot a prepossession so deep that the works of
geologists and savants have failed to shake it ? Dufrenoy proved that
water alone swept over Herculaneum heaps of scoria and pumice
crumbled from La Somma ; Dyer, Overbeck, Ernst Breton, and others,
have affirmed in various languages, to no purpose, that nothing but
ashes, wet to paste and hardened by pressure, covered over Hercu-
laneum : no one heeded them, and the blame continues to be thrown
on the lava, which makes excavation so costly and laborious.

But every one knows the nature and effects of lava. Lava is an in-
candescent mass, of so high temperature as to absorb and melt all fu-
sible bodies ; forced out from the fissures of the crater by irresistible
expansive power, this mass rolls on in a fiery river, burning up every
thing in its path ; cooling slowly, it grows as hard as porphyry or ada-
mant. Now, I appeal to the recollection of all who have ascended

234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Vesuvius during those lava-flows that succeed an eruption, and con-
tinue for weeks or months even. What haj)pens to-day, if studied
with a little good sense and reflection, can enlighten us on what must
have hapjiened eighteen centuries ago. For instance, we have seen
how slow lava-currents, remote from the vent of escape and cooled by-
contact with the ground and air, flowing around country-houses, level
and consume them, with a sudden flaming up of roofs and floors. How
could the stuccoes and the marble statues of Herculaneum remain un-
harmed, in their original color, free from crack or splinter, if they had
been enveloped in lava ? We have seen metals by mere contact melt
and vanish in that viscous paste, which glows like fused iron or glass
gushing from a furnace. How, then, do we find in Herculaneum articles
of silver, bronze statues, leaden vases, with their shapes, their relief,
their ornaments and polish uninjured ? The bronzes of Herculaneum
are even better preserved than those of Pompeii, being distinguished
by their freshness of surface, their lustre, and dark and even tone,
while the Pompeian bronzes have been attacked by sulphurous fumes,
and eaten on the surface, and have taken on an agreeable ultra-marine
blue tint, like that of sulphate of copper.

Other facts of the same kind are quite as puzzling. The guides
amuse strangers with an experiment ; breaking off a bit of lava with an
iron-pointed stick, they let it cool on the ground, and stamp a penny
on it, to get an impression of the coin. If the trial is made too quickly,
the copper melts, and the coin, instead of leaving its image, disappears
and mingles with the rest of the lava. How, then, do we find at Her-
cula,-,~.rn so many ancient silver or copper coins, not merely un-
desL-^-i, but not even changed, by those waves of lava which attain
a concentrated heat beyond all measurement ? We know,4oo, that the
ancients used colors with a mineral base in decorating their buildings ;
they will stand dampness from the earth, but the touch of fire changes
their nature ; the partial fires that have left traces in Pompeii have in
some places altered the blue to gray, and the red to yellow, and Nea-
politan artists in our time well understand the very simple method of
producing what is called burnt-yellow, by exposing minium to the
action of fire. How, then, do the houses uncovered at Herculaneum
present such exquisite colors ? How is it that the ultra-marine blue
and the vermilion-red, covering whole walls, keep a freshness and
smoothness that contact with a burning substance must necessarily
have destroyed ? Then, too, on Vesuvius I have seen trees just
touched by the lava-flow take fire like matches, throw out a blazing jet,
and fall at once, as if struck with lightning. Why have the beams and
floors and sills of Herculaneum, instead of crumbling into ashes, slowly
decayed in their places in the bosom of the earth, leaving no holes nor
fractures ? Why are they found blackened like oak-timbers that have
been sunk in the mud for ages, like the piers of bridges and the piles
of old docks at Carthage, and the wood brought down by the Jordan

HOW WAS HERCULANEUM DESTROYED? 235

and thrown out by the Dead Sea, saturated in it with chloride of
sodium? How is it that every thing proves their decomposition to
come only from the effects of time ? How has the wood kept its character
and color in those parts pierced by spikes and nails, in other words,
protected from dampness by iron rust ? How do we find manuscripts
written on the soft fibres of papyrus-reed, when lava must infallibly
have consumed them, and dispersed their ashes like those of a sheet of
paper thrown on burning coals ? Why has this kind lava, in like
manner, respected fruits, nuts, almonds, linen, silk, lamp-wicks found in
hundreds, and so many very combustible articles which have merely
turned black, when they usually vanish, without the least trace, in the
feeblest flame ?

This refutation by absurdity might be urged with multiplied argu-
ments. Indeed, very slight reflection suffices to show that fire could
not have played any part in the destruction of Herculaneum, and that
if lava, the most terrible destroying agent next to lightning, had made
its way into the city, we should scarcely recognize a few blackened
stones, smashed bricks, and calcined marbles. But, to say all in a
word, I state that on a late tour I examined the ground of Herculane-
um, in the parts made accessible by excavation, with particular care.
I could not find a square inch of lava ! Every thing is ashes, nothing
but ashes, and these ashes have been hardened by three agents — wa-
ter, pressure, and time. It> is exactly this hardness, which is not to be
conceived of as very great, that has deceived visitors, particularly in
the underground galleries dug out in exploring the theatre. The de-
scent is by stairways damp with exudations from the streets of Por-
tici ; overhead is heard the rolling of vehicles ; we pass through tun-
nels polished with rubbing ; we see on the smoky arches the smudge of
torches, collecting for centuries ; we shudder at the appalling gloom,
and seem buried in the bowels of the earth. In a word, the passage
impresses the imagination as strange and awful, and we reassure our-
selves perforce with the thought that these galleries are hewn in lava,
and beyond danger of caving in ; but a scratch of the nail on this
supposed lava betrays the fact that it is friable and yielding, being-
only hardened ashes. In one of these tunnels, which are pretty regu-
larly cut out, the guides show the print of a human face. We wonder
at the unchanging solidity of a substance which once so finely moulded
the objects it surrounded. Still, if you try to cut with a knife, not
into the impression itself, but into the parts next it, you are amazed to
find that nothing is easier, and that it is all mere solidified ashes.

One street of Herculaneum, in the outskirts, on the side nearest the
sea, has been regularly excavated, and several houses cleared out —
that called the house of the skeleton, the house of Argus, some shops,
a slave-prison, and others — all is in the open air, and one can walk as
in the streets of Pompeii. The space thus disentombed is from 3,000
to 4,000 square yards, a large-enough area for observations of the

236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kind we are pursuing. Now no fragments of lava, not a vestige of
it, are to be found there, nor any trace of injury caused by lava. On
the contrary, on examining the perpendicular surfaces surrounding
this four-sided space, every thing is ashes ; 30 or 36 feet deep of
ashes ; only at the upper part a few bits of coal are seen, ejections
from the volcano, layers corresponding with the modern eruptions, and
separated by layers of vegetable earth which have had time to be de-
posited between the several eruptions. Look at the fragments of stuff
dug out of one of those caveras — examine them — you will still find
nothing in them but ashes, bi'oken up by the pick as readily as clay or
pumice.

But it may be asked, How could ashes which are light as dust, and
with no coherence, gain hardness enough to take durable impressions,
to form supporting arches, and to bear so delusive a look of solidity as
to be taken for lava ? The ready answer is found in the example of
Pompeii, and the casts found in the cellars of Diomed's house ; but
similar and even more striking cases may help us to understand such
power of adhesion. In the valleys of Monte Cavo there are ledges of
peperino, formed by the filling up of volcanic ashes mingled with wa-
ter. This compost grew so dense that the Romans used it for building-
material. The Catacombs of Rome, which are nothing else than a vol-
canic tufa, that is, sand and pulverized fragments, compressed by time
and their own weight, are in like manner friable, easy to cut, easier to
rub down, and yet galleries are dug in them, arches, ceilings, stairways,
numberless tombs, and as many as five stories of excavations, beneath
each other ! Nor must it be forgotten that pumice, which furnishes
so excellent a water-lime, was taken originally from Pozzuola, near
Vesuvius, and is nothing more than a ferruginous clay, once subjected
to high volcanic temperature, and ejected in a shower of ashes. I re-
call, too, the great altar at Olympia, described by the traveller Pausa-
nias, which was formed entirely from the ashes of the victims sacrificed
to Jupiter. After every sacrifice the priests moistened the ashes with
water from the Alpheus, smeared the altar with them, and so enlarged
it gradually until, during ten centuries, the structure gained 125 feet in
circuit, and 22 in height. Indeed, any one who has seen water flung
into a fireplace may judge of the toughness of ashes when mixed with
liquids ; much more must the volcanic ashes of the Roman Carnpagna,
of Naples and Santorin be suited for making cements.

For the rest, should this explanation only half satisfy the reader,
there are the facts, and not to be denied. I defy any careful observer,
examining the parts of Herculaneum hitherto brought to light, to dis-
cover any thing else in them than ashes. It may be that, on the surface
of the existing soil of Portici, which has been raised at least 60 feet,
marks of lava-flows are traceable which belong to modern eruptions,
especially toward Resina. Neither can I affirm that, in some unex-
plored quarter of Herculaneum, the presence of lava may not some day

HOW WAS HERCTJLANETJM DESTROYED? 237

be ascertained ; but, as the present question is only about what we know,
that is, the parts of the city which are visible, or examined already, I
repeat that not the hundredth part of a square yard of lava can be found
at Herculaneum, and that ashes are the only thing there is there.

The problem to be solved is, how so huge a mass of ashes was ever
piled up above the unfortunate city, and, since water played so fearful
a part in the catastrophe, whence that enormous quantity of water
came. It is clear, in the first place, that these ashes were thrown out
by the volcano. Judging from the character of the region, and from
the vents formed at the mouth of the crater, the pumice-stones were
all hurled toward Pompeii and Stabise, while the ashes drifted toward
Herculaneum. Perhaps some allowance must be made for the wind
which separated these substances, and the convulsions which ejected
them irregularly. Then we must recollect that every very violent
eruption is attended by steam produced by the sudden contact of fire
with underground sheets of water. The origin of these sheets of water
and the effect of their sudden gush into the furnace of eruption have
been already explained. These vapors, exceeding the power of calcu-
lation in their volume and expansive force, condense at once on contact
with the atmosphere ; they cool, and fall again in torrents of rain. If
M. Fougire could demonstrate that in 1865, during an eruption by no
means extraordinary, there fell on the mountain, in 24 hours, 22,000
cubic metres of water, the number must be multiplied by five, or even
by ten, to represent that explosion of Vesuvius, A. D. 79, whose fury
has never been equalled. Without adopting the hypothesis of mud-
discharges from the crater, or citing the example of the volcanoes in
Java, which eject mire instead of water-spouts, we may affirm that such
volumes of water, mingling with the ashes and pulverized substances
thrown out by other vents, suddenly produced a liquid compost, either
in the air or on the ground they fell upon. The Neapolitans are fa-
miliar with a phenomenon of this sort, occurring more than once, though
under limited conditions. They call it " muddy lava," and their use
of the substantive would be correct if they always added the adjective,
in saying that Herculaneum was buried under lava. Herculaneum, in
fact, was buried by muddy lava, or, in simpler terms, by torrents of mud.

Moreover, these sudden rains, or, rather, deluges, pouring down from
the sky at each outburst of steam, swept along all the ashes that had
fallen on the slopes of the mountain, and carried them down upon the
plain ; an ash-avalanche rolled over Herculaneum. At the same time,
the rivers, which ran to the right and left of the city, ceased to flow
down to the sea. It has been explained how the coast was elevated,
and Pliny's ships kept off, by sudden new shoals preventing access to
the port of Resina. The effect of this lifting was to raise the mouths
of the two rivers, and throw back their waters on the city, and this
overflow added its share of mud, ashes, and vegetable matter. JSTor
must we omit the canals filled up, the sewers choked, the aqueducts

238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shattered by the eai'thquake, and pouring their contents into the valley.
By degrees, as the mud settled in the streets, the courts, rooms, and
dwellings, the level of the water rose, new deposits gathered ; the ashes
falling in dense masses from the sky, grew saturated, and increased
the rising heaps. Thus, in a few days, perhaps a few hours, a flourish-
ing city was swallowed up, under an average thickness of sixty feet of
mud. Those of the inhabitants who did not take flight at once, were
drowned. In vain they climbed to the upper stories, then to the ter-
races and roofs — they perished at last, leaving the impressions of their
bodies in the fluid ashes.

When the waters had drained away, nothing was to be seen but a
grayish hillock, seamed on the surface by the streamlets which had
been the last to dry up. Nothing rose above the surface, neither tem-
ple-fagades, nor theatre-walls, nor tops of the loftiest buildings. Un-
der a shell which would harden and thicken every day, Herculaneum
was buried far otherwise than Pompeii had been. It was not fifteen
feet of pumice stones that filled the ground floors and first stories
of the houses up to the windows ; it was 70 or 80 feet of compact
matter that hid even the site of the city. The inhabitants who es-
caped must afterward have returned, as the Pompeians did ; but, less
fortunate, they could not revisit their homes, buried beneath their
reach in unknown depths, without a trace to indicate them. Signs of
excavation are thought to have been detected outside the city, above
the rich villa in which the moderns have recovered 1,756 rolls of pa-
pyrus, but the owners did not dig deep enough, and their attempt
was fruitless, as is proved by the art treasures discovered a century
ago, which they would not have failed to carry away. It is likely that
the chief impediment to digging, next to the depth, was the moisture
of an alluvial deposit, in which any work soon became impossible.

But after sixteen centuries the moisture had evaporated, and the
muddy lava at this day is compact and resistant enough to permit ex-
cavations in all directions throughout it. The surface has been re-
stored to cultivation and covered with houses ; Portici and Resina are
populous and flourishing towns. New eruptions wrapped Hercula-
neum in a thicker pall, and it seemed forever blotted out from the
world, until, in 1684, a baker, in digging a well, came upon ancient
ruins — those of the theatre — and brought the buried city again to light.

-*»♦-

SKETCH OF GENERAL SIR EDWARD SABINE.

WE furnish our readers this month with an excellent likeness
of the venerable President of the Royal Society, England,
who will have a permanent and distinguished place in the history
of science through his researches on terrestrial magnetism, of which
he may be regarded as the pioneer explorer. He is of Irish ex-

^'.mwSSWSW^^^^v^S^N'

GENERAL SIR EDWARD SABINE.

President of the Royal Society.

SKETCH OF GENERAL SIR EDWARD SABINE. 239

traction, though descended from an ancient Italian family, and was
born in October, 1788. He entered the army, and became second-
lieutenant at the age of fifteen, captain at twenty-five, colonel at
sixty-three, major-general in 1859, at the age of seventy-one, and
was created Knight-Commander of the Order of the Bath, in 1869,
at the age of eighty-one. During the war with the United States he
took part in the campaign of 1814, on the Niagara frontier, when he
commanded the batteries at the siege of Fort Erie. He first became
known to the public by the part which he took in the Arctic Explora-
tions in 1818-'19. He here made a series of magnetic observations of
great value, an account of which was published in two papers, which
he communicated to the Royal Society on his return. These and other
papers, printed in the Philosophical Transactions, demonstrated several
new and important facts relative to the variations of the magnetic
needle, and it was the results of the observations in these northern
voyages which gave the first great impulse to the systematic study of
the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. The strong desire of con-
tinuing the investigation of this and other branches of experimental
physics, prompted him to undertake a series of voyages to places be-
tween the equator and the north-pole, making at each point observa-
tions on the length of the seconds-pendulum, and on the dip and inten-
sity of the magnetic needle. The fruits of these labors were of high
importance, and were published, along with other information, in 1825,
and from this period his history is that of a studious investigator into
the laws of and phenomena of Nature. In 1827 he was chosen secre-
tary of the Royal Society, which office he filled until 1830. In 1836
he communicated to the British Association at Bristol his observations
on the declination and intensity of the magnetic force in Scotland, and
to the same Association he delivered at Liverpool a report on the
variations of magnetic intensity at different parts of the earth's sur-
face. His labors have led to the discovery of the laws of " magnetic
storms," of the connection between certain magnetic phenomena and
the changes of the solar spots (already referred to), and of the mag-
netic action of the sun and moon on the earth. General Sabine de-
serves almost the sole credit of extending the body of known facts in
magnetic science, by the establishment of magnetic observatories in
all parts of the world, and the collation of the enormous mass of facts
thus acquired. He has contributed, to various scientific societies, nu-
merous papers which display great powers of research. He edited
Mrs. Sabine's translation of Humboldt's " Cosmos," published in
1849-'58.

Colonel Sabine was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1818,
and President of the British Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence, at its Belfast meeting, in 1852. He succeeded Sir Benjamin
Brodie, as President of the Royal Society, in 1861, and continues to
discharge the duties of this office, at the advanced age of eighty-four.

240

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCE II? ITS LATER
STATEMENTS.

THAT man, as an individual, exem-
plifies the action of law in the vari-
ous parts of his nature, and is hence the
subject of science, everybody now un-
derstands : but that men collectively, or
in social relations, are governed by nat-
ural laws which are capable of scien-
tific investigation, is only beginning
to be seen and admitted. If there
are natural laws which determine the
social state, it is certainly of the
highest importance that they should
be known. Legislation, philanthropy,
and all projects of social amelioration
and reform, must be but futile and
quackish expedients, so long as men
are ignorant of the natural forces, and
orderly method, by which human so-
ciety has been originated and is regu-
lated. Social phenomena have their
laws like all other phenomena, and it
is the sole business of science to eluci-
date and declare them. Science has
no schemes to propose, no reforms
to carry out. Whether society is bad
or good, rude or cultivated, getting
better or getting worse, developing or
perishing, it is all the same: science
simply takes note of the facts, and
draws from them the general principles
to which social changes conform, and
the systematic statement of which con-
stitutes true social science.

It is from this point of view that
the subject has been approached by
Herbert Spencer, who is now acknowl-
edged to be the foremost living exposi-
tor of pure scientific sociology. Some
confusion has arisen in the public mind
in regard to the various works bearing
upon this subject which he has under-
taken, and for the benefit of those in-
terested we propose to explain his

method of dealing with it, as this may
prove instructive in relation to the
character of the inquiry itself.

Mr. Spencer was attracted to social
studies in his youth. His first publica-
tion was a pamphlet on the proper
sphere and functions of political govern-
ment, and his first book was a treatise
on society, known as " Social Statics."
It was a work of great originality and
power of statement, and its fundamen-
tal idea was that of his present philo-
sophical system, the idea of evolution ;
but it was only imperfectly worked out,
and the effect upon Mr. Spencer's mind
of preparing the volume was to con-
vince him that the whole question of
the natural laws of society would have
to be taken up in a more thorough and
comprehensive way, before the require-
ments of science could be satisfied. As
society is made up of men, its deepest
laws must be derived from the natures
of men. The first thing to be done,
therefore, was to inquire what there is
in the constitution of human nature
which must be known, before social ef-
fects can be understood. Man's nature
is twofold, vital and psychical ; and all
social phenomena are phenomena of
life and thought, which determine hu-
man actions. The laws of life give
rise to the science of Biology; the laws
of thought and feeling, which depend
upon life, give rise to the science of
Psychology ; and a knowledge of these
subjects forms the indispensable basis
of Sociology. So clear and close is
this dependence, and so comprehensive
and complex the investigation, that
Mr. Spencer soon saw he must give his
life to it, if it was to be adequately
done. He accordingly laid out his plan
of work in 1859, and commenced its
execution in 1860, allowing twenty

EDITOR'S TABLE.

241

years for its completion. His first vol-
ume was preliminary, and contained an
exposition of his method, under the title
of " First Principles." Then followed
two volumes of the "Principles of
Biology," which was succeeded by two
volumes of the " Principles of Psychol-
ogy." This work is just finished, and
takes him half through his undertaking.
He has now before him the subject of
Sociology, which he proposes to treat
in three volumes of the " Principles of
Sociology," to be commenced this win-
ter. His Philosophical Series will be
completed by two additional volumes
of the "Principles of Morality," as de-
duced from the whole system of facts
and principles established in the pre-
ceding works.

At this stage of his enterprise, Mr.
Spencer encounters certain difficulties
which have to be met by what we may
call side-undertakings — works which
have an important bearing upon the
subject of Sociology, but are not prop-
erly parts of his philosophical system.
The articles that are appearing in The
Popular Science Monthly, and which,
when completed, will form a volume of
the International Scientific Series, are
designed to explain the nature, scope,
and claims of Social Science. Such are
the general doubt and misapprehension
regarding this subject, that Mr. Spen-
cer was induced to pause for a little at
this stage of his labors, and present
some considerations of the method and
subject-matter of Sociology which are
greatly needed by the public, and
which do not properly fall within the
course of his regular exposition. It is
important to make this explanation, as
the papers we have published have
been supposed, by some, to be a part
of his long-expected " Principles of So-
ciology."

Another of the difficulties of his un-
dertaking was foreseen by Mr. Spencer
several years ago, and has led to a
separate work, which, though indis-
pensable to the main plan, is neverthe-
vol. 11. — 16

less of independent value, and of great
public importance. As the scientific
character of his philosophy is funda-
mentally inductive, the first work in
each department is the collection of
data on which inductions are to rest.
The data of Biology are accessible in
treatises on Natural History, where they
can be obtained in a digested and au-
thentic form, while any defects may be
supplied by special investigations. The
data of Psychology are also available in
scientific works upon that subject, and
the conditions for extending and veri-
fying them can be commanded any-
where. But, as respects its data, Soci-
ology is very different from these sci-
ences. Dealing with the phenomena
manifested by diverse races and com-
munities of men ; dealing with the de-
velopment of society, which is a prob-
lem of history ; dealing with those
facts of the social state which illus-
trate its natural laws ; and dealing,
moreover, by a scientific method, with
a great subject which has hitherto
been regarded as not amenable to that
method, the difficulty of gathering the
indispensable and pertinent facts for
such an inquiry was formidable. His-
tory has occupied itself with quite
other things than the record of such
facts. Travellers fill their pages with
chaffy gossip and egotistical narrative,,
and give but little attention to the
social facts which it is most desirable-
to know. Their observations are care-
less, and their statements loose and
often untrustworthy. Nobody has
taken pains to collect and sift from
the vast mass of historical rubbish and
the bulky litter of travellers the few
and scattered statements which throw-
light upon the laws of social life. Be-
fore there can be a science of Sociology
presenting the generalizations of sociaL
phenomena, there must first be an ac-
cumulation and a classification of its-
data. "What these are it is important
to understand, and, in a remarkable
passage of a review article published

242

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by Mr. Spencer in 1859/ he thus states
them :

That which constitutes History, proper-
ly so called, is in great part omitted from
works on the subject. Only of late years
have historiaus commenced giving us, in
any considerable quantity, the truly valu-
able information. As in past ages the king
was every thing and the people nothing,
so, in past histories, the doings of the king
fill the entire picture, to which the national
life forms but an obscure background. "While
only now, when the welfare of nations rath-
er than of rulers is becoming the dominant
idea, are historians beginning to occupy
themselves with the' phenomena of social
progress. The thing it really concerns us
to know is, the natural history of society.
"We want all facts which belp us to under-
stand how a nation has grown and organ-
ized itself. Among these, let us of course
have an account of its government ; with as
little as may be of gossip about the men
who officered it, and as much as possible
about the structure, principles, methods,
prejudices, corruptions, etc., which it ex-
hibited : and let this account include not
only the nature and actions of the central
government, but also those of local govern-
ments, down to their minutest ramifications.
Let us of course also have a parallel descrip-
tion of the ecclesiastical government — its
organization, its conduct, its power, its rela-
tions to the State ; and, accompanying this,
the ceremonial, creed, and religious ideas —
-not only those nominally believed, but those
really believed and acted upon. Let us at
the same time be informed of the control
exercised by class over class, as displayed in
social observances — in titles, salutations,
and forms of address. Let us know, too,
what were all the other customs which regu-
lated the popular life out-of-doors and in-
doors, including those concerning the rela-
tions of the sexes, and the relations of
parents to children. The superstitions, also,
from the more important myths down to the
charms in common use,- should be indicated.
Next should come a delineation of the indus-
trial system: showing to what extent the
division of labor was carried ; bow trades
were regulated, whether by caste, guilds, or
otherwise; what was the connection be-
tween employers and employed ; what were
the agencies for distributing commodities ;
what were the means of communication;
what was the circulating medium. Aecom-

i"What Knowledge is most worth" (West-
minster Review).

pariying all which should be given an ac-
count of the industrial arts technically con-
sidered : stating the processes in use, and
the quality of the products. ' Further, the
intellectual condition of the nation in its
various grades should be depicted ; not only
with respect to the kind and amount of ed-
ucation, but with respect to the progress
made in science, and the prevailing manner
of thinking. The degree of {Esthetic cul-
ture, as displayed in architecture, sculpture,
punting, dress, music, poetry, and fiction,
should be described. Nor should there be
omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the
people— their food, their homes, and their
amusements. And, lastly, to connect the
whole, should be exhibited the morals,
theoretical and practical, of all classes, as
indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs,
deeds. These facts, given with as muck
brevity as consists with clearness and ac-
curacy, should be so grouped and arranged
that they may be comprehended in their en-
semble, and contemplated as mutually-de-
pendent parts of one great whole. The aim
should be so to present them that men may
readily trace the consensus subsisting among
them, witb the view of learning what social
phenomena coexist with what others. And
then the corresponding delineations of suc-
ceeding ages should be so managed as to
show how each belief, institution, custom,
and arrangement, was modified, and how
the consensus of preceding structures and
functions was developed into the consensus
of succeeding ones. Such alone is the kind
of information, respecting past times, which
can be of service to the citizen for the reg-
ulation of his conduct. The only history
that is of practical value is, what may be
called Descriptive Sociology. And the
highest office which the historian can dis-
charge is that of so narrating the lives of
nations as to furnisb materials for a Com-
parative Sociology, and for the subsequent
determination of the ultimate laws to which
social phenomena conform.

In this statement of the missing ele-
ments of history, Mr. Spencer has out-
lined just that body of facts which are
indispensable as the foundation of a
valid social philosophy; and he fore-
saw that, before any such philosophy
can be constructed, these facts must be
systematically and exhaustively sup-
plied. The labor of their careful col-
lection could not fail to be enormous,
and its expense, together with their

EDITOR'S TABLE.

243

publication, heavy; yet it was essential
to the completeness of his system and of
immense importance to the progress of
knowledge, and Mr. Spencer did not
for a moment hesitate to undertake it.
lie first devised a system of tables suit-
ed to present the whole scheme of so-
cial facts, displayed by any community,
in such a manner that these facts can be
compared with each other at a glance,
while the social elements of different
communities can also be brought into
comparison with the greatest facility.
These Sociological Tables are marvels
of analytic skill, simplicity, and com-
prehensiveness ; and the command they
give over the results of investigation
is commensurate with the greatness of
the subject t# which they apply.

Having fixed upon a method of pres-
entation, Mr. Spencer divided the com-
munities of mankind into three great
groups : the existing savage races of
Asia, Africa, and America ; the exist-
ing civilized races of "Western Europe ;
and the extinct civilizations of Egypt,
Palestine, Greece, Eome, and Peru.
Five years ago he engaged an able
scholar — a graduate of the University
of Edinburgh — to devote himself to the
study of the savage races, and gather
from all the most reliable sources the
facts relating to their social state. The
Tables are then gradually filled in, and
each one becomes a summary, we might
almost say a map, of the social condi-
tion of the community to which it is
devoted. The first volume of the So-
ciological Tables will embrace descrip-
tions of some seventy or eighty of the
principal savage tribes, and will be ac-
companied by an octavo volume of ex-
tracts from the authorities consulted,
and on which the summary of the Ta-
bles rests. This portion of the under-
taking is now nearly completed. An-
other able scholar — also an Edinburgh
graduate — has been for some years en-
gaged upon the existing civilizations,
the results of which will be published
in a second volume of Tables and the

second accompanying volume of au-
thorities, and this work is also well ad-
vanced. A German historical student
has also taken up the extinct civiliza-
tions, and will prepare the third volume
upon this division of the subject. We
shall thus have the full realization of
what Mr. Spencer pointed out many
years ago, in the above-quoted extract,
as a great desideratum, and which will
create the new and important science
of Descriptive Sociology. It is hardly
necessary to say that such a work will
stand upon its own merits, and have a
general usefulness that will no way de-
pend upon Mr. Spencer's philosophical
doctrines.

A CORRECTICX.

Mr. Editor. — In one of the late num-
bers of your periodical, I observe that
you say, in casually alluding to my Chi-
cago Address, that I treat the doctrine
which classes mental and physical forces
in the same category as being "hereti-
cal." There is but one sense in which
the word "heretical" can be properly
understood, or even understood at all —
and that is, the sense of opposition to
the prevailing religious belief. Under-
standing the word in this sense, there
can be no difference of opinion what-
ever, among any of the parties to this
discussion, as to the " heresy " involved
in the doctrine in question. The doc-
trine is as much heretical in your view,
and in Mr. Herbert Spencer's, as it is in
mine.

But, the inference which the reader
is left necessarily to draw from your
remark is, that I attempted to contro-
vert the doctrine, on the ground that it
is heretical — a thing which I did not do
at all. I did not even, if I remember
aright, take the trouble to remark that
the doctrine is an heretical doctrine, that
being a thing so obvious that it may be
allowed to "go without saying." My
actual argument was that, in assuming
the equivalency and convertibility of
mental and physical forces, we are una-

P44

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

voidably led to conclusions which con-
tradict (not religious dogmas, of which
I said not a word, but) well-established
principles of Physics themselves.

Your reference to my Address was
so casual and slight, that it may hardly
seem sufficient to justify this seriousness
of remonstrance, but, slight as it was,
it placed me wholly wrong before the
readers of the Monthly, the greater
number of whom have probably not
seen my Address.

I am, very respectfully,

F. A. P. Barnard.

Columbia College, October 9, 1872.

LITERARY NOTICES.

A Handbook of Chemical Technology, by
Eudolf Wagner, Ph. D., Professor of
Chemical Technology at the University
of Wurtzburg. Translated and edited
from the eighth German edition, with
Extensive Additions, by Wm. Crook.es,
F. E. S.

Technology is the term now generally
applied to the applications of the principles
of science to the arts of industry. The
earth in its matter and its forces is a treas-
ury of material for the service of humanity.
These materials furnish the aliment by
which our bodies are daily nourished, the
textures with which we are clad, the build-
ings that shelter us, and the innumerable
objects of use and pleasure that minister to
the service of civilized man. The transfor-
mations of matter constitute the great busi-
ness of mankind in all stages of its develop-
ment. In the lowest stage they are few in
number, crude and imperfect in form, and
wasteful both of material and of power
applied. Nothing is understood, and blind
groping leads to scanty and uncertain re-
sults. For every particle of matter is bound
in the meshes of inexorable law, and the
sole condition on which refractory Nature
can be conquered and put to use, is that of
knowledge. Science creates this knowledge,
and thus becomes the guide of industry.
The office of science in directing the opera-
tions of labor is now the great fact of civil-
ization, and it is daily becoming of more
importance to all classes of the community.

Processes are daily becoming more expedi-
tious and more perfect ; the uses of things
are more extended ; new objects of value
are created ; waste-products are utilized ;
and the economy of effort in production
vastly augmented. There is still great de-
ficiency of scientific knowledge on the part
of artisans ; but large manufacturing estab-
lishments have their scientific directors and
advisers, while the movement for extended
technical education is participated in by all
the leading nations of the world.

Technology, though always grounded in
science and starting from it, is not in itself
a science like astronomy or mechanics, that
is, a body of inductive truths applying to
specific divisions of natural phenomena,
nor is it mainly concerned with true scientific
work which is the elucidation of the laws
of phenomena. It begin* where science
leaves off, or rather at the highest point
which it has attained, and turns scientific
results to practical account. Nevertheless,
technology is by no means passive in the
research after new truths. Its office being
to carry out, or to verify, on a comprehen-
sive scale, the results of pure scientific in-
vestigation, it cannot fail to react power-
fully upon the work of original investiga-
tion. It is constantly putting questions,
wanting further explanations, and demand-
ing more light ; and by thus forcing tangi-
ble problems upon the scientist, under press-
ure of great interests involved, it both
stimulates research and furnishes the ex-
perimenter with what he most wants — a
definite subject to be worked out. The
peril of the technologist of falling into rou-
tine, and following blind rules, is thus con-
stantly checked and more or less counter-
acted by the influence of his own diffi-
culties, and the need of frequent appeal to
those whose business it is to explain them.

The raw materials of Nature, which re-
quire transformation before they can be
available for human use, take two routes to
this destination. They either go by the
mechanical way, or by the path of chemis-
try, and so we have two kinds of technology
— mechanical and chemical. Mechanical
technology deals with the outward changes
of natural products, or alterations of form
only, as, for example, the joiner and carpen-
ter working in wood ; the making of iron

LITERARY NOTICES.

245

rails, slieath-metal, and wire ; the casting
of iron, zinc, and alloys of copper, into
various objects ; the spinning and weaving
of various fibres, flax, cotton, jute, to be-
come materials of greater value ; also the
manufacturing of paper from rags, of horn
into combs, and of bristles into brushes —
all these operations belong to this section.

Chemical technology, on the other hand,
as Dr. Wagner observes, "deals with the
operations by which the raw material is not
only changed in its form, but especially as
regards its nature ; such, for instance, is
the case with the extraction of metals from
their ores ; the conversion of lead into
white-lead and sugar of lead (acetate of
lead) ; the conversion of sulphate of baryta
into chloride of barium and baryta white
(permanent or Chinese white) ; the conver-
sion of cryolite into sulphate of alumina,
alum, and soda ; the conversion of rock-
salt into sulphate and carbonate of soda ;
the conversion of carnollite and kainite into
chloride and bromide of potassium, sulphate
and carbonate of potassa ; the conversion
of copper into verdigris and sulphate of
copper ; the manufacture of paraffin, and
paraffin or crystal oils from peat, Boghead
coal, and lignite ; the preparation of kelp
and iodine from sea-weeds ; the manufac-
ture of stearine-candles (stearic acid prop-
erly) and soap from oils and fats ; the prep-
aration of sugar and alcohol from starch •
the conversion of alcohol into vinegar ; the
brewing of beer from barley and hops ; the
manufacture of pig-iron into malleable iron
(puddling process), and the conversion of
malleable iron into steel ; the production
of gas, coke, and tar from coals ; the ex-
traction from the tar of such substances as
benzol, carbolic acid, aniline, anthracen,
asphalte, naphthaline ; the preparation of
tar-colors, as rosaniline, aniline blue, Man-
chester yellow, Magdala red, alizarine,
iodine green, picric acid, etc."

These illustrations of the scope and
character of chemical technology give also
an idea of the quality and range of Dr.
Wagner's book. For twenty years he
has held an eminent position in Germany
as an authority upon technology, and his
voluminous annual reports upon the sub-
ject have been the standards of reference
in regard to its progress. The first edition

of the present hand-book was published in
1850; and the eighth edition, which ap-
peared last year, is now translated, and is
the first that appears in English. The vol-
ume is a compact cyclopaedia of the most
recent and accurate knowledge on a wide
range of practical subjects, and will be of
great value to the industrial and manufac-
turing interests of the country.

The Great Problem : The Higher Ministry
of Nature viewed in the Light of Modern
Science and as an Aid to Advanced Chris-
tian Philosophy. By John R. Leifchild,
A. M., author of " Our Coal-Fields and
our Coal-Pits," " Cornwall : Its Mines
and Miners," etc., etc. With an introduc-
tion by Howard Crosby, D. D., LL. D.,
Chancellor of the University of New
York. 543 pages. George P. Putnam &
Sons.

Mr. Leifchild's book, entitled "The
Higher Ministry of Nature," has been re-
published by the Putnams, who have appro-
priately prefixed to it the title " The Great
Problem." The general aim of the author,
who is a semi-preacher and semi-geologist
of London, is to show that the higher teach-
ings of Nature confirm true religious faith
instead of subverting it ; but he feels it in-
cumbent upon him to go into all the contro-
verted questions of the time in theology,
metaphysics, and science, and is equally
ready in the treatment of theism, pantheism,
the unknowable, Spinozism, Darwinism, evo-
lution, morals, the correlation of forces,
protoplasm, and other knotty matters too
numerous to mention.

The American volume comes well com-
mended to the public. A gentleman high
in the honors of scholarship, and the re-
sponsibilities of education, and who presides
over our metropolitan university, has pre-
pared a compact and telling introduction to
Mr. Leifchild's volume, in which he assures
us that it is a work that strips off disguises
and goes to the core of things. His decisive
views are put in a narrow compass, so that
we are happily enabled to give them com-
plete to the readers of the Monthly. If any
should happen to think that the volume
lacks point and incisiveness, they will find
this quality eminently supplied in the
chancellor's brief prologue. When, how-
ever, he calls for a thousand such books, we

l\d

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

think he underestimates the potency of a
smaller number, for certainly, before a score
had made their appearance, " The Modern
Huxleys," whose skins are so ruthlessly
stripped off, would call upon their eternal
protoplasmic firmament to fall upon them
and hide them forever from the calamities
to come.

The author of the performance before us
is of a most conservative temper, and re-
frains from altering even by a hair's-breadth
any of the questions he has undertaken to
discuss. All the conflicts, confusions, and
obscurities of the subject, are faithfully re-
flected in his pages. For the alleged strip-
ping off of disguises and plucking out the
core of things, we have sought in vain, our
impression being that this is exactly what
the author has avoided. The assiduity with
which he leaves things as he finds them is
remarkable, and this trait gives a special
value to his treatment of the subject. What
is denounced by many people, Mr. Leifchild
denounces, and what is indorsed by many
other people, Mr. Leifchild indorses, and, if
it happen to be the same thing, that is none
of his business. Mr. Lyell's views of spe-
cies are quoted, and then it is naively
stated that Mr. Lyell has abandoned them
— with Mr. Lyell be all the responsibility.
His book may therefore be taken as hav-
ing some value in indicating the various
drifts of public opinion. Mr. Herbert
Spencer is freely denounced by certain
parties as the prince of materialists and
the arch-enemy of all religion, because he
is the leading exponent of the doctrine of
evolution, and Mr. Leifchild joins in the
condemnation, and quotes President Porter,
of Yale, exultingly as the great " Spencer-
crusher." But there are others who main-
tain that the doctrine of evolution is not
necessarily atheistic, or materialistic, or
destructive of religion, and with these also
Mr. Leifchild is in equal accord. Lest the
readers of Chancellor Crosby's introduction
should be puzzled at this statement, and
perhaps a little skeptical about it, we quote
the following passages from " The Great
Problem :"

" The earnest and increased study of Na-
ture in our day leads us to much broader
views of Divine action than have been for-
merly entertained ; and to these views

natural science conducts ns without really
leading us away from the -beity. Just as we
now discover more and more geographically,
so we discern more and more theologically.
The earth is far larger to us than to Herodo-
tus ; Columbus was a far better geographer
than the Grecian ; but the discovery of
America did not annul the existence of Eng-
land or Spain. The discovery of new stars
does not extinguish the old stars, does not
darken one beam of their light. In like
manner, the discovery of Natural and Sexual
Selection, or rather the application of them,
does not limit the action of the Creator"
(p. 256). " The unity of Evolution, as com-
prehended by the Cosmos, is aptly described
by Mr. Spencer, who shows the higher gen-
eralization of our knowledge concerning
Evolution to be — so far as we know the con-
stitution of the world — one unceasing and
all-perfecting system, advancing everywhere
and in all. After elaborately working out
his own theory, Mr. Spencer suggestively
intimates that the laws of Evolution, con-
templated as holding true of each order of
existence separately, hold true when we con-
template the several orders of existences as
forming together one natural whole. While
we think of Evolution as divided into Astro-
nomic, Biologic, Psychologic, Sociolcgic,
etc., it may seem to a certain extent a coin-
cidence that the same law of metamorphosis
holds throughout all its divisions. But
when we recognize these divisions as mere
conventional groupings made to facilitate
the arrangement and acquisition of knowl-
edge— when we regard the different exist-
ences with which they deal as component
parts of one Cosmos — we see at once that
there are not several kinds of Evolution hav-
ing certain traits in common, but one Evolu-
tion going on everywhere after the same
manner. While any whole is evolving, there
is always going on an Evolution of the parts
into which it divides itself. This holds truo
of the totality of things as made up of parts
within parts, from the greatest down to the
smallest. We know that, while a physically
cohering aggregate like the human body is
getting larger, and taking on its general
shape, each of its organs is doing the same ;
that, while each organ is growing and becom-
ing unlike others, there is going on a differ-
entiation and integration of its component
tissues and vessels ; and that even the com-
ponents of these components are severally
increasing and passing into more definitely
heterogeneous structures. But we have not
duly remarked that, setting out with the
human body as a minute part, and ascending

LITERARY NOTICES.

247

from it to the greater parts, this simultaneity
of transformation is equally manifest ; that,
■while each individual is developing, the
society of which he is an insignificant unit
is developing too ; that, while the aggregate
mass forming a society is becoming more
definitely heterogeneous, so likewise is that
total aggregate, the Earth, of which the soci-
ety is an inappreciable portion ; that, while
the Earth, which in bulk is not a millionth
of the solar system, progresses toward its
concentrated and complex structure, the solar
system similarly progresses ; and that even
its transforations are but those of a scarcely
appreciable portion of our sidereal system,
which has at the same time been going
through parallel changes" (p. 260). "The
more I can understand of the manner of
Evolution, the more am I impressed with its
unity of purpose, even in full view of its
multiplicity of parts, and manifoldness of
stages. From increase of such knowledge
I rise into higher perceptions. I see rhythm
in every motion on the earth, rhythm there-
fore in combined motions, a wonderful
rhythm pervading the Cosmos" (p. 259).
" What can we say of Evolution ? if we treat
it reverently, and not atheistically, we can
only say that it presupposes an evolver, and
that such an evolver must be Divine " (p.
257). " The manner of his unfolding is the
true and limited province of physical in-
quiry ; yet a noble province it is, rich in
results, fair with flowers by the wayside,
and abundant in promise for future ages.
Men are observers of natural development ;
whether or not included in it ; they watch
its progress in other existences with deep
interest. Every advance in it is fitted to
impress the beholder with admiration, and
to direct him not only to the advance itself,
but to convert him from a mere interpreter
of stage after stage into an obedient ser-
vant and reverent worshipper of the grand
Evolver."

The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons,
and Ornaments, of Great Britain, by
John Evans, F. S. A., Honorary Secre-
tary of the Geological and Numismatic
Societies of London, etc., etc.

The author of this work is the highest
authority in England — perhaps the highest
in the world — upon the subject of which it
treats. A gentleman of extensive means
and a laborious student, he has taken up
that "great division of Prehistoric Archce-
ology which deals with the vestiges of man
in the age of stone, and in the present vol-

ume we have the matured and comprehen-
sive results of his inquiries. He has con-
centrated his main attention upon England,
and given an exhaustive presentation of the
evidence that has now been gathered, re-
garding the primitive state of the inhabi-
tants of that island, when their implements
of war and peace were chiefly constructed
of flint. The volume is a valuable contribu-
tion to the obscure but interesting question
of the antiquity of man, and the primeval
conditions of his life. Mr. Evans is not a
partisan, or a propagandist of any extreme
views upon this subject, but deals with it
simply as a scientific question, to be eluci-
dated by the painstaking accumulation of
the relics of antiquity wThich yet remain, and
which are becoming more varied and abun-
dant with increasing search and observation.
He ha3 figured in his pages about 800 ob-
jects— arrow-heads, daggers, knives, axes,
hammers, adzes, picks, chisels, gouges,
drills, scrapers, whetstones, stone-vessels,
buttons, rings, necklaces, bracelets, and
various other things — stating their locality
and under what circumstances they were
found. Great care has been taken with the
illustrations, Mr. Evans having spared no
expense in procuring the best artistic talent
in order to secure the highest accuracy of
representation. The book is valuable for the
fidelity of its preparation, both in a scientific
and artistic point of view, and, as it contains
most of the information at present available
with regard to the class of antiquities of
which it treats, it will at once take eminent
rank among treatises upon this branch of
the natural history of man.

A Manual of Microscopic Mounting,
with Notes on the Collection and
Examination of Objects. By John
II. Martin. Philadelphia : Lindsay &
Blakiston, 1872.

The necessity of the microscope to the
naturalist and physician, and its wide em-
ployment as a means of recreation and
study by the non-professional, have created
a demand for something that shall serve as
a guide in the delicate operations connected
with its use. So far as the management of
the instrument itself is concerned, this has
been supplied in various treatises ; but, with
the exception of incidental directions, wide-

248

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ly scattered, and therefore not readily ac-
cessible, we do not remember to have seen
any thing recent that would help the stu-
dent in the preparation and mounting of
specimens. Yet this is by far the most dif-
ficult part of microscopic work, and, after
the management of the instrument has been
learned, the beginner not unfrequently
breaks down, or becomes sorely discour-
aged in his attempts to prepare and mount
his objects. But, if he fails to master this
department, all opportunity for original re-
search is precluded, and he is compelled to
rely on the use of purchased slides, which,
often got up merely " to sell," are not al-
ways to be depended on. His need is a set
of clear and explicit directions in regard to
all the important details of this part of the
work, and this the book before us appears
well designed to fill.

Beginning with the illustrated descrip-
tions of all the necessary apparatus, and
minute directions for its use, there follow
very complete explanations of the various
methods of mounting, with careful direc-
tions how to proceed in each; and after
this the manner of preparing specimens for
the purpose of mounting is very fully treat-
ed. How to collect, label, and temporarily
preserve all sorts of objects intended for
mounting is next considered ; and then we
come to the seventh and last chapter, which
gives instructions how to proceed in the
examination of organic and inorganic sub-
stances, with test3 for adulterations — a
branch of microscopic work of much prac-
tical importance.

The book closes with an appendix, con-
taining some seventy-five receipts for prep-
arations useful to the microscopist, and a
short explanation of how to convert and
correct microscopic measurements. It is
also provided with a good index.

Thoughts for the Times. Sermons by the
Rev. H. R. Haweis, M. A., Incumbent
of St. James's, Westmoreland Street,
Marylebone, London, Author of " Music
and Morals," etc.

We have read Mr. Haweis's " Thoughts
for the Times " with much interest, and be-
lieve it is destined to' make a deep and
wholesome impression upon many minds.
Books of sermons are getting to be very dif-
ferent things from what they were formerly,

and this is one of the improved kind — a
book of broad, liberal, and decisive views,
applied to practical questions. It is a work
of the type of " Robertson's Sermons," fresh
and breezy with the stir of living thought,
strong in criticism, and thoroughly hospi-
table to modern ideas. Mr. Haweis does
justice to those whom sermonizers general-
ly delight to denounce, and in his search for
truth he does not neglect its latest forms.
Instead of sounding the alarm-bell, and pro-
claiming the peril of religion at every step in
the onward course of Science, he*denies the
antagonism, and is in no dread that faith will
be destroyed by any discoveries that can
be made concerning the order of Nature.
While the whole book is pervaded by inde-
pendent thought, and by a devotional and
reverent spirit, the sermons upon the " Idea
of God " and the' " Law of Progress " are
especially significant and instructive.

A Compendious Manual of Qualitative
Chemical Analysis, by Charles W.
Eliot and Frank H. Storer. Revised,
with the Cooperation of the Authors, by
Wm. Ripley Nichols. New York ; D.
Van Nostrand, Publisher, 18Y2.

No field of literature has been more
cultivated, and yet with so little apparent
success, as that of elementary text-books,
and particularly is this the case in the de-
partment-of science and technics. Every
new effort in this direction is therefore fully
deserving of all the encouragement which
can conscientiously be extended to it. And
we are sure that the little book on Qualita-
tive Chemical Analysis by Messrs. Eliot and
Storer deserves as full a measure of recom-
mendation as the success of its first edition
implies. It is a book especially adapted to
the necessities of the beginner in this branch
of chemical technics, and will leave him, if
not inclined to pursue the subject into the
higher details of analytical practice, with
sufficient knowledge of the subject for the
man of culture, or, if so inclined, will fit nira
to erect the edifice of his chemical educa-
tion on a firm foundation of elementary
knowledge.

The Gardener's Monthly. — The ama-
teur in need of practical directions as to
the laying out and tending of a garden, and
the choice of plants, shrubs, etc., cannot do

MISCELLANY.

249

better than to subscribe for this exceeding-
ly valuable little monthly. He will there
always find, in the "Monthly Hints," just
the information he is likely to want, coming
precisely in season for him; while in the
department of "Communications" he will
have detailed in brief the experience of
some of the most successful amateur and
professional gardeners in the country. A
glance at the headings of the various de-
partments of this magazine will perhaps best
show the ground it is intended to cover.
Besides the two already mentioned, we have
the following: Editorial, Scraps and Que-
ries, Book Notices, New and Rare Plants,
Fruits, etc., Foreign Correspondence, Hor-
ticultural Notes. Mr. Thomas Meehan is
the editor ; and, this said, there is no need
of further commendation of the magazine.
$2.00 per annum. Philadelphia : Published
by Charles H. Marot, 814 Chestnut Street.

The Bee -Keeper's Magazine (H. A.
King & Co., 14 Murray street, N. Y)., the
initial number of which is out, presents a
very creditable appearance, and will no
doubt be favorably received by the special
public to which it is addressed. It has a
very interesting table of contents, and a
handsome chrorao frontispiece, "A Group
of Honey Plants."

BOOKS EEOEIVED.

Annual Report of the Director of the
Meteorological Observatory, Central Park,
New York, 1871.

Reports on the Observations of Encke's
Comet during its Return in 1 87 1 . By Asaph
Hall and William Harkness. Washington :
Government Printing-Office, 1872.

The Health and Wealth of the City of
Wheeling, etc. By James E. Reeves, M. D.
Baltimore, 1871.

MISCELLANY.

Facts relating to Niagara. — We have
received a letter stating that the article
on Niagara Falls, which was published in
the September Mon'thly, contains various
inacuracies, the following being the most
important. The author of the article
states that a barrier fifteen feet high,
6tretching across the plateau at the head

of the rapids, would throw the water back
on Lake Erie. Our correspondent objects
that this barrier would have five feet of
water flowing over it. The critic further
states that the writer of the article blunders
about the source of Gill Creek, in such a
way as to require its waters to rise 350 feet
before they could discharge into Niagara
River ; and, finally, the author of the arti-
cle affirms that the falls, in cutting their
way southward, have lost 35 feet in height
each mile, which, in 6£ miles, the distance
to Lewiston, would amount to 227 feet,
while our correspondent affirms that this
loss of height is but 99 feet.

The Monas Prodigiosa. — In our common
household experience we may often observe
the sudden appearance of a phenomenon,
which, as is remarked by a writer in the
Danziger Zeilung, is of great interest, both
from the historical and the scientific point
of view. The writer says that housewives
in Dantzic must have noticed blood-red
spots making their appearance on farina-
ceous articles of food, when laid aside for a
little while. This phenomenon has been
often observed in that city lately, and is at-
tributable to the presence in the food of a
microscopic animalcule in the low:est stage
of organic development, and consisting of a
single mucous sac; though the botanist
would perhaps class it among plants. It is
probable that house-flies transfer from place
to place these animalcules, which adhere to
their feet, and thus occasion in provisions
those apparent spots of blood which cause
housewives so much annoyance. These
animalcules acted an important and tragic
part in the history of the middle ages, pro-
ducing the phenomenon of bleeding hosti
which repeatedly gave the signal for fearful
persecutions of the Jews. It will be le
membered that in those ages of fanaticism
the Jews were often accused of stabbing
the consecrated Host, and causing it to
bleed, and on this charge over 300 Jews
were at one time put to death in Basle, dur-
ing the fourteenth century. Bolsena, a
town in the late Pontifical States, was once
the scene of a great miracle, produced by
these animalcules. Down to the present
day they exhibit at Bolsena, as a famous
relic, the robe worn by a certain priest who,

250

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

in the act of consecrating the eucharistic
elements, entertained a doubt as to tran-
substantiation, when suddenly he perceived
on his alb (white robe) drops of Wood,
which had previously been concealed by the
plaits of the garment. He hastened to hide
the stain, but in the excited state of his im-
agination only saw the appearances of bleed-
ing hosts multiplying. This wonderful oc-
currence (as it was then esteemed) gave
occasion to the establishment of the festival
of Corpus Christi by Pope Urban IV., and
is the subject of Raffaelle's beautiful Mira-
colo di Bolsena, which he painted in the year
1512. The well-known savant, Ehrenberg
of Berlin, was the first to attempt an expla-
nation of the occurrence, by assigning nat-
ural causes for it. A Berlinese lady, having
shown to him some potatoes boiled in their
skins, and then laid aside for the space of
one day, with a deep-red color appearing
where the skins had burst, he discovered
the existence, at the broken places, of a
microscopic animalcule ■zobs to -g oVrrth of a
line in diameter, which he recognized as the
cause of the phenomenon. In memory of
the marvels wrought by the creature in
past times, he gave it the name of Monas
prodigiosa — the miraculous monad.

" The City of the Future."— There is a
tendency among the more comfortable
classes to make cities merely places to work
in, but to abandon them for the country as
soon as business is over for the day. l^r.
0. B. Bunce, in Appletons' Journal, op-
poses this movement, and claims for city-
life superiority over country-life, in almost
every respect. He proposes to utilize the
pure air above our heads, by erecting build-
ings of many stories, with steam-elevators
and every modern convenience. This would
bring the entire population within easy
reach of the theatre, lecture- and concert-
hall, art-gallery, museum, etc. In short,
the writer makes out a strong case for the
city, as regards intellectual life. Then
come physical health and comfort. It is
an error to suppose that the city is less
salubrious than the country ; a walk up
Broadway is sufficient to prove this. Dys-
pepsia, rheumatism, and diseases arising
from damp houses and undrained lands, are
more common in the country. The city,

too, is not subject to the plague of mosqui-
toes. The writer would have city people
employ all the resources of science, to
evolve from their surroundings all the
health and comfort, all the enjoyment and
intellectual life, which the town can afford.

An Aged Carp. — The following remark-
able story concerning the age of a carp re-
cently killed at Chantilly, while fighting
with a pike, is told by the Paris Gaidois:
" It was the oldest carp in the world, being
475 years of age, and belonged to M.

C , the proprietor of a fine property at

Chantilly. It was an historical carp, a carp
which was born at the Comto de Cosse's, in
the time of Francois I. ; it had passed
through various fortunes, having had no
less than thirty-two masters. M. G pur-
chased it a year since for 1,300 francs. The
name of the carp was Gabrielle, and it meas-
ured nearly 29J inches round, and S85 inch-
es in length."

The Potato - Disease. — According to
recent statements in the English papers, one
of the most serious of the multiplied ills
from which England is now suffering is the
almost total failure of this year's potato-
crop, due to the attack of a parisitic fungus
peculiar to plants belonging to the same
natural order as the potato. This affection,
which is known as the pofato-disease, or
more commonly nisi, was first observed in
Germany in 1842, where it assumed a serious
character. In 1844 it broke out in Canada,
and did a great amount of damage. In the
following year it was first noticed in Eng-
land, and in 1S46 prevailed all over Europe,
but was most destructive in Ireland, where
it gave rise to the celebrated Irish famine.
The mycelium of this fungus eats into and
completely destroys the tissue of the leaf
and stem, and, when once its ravages have
commenced, there is little hope of arresting
them. From the leaves and stem the dis-
ease frequently extends to the tubers, where
it sometimes lies dormant for months, so
that, after being stored, apparently sound
in autumn, they become affected in the fol-
lowing spring. When the disease appears
in the growing plant, brown spots are first
seen on the margins of the leaves, corru-
gating them as they spread. Yery rapid

MISCELLANY

2U

extension of 'the disease, and decay of the
leaves and stalks, often ensue. Botrytis
infestam is the name applied to the fungus,
and it is on the under surface of the leaf
that it is generally found ; it abounds also
in the diseased tubers, which, when cut, pro-
duce an abundant crop from the fresh sur-
face, and it sometimes vegetates even from
the natural skins. The resting spores of the
fungus may lie dormant through the winter,
germinating the next season; and hence,
though the eyes of a diseased tuber appear
healthy, to plant them would be the certain
means of spreading the disease. The same
fungus has been found in the berries of the
tomato when diseased, and on the leaves of
other plants of the natural order Solanacece,
but never on any plant not of that order.

The influences which favor the devel-
opment of Botrytis are not well understood.
It is most prevalent, however, in cloudy,
moist summers, and all authorities agree
that it makes its first decided appearance
during thundery weather. The exceptional
amount of electrical disturbance which ex-
tended over almost the whole of England,
during July last, appears to have been most
unfavorable to the potato-crop, but in a
portion of the county of Devon, where
thunder-storms are remarkably rare, the
potatoes are said to be comparatively free
from the disease. The most destructive out-
breaks of the blight have been observed to
recur at intervals of about twelve years. In
1S46, as before mentioned, the disease was
general in Europe, and in some places, as in
Ireland, it swept away the entire crop. From
1859 to 1861 it again did a great amount of
damage; and now, in 1872, it is more de-
structive than at anytime since 1846. The
London Times states that the loss to the
country from the destruction of the pres-
ent crop will exceed twenty millions ster-
ling, and very pertinently asks : " What
are we doing, or what have we done, to
obviate the recurrence of a disease which is
always impending? Probably all we can
remember is, that there is always a talk of
the potato-rot, and that some years it has
been worse than others. We can only say
that this is a disgraceful confession. There
is no matter in which science could interfere
with more advantage ; and we seem to have
all the conditions of the subject under con-

trol." Nature, hi an article upon the sub-
ject, admits the force of these remarks, and,
pointing out the reasons why neither indi-
viduals nor societies should be expected to
undertake the work, urges that the govern-
ment appoint a commission to investigate
the origin, course and remedies for the po-
tato-disease.

" Little objection can be anticipated to
the course we advocate, on the ground of
the money value at stake in the question.
We are at the present time spending a large
sum of money and employing the highest
talent in the country in the settlement of a
claim for a few millions ; to save the country
several times as much per annum cannot be
objected to as a matter unworthy the atten-
tion of our rulers. And yet, because the
one infliction will fall upon us in the form of
an additional twopence to our income-tax
for a single year, the other in the form of a
much heavier addition to our butchers' and
greengrocers' bills for .many years in suc-
cession, we are content in the latter case to
grumble and bear it, without making any
serious efforts to relieve ourselves from it.
Science is often charged with being 'un-
practical ; ' indeed, in the minds of perhaps
the majority of people, there is a kind of
hazy feeling of a necessary antagonism be-
tween what is scientific and what is prac-
tical. It is time for science to redeem her-
self from this imputation, and no better op-
portunity could be found than in discover-
ing a remedy for the potato-disease."

Action of Plaster on Soils. — Though gen-
erally employed by farmers as a fertilizer,
the action of plaster (gypsum) on the soil is
not well understood. It has been shown,
however, by actual experiment, that plaster
is capable of absorbing ammonia from the
air, and also from decomposing animal and
vegetable matter, holding it in the form of
sulphide of ammonium. This, again, may
be changed into carbonate of ammonia, by
absorption of carbonic acid from the air.
These changes occur when gypsum is
brought in contact with moisture and vege-
table matter. Whatever other purpose it
may serve, this must be regarded as the
most important, as by it plants are supplied
with food of the highest value.

From this fact it may be inferred that

252

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plaster must prove highly serviceable to
moist, mossy hills, and also to meadows
that are not too wet. The north side of a
hill is sometimes greatly benefited by plaster,
when upon a southern exposure it produces
no perceptible effect. It may be used with
confidence on pastures and fields which are
strong enough, and moist enough, to sup-
port deciduous trees. A hill-side, where
moss will grow so as to crowd out good
grasses, is, usually, promptly benefited by
plaster, white-clover quickly following its
application.

Facts about Glass. — Common greenish
glass is found to change color under the in-
fluence of the sun's light, becoming first
yellow, then rose-colored, and finally violet.
And even the purest white glass is found
sometimes to undergo the same changes.
Thus M. E. Siegwart, from whose mono-
graph on " Glass Manufacture," we gather
these items, found the abductor tube of a
chlorohydric gas apparatus deeply tinged
with violet at the parts exposed to sunlight.
When fused anew, the original color returns
to the glass. It is commonly supposed that
glass is not corroded by the atmosphere,
nor even by strong acids. But this is an
error ; for Siegwart found, on actual experi-
ment, that the exposed surface of glass
combines with the constituents of the air.
If glass is suffered to cool very gradually,
it undergoes a transformation which is in
most cases visible to the eye. At first
there appear specks, which soon dot the
entire surface. The glass now becomes
cloudy ; and finally changes into an opaque
body like porcelain, and called Reaumur
porcelain. This devitrification is the most
remarkable phenomenon in the manufacture
of glass, and explains several of the faults
found in that material.

War and Insanity. — It was supposed
that the disasters attending the late war
had had the effect of increasing the num-
ber of insane persons in France, but statis-
tics, so far from confirming this conclusion,
show rather that the number of insane pa-
tients was smaller during the year ending
July 1, 1871, than during the preceding
year. Dr. Lunier, who has studied this
subject, shows that in 1869— '70 there were

admitted into the asylums 11,165 patients;
whereas for the year of the war and the
insurrection the number was 10,243. Of
these 10,243 patients, 1,322 became insane
by reason of the calamities produced by the
war. During the first half of the year af-
ter the war, 400 patients were admitted
who had lost their reason from the same
cause. The sum total, therefore, of such
cases is between 1,700 and 1,800 ; and the
asylums now contain 3,000 less patients
than in 1869.

Parliamentary Ventilation. — After spend-
ing immense sums of money, and trying
numerous methods, the ventilation of the
English houses of Parliament is still exceed-
ingly imperfect. The system now in op-
eration is one of exhaustion, or in other
words one of suction, the air within the
building being sucked out, and, to supply
its place, the surrounding external air is
sucked in, no matter how impure or how
unfit for breathing purposes it may be.
This plan is condemned by a writer in the
Journal of the Society of Arts on the follow-
ing grounds : Exhaustion creates a partial
tendency to a vacuum, when, to maintain the
atmospheric equilibrium, the surrounding
air rushes in from every quarter. Impure
sources are thus as likely to be drawn upon
as any other, and the air introduced is
scarcely an improvement on that with-
drawn. The tendency to a vacuum also fa-
vors the occurrence of draughts. Every
chink about a door or window, and every
crack in the wood-work, becomes an open-
ing for the admission of cold damp air in
the shape of a sensible current. A sys-
tem of suction also perceptibly affects the
acoustic properties of rooms to which it is
applied. The reason for this is that, when-
ever there is a partial vacuum, in the same
ratio as that has been reached, has the
power of the air to transmit pulsations of
sound been impaired.

Preparations for observing the Transit
of Venus. — The French are making active
preparations for observing the approaching
transit of Venus, the Assembly having
voted $20,000 for the construction of in-
struments, with the promise of $40,000
more during the coming year. Nine sta-

MISCELLANY.

253

tions have been selected for observation,
at four of which the entrance and exit
of the planet will be visible, while at
the other five but one of the two inci-
dents can be observed. French savants are
now corresponding with the astronomers of
England, Germany, Russia, and this coun-
try, with a view to parcelling out the sta-
tions to the different observers in such a
way that all shall be favorably located, and
all the useful points of the earth's surface
available for these important observations
occupied. After use in 1874, the French
apparatus will be carefully preserved for
observing the transit of 1882, which is fol-
lowed by a period of one hundred and
twenty years, in which no transit occurs.

The Boring-Organ of Pholadcs. — It is

well known that certain molluscous ani-
mals have the power of boring their way
into solid substances, making the hole thus
excavated their future home. The teredo
or ship-worm, for example, honeycombs the
densest timber, others excavate in clay or
chalk, and pholas perforates the hardest
rocks. With what part of the animal the
work is accomplished has long been a mat-
ter of dispute, some zoologists regarding
the rough, rasp-like shell as the perforating
organ, while others believe that the work
is done by the foot. In a paper on the
subject, read at the recent meeting of the
British Association, Mr. John Robertson
adopts, the former view, maintaining that
the perforations are made by the rotating
movements which the creature is capable
of imparting to its shell. In the discussion
which followed, Mr. Bryson, a close observ-
er of the habits of pholas, was quoted to
the effect that the boring is accomplished
by the foot, which, charged with siliceous
particles, acts like the leaden wheel of the
lapidary. Mr. Gwynn Jeffreys also regards
the foot, in all the boring Conchifera, as
the instrument of perforation. Several facts
were cited in support of this. In Teredo
navalis, as was long ago shown by Sellius,
the foot is the only organ of perforation,
and the posterior extremity of the shell has
a large excavation into which this organ
is received. Pholadidea in the young state
excavates by means of the foot, but after-
ward the aperture becomes closed by ge-

latinous matter, when no further excavation
takes place. In pholas, also, no part of the
shell can act at the bottom of the excava-
tion, the foot alone being capable of use in
that position.

The Polaris Expedition.— Captain C. F.

Hall writes, under date August 24,18*71, from
Tossak, North Greenland, that all goes well
with his vessel, the Polaris. The captain
has abundant supplies, and is well provided
with Esquimaux dogs, reindeer-furs, seal-
skins, etc. Hans Christian, well known to
readers of Kane's narrative, accompanies the
Polaris Expedition, together with his family
of wife and three children. Various charts
and notes of Baron von Otter, commander
of the Swedish Expedition, and of other
scientific men, are in the possession of Cap-
tain Hall, and have led him to abandon the
Jones Sound route ; to cross Melville Bay
to Cape Dudley Diggs ; and thence make
for Smith's Sound, with a view to reach
Kennedy Channel.

Disastrous Volcanic Eruption. — A very
violent eruption of the volcano of Merapi,
in Java, took place on the 15th of April.
The event was totally unexpected, and the
loss of life and property was great, many
villages being destroyed. In some places
the ashes fell for three days, and it became
so dark that lamps had to be lit. About
200 dead bodies had at last accounts been
found on one side of the volcano.

f h finical Products of Encalyptns. — Euca-
lyptus is the name of a genus of trees con-
taining many species, mostly natives of Aus-
tralia, where the tree is very abundant. Sev-
eral species yield a copious resinous secre-
tion, and are therefore known as gum trees.
Some of these attain a great size, it is said,
exceeding in height the giant red-woods of
California. The bodies are slender and with-
out branches, except near the top, where the
branchlets droop like those of the weeping-
willow. The leaves are entire, of a leathery
texture, and, instead of being placed with
one surface toward the ground and another
toward the sky, hang with their edges in
these positions, so that the two surfaces of
the leaf are equally exposed to the light.
The trees are of very rapid growth, and fur-

2 54

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

nish a timber that when green is soft and
easily worked, and that when dry becomes
very hard. Eucalyptus has been introduced
with success both into Europe and Califor-
nia, and the valuable character of the tree
is becoming more and more appreciated as
its properties are better known. Ramel first
brought it into Europe in 1856, and it has
since flourished in the southern portion
of the continent. As far north as Paris,
however, it does not thrive, the winters
proving too cold for it. Owing to the great
absorbent power of its roots and leaves,
and the fact that the latter yield a strong
aromatic odor, the tree is regarded as pe-
culiarly suitable for marshy and unhealthy
districts. The leaves contain a notable
quantity of a volatile aromatic oil, and afford,
both in the fresh and dry state, a very fluid
essence, which is slightly colored, and gives
off an aromatic odor that reminds one of
camphor.

The following preparations are at pres-
ent manufactured from Eucalyptus :

1. The essence already spoken of, which
is administered in doses of a few grms. in the
form of globules.

2. Leaf-powder, which contains all the
active principles of the plant (essence, tan-
nin, bitter principle), and which is pre-
scribed in doses of 4, 8, 12, and even 16 grms.
daily.

3. The infusion and decoction of the
leaves. With half a leaf (about 1 grm.) it
is possible to aromatize three or four cups,
affording a good substitute for tea. This is
employed as a stimulating drink. For topical
applications, 8 grms. in decoction, in a litre
of water, forms a liquor well charged with
the principles indicated.

4. Water distilled from the leaves, which
may be advantageously used with stimulat-
ing drinks.

5. Aqueous extract, alcoholic extract,
employed as febrifuges.

6. Tincture or alcoholate.

7. A liquor, which is similar to the
liquor of mastic, and a wine, which is a tonic
and febrifuge.

8. Cigars and cigarettes.

Dr. Gimbert has studied on himself the
effects of essence of Eucalyptus when taken
into the system. He took various doses of
from 10 to 20 drops, and found it had a

soothing effect. It diminishes tie vascular
tension, and the sense of comfort arising
from it induces sleep. A very strong dose
produces temporary excitement, headache,
and slight fatigue.

New Method for disintegrating Wheat.

— An inventor of Bristol, England, has con-
trived a mill for reducing wheat to flour,
which is said to do the work much more
rapidly than millstones, and at the same
time yields a vastly superior product.
The arrangement consists of iron cages
containing revolving radii, driven at the
rate of four hundred revolutions a min-
ute, which almost instantaneously reduces
the wheat to powder. At Edinbnrgh two
such mills have been running for more than
a year. Each one does the work of twenty-
seven pair of ordinary millstones, with a
saving of five and a half per cent, in favor
of the new mill. The bread made from the
flour which this mill turns out is pronounced
remarkable for its lightness and good keep-
ing qualities.

Instinct at Fanlt in a Dnmming-Bird. —

Says a correspondent in the Bulletin of the
Tony Botanical Club : " I was reminded
the other day of the story told by Pliny,
of the painter Zeuxis, who represented a
bunch of grapes so naturally that the birds
flew at the picture to eat the fruit. My
friend Mrs. P. W. told us that a gentle-
man, the Rev. Mr. P., was sitting on the
piazza of her house with his feet encased in
a pair of worked slippers, adorned with
some highly-colored flowers, and that she
saw a humming-bird repeatedly peck at the
flowers, in the vain attempt to find in them
his accustomed nourishment. This curious
fact seems to indicate that the attraction
in such cases is not due to the odor of the
flowers, but simply to their bright color ;
and that the Greek story is not so im-
probable, after all"

White Partridge-Berries.— Of this berry,
sometimes called Squaw-berry, and which
is normally a brilliant scarlet, a good many
white ones were found this autumn at
Canaan, Conn. The white berries grew on
separate vines, ripened like the red ones,
but were much larger.

NOTES.

255

Aa Aroiy of Caterpillars. — A writer in
the Gardener's Monthly gives some interest-
ing particulars concerning the habits of the
caterpillars, which last spring visited the
region about Memphis in such unheard-of
numbers. They were so numerous, that
several trains of cars coming into the city
were stopped on each of the two roads, the
masses covering the rails for hundreds of
yards in a body, compelling the brakemen
to get down and sweep them off before the
driving-wheels could get sufficient hold to
pass over the obstruction. They lived on
the young leaves of both forest and fruit
trees — the oak, quince, apple, and plum,
being their favorite food. "Whole orchards
were denuded of foliage, and great lanes of
bare trees marked their track through the
forests. They are characterized by one
remarkable peculiarity. Unless prowling
through thick grass, or when about half
grown, descending by the long web which
each spins, from a tall rough forest-tree,
they are always arranged in military style ;
. and travel, also, in long, straight lines, sev-
eral abreast.

lasect-Life ia a Coal-Minc. — A coal-pit
in England having become infested with
large-winged insects, which caused the
workmen considerable annoyance, by flit-
ting around their lamps and often ex-
tinguishing them, a search was made to
discover the source from which they came.
The wooden props supporting the workings
were found to be pierced in several places,
as though by gimlets, and in the holes were
found a number of moth-like insects. The
wood had come from abroad, and had been
in the pit some four years before the insects
began to make their appearance.

Au Fapatcntable Pavemeat. — A writer
in the Journal of the Society of Arts advo-
cates the adoption of a kind of wooden
pavement for the .streets of London, which
in point of wear he believes to be superior
to all other varieties of wooden pavement,
and with the additional advantage that it
cannot be made the subject of a patent.
He says : " Xow, the only wood pavement
fit to stand London traffic, and entailin"-
the smallest cost, could not be patented by
the most astute lawyer. Instead of fashion-

ing the blocks into patent dice, hexagons,
polygons, or dove-tailed complications in
any form, we have only to slice barked trees
of any size or quality into cylindrical slices
about thirteen inches in thickness, and put
the largest size down first into a good
rammed foundation, and then the smaller
sizes, until the remaining interstices may be
filled up with what may be called pegs, the
proper ramming of which will render the
whole one solid mass of timber, while the
economy of wood is so great that not a
chip will be wasted. The surface will pre-
sent end-grain only, and with the different
sorts and sizes will afford a much better
foothold than granite blocks."

Gold la Sea-Water. — In a series of re-
searches on the composition of sea-water, a
chemist named Sonstadt has been able to
make out the presence of gold as one of its
constituents. It appears to be completely
dissolved, and is held in solution by the
action of iodate of calcium, which, as shown
by the same chemist, sea-water also con-
tains. He demonstrates the presence of
gold by three separate and entirely different
methods, and estimates the proportion to be
less than one grain per ton of water.

NOTES.

Non-inflammable Fabrics. — Cotton or
linen goods may be rendered non-inflamma-
ble by being dipped in a solution of equal
parts of acetate of lime and chloride of cal-
cium dissolved in twice their weight of wa-
ter.

Taper Lamp-Shades. — Dr. Minis men-
tions two cases in Jena and one in Frank-
fort where persons using green glazed paper
lamp-shades were poisoned by the arsenic
of the coloring matter. The heat of the
lamp volatilized the arsenic, and rendered
the small quantity present very dangerous.

Progress of Chemistry. — One by one
the organic products are being copied in the
laboratory. The last triumph in this direc-
tion which has come to our notice is the
production of glycerine by Friedel and Silva.
If the vapor of fusel-oil be passed through
a red-hot tube, propylen is formed, which
readily combines with chlorine, and from
this chloride of propylen glycerine is pro-
duced by a process in which no glycerine is
employed. As glycerine is the base of all
true fats, this is an important step in the
direction of oil-making.

256

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

An officer connected with the Geological
Survey of Ireland, Mr. Hull, states the net
available tonnage of coal in that country as
182,280,000 tons. Of this amount, Antrim
has 16,000 tons ; Tyrone, 32,900,000;
Queens, Kilkenny, and Carlow, 77,580,000 ;
Tipperary, 25,000,000 ; Clare, Limerick, and
Cork, 20,000,000. Connaught has 10,800-
000.

According to J. Ballynski, if the motion
of a leaden bullet were all converted into
heat, it would amount to three times as much
as would be sufficient to melt the quantity
of lead found to be melted by actual experi-
ment. This he explains as having been ex-
pended in denting the iron plates of the
target. By using a hard stone target, he
was able to completely melt the bullets
fired against it.

An improvement ha* been made in the
process for extracting sugar from the beet by
maceration, by adding lime to the liquor and
precipitating the lime by a current of car-
bonic-acid gas. This has the effect of rap-
idly purifying the liquor and of displacing
the remaining air, which would otherwise
promote fermentation.

Mr. Wideman states that, by the contact
of ozone for twenty minutes with whiskey,
the fusel-oil was removed, and the whiskey
mellowed as much as if it had been kept for
ten years. Further, by adding to whiskey
of proof strength seven times its weight, of"
water, the introduction of ozone speedily
transformed the mixture into marketable
vinegar. In Russia good brandy is said to
be made from mosses and lichens.

Paper from Wood. — A letter from Berlin,
in the Elberfeld Gazette, represents Prince
Bismarck in a new light — that of a paper-
maker. The paper-manufactory established
by the Imperial Chancellor on his estate at
Varzin has proved so successful, says the wri-
ter, that it is impossible to meet the large or-
ders which come from England. This paper
is made of chips of fir — that, at least, is the
chief element.

An instance of supposed mimicry in in-
sects is given in Science Gossip. The car-
pet-moth hides in some obscure place during
the day, holding the upper wings outspread.
When it thus rests on a greenish or obscure
ground, it might easily pass for a smaller
whitish moth. Is it by mere accident that
the upper rather than the lower wings of
the insect are spread out, or have we here a
provision made to guard against the assaults
of its enemies ?

The French are making preparations
for meteorological observations at elevated
points. An observatory is now in course of
construction at the summit of Puy-de-Dome,

which will be connected by a telegraphic
wire with another in a pavilion of the faculty
at Clermont. The difference in height be-
tween the two is about 3,800 feet, and, by
means of the telegraphic wire, the difference
of meteorological conditions between the
plain and the upper regions of the atmos-
phere can be shown at any moment.

The opium-poppy in Bengal is suffering
serious damage from a fungoid growth
which develops itself on the leaves. Sul-
phur is suggested as a remedy, it having
proved useful in a similar disease which at-
tacks the vine.

Timber-Planting in Hall County, Ne-
braska, has become quite popular. It is
predicted that within twenty years the
" Great American Desert " will be far
better timbered than the Eastern States.

Hops in England. — Says the Mark Lane
Express, 65,600 acres are devoted to the cul-
ture of hops in England, and the area is grad-
ually increasing. Kent, the largest hop-
growing county, had 32,000 acres in this
crop last season, the early grounds averag-
ing 1,400 to 1,600 pounds per acre ; Sussex,
next in importance, 14,500 acres, averaging
1,800 to 2,200 pounds per acre. Surrey is
noted for a choice quality of hops of bright
color and superior aroma.

A correspondent calls attention to a
discrepancy of statement occurring in the
article entitled " Coal as a Reservoir of
Power," published in No. 6 of The Popular
Science Monthly. It is there affirmed that
a pound of coal in burning yields an energy
equal to the power of lifting 10,808,000
pounds one foot ; and this is followed by
the statement that a cubic yard of coal,
2,240 pounds, possesses a reserve of energy
equal to lifting 1,729,200 pounds one foot
high : 2,240 pounds (an English ton) would
of course yield 2,240 times as much energy
as one pound, and consequently would raise
10,808,000 tons one foot high.

The extraction of sulphur and the man-
ufacture of sulphuric acid from iron pyrites
were first successfully accomplished on the
large scale, under the stress of a tyrannical
proceeding on the part of the King of the
Two Sicilies. At the time, the island of
Sicily was the principal source of the sulphur
consumed in Europe, and the trade in the
article brought an immense revenue to the
government. A corrupt administration and
a bankrupt treasury led the king to grant
a monopoly of the business to a single firm
in France, he expecting thereby to secure a
large increase of funds. His action had ex-
actly the opposite effect. The price of sul-
phur was doubled, its extraction from py-
rites followed, and the sulphur mines of
Sicily have since been of comparatively little
consequence.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JANUARY, 1873.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

By HERBERT SPENCER.
VI. — Subjective Difficulties — Intellectual.

IF you watch the management of a child by a mother of small ca-
pacity, you may be struck by the inability she betrays to imagine
the child's thoughts and feelings. Full of energy which he must ex-
pend in some way, and eager to see every thing, her little boy is every
moment provoking her by his restlessness. The occasion is perhaps a
railway journey. Now he strives to look out of the window; and
now, when forbidden to do that, climbs on the seats, or meddles with
the small luggage. " Sit still," " Get down, I tell you," " Why can't
you be quiet ? " are the commands and expostulations she utters from
minute to minute — partly, no doubt, to prevent the discomfort of fel-
low-passengers. But, as you will see at other times, when no such
motive comes into play, she endeavors to repress these childish activi-
ties mainly out of regard for what she- thinks propriety, and does it
without any adequate recognition of the penalties she inflicts. Though
she herself lived through this phase of extreme curiosity — this early
time Avhen almost every object passed has the charm of novelty, and
when the overflowing energies generate a painful irritation if pent up ;
yet now she cannot believe how keen is the desire for seeing which she
balks, and how difficult is the maintenance of that quietude on which
she insists. Conceiving her child's consciousness in terms of her own
consciousness, and feeling how easy it is to sit still and not look out of
the window, she ascribes his behavior to mere perversity.

I recall this and kindred experiences to the reader's mind, for the-
purpose of exemplifying a necessity and a difficulty. The necessity is
that, in dealing with other beings and interpreting their actions, we
are obliged to represent their thoughts and feelings in terms of our

VOL. II. — 17

258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

own. The difficulty is that, in so representing them, we can never he
more than partially right, and are frequently very wrong. The con-
ception which any one frames of another's mind, is inevitably more or
less after the pattern of his own mind — is automorphic ; and in propor-
tion as the mind of which he has to frame a conception differs from his
own, his automorphic interpretation is likely to be wide of the truth.

That measuring other person's actions by the standards our own
thoughts and feelings furnish, often causes misconstruction, is indeed
a truth familiar even to the vulgar. But while anions: members of the
same society, having natures nearly akin, it is seen that automorphic
explanations are often erroneous, it is not seen with due clearness how
much more erroneous such explanations commonly are, when the ac-
tions are those of men of another race, to whom the kinship in nature
is comparatively remote. We do, indeed, perceive this, if the interpre-
tations are not our own ; and if both the interpreters and the inter-
preted are distant in thought and nature from ourselves. When, as in
early English literature, we find Greek history conceived in terms of
feudal institutions, and the heroes of antiquity spoken of as princes,
knights, and squires, it becomes clear to us that the ideas concerning
ancient civilization must have been utterly wrong. When we find
Virgil adopted by Dante as his guide, and named elsewhere as one
among the prophets who visited the cradle of Christ — when an illus-
trated psalter gives scenes from the life of Christ in which there re-
peatedly figures a castle with a portcullis — when even the Crucifixion
is described by Langland in the language of chivalry, so that the man
who pierced Christ's side with a spear is considered as a knight who
disgraced his knighthood1 — when we read of the Crusaders calling
themselves " vassals of Christ ; " we need no further proof that by car-
rying their own sentiments, and ideas, and habits, to the interpreta-
tion of social arrangements and transactions among the Jews, our
ancestors were led into absurd misconceptions. But we do not recog-
nize the fact that in virtue of the same tendency we are ever framing
conceptions which, if not so grotesquely untrue, are yet very wide of
the truth. How difficult it is to imagine mental states remote from
our own so correctly that we can understand how they issue in indi-
vidual actions, and consequently in social actions, an instance will
make manifest.

The feeling of vague wonder with which he received his first lessons
in the Greek mythology, will most likely be dimly remembered by
every reader. If not in words, still in an inarticulate way, there passed
through him the thought that belief in such stories was unaccount-
able. When, afterward, he read in books of travels details of the
amazing superstitions of this or that race of savages, there was joined
with a sense of the absurdity of such superstitions, more or less of
astonishment at their acceptance by any human beings, however

1 Warton's "History of English Poetry," vol. ii., p. 57, cote.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 259

ignorant or stupid. That the people of a neighboring tribe had de-
scended from ducks, that rain resulted when certain deities began to
spit upon the earth, that the island lived upon had been pulled up
from the bottom of the ocean by one of their gods, whose hook got
fast when he was fishing — these and countless beliefs equally laugh-
able seem to him to imply an irrationality near to insanity. He inter-
prets them automorphically — carrying with him not simply his own
faculties developed to a stage of complexity considerably beyond that
reached by the faculties of the savage, but also the modes of thinking
in which he was brought up, and the stock of information he has ac-
quired. Usually it never occurs to him to do otherwise. Even if he
attempts to look at things from the savage's point of view, he most
likely fails entirely ; and, if he succeeds at all, it is but very partially.
Yet only by seeing things as the savage sees them can his ideas be un-
derstood, his behavior accounted for, and the resulting social phe-
nomena explained. These seemingly-strange superstitions are quite
natural — quite rational, in a certain sense, in their respective times and
places. The laws of intellectual action are the same for civilized and
uncivilized. The difference is in complexity of faculty and amount of
knowledge accumulated and generalized. Given reflective powers de-
veloped only to that lower degree in which they are possessed by the
aboriginal man — given his small stock of ideas, collected in a narrow
area of space, and not added to by records extending through time —
given his impulsive nature incapable of patient inquiry ; and these
seemingly-monstrous beliefs of his become in reality the most feasible
explanations he can find of surrounding things. Yet even after seeing
that this must be so, it is not easy to think, from the savage's point of
view, clearly enough to follow the effects of his ideas on his acts,
through all the relations of life, social and other.

A parallel difficulty stands in the way of rightly conceiving char-
acter remote from our own, so as to see how it issues in conduct. We
may best recognize our inability in this respect by observing the con-
verse inability of other races to understand our characters, and the
acts they prompt.

" "Wonderful are the works of Allah ! Behold ! That Frank is trudging about,
when he can, if he pleases, sit still!" '

In like manner Captain Speke tells us :

" If I walked up and down the same place to stretch my legs, they " (Somali)
" formed councils of war on my motives, considering I must have some secret de-
signs upon their country, or I would not do it, as no man in his senses could be
guilty of working his legs unnecessarily." 2

But while by instances like these we are shown that our characters
are in a large measure incomprehensible by races remote in nature

1 Burton's " Scinde," vol. ii., p. 13.

2 Speke's " Journal of Discovery of Source of the Nile," p. 85.

*6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from ourselves, the correlative fact that their sentiments and motives
cannot be rightly conceived by us, is one perpetually overlooked in
our sociological interpretations. Feeling, for instance, how natural it
is to take an easier course in place of a more laborious course, and to
adopt new methods that are proved to be better methods, we are
somewhat puzzled on finding the Chinese stick to their dim paper-
lamps, though they admire our bright argand-lamps, which they do
not use if given to them ; or on finding that the Hindoos prefer their
rough primitive tools after seeing that our greatly-improved tools do
more work with less eflbrt. And, on descending to races yet more
remote in civilization, we still oftener discover ourselves wrong when
we suppose that under given conditions they will act as we should act.
Here, then, is a subjective difficulty of a serious kind. Properly to
understand any fact in social evolution, we have to see it as resulting
from the joint actions of individuals having certain natures. We can-
not so understand it without understanding their natures ; and this,
even by care and effort, we are able to do but very imperfectly. Our
interpretations must be in a greater or less degree automorphic ; and
yet automorphism perpetually misleads us.

One would hardly suppose, a priori, that untruthfulness would
habitually coexist with credulity. Rather our inference might be,
that, in virtue of the tendency above enlarged upon, people most given
to make false statements must be people most inclined to suspect state-
ments made by others. Yet somewhat anomalously, as it seems, ha-
bitual veracity very generally goes with inclination to doubt evidence ;
and extreme untrustworthiness of assertion often has, for its concomi-
tant, readiness to accept the greatest improbabilities on the slenderest
testimony. If you compare savage with civilized, or compare the suc-
cessive stages of civilization, you find untruthfulness and credulity de-
creasing together ; until you reach the modern man of science, who is
at once exact in his statements and critical respecting the evidence on
which facts are alleged. The converse relation to that which we see
in the man of science is even now very startlingly presented in the
East, where greediness in swallowing fictions goes along with superflu-
ous telling of falsehoods. An Egyptian prides himself in a clever lie,
uttered even without motive ; and a dyer will even ascribe the failure
in fixing one of his colors to the not having been successful in a decep-
tion. Yet so great is the readiness to believe improbabilities that Mr.
St. John, in his " Two Years' Residence in a Levantine Family," nar-
rates how, when the " Arabian Nights' Entertainments " was being
read aloud, and when he hinted that the stories must not be accepted
as true, there arose a strong protest against such skepticism — the ques-
tion being asked, " Why should a man sit down and write so many

lies ? " '

1 See pp. 79 and 127.

i

TEE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 261

I point out this union of seemingly-inconsistent traits, not because
of the direct bearing it has on the argument, but for the sake of its in-
direct bearing. For I have here to dwell awhile on the misleading effects
of certain mental tendencies which similarly appear very unlikely to
coexist, and which yet do habitually coexist. I refer to the belief
which, even while I write, I find repeated in the leading journal, that
"the deeper a student of history goes, the more does he find man the
same in all time ; " and to the quite opposite belief embodied in current
politics, that human nature may be readily altered. These two beliefs,
which ought to cancel one another but do not, originate two classes of
errors in sociological speculation ; and nothing like correct conclusions
in Sociology can be drawn until they have been rejected, and replaced
by a belief which reconciles them — the belief that human nature is in-
definitely modifiable, but that no modification of it can be brought
about rapidly. We will glance at the errors to which each of these
beliefs leads.

While it was held that the stars are fixed and that the hills are ever-
lasting, there was a certain congruity in the notion that man contin-
ues unchanged from age to age ; • but now when we know that all
stars are in motion, and that there are no such things as everlasting
hills — now that we find all things throughout the Universe to be in a
ceaseless flux, it is time for this crude conception of human nature to
disappear out of our social conceptions ; or rather — it is time that its
disappearance should be followed by that of the many narrow notions
respecting the past and the future of society, which have grown out
of it, and which linger notwithstanding the loss of their root. For,
avowedly by some and tacitly by others, it continues to be thought
that the human heart is as " desperately wicked " as it ever was, and
that the state of society hereafter will be very much like the state of
society now. If, when the evidence has been piled mass upon mass,
there comes a reluctant admission that aboriginal man, of troglodyte
or kindred habits, differed somewhat from man as he was during feudal
times, and that the customs and sentiments and beliefs he had in feudal
times imply a character appreciably unlike that which he has now —
if, joined with this, there is a recognition of the truth that along with
these changes in man there have gone still more conspicuous changes
in society ; there is, nevertheless, an ignoring of the implication that
hereafter man and society will continue to change, until they have
diverged as widely from their existing types as their existing types
have diverged from those of the earliest recorded ages. It is true that
among the more cultured, the probability, or even the certainty, that
such transformations will go on, may be granted ; but the granting is
but nominal, the admission does not become a factor in the conclusions
drawn. The first discussion on a political or social topic reveals the
tacit assumption that in times to come society will have a structure
substantially like its existing structure. If, for instance, the question

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of domestic service is raised, it mostly happens that its bearings are
considered wholly in reference to those social arrangements which exist
around us ; only a few proceed on the supposition that these arrange-
ments are probably but transitory. It is so throughout. Be the sub-
jects industrial organization, or class-relations, or rule by fashion, the
belief which practically, moulds the conclusions, if not the belief theo-
retically professed, is, that, whatever changes they may undergo, our
institutions will not cease to be recognizably the same. Even those
who have, as they think, deliberately freed themselves from this per-
verting tendency — even M. Comte and his disciples, believing in an
entire transformation of society, nevertheless betray an incomplete
emancipation ; for the ideal society believed in by them, is one under
regulation by a hierarchy essentially akin to hierarchies such as man-
kind have known. So that everywhere, more or less, sociological
thinking is impeded by the difficulty of constantly bearing in mind
that the social states toward which mankind are being carried are
probably as little conceivable by us as our present state was conceiv-
able by a Norse pirate and his followers.

Note, now, the contrary difficulty, which appears to be surmount-
able by scarcely any of our parties, political and philanthropic, from
the highest to the lowest — the difficulty of understanding that human
nature, though indefinitely modifiable, can be modified but very
slowly ; and that all laws and institutions and appliances, which count
on getting from it within a short time much better results than pres-
ent ones, will inevitably fail. If we glance over the programmes of
societies, and sects, and schools of all kinds, from Rousseau's disciples
in the French Convention down to the members of the United King-
dom Alliance, from the adherents of the Ultramontane propaganda
down to the enthusiastic advocates of an education exclusively secu-
lar, we find in them one common trait. They are all pervaded by the
conviction, now definitely expressed and now taken as a self-evident
truth, that there needs but this kind of instruction or that kind of
discipline, this mode of repression or that system of culture, to bring
society into a very much better state. Here we read that " it is neces-
sary completely to refashion the people whom one wishes to make
free : " the implication being that a refashioning is practicable.
There it is taken as self-evident that, when you have taught children
what they ought to do to be good citizens, they will become good
citizens. Elsewhere it is held to be a truth beyond question that, if
by law temptations to drink are removed from men, they will not only
cease to drink, but thereafter cease to commit crimes. And yet the
delusiveness of all such hopes is obvious enough to any one not blind-
ed by an hypothesis, or carried away by an enthusiasm. The fact,
often pointed out to Temperance-fanatics, that some of the soberest
nations in Europe yield a proportion of crime higher than our own,
might suffice to show them that England would not be suddenly

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 263

moralized if they carried their proposed restrictions into effect. The
superstition that good behavior is to be forthwith produced by lessons
learned out of school-books, which was long ago statistically disproved,1
would, but for preconceptions, be utterly dissipated by observing to
what a slight extent knowledge affects conduct — by observing that
the dishonesty implied in the adulterations of tradesmen and manufac-
turers, in fraudulent bankruptcies, in bubble-companies, in " cooking "
of railway accounts and financial prospectuses, differs only in form,
and not in amount, from the dishonesty of the uneducated — on observ-
ing how amazingly little the teachings given to medical students affect
their lives, and how even the most experienced medical men have their
prudence scarcely at all increased by their information. Similarly,
the Utopian ideas which come out afresh along with every new politi-
cal scheme, from the " paper-constitutions " of the Abbe Sieyes down
to the just-published programme of M. Louis Blanc, and from agita-
tions for vote-by-ballot up to those who have a republic for their aim,
might, but for this tacit belief we are contemplating, be extinguished
by the facts perpetually and startlingly thrust on our attention.
Again and again for three generations has France been showing to
the world how impossible it is essentially to change the type of a social
structure by any rearrangement wrought out through a revolution.
However great the transformation may for a time seem, the original
thing reappears in disguise. Out of the nominally-free government
set up, a new despotism arises, different from the old by having a new
shibboleth and new men to utter it; but identical with the old in the
determination to put down opposition, and in the means used to this
end. Liberty, when obtained, is forthwith surrendered to an avowed
autocrat ; or, as we have seen within this year, it is allowed to lapse
into the hands of one who claims the reality of autocracy without its
title. Nay, the change is, in fact, even less ; for the regulative organi-
zation which ramifies throughout French society continues unaltered
by these changes at the governmental centre. The bureaucratic sys-
tem persists equally under Imperialist, Constitutional, and Republican
arrangements. As the Due d'Audriffret-Pasquier pointed out, " Em-
pires fall, Ministers pass away, but Bureaux remain." The aggregate
of forces and tendencies embodied, not only in the structural arrange-
ments holding the nation together, but in the ideas and sentiments of
its units, is so powerful that the excision of a part, even though it be
the governmental centre, is quickly followed by the substitution of a
like part. It needs but to recall the truth exemplified some chapters
back, that the properties of the aggregate are determined by the prop-
erties of the units, to see at once that, so long as the characters of citizens
remain substantially unchanged, there can be no substantial change in
the political organization which has slowly been evolved by them.

1 " Summary of the Moral Statistics of England and Wales." By Joseph Fletcher, ,
Esq., one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools.

264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This double difficulty of thought, with the double set of delusions
fallen into by those who do not surmount it, is, indeed, naturally asso-
ciated with the once-universal, and still-general, belief that societies
arise by manufacture, instead of arising, as they do, by evolution.
Recognize the truth that aggregates of men, like other aggregates,
grow, and acquire their structural characters through a process of
modification upon modification, and there are excluded.these antitheti-
cal errors that man remains the same and that man is readily alter-
able ; and along with exclusion of these errors comes admission of the
inference that the changes which have brought social arrangements to
a form so different from past forms will in future carry them on to
forms as different from those now existing. Once become habituated
to the thought of a continuous unfolding of the whole and of each
part, and these misleading ideas disappear. Take a word and observe
how, while changing, it gives origin in course of time to a family of
words, each changing member of which similarly has progeny ; take a
custom, as that of giving eggs at Easter, which has now developed
in Paris into the fashion of making expensive presents of every
imaginable kind enclosed in imitation-eggs, becoming at length large
enough to contain a brougham, and which entails so great a tax that
people go abroad to evade it ; take a law, once quite simple and made
to meet a special case, and see how it eventually, by successive addi-
tions and changes, grows up into a complex group of laws, as, out of
two statutes of William the Conqueror came our whole system of stat-
utes regulating land-tenure ; 1 take a social appliance, like the press,
and see how from the news-letter, originally private and written, and
then assuming the shape of a printed fly-leaf to a written private let-
ter, there has, little by little, evolved this vast assemblage of journals
and periodicals, daily, weekly, general, and local, that have, individu-
ally and as an aggregate, grown in size while growing in heterogeneity
— do this, and do the like with all other established institutions, agen-
cies, products, and there will come naturally the conviction that now,
too, there are various germs of things which will in the future develop
in ways no one imagines and take shares in profound transformations
of society amd of its members — transformations that are hopeless as
immediate results, but certain as ultimate results.

Try to fit a hand with five fingers into a glove with four. Your
difficulty aptly parallels the difficulty of putting a complex conception
into a mind not having an adequately complex faculty. In proportion
as the several terms and relations which make up a thought become
numerous and varied, there must be brought into play numerous and
varied parts of the intellectual structure, before the thought can be
comprehended ; and, if some of these parts are wanting, only fragments
of the thought, and not the thought as a whole, can be taken in. Con-

1 Reeves, "History of English Law," vol. i., pp. 34-36 (second edition).

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 265

eider an instance. What is meant by the ratio of A to B may be ex-
plained to a boy, by drawing a short line A and a long line B, telling
him that A is said to bear a small ratio to B; and then, after lengthen-
ing the line A, telling him that A is now said to bear a larger ratio to
B. But suppose I have to explain what is meant by saying that the
ratio of A to B is equal to the ratio of C to D. This conception is
much more complex : instead of two different quantities and one rela-
tion, there are four different quantities and three relations. To under-
stand the proposition, the boy has to think of A and B and their dif-
ference, and, without losing his intellectual grasp of these, he has to
think of C and D and their difference, and, without losing his intellect-
ual grasp of these, he has to think of the two differences as each hav-
ing a like relation to its pair of quantities. Thus the number of terms
and relations to be kept before the mind is such as to imply the co-
operation of many more agents of thought, any of which being absent,
the proposition cannot be understood : the boy must be older before he
will understand it, and, if uncultured, will probably never understand
it at all. Pass now to a conception of still greater complexity — say
that the ratio of A to B varies as the ratio of C to D. Far more
numerous things have now to be represented in consciousness with ap-
proximate simultaneity. A and B have to be thought of as not constant
in their lengths, but as one or both of them changing in their lengths,
so that their difference is indefinitely variable. Similarly with C and
D. And then the variability of the ratio in each case being duly con-
ceived in terms of lines that lengthen and shorten, the thing to be un-
derstood is, that whatever difference any change brings about between
A and B, the relation it bears to one or other of them is always like
that which the difference simultaneously arising between O and D
bears to one or other of them. The greater multiplicity of ideas re-
quired for mentally framing this proposition evidently puts it further
beyond the reach of faculties not developed by appropriate culture, or
not capable of being so developed. And as the type of proposition
becomes still more involved, as it does when two such groups of depend-
ent variables are compared and conclusions drawn, it begins to require
a grasp that is easy only to the disciplined mathematician.

One who does not possess that complexity of faculty which, as we
here see, is requisite for the grasping of a complex conception, may, in
cases like these, become conscious of his incapacity ; not from perceiving
what it is that he lacks, but from perceiving that, by another person,
results can be achieved which he cannot achieve. But, where no such
thing as the verifying of exact predictions comes in to prove to one of
inferior faculty that his faculty is inferior, he is usually unaware of the
inferiority. To imagine a higher mode of consciousness is in some de-
gree to have it ; sc that, until he has it in some degree, he cannot really
conceive of its existence. An illustration or two will make this
clear.

266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Take a child on your knee, and, turning over with him some engrav-
ings of landscapes, note what he observes. " I see a man in a boat,"
says he, pointing. "Look at the cows coming down the hill." "And
see, there is a little boy playing with a dog." These and other such
remarks, mostly about the living objects in each view, are all you get
from him. Never by any chance does he utter a word respecting the
scene as a whole. There is an absolute unconsciousness of any thing
to be observed, or to be pleased with, in the combination of wood and
water and mountain. And, while the child is entirely without this
complex aesthetic consciousness, you see that he has not the remotest
idea that such a consciousness exists in others, but is wanting in him-
self. • Take, now, a case in which a kindred defect is betrayed by an
adult. You have, perhaps, in the course of your life, had some musi-
cal culture, and can recall the stages through which you have passed.
In early days a symphony was a mystery, and you were somewhat
puzzled to find others applauding it. An unfolding of musical faculty,
that went on slowly through succeeding years, brought some apprecia-
tion, and now these complex musical combinations, which once gave
you little or no pleasure, give you more pleasure than any others.
Remembering all this, you begin to suspect that your indifference to
certain still more involved musical combinations may arise from inca-
pacity in you, and not from defects in them. See, on the other hand,
what happens with one who has undergone no such series of changes
— say, an old naval officer, whose life at sea kept him out of the way
of concerts and operas. You hear him occasionally confess, or rather
boast, how much he enjoys the bagpipes. While the last cadences of
a sonata, which a young lady has just played, are still in your ears, he
goes up to her and asks whether she can play " Polly, put the kettle
on," or " Johnny comes marching home." And then, when concerts
are talked about at table, he seizes the occasion for expressing his dis-
like of classical music, and scarcely conceals his contempt for those
who go to hear it. On contemplating his mental state, you see that,
along with absence of the faculty for grasping complex musical combi-
nations, there goes no consciousness of the absence — there is no suspi-
cion that such complex combinations exist, and that other persons
have faculties for appreciating them.

And now for the application of this general truth to our subject.
The conceptions with which sociological science is concerned are
complex beyond all others. In the absence of faculty having a cor-
responding complexity, they cannot be grasped. Here, however, as in
other cases, the absence of an adequately complex faculty is not ac-
companied by any consciousness of incapacity. Rather do we find
that, in proportion to the deficiency in the required kind of mental
grasp, there is an extreme confidence of judgment on sociological ques-
tions, and a ridicule of those who, after long discipline, begin to per-
ceive what there is to be understood, and how difficult is the right un-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 267

derstanding of it. A simple illustration of this will prepare the way
for more involved illustrations.

A few months ago, the Times gave us an account of the last
achievement in automatic printing — the "Walter Press," by which its
own immense edition is thrown off in a few hours every morning.
Suppose a reader of the description, adequately familiar with mechan-
ical details, follows what he reads step by step with full comprehen-
sion— perhaps making his ideas more definite by going to see the
apparatus at work and questioning the attendants ? Now he goes
away considering he understands all about it. Possibly, under its
aspect as a feat in mechanical engineering, he does so. Possibly also,
under its biographical aspect, as implying in Mr. Walter and those
who cooperated with him certain traits, moral and intellectual, he
does so. But under its sociological aspect he has no notion of its
meaning, and does not even suspect that it has a sociological aspect.
Yet, if he begins to look into the genesis of the thing, he will find that
he is but on the threshold of the full explanation. On asking not what
is its proximate but what is its remote origin, he finds, in the first
place, that this automatic printing-machine is lineally descended from
other automatic printing-machines, which have undergone successive
developments — each presupposing others that went before : without
cylinder printing-machines long previously used and improved, there
would have been no " Walter Press." He inquires a step further, and
discovers that this last improvement became possible only by the
help of papier-mdche stereotyping, which, first employed for making
flat plates, afforded the possibility of making cylindrical plates. And
tracing this back, he finds that plaster-of-paris stereotyping came
before it, and that there was another process before that. Again he
learns that this highest form of automatic printing, like the many
less-developed forms preceding it, depended for its practicability on
the introduction of rollers for distributing ink, instead of the hand-
implements used by " printer' s-devils " fifty years ago — which rollers,
again, could never have been made fit for their present purposes,
without the discovery of that curious elastic compound out of which
they are cast. And then, on tracing the more remote antecedents,
he finds an ancestry of hand printing-presses, which, through genera-
tions, had been successively improved. Now, perhaps, he thinks he
understands the apparatus, considered as a sociological fact. Far
from it. Its multitudinous parts, which will work together only when
highly finished and exactly adjusted, came from machine-shops,
where there are varieties of complicated, highly-finished engines for
turning cylinders, cutting out wheels, planing bars, and so forth ; and
on the preexistence of these the existence of this printing-machine
depended. If he inquires into the history of these complex automatic
tools, he finds they have severally been, in the slow course of mechan-
ical progress, brought to their present perfection by the help of

z68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preceding complex automatic tools of various kind, that cooperated
to make their component parts — each larger, or more accurate, lathe
or planing-machine having been made possible by preexisting lathes
and planing-machines, inferior in size or exactness. And so if he
traces back the whole contents of the machine-shop, with its many-
different instruments, he comes in course of time to the blacksmith's
hammer and anvil, and even, eventually, to still ruder appliances.
The explanation is now completed, he thinks. Not at all. No such
process as that which the " Walter Press " shows us was possible
until there had been invented, and slowly perfected, a paper-machine
capable of making miles of paper without break. Thus there is the
genesis of the paper-machine involved, and that of the multitudinous
appliances and devices that preceded it, and are at present implied
by it. Have we now got to the end of the matter? No ; we have just
glanced at one group of the antecedents. All this development of
mechanical appliances — this growth of the iron-manufacture, this
extensive use of machinery made from iron, this production of so
many machines for making machines — has had for one of its causes
the abundance of the raw materials, coal and iron; has had for
another of its causes the insular position which has favored peace
and the increase of industrial activity. There have been moral causes
at work too. Without that readiness to sacrifice present ease to
future benefit, which is implied by enterprise, there would not only
have never arisen the machine in qixestion, but there would never
have arisen the multitudinous improved instruments and processes
that have made it possible. And, beyond the moral traits which
enterprise presupposes, there are those presupposed by efficient
cooperation. Without mechanical engineers who fulfilled their con-
tracts tolerably well, by executing work accurately, neither this
machine itself nor the machines that made it could have been pro-
duced; and, without artisans having considerable conscientiousness,
no master could insure accurate work. Try to get such products out
of an inferior race, and you will find defective character an insuper-
able obstacle. So, too, will you find defective intelligence an insuper-
able obstacle. The skilled artisan is not an accidental product, either
morally or intellectually. The intelligence needed for making a new
thing is not everywhere to be found ; nor is there everywhere to be
found the accuracy of perception and nicety of execution without
which no complex machine can be so made that it will act. Exact-
ness of finish in machines has developed pari passu with exactness of
perception in artisans. Inspect some mechanical appliance made a
century ago, and you may see that, even had all other requisite con-
ditions been fulfilled, want of the requisite skill in workmen would
have been a fatal obstacle to the production of an engine requiring so
many delicate adjustments. So that there are implied in this mechan-
ical achievement, not only our slowly-generated industrial state, with

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 269

its innumerable products and processes, but also the slowly-moulded
moral and intellectual natures of masters and workmen. Has nothing:
now been forgotten ? Yes, we have left out a whole division of all-
iinportant social phenomena — those which we group as the progress
of knowledge. Along with the many other developments that have
been necessary antecedents to this machine, there has been the develop-
ment of Science. The growing and improving arts of all kinds have
been helped up, step after step, by those generalized experiences, be-
coming ever wider, more complete, more exact, which make up what
we call Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, etc. Without a consider-
ably developed Geometry, there could never have been the machines
for making machines ; still less this machine that has proceeded from
them. Without a developed Physics, there would have been no steam-
engine to move these various automatic appliances, primary and sec-
ondary ; nor would the many implied metallurgic processes have been
brought to the needful perfection. And, in the absence of a developed
Chemistry, many of the requirements, direct and indirect, could not
have been adequately fulfilled. So that, in fact, this organization of
knowledge which began with civilization had to reach something like
its present stage, before such a machine could come into existence,
supposing all other prerequisites to be satisfied. Surely we have
now got to the end of the history. Not quite ; there yet remains an
essential factor. No one goes on year after year spending thou-
sands of pounds, and much time, and persevering through disappoint-
ment and anxiety, without a strong motive : the " Walter Press " was
not a mere tour deforce. Why, then, was it produced ? To meet an
immense demand with great promptness — to print, with one machine,
16,000 copies per hour. Whence arises this demand ? From an exten-
sive reading public, brought in the course of generations to have a
keen morning-appetite for news of all kinds — merchants who need to
know the latest prices at home and the latest telegrams from abroad ;
politicians who must learn the result of last night's division, be informed
of the latest diplomatic move, and read the speeches at a meeting ;
sporting-men who look for the odds and the result of yesterday's race ;
ladies who want to see the births, marriages, and deaths. And, on
asking the origin of these many desires to be satisfied, they prove to
be concomitants of our social state in general — its trading, political,
philanthropic, and other activities ; for, in societies where these are not
dominant, the demand for news of various kinds rises to no such inten-
sity. See, then, how enormously involved is the genesis of this ma-
chine, as a sociological phenomenon. A whole encyclopaedia of
mechanical inventions — some dating from the earliest times — go to
the explanation of it. Thousands of years of discipline, by which the
impulsive, improvident nature of the savage has been evolved into a
comparatively self-controlling nature, capable of sacrificing present
ease to future good, are presupposed. There is presupposed the

270 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

equally long discipline by which the inventive faculty, almost wholly
absent in the savage, has been evolved, and by which accuracy, not
even conceived by the savage, has been cultivated. And there is
further presupposed the slow political and social progress, at once
cause and consequence of these other changes, that has brought us
to a state in which such a machine finds a function to fulfil.

The complexity of a sociological fact, and the difficulty of adequate-
ly grasping it, will now perhaps be more apparent. For as in this
case there has been a genesis, so has there been in every other case,
be it of institution, arrangement, custom, belief, etc. ; but while in
this case the genesis is comparatively easy to trace, because of the
comparatively concrete character of process and product, it is in other
cases difficult to trace, because the factors are mostly not of a sensible
kind. And yet only when the genesis has been traced — only when the
various antecedents of all orders have been observed in their coopera-
tion, generation after generation, through past social states — is there
reached that interpretation of a fact which makes it a part of sociologi-
cal science, properly understood. If, for instance, the true meaning of
such phenomena as those presented by trade-combinations is to be seen,
it is needful to go back to those remote old English periods when anal-
ogous causes produced analogous results. As Brentano points out :

" The workmen formed their Trade-Unions against the aggressions of the
then rising manufacturing lords, as in earlier times the old freemen formed their
Frith-Gilds against the tyranny of mediosval magnates, and the free handicrafts-
men their Craft-Gilds against the aggressions of the Old-burghers." l

Then, having studied the successive forms of such organizations in re-
lation to the successive industrial states, there have to be observed the
ways in which they are severally related to other phenomena of their
respective times — the political institutions, the class distinctions, the
family arrangements, the modes of distribution and degrees of inter-
course between localities, the amounts of knowledge, the religious be-
liefs, the morals, the sentiments, the customs, the ideas. Considered
as parts of a nation, having structures that form parts of its structure
and actions that modify and are modified by its actions, these trade-
societies can have their full meanings perceived only when they are
studied in their serial genesis through many centuries, and their
changes considered in relation to simultaneous changes throughout the
social organism. And even then there remains the deeper inquiry —
How does it happen that in nations of certain types no analogous insti-
tutions exist, and that in nations of other types the analogous institu-
tions have taken forms more or less different ?

That phenomena so involved cannot be seen as they truly are, even
by the highest intelligence at present existing, is tolerably manifest.
And it is manifest also that a Science of Society is likely for a long

1 Brentano's "Introduction to Early English Guilds," p. cxiv.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 271

time hence to be recognized by but few ; since not only is there in
most cases an absence of faculty complex enough to grasp its complex
phenomena, but there is mostly an absolute unconsciousness that there
are any such complex phenomena to be grasped.

To the want of a due complexity of coneeptive faculty, there has to
be added, as a further difficulty, the want of due plasticity of concep-
tive faculty. The general ideas of nearly all men have been framed
out of experiences gathered within comparatively narrow areas ; and
general ideas so framed are far too rigid readily to admit the multitu-
dinous and varied combinations of facts which Sociology presents.
The child of Puritanic parents, brought up in the belief that Sabbath-
breaking brings after it all kinds of transgressions, and having had
pointed out, in the village or small town that formed his world, vari-
ous instances of this connection, is somewhat perplexed in after-years,
when acquaintance with more of his countrymen has shown him exem-
plary lives joined with non-observance of the Sunday. When he adds
to his experiences by Continental travel, and finds that the best people
of foreign societies disregard injunctions which he once thought essen-
tial to right conduct, he still further widens his originally small and
stiff conception. Now, the process thus exemplified, in a single belief
of a comparatively superficial kind, has to be gone through with nu-
merous beliefs of deeper kinds, before there can be reached the flexibili-
ty of thought required for dealing properly with sociological phenom-
ena. Not in one direction, but in nearly all directions, we have to
learn that those connections of social facts which we commonly regard
as natural, and even necessary, are not at all necessary, and often have
no particular naturalness. On contemplating past social states, we are
continually reminded that many arrangements, and practices, and con-
victions, that seem matters of course, are very modern ; and we are
continually forgetting that many things we now regard as impossible
were quite possible a few centuries ago. Still more, on studying soci-
eties alien in race as well as in stage of civilization, we perpetually
meet with things not only contrary to every thing we should have
thought probable, but even such as we should have scarcely hit upon
in trying to conceive the most unlikely and even impossible things.

Take in illustration the varieties of domestic relations. That mo-
nogamy is not the only kind of marriage, we are, indeed, early taught
by our Bible-lessons. But though the conception of polygamy is thus
made somewhat familiar, it does not occur to us that polyandry is also
a possible arrangement ; and we are surprised on first learning that it
not only exists, but was once extremely general. When we contem-
plate these marital institutions unlike our own, we cannot at first
imagine that they can be practised with a sense of propriety like that
with which we practise ours. Yet Livingstone narrates that, in a tribe
bordering one of the Central African lakes, the women were quite dis-

z 72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gusted on hearing that in England a man has only one wife. This is
a feeling by no means peculiar to them.

" An intelligent Kandyan chief, with whom Mr. Baily visited these Ved-
dahs, was perfectly scandalized at the utter barbarism of living with only one
wife, and never parting until separated by death. 'It was,' he said, 'just like
the wanderoos' (monkeys)." '

Again, one would suppose that, as a matter of course, monogamy,
polygamy, and polyandry, in its several varieties, exhausted the pos-
sible forms of marriage. An utterly unexpected form is furnished us
by one of the African tribes. Marriage, among them, is for so many
days in the week — commonly for four days in the week, which is said
to be " the custom in the best families : " the wife during the oif days
being regarded as an independent woman who may do what she
pleases. We are little surprised, too, on reading that, by some of the
hill-tribes of India, unfaithfulness on the part of the husband is held
to be a grave offence, but unfaithfulness on the part of the wife a triv-
ial one. We assume, as self-evident, that good usage of a wife by a
husband implies, among other things, absence of violence ; and hence
it seems scarcely imaginable that in some places the opposite criterion
holds. Yet it does so among the Tartars.

" A nursemaid of mine left me to be married, and some short time after she
went to the Natchalniok of the place to make a complaint against her husband.
He inquired into the matter, when she coolly told him her husband did not love
her. lie 5sked her how she knew he did not love her; 'Because,' she replied,
' he never whipped me.' " 2

A statement which might be rejected as incredible, were it not for
the analogous fact that, among the South African races, a white mas-
ter who does not thrash his men is ridiculed and reproached by them
as not worthy to be called a master. Among domestic customs, again,
who, if he had been set to imagine all possible anomalies, would have
hit upon that which is found among the Basques, and has existed
among other races — the custom that on the birth of a child the hus-
band goes to bed and receives the congratulations of friends, while his
wife returns to her household work? Or who>, among the results of
having a son born, would dream of that which occurs among some
Polynesian races, where the father is forthwith dispossessed of his
property, and becomes simply a guardian of it on behalf of the in-
fant ? The varieties of filial relations and of accompanying senti-
ments continually show us things equally strange, and at first sight
equally unaccountable. It seems hardly credible that it should any-
where be thought a duty on the part of children to bury their parents
alive. Yet it is so thought among the Fijians ; of whom we read also
that the parents thus put out of the way, go to their graves with smiling

1 Lubbock's " Prehistoric Times," p. 344 (first edition).

8 Mrs. Atkinson's "Recollections of Tartar Steppes," p. 220.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 273

faces. Scarcely less incredible does it seem that a man's affection
should be regarded as more fitly shown toward the children of others
than toward his own children. Yet the Hill-tribes of India supply an
example :

"Among the Nairs every man looks upon the children of his sisters as his
heirs. ' And he would he considered as an unnatural monster were he to show
such signs of grief at the death of a child which ... lie might suppose to he
his own, as he did at the death of a child of his sister.' " '

"The philoprogenitiveness of philosophical Europe is a strange idea, as well
as term, to the JSTair of Malabar, who learns with his earliest mind that his uncle
is a nearer relation to him than his father, and consequently loves his nephew
much more than his son." a

When, in the domestic relations, we meet with such varieties of
law, of custom, of sentiment, of belief, thus indicated by a few exam-
ples which might be indefinitely multiplied, it may be imagined how
multitudinous are the seeming incongruities presented among the so-
cial relations at large. To be made conscious of these, however, it is
not needful to study uncivilized tribes, or alien races partially civil-
ized. If we look back to the earlier stages of European societies, we
find abundant proofs that social phenomena do not necessarily hang
together in those ways which our daily experiences show us. Reli-
gious conceptions may be taken in illustration.

The grossness of these among civilized nations, as they at present
exist, might, indeed, prepare us for their still greater grossness during
old times. When, close to Boulogne, one passes a crucifix, at the
foot of which lies a mouldering heap of crosses, made of two bits of
lath nailed together, deposited by passers-by in the expectation of
Divine favor to be so gained, one cannot but have a sense of strange-
ness on glancing at the adjacent railway, and on calling to mind the
achievements of the French in science. Still more one may marvel on
finding, as in Spain, a bull-fight got up in the interests of the Church
— the proceeds being devoted to a " Holy House of Mercy ! " And
yet, great as seem the incongruities between religious beliefs and social
states now displayed, more astonishing incongruities are disclosed on
going far back. Consider the conceptions implied by sundry mystery-
plays ; and remember that they were outgrowths from a theory of the>
Divine government, which men were afterward burnt for rejecting;
Payments of wages to actors are entered thus •

" Imprimis, to God, ij*
Item, to Cayphas, iij"- iiijd

• • • •

Item, to one of the knights, ij9-

Item, to the devyll and to Judas, xviijd-

1 Quoted in McLennan's "Primitive Marriage," p. 187.
8 Burton's " History of Sindh," p. 244.
VOL. II. — 18

274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"We have frequently such entries as: "Item, payd for the spret (spirit) of
God's cote, ij"'' We learn from these entries that God's coat was of leather,
painted and gilt, and that he had a wig of false hair, also gilt." 1

"Even the Virgin's conception is made a subject for ribaldry; and in the
Coventry collection we have a mystery, or play, on the subject of her pretended
trial. It opens with the appearance of the somnour, who reads a long list of
offences that appear in his book ; then come two ' detractors ' who repeat cer-
tain scandalous stories relating to Joseph and Mary, upon the strength of which
they are summoned to appear before the ecclesiastical court. They are accord-
ingly put upon their trial, and we have a broad picture of the proceedings in
such a case," etc.8

Again, on looking into the illuminated missals of old times, there
is revealed to us a mode of conceiving Christian doctrine which it is
difficult to imagine as current in a civilized or even semi-civilized so-
ciety: instance the ideas invplied by a highly-finished figure of Christ,
from whose wounded side a stream of wafers spouts on to a salver
held by a priest. Or take a devotional book of later date — a printed
psalter, profusely illustrated with woodcuts representing incidents in
the life of Christ. Page after page exhibits ways in which his sacri-
fice is utilized after a perfectly material manner. Here are shown
vines growing out of his wounds, and the grapes these vines bear are
being devoured by bishops and abbesses. Here the cross is fixed on a
large barrel, into which his blood falls in torrents, and out of which
there issue jets on to groups of ecclesiastics. And here, his body
being represented in a horizontal position, there rise, from the wounds
in his hands and feet, fountains of blood, which priests and nuns are
collecting in buckets and jars. Nay, even more astonishing is the
mental state implied by one of the woodcuts, which tries to aid the
devotional reader in conceiving the Trinity, by representing three per-
sons standing in one pair of boots!3 Quite in harmony with these
astoundingly-gross conceptions are the conceptions implied in the pop-
ular literature. The theological ideas that grew up in times wrhen
Papal authority was supreme, and before the sale of indulgences had
been protested against, may be judged from a story contained in the
Folk-lore collected by the Brothers Grimm, called " The Tailor in
Heaven." Here is an abridged translation :

" God, having one day gone out with the saints and the apostles for a walk,
left Peter at the door of heaven with strict orders to admit no one. Soon after
a tailor came and pleaded to be let in. But Peter said that God had forbidden
anyone to be admitted; besides, the tailor was a bad character, and 'cab-
baged ' the cloth he used. The tailor said the pieces he had taken were small,
and had fallen into his basket ; and he was willing to make himself useful — he
would carry the babies, and wash or mend the clothes. Peter at last let hiin in,
but made him sit down in a corner, behind the door. Taking advantage of

1 Wright's "Essays on Archaeology," vol. ii., pp. 175, 176. 2 ii., 184.

3 But four copies of this psalter are known to exist. The copy from which I made
this description is contained in the splendid collection of Mr. Henry Iluth.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 275

Peter's going outside for a minute or two, the tailor left his seat and looked
about him. He soon came to a place where there were many stools, and a chair
of massive gold and a golden footstool, which were God's. Climbing up on
the chair, he could see all that was happening on the earth ; and he saw an old
woman, who was washing clothes in a stream, making away with some of the
linen. In his anger, he took up the footstool and threw it at her. As he could
not get it back, he thought it best to return to his place behind the door, where
he sat down, putting on an air of innocence. God now reentered, without ob-
serving the tailor. Finding his footstool gone, he asked Peter what had become
of it — had he let any one in? The apostle at first evaded the question, but con-
fessed that he had let in one — only, however, a poor limping tailor. The tailor
was then called, and asked what he had done with the footstool. When he had
told, God said to him : ' 0 you knave, if I judged like you, how long do you
think you would have escaped? Long ago I should not have had a chair or
even a poker left in the place, but should have hurled every thing at the sin-
ners.' . . . ." '

These examples, out of multitudes that might be given, show the
wide limits of variation within which social phenomena range. When
we bear in mind that, along with theological ideas that now seem little
above those of savages, there went (in England) a political constitu-
tion having outlines like the present, an established body of laws, a
regular taxation, an emancipated working-class, an industrial system
of considerable complexity, with the general intelligence and mutual
trust implied by social cooperations so extensive and involved, we see
that there are possibilities of combination far more numerous than we
are apt to suppose. There is proved to us the need for greatly enlar-
ging those stock-notions which are so firmly established in us by daily
observations of surrounding; arrangements and occurrences.

"We might, indeed, even if limited to the evidence which our own
society at the present time supplies, greatly increase the plasticity of
our conceptions, did we contemplate the facts as they really are.
Could we nationally, as well as individually, " see ourselves as others
see us," we might find at home seeming contradictions, sufficient to
show us that what we think necessarily-connected traits are by no
means necessarilv connected. We might learn from our own institu-
tions, and books, and journals, and debates, that while there are cer-
tain constant relations among social phenomena, they are not the
relations commonly supposed to be constant ; and that, when from
some conspicuous characteristic we infer certain other characteristics,
we may be quite wrong. To aid ourselves in perceiving this, let us,
varying a somewhat trite mode of representation, consider what might
be said of us by an independent observer, living in the far future —
supposing his statements translated into our cumbrous language.

" Though the diagrams used for teaching make every child aware
thac many thousands of years ago the earth's orbit began to recede

1 " Kinder- und-Hausmarchen," by William and James Grimm, larger edition (1870),
pp. 140-142.

276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from its limit of greatest eccentricity ; and though all are familiar
with the consequent fact that the glacial epoch, which lias so long
made a large part of the northern hemisphere uninhabitable, has passed
its climax ; yet it is not universally known that, in some regions, the
retreat of glaciers has lately made accessible tracks long covered.
Amid moraines and under vast accumulations of detritus, have been
found here ruins, there semi-fossilized skeletons, and in some places,
even records, which, by a marvellous concurrence of favorable condi-
tions, have been so preserved that parts of them remain legible. Just
as our automatic quarrying-engines occasionally turn up fossil cephalo-
pods, so Httle injured that drawings of them are made with the sepia
taken from their own ink-bags ; so here, by a happy chance, there have
come down to us, from a long-extinct race of men, those actual secre-
tions of their daily life, which furnish coloring-matter for a picture of
them. By great perseverance our explorers have discovered the key
to their imperfectly-developed language ; and in course of years have
been able to put together facts yielding us faint ideas of the strange
peoples who lived there during the last preglacial period.

" A report just issued refers to a time called by these peoples the
middle of the nineteenth century of their era ; and it concerns a nation
of considerable interest to us — the English. Though until now no
traces of this ancient nation were known to exist, yet there survived
the names of certain great men it produced — one a poet whose range
of imagination and depth of insight are said to have exceeded those of
all who went before him ; the other, a man of science, of whom, pro-
found as we may suppose in many other respects, we know definitely
this, that to all nations then living, and that have since lived, he
taught how the Universe is balanced. What kind of people the Eng-
lish were, and what kind of civilization they had, have thus always
been questions exciting curiosity. The facts disclosed by this report
are scarcely of the kind anticipated. Search was first made for traces
of these great men, who, it was supposed, would be conspicuously com-
memorated. Little was found, however. It did, indeed, appear that
the last of them, who revealed to mankind the constitution of the heav-
ens, had received a name of honor like that which they gave to a suc-
cessful trader who presented an address to their monarch ; and besides
a tree planted in his memory, a small statue to their great poet had
been put up in one of their temples, where, however, it was almost lost
among the many and large monuments to their fighting chiefs. Not
that commemorative structures of magnitude were never erected by
the English. Our explorers discovered traces of a gigantic one, in
which, apparently, persons of distinction and deputies from all nations
were made to take part in honoring some being — man he can scarcely
have been. For it is difficult to conceive that any man could have had
a worth transcendent enough to draw from them such extreme hom-
age, when they thought so little of those by whom their name as a race

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 277

has been saved from oblivion. Their distribution of monumental hon-
ors was, indeed, in all respects remarkable. To a physician named
Jenner, who, by a mode of mitigating the ravages of a horrible disease,
■was said to have rescued many thousands from death, they erected a
memorial statue in one of their chief public places. After some years,
however, repenting them of giving to this statue so conspicuous a po-
sition, they banished it to a far corner of one of their suburban gar-
dens, frequented chiefly by children and nursemaids ; and, in its place,
they erected a statue to a great leader of their fighters — one Napier,
who had helped them to conquer and keep down certain weaker races.
The reporter does not tell us whether this last had been instrumental
in destroying as many lives as the first had saved ; but he remarks :
' I could not but wonder at this strange substitution among a people
who professed a religion of peace.' Not, however, that this was an
exceptional act, out of harmony with their usual acts : quite the con-
trary. The records show that, to keep up the remembrance of a great
victory gained over a neighboring nation, they held for many years an
annual banquet, much in the spirit of the commemorative scalp-dances
of still more barbarous peoples ; and there was never wanting a priest
to ask on the banquet a blessing from one they named the God of
love. In some respects, indeed, their code of conduct seemed not to
have advanced beyond, but to have gone back from, the code of a still
more ancient people from whom their creed was derived. One of the
laws of this ancient people was, ' an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth ; 'but sundry laws of the English, especially those concerning acts
that interfered with some so-ealled sports of their ruling classes, in-
flicted penalties which imply that their principle had become ' a leg
for an eye, and an arm for a tooth.' The relations of their creed to the
creed of this ancient people are indeed difficult to understand. They
had at one time cruelly persecuted this ancient people — Jews they
were called — because that particular modification of the Jewish reli-
gion, which they, the English, nominally adopted, was one which the
Jews would not adopt. And yet, marvellous to relate, while they tor-
tured the Jews for not agreeing with them, they substantially agreed
with the Jews. Not only, as above instanced, in the law of retaliation
did they outdo the Jews, instead of obeying the quite opposite princi-
ple of the teacher they worshipped as divine, but they obeyed the
Jewish law, and disobeyed this divine teacher in other ways — as in the
rigid observance of every seventh day, which he had deliberately dis-
countenanced. Though they were angry with those who did not nom-
inally believe in Christianity (which was the name of their religion),
yet they ridiculed those who really believed in it ; for some few people
among them, nicknamed Quakers, who aimed to carry out Christian
precepts instead of Jewish precepts, they made butts for their jokes.
Nay, more ; their substantial adhesion to the creed they professedly
repudiated was clearly demonstrated by this, that in each of their tcm-

278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pies they fixed up in some conspicuous place the ten commandments of
the Jewish religion, while they rarely fixed up the two Christian com-
mandments which were to replace them. ' And yet,' says the reporter,
after dilating on these strange facts, ' though the English were greatly
given to missionary enterprises of all kinds, and though I sought dili-
gently among the records of these, I could find no trace of a society
for converting the English people from Judaism to Christianity.' This
mention of their missionary enterprises introduces other remarkable
anomalies. Being anxious to get adherents to this creed which they
adopted in name, but not in fact, they sent out men to various parts of
the world to propagate it— one part, among others, being that subju-
gated territory above named. There the English missionaries taught
the gentle precepts of their faith ; and there the officers employed by
their government exemplified these precepts — one of the exemplifica-
tions being that, to put down a riotous sect, they took fifty out of
sixty-six who had surrendered, and, without any trial, blew them from
the guns, as they called it — tied them to the mouths of cannon,
and shattered their bodies to pieces. And then, curiously enough,
having thus taught and thus exemplified their religion, they expressed
great surprise at the fact that the only converts their missionaries
could obtain among these people were hypocrites and men of charac-
ters so bad that no one would employ them.

" Nevertheless, these semi-civilized English had their good points.
Odd as must have been the delusion which made them send out mis-
sionaries to inferior races, who were always ill used by their sailors
and settlers, and eventually extirpated by them, yet, on finding that
they spent annually a million of their money in missionary and allied
enterprises, we cannot but see some generosity of motive in them.
They country was dotted over with hospitals and almshouses, and in-
stitutions for taking care of the diseased and indigent ; and their
towns were overrun with philanthropic societies, which, without say-
ing any thing about the wisdom of their policy, clearly implied good
feeling. They expended in the legal relief of their poor as much as,
and at one time more than, a tenth of the revenue raised for all
national purposes. One of their remarkable deeds was that, to get rid
of a barbarous institution of those times, called slavery, under which,
in their colonies, certain men held complete possession of others, their
goods, their bodies, and practically even their lives, they paid down
twenty millions of their money. And not less striking was the fact
that, during a war between two neighboring nations, they contributed
large sums, and sent out many men and women, to help in taking care
of the wounded and assisting the ruined.

" The facts brought to light by these explorations are thus ex-
tremely instructive. Now that, after tens of thousands of years of
discipline, the lives of men in society have become so harmonious —
now that character and conditions have little by little growrn into ad-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 279

justment, we are apt to suppose that congruity of institutions, con-
duct, sentiments, and beliefs, is necessary. "We think it almost im-
possible that, in the same society, there should be daily practised
principles of quite opposite kinds ; and it seems to us scarcely credible
that men should have, or profess to have, beliefs with which their acts
are absolutely irreconcilable. Only that extremely rare disorder, in-
sanity, could explain the conduct of one who, knowing that fire burns,
nevertheless thrusts his hand into the flame ; and to insanity also we
should ascribe the behavior of one who, professing to think a certain
course morally right, pursued the opposite course. Yet the revela-
tions yielded by these ancient remains show us that societies could
hold together notwithstanding: what we should think a chaos of con-
duct and of opinion. Nay, more, they show us that it was possible for
men to profess one thing and do another, without betraying a con-
sciousness of inconsistency. One piece of evidence is curiously to the
point. Among their multitudinous agencies for beneficent purposes,
the English had a 'Naval and Military Bible Society' — a society for
distributing copies of their sacred book among their professional
fighters on sea and land ; and this society was subscribed to, and
chiefly managed by, leaders among these fighters. It is, indeed, sug-
gested by the reporter, that for these classes of men they had an ex-
purgated edition of their sacred book, from which the injunctions to
'return good for evil,' and 'to turn the cheek to the smiter,' were
omitted. It may have been so ; but, if not, we have a remarkable in-
stance of the extent to which conviction and conduct may be diamet-
rically opposed, without any apparent perception that they are op-
posed. We habitually assume that the distinctive trait of humanity
is rationality, and that rationality involves consistency ; yet here we
find an extinct race (unquestionably human, and regarding itself as
rational) in which the inconsistency of conduct and professed belief
was as great as can well be imagined. Thus we are warned against
supposing that what now seems to us so natural was always natural.
We have our eyes opened to an error which has been getting con-
firmed among us for these thousands of years, that social phenomena
and the phenomena of human nature necessarily hang together in the
ways we see around us."

Before summing up what has been said under the title of "Sub-
jective Difficulties — Intellectual," I may remai'k that this group of
difficulties is separated from the group of objective difficulties, dealt
with in the last chapter, rather for the sake of convenience than
because the division can be strictly maintained. In contemplating
difficulties of interpretation — phenomena being on the one side and in-
telligence on the other — we may, as we please, ascribe failure either to
the inadequacy of the intelligence or to the involved nature of the
phenomena. * The difficulty is subjective or objective according to our

28o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

point of view. But the difficulties above set forth arise in so direct
a way from conspicuous defects of human intelligence, that they may
be, more appropriately than the preceding ones, classed as subjective.
So regarding them, then, we have to beware, in the first place, of
this tendency to automorphic interpretation ; or rather, having no
alternative but to conceive the natures of other men in terms such as
our own feelings and ideas furnish, we have to beware of the errors
likely hence to arise — discounting our conclusions as well as we can.
Further, Ave must be on our guard against the two opposite prevailing
errors respecting Man, and against the sociological errors arising from
them : we have to get rid of the two beliefs that human nature is un-
changeable, and that it is easily changed ; and we have, instead, to
become familiar with the conception of a human nature that is changed
in the slow succession of generations by social discipline. Another
obstacle not to be completely surmounted by any, and to be partially
surmounted by but few, is that resulting from the want of intellectual
faculty complex enough to grasp the extremely complex phenomena
which Sociology deals with. There can be no complete conception of
a sociological fact, considered as a component of Social Science, unless
there are present to thought all its essential factors ; and the power
of keeping them in mind with due clearness, as well as in their proper
proportions and combinations, has yet to be reached. Then beyond
this difficulty, only to be in a measure overcome, there is the further
difficulty, not, however, by any means so great, of enlarging the con-
ceptive capacity, so that it may admit the widely divergent and ex-
tremely various combinations of social phenomena. That rigidity of
conception produced in us by experiences of our own social life, in our
own time, has to be exchanged for a plasticity that can receive with
ease, and accept as natural, the countless different combinations of
social phenomena utterly unlike, and sometimes exactly opposite to,
those we are familiar with. Without such a plasticity there can be
no proper understanding of coexisting social states allied to our own,
still less of past social states, or social states of alien civilized races
and races in early stages of development.

♦«»•

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS.

By ALFRED W. BENNETT, M. A., B. So., F. L. S.

THAT there are no "hard and fast lines" in Nature is a truth
which is more and more forcing itself upon the minds of men
of science. The older naturalists delighted to circumscribe their own
special domains within sharply-marked boundaries, which no trespass-
ers were allowed to pass. We have long given up the attempt thus

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 2S1

accurately to map out the kingdom of Nature. Her varied produc-
tions are connected with one another by innumerable links and cross-
links ; and our systems of classification, even the most " natural," are
but an imperfect human contrivance for bringing together those forms
which present the most evident marks of resemblance or affinity.
While the truth of this law is most familiar in the case of those
smaller subdivisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms — classes,
orders, and genera — which are connected with one another by innu-
merable intermediate forms, it is none the less certain in the line of
demarcation which separates these two great kingdoms themselves
from one another. In attempting to draw up a definition which shall
serve accurately and infallibly to distinguish between the Animal and
Vegetable Kingdoms, we find ourselves compelled to abandon one
supposed crucial test after another, and to content ourselves at last
with framing, as in the case of the lower subdivisions, an assemblage
of characters, by the tout-ensemble of which we must decide whether
our organism is an animal or a plant. So great is the uncertainty as
to the actual boundary-line, that large groups of lowly organisms,
such as those known as Diatoms and Desmidea?, have been regarded
by experienced authorities as belonging to each kingdom ; and one of
the ablest of living naturalists, Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, has proposed
the division of the material universe not into three but into four king-
doms— animals, plants, protista, and minerals, the new kingdom of
Protista including the most lowly-organized forms of what are gener-
ally considered animals and plants, from the Flagellate Infusoria to
the Fungi, distinguished by the absence of sexes, and the mode of re-
production by gemmation or fission alone. The soundness of this new
classification is not, however, admitted by the best remaining authori-
ties in England or Germany.

One of the most obvious distinctions between the Animal and
Vegetable Kingdoms consists in the possession by the former of a
power of voluntary motion of either the whole or a part of the body,
dependent on the presence of a distinct nervous system, which is ab-
sent in the latter ; a distinction obvious enough when contrasting any
of the higher forms of the two kingdoms, but which, like all other in-
dividual characters, fails when pressed to too rigid a test. There are
animals, so regarded by the best naturalists, and possessing other
characters which compel us to refer them to this class, whose power
of motion is confined to the " contractility " common to all protoplas-
mic substance, and which are absolutely devoid of a nervous system ;
and there are plants, unquestionable plants, which possess powers of
spontaneous motion strictly compai'able to those exhibited by the
lower animals. It may be interesting to collect together a few illus-
trations of this last-named fact, some of which appear to the writer
scarcely explicable by the application of any of those laws which
govern inert unorganized matter.

232

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The movements to which reference is here made belong in most
cases to a part rather than to the whole of a plant ; in some cases,
however, we find the whole organism endowed with spontaneous motion
of a very remarkable character. An instance of this occurs in the case
of the regular undulating motion, exceedingly similar to that of some
of the lower animals, characteristic of a class of Algae hence called
Oseillatoriae. The mode of reproduction of the Algae, the lowest class
of th.3 vegetable kingdom, to which the sea-weeds and the fresh-water
confervae belong, is often obscure, and in some cases different distinct
processes exist in the same species. In certain fresh-water Algae, repro-
duction takes place by the formation of "Zoospores" (Fig. 1), which
are the results of the separation and isolation of the protoplasmic con-
tents of certain special cells. According to the observations of M.
Thuret, who has paid great attention to this subject, these zoospores,
which are of extreme minuteness, are ovoid in form, and are furnished,
either over their whole circumference or toward one extremity, with
very fine cilia, varying from two to a large number. As soon as these
minute bodies free themselves from the cell in which they are enclosed,
the cilia begin to vibrate with great rapidity, the vibration being ac-
companied by a movement of rotation of the bodies themselves on
their axis, occasioned apparently by rapid and spontaneous contrac-
tions ; the result being a quick motion of the body through the water
— undistinguishable, in fact, from that of some of the lower forms of

Fig. 2.

Fig 1.

M&,

animal life — continuing for a period varying from half an hour to
several hours, at the expiration of which they settle down, reassume
the characters of ordinary vegetable cells, lose their cilia, and give
rise, by cell-division, to new individuals resembling the parent-plant.
Those zoospores which are furnished with cilia at one extremity only,
direct that extremity, which is destitute of chlorophyll or green color-
ing-matter, toward the light. Closely resembling these zoospores are
the "spermatozoa" of the higher orders of cryptogamic plants, ferns,
equisetums, and mosses. These bodies (Fig. 2) are produced in the an-
theridia or male organs, again by a modification of the protoplasmic
cell-contents; they are filiform bodies of various forms, mostly pre-
senting one or more spiral curves, and furnished with vibratile cilia.
When released from the parent-cells, they move about with great ac-

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 283

tivity until they come into contact with the opening of the archego-
nium or female organ, which they enter, and thus fructify the germ of
the new plant. Pringsheim describes the process by which the sper-
matozoa enter the archegonium as a very peculiar twisting motion, due
to the action of the mucus or protoplasm of the germ-cell. He has
seen a large number of spermatozoa enter a single cell, forming a kind
of chain.

In describing these curious bodies, of the connection of which with
the vegetable kingdom there is no room for doubt, one is irresistibly
reminded of these lowly forms of animal life known as Amoeba and
Gromia, consisting apparently of shapeless masses of protoplasm pos-
sessing indeed far more restricted powers of locomotion than the zoo-
spores and spermatozoa, their faculties in this respect being confined to
the protrusion and retractation of arms or pseudopodia, by means of
which a slow movement is effected. If the possession of consciousness
and of a voluntary control over the movements of the body belongs to
the animal kingdom even to its lowest forms, it is difficult to frame any
cogent reason for denying these faculties to the vegetable organisms
which we have been considering. A very interesting problem also
presents itself for solution in the almost perfect identity of constitution
between these lowest forms of animals and the protoplasmic elements
in the constitution of more highly-organized forms. If the Amcebce
and Gromice are admitted to be distinct individual animals, the same
line of reasoning would almost compel us to admit to the same rank
the white corpuscles of the blood of mammalia, which present almost
the same characters and possess the same power of protrusion and re-
tractation of a portion of their substance.

The instances above cited illustrate the faculty of spontaneous mo-
tion possessed by detached portions of protoplasm endowed with the
power of forming themselves into new individuals. This phenomenon
appears, however, to be but a form of the property possessed by all
protoplasm, of constant motion in some form or other. The circulation
of the protoplasmic mucous fluid within the cells of plants is one of
the most beautiful phenomena of vegetable life revealed by the micro-
scope, and one of which the explanations at present offered appear
quite inadequate. A favorite object for exhibiting this circulation or
rotation is formed by the jointed hairs which cover the stamens of the
Virginian spider-wort {Trades cant ia Virginica). The movement is
rendered visible by the presence, in the otherwise colorless fluid, of
minute opaque granules of chlorophyll or other coloring-matter; and
is observable with great ease in the semi-transparent tissue of certain
water-plants, as Ghara, or the Valisneria commonly grown in fresh-
water aquariums. It consists of a slow movement of the protoplasmic
fluid up one side of the cell, across the ends, and down the other side ;
not perpendicularly, but in an oblique or spiral course. The subject
has been carefully investigated by three French physiologists, M3I.

284 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prillieux, Roze, and Brogniart, who find that the rotation is directly-
influenced, in a remarkable manner, by the presence of light. M. Pril-
lieux kept a moss in the dark for several days, when the cells pre-
sented the appearance of a green net-work, between the meshes of
which was a clear, transparent ground. All the grains of chlorophyll
were applied to the walls which separate the cells from one another ;
there were none on the upper or under walls which form the surfaces
of the leaf. Under the influence of light, the grains, together with the
thin mucous plasma in which they are embedded, change their posi-
tion from the lateral to the superficial walls, this change taking place,
under favorable circumstances, in about a quarter of an hour. On at-
taining their new position, the grains do not remain absolutely immov-
able, but continually approach and recede from one another; and, if
again darkened, they leave their new position, and return to the lateral
walls. Artificial light produces the same effect as daylight.

Analogous to the circulation of the protoplasm, within the cell, is
that of the sap or nutritive fluid through the whole plant, passing
through the permeable walls of the cells. This circulation of the sap,
by which fluid is conveyed equally to all parts of the plant, apparently
in opposition to the laws of gravity, is no doubt explicable, to a cer-
tain extent, by the application of known physical laws, of which the
most important are capillary attraction, osmose, or the law by which a
less dense fluid passes through a permeable diaphragm to mingle with
a denser fluid, and the upward-pumping force, to supply the partial
vacuum occasioned by the evaporation of water from the leaves. Al-
lowing, however, full scope to all these physical forces, there would
seem to be a residuum of energy, still unaccounted for, connected with
the vitality of the plant itself. In particular, the selective power of
plants, in absorbing from the soil a larger portion of those ingredients
which are required for the formation, or healthy life, of their tissues, is
an absolutely unexplained phenomenon. A familiar instance of this is
furnished by the difference in the amount of silica absorbed by corn-
crops and by leguminous plants, amounting, in the former case, to 2.5
per cent., in the latter, to 0.3 per cent., of the dry foliage. Indeed, if
any two plants are grown together, side by side, in the same soil, the
constitution of the ash, i. e., of the solid ingredients derived from the
soil, will be remarkably different ; while, in the same plant, in the same
soil, the constitution is constant. It was pointed out, by the Duke of
Argyll, when criticising Darwin's " Origin of Species," how unavoid-
able it seems, in describing the phenomena of Nature, to use language
involving the idea of contrivance and design. In the same manner, it
seems impossible to describe the process of vegetative life without
appearing to attribute to the plant some conscious power of its own.
A striking instance of this, as well as of the liability to consider a
mere statement of an obscure law in other terms as an explanation of
that law, occurs in an admirable treatise on the growth of plants —

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 285

Johnson's " How Crops Grow." ' " The cereals are able to dispose of
eilica by giving it a place in the cuticular cells; the leguminous crops,
on the other hand, cannot remove it from their juices ; the latter remain
saturated, and thus further diffusion of silica from without becomes
impossible except as room is made by a new growth. It is in this way
that we have a rational and adequate explanation of the selective
power of the plant." The " rational and adequate explanation " seems
to me, on the contrary, to be merely a restatement of this selective
power of the tissues in other terms. Because the tissues want the sil-
ica, is no explanation of how they get it.

The curious and interesting movements of climbing plants have
been investigated by Palm, Mohl, and Asa Gray, and form the subject
of one of the most charming of Mr. Darwin's works. It is well known
that climbing plants, such as the hop, honeysuckle, or major convolvu-
lus, always twine round the stem or other object which supports them
in one direction, that is, always either from right to left or from left to
right ; but few, probably, have reflected, and fewer still attempted to
observe, by what process the end of the growing shoot contrives to
change its position from one side to the other of the stem. If the ex-
tremity of a living stem, say of convolvulus, growing perfectly free,
and in a normal position, is observed, it is seen to hang over from its
support in a horizontal direction ; and this horizontal portion is found,
if observed at intervals of some hours, to point in different directions.
The end of the growing shoot has, in fact, the property of revolving in
a large circle, round the support, always, with the same species, in the.
same direction, either with the sun or opposed to the sun. The rate
of revolution varies with different plants, and with the same plant at
different periods of its growth ; it is much quicker in warmer than in
cooler weather. With the hop, Darwin found it to vary from two and
a half hours to nine hours. The object of the climbing power of plants
is no doubt to reach the light, and to expose a large surface of leaves
to its action and to that of the free air ; but the mode by which this
power of motion is gained is by no means clear. The late eminent
physiologist Mohl supposed that it was caused by a dull kind of irrita-
bility in the stem, which caused it to bend toward the support when in
contact with it. Mr. Darwin has, however, carefully tested this theory
experimentally, and always with negative results. He rubbed many
shoots, much harder than was necessary to excite movement in any
tendril, or in any foot-stalk, of a leaf-climber, but without result. This
view seems also entirely negatived by the fact that not only do the
stems of climbing plants revolve when they are not in contact with
any support, but even more freely, under such circumstances, than

1 "How Crops Grow:" A Treatise on the Chemical Compositions, Structure, and
Life, of the Plant, for Agricultural Students. By S. W. Johnson. Revised and adapted
for English Use, by A. H. Church and W. T. T. Dyer. London: MacmMan & Co., 1869
pp. 345.

236

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

when climbing. When a climbing plant first springs from the ground,
the extremity of the shoot performs slow gyrations in the air, as if, as
Darwin expresses it, it were searching for a support. I do not here
discuss the question whether this habit may be the result of a tendency
transmitted and enhanced through thousands of generations ; the move-
ment itself is, in the individual plant, entirely " spontaneous," in every
sense of the term ; that is, is not the necessary result of known physi-
cal laws acting upon the individual. Darwin's paper, " On the Move-
ments and Habits of Climbing Plants," published in the Journal of the
Linnoean Society, contains a number of the most interesting observa-
tions on this class of plants ; and the language employed is everywhere
suggestive of some hidden, sentient controlling power in the plant it-
self.

Fis. 3.

The same purpose as that served by a climbing stem is answered in
other plants, as the vine, Virginian creeper, and passion-flower, by ten-
drils ; and the phenomena of spontaneous motion in tendrils are, if
possible, still more curious. Some tendrils display the same power of
rotatory motion possessed by the extremities of the shoots of climbing
plants ; others do not revolve, but are sensitive, bending to the touch.
The curling movement, consequent on a single touch, continues to in-
crease for a considerable time, then ceases ; after a few hours the ten-
dril uncurls itself, and is again ready for action. A tendril will thus
J show a tendency to curl round any object with which it comes into
contact, with the singular exception that it will seldom twine itself
round another tendril of the same plant. It is also very curious that,

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS.

:S7

with some exceedingly sensitive plants, the falling of drops of rain on
the tendril will produce no effect whatever. The mode in which a
tendril of a Bignonia catches hold of a support is thus described by-
Darwin : " The main petiole is sensitive to contact with any object ;
even a small loop of thread after two days caused one to bend up-
ward. The whole tendrils are likewise sensitive to contact. Hence,
when a shoot grows through branched twigs, its revolving movement
soon brings the tendril into contact with some twig, and then all three

Fig. 4.

' toes ' bend (or sometimes one alone), and, after several hours, seize
fast hold of the twig, exactly like a bird when perched." The Virgin-
ian creeper has another mode of attaching itself to a wall or other solid
support, by the formation, at the extremities of the branches of the ten-
dril, of little disks or cushions, very similar to the disks on the foot of
the house-fly, by which it is enabled to attach itself to our windows,
and to walk along the ceiling. These disks secrete a glutinous fluid,
which attaches the tendril to the support with such strength that it is
often impossible to detach it without destroying the tendril, or even
removing a portion of the wall itself. As soon as the attachment is
accomplished, the tendril gradually thickens, and contracts spirally, as
shown in Figs. 3 and 4. This spiral contraction, indeed, is always the
result of the tendril meeting with a support ; and, if no support is
found, the tendril soon shrinks and withers away. Some tendrils ex-
hibit a most remarkable power of selection, which, to use Mr. Darwin's
words, " -would, in an animal, be called instinct." The tendrils of a
species of Bignonia slowly travelled over the surface of a piece of
wood, and, when the apex of one of them came to a hole or fissure, it
inserted itself; the same tendril would frequently withdraw from one

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hole and insert its point into a second one. Mr. Darwin has seen a ten-
dril keep its point, in one instance, for twenty hours, and, in another
instance, for thirty-six hours, in a minute hole, and then withdraw it.
After the record of this fact on such unexceptional evidence, we are the
more prepared to credit the statement of Mr. Anderson-Henry, that a
climber will, in running up a wall, carefully avoid contact with anoth-
er climber which it dislikes ; and even the account by M. Paul Levy,1
that the lianes of tropical forests have an affinity for certain trees, tow-
ard which they direct their growth, and not toward those nearest
to them ; carefully drawing themselves away when they encounter one
of the objectionable trees.

We may conclude our account of climbing plants with the follow-
ing remarks by Mr. Darwin : " It has often been vaguely asserted that
plants are distinguished from animals by not having the power of
movement. It should rather be said that plants acquire and display
this power only when it is of some advantage to them, but that this
is of comparatively rare occurrence, as they are affixed to the ground,
and food is brought to them by the wind and rain. We see how high
in the scale of organization a plant may rise, when we look at one of
the more perfect tendril-bearers. It first places its tendrils ready for
action, as a polypus places its tentacula. If the tendril be displaced,
it is acted on by the force of gravity, and rights itself. It is acted on

Fig. 5.

by the light, and bends toward or from it, or disregards it, whichever
may be most advantageous. During several days the tendrils or in-
ternodes, or both, spontaneously revolve with a steady motion. The
tendril strikes some object, and quickly curls round, and firmly grasps

1 Bulletin de la Societe Botanique da France. Translated in the Gardener's Chroni-
c/p, March 19, 1870.

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 289

it. In the course of some hours it contracts into a spire, dragging up
the stem, and forming an excellent spring. All movements now cease.
By growth, the tissues become wonderfully strong and durable. The
tendril has done its work, and done it in an admirable manner."

The phenomenon known as Sensitiveness is of by no means un-
common occurrence in the vegetable kingdom. It consists of a sudden
movement of the leaf, a portion of the flower, or the whole plant, on
contact with, or even on the approach of, a foreign body. One of the
most familiar examples is that of the Sensitive-plant {Mimosa pudica
and sensitiva), Figs. 5 and 6, in which three distinct movements are

Fig. 6.

observable when the leaf is touched by the hand or the warm breath.
First, the numerous leaflets close in pairs, bringing their upper faces
together, and also inclining forward ; then the four branches of the
leaf-stalk, which were outspread like the rays of a fan, approach each
other; at the same time the main leaf-stalk turns downward, bending
at its joint with the stem. The explanation offered in one of our best
botanical text-books, of this phenomenon, is. as follows: "There is a
swelling at the base of the petiole, the cells of which constitute, as it
were, two springs acting in contrary directions, so that, if the one from
any cause be paralyzed, the other pushes the leaf in the direction of
least resistance. These springs, if they be so called, are set in action
by the rush of fluid creating a turbid state of the one set of cells and
an empty state of the other. What circumstances regulate the turges-
cence are only imperfectly known." It will be obvious that, even if
this is correct as a statement of facts, it offers no real explanation of
the phenomenon ; for it is quite as difficult to understand how the mere
approach of the hand, which gives rise to a sensitiveness commencing,
it will be remarked, at the extremity of the leaf, will account for a
" turgescence " of the springs at the base of the leaf, which then causes
the movement. It should be observed also that we are unaware of any
use which these movements are to the plant. Similar sensitiveness

VOL. II. — 19

290

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

occurs in the leaves of some other leguminous plants, in several species
of Oxalls, etc. M. Bert has observed that the sensitiveness is de-
stroyed by the continual application of chloroform, and also by placing
the plant constantly in the dark or in green light.

Similar movements to that of the Sensitive-plant, but occurring
spontaneously, may be observed in other plants. Thus in the Des-
modlum gyrans or " Telegraph-plant," sometimes grown in our hot-
houses, belonging to the same order, Leguminosa?, the leaf consists of
three leaflets, a large central, and two smaller side ones. The motion
is especially observable in the small side-leaflets, which on a warm
summer's clay may be seen to rise and fall by a succession of jerking
movements ; now stopping for some time, then moving briskly, always
resting for a while in some part of their course, and starting again
without apparent cause, " seemingly of their own will," as Prof. Asa
Gray remarks. The movement is not simply up and down, but the
end of the moving leaflet sweeps more or less of a circuit. It is not
set in motion by a touch, but begins, goes on, and stops, of itself.

An exceedingly remarkable instance of sensitiveness occurs in the
case of the " Venus's Fly-trap " of North Carolina (Dionwa mitscipula),

Fig. 7.

represented in Fig. 7. The mid-rib of each leaf serves as a kind of
hino-e. When the inside of the blade of the leaf, or the fine bristles
which grow on its surface, are touched by any foreign substance, the
hinge suddenly closes, and if the intruding substance be a fly or other
small object, it is immediately imprisoned as represented in the figure,
the teeth on the margin of the leaf closing firmly upon one another
like a steel trap, the sides of the trap then flatten down and press firmly

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 291

upon the victim, and it now requires a very considerable force to open
the trap. If nothing is caught, the trap presently reopens of itself, and
is ready for another attempt. With regard to the object of this
strange proceeding, there can be no doubt that the insect is retained
until the softer parts of the body are completely dissolved in the thick
mucous fluid which is exuded by the leaves ; and Prof. Asa Gray
considers that the evidence is nearly complete that the animal matter
is actually absorbed in the leaf itself. It is even stated that pieces of
raw beef are digested by the leaf in the same manner ! Seeing, how-
ever, that it is now generally admitted by physiologists that even pure,
water is not absorbed through the pores of leaves, which serve only
for the exhalation of vapor, this explanation is very hard of belief.
The " pitchers " of the Nepenthes, or pitcher-plant, act also as fly-traps,
large numbers of insects being enticed into them by the fluid they
secrete, and ai*e then unable to extricate themselves.

The sensitiveness of the leaves of plants is but an excessive devel-
opment of the phenomenon known as the Sleep of Plants. In the case
of the Sensitive-plant the position assumed by the leaf and leaflets in
the night is the same as that which they assume when disturbed in the
daytime ; and with many other plants, such as the clover and the
Robinia or " acacia " tree, the change in the position of the leaflets,
morning and evening, is a familiar fact. The Sleep of Plants extends
also to the flowers, many plants opening their flowers only at particu-
lar times of the day. Thus the major convolvulus of the gardens and
the goat's-beard open at sunrise and always close by about noon, the
evening primrose opens only in the evening, and many others last for*
but a single day. So regular is the time of opening and closing of .
some flowers, that Linnreus drew up a list, which he termed a " floral
clock." The singular part of the affair is, that with many flowers the
time of opening and closing is determined, not by the degree of light,
or by the temperature or humidity of the atmosphere, but absolutely
by the hour of the day. The giant water-lily of the Amazons, the
Victoria rer/ia, opens, for the first time, about 6 p.m., and closes in a
few hours, then opens again at 6 p. m. the next day, remaining open
until the afternoon, when it closes and sinks below the water. Other
plants, again, open their flowers only in the bright sunshine, as the
beautiful yellow centaury (or Chlora perfoliata) the sundew {Drosera
rotund if olia), etc. In the latter plant, belonging to the same natural
order as the Venus's Fly-trap, and possessing a slight irritability of
the leaves, Mr. Worthington Smith has noticed also a strong sensitive-
ness in the petals, the flowers closing suddenly when touched.

Irritability or sensitiveness, similar to that of the leaves of the Sen-
sitive-plant, is not uncommon in the flower. An instance has been
alluded to in the petals of the sundew ; it occurs also in the lip of the
corolla of several of the orchis tribe. It is, however, more common in
the proper organs of reproduction, as the style of Stylidium, the sta-

292

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mens of the berberry, etc., and is then directly connected with the pro-
cess of fertilization of the ovule. In JStylidium, an Australian genus,
the style and filaments are adherent into a column, which hangs over
on one side of the flower. When touched, it rises up and springs over
to the opposite side, at the same time opening its anthers and scatter-
ing the pollen. The stamens of the various species of Herberts and Maho-
nia, to the former of which our common berberry belongs, exhibit this
irritability to a remarkable degree. If touched with a pin or other
object at the base of the inside face of the filament, the stamen will
spring violently forward from its place within the petal, so as to bring

Fig. 8.

the anther into contact with the stigma, as shown in Fig. 8, and will
after a time slowly resume its original position. At first sight it may
s'eem as if this contrivance were intended to insure the fertilization of
•the pistil from the pollen of its own flower. In reality, however, the
reverse is the case ; the excitation takes place in Nature when an insect
entering the flower, for the sake of the honey in the glands at the base
of the pistil, touches the inside of one of the stamens. The pollen is
thus thrown on to the head or body of the insect, which carries it away
to the next flower it visits, and leaves some of it on the stigma, and
thus cross-fertilization instead of self-fertilization is secured. Similar
motion of the stamens toward the pistil, but spontaneous, takes place
in the case of the London Pride, and other species of Saxifraga.

Elasticity is, indeed, a common property of organized tissue, though
it is not often developed to so evident an extent. In the " touch-me-
not," or Impatiens, we have a familiar instance in the seed-vessel,
which, if touched when nearly ripe, suddenly coils back, throwing the
seeds to a considerable distance. The "squirting cucumber" (Mo-
mordica elateriuni) marks the period of ripeness by the fruit separat-
ing from its stalk, and expelling the seeds and juice with great violence.
Mr. Thomas Meehan described a remarkable instance of elasticity at a
recent meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences ot Philadelphia.
The seeds — or, as would appear from his description, more correctly
the embryos of the seeds — of the American " witch-hazel " (Hamame-

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 293

lis Yirginicci) are thrown out with such force as to strike people vio-
lently in the face who pass through the woods. Collecting a number
of the capsules, and laying them on the floor, he found the seeds or em-
bryos were thrown out generally to the distance of four or six feet, and
in one instance as much as twelve feet.

Many of the instances of spontaneous motion or irritability we have
now recorded may doubtless be explained by the application of known
physical laws. With others this is not so easy ; and it is but reason-
ing in a circle to say that, because the organisms which manifest them
belong to the vegetable kingdom, therefore the phenomena cannot be
the result of a sentient force acting upon, and independent of, matter.
Darwin has described how certain movements of the tendrils of climb-
ing plants would be termed instinctive if they were observed in ani-
mals. The rapid rotatory motion of the zoospores of the lower Algae
is absolutely undistinguishable from that of certain undoubted lowly
organized forms of animal life. It is very difficult to distinguish be-
tween the movement of a shoot of a climber performing its circles in
the air in search of a support, and that of the tentacula of a coral-
polyp in search of food. The mode in which the Venus's Fly-trap
seizes and encages its prey is very like that adopted by a sea-anemone.
Every fresh addition to our knowledge seems to confirm us in the view
that it is unwise to dogmatize by laying down too rigid generalities,
and absolutely to deny certain functions to whole classes of animated
beings because we do not find them exhibited in the forms most famil-
iar to us. I do not wTish distinctly to claim for plants the actual pos-
session of a voluntary or sentient faculty. But I do wish to point out
that facts do not support us in asserting that a clear line of demarca-
tion separates the animal from the vegetable kingdom ; the power of
voluntary motion belonging to the one and not to the other. Taking
all the facts we have described into consideration, the statement seems
justified which has been made by one of our most experienced natural-
ists, Prof. "Wyville Thomson : " There are certain phenomena, even
among the higher plants, which it is very difficult to explain with-
out admitting some low form of a general harmonizing and regulat-
ing function, comparable to such an obscure manifestation of reflex
nervous action as we have in sponges and in other animals in which a
distinct nervous system is absent." — Popular Science Review.

29+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

LIGHT AND LIFE.

By FERNAND PAPILLON.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY A. R. MACDONOUdH, ESQ.

THE organized being that we observe on the surface of the globe
does not subsist solely by the nourishment absorbed, sometimes
in the form of aliment, sometimes in that of atmospheric air ; it needs
besides, heat, electricity, and light, which are like a secret and life-
giving spring for 'the world. Its organs are subject to the twofold in-
fluence of an inner medium, represented by the humors moistening its
tissues, and of an outer medium, composed of all those subtle and fluid
agents with which space is filled. This close interdependence of beings
and of the media in which they are immersed, too plain to have quite es-
caped notice, yet too complex for analysis by science in its infancy, has
been brought in our day under piercing and methodical investigation,
yielding results of remarkable interest. Light especially takes a part
in this combination deserving deep study. Whether organic existence
in its simplest expression jaid its lowest degree be considered, or
whether we regard it in its highest functions, the influence of light upon
it strikes us in the most strange and unlooked-for relations. Lovely
forms and vivid colors, the hidden harmonies of life as well as itS
dazzling brightness and bloom, alike claim mysterious connection with
that golden mist diffused by the sun over the world.

From this point of view, modern science finds reason in the simple
worship paid by primitive man. It helps us to understand the divine
honors given to the star of day among the earliest civilized nations,
and the pathetic terror those child-like races suffered when, at evening,
they saw the crimson globe, that was the source for them of all power
and all splendor, slowly disappear in the horizon. That pious idolatry,
far from being a mere utterance of gratitude for the wealth of fertility
scattered by the sun over earth, was a homage, too, to the comforting
source of brightness and joy, revealing the natural affinity between
man and light. The Vedas, the Orphic hymns, and other remains of
the earliest religions, are full of this feeling, which appears again in
many poets and philosophers of antiquity, Lucretius and Pliny among
others. Dante, invoking so often "the divine and piercing. light,"
crowns his poem by a hymn which more than any thing else is a sym-
bolic description of the supreme brightness. On the other hand,
laborers, gardeners, physicians, unite in bearing witness to the bene-
ficial effects of light. Naturalists and philosophers, too, in all ages,
impressed with the power of the sun, have described its manifold effects.
Alexander Humboldt, following Goethe and Lavoisier, often notices its
its various influences. Yet it was not until the middle of the eighteenth

LIGHT AND LIFE. 295

century that so rich a subject of study began to attract serious experi-
mental research ; and such are the difficulties of this grand and complex
problem, that its solution is only partly revealed, in spite of a long
series of attempts. Great deficiencies remain to be supplied, and many
vaguely-known points to be cleared up, nor has an efibrt even been
made as yet to systematize all the groups of results gained. The latter
task we propose to attempt here, with the purpose of showing by a
remarkable instance the manner of evolving knowledge through the
power of the experimental method, the sequent, cumulative, and mu-
tually-supporting character of wrell-conducted experiments, and their
endless wealth of instruction ; in a wrord, the process adopted by emi-
nent men in the great art of wresting her secrets from living Nature.

I.

Plants gain their nourishment by the absorption through their
roots of certain substances from the soil, and by the decomposition,
through their green portions, of a particular gas contained in the atmos-
phere— carbonic-acid gas. They decompose this gas into carbon,
which they assimilate, and oxygen, which they reject. Now, this phe-
nomenon, which is the vegetable's mode of respiration, can only be
accomplished with the assistance of solar light.

Charles Bonnet, of Geneva, who began his career by experimenting
on plants, and left this attractive subject, to devote himself to philoso-
phy, only in consequence of a serious affection of his sight, was the first
to detect this joint work, about the middle of the eighteenth century.
He remarked that vegetables grow vertically, and tend toward the
sun, in whatever position the seed may have been planted in the earth.
He proved the generality of the fact that, in dark places, plants always
turn toward the point whence light comes. He discovered, too, that
plants immersed in wTater release bubbles of gas under the influence
of sunlight. In 1771, Priestley, in England, tried another experiment.
He let a candle burn in a confined space till the light went out, that
is until the contained air grew unfit for combustion. Then he placed
the green parts of a fresh plant in the enclosure, and at the end of ten
days the air had become sufficiently purified to permit the relighting;
of the candle. Thus he proved that plants replace gas made impura
by combustion with a combustible gas ; but he also observed that at
certain times the reverse phenomenon seems to result. Ten years
later, the Dutch physician, Ingenhousz, succeeded in explaining thia
apparent contradiction. " I had but just begun these experiments,'*
says that skilful naturalist, " when a most interesting scene revealed
itself to my eyes : I observed that not only do plants have the power
of clearing impure air in six days or longer, as Priestley's experiments
seem to point out, but that they discharge this important duty in a
few hours, and in the most thorough way ; that this singular operation
is not due at all to vegetation, but to the effect of sunlight ; that it does

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not begin until the sun has been some time above the horizon ; that it
ceases entirely during the darkness of night ; that plants shaded by
high buildings or by other plants do not complete this function, that
is, they do not purify the air but that, on the contrary, they exhale an
injurious atmosphere, and really shed poison into the air about us ; that
the production of pure air begins to diminish with the decline of day,
and ceases completely at sunset ; that all plants corrupt the surround-
ing air during the night, and that not all portions of the plant take
part in the purification of the air, but only the leaves and green
branches."

How do this transformation of impure air into pure air under the
influence of sunlight, and the reverse process during darkness, take
place ? Senebier, the countryman and friend of Bonnet, gives us the
answer. Applying to the problem the late discoveries of Lavoisier, he
showed that the impure air absorbed and decomposed in the daytime
by plants is nothing more than the carbonic acid thrown off by a burn-
ing candle or a breathing animal, and that the pure air which results
from this decomposition is oxygen. He proved besides that the gas
released by vegetables during the night is also carbonic acid, and
consequently that the respiration of plants in the night-time is the
reverse of that in the daytime. He also demonstrated that heat can-
not supply the place of light in these processes. Thus the nature of
the phenomenon was explained, but it remained to be learned what
relation exists between the volume of carbonic acid absorbed and that
of the oxygen released. Another Genevese, Theodore de Saussure,
proved that the quantity of oxygen released is less than that of car-
bonic acid absorbed, and at the same time that a pai*t of the oxygen
retained by the plant is replaced by nitrogen thrown off; and supposed
that this nitrogen was furnished by the substance of the plant itself.
This function of the green portions of vegetables is, moreover, performed
with great rapidity and energy. Boussingault, who has made some
remarkable experiments on this subject, filled a vessel of water with
vine-leaves, placed it in the sun, and sent a current of carbonic acid
through it ; on its passing out, he collected nothing but pure oxygen.
It is calculated that a leaf of nenuphar gives out in this way during
the summer more than 66 gallons of oxygen.

In 1848 Cloez and Gratiolet contributed new facts. They showed
that aquatic plants follow the same course during the day as others,
but that at night they are at rest, and give rise to no release of car-
bonic acid. They proved the powerful, instantaneous action of solar
light on vegetable respiration. If a few leaves of potamogeton or of
nay as are put into a gauge full of water saturated with carbonic acid,
as soon as the apparatus is placed in the sun, an immense number of
light bubbles, of almost pure oxygen, are seen to detach themselves
from the surface of the leaves. The shadow of a slight cloud, crossing
the sky, suffices to check their disengagement at once, followed by

LIGHT AND LIFE. 297

sudden activity after it has passed. By intercepting the solar "beam
with a screen, the alternations of quickness and slowness in the pro-
duction of gas-bubbles may be very plainly seen, according as the
plant receives the rays or not. Water-plants show other interesting
peculiarities. Diffused light has no power to excite the production of
carbonic acid, unless the phenomenon has been first called forth by
direct sunlight. Still further, the solar influence having once been ap-
plied, the evolution of carbonic acid continues even in darkness. The
vegetable keeps up at night its mode of breathing by day. The living
force of solar light, therefore, can be fixed and stored away in living
plants, as Van Tieghem, the discoverer of this curious property, very
well remarks, to act afterward in complete darkness, and exhaust it-
self by slow degrees, through transformation into equivalent chemical
energy. It appears to lodge itself in phosphorescent sulphur, to reap-
pear under the form of less intense radiations ; it hoards itself up in
paper, starch, and porcelain, to come forth anew, after a greater or less
lapse of time, through its action on the salts of silver. The peculiarity
residing in these green cells of vegetables, then, is not an isolated one :
it is a special instance of the general property, inherent in many bod-
ies, of retaining, within their mass, in some unknown form, a part of
the vibrations that fall upon them, and of preserving them through
transformation, to be afterward emitted, either in the state of luminous
radiations, or in the condition of chemical or mechanical energy. The
great principle of the transformation of forces thus holds good in the
vegetable kingdom. And we end with the remark that these facts of
persistent activity, called out by an initial excitement, lend support to
the idea that living forces hold a close connection with the molecular
structure of bodies, and may even be the determinate expression of
that structure. "We cannot conceive manifold energy in a mathemati-
cal and irreducible atom ; but in a molecule, made up of a certain num-
ber of atoms, we can fancy dynamic figures of a very complex order.

We have thus far regarded only the action of white light, the effect
of the totality of rays sent us by the sun ; but this light is not simple.
It is composed of a great number of radiations, of distinct colors and
properties. When white light is decomposed by the prism, we obtain
seven groups of visible rays, of unequal refractive power, violet, indi-
go, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. The spectrum or ribbon of
colors thus obtained widens and spreads out by invisible radiations.
Beyond the red, there exist radiations of dark heat, or calorific. rays,
and, outside of the violet, radiations which are called chemical or ultra-
violet rays. The first affect the thermometer, the last occasion ener-
getic reactions in chemical compounds. What is their influence upon
vegetation ? Does solar light act by its colored rays, its heat-rays, or
its chemical rays ?

The question has been subjected to many important experiments,
and is, perhaps, not yet determined. Daubeny, in 1836, was the first

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to watch the respiration of plants in colored glasses, and he found that
the volume of oxygen released is always less in the colored rays than
in white light. The orange rays appeared to him most energetic ; the
blue rays coming next. A few years later, Gardner, in Virginia, ex-
posed young, feeble plants, from two to three inches long, to the differ-
ent rays of the spectrum, and observed that they regained a green col-
or with a maximum rapidity under the action of the yellow rays and
those nearest them. In one of his experiments, green color was pro-
duced, under the yellow rays, in three hours and a half, under orange
rays in four hours and a half, and under the blue, only after eighteen
hours. Thus it is seen that the highest force of solar action corre-
sponds neither with the maximum of heat, which is placed at the ex-
tremity of the red, nor with the maximum of chemical intensity, situ-
ated in the violet, at the other edge of the spectrum. Those radiations
which are most active, from a chemical point of view, are the ones
which have the least influence over the phenomena of vegetable life.

Mr. Draper, at present a professor in the New York University,
and the author of a very remarkable history of the intellectual devel-
opment of Europe, undertook new and more accurate experiments
about the same time. He placed blades of grass in tubes filled with
water which was charged with carbonic gas, and exposed these tubes,
near each other, to the different rays of the solar spectrum. Then
measuring the quantity of oxygen gas disengaged in each one of these
little vessels, he proved that the largest production of gas occurred in
the tubes exposed to the yellow and green light; the next, in the
orange and red rays. In 1848, Cloez and Gratiolet discovered the sin-
gular fact that the action of light on vegetation is more powerful when
it passes through roughened glass than when transmitted through
transparent glass. Julius Sachs, more lately, conceived the idea of
measuring the degree of intensity of light-action, upon aquatic plants,
by counting the number of gas-bubbles released by a cutting of a
branch exposed to the sun in water charged with carbonic acid. He
thus observed that the bubbles thrown off under the influence of orantre
light are very little less numerous than under white light, while the
branch put under blue light throws out about twenty times less. These
experiments are decisive. Neither the chemical nor the calorific rays
of the solar beam act on plants. The luminous rays only, and chiefly
the yellow and the orange, have that property. To these clearly-set-
tled results, Cailletet added a new fact, that green light acts on vege-
tation in the same way as darkness. He assigns this reason for the
feebleness of vegetation bathed in green light under the shade of large
trees. It is true, this discovery of Cailletet has been warmly ques-
tioned recently, but it has found defenders too, Bert among others
and we shall find soon that it harmonizes with the whole system of the
actions of light in the two kingdoms of life.

A year ago, science had gone thus far, when a very distinguished

LIGHT AND LIFE. 299

botanist, Prillieux, published the result of a course of experiments
made with an entirely different purpose, and taking up the study of
the action of light from a new point of view. Resting on the twofold
consideration that the distinctly-colored rays are not equally luminous,
and that those of the greatest illuminating power are also those which
act with most energy on plants, Prillieux undertook to examine what
influence will be exercised on plants by rays different in color, but
known to be equal in intensity, and whether this influence differs in
the case of different colors, or is the same, provided they do not vary
in illuminating power. The long and conscientious researches of this
experimenter led him to the conclusion, that rays of different colors
act with equal force on the green parts of plants, and produce an equal
release of gas, when they have the like luminous intensity. He holds
that all luminous rays effect the reduction of carbonic acid by vege-
tables in proportion to their illuminating power, whatever their refran-
gibility may be. If the yellow and orange rays are more active in
this respect, it is because their luminous glare is much greater than
that of the extreme rays.

The luminous rays also promote the production of green tissue, the
green matter of all vegetables. Gardeners blanch certain plants by
raising them in the dark. They thus obtain plants of a pale yellow,
spindling, without strength or crispness. They are attacked by a true
chlorosis, and waste away, as if sprung from barren sand. The sun
also aids the transpiration of plants, and the constant renewal of
healthy moisture in their tissues. On failure of the evaporation of
moisture, the plant tends to grow dropsical, and its leaves fall, from
weakness of the stem.

This love of plants for light, which is one of the most imperious
needs of their existence, displays itself also in other interesting phe-
nomena, which show that solar rays are, in very truth, the fertilizer
that produces color. The corolla of vegetable species growing at great
heights on mountains has livelier colors than that of species that spring
in low spots. The sun's rays, in fact, pass more easily through the
clear atmosphere that bathes high summits. The hue of certain flow-
ers even varies according to the altitude. Thus the corolla of the An-
tliyllis vulneraria shades down from white to pale red and vivid pur-
ple. In general, the vegetation of open, well-lighted places is richer in
color and development than that of regions not accessible to the sun.
Some flowers originally white afterward deepen in color by the direct
action of light. Thus Cheiranthus cameleo has a flower at first whitish,
afterwai'd yellow, and, at last, a violet-red. The Hibiscus mutabilis
bears a flower which opens at morning with a white hue, and grows
red during the day. The flower-buds of the Agapanthus umbellatus
are white when they begin to unclose, and afterward take on a blue
tint. If, at the moment of leaving its spathe, the flower is wrapped in
black paper, intercepting the light, it remains white, but regains its

3oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

color in the sun. The tints of fruits in the same way develop under
the healthy action of daylight, and the rule extends to those principles
of every nature which give taste and odor to the different parts of the
the plant.

Flowers, fruits, and leaves, then, are elaborated by the help of
luminous vibrations. Their tissue holds the sun's rays. Those
charming colors, those fragrant perfumes, and delicious flavors, all the
innocent pleasures the vegetable kingdom yields us, owe their creation
to light. The subtle working of these wonderful operations eludes us,
as does that which guides the fleeting diffusion and thousand-fold re-
fractions displayed by the imposing spectacle of the dawn ; but is it
nothing to gain a glimpse of those primal laws, and to possess even a
twilight ray upon these magnificent phenomena ?

II.

Light exerts a mechanical influence on vegetables. The sleep of
flowers, the bending of their stems, the nutation of heliotropic plants,
the inter-cellular movements of chlorophyll, offer proofs of an ex-
tremely delicate sensitiveness of certain plants in this respect. Pliny
mentions the plant called the sunflower, which always looks toward
the sun, and steadily follows its motion. He notices, too, that the
lupin always follows the sun in its daily movement, and points out the
hour for laborers. Tessier, at the end of the last century, took up the
study of these phenomena, and inferred in a general way that the
stems of plants always turn toward the light, and bend over, if neces-
sary, to receive it. He noted, too, that leaves tend to turn toward the
side whence daylight comes. Payer made more exact experiments.
He tried them with young stems of common garden cresses grown on
damp cotton in the dark. These stems have the property of curving
and turning quickly when placed in a room lighted only from one side
or iu a box receiving light on one wall only. The upper part of the
stem curves first, the lower part remaining straight. By a second
movement the top erects and the bottom bends over, so that the plant,
though leaning, becomes almost rectilinear again. "When put in a
room receiving light from two windows, the following results are no-
ticed : If the openings are on the same side admitting light equally,
the stem bends in the direction of the middle of the angle formed by
these two beams ; if one of the two windows admits more light than
the other, the stem leans toward it ; if the windows are opposite each
other, the stem stands erect, when light comes equally from both sides,
and, if it does not, turns toward the stronger rays. Payer discovered,
moreover, that the part of the irradiating light most active in its
effects corresponds in this case to the violet and the blue. The red,
orange, yellow, and green rays, do not seem to produce any movement
in plants. Gardner carried the investigation still further. He sowed
turnips, and let them develop in the dark to two or three inches in

LIGHT AND LIFE. 301

length. Then he threw the solar spectrum by a prism on this little
field. The plants inclined toward a common axis. Those exposed to
the red, orange, yellow, and green rays, leaned toward the deep blue,
while the part lighted by violet bent in the opposite direction. Thus
the crop took the appearance of a wheat-field bowing under two con-
trary winds. The turnips placed in the violet-blue region looked
toward the prism. Gardner thus determined, as Payer had done, that
the most refrangible rays are those which effect the bending of the
young stems. He proved also that the plants grow erect again in the
dark.

These experiments, repeated and varied in many ways by Du-
trochet and Guillemin, uniformly gave like results, but the phenome-
non itself still remains almost unexplained. This remark also applies
to the very singular facts of the twisting of running plants. The
stems of these plants, in twining about their supports, usually curl from
the left to the right. Others follow the contrary course, and some
twist indifferently in either way. Charles Darwin inferred, from his
investigation, that light has an effect on this phenomenon. If twining
plants are put in a room near a window, the tip of their stalk takes
longer to complete the half circuit during which it turns toward the
darker part of the room than that which is described nearer the win-
dow. Thus one of them, having gone through a whole turn in five
hours and twenty minutes, the half circle toward the window em-
ployed a little less than an hour, while the other was not traversed in
less than four hours and a half. Duchartre placed some China yams in
full vegetation in a garden, and others in a completely dark cellar.
The stems of the plants uniformly lost in the dark the power of twist-
ing around their supporting sticks. Those exposed to the sun presented
one portion twisting, but when put in the cellar they shot out straight
stems. Yet some twining plants are known that seem to be indepen-
dent of light in twisting.

The sleep of plants, in connection with light particularly, is still less
understood. The flowers and leaves of certain vegetables droop and
wither at fixed hours. The corolla closes, and after quiet inaction the
plant again expands. In others, the corolla drops and dies without
closing. In others still, as the convolvulus, the closing of the flower
occurs only once, and its sleep marks its death. Linnaeus noted the
hours of opening and shutting in certain plants, and thus arranged
what has been called Flora's clock ; but the relations of these closings,
with the intensity of light have not yet been scientifically determined.

The green coloring of vegetable leaves and stems is due to a spe-
cial substance called chlorophyll, which forms microscopic granula-
tions contained in the cells which make up these stems and leaves.
These grains are more or less numerous in every cell, and it is their
number as well as intensity of color that determines the tint of the
plant's tissues. Sometimes they are closely pressed together, covering;

302 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the whole inner surface of the cell ; sometimes the quantity is smaller,
and they are separate. Now, it has lately been discovered that in
the latter case, under the influence of light, the green corpuscles we
speak of undergo very singular changes of position. Some twelve
years ago, Boehm noticed for the first time that in certain unctuous
plants the grains of chlorophyll gather at one point of the wall of the
cells under the action of the sun. He remarked that the phenomenon
does not take place in the dark, nor in the red rays. The flat sheet
made up of a single layer of cells, without epidermis, which composes
the leaves of mosses, seemed to Famintzin the most suitable for this
delicate kind of observations. He followed the movements, that take
place in these sheets, by microscopic study. During the day the green
coloring-grains are scattered about the upper and lower parts of the
leal-cells. At night, on the contrary, they accumulate toward the
lateral walls. The blue rays affect them like white light; the yellow
and the red ones keep the chlorophyll in the position it takes at night.
The order of activity in the rays seems, then, to differ in this case from
that in the phenomena of respiration. The researches of Borodine and
Prillieux proved that these movements of coloring-corpuscles within
the cells occur in almost all cryptogamous plants, and in a certain
number of phanerogamous ones. The lately-published experiments of
Roze show that in mosses the grains of chlorophyll are connected by
very slender threads of plasma, and may suggest the idea that these
threads are the cause of the changes of position just described. Per-
haps there is some real relation between them; but it must not be for-
gotten that these movements of the plasmatic matter inside the cell
take place by day and night, and that light has no marked effect on
them. The green particles, on the contrary, creep over the walls of
the cell, and move toward the lightest part as zoospores and some in-
fusoria do.

Biot relates that in 1807, while at Formentera, employed in the
work of extending the meridional arc, he devoted his leisure hours to
the analysis of the gas contained in the swimming-bladder of fishes
living at different depths in the sea. The oxygen required for these
analyses was furnished him by the leaves of the cactus opuntia, which
he exposed in water to sunlight, under hand-glasses, ingeniously apply-
ing the discovery of Ingenhousz and Senebier. It occurred to him one
day to expose these leaves, in a dark place, to the illumination thrown
by lamps placed in the focus of three large reflectors, used for night-
signals in the great triangulation. He threw the light from three of
these reflectors on the cactus-leaves. The eye, placed in this concen-
tration of light, must have been struck blind, Biot says. The experi-
ment, kept up for an hour, did not cause the release of a single gas-
bubble. The glass was then taken into the diffused light outside tho
hut. The sun was not shining, but the evolution of gas took place at
once with great rapidity. Biot is a little surprised at the result and

LIGHT AND LIFE.

3°3

concludes that artificial light is impotent to do what solar light can.
The labors of Prillieux and other contemporary botanists have proved
that all light acts on the respiration of plants, provided only it is not
too powerful. In Biot's case artificial light had no effect, because it
it was far too intense.

III.

Lavoisier somewhere says : " Organization, voluntary movement,
life, exist only at the surface of the earth, in places exposed to light.
One might say that the fable of Pi'ometheus's torch was the expression
of a philosophic truth that the ancients had not overlooked. Without
light, Nature was without life ; she was inanimate and dead. A be-
nevolent God, bringing light, diffused over the earth's surface organi-
zation, feeling, and thought." These words are essentially true. All
organic activity was very clearly at first borrowed from the sun, and if
the earth has since stored away and made its own a quantity of energy,
that sometimes suffices to produce of itself that which originally pro-
ceeded from solar stimulus, it must not be forgotten that those living
forces, of startling and complex aspects, sometimes our pitiless ene-
mies, often our docile servants, have descended, and are still descend-
ing upon our planet, from the inexhaustible sun. The study of animal
life shows us by striking instances the physiological efficacy of light,
and the immaterial chain, it may be called, which links existences with
the fiery and abounding heart of the known universe.

In plants, as we have seen, respiration at night is the reverse of
that by day. There are infusoria which behave, under the influence
of light, exactly like the green portions of plants. These microscopic
animalcula are developed in fine weather in stagnant water, and in
breathing produce oxygen at the expense of the carbonic acid con-
tained in the liquid. Morren saw that the oxygenation of the water
occasioned by these little beings varied very perceptibly in the course
of twenty-four hours. It is at the minimum at sunrise, and reaches
its maximum toward four in the afternoon. If the sky is overcast, or
the animalcula disappear, the phenomenon is suspended. Tbis is only
an exception. Animals breathe at night in the same way as in the
daytime, only less energetically. Day and night they burn carbon
within their tissues, and form carbonic acid, only the activity of the
phenomenon is much greater in light than in darkness.

Light quickens vital movements in animals, especially the act of
nutrition, and darkness checks them. This fact, long known and ap-
plied in practical agriculture, is expressly noted by Columella. He
recommends the process of fattening fowls by rearing them in small
dark cages. The laborer, to fatten his cattle, shuts them up in stables
lighted by small low windows. In the half-light of these prisons the
work of disassimilation goes on slowly, and the nutritive substances,
instead of. being consumed in the circulating fluid, more readily accu-

304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. . .

mulate in the organs. In the same way, for the sake of developing
enormous fat livers in geese, they are put into dark cellars, kept en-
tirely quiet, and crammed with meal.

Animals waste away as plants do. The absence of light sometimes
makes them lose vigor, sometimes entirely changes them, and modifies
their organization in the way least favorable to the full exercise of
their vital powers. Those that live in caverns are like plants growing
in cellars. In certain underground lakes of Lower Carniola we find
very singular reptiles resembling salamanders, called proteans. They
are nearly white, and have only the rudiments of eyes. If exposed to
light they seem to suffer, and their skin takes a color. It is very likely
that these beings have not always lived in the darkness to which they
are now confined, and that the prolonged absence of light has de-
stroyed the color of their skins and their visual organs. Beings thus
deprived of day are exposed to all the weaknesses and ill effects of
chlorosis and impoverishment of the blood. They grow puffy, like
the colorless mushroom, unconscious of the healthy contact of lumin-
ous radiance.

William Edwards, to whom science owes so many researches into
the action of natural agents, studied, about 1820, the influence exer-
cised by light on the development of animals. He placed frogs'-
eggs in two vessels filled with water, one of which was transparent,
and the other made impermeable to light, by a covering of black pa-
per. The eggs exposed to light developed regularly ; those in the
dark vessel yielded nothing but rudiments of embryos. Then he put
tadpoles in large vessels, some transparent, others shielded from the
light. The tadpoles that were shone upon, soon underwent the change
into the adult form, while the others either continued in the tadpole
condition, or passed into the state of perfect frogs with great diffi-
culty. Thirty years later, Moleschott performed some hundreds of
experiments in examining how light modifies the quantity of carbonic
acid thrown off in respiration. Operating on frogs, he found that the
volume of gas exhaled by daylight exceeds by one-fourth the volume
thrown off in darkness. He established, in a general way, that the
production of carbonic acid increases in proportion to the intensity of
light. Tims, with an intensity represented by 3.27, he obtained 1 of
carbonic acid, and, with an intensity of 7.38, he obtained 1.18. The
same physiologist thinks that in batrachians the intensity of light is
communicated partly by the skin, partly by the eyes.

Jules Beclard made more thorough researches. Common flies'-
eggs, taken from the same group, and placed at the same time under
differently-colored glasses, all produce worms. But if the worms,
hatched under the different glasses, are compared at the end of four or
five days, perceptible differences may be seen among them. Those
most developed correspond with the violet and blue ray ; those hatched
under the green ray are far less advanced; while the red, yellow, and

LIGHT AND LIFE. 305

white rays exert an intermediate action. A long series of experiments
on birds satisfied Beclard that the quantity of carbonic acid thrown
out in breathing, during a given time, is not sensibly modified by the
different colors of the glasses the animals are placed under. It is the
same with small mammifers, such as mice ; but it is to be observed in
this case that the skin is covered either wTith hair or feathers, and the
light does not strike the surface. The same plrysiologist examined
also the influence of the different-colored rays of the spectrum on
frogs. Under the green ray, the same weight of frogs produces in the
same period of time a greater quantity of carbonic acid than under
the red ray. The difference maybe a half greater; it is usually a
third or a fourth greater; but if the skin is afterward taken off the
frogs, and they are replaced under the same conditions, the result al-
ters. The amount of carbonic acid thrown out by the flayed frogs is
greater in red than in green light. A few experiments tried by Be-
clard on the exhalation of the vapor of water by the skin show that in
the dark, temperature and weight being alike, frogs lose by evapora-
tion a half or a third less moisture than under white light. In the
violet ray the quantity of moisture lost by the animal is perceptibly
the same as in white lisrht.

Light acts directly on the iris of almost all animals, and thus pro-
duces contraction of the pupil, while heat produces the reverse phe-
nomena. This stimulus is observed in eyes that have been separated
for some time from the body, as Brown-Sequard has shown.

Bert lately took up some very curious experiments on the prefer-
ence of animals for differently-colored rays. He took some of those
almost microscopic Crustacea, common enough in our fresh waters, the
daphne-fleas, remarkable for their eager way of hurrying toward light.
A number of these insects were put into a glass vessel, well darkened,
and a spectrum of the ray then thrown into it. The daphnes were
dispersed about the dark vessel. As soon as the spectrum-colors ap-
peared, they began to move, and gathered in the course of the lumi-
nous track, but, when a screen was interposed, they scattered agaiiu.
At first all the colors of the spectrum attracted them, but it was soon
noticed that they hurried much more toward the yellow and gree%
and even moved away a little if these rays were quickly replaced by
the violet. In the yellow, green, and orange parts of the spectrum
there was a thronging and remarkable attraction. A pretty large
number of these little beings were remarked in the red, too, a certain
number in the blue, and some, fewer in proportion to the distance, in
the most refrangible portions of the violet and ultra-violet. For these
insects, as for ourselves, the most luminous part of the spectrum was
also the most agreeable. They behaved in it as a man would do who,
if he wished to read in a spectrum thrown about him, would approach
the yellow and avoid the violet. This proves, in the first place, that
these insects see all the luminous rays that we see ourselves. Do they
vol. n. — 20

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perceive the clilorific and chemic rays, that is to say, the ultra-red and
ultra-violet ones, which do not affect our retina ? Bert's experiments
enable us to answer that they do not. That physiologist is even led
to assert that, with regard to light and the different rays, all animals
experience the same impi*essions that man does.

Let us now look at the influence of light upon the color of the skin
in animals, noticing first the being which presents the strangest pecu-
liarities in this respect, the chameleon. This animal, indeed, experi-
ences very frequent modifications of color in the course of the same
day. From Aristotle, who attributed these changes to a swelling of
the skin, and Theophrastus, who assigned fear as their cause, to Wal-
lisnieri, who supposes them to result from the movement of humors
toward the surface of the animal's body, the most different opinions
have been expressed on this subject. Milne-Edwards, thirty years
ago, explained them by the successive inequalities in the proportions
of the two substances, one yellowish and the other violet, which color
the skin of the reptile, inequalities due to the changes in volume of the
very flattened cells that contain these substances. Bruck, renewing
these researches, proves that the chameleon's colors follow from the
manifold dispersion of solar light in the colored cells, that is to say,
from the production of the same phenomenon remarked in soap-bubbles
and all very thin plates. Its colors, then, come from the play of sun-
light among the yellow and violet substances distributed very curiously
under its wrinkled skin. It passes from orange to yellow, from green
to blue, through a series of wavering and rainbow-like shades, deter-
mined by the state of the light's radiation. Darkness blanches it,
twilight gives it the most delicate marbled tints, the sun turns it dark.
A part of the skin bruised or rubbed remains black, without growing
white in the dark. Bruck satisfied himself, moreover, that temperature
does not affect these phenomena.

All animals having fur or feathers are darker and more highly
colored on the back than on the belly, and their colors are more intense
in summer than in winter. Night-butterflies never have the vivid
tints of those that fly by day, and among the latter those of spring
have clearer, brighter shades than the autumn ones. The gold-and-
azure dust that adorns them harmonizes with the tones of colors in
surrounding Nature. Night-birds, in the same way, have dark plu-
mage, and the downiness of their coverings contrasts with the stiffness
of those that fly by day. Shells secluded under rocks wear pale
shades, compared with those that drink in the light. We have spoken
above of cave-animals. What a distinction between those of cold
regions and those of equatorial countries ! The coloring of birds,
mammals, and reptiles, peopling the vast forests or dwelling on the
banks of the great rivers in the torrid zone, is dazzling in its splendor.
At the north we find gray tints, dead and of little variety, usually close
-upon white, by reason of the almost constant reflection from snow.

LIGHT AND LIFE. 307

Not only the color of organized beings, but their shape too, is
linked with the action of light, or rather of climate. The flora of the
globe gain increasing perfection as we go from the poles toward the
equator. The nearer these beings approach the highest degree of heat
and light, the more lavishly are richness, splendor, and beauty, be-
stowed on them. The energy and glory of life, perfect forms as well
as brilliant arraying, are the distinguishing mark of the various and
manifold races in tropical regions, giving this privileged world its
characteristic aspect. A pure emanation from the sun, Nature here
lives wild and splendid, gazing unshrinkingly, like the Alpine eagle, on
the eternal and sublime source which inundates it with heat and glow.
Look, now, at the regions of the pole ! A few dwarfish shrubs, a few
stunted and herbaceous plants, compose all its flora. Its animals have
a pale covering and downy feathers ; its insects, sombre tints. All
around them are the utmost limits of life — ice invades every thing, the
sea alone still breeds a few acalephs, some zoophytes, and other low
rudimentary organizations. The sun comes aslant and seldom. At
the equator he darts his fires, and gives himself without stint to the
happy Eden of his predilection.

IV.

It remains to note the relations of light to that being most sensitive
to its influence, and best able to express its effects, man himself. The
new-born child seeks the day by instinct, and turns to the side whence
light comes, and, if this spontaneous movement of the infant's eyes is
thwarted, strabismus may be the consequence.

Of all our organs the eye is the one that light especially affects.
Through the eyes come all direct notions of the outer world, and all
impressions of an aesthetic kind. Now, the excitability of the retina
shows variations of every kind. Prisoners confined in dark cells have
been known to acquire the power of seeing distinctly in them, while
their eyes also become sensitive to the slightest changes in the inten-
sity of light. In 1766 Lavoisier, in studying certain questions upon
the lighting of Paris, which had been given for competition by the
Academy of Sciences, found after several attempts that his sight wanted
the necessary sensitiveness for observing the relative intensities of the
different flames he wished to compare. He had a room hung with
black, and shut himself up in it for six weeks in utter darkness. At
the end of that time his sensitiveness of sight was such that he could
distinguish the faintest differences. It is very dangerous, too, to pass
suddenly from a dark place into a strong flood of light. The tyrant
Dionysius had a building made with bright, whitewashed walls, and
would order wretches, after long seclusion from light, to be suddenly
brought into it. The contrast struck them blind. Xenophon relates
that many Greek soldiers lost their sight from reflections off the snow
in crossing the mountains of Armenia. All travellers who have visited

3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the polar regions have often seen like results produced by the glare
of the snow. When the impression of light on the eye is sudden and
overpowering, the retina suffers most. If it is less powerful, but longer
continued, the humors of the eye are affected. The phenomenon called
sunstroke results from the action of light, and not, as is often supposed,
from excessively high temperature. It sometimes occurs in the mod-
erately warm season of spring ; or a very intense artificial light, and
particularly the electric light, may occasion it. The violet and ultra
violet parts of the sunbeam seem to be the cause of this action, for
screens of uranium glass, that absorb these portions, protect the eyes
of experimenters occupied in studying the electric light. This dis-
order is a true inflammation.

The action of light on the human skin is manifest. It browns and
tans the teguments, by calling out the production of the coloring-
matters they contain. The parts of the body usually bare, as the skin
of the face and hands, are darker than others. In the same region,
country-people are more tanned than town residents. In latitudes not
far apart, the inhabitants of the same country vary in complexion in
a measure perceptibly related to the intensity of solar light. In Eu-
rope three varieties of color in the skin are distinctly marked : olive-
brown, with black hair, beard, and eyes ; chestnut, with tawny beard
and bluish eyes ; blond, with fair, light beard and sky-blue eyes.
White skins show more readily alterations occasioned by light and
heat ; but, though less striking, facts of variation in color are observa-
ble in others. The Scytho-Arabic race has but half its representatives
in Europe and Central Asia, while the remainder passes down to the
Indian Ocean, continuing to show the gradual rising heat of climate
by deepening brown complexions. The Himalayan Hindoos are al-
most white ; those of the Deccan, of Coromandel, Malabar, and Ceylon,
are darker than some negro tribes. The Arabs, olive and almost fair
in Armenia and Syria, are deep brown in Yemen and Muscat. The
Egyptians, as we go from the mouths of the Nile up-stream toward its
source, present an ascending chromatic scale, from white to black, and
the same is true of the Tuariks on the southern side of Mount Atlas, who
are only light-olive, while their brethren in the interior of Africa are
black. The ancient monuments of Egypt show us a fact equally signi-
ficant. The men are always depicted of a reddish brown ; they lived
in the open air, wdiile the women, kept shut up, have a pale-yellow
complexion. Barrow asserts that the Mantchoo Tartars have grown
whiter during their abode in China. Iiemusat, Pallas, and Gutzlaff,
speak of the Chinese women as remarkable for a European fairness.
The Jewesses of Cairo or Syria, always hidden under veils or in their
houses, have a pallid, dead color. In the yellow races of the Sumatra
Sound and the Maldives, the women, always covered up, are pale like
wax. We know, too, that the Esquimaux bleach during their long
winter. These phenomena, no doubt, are the results of several infiu

LIGHT AND LIFE. 305

ences acting at once, and light does not play the sole part in them.
Heat and other conditions of the medium probably have a share in
these operations of color. Still, the peculiar and powerful effect of
luminous radiation as a part of them is beyond dispute.

The whole system of organic functions shares in the benefits of
light. Darkness seems to favor the preponderance of the lymphatic
system, a susceptibility to catarrh in the mucous membranes, flaccidity
of the soft parts, swellings and distortions of the bony system, etc.
Miners and workmen employed in ill-lighted shops are exposed to all
these causes of physiological suffering. We may notice, with regard
to this, that certain rays of the solar beam affect animals like darkness ;
among others, the orange light, which, according to Bert, hurts the de-
velopment of batrachians. Now, if this light is injurious to animals,
it is not so to plants, as we have seen. In exchange, green light,
which is hurtful to vegetables, is extremely favorable to animals.
There is a kind of opposition and balance, then, as respects luminous
affinities, between the two great kingdoms of life. White light, as
Dubrianfant says, seems to split up under the influence of living be-
ings into two complementary groups, a green group and an orange
group, which exhibit in Nature antagonistic properties. It is quite cer-
tain that green light is a very lively and healthful stimulant for our
functions, and that, for that reason, spring is the favored and enchanted
season.

The-correspondence between perfection of forms and heightening of
luminous intensity proves true in the human race as in others. Es-
thetics, agreeing with ethnography, demonstrate that light tends to de-
velop the different parts of the body in true and harmonious propor-
tion. Humboldt, that nice observer, says, speaking of the Chaymas :
" The men and women have very muscular bodies, but plump, with
rounded forms. It is needless to add that I have never seen a single
one with any natural deformity. I will say the same of so many thou-
sands of Caribs, Muycas, Mexican and Peruvian Indians, whom we
have observed during five years. These bodily deformities and mis-
growths are extremely rare in certain races of men, especially among
people who have a deep-colored skin." No doubt there is great diffi-
culty in conceiving how light can model — can exert a plastic power.
Yet, reflecting on its tonic effect on the outer tegument, and its gen-
eral influence over the functions, we may assign it the part of distribut-
ing the vital movement orderly and harmoniously throughout the
whole of the organs. Men who live naked are in a perpetual bath of
light. None of the parts of their bodies are withdrawn from the vivi-
fying action of solar radiation. Thence follows an equilibrium which
secures regularity in function and development.

It is commonly said that an ordained causality rules the operations
of matter, and that free spontaneity is the privilege of those of spirit.
It might well be said on this subject that, in many cases, the causes

3ic THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

acting in matter elude us, and, not less often, the causes which act in
spirit overpower us ; but it is not our task to elucidate that terrible
antithesis of law, when the genius of Kant failed in it. We would
only ask it to be observed how great an influence light has on the sys-
tem of the intellectual functions. The soul finds in it the least deceiv-
ing of the consolations it seeks for the eternal sadness of our destiny —
the bitter melancholy of life. Thought, fettered and dumb in a dark
place, springs into freedom and spirit at evening, in a room brilliant
with light. We cannot shun the sad moods caused by gloomy and
rainy weather, nor resist the impulse of joy given by the spectacle of
a brilliant day. Here we must confess our slavery — yet a slavery to
be welcomed, that yields only delights. And why should we not join
in the chorus of all animate and inanimate things, which, at the touch
of light, quiver, and thrill, and betray in a thousand languages the
magical, rapturous stimulus of that contact ? By instinct, and spon-
taneously, we seek it everywhere, always happiest when it is found.
In some sort, it suffices us. And what a part it plays, what a charm it
gives, in works of poetry and art !

This is not the place to unfold that attractive and hardly-opened
chapter of aesthetics — to demonstrate the relation between the atmos-
phere and art, by interrogating the climates of the globe and the great
masters of all ages, not following a system of empirical analogies and
far-fetched suggestions, Ixit led by strict physiology and rigid optic
laws. A charming picture would unfold in tracing the countless and
changeful aspects of the sky, and all the caprices of light and air in
their influence over the moral and physical nature of painters, poets,
and musicians. The ever-varying face of the sun, the fires of dawn
and sunset, the opalescent play of air, the shimmer of twilight, the
blue, green, shifting hues and iridescent gleams of sea or mountain —
all these things find a destined answer in the inmost and unconscious
ongrowings of life, as in the soul of one who looks understandingly at
Nature's works. In it they reveal and transform themselves by sub-
tlest thrills — tender and creative. He who shall detect these — shall
link, range, and embrace them in their wonderfully complex unity —
will render a great service to science and to art. He will not make
the artist an automaton, nor prove man the copy of a plant, drawing
all its virtues from the soil it springs in, but he will lay his hand upon
the mechanism, as yet scarcely guessed, moving a whole system of
mighty combinations of energy. — Revue des Deux Mondes.

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 311

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON DTJMONT.
II.

HARTMANN adopts the following words as the title of his prin-
cipal work: "Speculative results according to the inductive
method of the natural sciences." If we were to trust to these words,
we might suppose that the author's system takes an essentially scien-
tific form, and relies exclusively on the observation and analysis of
facts. But the reading of a very few chapters soon leaves quite an
opposite impression. Although Hartmann gives proof of abundant
acquisitions in physics and physiology, he puts himself completely at
odds with the naturalist school, and, soaring away at once, launches
into the metaphysical regions haunted by Schelling and Schlegel. He
begins, it is true, by setting forth quite a number of facts belonging
to the domain of the natural sciences, but he follows with the imme-
diate declaration that such facts can only be explained by a cause of
the supernatural order. Now, to take any fact whatever, and en-
deavor to show that it is not a result of physical conditions, but has
its cause in a spiritual principle, intelligent and distinct from its real-
ity, may not, we suppose, be necessarily false, but we certainly cannot
recognize, in such a procedure, " the inductive method of the natural
sciences."

The principle of final causes is the starting-point of the system. In
vain Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, have successively combated it ; in
vain Darwin has given it its death-blow, by the proof that every thing
heretofore conceived as a final cause in the organic world might be
hypothetically, if not by demonstration, explained as a result; in
Hartmann's teaching, the idea of finality once more takes a place per-
Iiaps as high as in that of ancient philosophic systems. He says, the
causes of a fact are necessarily either material or spiritual — there is
no middle way ; therefore, when material circumstances fail to explain
a fact sufficiently, we must resort to the admission of a spiritual cause.
Now, when the mind acts, there is always a will joined with an idea,
a force tending to the realization of an end conceived ; in a word, there
is always a final cause. Therefore, to prove the existence of a provi-
dential principle, it is enough to show that certain facts cannot possi-
bly be reduced to material conditions.

This doctrine may be thus stated : Whatever we have not yet suc-
ceeded in grasping by observation is of a spiritual nature, or, what-
ever in the production of a fact has hitherto eluded our experimental
research, must be a priori a principle like the human intellect. Is not

3i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this simply going back to that old anthropomorphism of primitive phi
losophy, according to which imagination was childishly led to con-
ceive, behind any phenomenon inexplicable by ignorance, a will, a
force, like that we are conscious of within ourselves ? This illusion
has gradually lost ground, for two reasons : first, because the sphere
of the unknown has gone on diminishing, as the conquests of science
have continually revealed new natural explanations of phenomena ; and,
next, because we are brought more and more nearly to the conviction
that the human intellect, the will, instead of being principles of a
transcendent order, are themselves only results of material conditions.
We can maintain such a doctrine, and yet repel the charge of material-
ism ; for matter, in our view, is far from being a principle ; we regard
it only as a fact which is capable of being analyzed in its turn, and of
being reduced to yet simpler elements, to forces, which are not in
themselves substances, but merely phenomena. •

One of the most characteristic traits of the spiritualist tempera-
ment is this — that in the explanation of facts it always prefers meta-
physical hypotheses to purely physical ones ; that it clings to the
former as long as it is possible to do so without too violent a contra-
diction of irresistible truths ; that it never yields to such truths, ex-
cept in the last extremity, nor ever until they have been established
by proofs beyond refutation. This is the mental bent of which we
find the signs in Hartmann's theories. There are, in fact, a certain num-
ber of phenomena, of which the physical and physiological sciences
have succeeded in giving probable explanations, without going beyond
their own domain; but these explanations are as yet in the state of
conjectures, or at least have not been verified by experiences so deci-
sive as to compel the most hardened metaphysicians to accept them.
Instead of these solutions, Hartmann, in conformity so far with spirit-
ualistic traditions, prefers to hold to the hypothesis of an intelligent
principle, yet an unconscious one. Let us examine the principal facts
of this kind in order.

Hartmann contends that any voluntary movement must be impos-
sible, without an idea of the extremity of the nerve that serves to
produce it ; and, as this idea does not exist in consciousness, it must
exist, as he holds, in an unconscious intelligence, of which my con-
scious intelligence is doubtless only a mode, a manifestation. I will
to move my arm, and it moves. How can that effect be produced,
Hartmann asks, without the knowledge of the intermediate organs,
which must be set at work to effect the intended act ? How otherwise
.can we explain the action of the will on some one particular muscle,
rather than on some other one? We may well be astonished to find
;such a theory held by a philosopher who admits that acts of the con-
scious will are phenomena of the brain. Is it not a more natural and
.probable sequence to suppose an organic adaptation between the cere-
bral phenomenon and the modification of the motor nerve? But, it

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 313

is objected, What has the power to establish such adaptation, except
an intelligent being ? We shall reply, that all those phenomena which
are usually simultaneous in the organism have the power of suggest-
ing each other, that is to say, of acting reciprocally as causes. They
do in the end compose a circle, which vibrates throughout, whichever
one of its links it may be that receives the impulse. Every gesture,
every external movement of the body, is naturally followed by its per-
ception, and consequently by its idea ; by dint of being contempora-
neous with the organic facts which determine the production of motion,
the idea forms in connection with them habits of adaptation, the result
of which is to give it the property of exciting them. Thus, the move-
ment was at first involuntary, and theretofore it was the movement
which stirred its idea in the intellect, through the intermediate means
of perception ; afterward the movement became voluntary, and it may
be was caused, in its turn, by the cerebral phenomenon of its idea,
which had had time to contract habits of coexistence, and of sugges-
tion with the intermediate modifications of the nerves and the muscles.
Such habits may even show themselves, so far as they are hereditarily
reproduced and continued, as if they were innate with the individual.

It is the same with regard to those reflex movements which Hart-
mann also refers to an unconscious will and intelligence. He defines
a reflex movement as " that which takes place when the excitement of
a nerve of motion is transmitted to a nervous centre, which transmits
it on to another nerve of motion, that produces in the last place a
muscular contraction." This definition is evidently too broad, and
would equally embrace all those movements that result from cerebral
action ; for the brain is also a nervous centre, which only transforms
movements that come from outside of it, so as to transmit them to
motor nerves. Physiologists usually confine the description of " re-
flex " to those movements as to which the series of facts intermediate
between the external excitement received and the final act does not
pass through the me, or the thinking brain.1 Now, among these move-
ments, certain distinctions must be established. In a great number of
them the most prejudiced mind could not discover any sign of finality,
and therefore as to those there cannot even be any question of apply-
ing an hypothesis of an intelligence, whether conscious or unconscious ;
when, for instance, some one tickles me, and I laugh, I cannot recog-
nize any thing between these two facts of laughing and of tickling,
beyond an accidental and mechanical coincidence. Other reflex move-
ments are very easily explained upon the hypothesis of natural selec-
tion ; such, for instance, is the action of the spinal marrow on the

1 In the strictest meaning of the term, a reflex phenomenon is a movement called
forth in one part of the body by an excitement proceeding from that part, and acting
intermediately through a new centre, oti »r than the brain, properly called, and conse-
quently without the intervention of the will. — (Vclpian, Lectures onihe General and Com-
parative Pliyx'wloc/ii of the Nervous System.)

3i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

muscles of the blood-vessels ; such are the movements of the respira-
tory organs, etc. Again, there are a great number of cases in which
the adaptation between the excitement and the act must have been
originally regulated by conscious intelligence; but, the habit once
acquired, the concurrence of intelligence has become useless. The
player on a musical instrument needs at first to combine, by an act of
his will, the movements of the fingers with the visual perception of
the notes ; but, after a sort of organic coexistence between these facts
is established by repetition and practice, the one may become directly
the cause of the other, without the concurrence of the power that
regulated their adaptation; the movements of the hand then follow
the impressions on the sight mechanically, while the intellect may be
occupied with something quite different. Thus a machine, once con-
structed and regulated, has no need of the intelligent workman, who
adjusted its cogs and wheels, to keep it going. If we pinch a frog
after its brain is removed, it makes motions as though to repel the
hand that hurts it ; it is a reflex action resulting from habits contracted
under the cerebral influence, and strongly enough established to sur-
vive the removal of the intellectual organs. After this we do not deny
that a certain degree of intelligence may exist in other nervous cen-
tres besides the brain ; we grant that they may have a peculiar con-
sciousness of their modifications and their movements. But we go no
further, and we refuse to follow Hartmann, as soon as his hypotheses
needlessly take on a metaphysical or supernatural character.

Still less shall we follow him when, throwing himself into theories
which remind us of those of Stahl, he insists that the organization of
living bodies can be formed no otherwise than by the action of an in-
telligent but unconscious principle ; that, in diseases, a regulating in-
telligence, a vis medicatrix natures, presides over the restoration of
the functions to their normal state ; that the reproduction of organs
observed in some animals is caused by the unconscious idea of the
usefulness of such organs, for the preservation of the individual ; that
in every part of the living being there resides an unconscious idea of
the type of the species, which directs the reproduction of the organ
removed, the reparation of tissues, etc. These facts, all having rela-
tion to the study of forms, types, or species, are exactly those which
Darwin's theory best succeeds, as we think, in explaining. Hartmann,
however, does not altogether reject the ideas of the great English nat-
uralist; but he limits their application considerably, and interprets
them in a manner quite contrary to their author's. He admits natural
selection, indeed, in the struggle for existence; but this selection is
not, in his view, a primordial fact, resulting from the force of things ;
he calls it simply one of the means that unconscious intelligence would
employ in arriving at its ends. Besides, selection would be insufficient
still, according to Hartmann, to account for the organic forms of the
species, for what he calls the morphological facts, and ought to be ap-

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT.

315

plied to physiological facts exclusively. This distinction is opposed
to the tendencies of contemporaneous science, whose analyses reduce
all morphological facts to physiological facts. Selection, Hartmann
says, explains the progress in perfection of an already existing type,
within its own degree of organization ; but it cannot explain the pas-
sage from an inferior degree of organization to a superior one, a pas-
sage which always consists in an augmentation of the morphological
type ; and he gives, as a reason for his argument, that there is no more
vitality in one morphological type than in another, and that selection
is applicable only to facts that increase the vitality of the organism.
All the degrees of organization possessing equal vitality, it is only,
Hartmann insists, within the limits of a particular degree that different
species or varieties are distinguished by more or less important advan-
tages in the struggle for existence : if Darwinism were true of all sjie-
cies without restriction, there could only subsist one single morpholo-
gical type in each locality, and, in the millions of years that the vital
competition has lasted, all the inferior classes of animals and plants
must have been extinguished by the superior classes ; there are, in a
word, a great number of facts which form part of the plan of the
world, and yet are of no service in giving more vitality; such facts, in
order to keep themselves in existence, need some other support than
that of natural selection and the struggle for life.

We understand how many minds feel a certain repugnance in ac-
cepting the daring views of Darwin, so contrary to old associations of
ideas. It is as yet nothing more than an hypothetic induction, which is
waiting for its experimental verification. But it is no less true that
this is the most probable of all the theories hitherto put forth upon
the forms of life, and in default of that palpable and decisive demon-
stration that time only can furnish, we shall at least maintain that this
opinion deserves to be preferred to all those still far more hypothetic
doctrines which cannot dispense with a supernatural principle.

No doubt Darwinism does not succeed in explaining every thing.
It has never assumed to account for the existence of forces, for the
origin of those movements which are the source, and as it were the
substance of life ; it takes into view only their direction and the pro-
cedure of their organization. Putting aside the mysterious problem
of being, it takes cognizance only of the methods of being. Is this
saying that selection is only one of the means employed by a superior
intelligence to govern the other forces of the world toward its ends ?
Nothing permits us to suppose that, for, on the contrary, the peculiar-
ity of selection, in all the cases to which it applies, is to explain order
without calling in the aid of intelligence, and as a necessary resultant
of the reciprocal action of forces.

We think, with Hartmann, that Darwinism can explain only those
facts that relate to the vitality of beings. But what fact is there in
living Nature which can be regarded as indifferent from the point of

3iO THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

view of the struggle for life ? Can one imagine, in the recesses of an
organ, a single cell, a single element, which is not fighting for exist-
ence ? If there could be one, then there would exist in reality some-
thing else than forces encountering forces, and that is a consequence
which Hartmann himself could not admit, recognizing, as he does,
nothing but forces in the atoms of matter, and explaining, as he does,
reality and consciousness by the opposition of contending forces. We
shall find him, farther on, maintaining that, when two contrary but
equal forces meet, they annul and annihilate each other, and all reality
vanishes ; and yet the same author, arguing against Darwin, supposes
a reality which is not the result of the encounter and strife of forces.
For Hartmann, more than any other reasoner, the sphere of selection
onght to be coextensive with that of reality, and whenever conflict
and selection cease, by reason of the equilibrium of forces, there should
be nothing but annihilation. But contradiction, we all know, is the
hereditary vice of metaphysics.

In proof that certain facts have no concern with the struggle for
life, Hartmann mentions beauty, and especially the beauty of plauts,
which it would be difficult to explain by selection. Here we find our-
selves face to face with German aesthetics, with its mystical theories,
and its metaphysical entities. For ourselves, regarding beauty not as
a real fact, but simply as a relation between things and our faculties,
we do not feel this difficulty. We admit that selection has nothing to
do with the matter, because beauty is neither an act, nor an organ,
nor a function : it is simply a mode in us of feeling outward objects ;
it is a sentiment inspired by things which answer to our habits of
thought, and correspond with our associations of ideae. There is not, in
Nature, any fact which is beautiful only ; whatever is beautiful is at the
same time an object, and the forces that produce it, produce it, so far as
it is an object, and not so far as it is beautiful. We are not speaking of
art, in which selection again comes up ; and, in fact, if there is no nat-
ural selection as to beauty, there may be, in very many cases, artificial
or intelligent selection : among animals, and especially as regards
man, we know that beauty exerts a certain influence on choice in sex-
ual passion. As to the plant, which cannot choose, we have to take
account of natural selection by man, whose culture promotes the pres-
eiwation of the species most agreeable to the eye ; we may even admit
a certain selection by insects, which assist the transfer of the pollen,
and are perhaps not wholly insensible to size among flowers, to their
brilliancy of color, etc.

Can an argument against Darwinism be founded on the equality
of vitality among different species ? When selection has induced a
very considerable difference between two varieties, developing in two
more or less opposite directions, it often occurs that these two varie-
ties or species no longer have the same conditions of existence, and
cease to compete with each other. The farther apart the types grow,

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 317

the more there may exist between them that equality of vitality which
is merely the negation of competition. This explains why we oftener
remark equal vitality between different species than between varieties
of the same species. Certain species even suggest each other, and
have mutual need each of the other for their existence. If, for in-
stance, the quantity of vegetables, or of certain animal species which
we require for our nourishment, were to decrease, it would necessarily
follow that population would diminish proportionately ; but that dim-
inution would allow the other species to resume their former develop-
ment ; therefore the equilibrium is maintained of necessity.

As to the possibility of morphological alterations, by the accumu-
lation of individual modifications, Hartmann himself admits that Dar-
win has cited more than one instance of it, and a marked one in the
skeleton of pigeons : he objects, it is true, that there was some aid
from art in these different cases. Very true ! but that proves that
analogous changes are at least possible through natural selection.
Hartmann adds, that a pair of teeth, or vertebrae, or fingers, more or less,
or a vertebra shaped in such or such a way, are exactly the marks by
which zoologists oftenest distinguish species, and yet he says such
marks are of no importance in the struggle for life. This seems to us
an oversight ; for they are precisely those scarcely appreciable modifi-
cations which have the greatest importance from the point of view of
selection and competition.

Darwin and Hartmann stand at the opposite poles of modern
thought. To Darwin belongs the most fertile idea of the age, an idea
which upsets all the ancient ways of conceiving the world, and in-
cludes the first natural explanation yet given of order, of organization,
and of intelligence itself. Hartmann, on the contrary, takes us back
to the ancient labyrinths of teleology; between two explanations, one
natural and the other supernatural, we have always found him, thus
far, pronouncing for the latter. We detect a new instance of this pre-
dilection in his way of regarding instinct. Darwinism explains it ad-
mirably as an hereditary habit resulting from natural selection ; a habit
can only become formed and inveterate on condition of its aiming at
a result useful for the preservation of the individual and the species ;
that which is not useful cannot become habitual, or at least not heredi-
tary. Vices can be only individual accidents, or else the race is tend-
ing toward extinction ; all that flows from the force of things, and
there is no call for the supposition that the utility of fact grown into
habit must have been foreseen, and willed by a supernatural being.
But Hartmann prefers to define instinct as "the conscious will (choice)
of a means in view of an end unconsciously willed ; " and this he does
to raise a necessity for the supposition of an intelligent principle, dis-
tinct from conscious intelligence, in the bosom of which he may lodge
the seat of these unconscious volitions.

Hartmann's love of the supernatural goes so far as to make him

3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

accept, with the fullest faith, a certain number of extraordinary facts
which stand much in need of confirmation, such as the facts of second
sight and of artificial somnambulism. He admits the truth of dreams,
visions, and presentiments ; he cites cases of warnings given by mys-
terious revelations of coming dangers, of the death of one absent, or
of other occurrences taking place at a distance, as in the well-known
story of Swedenborg. Nothing is wanting but spiritism and turning
tables. It is clear that such facts would justify and even compel the
hypothesis of a supernatural principle. If the existence of a superior
intelligence in the world can be demonstrated by physical proofs (we
are not now speaking of metaphysical proofs), it is not by the spec-
tacle of order and regularity which indicate, on the contrary, the ab-
sence of any disturbing or interposing force, but really by abnormal
and contradictory facts ; in a word, by miracles. Only, it is necessary
that the authenticity of such facts should be above all question.

As to what concerns thought itself, we share Hartmann's views on
almost all the points of psychological analysis, and only when his
transcendental explanations begin do we feel obliged to part company
with him. Thus we think, as he does, that the Xdoes not make the
greater part of its ideas, that its ideas come to it without its volition,
and without its consciousness of the causes producing them. But
what must be concluded from this, except that intelligence in general
is a resultant and not a principle, and that it is simply, as Taine and
thet later English psychologists have so well shown, the series, the
grouping, the ensemble, of a multitude of phenomena, the greater part of
which have their cause outside of the me. Hartmann sets out on quite
a different path, and supposes behind my consciousness another intelli-
gence, which elaborates these ideas for me, and imparts them to me
ready made ; and in support of this theory he invokes the mysticism for
which he betrays sympathies that recall the romantic school ; he in-
vokes the inspiration of genius, which he holds to be only the revela-
tion ofluminous thoughts to certain privileged natures. But is genius
any other thing than the combination of those cerebral conditions
which permit new relations of ideas to manifest themselves in an in-
telligence, under the mere stimulus of life, of the organic functions,
and of the perceptions ?

"We remark the production, in history, of a great number of facts
which are independent of human volitions. Men set an end before
them, and yet the result is quite different from the one they had fore-
seen and willed. How could it be otherwise, since individual volitions
are but elements in the midst of an immense complexity, and all the
elements are thwarting, checking, neutralizing each other ? More-
over, the struggles for existence and selection explain historic progress
as clearly as they do physiological development. But Hartmann pre-
fers, in this instance, as in others, to resort to a metaphysical principle,
and imitates Joseph de Maistre, in calling for the interposition of a

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 31c,

providential action, which guides humanity toward an end, sometimes
even in spite of human efforts.

At the same time that Hartmann endeavors to prove, by the facts
we have just spoken of, the existence of " a psychical principle main-
taining itself above matter," he fancies that he has evolved from these
same facts the idea of what he calls " the unconsciousness," the idea
of an intelligence which has no consciousness of itself, of unconscious
manifestations (Vorstellungen), of unconscious volitions. We declare
that we have not succeeded in comprehending this idea — it even seems
to us self-contradictory. What is an idea or a volition without the
consciousness of that idea or that volition? Can the idea be any
thing else than ono form of consciousness, as the volition is another
form of it ? Hai'tmann is able to cite facts of intelligence which are
outside of the consciousness of the me, but without being able to prove
that these facts must be unconscious, absolutely and in themselves.
Who can even prove to us that the Zis the totality of the conscious
phenomena of the brain ? The /is nothing more than a series of facts,
and may there not be alongside of this series a multitude of facts
which become real, without being attached to it by any bond of con-
tinuity ? For instance, personal character is made up of a great num-
ber of conditions, which, without any consciousness on the part of the
I, modify the direction of its volitions : these facts only make them-
selves known to us by their influence on the acts and the morals of the
individual. But does it follow, from their being unconscious relatively
to the me, that they are unconscious in themselves ? Hartmann's own
doctrines, on the contrary, would lead us to allow that the other ner-
vous centres, the spinal marrow, the ganglia, etc., are endowed with
their own consciousness ; that there is a special consciousness in each
cell of a plant or animal, perhaps even in every material atom ; in a
word, that consciousness coincides everywhere with reality, uncon-
sciousness being outside of real facts. But what is to be concluded
from this, except that none of the real facts, which Hartmann has set
forth with so many details, offer us the idea of the unconscious ?
And then what foundation is there for this definition, that " the uncon-
scious is the cause of all those facts, in an organic and conscious indi-
vidual, which lead us to the supposition of a psychical and unconscious
cause ? " We will even say that Hartmann seems to us to have suc-
ceeded better in widening the sphere of consciousness, than in found-
ing a philosophy of the unconscious.

If we put ourselves the question, What is the real motive that de-
termined him to attribute unconsciousness, rather than consciousness,
to the supreme intelligence, to God? we find only an a priori reason,
drawn from the idea that evil rules the world : " If, at the time of the
creation of the world, there was in God any thing like consciousness,
the existence of the world would be an inexcusable cruelty, and the
development of the world a useless absurdity." Hartmann finds him-

32o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

self driven to suppose God unconscious, to escape supposing him
wicked. "This 'consideration," he says, "is decisive against the ad-
mission of consciousness in God." But stay ! — if God has not the
consciousness of what there is evil in the world, Hartmann argues, on
the other hand, that he has the idea of it (the Vorstellung). Does
not this idea suffice, as well as consciousness could (in our view they
are exactly the same thing), to pledge the Divine responsibility?

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTEOSCOPE.

By F. "W. CLAEKE.

MEN of science may be divided into two great classes — thinkers
and observers. And, although both classes are often represented
in one individual, the distinction between them is practically valid.
For, in classifying mankind, no sharp boundaries can be drawn. The
observer, on the one hand, contents himself with merely ascertaining
facts, and rarely deduces more than the simplest and most obvious
conclusions from them. He is in some measure an intellectual miser,
who accumulates, but never uses. It is the thinker, however, who
gives shape to science. His generalizations make true science possible.
To him, a discovery amounts to something more than its mere self,
and is valuable, like a choice seed, largely for what it may become.
He ranges facts into series, gives each series its proper place in a
science, clusters the sciences into groups, and, studying these groups
with reference to each other, and to the grand problems with which
thought is always busied, seeks to arrive at higher conceptions of the
universe, and of the essential unity of all material things. At the
present day this method of comparison has led to the announcement
of the philosophy of evolution ; a philosophy Avhich places the physical
world in a clearer light, and classifies a greater number of facts, than
any other scheme that human earnestness and ingenuity ever devised.
Surely it is worth while for us to study all great discoveries with ref-
erence to their bearings upon this philosophy.

Probably none of the many remarkable discoveries of the nine-
teenth century are more important or more striking than those
achieved by means of the spectroscope. It is now less than fifteen
years since this famous instrument was devised, and already it ranks
in importance side by side with the telescope and the microscope.
New fields of research have been opened, which, widening ever since,
show as yet no signs of approaching limits. Chemical analysis has
been simplified, many optical researches facilitated, and four new
metals discovered. Our knowledge of the sun and stars has in some

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTROSCOPE. 321

respects been more than doubled. Problems which were deemed in-
soluble, have been settled with the greatest ease. The magnitude of
the discoveries already made leads us to expect still greater revelations
in the future. Let us see what the spectroscope has to say for the
philosophy of evolution.

Among the doctrines held by evolutionists, the all but proved
Nebular Hypothesis occupies a very prominent position. Originating
with Kant more than a century ago, and afterward furnished with
secure foundations by Laplace, it has since striven for complete ac-
ceptance with ever-varying strength. According to this hypothesis,
our solar system began existence as a nebulous cloud of incandescent
vapor, which, rotating about a centre, and cooling as it revolved, cast
off rings of matter that gathered into globes and became planets, while
the central portion, undergoing less change, formed the sun. A vast
weight of physical and mathematical evidence supported this theory,
and the. nebulae seen in different parts of the heavens lent to it the
confirmation of analogy. From the first, the hypothesis was strong.

But soon doubts began to arise. Larger and more powerful tele-
scopes were constructed, and many nebulas were resolved into clusters
of stars. Astronomers began- to hope that all these bodies might be
similarly resolved, and the nebular hypothesis lost a little ground.
But the spectroscope came apparently to the rescue. In the skilful
hands of Mr. Hoggins, the narrow slit was made to receive the light
of several unresolved nebulas, and nebula after nebula gave up its
secret to the observer. Some yielded spectra, consisting of from one
to four bright lines, while others gave continuous bands of feeble light.
The former class told the story. Spectra like theirs could belong only
to the light emitted by incandescent gas, and therefore of such material,
true nebulous vapor, these distant bodies consisted. But even more
was revealed. The bright lines were characteristic of two well-known
substances, nitrogen being the more distinct of the two, and hydrogen
the less clearly visible. No other elements could be detected, nor
could any good reason be found for supposing others to be present.
But the main fact of the existence of genuine nebulas was fairly de-
monstrated, and the nebular hypothesis received a great accession of
strength. To-day it almost commands acceptance, although it is
capable of being made much stronger. Even the evidence which
analogy might offer in its favor is far from complete. We must look
to the spectroscope for its completion.

In this connection a great variety of interesting questions suggest
themselves. We assume that our planet originated from a gaseous
cloud by a slow process of condensation and cooling, and point to the
visible nebulas to confirm our views. Now, in evolving a solar system
from a nebula, a long series of changes would necessarily occur. We
see the extremes of such a line of development, and also a few of the
intermediate links. And we are at once led to ask whether we can

VOL. II. — 21

322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hope to find existing to-day, among the heavenly bodies, examples of
all the stages of evolution through which matter must pass in forming
solid globes from shapeless clouds of incandescent vapor. The task
will be a difficult one, but not hopeless. We have much material to
begin upon, and can safely look to the spectroscope to furnish us with
an abundance in the future. If the work can be done, the nebular
hypothesis will become so well grounded that we are scarcely able
to conceive of any possible arguments which could afterward dis-
turb it.

In beginning upon such an inquiry, we must start with a considera-
tion of the nebulae themselves. And, at the outset, their varieties of
form, and the visible changes which they undergo, offer strong sugges-
tions of processes of evolution actually going on. The spiral nebulae
hint of rotary motion, and some annular forms speak to us of rings of
vapor from which planets are yet to grow. In the double nebulas we
see future pairs of suns, companion stars ; and in every true nebula are
signs of condensation in the brighter portions. The nuclei which are
so common may be the germs of central luminaries, around which sys-
tems like our own are yet to revolve. But all these observations are
due to the telescope. We have to consider what the spectroscope has
done.

Now, as regards spectroscopic work, the nebulae may be divided
into three classes : First, those which give spectra consisting only of
bright lines. Secondly, nebulae whose spectra are continuous. And,
in the third place, the nebulae described by Lieutenant Herschel,
which are apparently intermediate between the other two classes, and
furnish spectra of bright lines upon a continuous background.

The nebulae of the first class I have partly described. They consist
mainly, if not wholly, of two common gases, nitrogen and hydrogen.
But gases give somewhat different spectra under different circum-
stances of temperature and pressure ; and the spectrum of a nebula in-
dicates that the gases of which it is composed are in a highly-rare-
fied condition, and at a temperature considerably lower than that of
our sun ! Of this we are tolerably sure, though perhaps not abso-
lutely certain.

The nebulae whose spectra are continuous speak to us with less cer-
tainty. Lord Oxmantown has shown that the resolved nebulae — those
which are known to be mere star-clusters — give this kind of spectrum,
as do also most of those which appear to be resolvable. Accordingly,
it is reasonably infei-red that all the nebulae of this class probably be-
long to the resolvable order ; but here is where a slight doubt may
arise : gases, under great pressure and at a high temperature, give con-
tinuous spectra ; possibly, then, some of these nebulae may consist of
gases under just such conditions. Here is a problem yet to be solved.
The third class of nebulae may, perhaps, strengthen this latter view.
Their spectra are intermediate between those of the other classes. It

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTROSCOPE. 323

may be that a more careful study will show them to be gaseous, with
their spectral lines in a state of transition to the full continuous spec-
trum; but this is little more than bare conjecture at present ; for the
published descriptions of these' nebulae are too incomplete to admit of
very satisfactory discussion.

This consideration of nebular spectra plunges us at once into a sea
of difficulties. We say that the sun and planets were formed by con-
densation and cooling from incandescent vapors, and hail the nebulae
as confirming this opinion. But could a sun be evoked, by cooling,
from a body less hot than itself? Moreover, the sun is known to con-
tain at least sixteen elements and probably many more. Were these
developed from a nebula containing only nitrogen and hydrogen ? Or
did the original nebulae differ in constitution ? All those which the
spectroscope has analyzed are chemically alike. We know nothing of
any whose constitution differs in this respect from theirs; and, there-
fore, if we point to them as confirmatory of the nebular hypothesis, we
are compelled to ask this portentous question : Did our planet, with
all its chemical complexity, arise, by a slow process of evolution, from
a glowing cloud of but two familiar gases ? Upon our answer to this
question depends largely the value of our spectroscopic confirmation
of the great hypothesis. The safety of the hypothesis itself is not in-
volved ; merely that of this one argument in its favor. We can easily
conceive of more complex nebulae, which could give rise to systems
like ours, although we know nothing of them. And, if we interpret the
spectra of some nebulae of the second class as due to gases at very high
temperature and pressure, the difficulty regarding the heat of our sun
will be easily gotten over.

Let us consider the question suggested, as to the possible evolution
of complex from simple matter. It is easy to speak out boldly, in an
ex-cathedra manner, and say that an affirmative answer to such a ques-
tion would be absurd; but dogmatism of this sort is, in the highest
sense, unphilosophical and foolish. We do not know but that the
evolution of one element from another may be possible, under circum-
stances over which we have as yet no mastery ; indeed, such a view
would have many points of probability about it. Although unsup-
ported, it is quite strongly suggested by evidence. The demonstrated
unity of force leads us, by analogy, to expect a similar unity of mat-
ter ; and the many strange and hitherto unexplained relations between
the different elements tend to encourage our expectations. These ele-
ments, which seem to-day so diverse in character, may be, after all, one
in essence. This idea is philosophically strong, but waits for experi-
mental evidence to support it. At present, it can neither be discarded
as false, nor accepted as true. But what an addition the proof of such
a doctrine would bring to the philosophy of evolution !

Now, although questions like these cannot be settled by any evi-
dence which we are likely to obtain for many years to come, specula-

324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion upou them is not altogether unprofitable. The time spent in con-
jectures and surmises is not wholly wasted ; for it is impossible to fol-
low up any of the lines of thought thus opened, without reaching some
valuable suggestions, which may pave the way to new discoveries.
New truth, in one direction or another, is sure to be reached in the
long-run. So, then, we may proceed to theorize in the most barefaced
manner, without entirely quitting the legitimate domain of science.

It is plain that the nebular hypothesis would be doubled in impor-
tance, and our views of the universe greatly expanded, if it could be
shown that an evolution of complex from simple forms of matter ac-
companied the development of planets from the nebulae. Evolution
could look for no grander triumph. For the evidence to support such
a theory, we must depend mainly upon the spectroscope. Let us con-
tinue upon our task of finding the intermediate links between the two
extremes of planetary growth, and see whether, as we ascend in the
line of change, an increased chemical complexity can be observed.
Upon this theory, the planets should contain more elements than the
sun ; the sun more than some of the less advanced among the fixed
stars ; and these, in turn, should be more highly organized than the
nebula?. But we must not fail to remember that we are merely speculat-
ing, and that the spectroscope, in telling us of the presence of certain
substances, does not give us accurate information with regard to the
absence of others. In this investigation, we can look to the spectro-
scope only for hints, not certainties. Difficulties will abound in our
path, and, in a paper of this length, we cannot stop to scrutinize them
closely. We must bridge many chasms with guesses.

The evidence concerning the constitution of the fixed stars has
been furnished chiefly by Secchi and Huggins. The former observer,
favored by Italian skies, has done, perhaps, the major portion of the
work, and has given us a classification of these bodies. According to
Secchi, the stars may be divided into four classes, as follows :

In the first class, which is by far the largest, we find most of the
white stars, Sirius, Altair, Vega, Iiegulus, and Rigel, being especially
prominent. These give spectra characterized by the intense develop-
ment of the four hydrogen lines, which stand out with great distinct-
ness upon a background of the seven primary colors. Lines belonging
to some of the metals, particularly to sodium, magnesium, and iron,
are also visible, but are exceedingly faint in comparison with those of
hydrogen. The distinctness of this element, as compared with the
faintness of the metallic lines, is characteristic of the stars of this type.
The absence of bands, indicating an absorptive atmosphere, is also
noteworthy.

In the second class of stars we find our sun, Arcturus, Aldebaran,
Capella, Pollux, Procyon, and many others. Here we have spectra in
which the lines of the metals are apparently more numerous, and cer-
tainly more distinct, the hydrogen being less conspicuous. In Aide-

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTROSCOPE. 325

baran, Mr. Huggins detected sodium, magnesium, calcium, iron, bis-
muth, antimony, tellurium, mercury, and hydrogen.

The third class, in which are some stars of a red color, is compara-
tively small in numbers. Alpha Orionis or Betelgeux, Alpha Herculis,
Beta Pegasi, Mira beti, and Antares, are good examples of this type.
Their spectra, as a rule, resemble the spectrum of a solar spot, and
sometimes contain bright lines. Hydrogen is still present, but so diffi-
cult to detect that, at first, it was supposed to be wanting in the spec-
trum of Betelgeux. But, in a state of combination, as aqueous vapor,
it has been found in the stars of this order, and, most notably, in An-
tares. In the spectrum of Betelgeux, Mr. Huggins observed lines be-
longing to magnesium, sodium, iron, calcium, and bismuth.

The stars of the fourth type are very inconspicuous, but give quite
peculiar spectra, consisting chiefly of three bright bands, separated by
dark spaces. Such a spectrum suggests that of carbon, but really tells
us nothing, as yet, of the constitution of these stars. We must, there-
fore, leave them out of account in our speculations. It would be easy
to theorize about them, only the theories would find no place in our
argument.

Now, taking the spectra of stars of the first, second, and third
classes as a basis for our speculations, we have quite decent evidence
of a gradual increase in chemical complexity. And, if we bring the
nebula? into line, we can devise a very neat progressive series of devel-
opment up to the solid planet. Beginning with a nebula consisting
mainly of nitrogen and hydrogen at low temperature and pressure, we
can easily conceive of several ways by which it might gain great acces-
sions of heat, and give a bright, continuous spectrum. A collision
with meteoric or cometary matter would account for such an increase
of temperature. But, given a nebula which is sufficiently hot, and
from which a sun might be evolved by cooling, what shape will our
speculations assume ? This intensely-heated body undergoes a certain
condensation, rings are thrown off from it, and a nucleus appears,
which soon becomes a star or sun of the first type. Hydrogen still
predominates in its constitution, but metals begin to show themselves,
though very faintly. But the cooling continues, and gradually the
hydrogen lines become fainter, the metallic lines stronger, a larger
number of substances are detected, and we have a sun of the second
class. By another slow transition, chemical action, as we recognize it,
begins to set in. The hydrogen lines disappear ; aqueous vapor is
formed ; spots, like those of the sun, which are probably centres of
chemical activity, become more and more abundant, and the star enters
the third order. As the spots accumulate, the istar becomes more de-
cidedly a "variable," and, after violent and prolonged convulsions of
its surface, solidity is reached, the emission of light ceases, and a plan-
et is formed. Some volcanic heat, however, yet remains ; but this
slowly dies away, the volcanoes become extinct, and, at the end of the

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

line of change, we have a body like our moon, dead and steiile. And
here our speculations end. What next ensues, no one can say. We
are seeking the past history of our planet, not looking into its future.

Now, a paper of this sort should always contain a summary of the
steps by which its conclusions have been reached. Beginning with the
nebular hypothesis, as it is commonly understood, we saw that it was
philosophically strong, was supported by much evidence, and opposed
by none. Bringing the spectroscope to bear upon it, we found that
true nebula? undoubtedly exist, and that there is tolerably good proof
of different degrees of complexity among the fixed stars. Notwith-
standing these differences, however, we know that the universe is built
throughout of essentially the same materials. In order to bring unity
out of this diversity in the constitutions of the heavenly bodies, we ar-
ranged a series of development, from nebula to planet. This made it
apparent that an evolution of matter from lower to higher stages
might have accompanied the formation of planets and suns ; an idea
which was suggested also by physical analogies, and which had decided
elements of philosophical strength. And thus we gave to the nebu-
lar hypothesis the somewhat novel form which it has received in our
speculations. Without our additions, it could derive no real support
from the spectroscopic evidence adduced in its behalf. The known
nebulse are simple, our systems of suns complex. By assuming the
evolution of matter, these difficulties cease to exist, and we have a co-
herent hypothesis, in which the evidence offered by the spectroscope is
used to good advantage. To be sure, although it is in harmony with
many observed facts, it is open to many objections. And yet we can
admit its probability, to a certain extent, without giving it the adhe-
rence of actual belief. Such theorizing is profitable, partly because it
aids us in making out the limits of our present knowledge, suggests to
us new paths of investigation, and, by uniting masses of different ideas,
helps the mind to handle more easily the facts and conceptions with
which it has to deal.

But, when one is fairly started on a line of thoughts, it is hard to
come to an end. Problem after problem, theory after theory, law after
law, crowd forward for inspection. If we assume one hypothesis to be
true, a hundred others rush in upon the mind, and demand considera-
tion. From every one of these a host of interesting conclusions can be
drawn, each suggesting another, until the brain grows weary of ac-
tion. The present case is no exception to the rule. Objections must
be answered, consequences foreseen, demonstrations sought. In an
article of this scope few points can receive due attention. Let it then
suffice, in closing, to say that science has done so much in the past that
we can justly expect almost any achievement in the future. And per-
haps, in days yet to come, an evolution of matter may be experimen-
tally be brought about, and our speculations of to-day proved to be not
altogether foolish.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

BE. LIVINGSTONE. 327

DE. LIVINGSTONE.

By L. J. PEOCTER.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE was born at Glasgow early in the present
century. His grandfather was originally the occupier of a small
farm in Ulva, one of the Hebrides, but, owing to the requirements of a
large family, found himself obliged to quit his island home to seek
employment at the Blantyre cotton works on the Clyde, above Glas-
gow. Livingstone's father and uncles having been fairly educated,
easily obtained situations as clerks at the factory, though the former
appears to have relinquished his employment with the pen, and to have
occupied himself during the later years of his life in keeping a shop as
a tea dealer in Glasgow. He died a member of the Independents in
1856, but brought up his children in connection with the old Kirk of
Scotland.

At ten years of age, David Livingstone was put to work as a
" piecer" at the Blantyre factory. Even at this early date his charac-
ter was remarkable for a gravity, and steady, plodding earnestness.
Reading took the place of ordinary amusements ; and, after a hard
day's work, the boy would often sit at his studies so far into the night
as to call for his mother's peremptory interference. To economize
time, he accustomed himself while at work to place an open book on a
portion of the spinning jenny, and catch sentence after sentence as he
passed backward and forward in front of it, quite undisturbed by the
noise of the machinery. An evening-school was made to help in his
education, and it may well be supposed no leisure time was wasted.
"While still a youth, the truths of religion took a deep hold of his
mind ; and under the feeling thus produced, " in the glow of love," as
he says, " which Christianity inspires, I soon resolved to devote myself
to the alleviation of human misery." " Turning this idea over in my
mind," he adds, " I felt that to be the pioneer of Christianity in China
might lead to the material benefit of some portions of that immense
empire; and therefore set myself to obtain a medical education, in order
to be qualified for that enterprise." Being promoted at nineteen to
higher work in the factory, the increased wages he received enabled
him, by working during the greater part of the year, to support him-
self at Glasgow while attending the medical, Greek, and divinity
classes, which were held in the winter. By the advice of friends, he
was induced, though reluctantly, to offer himself for the service of the
London Missionary Society, and was accepted. His admission as a
"Licentiate of Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons" completed his
preparatory labors. Just at the time, however, the opium war broke
out in China, and this presented an obstacle so great as to render it

328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

advisable that he should abandon his original design, and look else-
where for a sphere of enterprise. It was soon offered. Mr. Moffat,
another of the London Society's missionaries, was laboring successfully
in Southern Africa among the tribe of the Bechuana. Livingstone
heard of this ; and, as both the scene and the work were attractive, he
resolved to join him.

Accordingly in 1S40, with the full approval of his Society, he left
England for Kuruman, Mr. Moffat's station. There he spent the first
three years. In 1843 he moved to Mabotsa, gome three hundred miles
to the northeast, where, in the effort to help his Bakatta/>ro^£s, the
memorable encounter with the lion occurred, which so nearly proved
fatal to him. In 1844 he married the veteran missionary's daughter.
Having made a friend of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, he ultimately
removed to his country, and built a station with his own hands, near a
small stream called the Kolobeng.

Some years pass in hard and successful work, and then Livingstone
renounces his life as a stationary teacher ; and, though never entirely
relinquishing his missionary chai*acter, assumes that of an explorer, by
which he is best known. The change came about in this way :

To the southeast of Kolobeng lay the Kashan Mountains, to which
a number of Dutch Boers, fugitives from English law, had migrated,
and formed a small republic. Having appropriated their territory,
they had compelled the natives themselves to live, if not in absolute
slavery, yet under a system of unpaid labor very closely allied to it.
Livingstone, with his missionary views, was of course looked upon as
an interloper, and hated in a corresponding degree. To add to the
grievance of the settlement at Kolobeng, his subsequent discovery of
Lake Ngami had encouraged traders to advance from the south, who,
by giving the natives ideas about commercial matters they never had
before, tended to raise disaffection toward themselves. The result was
a determination on the part of the Boers to make a raid on the Bak-
wains, which a report that the latter were well armed with guns and
cannon (an amusing myth about a black pot of Livingstone's) alone
prevented. They then tried to get the governor at the Cape, Sir G-.
Cathcart, to interfere, and negotiations which followed ended in a
treaty far more favorable to the natives than to themselves. In spite
of this, however, an attack was made by the Boers on Sechele and the
Bakwains in 1852, in which Livingstone's house was burnt down, and
all his property destroyed, while he was absent on a journey to the
Cape.

This opposition was very provoking to Livingstone ; and the deter-
mination to carry out his plans for bettering the condition of the
natives set him at work forthwith to open up the country northward.
In company with two English gentlemen, Mr. Oswell and Major Var-
don, the great Kalahari Desert was crossed, and Lake Ngami dis-
covered, in August, 1849. Livingstone's opinion of this country de-

DR. LIVINGSTONE.

329

serves notice : " Not only the natives," he says, " but Europeans whose
constitutions have been impaired by an Indian climate, find the tract
of country indicated " — the southern borders of the Kalahari — " both
healthy and restorative .... Cases have been known in which pa-
tients have come from the coasts with complaints closely resembling,
if they were not actually those of consumption ; and they have re-
covered by the influence of the climate alone."

A subsequent journey in the same direction brought him to the
town of Sebituane, chief of the Makololo, from whom he met with a
most cordial reception. Unfortunately, the chief fell sick and died
shortly after his arrival; but the promise of assistance made before
this occurred wras confirmed by his successor, a daughter, Ma-Mochi-
sane. In order to confer with her on the matter, Livingstone made a
journey to Shesheke, where she lived, 130 miles to the northeast, in
company with Mr. Oswell. It wras on this journey that they dis-
covered the Zambesi, toward the end of June, 1851, even then, the
dry season of the year, a magnificent stream 300 or 400 yards broad.
In defence of his claim to the discovery, Dr. Livingstone says : " The
Portuguese maps all represent the Zambesi as rising far to the east of
where we now were ; and, if ever any thing like a chain of trading-
stations (as is asserted) had existed across the country between the
latitudes 12° and 18° south, this magnificent portion of the river must
have been known before." The discovery was indeed important ; and,
impelled not only by the prospects it presented, but by the remem-
brance of his difficulties at Kolobeng, Livingstone decided to explore
the river thoroughly, and meanwhile send his family home to England.

The journey undertaken with this view commenced in the early
part of June, 1852, and "extended from Capetown, at the southern
extremity of the continent, to St. Paul de Loando, the capital of Angola
on the west coast, and thence across south Central Africa in an oblique
direction to Quelimane in Eastern Africa." Besides geographical
research, Livingstone tells us that his object was to find if he could
" a healthy district that might prove a centre of civilization, and open
up the interior by a path to either the east or west coast."

Glancing rapidly along his route, we are to see our traveller first
at Kuruman, where the panic in the country on account of the attack
on Kolobeng delayed him. Then at Linyanti, capital of the Makololo,
where Sekeletu now reigned in place of his sister Ma-Mochisane, show-
ing himself, like his predecessors, favorable to Livingstone. Then
with a large body of Makololo, provided by the chief, on December
27, 1853, at the confluence of the two streams Leeba and Leeambye,
where we pause.

The Leeambye — also called the Kabompo and Zambesi — is a large
river 300 yards wide, flowing from the eastward, while the Leeba, 250
yards wide, comes from the N. N. "W. The junction of the two forms
Livingstone's Zambesi, lat. 14° 10' 52" S., long. 23" 35' 40" E. Lake

330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dilolo, a small body of water, reached February 20, 1854, is the source
of the Lceba. It was only on his return that Livingstone ascertained
this. But the courses taken by the different streams he crossed struck
him; and the observations he made on his journey back impressing
him with the conviction that the Dilolo country was the water-shed of
the streams running east and west, led him to confirm the theory of
Sir R. Murchison, of which he had not heard at the time, that the form
of the interior of the South African Continent is that of an elevated,
saucer-shaped plateau. In other words, that the country is gi-adually
depressed toward its centre, sloping from an inner environing moun-
tain-ridge toward which the land rises from the coast. The western
ridge was crossed at a spot called Tala Mungongo, lat. 9° 42' 31" S.,
and, by carefully noticing the course of the various streams flowing
thence to the centre, and forming his judgment from what Arab trad-
ers had told him — subsequently confirmed by his own observation —
that the rivers set inland from a similar ridge on the eastern side of
the continent, the conclusion forced itself on Livingstone's mind, that
these river systems, uniting at last, pass out to the north and south in
two main drains ; the northern finding its way to the Atlantic as the
Congo on the west coast, and the southern to the Indian Ocean as the
Zambesi on the east. The configuration of the oountry alluded to will
account for the course of the Leeba from the lake being about S. E.,
while the Leeambye joins it flowing west from the eastern ridge of the
central plateau. But Livingstone also speaks confidently of " a sort
of elevated partition in the great longitudinal valley " between the
latitudes about 6° and 12° S. It would not be fair to him to suppress
the fact that, considering this peculiar configuration of the country,
and hearing: from some Zanzibar Arabs of the existence of a lake Tan-
ganyenka (Tanganyika) and Nyanja (Nyassa) to the east of Londa
where he then was, he was led to the probable conjecture that the
res-ion about them would be found to be the water-shed of the Nile to
the north, as it was that of the Zambesi to the south. Thus his saga-
city brought him to anticipate the existence of facts which have since
been confirmed by the travels of Burton, Speke, and Grant, and Sir S.
Baker ; and which only remain to be thoroughly investigated and de-
fined in the completion of those researches the exciting story of whose
partial accomplishment we have recently heard.

A few words must dispose of Livingstone's westward journey.
Passing various tribes as he wends along, chiefly on oxback, accompa-
nied by his faithful Makololo, he encounters no opposition, but the con-
trary, till he enters the territory of the Chiboque. There, however,
he gets on the track of the Mambari, or half-caste Portuguese slave-
traders, from whom the native chiefs exacted heavy tribute, and the
hostilities with which he is threatened, on his stanch refusal to submit
to their impositions, were avoided simply by his firmness and tact.
On his arrival at Loando, May 31, 1854, he was well received by the

DR. LIVINGSTONE.

33»

Portuguese, whose kind treatment did much to restore his health,
which had been impaired by fever, and the poor food, chiefly manioc-
root, on which he had been obliged to live. But his task was boot-
less. The country was unhealthy. The coast tribes were inhospita-
ble. Wagons would be impracticable among the interminable for-
ests, marshes, and rivers. The westward route being thus out of the
question, instead of availing himself of the offer of a passage home
from the officers of H. M.'s cruisers at Loando, Livingstone determined
to retrace his steps, and seek a path along the Zambesi to the east.

In August, 1854, he is once more at Linyanti; on November 3d,
starting down the Zambesi with a large retinue of Makololo.

The country beyond Linyanti is greatly infested by the " tsetse"
fly, the bite of which, fatal to oxen, horses, and dogs, is perfectly harm-
less to man, as well as to goats and sheep, and wild animals. After
its bite is received, the victim gradually pines as if seized with con-
sumption, and in a longer or shorter time dies. There is no cure for
it known. In appearance the " tsetse " resembles the honey-bee, and
is about the size of the common horse-fly. It is common throughout
the whole of Central Africa, and infests certain well-defined districts,
usually those frequented by game ; numbers may be found in a partic-
ular spot, and yet a few yards farther on not a singly fly is to be seen.
It only bites in the daytime.

Starting at night, therefore, to get safely through the "tsetse"
tract, on November 4th Livingstone arrived at the island of Kalai,
where the rapids commence above the " Victoria Falls," as he loyally
named them. They are known among the natives as " Mosi oa tunya "
(Smoke does sound there). Nothing can be grander than their appear-
ance, which is perhaps unique. Columns of vapor, darkening upward
from a white base, first become visible, rising at distinct intervals
like jets of smoke in the far distance. The broad stream sweeps
along, its surface dotted in every direction with beautiful green isl-
ands, and then the vast body of water is seen to descend suddenly
into a deep perpendicular fissure 180 yards wide, extending across the
entire bed of the river, and is lost to view. Looking down from the
brink opposite, masses of dense white vapor conceal the seething vol-
ume of fallen water below, from which feathery columns of spray like
those described, rainbow-covered and the source of ceaseless showers,
perpetually ascend far up into the air. Passing eastward (the river
here flows north and south), along the edge of the cleft in front of the
falls, the fissure is seen to extend, from a gap near the end, with still
narrower dimensions in a zigzag course, down which the whole mass
of Zambesi water, compressed into a deep, swift column, rolls along,
boiling and foaming, till it finds an outlet at a lower level. The rock
through which the chasm runs is a dark-brown basalt, covered at the
projecting angles, and wherever there is root-hold, with a dense growth
of tropical vegetation. The length of the fissure into which the river

332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

falls is, by a measurement made in the year 1800, rather more than
that number of yards ; and tbe depth, from its edge to the surface of
the basin water, about 400 feet. On account of clouds, Livingstone
was unable to take the position of the falls ; but Kalai, a few miles
above (north) is, according to his observation, in lat. 17° 51' 54" S., and
long. 25° 41' E.

Passing the confluence of the Kafue, on January 14, 1856, he
reached that of the Loangwa, where are the ruins of Zumbo, formerly
a Portuguese settlement, and probably the farthest point inland to
which they have penetrated from the east, long. 30° 32' E. Crossing
from the north side of the Zambesi, along which he had hitherto been
travelling, on February 6th, he entered the extensive district of Chi-
cova, where silver-mines were said to have once existed. After exam-
ining the geological structure of the country — a soft gray sandstone —
he was unable to meet with traces of silver ; but crossing some dikes
of basalt running north and south, " the sandstone," he says, " is then
found to have been disturbed, and at the rivulet called Xake we found
it tilted up and exhibiting a section which was coarse sandstone above,
sandstone flag, shale, and lastly, a thin seam of coal." This seam, it
is true, was not traced far, being displaced by a fault formed by a
dike of basalt. But its existence can hardly be deemed an unimportant
matter, especially when it is considered that the discovery was made
in the very centre of a cotton-producing district, that iron is plentiful
in the hills to the north,, and that, if, as Livingstone thinks, silver may
not prove to be one of the products of the country, gold certainly is,
specimens of which the writer has in his possession. That the Portu-
guese of the lower settlements have not availed themselves more of
the advantages thus offered them, is owing much to their indolence
and want of enterprise, but more to the hostility of the tribes of these
districts, who vigorously oppose any attempts to advance into their
territory. A considerable quantity of gold, however, comes into their
nands, though it is all obtained from natives living on the borders,
who bring it to their settlements. The gold in the form of dust is put
into goose-quills, and one quill is sold for twenty-four yards of calico.
A singular superstition keeps down the produce. The natives believe
the earth to consist of a thin, flat, pancake-like crust of matter, poised
in space ; and, for fear of breaking through this crust, and falling
headlong into the fathomless depths that they suppose yawn for them
below, they will never venture to dig deeper than the level of their
chin. Whenever a flake or nugget of gold is met with, it is put back
into the earth again, under the impression that it forms the seed of the
gold !

Striking away from the river southward, Livingstone failed on this
occasion to see the rapids of Kebrabasa, 50 miles above Tette.
These rapids no doubt present a formidable barrier to the navigation
of the Zambesi — especially at one point where the whole volume of-

DR. LIVINGSTONE. 333

the stream, compressed within the limits of a few yards, rushes down
with tremendous force between high perpendicular banks of solid
rock. But, from the Victoria Falls to the central Luabo mouth-branch,
there is nothing else in the shape of hindrance except shoals, and these
are only troublesome at the dry season of the year.

Tette, in native momenclature Nungwd, the farthest Portuguese
settlement westward, was reached safely on March 3d. The command-
ant, Major Sicard, received the travellers kindly, and, on hearing the
account of the coal discovered at Chicova, mentioned the fact of the
existence of five other seams lower down. They were found on the
banks of a small river, Lofubu, the visible width of the largest seam,
according to Livingstone's measurement, being 58 inches. The whole
of the district two miles below Tette proved to be carboniferous; and,
if rumor counts for any thing, it extends into the Maravi country far to
the north in the region of the lakes.

But the protracted journey is drawing to a close. Passing the
Lupata gorge, Senna was reached April 27th. Morambala and the Shire
mouth, May 11th. Thirty miles below, Shupanga. It was here Mrs.
Livingstone died of virulent fever, six years after she had joined her
husband from England, on April 22, 1862. She lies buried under a
fine baobab-tree, close to a modern Portuguese house, and a simple
white monument marks her grave. From Mazaro, at the head of the
Delta, down the Mutu River to Quelimane, and so the east coast is
touched at last, May 26, 1856. A few weeks after, II. M. S. Frolic
anchored off Quelimane, and, giving him a passage to Mauritius, the
traveller embarked in a steamship of the Peninsular and Oriental Com-
pany, and on December 12th, landed in England.

Livingstone was the observed of all observers after his return.
The feeling regarding him amounted to enthusiasm: and the eagerness
with which his book was read, published in 1857, proved the interest
that was taken in all he had done. A high estimate was formed of his
abilities; but a still higher one, perhaps, of the qualities he had dis-
played, the energy, the perseverance, the tenacity of purpose, com-
bined with powers of endurance and a courage and activity that cer-
tainly revealed a man of no ordinary calibre. Nor was the integrity
of his personal character forgotten. On what just grounds this opinion
rested, is proved by the fact that after a lapse of more than fifteen
years, in spiie of severe criticisms, and not a few hard words, his rep-
utation stands as high as ever. And what had he done? He had
overthrown the belief which previously existed, " that a large part of
the interior of Africa consisted of sandy deserts into which rivers ran
and were lost." He had filled up considerable portions of the map of
Central Africa, lying between the 15th and 28th parallels of S. latitude.
A splendid river was found crossing nearly two-thirds of the continent,
and he had accomplished the work of tracing it down to its outlet
with the hope of its becoming a path for the missionary and the mer-

334

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chant. He had shown, too, that the African, with all his faults, was
open to the influence of reason, truth, and kindness, that he was capable
of improvement, and often eager for it : while all that he wrote of such
chiefs as Sechele and Sebituane had corroborated the opinion of every
unprejudiced observer that the country could produce men of a far
higher stamp than was generally believed.

And now he might have rested. Most men would ; but not Living-
stone. Feeling more than ever, after his experience on the Zambesi,
the enormous evils of the slave-trade which prevails along its banks;
feeling, too, that the best corrective was to go with commerce and
civilization as the handmaids of religion, he endeavored, by public
speeches at most of our principal places, to increase the interest in the
country his return had excited. At Manchester and Liverpool a strong
feeling was aroused among the mercantile and cotton-manufacturing
communities ; and on the side of religion the universities embraced
his cause. Perhaps he never created a deeper impression than at
Cambridge, where he concluded a telling speech in the Senate-House,
before the leading members of the university, in these words : " I know
that, in a few years, I shall be cut off in that country which is now
open. Do not let it be shut again ! — I go back to Africa to try to
make open a path for commerce and Christianity ; do you carry out
the work which I have begun. I leave it with you ! "

There was no resisting such an appeal. It went abroad, and Eng-
lishmen were stirred. And they were stirred to a depth that impelled
them to come forward, as they heard the man and felt what he was.
The Government, under Lord Palmerston, made a liberal grant of
money, and furnished him besides with a small steamer to aid him in
his further researches. To give him influence with the Portuguese, he
was appointed H. B. M. consul at Quelimane. An expedition was
formed, composed of picked men, who, as well as assisting Livingstone
in the direct objects of his undertaking, were to examine and report
on scientific matters. This object, as concisely stated in Livingstone's
second book, was " to explore the Zambesi, its mouths and tributaries,
with a view to their being used as highways for commerce and Chris-
tianity to pass into the vast interior of Africa." The expedition left
England in H. M. S. Pearl, on March 10, 1858 ; and in the following
May the little steamer Ma-Robert — Mrs. Livingstone's Makololo name
— was put together and launched in the Kongone mouth of the Zam-
besi.

But, while this was all doing, the universities did not forget Dr.
Livingstone's legacy. Oxford, in addition to the Glasgow M. D.,
recently conferred, had given him the honorary degree of D. C. L. ; but
she showed much more how she appreciated his merits by uniting with
the other universities to promote the religious objects he had in view.
His first work in the Ma-Robert was to ascend the Shire, and discover
a beautiful region along its banks to the eastward, which he strongly

DR. LIVINGSTONE. 335

recommended, in subsequent letters home, as a field for missionary en-
terprise. In the same letters he referred to the organization of a
mission, which, he suggested, should consist of a missionary bishop as
leader, a staff of clergymen, and a small band of laborers and skilled
artisans to instruct the natives in industrial work. This advice was
acted upon. The then Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Wilberforce — suitably
to the prestige of that honored name — took an active part in establish-
ing what was afterward known as the " Universities' Mission to Cen-
tral Africa." The Rev. C. F. Mackenzie, Archdeacon of Pieter-Maritz-
burg, in Natal, was chosen as bishop ; and, £17,000 having been sub-
scribed, of which a large portion was contributed by the manufactur-
ing towns, the mission left England on October 6, 1860. After Bishop
Mackenzie's consecration at Capetown, on January 1, 1861, he set sail
with his companions for the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi, in two
parties, on board H. M. ships Sidon and Lyra. The Ma-Robert had
proved too weak for her work, and, besides carrying the missionaries,
the Sidon had the task of taking out the Pioneer in convoy, a new and
larger steamer granted to Livingstone by Government. Arriving off
the Kongone early in February, they found the doctor with his party
waiting for them, having just returned from the Makololo Country,
where he had gone to take home the men he had been obliged to leave
at Tette, in 1856.

Dr. Livingstone threw himself into the plans of the missionaries,
and, without absolutely identifying himself with their work, gave it
his hearty support and cooperation. The Pioneer was offered for their
passage up the rivers Zambesi and Shire ; and the proposal that he
should himself accompany them to the place where they were to settle,
near Lake Shirwah, was accepted with even greater satisfaction. This
good office accomplished, he proceeded with his own work of exploring
the southern end of Lake Nyassa (lat. 14° 25' S., long. 35° 30' E.), dis-
covered, like Lake Shirwah, a few miles S. S. E. of it, in 1859.

Parenthetically: a figure of medium height, the tough, wiry frame
denoting great powers of endurance, the left arm slightly shortened,
recalling the perilous encounter with the lion ; firm-set features, weath-
er-beaten and browned, though not roughened, by exposure, passive
and thoughtful rather than demonstrative; the eyes' keen glance, and
a rapidly-changing expression, betraying furtive enthusiasm; a low
voice, winning address, manners quiet, frank, and unaffected, even re-
served ; such was David Livingstone as he is remembered in his favor-
ite dress of rough blue naval cloth, the jacket short, and the low cap,
of the same material, surrounded by a broad silver band. Nor is it
easy to forget the kindliness of disposition, and the readiness to give
sympathy wherever there was zeal, though hesitation or a self-sparing
timidity was derided as much as it was despised. Full of courage and
self-reliant, he expects to find something of a like spirit in others ; and
he gives them credit for it, never assuming backwardness or incapacity,

336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but sternly meeting and dealing with it when its existence is perceived.
With a fund of quiet humor — and sarcasm, too, if he pleased — Living-
stone possessed a keen sense of the ridiculous, and entered thoroughly
into a joke. He might often be seen talking to the Makololo he had
brought down from the country of Sekeletu, and their attention and
respect, as they listened or replied to him, plainly showed the influence
he had with them. Indeed, one of Livingstone's strongest points, and
one that has conduced, no doubt, as much to his safety as his success,
is his power of understanding and dealing with the natives, and of
winning their confidence, while he overawes their truculence.

As regards the practical objects with which it started, this expedi-
tion fell short of success. Little was done beyond laying down the
position of the comparatively unimportant lakes of Shirwah and Nyas-
sa,. and a complete survey of the Shire and lower parts of the Zambesi.
Several circumstances combined to bring about this result. Though
the natives of the Shire country were found to grow very little cotton,
and that, moreover, of an inferior quality, there can be no doubt that
the soil is cotton-producing, and that, with proper attention, and the
introduction of the better sorts of the plant, its cultivation would be
remunerative. The land will grow sugar-cane, cereals on the upland
plateaux — the wheat near Tette is exceptionally fine — the tropical
fruits that are known, and some that are not. Indigo grows wild.
The forests contain valuable woods, such as ebony and lignum-vitoe,
and large-sized timber of different kinds. The rocks are metalliferous ;
plumbago and hematite abound ; gold is not far off; and the quartz
shows traces of amethyst and garnet. And something might be said
about ivory. All these advantages, however, were supposed, as ac-
counts one by one reached England, to be counterbalanced by the dif-
ficulties presented by the nature of the country, the roughness of the
upland tracts, the shallowness of the rivers, and the formidable bars
of the Zambesi mouths.

But other things were adverse. A tribal war, which was raging on
the Shire, and a drought of unusual length and severity, threw insu-
perable obstacles in the way of the expedition, causing a famine in the
higher country, and a disastrous loss of time in the journeys to the
coast, which were rendered necessary to procure provisions. The same
causes compelled the mission — after the death of Bishop Mackenzie
and one of his followers — to abandon the position they had taken on
the hills, and find a temporary abode on the banks of the Shire. The
hope that it would either develop into, or, at least, promote the estab-
lishment of a central trading station or factory, was in this way disap-
pointed for the present. The subsequent death of three more of the
missionaries, besides two of the expedition and Mrs. Livingstone —
added to the illness from which most in the country suffered — gave to
it a character for malignancy of climate wrhich might apply to the val-
ley regions, but not to the highlands. All these things, as they were

BR. LIVINGSTONE. 337

looked at, in England, from different points of view, led to the impres-
sion that the pictures on the Zambesi had been too highly colored, and
public interest flagged.

But it was not duly considered, perhaps it was never thoroughly
understood, that the jealousy and secret opposition of the Portuguese
colonists contributed largely to Livingstone's want of success. It was
to their interest to encourage the upper slave-trade with all its demor-
alizing influences ; and dispatches from the home government, in favor
of the expedition, if ever received, if ever sincerely written, would be
of small avail : the distance from Europe was fatal ; and then the col-
ony consisted chiefly of political refugees and convicts. Livingstone's
aim was to abolish the slave-trade ; and, as long as they felt that, the
Portuguese on the Zambesi, themselves prospering, would do all they
could to throw moral obstacles in his way. They would simply not
cooperate ; the better disposed would sit still with their slaves around
them ; the less scrupulous would combine to misrepresent the country,
cry down the people, and talk as loudly as possible of the hopelessness
of the inland trade. Their slave-drivers all the while might be putting
their gangs into the fork-stick shackles ; but get rid of Livingstone
and the English, and who would be the wiser ?

However, things were just beginning to look brighter. A neAV
steamer, sent out by Livingstone's friends, for the navigation of the
Upper Shire, had been taken to the foot of the Murchison Falls. Sev-
eral miles of broken country divide the Upper from the Lower Valley,
over which the steamer, built accordingly, was to be carried piecemeal ;
a road had been already commenced for the purpose, when Mackenzie's
successor arrived firom England, in the middle of June, 1863, bringino-
the dispatch from Lord John Pussell, recalling the expedition. This,
in connection with other ostensible grounds, induced Bishop Tozer to
remove the mission to another sphere of work; and, in the summer of
1864, the original members who survived were once more in England,
Dr. Livingstone himself following in the autumn.

And now commences what is likely to prove the most eventful
period of this remarkable life. It would seem that the independent
spirit which chafed under control at the outset, could find a stimulus
only in roaming over its congenial wilds, and must be left to work out
its grand problems at its own unfettered will. For in the autumn of
1865 Dr. Livingstone is again on his way out to Eastern Africa, unsup-
ported by public aid, and entirely alone, crossing first to Bombay.
His object was— the words are Sir Roderick Murchison's, in 1867 —
" to discover whether there was an outlet to the south from Lake Tan-
ganyika, discovered by Bui-ton and Speke, which was a fresh-water
lake, and which, but for such an outlet as was supposed, ought to be a
saline lake." The Rovuma River, between latitude 10° and 11° S., had
previously engaged his attention, and he thought by ascending this to
be able to connect it with Lake ISTyassa, in which case, having no
tol. n. — 22

333 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mouth bar, and lying beyond Portuguese territory, it would afford a
better entrance to the Shire country than the Zambesi. Starting from
Zanzibar, he found no connection to exist between the Rovuraa and
Lake Nyassa, and, from a thorough examination of its north end,
that there was no communication between that lake and Tanganyika.
Livingstone's idea has been mentioned, on first hearing of these lakes
in the interior, that, on the supposition of a central dividing line, be-
tween the north and south river systems, the region about them would
be found to be the water-shed of the Nile. This theory it seems to
have been his object now to establish, by tracing, if he could, a north-
ern outflow from Tanganyika into Sir S. Baker's great lake, the
Albert Nyanza. " Go," said Sir Roderick, even before he left Eng-
land, " and you will then be the real discoverer of the sources of the
Nile ! "

Soon after starting toward Tanganyika, a little to the west of Ny-
assa, the men he had engaged at Johanna were frightened by a report
of native ferocity, and, deserting him in a body, returned to the coast
with the story that he had been murdered. The story ran, that in
marching westward from the north end of the lake, the party was at-
tacked by a body of Mazitu — a Kaffre tribe, who are known to have
emigrated from the south side of the Zambesi. The Johanna men
were some distance behind with unloaded guns, and saw three men at-
tack the doctor, who had fired, and was trying to reload. One struck
him behind the head with an axe ; he gave a loud cry and fell dead.
Two of the Mazitu were found lying near him, shot with his revolver,
and the bodies of some boys he had brought with him from Bombay.
The Johannese hid in the bush till the Mazitu had retreated, and then,
having buried their master, travelling by night made the best of their
way back to Zanzibar.

The murder was said to have taken place in August, 1866, and the
details were circumstantial. In July, 1867, an expedition left the
mouth of the Zambesi, dispatched by the Royal Geographical Society,
under the leadership of Mr. Young, formerly master of the Pioneer,
with a view of obtaining some clew to Livingstone's fate. The voyage
to Nyassa and back was accomplished in a little steel boat which
could be taken to pieces, and on November 11th they were once more
at the Zambesi mouth. On his return to England, Mr. Young gave
his report. He had ascertained the route taken by Livingstone in
crossing Lake Nyassa, and had been able to trace him to the village
of a chief, Marenga, at least five days' journey beyond the point of the
reported murder ! The chief was an old friend of Livingstone's, and
assured Mr. Young that, if the doctor had been killed one month's
journey beyond his village, he, Marenga, must have heard of it.
Mazitu had never been seen in that part of the country ; and the
story of the Johanna men was a gross fabrication to cover their own
cowardice!

DR. LIVINGSTONE. 339

A letter from Livingstone himself, dated February, 1867, and re-
ceived many months later, confirmed the facts brought out by Young :
but, after the arrival of that, nothing but vague and unreliable rumors
reached England. "We were again left in doubt as to the fate of the
intrepid traveller. At last tidings came. A letter appeared in the
Times of December 13, 1869, written by Dr. Livingstone to Dr. Kirk,
at Zanzibar, and dated Ujiji, 30th May, 1869. After referring to the
untrustworthiness of the Arab traders, both in taking charge of goods
and carrying letters — which accounts, by-the-way, for his long silences
— the doctor writes as follows :

"As to the work to be done by me, it is only to connect the sources which
I have discovered from 500 to 700 miles south of Speke and Baker's, with their
Nile. The volume of water which flows north from latitude 12° south is so
large, I suspect that I have been working at the sources of the Congo as well as
those of the Nile. I have to go down the eastern line of drainage to Baker's turn-
ing-point. Tanganyika, Nj-ige Chowambe (Baker's ?), are one water, and the head
of it is 300 miles south of this. The western and central lines of drainage con-
verge into an unvisited lake west or south of this. The outflow of this, whether
to Congo or Nile, I have to ascertain. The people of this, called Manyema, are
cannibals, if Arabs speak truly. I may have to go there first, and down to Tan-
ganyika, if I come out uneaten and find my new squad from Zanzibar. I ear-
nestly hope that you will do what you can to help me with the goods and men."

This letter refers to his discoveries east and west of the southern
extremity of Tanganyika, and the unvisited lake is Kamolondo. Com-
paring this with Livingstone's account of his earlier explorations, in
recent letters which have reached us, it helps, it would seem, to estab-
lish their authenticity, regarding which some are skeptical.

Then we were startled by the following :

" To the Editor of the Times, February 2, 1870 :

" Sir : The enclosed letter from my son-in-law, Captain the Hon. Ernest
Cochrane, commanding H. M. S. Petrel on the west coast of Africa, is at your
service. It gives an account of the awful death which has terminated Living-
stone's career. Your obedient servant, Richard Doherty.

" Red Castle, County of Donegal, January 31s£."

"My Dear Sir : A few lines to tell you Dr. Livingstone has been killed and
burnt by the natives ninety days' journey from the Congo. He passed through
a native town and was three days on his journey when the king of the town
died. The natives declared Livingstone had bewitched him, sent after him and
told him he had witched their king, and he must die. They then killed him
and burnt him. This news comes by a Portuguese trader travelling that way.
Livingstone was on the lakes at the head of the Congo, making his way to the
Congo, where he was going to come out. I believe this news to be true."

55

And so might others, if on consideration they could have persuaded
themselves that, after hearing some native rumor, the thoughts in the
Portuguese informant's mind had been unconnected with his wish !
But time passes ; and then we learn how a solitary American most

340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gallantly does that which throe Englishmen were going to do — and
not doing, did less than might still have been done — and comes home
and tells the thrilling tale when and where he found the great Living-
stone, and in his sore need helped him.

Mr. Stanley's story is so well known that a brief outline of the
work he found accomplished after the meeting at Ujiji, November 3,
1871, will be sufficient to complete this sketch.

Leaving the renegade Johannese to carry home their lie, Living-
stone first crosses the Chambezi River in latitude 11° S., which, relying
on Portuguese information, he passed unnoticed as the head of his own
Zambesi, but which afterward was to prove such a name of note. In
the beginning of 1867, he enters Londa, where he is kindly received by
the chief Cazembe, and enters upon the exploration of the regions to
the east. Lake Liemba, first visited, he ascertains to be the southern
extension of Lake Tanganyika, which covers a latitudinal area of 360
miles. After many and complicated wanderings among the waters of
this vast region, he reaches Ujiji in the March of 1869, and it was then
the letter was written which has been quoted. Crossing Tanganyika
in the following June, he reaches TTgujma on its western side, and, en-
tering Rua (Speke's Ururoa), commences a long series of journeys of
which the details are yet his own secret.

But a bird's-eye view is given us. First, a vast water-shed between
latitude 10° and 12° S., a tree-covered belt, some 700 miles from east to
west. From a plain 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the level of the sea, moun-
tains rise to a height of from 6,000 to 7,000 feet, taking the same level.
Countless brooks on this wide upland converge and form broad streams
that flow toward the centre of a far-extending trough, which Livingstone
supposes to be the valley of the Nile. Three large rivers form primary
sources in this great valley ; and these unite in what he calls " an enor-
mous lacustrine river." This is the Lualaba — " Webb's Lualaba," as he
names it, after his friend, the owner of Newstead, to distinguish it from
other streams bearing the same appellation. In the valley are five con-
siderable lakes. First, Bemba, or Bangweolo, into which the Cham-
bezi flows — the most conspicuous among many other river-sources.
Out of Bangweolo runs theLuapula, to enter the beautiful lake Moero,
from which a stream, " Webb's Lualaba," pours impetuously through
a rift in the surrounding mountains, and, spreading out in the plain-
country beyond, winds away in a course of confusing tortuousness, till
it enters Lake Kamolondo. The Lufira, the second of the three great
primary rivers, discharges itself into the Lualaba, north of Kamolondo.
Then comes the third, the Lomami, which, flowing from a lake west-
ward of Kamolondo — " Lake Lincoln," as Livingstone styles it — fed by
another Lualaba, joins the central drainage-line lower down. The
three thus uniting, a mighty stream flows northward toward a lake,
which may be that discovered by an Italian explorer, Paggia, but
which Livingstone designates as the " Unknown Lake ; " for at this

DR. LIVINGSTONE.

34i

point his researches are brought to a stop by the mutiny of his men,
and, in a state of mind bordering on despair, and utterly destitute,
he wanders back to Ujiji, leaving about 180 miles of country unex-
plored— the casket containing the crown of his discoveries.

When he first began the journeys which led to them from Lake
Moero, he could learn nothing from natives about the central line of
drainage, after leaving that lake. It might pass eastward into Tan-
ganyika ; and if so, and Tanganyika was found to be connected with
the Albert Nyanza, then the Chambezi would be the farthest source of
the Nile to the south ; but, in this case, the configuration of the coun-
try showed that it would have to run up-hill. Or it might flow west-
ward, and be found to be none other than the source of the Congo or
Niger. To throw light on this point, Manyuema, or, as the Arabs
called it, Manyema, a splendid country, but little known, and whose
inhabitants were reported to be cannibals, though Livingstone rather
ridicules the idea, had to be visited. Then followed the discovery of
Lake Kamolondo, the southern end, in lat. 6° 30' S., and the great cen-
tral drain of the Lualaba. But, then, what of the Kamolondo outflow?
Here Livingstone is left to himself; the natives know — can tell him
nothing ; his chronometers are defective, and he cannot depend on his
reckonings ; but he traces the northeast set of the Lufira and Lomami,
and sees that the western, like the eastern boundary of the great val-
ley, is elevated. He observes, too, that the central line of the Luala-
ba maintains a steady though sinuous northward flow ; hence, he is led
to the conclusion that this river and lake system has nothing to do
with the Congo, but that his tedious wanderings have been to and fro
among the head-waters of the Nile.

In the mean time, the question is, and will be, keenly debated. The
River Kasai, Livingstone's old friend on the Loando journey, flowing
into the Congo, bears another name, Loke, among the natives, and is
said by them to wind out of a " Nyanja," or lake. The Lomami, ac-
cording to Livingstone, is also called the " Loeki." Does this simi-
larity of name warrant the conclusion that the Kasai is only a prolon-
gation of the river, with its source in the Manyema country ? The
Kasai, with the Quango and Lubilash — the two former rising west of
the water-shed in the latitude of Lake Bangweolo — were always pre-
sumed, on Portuguese authority, to be the sources of the great western
river. Can the Lualaba — proved to be connected with the Loeki or Lo-
mami— take a westward course after its prolonged northing, and, over-
throwing Livingstone's assumption, become the Congo feeder ? If not,
another question arises : What is the course of the Lualaba after leav-
ing the Unknown Lake? Do these great waters find a channel to the
eastward, and empty themselves into the Albert Nyanza ? If, ac-
cording to Sir S. Baker's observations, the elevation of that lake is
2,700 feet, the lower level of Kamolondo, which is 2,000 feet above the
sea, must necessarily preclude that.

342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But, further, if unconnected with the eastern branch of the White
Nile, of which the Albert Nyanza and the Victoria Nyanza are the
feeders, does the Lualaba join the eastern branch either as the upper
waters of Petherick's Bahr-el-Ghazel, or as one of its tributary streams ?
Against the first supposition it is urged that the source of this branch
was discovered by the German traveller, Schweinfurth, 5° north of the
equator. But it is maintained, in favor of the second, that the Uelle,
a large feeder of the Bahr-el-Ghazel, was crossed by the same travel-
ler, which, though certainly, where he saw it, flowing from east to west,
was never traced to its source. He supposed it to rise in lat. 2° N., in
the range of mountains west of the Albert Nyanza ; but it is uncer-
tain. The course of the Uelle may wind in such a manner as to ac-
count for the westward setting where Schweinfurth found it. Wheth-
er a greater difficulty exists in the fact that the two rivers lie at the
same altitude of 2,000 feet, yet awaits the test of accurate observa-
tion. In the mean time, it is thought that the Lualaba may prove
to be connected with the Uelle tributary, and thus enter the Nile by
its western branch.

But even then the old mystery will not be solved. The Chambezi
is not to monopolize the glory of giving rise to the great Egyptian
river. Dr. Livingstone does not think so. On the 700th mile of the
water-shed, are the fountains of the two rivers, Kafue and Leeambye,
running south into the Zambesi. Near the same spot, the Lufira and
Lomami (Lualaba) are said to have their source, flowing, as was seen,
to the north. In the stoneless mound, or ant-hill according to some, on
which these four fountains are reported to gush out, Livingstone is re-
minded of the information supplied to Ptolemy by ancient explorers,
and of the description of the Nile sources given to Herodotus at Sais
in Egypt. Will he be able, as he believes, to substantiate this record
of antiquity, and in establishing his own theory of a dividing ridge-line
between north and south — where Lake Dilolo (lat. 11° 32' 1" S.) may
again have to be considered — find, after all, that, instead of a discov-
ery, his labors may simply result in a rediscovery ? And then as to
Tanganyika and the Albert Nyanza. Dr. Livingstone and Stanley to-
gether proved that the first lake has no outlet at its northern end, and
that the Rusizi — a river with eighteen tributaries, coming from the
small lake Kivo — is an inflowing stream, and not a drain. What will
be done in this direction ? What may be the result of discovering
some other outlet from a lake extending over 360 miles of latitude, and
this, too, when the Albert Nyanza to the south shall be no longer, as
at present, unexplored ?

For the solution of these questions, we must await the return of
Dr. Livingstone himself, who is, by this time, we hope, once more
among the waters of Rua and Manyema, with ample stores, and well
attended. In two years, though probably more, he may be able to
give us his own account. But, in prosecuting the researches, whose

ARTS IN THE STONE AGE. 343

successful issue will leave him, in the words of his late friend Sir
Roderick Murchison, " the most glorious of all explorers in African
geography," it is not to be forgotten that he has other, and what must
be admitted to be nobler, aims. With his never-relinquished idea of
establishing a central trading-mart, and purging Africa from its slave-
trade, whether Portuguese or Arab, he exhibits the old steadiness in
completing a self-set task, the same tenacity of purpose. He is certain-
ly endeavoring to end as he thought good to begin: "It is better to
lessen human woe than to discover the sources of the Nile." — Fmser's
Magazine.

♦«»

ARTS m THE STONE AGE.1

TTTHEN" Shakespeare represented his philosophical Duke as find-
V V ing " sermons in stones," and " books in the running brooks,"
he was but unconsciously exhibiting the prophetic faculty which has
been attributed to all true poets. He could hardly have foreseen that
his pretty yet fanciful conceit would one day be found to be sober
earnest. But so it is ; we have here a goodly volume of more than
six hundred pages, illustrated by nearly as many excellent woodcuts,
discoursing learnedly of nothing save stones and streams, and finding
in them sermons of great and, to many readers, novel interest.

It might have been supposed, when Mr. Evans had published his
well-known work on " The Coins of the Ancient Britons," that he had
gone back as far as possible in the history of our land and nation ; but,
in archreological as in other sciences, there is in the lowest known
depth one lower still remaining to be fathomed ; every chamber opened
to the light discloses others lying beyond it. From a people who had
no literature, or none of which they have left any trace beyond the
rude characters inscribed on their rude coins, we are now carried back
to tribes and races which possessed neither coins nor letters ; people
who have left us neither their sepulchres nor their ashes, nor indeed
any trace of their existence, save the rude triangular or subtriangular
fragments of worked stone which served them for tools or weapons ;
and even these are usually found buried beneath the wreck and ruin,
it may be, of continents or islands which have long since been worn
and wasted away.

The publication of this work is remarkable as an evidence of the
quickened pace which characterizes scientific research in our days.
Paleontology and geology, vigorous and flourishing as they are, are
still hardly "out of their 'teens;" but prehistoric archaeology has

1 " The Ancient Stone Implements, "Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain." By
John Evans, F. R. S., F. S. A. (New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1812.)

344

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

made comparatively more rapid progress than either. Not more than
fourteen years have passed since the discoveries made by Boucher de
Perthes of flint implements in the gravel-beds of Abbeville and
Amiens, although at that time discredited and disparaged by the geol-

Fio, 1.— Polished Celts, Santon Downham, Suffolk.

ogists of his own country, were confirmed and supplemented by Mr.
Prestwich and Mr. Evans. Previously to that time these objects had
attracted but little notice ; the things were " neither rich nor rare ; "
men looked at them and wondered, and then forgot them, just as be-
fore William Smith's time they gazed with a profitless curiosity on

ARTS IN THE STONE AGE.

345

fossil shells and bones, and thought with Dr. Martin Lister, that they
might he " the efforts of some plastic power, in the earth, being the
regular workings of Nature, whereby she sometimes seems to sport
and play, and make little flourishes and imitations of things, to set
off and embellish her more useful structures."

Fig. 2.— Hatchet from the Solway Mos3.

But, since the discoveries in the Somme Valley were recognized, a
flood of light has been shed upon the subject. These dry bones live,
and these rude stones are found to be useful, indeed indispensable, ma-
terials for building up the earliest history of the human race. The
savants of every country in Europe have hastened to take part in an
inquiry so novel and so interesting ; many volumes of memoirs have
been written ; our French neighbors, with their usual vivacity, have

Fig. 8. — Axe-Hammer, Thames, London.

established a journal devoted to prehistoric archaeology, as well as
an annual Gongres / and these researches having been for several
years conducted by so many able and eager observers, we need not
wonder that Mr. Evans, having studied the whole bibliography of the
subject, both ancient and modern, and explored every considerable
museum or collection, is now enabled to produce this encyclopaedia of
the new-born science, which for want of a better word may, perhaps,
be called petrology or petro-tomology. He has introduced us into the
workshops and armories of our most remote predecessors, it may be
of our ancestors, as they existed not at any particular epoch, but in

34^

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all probability through a long succession of ages ; and he has shown
us so clearly what were their weapons and tools, of which any ves-
tiges remain, and how they were made and used ; and has correlated
them so accurately, as far as might be, with similar objects found in
all quarters of the globe, as well as with those described by classical
writers, or in use by modern savages, that in reading his work we
know not which most to admire, the industry shown in the collection
and examination of such a vast amount of material, or the skill with
which the information thus obtained has been methodized and ar-
ranged. The book completely exhausts the subject, and will long con-
tinue to serve as a perfect manual for the collector, as well as furnish-
ing most useful materials for archaeologists and anthropologists.

Those who are not already somewhat versed in this science will be
astonished to learn the infinite variety of uses to which the apparently
stubborn and unmanageable rock called flint has been converted. We
may, perhaps, doubt if in the very earliest ages it was used for pur-
poses of warfare, and we prefer to give our progenitors the benefit of
that doubt, and to believe that those were " golden ages " — times of
primitive piety and peace ; and that it was only for purposes of hus-
bandry, and the chase, and domestic use, that they worked up the ma-
terials found in their plains and valleys. Thus, we find descriptions
of celts, or axes for felling trees, or hewing canoes, hoes, threshing-
machines — as now used in the East — or perhaps harrows, scrapers for
preparing skins, arrows for birds or other " small deer," knives, gouges,

Fig. 4. — Arrow-head, Isle of Skye.

saws, mullers, or pounding-stones, chisels, hammer-axes or picks, and
polishing or grinding stones, of which there must have been great
need ; nor were the women of the period left destitute of their share
of the stony spoil; for we find in these pages descriptions and figures
of rings, armlets, amulets, spindle-whorls, pestles, and, in the cave-de-
posits, needles of bone of admirable workmanship, which might have
been, and probably were, drilled by flint-flakes.

As these primitive people have left us no record of their progress
in arts and manufactures, and the material evidences bearing on the

ARTS IN THE STONE AGE. 347

subject are found in a very confused and dislocated condition, it is a
work of no small labor to classify and arrange them in order of date,
or rather of sequence, and thus none but a rough and wide scheme
of classification is possible. The Danish and French authors, as well
as many of our own, usually divide the stone-implement period into
two principal stages only, the paleolithic and neolithic — unpolished
and polished; placing them both before what has been called the
Bronze age. This arrangement, however, although found convenient
for popular use, and in that sense adopted by Mr. Evans, can hardly
be regarded as scientifically accurate; as he has himself observed,
there are blanks in the chronology of stone implements, which it is
hard to fill up. The classification may be, and indeed is, too wide in
one respect, and too limited in another. While, on the one hand, the
drift and the cave implement periods, which are usually bracketed to-
gether as paleolithic, are characterized by very various conditions,
both paleontological and geological, and, indeed, technological also —
conditions which may indicate their separation by a vast interval of
time ; so, on the other hand, as Mr. Evans has shown at the close of
the fourth chapter, some of the unpolished stones, chipped or rough-
hewn celts, were probably of a date not earlier than some that were
ground and polished ; and, in Great Britain, at least, there are not
wanting indications that the use of bronze was coeval with the pol-
ished-stone period, if not, indeed, with one or two exceptions (which
were probably imports) anterior to it.

One of the most perplexing questions suggested by the discovery
of the drift-implements relates to the means by which they came into
their present position. They are often met with at a depth of twenty
or even thirty feet, usually at or near the base of thick beds of coarse
flint-gravel, which in its turn is overlain by masses, more or less thick,
of brick-earth or loess. Occasionally, and indeed not rarely, they
occur entirely beneath the gravels, and on the surface of the subjacent
rock, whatever it may chance to be. Mr. Evans deals with them
merely as constituent portions of the beds of sand, gravel, and clay,
in which they occur, and so indeed they now are, but they are some-
thing more. Although of the drift, drifty, each has its own separate
history ; for each has been held and fashioned by hands guided by an
intelligent will, and thus we are led irresistibly to inquire when, and
why, and how did they come where we now see them, and why are
they never found on the surface, nor under any other conditions ?

To a certain extent this inquiry is involved in the far larger ques-
tion of the forces by means of which the superficial gravels, of which
the implements are as it were but the accidents, became dispersed — a
subject which does not necessarily come within the scope of a work
designed to be technological rather than geological. Mr. Evans has,
however, very judiciously devoted one of his chapters to it ; and, as it
is one of great interest, and is still involved in much obscurity, we

343 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

may gladly welcome any attempt to deal with it, especially by one
who has given so much attention to its investigation.

It was the opinion of the late Dr. Buckland, an opinion which was
concurred in by Greenough, Conybeare, and other able writers of their
time, that the general dispersion of gravel, sand, and loam, over hills
and elevated plains, as well as valleys, was the result of a universal
deluge, which is described as transient, simultaneous, and of a date
not very remote ; that the existing system of valleys was mainly due
to the same cause, and that thus both valleys and gravels preceded
our present river systems. Cuvier, and the French geologists gener-
ally, have held the same opinion, but of late years it seems to have
been altogether discredited by English authors, with perhaps the ex-
ception of the late Sir Roderick Murchison. We may well entertain
doubts as to the occurrence of a deluge that should be both universal
and simultaneous ; and it is probable that it is chiefly on that account
that Dr. Buckland's theory has met with so little favor. Still, al-
though we may be unable to adopt his views in their entirety, his
statements, as to the diluvial characters of the English drifts, seem en-
titled to some .further consideration before they are set aside alto-
gether, and on this account it is fortunate that the recent discoveries
of flint implements have excited so much interest in the gravels in
question, as to induce Mr. Evans to devote no inconsiderable portion
of his work to the history and antiquity of the river-drift.

In the last chapter he has adduced an elaborate argument in favor
of the belief in fluviatile transport as opposed to diluvial, by showing
first, hypothetically, the possibility that " deposits now occupying the
summits of hills have originally been formed in and about river-beds,"
and then, by reference to the actual phenomena, the probability that
the implement-bearing beds were thus formed. No one can doubt,
upon the hypothesis here ' stated, that rivers may have possessed
at one time a far greater power of excavating and deepening their
channels than now; but then the author is obliged to assume the prev-
alence of several conditions, and notably a far more rigorous climate,
and a greater amount of rainfall ; conditions as to which we have but
little evidence, and some of that is of a doubtful tendency. If, as is
now supposed, the hippopotamus and elephant and rhinoceros remained
here all the winter, they would have fared but badly, had the climate
been as severe as is supposed.

But passing by these topics as not bearing very immediately upon
the question of transport, it cannot be doubted that submergence, by
means of diluvial action, is quite possible, since we have many in-
stances of it within the historical period, and some indeed within the
last few years ; and, both modes of transport being alike possible, the
probabilities of the case have alone to be considered ; and, notwith-
standing the various reasons so ably stated by Mr. Evans, it does not
seem that there are sufficient grounds for rejecting Dr. Buckland's

ARTS IN THE STONE AGE.

349

theory, and there are, besides, some inferences to be drawn from the
position of the implements, which, so far as they are concerned, are at
variance with the theory of finviatile transport. For instance, when
met with in valleys, it appears that the implements are not found
along the whole course of those valleys, as well where flint-gravels
are wanting as where they abound, as would have been the case had
they been carried down promiscuously by the streams from time to
time; but, only in certain limited areas, and then usually in large
numbers, and at about the same levels ; and further, that in several of
these deposits the implements are distinguished from those of neigh-
boring deposits by some slight difference in form. From these indica-
tions it may be inferred that they were made and left at or near the
spots on which they were found, and afterward covered up, and occa-
sionally displaced, by the masses of drifted material which now over-
lie them; and this seems the more probable, when it is seen that some
of them were formed from stones of the same kind as those composing
the beds in which they rest, and that some of these appear to have
lain exposed upon the surface for long periods before they were worked.

Fig. 5. — Sling-Stone, from Aberdeenshire.

If, indeed, it had happened that these things had never been found
elsewhere than in river-valleys, the conclusions arrived at by Mr.
Evans would have been irresistible, but, so far from this being the case,
it is certain that these implement-bearing gravels are occasionally
found on the extreme margin of sea-cliffs, or isolated hills on the verge
of far-stretching plains — situations to which no river flowing in the
same channels, and draining the same areas as now, could have carried
them.

Mr. Evans has noticed several of these deposits as met with at
Bournemouth, the Reculvers and the Foreland cliffs in the Isle of
Wight (to these probably should be added Southampton and Brandon
Down, and some others) ; and he has also alluded to the remarkable

35°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

discovery, in the Madras Presidency, of implements of quartzite of true
drift-type, found on the cliffs at an elevation of 300 feet above the
sea, in a bed of ferruginous clay, which forms the coast-line for several
hundred miles, and is intersected at right angles, at various intervals,
by the rivers of the country in making their way to the sea.

In all these cases, all traces of the ancient rivers, if indeed they
ever existed, have been entirely effaced ; neither channels, nor outlets,
nor adequate water-sheds, nor a single land or river shell, remaining
to testify of them ; and not only so, but we find many deposits of
quaternary gravel (which Mr. Evans justly concludes to be of the
same geological period as those of the implements, and to owe their
existence and position to the same causes) on hills which could not
have been reached by modern rivers. The whole country would have
been a vast lake before such heights could have been submerged ; and
under such circumstances it may be fairly assumed that the same
forces, whatever they were, that covered the hill-tops, may have par-
tially filled up the valleys; the presence of gravel may suggest, but
cannot prove, that the river brought it, however much it may have re-
arranged and sorted it ; both valley and gravel may have had an ex-
istence before the river began its course. We have many valleys and
gravels without rivers, and rivers without gravels ; they can very well
exist apart, and doubtless have often done so.

Fig. 6.— Spindle- Whorl, from Holyheaa.

One of the arguments usually relied upon, in support of the belief
in fiuviatile, as opposed to diluvial, agency in the formation of the de-
posits in which the stone implements are found, is founded on the as-
sumption that the constituents of these quaternary gravels are petro-
logically such, and only such, as belong to existing river-basins ; and
this fact, Mr. Evans says, holds good in France and England, and can-
not be too often reiterated. Without pausing to consider how far this
argument might avail as against those who, like Dr. Buckland, believe
in a simultaneous and universal cataclysm, it seems hardly applicable

ARTS IN THE STONE AGE.

35i

to the conditions under which the implement-hearing drifts are found;
for if the term petrological is to be understood as meaning rocks found
in situ in the river-basins, and thus native to the soil, then it is not
the fact that the constituents of the gravels in question belong to
those basins ; for we know that they are often largely made up — in
one instance cited by Mr. Evans, to the extent of 50 per cent. — of the
quartzose stones known as Lickey pebbles, and rounded fragments of
jasper, quartz, and other foreign rocks. Such rocks certainly do not
belong petrologically, in the proper sense of that term, to the river-
basins in which they occur, but to strata of a far earlier date. As Dr.
Buckland has shown, the quartzite pebbles are derived from the New
Red sandstone beds in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, and were at
some remote period forced over the escarpment of the Oolite into the
south and east of England. Whether they were brought in before or
after the present river-valleys were formed is not very clear, nor per-
haps very material. It is incontestable that they were transported
from a great distance, and possibly by the same forces that brought
the flint-gravels ; and it is equally certain, in several instances, that
their transport cannot be attributed to rivers now in action, because
those rivers flow, as at Brandon, toward the quarter from which the
stones were brought.

Nor, if it were certain that the intrusion of these rocks dated back
to the Glacial epoch, as is usually supposed, or to some other very dis-
tant period, and had thus become denizens, if not natives of the soil,
could the inference which is drawn from the absence of extraneous
rocks be regarded as satisfactory.

The occurrence of alternate elevations and depressions of the land
above or below the sea-level, during the post-glacial times, has been
suggested by several English writers ; and, if we suppose a dis-
trict comprising the south of England and the north of France, cor-
responding, or nearly so, with that in which no bowlder-clay is found,
to be sufficiently depressed, and then invaded by a deluge, the argu-
ment drawn from petrological conditions will cease to apply ; for, no
rocks are found in the drift-gravels, but such as belong to the supposed
deluge-basin. A delude of short duration would not necessarily in-
troduce any foreign rocks into the submerged area, but would sweep
into hollows and valleys those that came in its way ; and, even should
the submergence be of long continuance, as in some provinces of Hol-
land, it would leave no more traces than those exhibited in our drift-
gravels. That such a partial deluge was both possible and probable
is evident, when it is considered that a depression of 600 feet would
perfectly well effect it ; and, as we have evidence that the land has
risen in several places 30 feet and more within the historical period, it
is not difficult to believe that, in the infinitely longer time that proba-
bly intervened after the Glacial epoch, the same process of elevation
may have been going on for many ages.

352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The absence of all traces of a marine fauna, and the occasional
presence of land and fresh-water shells in these beds, are circum-
stances on which much stress is laid by the author ; but, when fully
considered, they hardly seem to warrant the inferences drawn from
them. A marine fauna requires a marine flora for its sustenance, and,
unless the submergence had been of long duration, this could not have
existed. We find extensive marine deposits of older date, in which
no marine organisms are ever seen ; and, if marine fossils are wanting
in drift-beds, those of the land and fresh water are usually equally
wanting. We have, probably, hundreds of square miles of quater-
nary gravels, in which not a single specimen has ever been discovered.
In those instances, comparatively rare, in which they occur in the im-
plement-bearing beds, they are usually lying above the gravel, and
may thus be ascribed to a later date ; or, if of an earlier date in some
instances, their occurrence would not of necessity exclude diluvial
action, as regards the gravels.

There is one interesting topic connected with these drifts, which
Mr. Evans has not dealt with at any length, as, indeed, it barely came
within the design of his work; but he seems to share the general opin-
ion that the men who made and used the drift-implements were con-
temporary with the hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, and other
animals, with whose remains they are often found associated. At
present this is but a possibility, and it is an assumption founded on
the fact of the bones and implements being often found in close prox-
imity; but, if, as seems probable, the implements were formed from
stones found in the gravels in which they now rest, it can hardly be
doubted that the bones were already in that gravel, and may have
lain there for centuries. From their shattered and way-worn condi-
tion, they have evidently been subjected to much rougher usage than
that which some of the flint implements have met with. But, however
this may have been, there can be no doubt, as Sir Charles Lyell has
observed in the "Antiquity of Man," that "the fabrication of the im-
plements must have preceded the reiterated degradation which re-
sulted in the formation of the overlying beds;" a process for which
vast periods must be allowed, and one which must have involved im-
portant geological changes. Among others we have very strong rea-
sons to believe was the severance of our island from the Continent, an
event, indeed, which, however brought about, could hardly have been
unattended with important changes in the contour of the adjacent dis-
tricts, and the courses of their rivers. When we contemplate the vast
changes, geological, paleontological, and geographical, which our race
seems to have survived, we are surprised to learn how very old we are,
or, as Mr. Evans has better expressed it, the mind is almost lost in
amazement at the vista of antiquity thus displayed.

It would seem, as might be expected, that, notwithstanding the
cosmopolitan character of these objects — for, as Mr. Evans's researches

ARTS 1& THE STONE AGE. 353

have shown, they are found in one form or other in every country on
the face of the globe — certain forms are pretty well confined to cer-
tain localities, as if each of the tribes or families who used them had
its own manufacture. The half-polished and polished celts of Norfolk,

Fig. 7. — Jet Necklace, from Ross-shire.

Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, vastly outnumber those which have been
observed in all other parts of England, from which it would seem that
these countries were more populous, or the people more advanced in
the arts, than in the rest of the island, or possibly they may have been
the manufacturing district of the period. As regards, however, the
distribution of the drift-implements, a far more suggestive and im-
portant circumstance is to be noticed. As Mr. Evans has observed,
the district farthest north of the Thames, in the gravels of which flint
implements are at the present time known to have been found, is the
basin of the river Ouse and its tributaries. They have, in fact, been
found, at one time or other, in every English county lying to the south-
east of a line drawn from the Severn to the Great Ouse, correspond-
ing thus far with the great escarpment of the oolite, but they have
never been met beyond that line ; and it is an interesting subject of
speculation to what the dearth of these objects in the country lying
to the northwest is to be attributed. If it was habitable and inhab-
ited, it is difficult to imagine a reason for their absence, especially as
in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire there is abundance of suitable chalk-
flint. This line of demarcation is not very much out of that which
separates the bowlder-clay districts from those in which no bowlder-
clay is met with. May it not have been the case that, when the im-
plements were fashioned, Scotland and the northwestern parts of Eng-
land were still submerged beneath the glacial sea, and that on their
emergence the southeast became in its turn depressed ?

Notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, there
seems to be still much doubt as to the uses for which some, and no
inconsiderable number, of these objects were designed. For all useful
purposes it would have sufficed that the cutting-edge of a celt should
alone be polished and ground ; yet it is often, indeed usually, found
vol. 11. — 23

354

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that the entire surfaces of the faces and the sides exhibit a polish
which could only have been obtained by long and apparently profitless
labor. And not only so, but many of these are very fragile, being
slightly made, and of delicate workmanship, and others are of such
small dimensions that, as M. Boucher de Perthes pointed out, they
never could have been available for any kind of hard work. Many
of these exhibit no signs whatever of fracture or even of scratching,
either at the butt or the edge — indications which could not possibly
have bepn wanting, had they ever been used for weapons or tools.
Besides which, while many of the districts, in which they are found,
contain abundance of rocks suitable for all ordinary purposes, these
implements are often made from Asiatic jade, jadeite, tremolite, serpen-
tine, green porphyry, nephrite, and other stones of beautiful colors,
and capable of taking a high polish, many of which must have been
brought from great distances, and would have been very costly both
to import and to work. The museums in Brittany, and particularly
that at Vannes, are very rich in jadeite implements of this kind, but
they are also found frequently both in England and Scotland.

Fig. 5. — Jet Armlet, from Guernsey.

Fig. 9. — Bronze Armlet, from Guernsey.

But, if we conclude, as we must, with the author, that implements,
for which such beautiful and intractable materials were selected, could
hardly have been in common use, we may indulge in some speculation
as to what were the uses they were designed to serve, notwithstanding
that, as Mr. Evans says, we have not sufficient ground for arriving at
any trustworthy conclusion. M. Boucher de Perthes thought that
they were deposited by the survivors in the graves of deceased friends,
as useful to them on their resurrection, and he argued from this their
belief in a future state. It seems, however, hardly probable that ob-
jects, many of which obviously could not be serviceable, should be
placed in tombs under the belief that tney would be so at some future
date. In the absence of any more satisfactory explanation, it may be
suggested that these things were intended by our remote predecessors
to represent the deities whom they worshipped, and that, by their va-
ried sizes and shapes, they indicated the ranks and orders of their
idols. We may believe that men, not having learned the art of repre-
senting the human or animal form, were obliged to content themselves

ARTS IN THE STONE AGE. 35S

with symbols of their divinities — it may be their Mars and Ceres—
under the form of weapons of wrar, or instruments of agriculture.
Nor is this so unlikely as it might otherwise appear, when we know
that these celts are still objects of worship in India. Mr. Evans,
quoting from the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, says
that they are there venerated as sacred, and it is known that, in a cer-
tain village in the Shewaroy hills, some hundreds of polished celts,
of varying sizes, resembling those found in England and Scotland, are
preserved in a temple, arranged in rows. They are guarded with the
utmost jealousy by the priests, each representing some particular
sioamy or deity, and each receiving from time to time a dab of red or
white paint, as a proof that the priest has performed before it the cus-
tomary poojah or worship.

This being so, the discovery of these implements in Europe may
have some bearing upon an important ethnological question. We
have good reason to believe that the dolmen-builders came, in the first
instance, from India, for we find in Wilts and Berks, and elsewhere,
exact counterparts of some megalithic structures, and those of a pe-
culiar construction, which yet remain in the same Shewaroy district in
which the celt-worship is still practised. May we not, then, regard it
as possible that the fabrication of polished instruments, as well as the
practice of dolmen-building, originated in India, where they are still
retained, and that these costly polished celts were brought hither by
our Aryan ancestors, as the Israelites carried their Teraphim about
with them, or as the Trojans, after the fall of their city, are repre-
sented in Virgil as carrying with them their household gods :

" Ilium in Italiam portans, victosque penates; "

and that the worship was only abandoned here as men became enlight-
ened, or were subjected to the dominion of some race of a different
theology? Since we find abundant traces of the Aryan language in
our own, and of their sepulchral architecture in our dolmens, why
should we not find in our fields and fens some of their idols? It is
quite consistent with, and in a certain sense confirmatory of, such a
belief, that, in almost every country in which these things are found,
they are regarded by the common people with superstitious reverence,
as if the practice of adoration had in the lapse of ages merged in a
vague and faint tradition of sanctity.

Nor is it any objection to this hypothesis, but the reverse, that
these implements are usually found in and about dolmens, as at Tu-
miac and Mont St. Michel, where nearly seventy highly-polished celts
of imported materials — Asiatic jade and hard tremolite — were found
ranged in regular order. It has been usual with almost all people, in
all ages, that those things which they most esteemed in life should
rest with them in their graves ; and as we often find in our own coun-
try the priest's paten and chaliee placed in his coffin, or the Anglo-

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Saxon's sword and shield laid beside him in the earth ; so, possibly,
these prehistoric men may have wished that the stone idols which,
when living, they adored — the lares and penates of their time — should
be laid beside them in their tombs.

But, in pursuing the train of thought suggested by our author, we
had wellnigh forgotten his book, and we have only space to congrat-
ulate all those who are interested in these researches — and they are
now many — on the ample and valuable additions which he has made
to this new and most interesting chapter in the history of our race. —
Nature.

•»♦»•

CULTIVATING WILD-FLOWERS.

By Prof. SAMUEL LOCKWOOD.

BUT few are aware of the many American wild-flowers which merit
and would repay cultivation. The showy scarlet sage (Salvia
coccinea) is a common sea-coast weed in some of the extreme Southern
States. In the North it has deservedly become a favorite ; and cul-
ture has placed it within the reach of every one, even the poorest.
The brilliant, deep-red cardinal-flower (Lobelia cardinalis) is highly
esteemed abroad as a garden-plant ; and yet, to dwellers in our cities,
this plant is almost unknown, although it is one of our common wild-
flowers, lavishing its bewitching beauty in numberless places, both
North and South. Nor is the above word a mere figure of speech.
An English scientific gardener lately visited Long Branch. He took a
ride among the surroundings of that watering-place. When between
Eatontown and Red Bank, he suddenly requested the driver to stop,
at the same time uttering an exclamation which caused Jehu to doubt
the gentleman's soundness of mind. The carriage was stopped, and
away went the well-dressed Englishman over the field-fence, as lithe
and agile as a youth. He actually plunged into the half-swampy
ground, and made, as nearly as possible, a straight line toward a scar-
let speck in the vernal distance. No high-mettled bull in a Spanish
arena ever went more intently at the little red banner of the picador
than went our friend John B., Esq., through that wet New Jersey
meadow for that scarlet flower, which drew him like a fascination. It
was a pitiable plight that he presented on his return to the carriage,
exultant with his prize. To the astonished driver he offered these
apologetic words : " This is the splendid Lobelia cardinalis, which I
have cultivated with so much care at home, and, behold ! here it grows
wild ! " To which Jehu, whose astonishment had now become modi-
fied by a shade of contempt, returned an ingenious equivocation :
" That is worth a gentleman spoiling his clothes for ! "

CULTIVATING WILD-FLOWERS. 357

We know of more than one little cottage flower-patch, whose owner
has planted in it the cardinal-flower, where it has grown in such de-
cided prominence of beauty as to maintain a sort of pontifical preemi-
nence among the floral dignities of the parterre. This splendid flower,
with its racemes like scarlet rods, and the habit of the plant, so up-
right and graceful, with a sort of queenly bearing, and gorgeous mag-
nificence, very much outshone its gayer but straggling companion, the
gaudy scarlet salvia. We know a village blacksmith who thus made
this plant the spectacle in his flower-plot ; and it was amusing to see
persons, in their admiration, seeking to purchase plants from this little
garden, utterly ignorant of the fact that they could be had simply for
the going after in the contiguous meadows. As a wild-flower, they
had often seen it, but had never observed it. Forsooth, how few
obey the aesthetic command : " Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow ! "

And there is the common spreading dogbane, to which science has
given one of its terrible sesquipedalian names, to wit, Apocynum an-
droscemifolium. It is an engaging plant, for all that, with its open,
bell-shaped flowers. Its first cousin, the Indian hemp, though very un-
pretentious as to its flowers, has an upright habit, much more queenly
than the loose abandon of its beautiful flowered relation. Alas ! for its
reputation, this plant has fallen into bad hands, and become notorious
among the empirics of medicine. Speaking of the spreading dogbane,
a correspondent of the Torrey Botanical Club, quoting authorities, de-
scribes it as "one of the most charming of our native plants. The
beautiful clusters of rosy bells, with their pink bars, and delicate fra-
grance, claim for it a place in the garden, where, however, we do not
meet with it, but on open banks and by the side of roads or cultivated
fields. It is well approved, too, by the insect tribe, who are, in gen-
eral, much more appreciative judges of color and odor than we are. In
Europe, where it is not native, it is cultivated in gardens, and, accord-
ing to Lamarck, is called gobe-mouche — fly-trap. If flies alight on this
plant, they are frequently entangled by the glutinous matter, and de-
stroyed. Hence, the plant has been called Ilerbe d la puce.''''

It has surprised me that so little has been done with our star-
worts, or native asters — plants so prodigal of bloom during the late
summer, and almost the entire autumnal months. The number of spe-
cies is very great, and some are of exquisite beauty. Our favorite is
the Aster concolor. It abounds South, and comes as far North as the
Pines of New Jersey, where it attains perfection in delicacy of struct-
ure and prodigality and compactness of bloom. Indeed, this part of
New Jersey has seemed to us as the prodigal border-land, where the
Southern and the Northern floras terminate and commingle, or overlap
each other. Here Michaux and other great men have labored, and car-
ried away many novelties. In these regions, the Aster concolor
grows up like a simple wand, with its small leaves closely hugging the

353 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

remarkably small stem, much as if a wire had been dressed with leaves
for festal uses. The upper part of the stem is so closely surrounded
with the compact flowers, that it is literally a purple raceme or wand.
Cultivated in mass, in a dry soil, this aster would glow like a sheet of
purple flame.

And why is the very common, yet very stately, gentian over-
looked? This plant is positively unique in character. A single stem
set amid green leaves, with cerulean gems, is a thyrsus worthy of a
god. But there is a quaint, coyish modesty about it — its singular
flowers seem to be always in bud, as if too coy to blossom outright.

And what charming terrestrial orchids are found native — but, con-
cerning this, there, is but space for a word. These singular indigenous
flowers — so lovely, and yet so eccentric — are represented by a large
number of species. They may be called pretty, winning little oddities.
They would need some skill, perhaps, in their cultivation ; and some
might come to be regarded as the coquettes of the floral community,
jilting the gardener with futile promises. Last summer, we took up
with our fingers a pretty specimen of the Calopogon pulchellus, which
means the Beautiful Little Beard. It had but one tiny scape, growing
from a green bulb which lay in the moss, much like a solitary egg in a
bird's-nest. The entire plant, with its marvellous flower, was not
more than six inches high. Our heart failed us in an attempt to put it
in the press as a specimen ; so we planted it in a little pot, attached to
it a label bearing its scientific name, for popular name it had not, and
then put it on the glass case on the counter of the apothecary. It
was a pleasant surprise to everybody who saw it. Many were the
ejaculatory commendations received by the little stranger with the
purple hood, and the quaint little beard of so grotesque dyes of pink,
and yellow, and white. The pretty stranger was unanimously voted
" charming ; " and was by some taken to be a rare exotic, that had
grown up under the professor's care. Besides this, we have among
our native orchids the equally pretty Pogonia and Arethusa ; while,
worthy of any conservatory, are the white fringed and the yellow
fringed Rein-orchis, both of the genus Habenaria. Mention might be
made of the Lady's Slipper, the showy and rather ostentatious Ct/pre-
peclium ; but the list is a long one. These native orchids are all ec-
centricities, and we have selected the most lovable, and the most
easily attainable — in fact, those the nearest to our hands.

Just as the above was written, the usual monthly report of the
Department of Agriculture came to hand. The following paragraphs
are so much to the purpose, that it would be nothing less than blame-
worthy not to quote them. Speaking of American plants in Great
Britain, it cites an English journal as saying : " The beautiful Ascle-
jxlas tuberosa is, this season, producing freely its showy, bright orange-
colored flowers in several collections round London. This fine peren-
nial thrives perfectly well almost anywhere, if planted in sandy peat."

CULTIVATING WILD-FLOWERS. 359

In the same journal we find the following : " One of the best hardy-
aquatic plants, in flower at the present time, is the North American
Pickerel-weed (Pontederia cordata), a plant by no means so often met
with as it deserves to be. It produces a stout spike of handsome sky-
blue flowers from l£ to 2 feet high. No ornamental water should be
without this charming aquatic, which should, however, have a place
near its margin." " The American Pitcher-plant (Sarraeenia pur-
purea) is thriving as well as any native plant in the bog-garden in
Messrs. Backhouse's nurseries at York, and by its side a healthy little
specimen of the still more curious Darlingtonia Californica is begin-
ning to grow freely."

The Asclepias family in America is very rich in species, but the
above-mentioned one is by far the noblest of them all. From the fact
that it attracts around it large numbers of these beautiful creatures, it
is often called the Butterfly-weed. The plant was formerly held in
high repute as a medicine, under the name of Pleurisy-root. But its
gorgeously-colored flowers, so intensely orange, and so densely massed
in heavy umbels, present a gorgeous richness which is incomparable.
There is an African species, with flowers of a similar color, which is
carefully cultivated in conservatories ; but, when contrasted with our
native plant, on every count, the foreigner becomes tame, and mean,
if not insignificant, in the comparison. As to the Pickerel- weed, it is
of easy culture ; and in the margin of garden-ponds, or fountain-basins,
it might be pronounced as gracefully genteel. The Pitcher-plant, if
set higher up on the banks in a bed of sphagnum, or bog-moss, would
be so uniquely elegant as to deserve the epithet recherche. This same
plant can be grown in a pot, simply by keeping the saucer well sup-
plied with water, while its quaint flowers, and the curious structure of
the leaves, would make it the favorite bit of bijoutry in the floral jewels
of the window.

This culture of wild-flowers, to some extent, can be indulged in by
almost all. Its effect upon a mind of average intelligence is surprising*
We have, in our acquaintance, a village bricklayer, a man whose means
are of the most slender kind. He has a love for flowers, and shows-
considerable tact in producing effect by massing the different popular
sorts. The imported asters, the improved petunias, and pansies, are
severally made to effect a blaze of color. But his chief affection cen-
tres in a little spot where he keeps his wild-flowers, among which he
pointed out to us, with an amiable pride, his pet pogonias, obtained
from the swamp over the way. This man has become quite a system-
atist in botany, and is deservedly looked upon as the botanical light
in his community. And who could possibly indulge in this pleasure
of wild-flower culture long without wanting to know the names of his
plants ? But, as few of them have popular names, he must turn to
botany for information. Thus this innocent and elevating pursuit
may become a key to the acquisition of scientific knowledge, and the

360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

application of scientific methods. Here we stop, with the sense of a
child who has picked up a few spangles which have dropped from
Flora's rich attire.

THE TELOCITY OF THE WILL.

Br R. RADAU.

TRANSLATED BY A. R. MACDONOUGH.

IT is a common idea that the saying " as quick as thought " expresses
the ne plus ultra of speed — an unapproachable rapidity, instanta-
neous and lightning-like. The phrase seems used, indeed, as an hyper-
bole ; but in one sense, at least, this is a mistake. Thought, it is true,
can transport us afar without taking note of distances, because there
is no more difficulty in bringing up, in fancy, a remote object, than one
that is close to us, and in this view it may be allowable to say that
space creates no obstacle to thought — not impeding nor changing it
in the least. But thought never springs instantaneously under the
influence of an external cause ; an appreciable time elapses, one or two
tenths of a second, before an idea is aroused in the mind in conse-
quence of an impression received by the brain, and before it will re-
spond to that idea by the movement of a limb. So the nervous cur-
rent which transmits sensations to the brain, and bears the commands
of the will to the extremities of the body, requires a certain time to
finish its course. Impressions coming to us from without are not per-
ceived at the very instant of their production ; they travel along
the nerves with a speed of from 60 to 90 feet a second, equal to that
of the carrier-pigeon, or the hurricane, or of a locomotive under full
steam, but very much less than the swiftness of a cannon-ball. For
instance, we are conscious of an injury in the feet only after a half-
tenth of a second has elapsed. The commands of the will pass from
the centre to the circumference with no greater rapidity ; the limbs do
not instantaneously obey the motive thought. When a movement is
provoked by a shock received in any part whatever of the body, the
stimulus at first travels as far as the brain; there a thought is devel-
oped, the will determines to send out an order ; this order runs along
the nerves to the limb which is bidden to act, and, at last, the limb
begins movement. All this takes place in three times, of quite an ap-
preciable duration.

In the human body, this time lost is a mere trifle, some hundredths
of a second ; but let us suppose one of a great cetacea, a whale, for
instance, in which the telegraphic net-work cf the will controls a wider
range. A boat attacks it in the rear, the harpoon strikes the monster's
tail. Then the pain sets out on its course to demand revenge ; but
the journey is long — it must travel over 90 feet before reaching the

THE VELOCITY OF THE WILL. 361

headquarters of the will. Here is one second lost. What takes place
then ? How much time does reflection need ? That depends on cir-
cumstances ; but it is certain that the will does require a measurable
time to make a decision. Then it acts ; the order is sent out to the
tail to thrash the boat to bits. Another second elapses before the
message reaches its destination: total, two seconds gone, during which
the boat and sailors get off clear by vigorous rowing.

It will be asked, How have philosophers succeeded in measuring the
rapidity of the onward movement of nervous stimulus ? Several meth-
ods of calculating it have been devised. A doctor of the middle ages,
cited by Haller, gave some thought to it long ago. He conceived — a
singular notion — that the speed of the nervous fluid might be de-
duced from that of the blood in the aorta ; these two rates, he fancied,
must be in the inverse ratio of the sizes of the aorta and the nerve-
tubes. That calculation assigned, as the speed of the nervous fluid,
600,000,000,000 of yards a minute — 600 times the rapidity of the
motion of light.

Haller himself undertook the task in a different way. Reading
the " iEneid " aloud, he counted the number of letters he could pro-
nounce in a minute with a very rapid utterance. He found 1,500
the extreme limit, or one fifteen-hundredth part of a minute for each
letter. Now the letter r requires, Haller says, ten successive contrac-
tions of the muscle that gives the tongue vibration, and from that, he
adds, we may conclude that in one minute this muscle can contract
and relax 15,000 times, which represents 30,000 simple motions. The
distance from the brain to the muscle in question is a little over three
inches. If the nervous fluid travels it 30,000 times, that makes more
than 9,000 feet, and 9,000 feet a minute represents a speed of 154 feet
in a second. This reasoning is a mere sequence of mistakes, and the
approximation to the right view that Haller gained is the more aston-
ishing because his method was not in the least likely to ascertain it.
The "iEneid" justifies, in this instance, its ancient pretensions as a
book of oracles.

Not until 1850 were these researches resumed by a new method
that led to the solution of the problem. It is due to Helmholtz, the
most famous of the German physiologists, who unites, to rare talent as
an observer, the profound learning of a consummate mathematician.
His first method is founded on the use of the chronoscope of Pouillet.
A galvanic current of very brief duration acts at a distance on a mag-
netized needle, and swings it away from the normal position ; the
range of the deviation is measured, and the length of the current de-
duced thence by calculation. A means is thus gained for measuring
intervals of time not exceeding a few thousandths of a second. Helm-
holtz applied this method in the following way : One of the muscles
of a frog's leg is fixed at one extremity in a nip, and attached at the
other extremity to a little lever forming part of a galvanic circuit. A

362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

weight, hung on this lever, serves to give the muscle the required ten
sion. Every thing is so arranged that, at the instant the current is
closed, a shock is produced either directly in the muscle, or in a given
point of a nerve which is isolated for a length of about an inch, and
still adheres by one end to the muscle which it is to stimulate. Under
the influence of this excitement, the muscle contracts, stirs the lever,
and breaks the electric circuit in which it was a part. The duration
of circulation of the current is indicated by the magnetized needle. It
is found, then, that contraction occurs later when the nerve is excited
than when the muscle is excited directly ; the difference discloses the
speed of transmission of the nervous agent, which is found equal to
very nearly 80 feet a second. Helmholtz has ascertained, moreover,
that, in every case, contraction follows the electric shock only after an
interval of time equal to T^ of a second, which he calls the time of
latent stimulus. The muscular fibres do not, therefore, instantly obey
the spur of electricity. Thus the waters of the sea rise under the influ-
ence of lunar attraction only after the planet is long past the meridian.

After these beautiful experiments, which revealed for the first time
the knowledge of the way in which a stimulus is transmitted along the
nerves, Helmholtz devised another method, permitting the analysis of
the phenomenon in its minutest details. In this, also, the contraction
of the muscle lifts a light lever, but the lever carries a point which
leaves a white mark on a revolving cylinder covered with lamp-black.
A peculiar arrangement causes the same point to mark the instant oi
production of the stimulus, and, from that instant to the moment of
the muscular contraction, the point traces a straight line in the lamp-
black. When it is afterward lifted by the tension of the muscle, it
draws a curve which at once represents to sight, by its appearance,
all the different phases of the movement of contraction. By this
method, Helmholtz discovered that the speed of the nerve-current was
a fraction over 83 feet. He proved, moreover, that the tension of the
muscles gradually increases from the first moment of movement, that
it reaches a maximum after about t4q- of a second, and diminishes
again until the muscle returns to its natural state.

This second instrument of Helmholtz received the name of a myo-
graphe. It has been perfected or rather modified by several physiolo-
gists. The great difficulty was, to measure precisely the time corre-
sponding to the different points of the tracing drawn by the point on
the cylinder. Helmholtz communicated motion to the cylinder of his
apparatus by a clock-work arrangement which pointed out to the eye
the length of its revolution. For this method, the use of the diapason
has been advantageously substituted. Dr. Marey, in his course of
medical physiology, employed for this purpose a diapason which
made 500 simple vibrations every second; those vibrations noted
themselves on the cylinder alongside the curve traced by the extrem-
ity of the muscle ; it was sufficient to count the number of vibrations in-

THE VELOCITY OF THE WILL. 363

scribed parallel to a part of the tracing by the muscle, to arrive direct-
ly at the time corresponding to the tracing. Marey detected, by this
method, degrees of speed in transmission varying from 30 to 61 feet.

Moreover, the nerve-current travels more slowly at low tempera-
tures than at high ones. Dr. Munk discovered, besides, that the speed
is not alike in the different parts of a nerve ; in the motor nerves it
seems to increase toward the point of attachment of the muscle. And,
according to De Bezold, this speed decreases when the nerve is under
the influence of an electric current.

The point was now to repeat these experiments on the human sub-
ject. It was found possible to conduct them in this manner : An elec-
tric current produces a slight sensation of pain on one point in the
skin ; the instant of action by the current is marked on the revolving
cylinder of a chronoscope. As soon as the person experimented on
feels the shock, he gives a signal by touching an electric key, and a
second mark is produced on the same cylinder. Measuring the inter-
val comprised between these two marks, we have the time that elapses
between the two signals. This time, which is from one to two-tenths
of a second, is made up of several parts; transmission of external im-
pression to the brain, perception, reflection, transmission of the will to
the fingers, muscular contraction, which is the result ; but, if the stim-
ulus is applied successively to different points on the skin, these delays
are always the same, except that which is due to the transmission of
sensations. If, for instance, a point on the great-toe is first excited,
and aftei*ward a point in the inguinal region, the difference in the .de-
lays remarked will represent the time employed by sensation in ascend-
ing from the foot to the middle of the body.

These experiments were first made in 1861 by Hirsch, director of
the Neufchatel Observatory, by means of an apparatus which it would
take too long to describe here. The person experimented on touched
an electric key with the right hand at the instant of feeling that slight
pain, not unlike a pin-prick, which the knob of an induction apparatus
produces on touching the skin. The knob was applied in succession
to the cheek, then to the left hand, then last to the left foot. The
time lost in the transmission of this stimulus from the point touched
to the right hand was found equal, in the three cases respectively, to
Tu_? ^-^ and TW of a second ; it required, therefore, yf^ of a second
for sensation to arrive from the left hand at the head, and -j-f^ for
its passage from the foot to the head. Hirsch inferred from tins
that the nerve-current travels over a distance of six feet and a frac-
tion in T|L_ of a second, or about 104 feet in a second. Dr. Schelske
repeated these experiments in a more thorough way at the Utrecht
Observatory. He arrived at 91 feet as the speed of transmission of
sensation in the human body. The same experimenter proved that
the passage takes place with the same rapidity in the spinal marrow
as in the nerves. This result is the more remarkable, as the nerve-

364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tubes undergo great changes at their entrance into the spinal mar-
row, where, according to Van Deen, they cease to be sensitive to
the action of electricity, of chemical substances, mechanical inju-
ries, etc.

It follows, from all these experiments, that the nerve-current makes
its way with a speed that is relatively inconsiderable. The hand in
thowing a stone parts the air with the quickness of nearly 68 feet a
second, which is qu'te comparable with that of the nervous fluid; and
the race-horse, the hare, and the leveret, move quite as rapidly. The
arterial wave, which passes through 27f feet in a second, moves only
three times more slowly.

When the sensation transmitted to the spinal marrow occasions a
reflex action, that is, an involuntary movement determined by the inter-
vention of the ganglionic cells, the reflex motion always proceeds more
slowly than that produced by the direct action of the exciting current
on the muscles ; the retarding varies from a thirtieth to a tenth of a
second. It may be inferred from this that reflex action in the spinal
marrow takes twelve times longer than the transmission of a stimulus
through nerves of sensation or motion.

The time employed in the brain's operations is also some tenths of
a second. Dr. Jaeger measured it in the following way : The sub-
ject of the experiment was made to touch the electric key with the
left hand as soon as he received an electric shock on the right side,
and with the risrht hand when the shock came from the left side.
The interval between the shock and the signal was found to be T2^-
of a second when the person knew beforehand, which side the shock
would come from, and Ts^g- when he was not forewarned ; thus Tfo
of a second were used in reflection. Hirsch found that at least two-
tenths of a second elapse before an observer marks by signal the
preception of a luminous spark or a sudden sound. In other experi-
ments it was arranged that the observer should touch the key with
the left hand for a white spark, and with the right for a red one, and
he lost, in that case, from three to four-tenths of a second. Therefore
reflection took from one to two-tenths of a second. Donders and Jae-
ger made the experiment a little differently. One pronounced some
syllable, which the other repeated as soon as he heard it, while a pho-
nontograph registered the vibrations of the word. When the syllable
to -be repeated was agreed on beforehand, the delay observed was two-
tenths of a second ; when not, it was three-tenths.

As we see, then, thought does not spring instantaneously ; it is a
phenomenon subject to natural laws of time and space. In different
observers the time lost is not alike ; one perceives, reflects, and acts,
more briskly than another ; it is a matter of temperament and of acci-
dental circumstance. This explains the differences always remarked
between astronomers busied in observing the same phenomenon. Two
persons never saw at the same instant the passage of a star across a

ASTRONOMICAL AND PHYSICAL OBSERVATORIES. 365

thread : besides, the difference between the instants noted, or what is
termed the " personal equation," of two astronomers, varies more or
less according to circumstances, and may increase or diminish with
time. The observer's training has a great deal to do with it, Wolf
having demonstrated that, by practice, the time lost may be reduced to
a minimum, with the employment of a special apparatus.

An important conclusion follows irresistibly from these experi-
ments : it is, that the nerve-fluid is not identical with the electric fluid.
Electricity darts through telegraphic wires with inconceivable rapidity,
far outspeeding light, and moving 20,000,000 times faster than the
nerve-agent. There exists another important difference between these
two forces. Any alteration in the structure of the nerves checks the
transmission of the nerve-current ; crushing or partial burning is
enough to interrupt its passage; once cut, they do not regain their
conductive power when the separated ends are brought together again.
Metallic wires, on the contrary, conduct electricity in spite of all the
injuries that may be inflicted on them. Yet the well-known labors of
Prof. Dubois-Reymond clearly prove that electricity plays a part of
some kind in nervous phenomena. Electric currents exist naturally in
nerves, and these currents are influenced and modified by the action of
the nerve-currents. It may be admitted, then, that nervous phenomena
are the result of a secondary action of electricity, producing certain
changes, chemical or otherwise, in the nerve-substance ; these manifest
themselves only after the lapse of a certain time, during which the ac-
tion increases in a slow and gradual manner till it becomes sensible,
and produces mechanical effects. This side of the question is still en-
veloped in profound darkness, and we are driven to more or less plau-
sible hypotheses. Still, we can say that a great step has been taken
toward the solution of the problem of life: the experiments of which
this account is given have thrown light upon its approaches, and placed
the question on the ground of exact science. No doubt a long time
will pass before the progress of methods of observation shall permit us
to make one step nearer to the goal, and nothing authorizes the be-
lief that we can ever fully reach it ; but we may take pride in what
has already been done, since the exactness of the results gained sur-
passes all expectation. — Revue des Deux Mondes.

♦»»

ASTRONOMICAL AND PHYSICAL OBSERVATORIES.

IT has been said that " dirt is but matter out of place," and we may
likewise take for an axiom that error is lorce misapplied. It
cannot be complained that the age in which we live is one which de-
mands the most careful economy of our forces of all kinds, nor are we
intellectually in the position which geologists are fond of predicting for

366 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the material world — " nearly out of our store of force." But it were
wisdom in us to husband the forces we have, that we may hand down
to our successors a thoroughly well-ordered system in all things. And
in nothing should we be so careful and scrupulous as in our schemes
of education, which affect, in a very direct way, the judgment of the
generation which follows us.

Sooner or later there is created in most American colleges what is
thereafter known as its astronomical observatory, and in respect to
this portion of the college we are frequently called on to lament over
some glaring instances of wasted force — force misapplied. One of the
forms of these prevalent errors is a mania for " instruments of the
largest size," which are not unfrequently bought at large cost, and
used perhaps a dozen times a year to allow the senior class, and per-
chance a few ladies, to view such objects as Jupiter, Saturn, the moon,
perhaps a double star, and, more unlikely yet, a nebula. Its kindred
error is an immense and vague desire for the multiplication of appa-
ratus, so that one walks amid a labyrinth of chronographs, transits,
meridian circles, and equatorials, upon each of which the rust of long
inaction lies. We must remember that each of these instruments rep-
resents a large outlay of money, and also an expenditure of faith in the
giver of them. It is bad enough to allow so much mere capital to lie
idle, but it is worse not to return to the benefactor of a college some-
thing which may be the sign of a good investment, something which
shall encourage him and others to believe that their gifts are doing
real, practical educational good. It is here intended to speak only of
the college observatory as a means of education, and a distinct differ-
ence is made between the ordinary institution of this kind, and the
working observatories of such colleges as Dartmouth, Harvard, the
University of Michigan, and others.

It is taken for granted that the ordinarily-constituted observatory
is for the purpose of teaching certain specific things and certain im-
portant methods to the average class of college pupils, and it will be
the endeavor of this paper to point out a remedy for some of the
abuses that undoubtedly exist in this respect.

Most certainly there are but few subjects which have a greater edu-
cational value than Astronomy. As a continuation of the most advanced
mathematical course, Theoretical Astronomy is of immense importance
and of endless extent. The effect of its study upon the mind is of a
much higher order, most of us will agree nowadays, whatever Pythag-
oras might have said, than the study of even the most abstract rela-
tions of number and space. It is supplementary to these last-named
subjects, which are, so to say, its raw material, which it elaborates
into more complex and higher forms. But let us remember, it is the
boast of Theoretical Astronomy that it is purely a science of the closet,
dependent upon observation only for its data. Its greatest master,
Laplace, thus speaks in the " Systeme du Monde : " " II est tres re-

ASTRONOMICAL AND PHYSICAL OBSERVATORIES. 367

marquable qu'un Astronome, sans sortir de son observatoire, en com-
parant seulement ses observations a Panalyse, cut pu determiner ex-
actement la grandeur et l'aplatissernent de la terre, et sa distance au
soleil et a la lune, elernens dont la connaissance a ete le fruit de longs
et sensibles voyages dans les deux hemispheres," x etc. (6me edition,
p. 232).

It is evidently not the purpose of Theoretical Astronomy, then, to
train faculties other than those employed in the higher mathematical
investigations, and for this purpose no observatory is strictly neces-
sary. But Physical Astronomy, as usually taught, confines itself to
Descriptive Astronomy, and for that study it is undoubtedly necessary
that students should have access (and a far freer access than they
usually have) to instruments. To supply this want, " instruments of
the largest size " have been too frequently supplied, so that it is pos-
sible that the student may contemplate the features of the moon, or
the components of a coarse double star, through a 15-inch, nay, per-
haps, a 20-inch object-glass, when perhaps a 4-inch telescope of
Alvan Clark's make would serve the student's and the college's pur-
poses fully. It used to be a saying of a celebrated American astrono-
mer that " the price of telescopes increased directly as the cubes of the
diameters of their object-glasses." If no higher ratio be the true one,
it is evident that in the case supposed we have force misapplied, or not
applied at all. It has become almost a reproach for a college not to
own an equatorial of at least eight inches clear aperture ; yet only con-
sider how much of the best work of astronomy has been done with
less apertures ! Sir John Herschel and Sir James South executed a
long and very refined series of measures of double stars with a much
smaller instrument than the ordinary college equatorial, and much of
Struve's best work is recorded as done with "the smaller instru-
ments," and so on. It is not intended to advocate the use of poor in-
struments, nor specially of small ones, but to point out that the means
should be adjusted to the object in view, and that no waste of power
should be permitted. Again, Spherical Astronomy is taught in some
colleges ; and, in considering this branch of the subject, we are touch-
ing on its most useful portion. In nothing is a student's habit of
accuracy more trained than in astronomical observation. There are
minor points to be attended to each moment, and it is not until he
ceases to be a pupil that he begins to be thoroughly at ease with even
the simplest instrument. He has a running commentary of reasoning
to make constantly, which is of the greatest value to him. He must
constantly ask himself, while using his instruments, " If I do this or that,
what will happen, and why ? " Now, it is presumably to forward this

1 It is a very noteworthy fact that an astronomer, without quitting his observatory,
but by merely submitting his observations to analysis, could have determined exactly
the dimensions of the earth, its oblate form, and its distance from sun and moon — data
which have been obtained as the fruit of long and arduous voyages in both hemispheres.

3 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

branch of Astronomy — Spherical Astronomy— that the college observa-
tory was founded, and, if it does this in the right way, it is of great
value. To do this properly, requires but a small outlay. A small
equatorial of, say, four inches aperture, with circles divided to one
minute, will serve to exhibit every thing of interest to the general ob-
server, and will give a student much more opportunity for work than
he can possibly find time to improve. A Pistor & Martin's portable
meridian circle, two good clocks or chronometers, and, if one wishes
luxury, a chronograph, will fit up a small observatory in the most com-
plete way, and give both student and professor excellent means for
observation. All this could easily be bought for the price of one of
the unwieldy equatorials which lie idle in so many college-towers.

"We must remember, too, that the professor of astronomy in most
colleges is a busy individual. I have before me the condensed cata-
logues of 157 American colleges, with an aggregate number of pupils
so great as 34,515, and, on running over the lists of college-officers, I
find such entries as the following : " , Professor of Mechan-
ics, Astronomy, and Engineering : " or " Professor of Mathematics,
Astronomy, Physics, and Geology:" or of "Astronomy and Physi-
ology ; " or, again, of " Latin, Astronomy, and History of American
Literature," and many other similar mixtures.

All this indicates that very little time is given by the average stu-
dent to any proper study of the subject, and the expensive and ill-con-
sidered observatories in the country certainly show that a great deal
of money and time is wasted in their construction. The writer of this
article is familiar with several of such ill-proportioned sets of appara-
tus. In one case, the observatory contains a fair equatorial of six inches
aperture, mounted on a brick arch let into the walls of its tower a few
feet below the floor of the dome, which arch receives every tremor of
the adjacent building, which is full of students ; also a fine portable
transit by Wurdemann, no clock, and a mean solar chronometer. In
another a fine clock is thrown away on a zenith telescope, which is used
only as a transit, and so on.

The moral would seem to be to have few instruments, to have them
of the best possible workmanship for their size, and to have no one so
large and expensive as to prevent the purchase of others which are
necessary.

But it is proposed further to give a few reasons why, as a means
of education, the astronomical observatory might well, in ordinary
cases, be superseded by the physical observatory, or at least why- in
most cases it would be better to divert some of the funds, which would
otherwise be spent on little-used apparatus, to establishing a physical
observatory, on a modest basis.

And first let us remember that, to properly educate, we must not
only give knowledge, but also the power to acquire knowledge ; that,
although facts are of great importance, the mental grasp which will

ASTRONOMICAL AND PHYSICAL OBSERVATORIES. 369

connect isolated facts is much more valuable. Viewed in this light,
the study of astronomy will he readily seen to he less efficient for
training the mind than the study of physics. Physics, indeed, in-
cludes astronomy as one of its parts, hut, as the termph ysics is com
monly used, it denotes the science of the changes and conditions of
terrestrial matter, and peculiarly of the laws relating to the various
emanations of celestial bodies, heat, light, etc. The subjects here re-
ferred to are such that their study requires in the very highest degree
just those faculties which it is the province of modern education to
train. Physics, too, is eminently a practical science ; it gives the ra-
tionale of what we see all around us, and is, so to say, of progressive
difficulty. Its elements may be taught to the young lad, and he may
go on for his life in their development. Every special method which
is useful educationally, that we have referred to in astronomical study,
has its analogue here.

Thermo-dynamics and optics certainly present as wide fields for
pure analysis as even celestial mechanics. In the cultivation of the
powers of observation, the study of physics stands preeminent ; and
in the physical laboratory the student has an immense advantage, for
in many cases it is within his power to produce by experiment, and on
a small scale and under favorable conditions, the same appearances
that he observes in Nature. There is thus opened to the mind a vast
field for that " scientific use of the imagination " which is so important
an element in culture.

Perhaps it is more than time that the exact nature of a physical
laboratory or observatory should be explained, and we are fortunate
in having a succinct account of its main purpose from the hand of
Prof. Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution.

Prof. Henry says (Report, 1870, p. 141) the principal object of a
physical observatory is, "to investigate the nature and changes of the
constitution of the heavenly bodies ; to study the various emanations
from these, in comparison with the results of experiments, and to re-
cord and investigate the different phenomena which are included under
the name of terrestrial physics."

The study of the nature and constitution of the sun, by means of
photographs, by experiments on its heat, by the spectroscope, and the
comparison of these results with similar observations of the stars, is
also pointed out by Prof. Henry, as among the legitimate and neces-
sary works of such an institution as he describes. Climatology, me-
teorology, magnetics, and electrics, equally belong to its scope.

To completely equip such an observatory as we imagine, would
require a great outlay, but, considered only in its relation to a college,
an equipment becomes much more simple and less expensive. The
apparatus required is simple in its nature, and but few of the single
instruments are of great cost, and the true policy of a college would
be to allow its laboratory to grow slowly with it, enlarging its scope
vol. 11. — 24

37o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as occasion demanded. In such an observatory the student would
acquire every habit of nice adjustment, delicate manipulation, accu-
rate judgment, which would be acquired in the best astronomical ob-
servatory, and the field for the mathematical discussion of his results
is simply limitless.

In another aspect, too, does the foundation of such observatories
hold out important promises. It must be remembered that many of
our physical constants rest unfortunately upon too uncertain a basis.
The velocity of electricity and the density of the earth are examples.
We have to look, then, to scientific men for the establishment of these
and other facts as they truly are, and besides, for the discovery of the
vast number of unknown physical laws, some of which we must be-
lieve are entirely within our reach, and but waiting continued effort
to declare themselves. The laws of terrestrial magnetism, the con-
nection of the aurora borealis with other appearances, and like sub-
jects, seem upon the point of being elucidated. It must be remem-
bered, too, that one astronomical observatory can do the routine work
for an entire country, and that, once done, it is done forever, and that
any repetition of it, however useful it may be to the person making it,
is yet of no original value in the world. But the vast number of un-
classified facts in the domain of physics, and the almost infinite variety
of its unknown laws, will supply ample work for many more physi-
cal observatories than could possibly be established. It seems deci-
dedly to the advantage of the student and of the college that each
should have the benefit of a well-appointed physical observatory, and
it is certain that the class of American gentlemen who found and sus-
tain departments of this kind in our colleges (and it is a very large
class, to our honor be it said), will find, in the establishment of such
an observatory as we have advocated, the pleasure which comes from
effort wisely made. They will see (as they have a most undoubted right
to expect to see) the immediate usefulness and benefit of their gift, and
can hardly fail to have aided in the discovery of some one of the many
laws of physics which lie so close to us, almost demanding discovery.

The wisest plan for the foundation of such an observatory may be
found in the form of a letter in the Smithsonian Report for 1870, al-
ready referred to, and it is as an introduction to that letter that the
present paper may claim to have any value.

EDITOR >S

TABLE.

37»

EDITOR'S TABLE.

OBSERVATION IN EDUCATION.
A N excellent article in the Tribune
U~\. urges the need of more and
better-educated observers to carry on
the work of science. Prof. Agassiz is
quoted as urging the establishment, in
San Francisco, of a college for the
training of skilled scientific observers.
It is stated that the Signal-Service Bu-
reau is engaged in training a large
number of students in the use of in-
struments of observation, with a view
to taking charge of signal-stations for
the promotion of meteorological sci-
ence. We publish an able and inter-
esting paper on the claims of physical
laboratories, in connection with insti-
tutions of learning, which shall afford
the necessary opportunity of training
in phys:cal observation. Of the im-
portance of this work the writer in the
Tribune observes : " We think the day
is coming when it will be generally
recognized that careful scientific obser-
vation is the most valuable labor per-
formed in the world." And regarding
its delicacy and difficulty, lie further
observes :

" Of the nicety of observation -which sci-
ence requires, it is difficult to convey to the
uninitiated any idea, A man who has never
before looked through a telescope would not
probably be able to see Biela's comet, upon
whose vagaries hang so much speculation, if
he gazed through any of the instruments by
which the observations on it have been ob-
tained. The hest microscopists, in approach-
ing the more difficult class of investigations,
prepare their physical systems by fasting and
rest, so that even their skilled eyesight may
give a purer service. Already men are train-
ing themselves in certain specialties of obser-
vation, with reference to the fevr minutes
of work they expect to perform, two years
hence, at the transit of Venus."

Kow all this is most true. Excepting
that higher intellectual work by which,
from the facts of observation, laws are

arrived at, so that general principles
can be substituted for ever-accumulat-
ing details, there is no labor performed
in the world so valuable as that of
careful scientific observation, and it is
also true that its difficulty equals its
importance.

But there is a vital consideration
connected with the subject, which the
writer seems to have overlooked: it is
that the capacity of educated observa-
tion is just as necessary for people
generally as for men of science. Facts
bear the same relation to principles, in
common life, that they do in the higher
departments of technical science. The
question is, at last, simply one of evi-
dence: what is fact, and what is not fact?
Imperfect observations vitiate reason-
ing, and lead to erroneous conclusions
in the workshop, on the farm, in the
counting-room, the church, and the
legislative ball, just as much as in the
laboratory or the observatory. The
objects are different; the mental pro-
cedure is the same. But that which
is a universal necessity should be pro-
vided for by universal means, and sys-
tematic training in observation should
therefore be a recognized part of our
common education. Even for purposes
of the higher science, this truth is not
to be neglected ; for you can no more
make first-class observers out of young
men who first take up the business in
college, than you can make first-class
musicians by beginning with adults.
Skill in doing the most important work
in the world is not to be so cheaply
and readily acquired. For the sake of
science itself, training in observation
should begin in childhood, and become
an early mental habit. There are na-
tive aptitudes here as in all other de-
partments of intellectual exertion; and
only by beginning with the young can

372

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

we find those whoso natural bent is in
this direction, and who, by early prepa-
ration and life-long discipline in this
difficult field, can reach that standard
of perfection which science now re-
quires, and which it will continue
more and more to exact. But when
we take the larger view of the value
of observational training, which re-
gards it as nothing less than bringing
the general mind into right relations
with Nature, art, man, and all the ob-
jects and interests around us, of which
we are compelled to form judgments,
the claims of special science are at
once subordinated to the grander re-
quirements of humanity. Or perhaps it
would be more correct to say that sci-
ence is itself to be so widened and en-
larged as to take control of this fun-
damental work of education. Until
scientific education recognizes this as
its first and great task, it will assured-
ly fall short of its highest duty.

DEATH OF MR. GREELEY.

One of the greatest personalities of
our country has just passed away. We
have little to add to the strain of eulogy
that has been heard in all parts of the
land, concerning the life and character
of the late Mr. Geekley. That he has
filled a large space in public attention
for the past generation, is of little mo-
ment; that he has exerted an exten-
sive influence for good upon the Amer-
ican people during that long period,
entitles his name to be written high in
the rolls of public honor. He is to be
gratefully remembered, net because of
his large capacities and extensive in-
fluence, but because he used his pow-
ers in the best service of his fellow-
men. He ever worked* in the direction
of social amelioration and public im-
provement. Believing in the power
of ideas, the value of knowledge, and
the vital need of general education, and
that the progress of society is an in-
ternal constructive work of its citizens,

depending upon virtue, industry, and
intelligence, he established a journal
dedicated to these objects, and devel-
oped it into a great and powerful in-
stitution for moulding the public mind,
and elevating the public character.
For thousands of families scattered all
over this land, the newspaper founded
by Mr. Greeley has played the part of
a people's university — arousing and
stimulating multitudes of the young
to enter upon the work of self-improve-
ment, or to seek instruction in acade-
mies, high-schools, or colleges. Of all
this it is superfluous to speak, as its
living witnesses may be everywhere
met, while the public press has done
full justice to the magnitude and salu-
tary influence of Mr. Greeley's work.
But, there is one point in regard to
his mental character upon which a few
words may not be here out of place.
Mr. Greeley made the most of his op-
portunities of self-education. He read
widely in critical literature, and at-
tained a mastership of his own lan-
guage which but few of the largest
opportunities of culture have equalled.
It has been customary, with many, to
lament that Mr. Greeley was without
the advantages of a regular collegiate
course of study. But he was never
much troubled by this alleged deficien-
cy. He saw too much of the influence
of our colleges in turning out waste
acquisitions, unavailable faculty, and
capacities unadapted to the times, to
regret very deeply that he had not
been exposed to the same peril. This
has been often attributed to the igno-
rant egotism of the self-made man, but,
we think, very erroneously; for Mr.
Greeley did have his profound regrets
at his own mental shortcomings and
defective culture. He deplored the cir-
cumstances of his early life, which gave
him no chance to acquire the rudiments
of science. TVe have often heard hira
express deep and painful regret that
there was no one to guide his child-
hood in the direction of observing and

EDITOR'S TABLE.

373

studying the familiar phenomena of
Nature. He keenly felt that his life
had been made less enjoyable to him-
self and less valuable to the public for
want of that early cultivation of the
observing powers by natural objects,
of which we have just been speaking,
as the great defect of our common edu-
cation. He knew nothing of science,
but he never despised it, as is too com-
mon with the devotees of literature
and politics, who are generally igno-
rant of it ; and he was always strong in
his condemnation of our educational
system, because of its culpable neglect
of scientific studies. He was emphatic
in insisting that the study of natural
things should be commenced in child-
hood, so as to maintain a place in after-
development, for he saw how difficult
it is, when the mind becomes engrossed
with other knowledge, to give proper
attention to the study of science. Mr.
Greeley's love of Nature was a pro-
found and genuine feeling, and his in-
terest in rural affairs was very far from
being an affectation. All who are fa-
miliar with the course of the Tribune
in its early days will remember the
prominence given to science in its col-
umns— the copious illustrated reports
of the lectures of Lardner and Agassiz,
and the fulness and ability of its treat-
ment of scientific agriculture. Had it
not been for the all-disturbing influ-
ence of the antislavery convulsions
which distracted the country for twen-
ty years, this early policy of the Tri-
bune would undoubtedly have been
carried out in a systematic way, and
with the most salutary public results.
If Mr. Greeley did not imderstand
science, and was therefore unable to
assist in its direct development, he,
nevertheless, appreciated the noble
part it is to play in the world's affairs,
and the great service the press can
render in promoting it ; and, in the
card announcing his return to the edi-
torial control of the Tribune, he stated
that this would be among the great ob-

jects to which he proposed t© dedicate
the remainder of his life. It is to be
hoped that the managers of that jour-
nal will share in the discernment of its
founder, and, as its history is indissol-
ubly linked with the diffusion of ideas
among the American people, that they
will see to it that its future shall, in
this respect, be worthy of its past.

TYNDALL AND FROUDE.

Ik the same ship came two wise
men from the East, at the urgent soli-
citation of our people, to instruct them
by public lectures. But it turns out
that there are different kinds of wis-
dom, and our illustrious teachers rep-
resent very diverse sorts of it. Prof.
Tyndall accepts, as the problem of his
life-study, the universe as it is. By
the help of all that has been hitherto
revealed concerning the order and har-
mony of Nature, he engages with the
living phenomena of the world as it
exists around us, and is accessible to
all. To understand the present ongo-
ings of the universe, the course and
polity of Nature, and the living laws by
what we are all enmeshed, is his su-
preme and immediate task. Not what
men have thought in past times, nor
what they may happen to think now,
but what can be demonstrated, and
what all can actually know to be
true, is his great concern. Asking no
man to take his bare word, he shows
us facts that can be recognized, prin-
ciples that can be proved, laws that can
be verified, truths that can no more be
resisted than the physical forces them-
selves. He speaks to us of the order
of Nature in its latest and grandest in-
terpretations, and with such force of
proof that his crowded listeners are
convinced, and assent to his utterances
as one man. Multitudes in our leading
cities have heard him with eager at-
tention ; but there has not been a
ripple of criticism or dissent even suffi-
cient to indicate his presence among

374

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

us. This results from the quality of
the knowledge he imparts, which is sci-
ence, or knowledge that can ho shown
to- he true. It is felt that so much, at
all events, is gained. So far we can all
agree.

The question now arises, How far
can this platform of solid and irresisti-
ble truth be widened ? The discov-
ery and organization of this certain
knowledge have been the work of
the past three centuries, and its fur-
ther expansion is the great work of the
present time. Is it to be equally the
task of the future, and is science in-
definitely progressive ? Is law univer-
sal and ascertainable, and are we to go
on creating new knowledge of this
kind, and reconstructing the older
knowledges, until they shall take on
the form and character of science ? Or,
are there limits, and have we reached
them ? The question, as all must see,
is simply one of the extent of the order
of natural law, for, wherever there are
method and law, there is possibility of
science. Prof. Tyndall represents, first
of all, our sure ground of knowledge
and then its certain and safe exten-
sion.

Mr. Froude, on the other hand, rep-
resents opposite ideas and modes of
thought. He deals with the past rath-
er than the present — with human
events in their variable, obscure, and
uncertain course, rather than with
that side of the world in which law
and order can be clearly shown. He
represents the debatable and unsettled
in human affairs, and that which will
be forever debated, and can never be
settled. Hence, no sooner does he open
his mouth, than dispute arises, and a
hubbub of contradiction and conten-
tion has followed him whithersoever
he has gone. Mr. Froude gives lessons
in what he calls "history," but his
teachings do not enforce assent. At
this we cannot complain, for he him-
self believes that there is neither law,
order, nor science in his chosen field

of labor. He belongs to the anti-
quated, historical school, which was in
the ascendant long before science arose,
and is contented to delve in the rubbish
of the past, with no guiding light from
principles that science has disclosed, and
which even scouts all possibility of such
guidance. Mr. Froude gave a lecture
upon this subject before the Royal In-
stitution, in 1864, attacking the views
of those who hold that there is such a
thing as a science of history and of so-
cial polity, which, although still in an
indefinite stage, is yet as certain in the
future as the progress of knowledge
itself. The reader, who will turn to
the June number of the Monthly, will
find a convincing refutation, by Herbert
Spencer, of Mr. Froude's position ; and,
as the subject is just now one of public
interest, we reproduce some passages
from an able lecture of Mr. John Fiske,
of Cambridge, upon the same subject:

" Mr. Froude begins by dogmatically de-
nying that there is or can be such a thing a.s
a science of history. There is something
incongruous, he says, in the very connec-
tion of the two words. ' It is as if we were
to talk of the color of sound, or the longi-
tude of the rule of three.' But he carries
on the thought in a way that shows plainly
his reluctance to grapple fairly with the
problem. In his next sentence he says :
1 Where it is so difficult to make out the
truth on the commonest disputed facts in
matters passing under our very eyes, how
can we talk of a science in things long past,
which come to us only through books ? '
Now, to reason like this is merely to shrink
from the encounter. For the question is,
not whether the science is difficult, but
whether it is possible. Mr. Froude sets
out to show that there can be no such
science, and his first bit of proof is that,
if there is such a science, it must be far
more difficult than any other ; a position
which we may contentedly grant. Let us
follow him a step further. ' It often seems
to me as if history were like a child's box
of letters, with which we can spell any word
we please. "We have only to pick out such
letters as we want, arrange them as we like,
and say nothing about those which do not
suit our purpose.' And what does all this
amount to? Is this Mr. Froude's idea of

EDITORS TABLE.

37?

historical investigation? Why, the same
thing may be done in any science. We
have only to pick out all the facts on one
side, and blink all the facts on the other
side, to prove the veracity of every oracle,
soothsayer, and clairvoyant, that ever ex-
isted, the validity of every paltry omen, the
credibility of every crazy notion of alchemy
or judicial astrology. In this way we may
prove that the homceopathist always saves
his patient, while the allopathist always
kills him ; or vice versa. And it was in this
way that the phrenologists erected their
pseudo-science. It is in this way that
every charlatanry, as well as every incor-
rect or inadequate hypothesis in physical or
mental science, has arisen and gained tem-
porary recognition. Mr. Froude ought to
know that, in history as in every thing
else, our only road to a safe conclusion lies
through the impartial examination of all
relevant facts. Supposing Tycho Brahe
had said to his Copernican antagonists :
' Astronomy is like a child's box of let-
ters ; if we take out what we want and let
the rest go, we can spell whatever we please ;
I spell out the Ptolemaic theory, and will
therefore abide by it ; ' he would have been
talking much after the manner of Mr. Froude.
It is true, as Mr. Froude says, that one phi-
losopher believes in progress, a second in re-
trogression, and a third, like Vico, in ever-
recurring cycles. But is this because the
facts are undecipherable, or because the in-
vestigation is one-sided ? Because Prof.
Agassiz believes species to be fixed, while
the majority of naturalists believe them to
be transmutable, are we to infer that there
is no science of biology ? In such unworthy
plight does Mr. Froude retreat before the
problem he has encountered. He starts to
show us that a science of history is as ridic-
ulous an impossibility as a scarlet B flat or a
westerly proportion, and he ends by mildly
observing that history is a difficult subject,
in which a series of partial examinations
may bring forth contradictory conclusions I
" The next bit of inference concerns us
more intimately : * Will a time ever be
when the lost secret of the foundation of
Borne can be recovered by historic laws ?
If not, where is our science ? ' Just where
it was before. The science of history has
nothing to do with dates, except to take
them, so far as they can be determined,
from the hands of historical criticism.
They are its data, not its conclusions. As
Mr. Morley reminds us, we do not dispute
the possibility of a science of meteorology,
because such a science cannot tell us whether

it was a dry day or a wet day at Jericho two
thousand years ago. Facts like these show
us that sciences dealing with phenomena,
which are the products t>f many and com-
plex factors, cannot hope to attain that
minute precision which is attained by sci-
ences dealing with phenomena which are
the products of few and simple factors.
They show that sociology cannot, like
astronomy, be brought under the control
of mathematical deduction. But it was not
necessary for Mr. Froude to write an essay
to prove that.

" But, continues Mr. Froude, ' can you
imagine a science which would have fore-
told such movements as' Mohammedan-
ism, or Christianity, or Buddhism ? To the
question as thus presented, we must an-
swer, certainly not. Neither can any man
foretell any such movement as the typhoid
fever which six months hence is to strike
him down. If the latter case does net prove
that there are no physiologic laws, neither
does the former prove that there are no laws
of history. In both instances the antece-
dents of the phenomenon are irresistibly
working out their results ; though, in both
cases, they are so complicated that no human
skill can accurately anticipate their course.
But to a different presentment of Mr. Froude's
question we might return a different answer.
There is a sense in which movements like
Mohammedanism and Buddhism, or Chris-
tianity, could not have been predicted, and
there is a sense in which they could have
been. What could not have been predicted
was the peculiar character impressed upon
these movements by the gigantic personal-
ities of such men as Mohammed and Omar,
Sakyamuni, Jesus, and Paul. What coidd
have been predicted was the general char-
acter and direction of the movements. For
example, as I shall show in a future lecture,
Christianity as a universal religion was not
possible until Eome had united in a single
commonwealth the progressive nations of
the world. And, when Eome -had accom-
plished this task, it might well have been
predicted that before long a religion would
arise which should substitute monotheism
for polytheism, proclaiming the universal
fatherhood of God and the universal broth-
erhood of men. I admit that such a predic-
tion could have been made only by a person
familiar with scientific modes of thought not
then in existence ; but, could such a person
have been present to contemplate the phe-
nomena, he might have foreseen such a rev-
olution in its main features, as being an in-
evitable result of tho interaction of Jewish.

376

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Ilel'lenic, and Roman ideas. I am inclined
to think he might have foreseen that it
would arise in Palestine, that its spread
would he confined to the area covered by
Roman civilization, and that its work would
be most thorough in the most thoroughly-
Romanized regions.

"I would not, however, insist upon this
point ; nor is it necessary to do so. In
none of the concrete sciences is there any
thing like thorough and systematic previ-
sion, save in astronomy ; and even in astron-
omy our foresight becomes precarious as
soon as we pass beyond the solar system
and begin to inquire into the mutual grav-
itation of the innumerable stellar bodies.
We know that our sun is rushing with im-
mense velocity toward the constellation
Hercules ; but we cannot yet trace his orbit
as Kepler traced the orbit of Mars. When
we come to biology and psychology, the
power of accurate prevision is very small ;
yet no one denies that the phenomena of
life and intelligence conform to fixed and
ascertainable laws. In sociology we must
expect to find still less ability to predict.
The truth is, as Comte acutely pointed out,
that while in the simpler sciences our object
is gained if we can foretell the course of
phenomema so as to be able to regulate our
actions by it, in the more complex sciences
our object is gained when we have general-
ized the conditions under which phenomena
occur so as to be able to make our volitions
count for something in modifying them.
"We cannot modify astronomic phenomena,
but we can predict them. We cannot pre-
dict, save to a limited extent, biologic phe-
nomena ; but, knowing more and more thor-
oughly the conditions under which they occur,
we can more and more skilfully modify them
so as to insure health or overcome disease.
And obviously even this limited ability to
modify the phenomena implies a certain
amount of prevision, enough to justify us
m asserting that the phenomena conform
to law. The case is similar in sociology.
Though we may not be able definitely to
predict a given political revolution, we may,
nevertheless, understand the general move-
ment of affairs, and the effects which certain
kinds of legislation are likely to produce, so
as to hasten a desired result or avert social
mischief. Upon this possibility are based
all our methods of government and of edu-
cation. And, as in biology, this ability to
modify the phenomena proves that the
phenomena occur in some fixed order of
sequence. For, where there is no definite
order of sequence among phenomena, we

can neither predict nor modify them ; and,
where there is a definite order of sequence,
there is, or may be, a science.

" Now, in denying that there is or can be
a science of history, Mr. Froude, if he means
any thing, means that social affairs have no
fixed order of sequence, but are the sport of
chance. Either Law or Chance — these are
the only alternatives, unless we have re-
course, like the Mussulman, to Destiny, an
illegitimate third idea, made up of the other
two, misconceived and mutilated in order to
fit together. But for the modern thinker
there is no middle course. It is either sym-
metry or confusion, law or chance, and be-
tween the two antagonist conceptions there
can be no compromise. If the law of causa
tion is universal, we must accept the theory
of law. If it has ever, in any one instance,
been violated, we may be excused for tak
ing up with the theory of chance. Now, we
know that all the vast bodies in this sidereal
universe move on for untold ages in their
orbits in strict conformity to law. In con-
formity to law the solar system in all its
complexity has grown out of a homogeneous
nebula ; and the crust of the cooling earth
has condensed into a rigid surface fit for the
maintenance of organic life. Out of plastic
materials furnished by tb^s surface, and the
air and moisture by which it is enveloped,
organic life has arisen and been multiplied
in countless differing forms, all in accord-
ance with law. Of this aggregate of organic
existence, man, the most complex and per-
fect type, lives and moves and has his be-
ing in strict conformity to law. His periods
of activity and repose are limited by cosmic
rotations. His achievements, physical and
mental, are determined by the rate of his
nutrition, and by the molecular structure
and relative weight of the nervous matter
contained in him. His very thoughts must
chase each other along definite paths and
contiguous channels marked out by the laws
of association. Throughout these various
phenomena, already generalized for us by
astronomers, geologists, biologists, and psy-
chologists, we know that neither at any
time nor in any place is law interfered
with — that yesterday, to-day, and forever,
the effect follows the cause with inevitable
and inexorable certainty. And yet wo are
asked to believe that in one particular corner
of the universe, upon the surface of our lit-
tle planet, in a portion of the organism of
one particular creature, there is one special
phenomenon, called volition, in whieh the
law of causation ceases to operate, and
every thing goes helter-skelter I "

LITER ART NOTICES.

377

LITERARY NOTICES.

Faraday as a Discoverer : By JonN Tyn-
dall. New York : D. Appleton & Co.,
1868.

Michael Faraday : By Dr. J. H. Glad-
stone, F.R.S. London: 1872.

Notice sur Michel Faraday, sa Vie et ses
Travaux : A. de la Rive. Geneva: 1867.

The name of Faraday has been a fa-
miliar one to all of us for many years. As
students, it was in our class-books, occur-
ring on page after page, with others nearly
as familiar ; and it i3 almost ludicrous to
remember the notion we had, as boys, of
the men whose works were before us.
Their names were the only realities to us;
their real existence was a vague concession
to authority; the possibility of knowing
any thing of their true life and character
was too remote to be considered.

Their work was before us, and the hand
that did it unknown. Liebig was a myth,
Regnault a shadow, the double-headed Du-
long et Petit a visionary Cerberus who
barked at error. Afterward we began to
know more of them as lecturers, or by their
portraits, and, to some of us, Herschel,
Faraday, Tyndall, are as real as our friends.
And how delightful it was, this making
friends of our shadowy acquaintances ; how
grateful we were to Arago for his long se-
ries of eloffcs of great men ! The curious
steel portrait of Laplace prefixed to the
French editions of his " Systeme du Monde "
told us much of him, but how much more
we knew from Arago's anecdote of this
towering genius, who could and did pro-
nounce an opinion on the probable dura-
tion of the solar system ; how one day he,
sitting in his study, was timidly approached
by Madame de Laplace, with the request
that he might " intrust " to her " the key
of the sugar." He, a "peer of France;
Grand-officer of the Legion of Honor ; one
of the forty of the French Academy ; of the
Academy of Sciences ; member of the Bu-
reau of Longitude of France ; of the Royal
Societies of London and Gottingen ; of the
Academies of Science of Russia, Denmark,
Sweden, Prussia, the Low Countries, Italy,"
etc., he with the " key of the sugar ! "

So, we first began to know Faraday as a
man, through a steel engraving of him pub-

lished by the Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge ; and the promise in his
youthful, tender face we may read fulfilled
in the books before us. Prof. Tyndall's
book contains two engravings of Faraday,
with the fire of his young face subdued to
a peaceful light ; and, if this volume should
pass to a second edition, it would add to its
value as- an exponent of Faraday's inner
life, to include in it a copy of one of his
early portraits. Its title is "Faraday as
a Discoverer," but in spite of its title we
cannot but know of the sweetness and
light of his character; as if, indeed, it were
impossible to conceive of his place as a
philosopher, without knowing somewhat of
the man.

His " Life and Letters," by Dr. Bence
Jones, gives best a conception of his de-
velopment as a man and as a scientist, for
it is shown by his own hand. And yet
these tributes of his three friends must be
read to understand him ; and, in reading
these, you cannot fail to be struck with one
thing, which is in itself a key to his char-
acter.

Dr. Gladstone proposes to treat of his
" life and noble character " so as to be ap-
preciated by those who " cannot follow his
scientific researches," and yet one gath-
ers from this life his scientific methods
and a knowledge of his principal results :
De la Rive and Tyndall mean to speak
chiefly of his work, and yet they must turn
aside to tell of his loveliness of disposition.
The truth is that, in his life, science was
not a thing apart ; he lived in it ; his house
and his laboratory joined, and his thoughts
knew no difference as to place.

In reading these books you are not
struck with the wonderful facts of his life ;
that he should be born a smith's' son, and
die a member of seventy-three scientific
bodies ; it requires an effort to remember
this, for from the first you feel, with De la
Rive, that he had that condition which ex-
ists but rarely, " c'est le genie." E. s. h.

Quarterly German Magazine. (Ber-
lin, 1872, Carl Habel.) This appears to
be intended for English readers, but a slight
acquaintance with German will be found
of great use for whoever wishes to find out
what the writers are driving at. Not hav-

17*

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing seen the original German of the two
papers which make up the second number
of this serial, we are not prepared to say
whether they contain any thing novel or
interesting about the matters they treat of.
On the whole, it were better to convey sci-
entific instruction to English-speaking peo-
ple in the English language.

Proceedings at the Inauguration of the
Building for the Departments of
Arts and of Science in the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania; also Special
Announcement of the Organization
and Course of Study of the New
Department of Science, same Univer-
sity.

The Appendix to the " Proceedings " con-
tains two very brief notices of the life and
labors of the late John F. Frazer, LL. D.,
Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chem-
istry, and editor of the Journal of the Frank-
lin Institute. The new Department of Sci-
ence, established in the university, allows
the student to make his choice of a profes-
sional training between the following four
courses : Chemistry and Mineralogy ; Ge-
ology and Mining ; Civil Engineering ; and
Mechanical Engineering.

A Popular Treatise on Gems, by Dr. L.
Feuchtw anger. New York, 1872. Pub-
lished by the author, No. 55 Cedar St.

This useful work, now in its fourth edi-
tion, is intended as a guide for the teacher
of natural science, the lapidary, jeweller,
and amateur. It is, in the best sense of the
term, a popular treatise, explaining the
chemical constitution and properties, and
the geological character, of all the substances
known as gems, in such a manner as to be
understood by the untechnical student.
The first part, which treats of mineralogy
in general, is based on Nichols's " Ele-
ments," and treats of the forms, physical and
chemical properties, and classification, of
minerals. The second part treats of gems
in general, their composition and geographi-
cal distribution, and describes the various
ways of grinding, polishing, and setting
them, as also the methods of producing
gems artificially. The third and last part
is devoted to the consideration of the vari-
ous species of gems, in the order of their
commercial value. The Appendix contains

a full chronological list of works on gems,
which will be of great service to the stu-
dent who desires to form an acquaintance
with the literature of this branch of miner-

alogy.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Annual Report of the Board of Health,
to the General Assembly of Louisiana.
New Orleans, 1872.

Proceedings of the Agassiz Institute,
Sacramento, Cal. With the Constitution
and By-Laws. Sacramento, 1872.

Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary
of State, of the State of Michigan, relating
to the Registry and Return of Births, Mar-
riages, and Deaths. For the Year 1860.
Lansing, Mich., 1872.

Popular Address on Organic Reform,
delivered before the Illinois State Medical
Society, at Rock Island, for the Session of
1872. By A. L. McArthur, M. D. Chicago,
1872.

New Theory of the Origin of Species.
By B. G. Ferris. New Haven, 1872.

On a Method of detecting the Phases

of Vibration in the Air surrounding a

Sounding Body. By Alfred M. Mayer,
Ph.D.

MISCELLANY.

Experiments on Sound. — Prof. Mayer,
of the Hoboken Technological Institute,
N. J., has made some rare and remarka-
ble researches on sound, of which he late-
ly gave an account before the Lyceum of
Natural History, New York. The following
is a summary of the views he presented :
That sound reaches the ear by a series of
waves or undulations, is a generally-accept-
ed fact. But, although so accepted, it may
well be doubted whether many persons,
even among those of considerable general
culture, are possessed of a clear view of the
nature of these waves. To obtain this, it is
necessary to bear in mind that the waves
of sound which take place within a gaseous
medium are in no wise similar to those
waves which undulate on the surface of
water or other liquids. The latter form
around their point of origin in concentric

MISCELLANY.

379

circles; the former are generated around
that point in concentric spheres ; all devia-
tions from these forms being in both cases
due to mere special disturbing influences.
This conception having been fixed in the
mind, it is readily seen that sound-waves
consist of alternate swellings (involving a
rarefaction) and contractions (involving a
condensation) of the air, propagated from
the point of origin, and that the thickness
(length) of each wave is measured by the
distance between the curved surfaces cor-
responding to the periods of maximum
swelling (rarefaction) and contraction (con-
densation). Within the wave-limits, the
progress of sound-motion is by no means
uniform ; and, could we accurately trace the
steps in variation, we could readily deline-
ate the march of sound within the wave.

This result may be obtained approxi-
mately by attaching a small piece of copper-
foil to one of the prongs of a tuning-fork,
and quickly drawing this (while vibrating)
across a plate of smoked glass. A very
beautiful representation of this march of
sound may also be obtained by operating
with an organ-pipe, having a hole at the
middle (nodal-point), which is covered by a
thin elastic membrane, offering no impedi-
ment to the transmission of the undulations.
Directly over this membrane a little box or
capsule is placed, through which a current
of illuminating gas is conducted to a jet
burning in front of a revolving mirror. The
sound-waves being communicated to the
gas, give rise to a series of flame-pulsations.
When the mirror revolves, the quiet flame
is reflected as a continuous, the pulsating
flame as a serrated, band of light.

If, at this point of the experiment, the
aid of one of Helmholz's resonance-spheres
be called in — the resonance-waves being
conducted by a pipe through a box and
membrane (like those already described), to
a second gas-jet placed exactly under the
first — the image in the mirror will be du-
plicated. The resonance-spheres (resona-
tors) here mentioned are thin, hollow, brass
globes, with two openings opposite to each
other ; one being furnished with a neck for
attaching a pipe, the other serving as a
mouth for receiving sound-impulses. They
act by sympathy, as it were, taking up and
resounding with a special note, and that

only, the special character of the note de-
pending upon the relative capacity of the
sphere, and the size of the mouth.

As the waves of sound, propagated
through a uniform medium, travel with
uniform velocity, it follows that, when the
pulsations transmitted to the first jet from
the organ-pipe, and the pulsations trans-
mitted to the second jet from the resonance-
sphere, pass through equal lengths of air,
they will be reflected from the revolving-
mirror as coincident serrations. When,
however, the pulsations from the organ-pipe
are transmitted through a depth of air equal
to one wave-thickness or length, and the
pulsations from the resonance-sphere are
transmitted through a depth, either less or
more (and not an exact multiple) than the
wave-thickness or length, the two serrated
bands of light, reflected from the revolving-
mirror, will not be coincident. If, starting
with equal distances of the organ-pipe and
resonance-sphere from the jets, that of the
latter be gradually increased, the serrations
of the two images will be at first coincident,
then non-coincident ; then, when a distance
of two wave-thicknesses is reached, again
coincident, then again non-coincident; each
coincident corresponding to a distance equal
to a simple multiple of the wave-length of
the note. And if, on the other hand, the
resonance-sphere be moved in such a man-
ner that the coincidence of the serrations is
not disturbed, it is evident that the motion
must be in lines traced upon the curved
surface of a body of air — exactly similar in
size and form to one, two, three, etc.,
pulsations sent forth by the organ-pipe.
Prof. Mayer was the first to trace the sur-
face of sound-waves by this beautiful and.
ingenious method. It is highly probable
that, by this arrangement, some hitherto
unapproachable acoustic problems may
meet with a solution.

The velocity of sound is not influenced
by variations in the density of a uniform
gaseous medium, provided the temperature
of this medium remain stationary. But,
when the temperature changes, the velocity
is at once affected. Hence, a gradual rise
in the temperature of the air, passing from
the resonance-sphere to the gas-jet, will be
productive of a successive alternation of co-
incidences and non-coincidences of serrated

38o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

images, analogous to the alternations pro-
duced by increase of distance. This re-
markable fact Prof. Mayer proposes to
employ in measuring temperatures, and
particularly the high temperatures of fur-
naces. This is to be accomplished by in-
terposing a coil of porcelain or other fire-
proof pipe between the resonance-sphere
and the jet, and introducing it slowly into
the furnace. By this method, Prof. Mayer
expects to be able to measure tempera-
tures with an accuracy equal to about
twenty-five degrees of the Centigrade ther-
mometer, or even less.

A New Species of Rhinoceros. — A writ-
er in Nature is disposed to see, in the
hairy-eared, two-horned rhinoceros at pres-
ent in the menagerie of the London Zoologi-
cal Society, a new species, which he proposes
to call R. casiotis, the hairy-eared rhino-
ceros. When this animal arrived in Eng-
land, it was taken to be the Sumatran
rhinoceros, though naturalists were sur-
prised that a Sumatran rhinoceros should
be taken so far north as was this specimen
— Chittagong, the northern extremity of the
Bay of Bengal. There is a fringe of long
hairs on the posterior rim of the otherwise
naked ears, and the tail is long, and tufted
at the extremity. The head is very broad,
and the skin comparatively smooth.

Nothing new sndcr the Snn. — Humboldt,
in his " Cosmos," states that the Chinese
had magnetic carriages with which to guide
themselves across the great plains of Tar-
tary, one thousand years before our era, on
the principle of the compass. The proto-
type of the steam-engine has been traced to
the eolipyle of Hero of Alexandria. The
Romans used movable types to mark their
pottery, and indorse their books. Mr.
Layard found in Nineveh a magnifying lens
of rock-crystal, which Sir D. Brewster
considers a true optical lens, and the origin
of the microscope. The principle of the
stereoscope, invented by Prof. Wheatstone,
was known to Euclid, described by Galen
fifteen hundred years ago, and more fully in
1599 a. d., in the works of Baptista Porta.
The Thames Tunnel, thought such a novelty,
was anticipated by that under the Euphrates
at Babylon ; and the ancient Egyptians had

a Suez Canal. Such examples might be in-
definitely multiplied, but we turn to photog-
raphy. M. Jobard, in his "Nouvelles In-
ventions aux Expositions Universelles,"
1857, says a translation from German was
discovered in Russia, three hundred years
old, which contains a clear explanation of
photography. The old alchemists under-
stood the properties of chloride of silver in
relation to light, and its photographic action
is explained by Fabricius in " De Rebus
Metallicis," 1566. The daguerreotype pro-
cess was anticipated by De la Roche in his
" Giphantie," 1760, though it was only the
statement of a dreamer.

The Snn as a Borer of Mountains.— 1.

The universe is filled with rays of heat and
light, which vibrate among the heavenly
bodies perpetually without loss or gain, and
which, on alighting upon a heavenly body,
pass first into common sensible heat, to
be reflected afterward as cold, invisible
rays.

2. Of the inexhaustible supply of these
rays, our sun receives at every instant of
time as much as he radiates back again.

3. A portion of his rays fall upon our
earth, where they are converted into sen-
sible heat.

4. By means of this sensible heat, water
is converted into aqueous vapor ; the sen-
sible heat being at the same time changed
into so-called latent heat, or chemical mo-
tion.

5. Aqueous vapor having less specific
gravity than air, it ascends and represents
a lifted weight. In this process, heat is
converted into motion — the ascent of the
weight.

6. The expansion of the air (during
which heat is converted into mass-motion)
causes the aqueous vapor to be spread over
the surface of the earth.

7. By the condensation of the aqueous
vapor, chemical motion escapes as common
heat, and the resulting water is deposited
on the mountain-heights in the form of
snow ; thus, again, representing a lifted
weight.

8. The warm winds from the Mediterra-
nean melt the snow and glacier-ice ; sensi-
ble heat is thus converted again into insen
sible chemical motiom

MISCELLANY.

38i

9. The downward current of the Alpine
streams generates motion in virtue of their
mass, and of the space passed over during
their descent.

10. This mass-motion, when temporarily
checked by any resisting object, is convert-
ed back into heat.

11. Man arrests a portion of this motion
by means of a large water-wheel, and, by the
aid of a crank and a connecting-rod, trans-
mits the motion to the piston-rod of an air-
compressor.

12. In compressing air, we accumulate
motion as a force or tension ; and the com-
pressed air yields this force again without
loss (exception made of the loss occasioned
by the friction of the piston, which reap-
pears as heat).

13. Compressed air — a storehouse of
motion — is made to pass into a contrivance
similar to the steam-chest of a steam-engine,
where a sliding-valve forces the air to enter
alternately above and below the piston to
which it thus imparts common mass-motion.
The process is the same as the one operating
in the steam-engine, with the difference that
the motor agent is compressed air in place
of steam, and that the motion is ultimately
obtained, not from the combustion of fuel,
but from the descent of water.

14. The mass-motion of the water, now
transferred to a drilling-machine, is modi-
fied by means of mechanical contrivances
in a manner such that powerful blows are
dealt in rapid succession upon the cutting-
tool which drills the hole ; mass-motion is
thus converted back into heat.

15. The drill-hole is filled with a mixture
of substances containing chemical motion,
which, at any time, may be given out as
heat and mechanical motion. By the igni-
tion of the mixture, new combinations of
substances occur, which, owing to the new
distribution of chemical motion, take up a
much greater space, and thereby split the
rocks.

16. Mont Cenis Tunnel (as will be the
future one of St. Gothard) was bored by
the sun's heat. — Mohr, translated by Hotze.

Cinchona in Bengal.— In 1862 Dr. T.
Anderson began the cultivation of cincho-
na (the tree that yields the Peruvian bark)
in Sikkin, Bengal. The venture has proved

profitable ; and at the present time he has
under cultivation cinchona-trees of three
species, to the number of 1,707,115, yield-
ing about 300 pounds of bark per acre.
Besides these, he has 480,000 young plants
in nursery.

Bnlb-Cnltnre in Holland. — Although one-
fifth of the entire land in the Netherlands is
worthless for cultivation, and another fifth
is meadow-land, yet 47,500 acres of the re-
mainder are devoted to tobacco, 35,000 to
hemp, and 500 acres to raising tulips, hya-
cinths, and other flowering bulbs. Holland
has ever excelled in this sort of horticul-
ture.

Antiseptic Properties of Borax. — A paper
by M. Jacquez on the preservative action
of borax and the sub-borate of ammonia,
on animal matter, read before the French
Academy of Sciences, gives an account of
some important experiments made by the
author during a period of five years, with a
view to ascertain the antiseptic properties
of the substances named. In June, 1853,
he dissolved 25 grammes (about 387 grains)
of gelatine in 100 grammes (a little over 3
ozs.'of water) with 4.50 grammes — nearly
70 grains — of borax. The mixture remained
in an open flask all through the summer,
without any sign of mould or putrefaction.
In August of the same year, pieces of meat
dropped into a solution of borax and water
(5 parts of the former to 100 of the latter)
were there preserved unchanged for a month
— being then taken out of the solution and
exposed to the air, they dried slowly, and
did not undergo decomposition. The next
series of experiments was with a mixture of
borax, sub-borate of ammonia, and tepid
water, in the proportion of 5 or 6 parts of
borax, and 10 or 12 of sub-borate of am-
monia, to 100 of rain or pure river water.
By injecting this mixture into the bodies
of rabbits killed two days previously, the
water kept them without sign of decom-
position for several months. M. Jacquez is
of opinion that this process is of high im.
portance for the dissecting-room, as it does
not alter either the coloring or the firmness
of the tissues, and at the same time imports
no poisonous element into the subject.
Futhermore, the edge of cutting- instruments

382

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is not at all affected by the presence of the
antiseptic. Probably, if 6 per cent, or
even 8 per cent, of borax were used with
the liquid at about 40° C. at the moment
of injection, the cadaver itself having been
previously kept for some hours in some
warm medium, the borate of ammonia might
be omitted. Then an adult cadaver might
be prepared at the trifling expense of two
francs. For purposes of embalming, the
writer recommends a concentrated solution
of both salts, injected two or three times
into the blood-vessels at intervals of a few
days. Pulverized borax would also be of
service in preserving the skins of stuffed
animals and birds ; and the solution might
be used instead of alcohol in cases where
the latter is now employed to preserve
specimens.

Disintegration of Tin. — Two cases of
the disintegration of tin are given in the
American Artisan, the phenomenon being
in the one case traceable to the action of
intense cold and long-continued vibration,
while in the other the cause of the disinte-
gration is unknown. A certain quantity of
tin in ingots was shipped from Rotterdam
to Moscow by rail during extremely cold
weather. On reaching its destination it
was found to have been reduced to a pow-
der, with coarse crystalline grains. When
fused, instead of forming a solid mass, it
gave only oxide of tin, a gray powder. The
second case was that of two pigs of "Banca
tin," purchased by the United States Ord-
nance Bureau. They had lain in store for
several years ; and, when at length they were
taken from their resting-place, one was
found almost entirely reduced to a gray
powder, while the process of disintegration
in the other was as yet confined to the
edge9. Dr. I. Walz, who communicates to
the Artisan this piece of information, tried
in vain to learn the previous history of these
two pigs of tin. It is his belief that the
instances here recorded are the only ones
known of tin assuming a granular condition.

A Sqnirrel-Pcst. — In some parts of Ar-
kansas the squirrels were so numerous the
past season that they destroyed entire fields
of corn. As many as 125 have been killed
by one person in a day.

Welding Copper. — According to the Jour-
nal of the Franklin Institute, Mr. Rust has
succeeded in perfecting a method by which
he accomplishes a perfect welding of cop-
per. He mixes together 358 parts of phos-
phate of soda and 124 parts of boracic acid.
This powder is applied when the metal is at
a low red heat ; it is then brought to a
cherry-red, and at once hammered with a
wooden hammer.

Effect of Atmospheric Pressnre. — Mr.

Paul Best, in a very interesting memoir,
shows that the destruction of life by di-
minished barometric pressure is chiefly to
be attributed to deficiency of oxygen. An
animal that will die with the pressure re-
duced to 18 centimetres (7 inches) of mer-
cury, will endure a reduction to 6 centime-
tres (2.4 inches) if an additional supply of
oxygen be furnished. And the converse is
also true, that the danger^) f too great press-
ure is from the increased amount of oxy-
gen in a given volume of air inhaled.

Relations of Local Diseases to the fliatare
of the Soil.— Dr. M( ffat read befor } the
British Association a paper on the above
subject, in which he shows that the nature
of the soil exercises considerable influence
on the character of endemic disease. His
district lies on the carboniferous and red,
or Cheshire, sandstone formation. Anaemia
is the prevailing condition of the inhabi-
tants of the carboniferous land, who are
both miners and farmers, while it is almost
unknown on the red sandstone. Consump-
tion is also more prevalent in the first-
named district. Since anaemia is a want of
iron in the blood, Dr. Moffat examined the
constitution of wheat grown on the Cheshire
sandstone, and found it produced much
more ash, and hence a larger proportion of
mineral constituents, including oxide of
iron, than that grown on the carboniferous
soil. He estimates that a pound of wheat
from the first furnishes five grains more of
oxide of iron to the consumer than a pound
of wheat from the second soil, which ac-
counts for the comparative poverty of the
blood of the miners in iron and phosphoric
acid. An examination cf the blood of the
animals kept in the two districts confirme
the above observations.

MISCELLANY

383

Sensitive Streams. — Prof. Edwin J.
Houston, while spending a summer's vaca-
tion in Pike County, Pa., had the good
fortune to discover the sensitiveness of
water to sound-waves. Among the many
beautiful water-falls of that section he found
one scantily supplied with water, which
dripped in small streams from the ends of
the moss covering the rocks of the preci-
pice ; the air being still and the stream free
from ventral segments. And it was found
that, on sounding a shrill falsetto note, the
streams would instantly respond, and change
the grouping of the drops and the position
of the ventral segments. A heavy rain,
however, flooded the stream, and prevented
further investigation.

Vegetable Caprice. — It would almost
seem that too much can be asserted as to
the uniformity of habitat, or natural loca-
tion, of a given species of plant. The
Bunch-flower (Melanthium Virginicum) has
been set down as invariably occupying moist
meadows and damp borders. A correspond-
ent of the Torrey Botanical Club reports
seeing, " when crossing the Alleghanies by
carriage-road to the Peaks of Otter, and
frequent, high and dry, on the rocks, tall
and stout Melanthium Virginicum" and
adds : " I was unprepared for that, as with
us it grows along the margins of marshes,
as at Bergen, N. J."

The Tails of Comets.— Prof. Zollner, in
his book " On the Nature of Comets," ac-
counts for some of the phenomena by
showing that water, mercury, and many
other substances, even in the solid state,
always give off vapor ; hence, a mass of
matter in space will ultimately surround
itself with its own vapor, and present the
appearance of a comet. It is quite prob-
able that some of the masses moving in
space may be fluid, in which case, on ap-
proaching the sun, the development of va-
por would be very rapid, as is well exem-
plified by some of the smaller comets.
And, as regards the swift growth of the
tail, Prof. Zollner demonstrates that if the
free electricity of the sun be not greater in
amount than that observed at the surface
of the earth, it would be sufficient to com-
municate an impulse which, as exemplified

by the comet of 1680, would produce a train
or tail 60,000,000 miles long in two days.
Having proved this mathematically, he does
not think it necessary to seek further for a
theory of repulsive force by which to ac-
count for the tails of comets. — Chambers's
Journal.

Phosphoric Acid. — The occurrence of
phosphorus in combination with the ores of
iron has long been an annoyance to iron-
manufacturers, and many rich ores are
worthless from the presence of phosphorus,
which makes the iron brittle and useless.
Julius Jacobi proposes a method of freeing
iron-ores from phosphorus, and at the same
time saving the phosphoric products for
agricultural purposes. His process con-
sists in roasting the ore and crushing it,
and, after placing it in a proper receiver,
submitting it to the action of water charged
with sulphurous acid under pressure. The
ore is then washed with water to remove all
the soluble products, and the phosphoric
acid precipitated from the water with
fresh-burnt lime is obtained as a neutral
phosphate of lime. If effectual, and not
too expensive, the proposed method is
very important, as rendering many ores
available which are now regarded as worth-
less, and at the same time supplying a de-
mand in agriculture which has heretofore
been but imperfectly met.

The Osage Orange. — The Madura au-
rantica, a familiar shrub from its general
use as a hedge-plant, it is now proposed to
utilize for other purposes. A decoction of
the wood is said to yield a beautiful and
very permanent yellow dye. This decoc-
tion, carefully evaporated, forms a bright-
yellow extract, called aurantine, which may
be used in imparting its color to fabrics.
In addition to this coloring-matter, the
wood of the Osage orange is rich in tannin.
Experiments made in Texas represent that
hides are tanned quicker with the wood of
this tree than with oak-bark. The seeds
yield a bland, limpid oil, resembling olfve-
oil, and which may, in general use, be sub-
stituted for it.

Test for Silk Goods. — In the present
methods of silk manufacture the amount

384

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of adulteration to which the fabric is sub-
jected is enormous. Although linen is
often used, the favorite adulterator is jute,
which is cheaper, is heavy, and so easily
takes the dye, and in other ways is made to
simulate the silk, that it is the more difficult
of detection by an unpracticed eye. If a
sample of the " goods suspected to contain
other kinds of fibre be treated with hydro-
chloric acid of 1.13 specific gravity, the
silk will be dissolved, while other kinds of
fibres, such as jute and linen, will remain
undissolved."

Opium-poppy in France. — The cultiva-
tion of the opium-poppy in France is steadi-
ly increasing. It now occupies 50,000 acres,
of the value of 4,500,000 francs, yielding
opium to the value of 2,000,000 francs a
year. Different samples of opium, raised
in various parts of Europe, ai-e said to have
yielded from 8 to 13 per cent, of morphine.

NOTES.

The Volcano of Santorin, when last
visited, in October, 1871, had ceased giving
the small eruptions which had been com-
mon almost without intermission since the
great eruption of 1866, and the summit of
the cr&ter, covered with great blocks of
lava, presented the same appearance as in
1707. A little steam was still escaping, but
this seemed due almost entirely to the va-
por of water condensing on the cinders cov-
ering the cone. In the north the fumerolles
were still active, and all around the stones
were covered with sulphur. At the south-
east point the volcanic activity had not com-
pletely ceased, but had greatly diminished.
All this would show that the eruption had
entered on its last stage, and after a period
of great central activity in 1866-67, accom-
panied by a diminution of activity in 1869-
'70, it is now again assuming a condition of
rest and quietude. — Nature.

Colonel Weitzel, of the Brussels Congress,
tells of a village on piles, still inhabited, on
the island of Noessa Kimbaugan, off the
south coast of Java. Its inhabitants live by
fishing. On being asked by Colonel Weitzel
why the village was built out into the water,
one of the inhabitants said that it was in
order to be secure against the attacks of
tigers.

English Sparrows in Australia. — Com-
plaints are received by the Royal Horticul-
tural Society that fruit-crops in Australia
have been seriously injured by the English
sparrows imported into that country.

The dolmens, or cromlechs, of Algeria,
was the subject of an address by General
Faidherbe before the Brussels International
Congress. He considers the cromlech to
be a monument indicating a place of inter-
ment, and thinks it has no other purpose.
According to him, the area in which crom-
lechs are to be found extends from Pome-
rania to Africa. That none exist in Belgium
he accounts for by the great density of the
population, the cromlechs having been there
cleared away.

We take from the Journal of the Frank-
lin Institute the following facts in micro-
scopic photography, contributed by L. Erck-
mann: Thin sections of plant preparations
laid overnight in aniline red solution came
out thoroughly colored. When washed in
water, the nitrogenous parts retain the red,
the non-nitrogenous giving it up. But, if
the solution is too concentrated, the image,
seen through the microscope, will be red
throughout. As the red rays have but little
action upon silver iodide, a positive print
will show very dark in the nitrogenous, and
lighter in the other portions.

In Great Britain and Ireland there are
about 30,000 coal-mines, yielding 120,000,-
000 tons per annum. The depths from
which this coal is raised vary widely — the
deepest workings being the Dunkinfield and
the Rosebridge collieries, near Wigan. The
depth of the latter is 2,418 feet, and the
average temperature 95° Fahr.

We have in the Gardener's Chronicle
a remarkable instance of the luminosity of
fungi. The spawn of some unknown spe-
cies of fungus, growing on a trunk of spruce
or larch, was found to give a perfect blaze
of white light along the track where the
trunk had been dragged. The light was
enough to read the face of a watch, and it
continued for three days.

Attention has lately been directed to a
new method for printing on cloth, the inven-
tion of Mr. E. Vial. The fabric to be printed
is first impregnated with a solution of nitrate
of silver, or other metallic salt, which, when
brought in contact with zinc or copper, will
be reduced to the metallic state. The pat-
terns are designed on zinc or copper, and,
wherever contact is made between the metal
plate and the cloth, a metallic precipitate is
firmly fixed upon the tissue. If nitrate of
silver is used, the color of the precipitate,
and therefore of the cloth, may be varied by
varying the strength of the solution, from a
brilliant gray to a deep black. The color
withstands acids, alkalies, or soaps.

The sewage of Tunstall, in Staffordshire,
England, is to be converted into cement by
precipitation, by the process of Major-Gen-
eral Scott. This system is already in opera-
tion in Birmingham, West Ham, and Ealing.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

FEBRUARY, 1873.

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED.

By PROFESSOR THOMPSON B. MAURY,

OF THE 8IGNAX-OFFI0E, WASHINGTON.

METEOROLOGISTS tell us that their science is as old as Aris-
totle. If we should judge by its progress up to the middle of
the present century, its antiquity furnishes little to boast of; for, in
the long lapse of centuries, it must have proved an incorrigibly dull
scholar. Within the past few years, however, it has greatly improved,
and, especially since it became identified with the popular and impor-
tant systems of storm-warnings and weather-forecasts, it has been
rapidly developed. This is peculiarly the case in America, and it is
not wonderful, when we consider the comprehensive observations of
our meteorological bureau, and the many beautiful phenomena which
its publications disclose.

If Vasco Nunez, the discoverer of the great South Sea, was so
awed by the grandeur and expanse of its waters, as seen with the
naked eye, how much more may we be impressed as telegraphic
meteorology enables us to discover, at a glance, the tossings and
undulations of the aerial ocean over the larger part of the hemisphere !

It is to some of the deductions, that may be justly made from
the extensive and synchronous observations of the modern weather-
systems, as they bear upon those weather-problems, which, from time
immemorial, have interested mankind, that we now ask attention.

1 Until the year 1821, "the law of storms," simple as it is, was
unknown to the most profound meteorologists and expert seamen of
the world. It was then first discovered and announced by Mr. Wil-
liam C. Redfield, of New York, and established by the labors of that
great mind, against the constant perversions and opposition of the scien-
tific empirics of his day. It can be easily comprehended in its great
vol. ii — 25

386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

outlines, and as far as our present purposes require. It assumes nothing,
supposes nothing ; but, from thousands of actual and actually recorded
observations, presents the phenomena of spiral currents of air seeking
a common centre of depression, and, in the attempt to find that centre,
acquiring a vorticose or rotatory motion. The direction of this rota-
tion Mr. Redfield found to be uniformly, in our hemisphere, contrary
to that of the hands of a watch, with its face turned upward ; and, in
the Southern Hemisphere, the rotation is with those hands, or with the
sun in its diurnal round. It is easy to see that, if the atmospheric
column, resting over any given area of the earth's surface, should, for
any cause, be suddenly diminished, or its pressure and intensity be
reduced, the gaseous fluid would rush in from all surrounding regions
to restore the disturbed equilibrium ; and, if the earth was not whirl-
ing around on its axis, every particle of the centre-seeking air would
'endeavor to move on the shortest, or the straight line. It is known,
from the principles of mechanics, that this endeavor can never strictly
be executed, because the axial rotation of the globe incessantly so acts
as to throw every body, while in motion, in our hemisphere, to the
right of the line on which it is moving, no matter whether that line
be from east to west, north to south, or at any conceivable angle with
the meridians or the equator. Obeying, in part, this tangential im-
pulse, every particle of wind must take up a resultant motion. If it
begins to blow toward the depressed centre of the storm as a north
wind, it trends to the west, and is felt as a northeaster ; if it begins
as a south wind, it diverges as a southwester ; if as an east wind, it
becomes a southeaster ; and, if as a west wind, it soon changes into
the boreal northwest wind.

It has often been asked whether the storms of our latitudes attain
the immense size formerly attributed to them; and many eminent
writers have denied the possibility of their reaching a diameter of
more than two or three hundred miles. Mr. J. K. Laughton, in his
recently-published " Physical Geography," would have us believe that
cyclones " do not attain the enormous magnitudes which have been
assigned them." But this opinion rests merely upon conjecture, not
yet upon a correct physical theory.

It is a well-known fact that the monsoons generated on the central
plateau north of the Himalaya Mountains, and the whole system of
Asiatic wet monsoons, may be regarded as an immense and prolonged
cyclone ; and extend their " backing " influence into the Indian
Ocean, and reach far to the south, through more than forty degrees of
latitude (a radius of 2,500 geographical miles), and from the 69th to the
140th meridian of east longitude, far out into the Pacific, beyond the
Bonin and Ladrone Islands, southeast of Japan. The whole system
of wet monsoons may also be justly regarded as a grand cyclone,
whose centre is stationary over the heated plains of Central Asia,

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED. 387

whose intro-moving winds, bearing the evaporations of the Asiatic
seas and oceans, feed it with meteoric fuel for six months in the year,
and whose periphery may be regarded as embracing nearly one-third
of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Analogy, therefore, warrants the
idea of a great cyclone. But, apart from all this, actual observations
in different parts of the globe prove the frequency of storms of enor-
mous magnitude. Thus, in the celebrated Gulf -Stream storm of 1839,
as Sir David Brewster long ago pointed out, several stanch merchant-
men were foundering off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah, in the
very heart of the gale, at the same hour that the winds in its north-
west quadrant were taking the roofs off houses in New York and
Boston, more than 800 miles distant — clearly revealing a cyclone
whose formation was symmetrical, and whose diameter must have
been nearly 1,300 miles. But, not to go back to old data, the West-
Indian storm of the 18th of August, 1871, before its centre had moved
north of Florida, had begun to draw upon the regions of high barom-
eter in the northern States, had exerted its influence as far north as New
London, Connecticut, and gave us the northeasterly cyclonic winds in
the northwest quadrant of the whirl, on the entire Atlantic coast. The
more furious cyclone of the 24th of August, discovered to be then south-
east of Florida, and telegraphically foreannounced as likely to endanger
the coasts of the Southern States in less than forty-eight hours, ap-
peared on the 26th in full force in Northern Florida, but not until
some eight or ten hours after it had set the atmosphere all around it
(as far north as Boston) in cyclonic motion, and had caused the storm-
cloud to spread itself over the entire region of the United States on
the eastern slopes of the Alleghanies, and as far westward as Knox-
ville, Tennessee. It is no uncommon thing, as Redfield, Espy, Henry,
Loomis, and others, long ago showed, for an area of depression on the
upper lakes to make itself simultaneously felt as far south as the Gulf
of Mexico, and as far east as New England.

If it fell within the scope of the present design in this paper to
consider the final cause of storms, it would be easy to show that,
unless the law of storms ordained a large area, and a far extended
path for the meteor, in some degree commensurate with the area of
our immense continent, the meteor could not fulfil its office in the
terrestrial economy — an office which, apparently, imposes upon it the
task of gathering to its centre, through the agency of its intro-moving
winds, the idle and inappreciable moisture scattered over the surface
of the earth, condensing it into rain and snow, and diffusing it, in
these forms, over immense districts of country.

It is of incalculable importance to observe, and carefully digest
the fact, that, when a storm-centre or area of low barometer is once
formed, it is the nucleus for a vast aggregation and marshalling of
meteoric forces. No matter how small at first, under favorable
atmospheric conditions, the courant ascendant is formed, condensa-

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion aloft sets in, and the precipitation only serves to add " fuel to
the flames " of the cyclonic engine. This process widens in geograph-
ical area, and, after a few hours have elapsed, the storm may so
^develop as to cover a continent with its portentous canopy of cloud,
while simultaneously strewing an ocean with wrecks, and throwing
out, in the upper sky, more than a thousand miles in its front, the
fine filaments of the premonitory cirrus and cirronus.

Fig. 1.

CIRKUS-CIRRONPS CLOUDS.

In close connection with the size and magnitude of cyclones must
be considered the distance over which they pass from their initial
point. Much has been said on this part of our subject, and not a few
writers have accepted the doctrine of Admiral Fitzroy that they pro-
gress over but comparatively short distances. For such a view, how-
ever, it is impossible to find, either in the nature or physical office of
the cyclone, any support whatever. The storm once engendered, no
matter in what part of the world, may be stationary or progressive.
There are well-authenticated instances of almost stationary cyclones
and almost stationary typhoons, of which latter will be remembered the
famous gale of the ship Charles Heddle — an Indiaman, carried round
and round the storm-centre for five days — which progressed not more
than ninety miles a day. Indeed, we may, as has been said, regard
every wet-monsoon region as a stationary and semi-perennial cyclone.

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED.

389

Such a meteor has been shown to resemble an eddy moving in the cur-
rent of a rapid river. The latter may be large or small, while it does
not determine, but is determined hy, the course of the on-flowing stream.
It is true the centre of an eddy or water-hollow may soon be tilled up
and the whirl disappear; but it is because the depression is not main-
tained. If the depression could be maintained, it is easy to see that
the eddy would eontinue, and pursue its way, as long as the current
in which it is embodied continues to flow: it mischt be through the
length of an Amazon or a Mississippi River. In the case of a cyclonic
eddy or whirl, we know the atmospheric depression is maintained as
long as the centre moves in a region sufficiently supplied with aqueous
vapor to feed it. It is a physical impossibility, as has been often
shown, that any storm, however vast or however violent, can prolong
its advance or sustain its fury over a dry and desiccated surface. The
most extended typhoons of the East, upon entering the dry and rainless
continental regions, dwindle into the well-known and diminutive dust-
whirlwind, such as Sir S. W. Baker describes as witnessed in Nubia, and
as here illustrated. The Sahara is a more formidable barrier to the

Fig. 2.

THE DUST-WHIRLWIND.

passage ol a storm than the majestic mountain-wall of the Alps, and
the simoom is, notwithstanding the stories of travellers and the
legend of swallowing up of the army of Cambyses on the African des-
ert, a wasted and worn-out cyclone. In his " Desert World," Mangin,
compiling the more accurate observations of the phenomenon says : " It
never prevails over any considerable area, and beyond its limits the
atmosphere remains serene and calm ; the phenomenon is of brief dura-
tion, the atmospheric equilibrium is speedily restored ; the heavens
recover their serenity ; the atmosphere grows clear, and the sand-col-
umns, falling in upon themselves, form a number of little hills or cones,

390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

apparently constructed with great care, like those mimic edifices of
sand made by children in their pastimes." The same writer also men-
tions a severe simoom which was " over in a couple of hours."

Embedded in the great aerial currents, however, and supplied with
abundance of moisture, there is nothing to arrest either the rotatory
or progressive movements of the storm. Like the drift-bottles cast
upon the current of the ocean, and found after months to have been
carried thousands of miles, from the equatorial to the polar parallels,
there is every reason to suppose the tropic-cradled gale, and the minor
storms also, are borne in the great atmospheric currents through quite
as great distances. There is an authentic and well-attested account of
a Japanese junk, lost or deserted off Osaka, drifting through the im-
mense arc of the Kuro Siwo's recurvation, and encountered (in latitude
37°, by the brig Forrester, March 24, 1815) off the coast of California.
That tiny craft must have followed in the bands of westerly winds and
warm waters for seventeen months. Why, upon theoretical grounds,
should we reject the hypothesis which represents the movement of
storm-areas as prolonged for many thousands of leagues, or indeed
that which represents them perpetually in motion around given cen-
tres of cyclonic or anti-cyclonic areas, keeping pace with the great
winds in their eternal circuit ?

As a striking corroboration of all this we find — what might have
been assumed on theoretical grounds — that the logs and special obser-
vations of the Cunard steamships show that a vessel bound from
Liverpool westward encounters frequent advancing areas of low press-
ure, indicating a number of rapidly-succeeding barometric hollows
or depressions, "each with its own cyclonic wind-system, moving
across the Atlantic as eddies chasing each other down a river-cur-
rent."

The word cyclone has frequently, but incorrectly, been used as
significant of an enormous or very violent meteor, as if its application
was to be confined to the devastating hurricane of the West Indies or
the terrific typhoon of the China seas. It simply means a storm which
acts in a circular direction, and whose winds converge, by radials or
sinuous spirals, toward a centre, moving in our hemisphere in the
opposite direction to that of the hands of a clock, and in the Southern
Hemisphere in a contrary direction. Taking this as the definition of
a cyclone, it seems clear, from observation alone, that all storms are to
be regarded as cyclonic. Volumes have been written to prove that
this is not the case. But we have only to examine a few series of
weather-maps from week to week to see that, wherever you have an
area of low barometer, into its central hollow the exterior atmosphere
from all sides will pour, and that in so doing a rotatory spiral or vor-
ticose storm is generated. The tornado, the simooms, the dust-whirl-
wind, the fire-storm, even the slow and sluggish storm which moves

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED. 391

on our Western plains as the laboring wheel of the steamship buried in
a heavy sea, all attest that a body cannot move on the earth's surface
in a straight line. It is not more true with us that the Gulf Stream
turns to the eastward, the Polar Stream to the westward, and the equa-
torial currents to the northward, than that every air-current, in obedi-
ence to the same law, should turn to the right of the line along which
from any cause it is called to move. The meteorist has therefore only
to ascertain by observation where the barometer is lowest, to know at
once the direction of the winds from the circumjacent districts, far
and near, or at least to test the mathematical law by a grand experi-
ment.

The tangential and centripetal forces, acting at the same time on
any particle of air in the storm, may be equal or very unequal, and the
cyclonic character of the gale may be well marked or partly concealed.
In the tornado, with a diameter of only a few hundred feet, the tan-
gential force may not be appreciable to an observer, but it is present,
and intensely assists in communicating vorticose motion to the storm,
whose roar is heard with awe by the stoutest heart, as it crashes
through the forest and even ploughs up the soil of the earth. If the
cyclonic or spiral feature should fail to manifest itself in any storm, we
ought to look for such failure in the tornado. It is true that no bar-
ometric readings have ever been taken in the narrow heart of a tor-
nado, but abundant evidence exists of the fearful rarefaction in the
centre. While the meteor, once set in motion, may move forward
with great velocity and destructiveness, the danger is clearly due to
the intro-rushing and gyratory winds. There is not an instance, it is
believed, recorded in which a tornado moved as much as 100 miles an
hour; probably one-half that velocity would be too high an estimate
for its usual and ordinary motion. But the wind, moving straightfor-
ward at the rate of 60 or 80 miles an hour, never worked any thing
like the disaster of a tornado. In the West-Indian hurricane, blowing
at the rate of 100 miles an hour, houses have been blown down, ships
inumerable stranded ; but all this is mere child's-play compared to the
suction and whirl of the tornado. The conclusion forced upon us is,
that the ravages of the latter are due, not to the weight of the atmo-
sphere, moving as a river-torrent in a straight line, nor to the rush of
air behind the travelling vacuum, but to the torsive, racking motion —
imparted to every object in its path — due to its gyration. To prove
that this gyration is always from right to left, or against the hands of
a watch, is, of course, practically impossible ; but such a direction has
often been observed in tornadoes.

It may, therefore, be safely concluded that, for all processes of me-
teorologic calculation, the disiurbance, if not such at first, will soon
become cyclonic. All daily weather-charts demonstrate this, not by a
laboratory or lecture-room experiment, but on an infinitely wider and
grander scale, and in a manner far more conclusive than any merely

39z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

manual experiment could possibly make to appear. As one has hap-
pily said, " Nature makes no distinction between small and great ; the
drop of mist that lights gently down on a delicate flower, and the ava-
lanche that sweeps away a village, fall in obedience to one universal
law."

It has been asserted lately that the Gulf Stream has no influence
upon storms ; that they have no tendency to run toward it or to run
upon it ; and that what geographers and seamen have always said about
the Gulf Stream as a " weathei'-breeder " and " storm-king " is absurd.
I think it can be demonstrated that this well-known popular belief is
not absurd.

It is an observation, as old as Aristotle, that the storms of the mid-
dle latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere advance from west to east.
This is obviously partly due to the fact that the winds on their eastern
sides are southerly, that they come from the equatorial regions, and
hence are highly charged with aqueous vapor. This vapor is absolutely
essential to the sustenance of the storm. Moreover, the law of storms
requires that the southerly winds should enter the storm-vortex on the
eastern side, and as this is the side on which the greatest quantity of
vapor is found, and the side of greatest condensation, of the greatest
evolution of latent heat, hence of the greatest aerial rarefaction and
barometric fall, to this side the heavier air from the west will push as
into a great hollow. Thus do we actually find that all storms, formed
west of the Gulf Stream, are actually propagated toward it. It may
be argued from the above facts that the anti-trade winds are thus
maintained by storms incessantly making the circuit of the globe
within the temperate zone. But in reality, instead of being the effect
of storm-influence, the anti-trades are originated by independent solar
agency, as are the trades, and they are potential and causal in produ-
cing the eastward progression of all cyclones. It must be conceded
that the pressure of vast aerial currents does serve to force the meteor
along with them as the river-eddy is carried down stream with the
water-current ; otherwise it is impossible to explain the westward pro-
gression of tropical hurricanes. While yet in the band of easterly
trade-winds the storm will invariably work its way or be propagated
toward the most humid region, unless mechanically borne in another
direction by the great atmospheric current in which it is often embed-
ded as an eddy in a river. The cyclone-tracks over all the oceans lie
in the central bands of the great ocean-currents of high temperature
and great evaporation, and the band of cyclonic violence is often
beautifully coterminous with the sharply-marked edge of the Gulf
Stream. Thus, in the Pacific, the Loochoo Islands lie just in the path
of the Kuro Siwo, the great Pacific Gulf Stream of the Japanese, and
are visited by the most fearful typhoons ; but the Bonin Islands, in the
same parellel, but on the extreme margin of the Kuro Siwo, have very

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED. 393

mild and moderate storms.1 "If a storm commences anywhere in the
vicinity of the Gulf Stream, it naturally tends toward that stream,
because," as Loomis says, " here is the greatest amount of vapor to be
precipitated, and, when a storm has once encountered the Gulf Stream,
it continues to follow that stream in its progress eastward." Vessels
and Japanese junks, dismasted in gales off the Asiatic coast, have
been drifted for many days in the current of the Kuro Siwo, to the
coast of California, just as West-India beans, cocoa-nuts, and vegetables,
have been drifted to Iceland, Greenland, and Spitzbergen, on the
extension of the Gulf Stream. According to all meteorological obser-
vations of the tracks of storms, we are warranted in believing that
cyclones and hurricanes do, as a matter of fact and of atmospheric law,
run on the hot currents of the sea as naturally as the water-course
clings to its bed. Practical seamen, though unable to explain the fact,
are always on the lookout for these furious gales when sailing on the
axial lines of the Gulf Stream, on the hot Mozambique current (the
Gulf Stream of the Indian Ocean), and on the dark superheated waters
of the Kuro Siwo of the Pacific.

So dangerous and disastrous are the storms which course along the
Gulf Stream that sailors avoid it, and the American Sailing Directions
and those of the British Admiralty advise all vessels, sailing from the
West Indies to New York or Liverpool, to beware of taking advantage
of its current, although it would help them along from three to four
miles an hour. Close observation has traced these storms continuously
from the Florida coast to New York, through Redfield's labors, and
thence to England, through the record of the Cunard steamships, and
thousands of detached observations.

We have now reached a point where we can properly and intelli-
gently consider a question that has always baffled meteorologists — the
origin of cyclones. The diagnosis of the phenomenon necessarily pre-
cedes its explanation. This subject has engrossed many minds, and
various have been the ingenious devices for unravelling its mystery.
Mr. Redfield — the father of storm physics — in his modesty and diffi-
dence, so distrusted himself and in his day so keenly felt the need of a
more enlarged induction of facts, that he has scarcely left us his opin-
ion. The theories of other writers have all long since been abandoned
by themselves or suffered to drop from the notice of the scientific
world as evidently incapable of explaining the phenomena of cyclones.
This has been the fate of them all, unless possibly we except the
theory advanced by the great meteorologist, M. Dove, of Berlin.
Briefly stated, the latter hypothesis is this (at least in its application
to West-India hurricanes), viz., that "they owe their origin to the
intrusion of the upper counter trade-wind into the lower trade-wind
current" (Dove's "Law of Storms," p. 264).

1 See Redfield's Report.

394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Without pausing here to examine this theory upon its merits and
upon the facts, we hasten to mention a different hypothesis advanced,
nearly two years ago, as a substitute for that of M. Dove, and as
affording an entirely original and satisfactory explanation of the
origin of cyclones.

The hypothesis was likewise based upon the agency of the trade-
winds, but in a manner wholly different from that elaborated by the
German meteorologist. In the original paper in which my views were
published, the following statement was made: "It can be demon-
strated that the origin of cyclones is found in the tendency of the
southeast trade-winds to invade the territory of the southeast trades,
by sweeping over the equator into our hemisphere.''''

The hypothesis advanced, in lieu of another seemingly less satisfac-
tory, claimed to rest upon observations conducted in the very region
most notorious for the generation of cyclones.

To test this, we need only to examine the Atlantic trade-winds.

Theoretically, physicial geography has generally represented the
motions of the atmosphere somewhat as is represented in the accom-
panying diagram of the winds, as projected by Prof. William Ferrel,
of Cambridge. The elaborate pages of Prof. Coffin, in his invaluable
volume on the " Winds of the Northern Hemisphere," as deduced from
myriads of observations, show that the graphic illustration furnished
by the following diagram is approximately correct.

The region of the trade-winds, it will be seen, more than covers the
torrid zone of the earth, and all seasons of the year overlaps both the
northern and southern tropics. While this is theoretically true, and
is usually put forth as fact, it must be accompanied with one or two
important qualifications and additions.

Let us see what these are : The well-known oscillation or swinging
of the belts of winds to and fro on the meridians, which is kept up in
never-ceasing response to the apparent annual motion of the sun as
he crosses and recrosses the equator, must ever underlie the conception
we form of the trade-winds and be perpetually present to the mind's
eye. This oscillation has never yet received the popular attention it
needs. The sun traverses (apparently) an arc of 23^° on either
side of the line; and we might, a priori, suppose that the thermal or
meteorological equator, the thermal or meteorological Tropics of Can-
cer and Capricorn, and all those phenomena which lie between them
and beyond them, move over an arc of as many degrees as they trav-
erse. Such an inference, however, is not borne out by observation,
and we propose to confine ourselves strictly to what may be proved by
observation. It is clear that the trade-wind belt does traverse or
vibrate over a wider zone than any physicist has yet assigned to it,
which is not more than ten degrees of latitude north and south respec-
tively of the Tropic of Cancer and that of Capricorn. These winds,
when first experienced by Spanish sailors, gave, to that portion of the

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED.

395

Fig. 8.

THE ATMOSPHERIC MOVEMENTS.

Atlantic over which they blew, the name el Golfo de las Damas (the
Ladies' Sea) because they rendered navigation so easy that a girl might
take the helm. But, " gentle " as they are, they have a wide sweep, and,
in the summer of the Northern Hemisphere, extend far beyond the
Tropic of Cancer. They have often been distinctly felt at Madeira and
the Azores (near the 40th parallel) in summer, and it is highly reason-
able to suppose that they then fully reach the latitude of 40° N. The
equatorial side of the northeast trade-wind belt, of course, vibrates
with the sun. In summer it stretches along between the 10th and
12th parallels of north latitude, verging in August on the 13th par-
allel, and, according to one writer, occasionally the northeast trades
at that season do not extend south of the 15th parallel of north lati-
tude. Dampier, " the prince of navigation," as the English call him,
gives the direction of the wind in the summer months, between the
equator and 12° north, as south -southeast, south-southwest, and south-
west.

The equatorial side of the northeast trade-wind belt in winter
approaches very nearly to the equator, and may be located in Janu-
ary at least as far south as the latitude of 2° north.

396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The freshest trade-winds in the North Atlantic are generally found
between the parallels of 10° and 25°, and by long-protracted experi-
ment in seamanship they have been found to have an average propel-
ling power, when the wind is taken just abaft the beam, of about six
knots an hour. But, of course, the northern boundary of the south-
east trade-wind likewise varies and vibrates with the seasons. So,
also, and under the same condition, does the southern boundary of
this trade vary and vibrate with the seasons. Its normal and mean
position is a little south of the parallel of 25° south, but in the winter
of our hemisphere it is pushed much farther south, and in the vicinity
of 35° south latitude. The charts of Captain Wilkes give easterly
winds for the east coast of Australia, and also for the south coast of
Africa. Sir John Herschel, speaking from knowledge gained by his
long residence at the Cape of Good Hope, tells us that there " the
southeasterly wind which sweeps over the Southern Ocean, infringing
upon the long range of rocks which terminates in the Table Mountain,
is thrown up by them, makes a clean sweep over the flat table-land
which forms the summit of that mountain (about 3,850 feet high), and
thence plunges down with the violence of a cataract " (" Meteorology,"
p. 96).

From these high southern latitudes, we must conceive the motion
of the southeast trades, extending northward in summer to the neigh-
borhood of the parallel of 10°.

From the Cape of Good Hope, in a straight line toward the pro-
jecting eastern coasts of Brazil, mariners have found a peculiar streak
of southeasterly winds. Between the island of Tristan da Cunha and
the Cape, and northward and westward to the island of Fernando
Noronha, this streak of powerful winds, with which nothing in the
trade-wind region of the North Atlantic can compare, has its atmos-
pheric current as sharply marked as the dark blue and rapid current of
the Gulf Stream in the Narrows of Bernini. It is, doubtless, the
region or band of most intensely acting southeast trades, and is
probably due to the peculiar configuration of the shores of the South
Atlantic, and to the wall of the South American Andes. It is a well-
known fact that the volcanic cone of Teneriffe, which lies in the zone
of northeast trades, intercepts the wind and gives it a lateral deflec-
tion ; so that, while the tirades are blowing strongly on the northeast
side of the island, on the opposite side there is a distinctly-marked
and carefully-measured calm shadow. Now, the chain of the Andes
endeavors to exert on the southeastern trades just such an influence
as is exerted by the Canary Islands on the northeast trades. This
influence, in the former case, suffices to throw off from the Continent
of South America a large body of the southeast trades, and to deflect
it to the eastward, giving it the character of a south-southwest wind,
and, at the same time, by forcing a greater or more concentrated body
of air into the regions northeast of Brazil, imparting an increased

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED. 397

velocity and violence to the air-current. It is, therefore, in the air-
current that the homeward -hound vessel from the Cape of Good Hope
aims to steer, hecause she is sure of being wafted happily and swiftly
to her destination.

It has long ago been demonstrated by meteorologic observations,
taken both at sea and on land, that there is very much less atmosphere
in the Southern Hemisphere than in the northern, and for a long time
physicists were at a loss to account for the difference. It has been,
however, very satisfactorily explained by the eminent American
mathematician, Ferrel, in his work on the "Motions of Fluids and
Solids, relative to the Earth's Surface," where he proves at length,
and states in detail (p. 39): "As there is much more land, with
higher mountain-ranges, in the Northern Hemisphere than in the south-
ern, the resistances are greater, and consequently the eastward motion
of the air, upon which the deflecting force depends, is much less ; and
the consequence is, that the more rapid motions of the Southern Hemi-
sphere cause a greater depression there, and a greater part of the at-
mosphere to be thrown into the Northern Hemisphere" It is, doubtless,
to this tendency of the Southern Hemisphere to throw off much of its
atmosphere north of the equator that we may attribute in part the
superior force and power of the southeast trades, and their well-known
ability to battle with the northeast trades, and drive them from their
own territory, at least all summer, and even in winter, as far back
across the line as 3° or 4° north latitude. Mr. Ferrel, speaking of the
principle just enunciated, well says: "This also accounts for the mean
position of the equatorial calm-belt being, in general, a little north of
the equator. But, in the Pacific Ocean, where there is nearly as much
water north of the equator as south (and the resistances are usually
equal), its position nearly coincides with the equator." In other words,
just as a bucket full of water set to revolving on a perpendicular axis
would show a depression in the centre, and the fluid be thrown from
all sides of its rim, the Southern Hemisphere throws its water and its
atmosphere into the Northern Hemisphere, all along the equator.

It is, therefore, a mathematical and mechanical certainty that there
is an invasion of the northeast trade-wind belt from the southeast
trades, and observation powerfully bears out the deduction of the
mathematician. Auste states, in his cautiously-written " Physical
Geography : " " The southern trade-wind region is much larger than
the northern in the Atlantic Ocean. In this sea, the southeast trades
are fresher, and blow stronger, than the others, and often reach to
the 10th or 15th parallel of north latitude; whereas, the northern
trade-wind seldom gets south of the equator, and usually ranges from
9° to 29° north latitude " (p. 253). It is easy to see how easily it
happens that a very small atmospheric eddy found in the tropical
Atlantic by the conflictoi«y northeast and overleaping southeast trade-
winds may soon become a hurricane of wide extent and of tremendous

393 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

energy. All that is necessary, as we have before seen, is that an
initial impulse of gyration be given to a body of air. The moment
that this takes place by mechanical influence, and, centrifugal force
creates the smallest eddy or vortex, the surrounding air, already
highly charged with moisture, begins the process of convergence and
ascensional motion, followed rapidly by condensation aloft, small,
centrical, and upright.

The storm-cylinder — the nucleus of the hurricane — originally very
small, is instantly enlarged and expanded by the evolution of latent heat
stored away in the vesicles of aqueous vapor. For some hours, as all
observations show to be actually the case, the incipient cyclone scarcely
moves, while gathering in its energies and laying tributes upon all con-
tiguous regions. The process continues with momentarily increasing
intensity, and, before the sun has made his daily circuit, the meteor is
formed.

If it be asked along what parallels of latitude in our hemisphere
this formation takes place, the intelligent reader will at once answer,
Near the terrestrial circle of trade-wind interference. This, we have
already seen, is in summer, from the 10th to the 12th parallels of north
latitude.

This slender zone of debatable ground is the battle-ground of the
two opposing bands of the trades. There is really no need of obser-
vations to tell us as much. But millions of observations attest the
fact. Every seaman knows it. Every meteorological writer tells the
same story. You have only to examine physical charts from the time
of Columbus and Magellan to this, to see the absolute unanimity of
testimony, and to discover that the hypothesis now advanced, and the
known facts of the case, are in perfect and minute accord.

If it be asked whether the origin of the West-Indian gales is solely
due to mechanical interference, the proper reply, it would clearly ap-
pear, should be in the negative. As the southeast trade-wind comes
laden with the vapor of the southern or water hemisphere, which Dove
well called " the boiler " of the globe, it is met by the cold northeast
trade from the northern, or land hemisphere. There must be a great
difference in their temperatures, and consequently extensive conden-
sation, which, by the reasoning of Mr. Clement Ley, would, of itself,
explain the formation of the storm. That condensation greatly assists
in producing and intensifying it, cannot be doubted. In the high
latitudes, where the polar air-current is sometimes forced by baromet-
ric pressure into the southerly or equatorial current moving over the
warm waters of the ocean, and thus heavily vapor-laden, the conse-
quence is illustrated by such terrific and sudden tempests as that of
the Royal Charter, distinctly proved by Admiral Fitzroy to have
been generated between the opposite polar and equatorial currents
off the coast of Wales.

But that the origin of great depression systems is solely due to

THE LAW OF STORMS DEVELOPED.

399

Fig. 4.

WEATHER-CHART OF GREAT BRITAIN, BEFORE ROYAL CHARTER STORM.

Full-feathered arrows show Polar current: half-feathered arrows show Equatorial current ; dark-colored
surface not reported by vessels or land-observers.

4oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

condensation, can hardly be sustained, and seems entirely overthrown
if we regard the single fact that, on the great equatorial belt — the belt
of perennial precipitation — no hurricane or typhoon has ever been
experienced by the mariner. It has long been, and is now, the
universally-accepted theory of meteorologists, that the reason no
cyclones have ever been known to occur on the equator is, that there
the earth's rotation exerts a deflecting influence on the winds, amount-
ing to zero, and hence the formation of a whirl is impossible. This
view is not satisfactory, because the nucleus of a depression once
formed on the equator, there would be intro-moving masses of air
proportioned in violence to the amount of the depression and the
steepness of the barometric gradient, down which they rush to reach
the point of lowest barometer. The true reason that no great cyclone
has ever been formed nearer the equator than the third parallels of
latitude appears to be, that the equatorial belt is a belt of calms.

-♦♦♦-

HEAT AND LIFE.
Bt fern and papillon.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY A. R. MACDONOtTGH, ESQ.

THE full solution of the question of heat and life could only be
reached by simultaneous concurrence of physics, chemistry, and
biology. Ancient physiology treated of animal heat empirically, but
was unable to explain its origin. That result required the discoveries
of Lavoisier and the more 'modern researches of thermo-chemistry.
After revealing the source of that heat, it was important to show how
it was disposed of; and this is taught us by thermo-dynamics. And,
in conclusion, only the most delicate physiological experiments could
settle the modifications that take place in living beings, when sub-
jected to the influence of a temperature either above or below that
they possess normally. Medicine and hygiene already benefit by the
indications yielded by pure science upon this subject. It is admitted
that the study of the variations of animal heat in diseases is of the
highest consequence for their comprehension, and that both diagnosis
and prognosis receive unexpected light from it.

An inquiry into calorific phenomena, undertaken from various
separate and independent points of view, for the solution of questions
that seemed at first sight to have no mutual connection whatever, has
thus obtained a body of truths which enter into combination almost
of their own accord at the present time, and are found to contain
the secret of a great problem in natural philosophy. A minute and

HEAT AND LIFE. 401

extended analysis has thus resulted in an instructive synthesis, which
is one of the most signal acquisitions of the experimental method.

All animals have a temperature above that of the gaseous or fluid
media in which they live ; that is to say, they all possess the faculty
of producing heat. "Warm-blooded animals maintain an almost con-
stant temperature in all latitudes and all climates. Thus, in polar
regions, man, mammals, and birds, mark only one or two degrees less
than they do at the tropics. The mean temperature of birds is 41°
(cent.), and that of mammals 37°. Those animals called cold-blooded
produce heat also, though in a less degree ; but their temperature fol-
lows the variations of that of the surrounding medium, keeping, how-
ever, a temperature a few degrees higher than it. In reptiles, this
excess varies from 5° to half a degree ; in fish and insects, it is still
smaller ; and, in the wholly inferior species, it rarely reaches half a
degree. In fine, with animals that vary in temperature, the power
of resistance to external causes of refrigeration increases in proportion
to the perfection of the organization. It is observed, too, that in these-
beings vital activity and the force of respiration have a direct relation,
to the thermometric state ; thus, in a medium of 7°, lizards consume
eight times less oxygen than at 23°. With animals of constant tem-
perature, the reverse is the case ; the colder it is, the more active is
their respiration : a man, for instance, who, in summer, consumes only
a fraction over an ounce of oxygen an hour, in winter consumes, more
than an ounce and a half. Apart from the state of the surrounding
medium, many different circumstances exert a perceptible influence
on animal heat, and produce tolerably regular variations in it. The
seasons, the times of day, sleep, digestion, mode of nourishment, age,
etc., are thus constant modifiers of intensity of combustion/ in breath-
ing ; but there are such order and harmony, such foresight, one may
say, in the organization of the system, that its temperature continues
definitively nearly the same in the physiological state.

The temperature of the human body, at the root of the tongue or
under the armpit, is about 37° (cent.) ; this figure expresses the mean
found in taking the temperatures of different points of tbe body, for
there are certain slight variations in this respect in passing from one
organ to another. The skin is the coolest part; and the more so the
nearer we come to the extremities. The temperature rises, on the
contrary, with increasing depth of penetration into tbe organism;
cavities are much warmer than surfaces. The brain is- cooler than the
viscera of the trunk, and the cellular tissue cooler than the muscles.
Nor does the blood have the same temperature in. all parts of the
body. The labors of Davy and Becquerel established the fact that
the blood is warmer the nearer to the heart examinations are made.
Claude Bernard measured, by methods of equal ingenuity and exact-
vol. 11. — 26

A02 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

Hess, the temperature of deep vessels and the cavities of the heart. IIo
showed that blood, in passing out from the kidneys, is warmer than
when it enters, and the same is true of blood passing through the
liver, lie ascertained, too, that the vital fluid is chilled in going through
the lungs, and consequently the temperature of the left cavities of the
heart is lower than that of the right, by an average of two-tenths of a
degree. The last fact clearly proves that the lungs are not the-£ur-
nace of animal heat, and that the blood, in the act of revivification,
grows cool instead of warm.

Ancient physiologists supposed that life has the power of producing
heat ; they conceived of a kind of calorific force in organized beings.
Galen imagined that heat is innate in the heart — the chemic-physicians
attributed it to fermentations, the mechanic-physicians to frictions.
Time has dispelled these errors of supposition, and it is proved now
that the heat of animals proceeds from chemical reactions taking place
in the interior of the system. Lavoisier must be credited with the
demonstration of this truth by experiment, As early as 1777 he
discovered that air, passing through the lungs, undergoes a decompo-
sition identical with that which takes place in the combustion of coal.
Now, in the latter phenomenon, heat is thrown oft"; " therefore," says
Lavoisier, " there must be a like release of heat in the interior of the
lu»gs, during the interval between inspiration and expiration, and it
is doubtless this caloric, diffusing itself with the blood throughout the
animal economy, which keeps up a constant heat in it. There is, then,
a constant relation between the heat of the living beinjx and the
quantity of air introduced into the lungs, to be there converted into
carbonic acid.'' Such is the first capital fact brought to light by the
creator cf modern chemistry ; but he did not rest there. lie under-
took to examine whether the heat theoretically produced in a given
time by the formation of a certain amount of carbonic acid, that is to
say. by the combustion of a certain quantity of carbon in the organism,
is exactly equal to the amount of heat developed by the animal in a
corresponding time. This quantity was estimated by the weight of
ice melted by the animal placed in a calorimeter. Lavoisier ascer-
tained in this way that such equality does not exist, nor was he long
surprised at this, for he soon discovered that, of 100 parts of atmos-
pheric oxygen absorbed, only 81 are thrown off by the breath in the
form of carbonic acid. He concluded then, from this observation, that
the phenomenon is not a simple one, that a part of the oxygen (nine
per cent.) is consumed in burning hydrogen, to form the vapor of
water contained in the expired air. Animal heat must be accounted
for, then, by a double combustion : of carbon first, then of hydrogen ;
and respiration regarded as throwing off out of the animal carbonic
acid and vapor of water.

Lavoisier's experiments have been repeated and varied, and his
conclusions' discussed in many ways for nearly a hundred years.

HEAT AXD LIFE. 403

Several experimenters have corrected or perfected some points, but
the general doctrine has not been shaken by the recognition of its
secondary and very subtle difficulties, several of which still puzzle
physiologists. It is, indeed, undeniable that the greater part of the
reactions which occur in the system, with the production of heat, do
bring out, as a result, the exhalation of watery vapor and carbonic
acid from the lungs ; but these two gases cannot arise from a direct
combustion of hydrogen and carbon, because the system does not
contain such substances in a free state. They represent really only
the close of a succession of transformations, often distinct from com-
bustions, properly so called. On the other hand, these are not the only
residue of the chemical operations performed in the vital furnace.
Besides the water and carbonic acid thrown off by animals in breath-
ing, which are like the smoke of this elaboration of nutrition, they
excrete by other channels certain principles which are, as it were, tbe
6Corice. Now, these principles of disassimilation, among which should
be noted urea, uric acid, creatine, cholesterine, etc., could not be
results of pure combustion, and they denote that the circulating cur-
rent is the seat of extremely manifold reactions, the laws of which we
are only beginning to gain a glimpse of.

The latest advances of chemistry allow us, indeed, to follow the
linked sequence of the gradual transformations of nutritive substances
into the cycle of vital operations. It is well, at the outset, to fix ex-
actly the seat of these phenomena. They take place in all the points
of the system traversed by the capillary vessels. The glands, the
muscles, the viscera, in brief, all the organs, are in a state of constant
burning — thev are every instant receiving oxvaren, which brings about
alterations of various kinds in the depth of their substance. In a
word, every organ breathes at all its points at once, and breathes in
its special way. Certain physiologists of the present day are wrong
in localizing the phenomena of breathing in the capillary vessels.
They are merely the channels of transfer for oxygen, which, by exos-
mosis, penetrates their thin walls, and then effects, by direct contact
with the smallest particles of the organized mass, the chemical action
which keeps up the fire of life. It is easy to prove this by placing
any tissue, lately detached from the body, in an oxygenated medium.
We remark in this case an escape of carbonic acid, together with a
development of heat, and this possibility of breathing outside the
system proves clearly that such act can be accurately compared, as
Lavoisier thought, to the combustion of any substance. The only dif-
ference is with regard to intensity. While a candle or a bit of wood
burns rapidly, with a flame, the combustible materials of organic pulp
unite with oxygen in a more slow and quiet manner, less violently
and manifestly.

The blood, which flows and reflows incessantly in the most slender
vessels of our bodies, and charges itself full with oxygen' every time

404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the chest heaves, is composed of very various substances. It con-
tains mineral salts, such as chlorures, sulphates, phosphates of potas-
sium, soda, lime, magnesia, coloring-matters, fatty particles, neutral
substances of the nature of starch, and nitrogenized products, such as
albumen and fibrin. The salts undergo slight changes in the torrent
of circulation ; they are eliminated by the chief emunctories. The
neutral matters of the nature of starch are converted into glycogene
and fat. The fatty particles undergo in the blood only such oxidiza-
tions as produce certain derivatives of the same order. And, last,
the nitrogenized products are made over into fibrin, musculin, ossein,
pepsin, pancreatin, compounds all differing very slightly. It is the first
portion of the chemical process which is effected in the principal fluid
of the body. All these materials, elaborated at different points of the
circulating current, and designed to be assimilated, are destroyed in
the very organs in which they had been fixed. The glycogene is trans-
formed into sugar, which is burned, yielding water and carbonic acid ;
the fatty acids are partly eliminated by the skin, and partly burned.
As to the plastic matters which form the web of the tissues, we know
little about the chemical relation which connects these with their prod-
ucts of destruction — urea, creatine, cholesterine, uric acid, and xan-
thine. Such is a rapid sketch of the principal chemical phenomena
which, taking place throughout the entire system, kindle everywhere an
evolution of more or less intense heat. There is no central organ, then,
for feeding the vital fire — every anatomical element performs its share;
and, if a nearly uniform temperature exists throughout the body, it is be-
cause the blood diffuses heat regularly into the various parts it bathes.
Now, how can the amount of heat to which these reactions may
give rise be ascertained? Lavoisier arrived at it in a very simple
manner. After comparing the oxygen absorbed by the animal with
the carbonic acid and watery vapor thrown off, he deduced the weight
of the carbon and hydrogen burned, by assuming that the formation
of carbonic acid and of water produces in the system the same amount
of heat that it would produce if taking place by means of free carbon
and hydrogen. This is very nearly the result he obtained : A man
weighing 132 pounds burns in 24 hours, at the average temperature
of Paris, very nearly 11 ounces of carbon, and \\ of an ounce of hy-
drogen, and thus develops 3,297 heat units. During the same period
he loses through his lungs and skin 2f pounds of watery vapor, which
take from him 697 heat-units. There remain, then, nearly 2,600 heat-
units to account for. Other analogous estimates have been made, and
physiologists have deduced from them the conclusion that a man of
average weight produces in our climate 3,250 heat-units every day ;
that is to say, a sufficient amount of heat to raise seven gallons of
water to the boiling-point. These figures, though approximations,
give a sufficiently clear notion of the power of the animal economy to
generate heat.

HEAT AND LIFE.

405

Of late years, the question has been taken up again with more ex-
actness, thanks to the views of a new science called " heat-chemistry,"
which occupies itself with chemical phenomena in their relations to
heat. Heat-chemistry, by the aid of very delicate apparatus for meas-
uring heat, ascertains the number of heat-units developed or absorbed
by bodies entering into combination, beginning with the noted experi-
ments of Favre and Silbermann. Berthelot, who had made profound
researches into this subject, reduces the sources of animal heat to live
varieties of transformation : first, the effects resulting from the fixation
of oxygen with different organic principles ; then the production of car-
bonic acid by oxidization ; then the production of water ; in the fourth
place, the formation of carbonic acid by decomposition ; and, last, hy-
drations and dehydrations. The learned chemist attempted to show
how the numbers obtained in the study of the heat of combustion of
the different organic acids, alcohols, etc., might be applied to the com-
pounds burned in the animal organism ; but, while admitting the theo
retic verity of the analogies he establishes, we cannot refrain from re
marking that their practical verification is exceedingly delicate and
difficult. How can we measure, at any one point of the system, the
heat produced by a fleeting reaction occurring in the inmost depths of
a tissue that must be lacerated to be examined ?

If thermo-chemistry seems not to throw much light on physiology
on this side, it reveals to it on another sources of heat that had hitherto
escaped notice. Berthelot shows that carbonic acid in the system is
not always formed by oxidization of carbon, but sometimes proceeds
from decomposition absorbing heat. We know that alimentary sub-
stances are reducible to three fundamental types — fats, hydrates of
carbon (sugars, fecula, starch), and the albuminoids. Now, the fats,
in decomposing and combining with wTater, as it occurs under the influ-
ence of the pancreatic juice, evolve heat ; and so it is with the hy-
drates of carbon, independent of any oxidization. And albuminous
substances, too, produce very clear calorific phenomena, when their
combination with water takes place with its consequent various de-
compositions. These facts, noted by Berthelot, must have their place in
the minute and exact calculation of animal heat, which it is perhaps as
yet too early to undertake. At any rate, this heat originates in the
totality of those chemical transformations which are going on unceas-
ingly in the depths of the animal organs, and are bringing about the
continual renovation of the whole organized substance ; in other words,
nutrition ; but why that nutrition — why that perpetual production of
heat in the living machine ?

We have now the means of answering this question, which involves
the secret of one of Nature's most beautiful arrangements. The heat
produced by animals is the source of all their movements ; in other
words, the mechanical labor they perform is a mere simple transforma-
tion of the activity of heat they develop. They do not create mo-

+o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tive force by any voluntary operation, which would be one of the
prerogatives of life ; they draw it from the calorific energy stored up in
the organs traversed by the blood. Besides, there is a fixed relation
between the quantity of heat that disappears and the mechanical la-
bor that appears. Yet, it is to be remarked that, if all motion by liv-
ing beings is a transformation of animal heat, that heat is not wholly
transformed into motion. It is partly wasted by transpiration through
the skin, by touch, and especially by radiation ; it is used in keeping
up to a constant point the temperature of the animal, subjected to
many causes of refrigeration.

The mechanical labor performed by an animal is very complex. In-
dependently of visible muscular motions, there are all the changes of
place in the interior organs, the continual pasisage of the blood, the
contractions and dilatations of a great number of parts. Now, these
actions are only possible in so far as the phenomena of breathing are
taking place in the active region. Prevent arterial blood from coining
to the muscle, that is to say, prevent combustion taking place, and
consequent heat evolving in it, and, although the structure of the or-
gan suffers no harm, it loses its contractile power. Mere compression
of the supplying artery of the muscle, so as to check the flow of blood
in it, causes the organ to grow cool, and lose its power. The labors
of Hirn and Beclard have clearly established the relations between
heat and muscular motion. Later experiments by Onimus have fixed,
with equal precision, the efficiency of heat through the movements of
circulation.

We have said that the heat-producing power of aliments will be
the more considerable in proportion as they contain a greater quantity
of elements that need a large supply of oxygen for their combustion.
Therefore, meat and fats repair the losses of the system much more
speedily than vegetable substances. The latter are suitable for the in-
habitants of warm countries who do not require to produce heat, which
the atmosphere supplies them with abundantly. The inhabitants of
cold regions, on the contrary, whose accessions of heat ought to be as
continual as energetic, are urged by instinct to use meats and fats,
which throw out great heat in their combustion. For instance, it is a
physiological necessity that the Lapps should feed on the oil of cetacca,
as it is a necessity for men of the tropics to consume only very light
food. The activity of respiratory combustion and the kind of alimen-
tation thus vary with climate, so that there is always a certain propor-
tion maintained between the thermic state of the surrounding medium
and that of the animal furnace. In like manner, in the same climate,
persons who perform great mechanical labor must eat more than those
who put forth but little movement. This fact, long ago observed, has
received of late the clearest and surest demonstration. Yet, perhaps,
it is not kept sufficiently in view in the management of public ali-
mentation. Many examples prove the benefit that industry would de-

HEAT AND LIFE.

407

rive from increasing, in all possible ways, the amount of meat used in
laborers' meals. Quite recently, at a manufacturing establishment of
the Tarn, M. Talabot has improved the strength and sanitary condi-
tion of his workmen by giving them meat in abundance. Under the
influence of a diet almost wholly vegetable, each laborer lost on an
average fifteen days work a year through fatigue or sickness. As soon
as the use of meat was adopted, the average loss for eacli man per
year was not over three days. Often enough, it must be owned, alco-
hol is only the workman's means of remedying the want of heat-pro-
ducing elements in his food ; a deceitful remedy, which buoys up the
system for a time, only to sap it afterward with alarming subtlety.
One of the best preventives of the abuse of alcohol would certainly be
the lessening of the cost of meat.

From the point of view of the relation between heat and motion,
the living being may thus be compared to an inanimate motor, as a
steam-engine. In both cases, heat is engendered by combustion, and
transformed into mechanical work by a system of organs more or less
complex. In both cases it is at first in a state of tension, and yields
motion in proportion as it is demanded for the performance of certain
work. Only the living being is the far more perfect machine. While
the best-made steam-engines only utilize y^- of the disposable force,
the muscular system of man, according to Hirn, accounts for y1^-. On
the other hand, the animated motor has this peculiarity, that its sources
of heat and its mechanical arrangements are intimately commingled,
that its heat is produced by organs in motion with a sort of general
diffusion, and that the machine itself becomes in turn transformed
within itself into heat ; an incredible complication, of which science has
succeeded in unravelling the simple laws only by dint of the united
efforts and resources of physics, chemistry, and biology.

As some physiologists hold, heat must not only be the source
of motion in the system, but must also undergo transformation into
nervous activity. The functional action of the brain must be a labor,
exactly like that of the biceps. Mind itself should be regarded as en-
gendered by heat. Late experiments by Valentin, Lombard, Byasson,
and especially Schiff, would seem to prove, it is thought, that there is a
proportional and constant relation between the energy of nervous func-
tions and the heat of the parts in which they are effected. Gavarret
boldly concludes, from his researches, that heat has the same relations
to the nervous system that it has to the muscular system ; only, in the
case of the muscles, the force produced exhibits itself externally by
visible phenomena, while in that of the nerves it is exhausted inter-
nally in profound molecular action, which eludes any exact measure-
ment. A given sum of heat developed in the system would thus be
on one side a mechanical equivalent, and on the other a psychological
equivalent. Gavarret, who is a cautious savant and true to experi-
mental methods, doubtless does not go so far as to maintain that

408 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thought and feeling can be estimated in heat-units; he even asserts
that there is no common measure between intelligence and heat ; but
less timid physiologists are not wanting who reduce every kind of
vital manifestation to the strict laws of thermo-dynamics. A few suc-
cinct remarks may perhaps shoAV that such physiologists err.

A comparison between the muscular and the nervous systems from
the point of view of their connection with heat is a bold one for many
reasons. Between nerve and muscle there exists this enormous differ-
ence— that the former is endowed with a spontaneity denied to the
latter. Muscular fibre never contracts of its own accord; it needs a
stimulus — its energy is borrowed. The nerve-cell, on the contrary, lias
in itself an ever-present, never-exhausted power of action, of which the
energy is its peculiar property. Both evidently derive the principle
of the activity that marks them from the same external and internal
media ; but, while the muscle, a mechanical organ, is limited to the
obedient transformation of the force assigned to it, under the form of
heat, into a measurable amount of work, the nerve, a vital organ, re-
mains impenetrable and inaccessible to our calculations, and exerts its
characteristic and sovereign powers in its own way, through a series
of operations that escape all estimates of their force and heat. On the
part of the muscular system, every thing can be measured ; on the part
of the nervous system, nothing. Impressions, sensations, affections,
thoughts, desires, pleasures, and pains, make up a world withdrawn
from the common conditions of determination. That superior force
which, ruling all the highest animal activities, decides, suspends,
checks, and governs the very transformation of heat into movement ;
which, asserting its independence within us, call it by what oldest
name we may — soul, will, or freedom — remains the most undeniable,
though the most mysterious certainty of our consciousness, this force
protests against the degradation of cerebral life to mechanism. Such
is the conviction, moreover, of Claude Bernard and of Helmholtz.

II.

Independently of the slight and usual variations that heat may
present in the same species, and those it exhibits in passing from one
zoological group to another, we may consider the changes it undergoes
in the same individual, influenced by the various disturbances of the
system. Although it remains almost insensible to modifications of the
surrounding temperature, it is not the same when the complete equi-
librium of the organs is affected. The concord between the different
parts of the organism and the functions they discharge is so perfect
that the least trouble is reflected among them, and sends disorder
everywhere. The nervous system, charged with keeping up harmoni-
ous communication between all points of the living being, first takes
note of the change befalling, and transmits its abnormal impression
into all quarters. It is not the generator, but it is the regulator, of

HEAT AND LIFE. 4o9

animal heat ; that is to say, it directs and in a manner oversees its
production and diffusion according to the varying needs of the system.
Every lesion or affection of this system reacts on the physiological
processes, and particularly on the evolution of heat. By cutting the
fdament of the great sympathetic nerve on only one side of a rabbit's
neck, Claude Bernard produced an elevation of temperature of several
degrees on that side. The blood flows toward the point where the
action of the nervous system is suspended under any influence what-
ever, bringing with it an increase of heating force. At a point where
the reverse occurs, the vessels contract, and the temperature falls.

Imperfect nutrition and fasting act on the animal heat, but not
directly. The organism keeps up to its normal degree of temperature
till it lias exhausted its reserved store of combustible substances.
Then it cools slowly down to a much lower degree. Thus, a rabbit,
starved by Chassat, showed the first day a warmth of 38° 4' (cent.) ;
two days before its death, 38° 1' ; the evening before, 37° 5' ; and at the
moment of death, 27°. By placing it in a warm medium the moment
it was about to die, the apparent activity of its functions was restored
for a little while ; but the renewal is of brief duration : the anatomical
elements have absolutely lost their spring.

The hand of an invalid, suffering from inflammation of the chest, or
from an attack of fever, is burning ; that of one affected by serious
asthma, or by emphysema, is as cold to the touch as marble. This is
because animal heat varies greatly in different pathological states.
Sometimes it rises, sometimes it falls; and the morbid influence is
scarcely ever compatible with the body's degree of normal tempera-
ture. In Hippocrates's time, when examination of the pulse was not
yet practised, the increase of temperature was the only element in the
commonest of maladies, fever. Galen defines it quite simply as an
extraordinary heat (calor praeternaturalis substantia febrium). The
ancients did not err. It has been admitted and proved in our days,
that the elevation of the animal heat is just the specific character of
the febrile condition. On the one hand, there is never any fever when
the temperature continues at the normal degree ; on the other, the
rapidity of the pulse may reach the utmost limits, without any febrile
movement, as is seen in hysteria. Whenever the bodily heat exceeds
38° (cent.), it may be affirmed that there is fever; and, whenever it falls
below 36°, there is what is termed algidity. So that the normal heat
varies within the narrow range of scarcely two degrees. Beyond these
limits, that is, above 38° and below 36°, the temperature points out
some morbid trouble. In common intermittent fever, it rises two or
three hours before the chill, reaches a maximum at the close of it, and
then falls. Acute and decided inflammations, such as pneumonia,
pleurisy, bronchitis, erysipelas, etc., are marked by a period of thirty-
six hours, or about two days, during which the heat rises slowly to 41°#
Toward the third day, this heat decreases, ready to reappear in exacer-

4io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bations of from half a degree to a degree, during three or seven days,
at the end of which time the disorder lias run its course. When the
temperature gradually rises after the third day, a fatal result may he
expected. Persistent heat in that case is the precursor of death.
Eruptive fevers, like small-pox, scarlatina, and measles, present very
important phenomena of heat. In these heat begins with the attack
of the malady, and increases till the cutaneous eruption occurs. It
keeps up at a maximum, which reaches 42^° (in scarlatina), till the
eruption is complete, then it begins a declining course, variable with
the phases of the eruption, which finishes either with scaling off as in
scarlatina, or suppuration as in small-pox. And the temperature rises
also in several surgical aifecticns, bringing on a more or less inflamed
and feverish condition. This is observed in wounds, and generally in
every kind of traumatism, in tetanus, aneurisms, etc. In the case of
strangulated hernia and of burns, and in most cases of poisoning, on
the other hand, it declines in a remarkable way.

Very plainly this rising and falling of animal warmth in diseases
can only be attributed to a corresponding state occurring in the
energy of respiratory combustion. We do not yet exactly know the
cause of these variations ; that is, the mechanism by which the mor-
bid influences stimulate or check the active production of heat. Some
physicians see in it the effect of fermentations occasioned in the blood
by certain microscopic beings, such as bacteria and vibriones, which
may perhaps be supposed to be the fact in most febrile maladies.
Others assume that, in local inflammations, it is the inflamed organ
which communicates heat to the whole body, as a furnace does in a
confined space. To others the disturbance seems rather to have a ner-
vous origin, since the nerves, as we have seen, are the regulators of
thermic action.

The use of the thermometer is the only exact method of measuring the
temperature in diseases. Swammerdam, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, seems to have been the first to have the idea of it. De Haen
and Hunter, in the last century, used it in their medical practice, but
its employment at the sick-bed has really only come into importance
in our own day, thanks to the labors of Bouilland, Gavarret, Roger,
Hirtz, and Charcot, in France ; B'arensprung, Traube, and especially
Wunderlich, in Germany. These physicians were not content with
proving that the temperature in illness rises several degrees ; they fol-
lowed the variations of the thermometer day by day, hour by hour,
in the different phases of the pathologic movements. They discovered
that the curves of these oscillations furnish constant types for each
disease, which are modified in a regular manner, according as the dis-
ease has been left to itself or treated by one or another medicine. By
the study of these pathologic curves of heat the course of diseases
may be followed, and valuable indications noted in diagnosis or prog-
nosis. In haemorrhage of the brain, for instance, the temperature falls

HEAT AND LIFE. 411

suddenly to 3G° or even 35°, while, in the attack that takes the form
of apoplexy, it continues nearly at 38°. These two disorders, quite
distinct in their treatment and cure, yet often give rise to a confusion,
which the thermometer will hereafter allow to be avoided. Granular
meningitis is distinguished from simple meningitis by the same method ;
in the former the temperature does not rise, notwithstanding the ex-
treme rapidity of the pulse, but in the latter the thermometer marks
40° or 41°.

In every case we see what advantage practical medicine may gain
from the physical sciences, what precision and safety it attains by
the employment of its means, in proportion to the morbid symptoms.
We may add that the future of diagnosis is to be found partly here.
By the banishment from medical examination of the often-uncertain
judgment of the senses, by substituting as far as possible for personal
and arbitrary conclusions, as well as for the feeling, always more or
less confused, of the physician, the plain and impassive indications of
an exact instrument, we do away with the causes that impede the me-
thodical interpretation of the evil in question. Moreover, these in-
struments often reveal peculiarities that elude direct observation.
They repair the omissions, correct the mistakes, guide the activity,
multiply the power of our imperfect senses. From this point of view,
the study, by the thermometer, of variations of animal heat in diseases,
thermometric clinic, as it is called, is one of the most indisputable
onward steps in medicine.

III.

After having seen how internal heat is produced in animals, how it
expends itself in them, and undergoes change into mechanical work,
in fine, what spontaneous or occasional changes it passes through in
them, we should study the influence of external heat on the same ani-
mals, and the various phenomena resulting from the rise or fall of tem-
perature in the medium they live in. Quite recent researches have
thrown light on these questions. Boerhaave had made some experi-
ments, not sufficiently exact, however, on the subject. Berger and
Delaroche, at the beginning of this century, undertook new ones,
which gained celebrity in the schools of physiology. They placed an-
imals in stoves containing air heated to different degrees of tempera-
ture, and noted the effects produced on life by thermic influences.
The conclusion from their researches was, that all animals have the
power of resisting heat for a certain length of time, and that the du-
ration of resistance varies with the species. Small animals yield after
a moderate time to a temperature of 45° to 50° (cent.). Larger ones
endure heat better. Cold-blooded animals and the larva? of insects
resist more energetically than warm-blooded animals ; but the reverse
is the case with fully-developed insects.

Delaroche and Berger studied the humau subject, too, from the

4i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

same point of view, and ascertained that the effect produced varies
with individuals. Thus from 49° to 58° the stove grew insupportable
to Delaroche himself, who became ill from the experiment, while Ber-
ger was scarcely fatigued by it. On the other hand, Berger could re-
main only seven minutes in a medium heated to 87°, while Blagden
stayed 12 minutes in it. In tropical countries the heat often rises during
the day above 40° without troubling the natives. At the Cape of Good
Hope the thermometer marks 43°. Yet sometimes such a heat is
murderous. It is related, among other cases, that in the month of
June, 1738, in the streets of Charleston, several persons died under
the influence of 41°. In Africa our soldiers are often known to be at-
tacked with madness and to die in making a long: march, under the
rays of a burning sun, but here the influence of light is combined with
that of heat. Duhamel mentions the account of several servant-girls
of a baker, who could remain without any inconvenience at all for
nearly ten minutes in an oven heated to the necessary degree for bak-
ing bread. The experiment has since been repeated. There is noth-
ing contradictory in these facts. An animal can endure for some time
a temperature much higher than its own, because the very profuse
transpiration which occurs in such a case prevents the heating of the
organs ; yet, as we shall see, so soon as the internal heat really rises a
few degrees above the normal figure, life is no longer possible.

The study of these phenomena had scarcely been carried further,
when in 1842 Claude Bernard devoted to it certain researches, which
he resumed and finished last year, and of which he has just published
the results. This physiologist used a pine box, divided into two parts
by a grating, on which the animal subjected to the experiment is
placed. The box rests on a cast-iron plate, and the whole is arranged
on a furnace which warms the air of the apparatus more or less. A
window, placed in the side of the box, allows the head of the animal
to be fixed outside of it at will. Examining animals, subjected under
these conditions to the influence of air more or less warm, Bernard
verified the first observations of Berger and Delaroche, and made new
and more important ones. Boerhaave had given as the cause of death
the application of hot air to the lungs, preventing the cooling of the
blood. Bernard showed by experiments that hot air, acting on the
skin, creates a rise of temperature more rapidly fatal than when this
fluid is merely introduced into the pulmonary vessels. He proved also
that, when the hot air is damp, the phenomena take a more rapid
course, and death occurs much more quickly and at a lower tempera-
ture than in dry air. This difference must result from the fact that
dampness promotes a rise in temperature.

When an animal is subjected to the poisoning effects of heat, it
presents a series of uniform and characteristic phenomena. It is at
first a little disturbed, then panting, its movements of respiration and
circulation accelerate, it grows slowly hotter through the circulation,

HEAT AND LIFE. 4l3

which, carrying the blood continually from the surface to the centre,
bears heat also along with it, then at a given moment it falls into con-
vulsions, the beating of its heart ceases, and it dies uttering a cry.
By means of the thermometer it is noted that the temperature of the
animal, in every case, is higher by four or five degrees (cent.) than the
figure which represents the normal warmth. Thus at first the animal
is excited, its functions seem to be performed with fresh vigor, very
much as, in the first rays of April sunshine, the pulsations of life in all
beings become more rapid ; but this stimulus is only fleeting, and soon,
when it reaches a certain degree, this heat gives place to the cold of
death. Bernard carefully examined animals dying under these con-
ditions, and the first phenomenon that struck him was the rapidity
with which corpse-like rigidity came on. The heart grew suddenly
insensible to any stimulus ; effused spots appeared at several points
on the skin. The heat fixed in coagulation the soft matter that com-
poses the muscular fibres. These had the look of being struck with
lightning. On the other hand, the arterial blood of the animal
grew black, ill-supplied with oxygen, overloaded with carbonic acid,
and assumed the look of venous blood. Yet in this state the blood
has not lost its physiological properties, and under the influence
of a new supply of oxygen can regain its normal state, and grow
ruddy again. The heat, provided the degree be not too elevated, only
promotes activity in sanguine combustion, without changing the blood.
Nor does the nervous system either appear to suffer much. The ele-
ment most deeply affected is muscle; heat is a poison of the muscular
system, like sulpho-cyanuret of potassium, and the upas-antiar. It is
the loss of the vital properties of this system, which, by bringing about
rigidity of the muscles, then the stoppage of circulation, and conse-
quently of respiration, is a necessary cause of death. This destruc-
tion of the contractile muscular fibre occurs toward 37° or 39° in
cold-blooded animals, toward 43° or 44° in mammals, toward 46° or
48° in birds, that is, speaking generally, at a temperature five or six de-
grees higher than the natural temperature of the animal. Bernard
calls attention to the fact that in no case is it allowable to suppose
that life opposes a kind of resistance to the excessive heating ; on the
contrary, vital movement tends to quicken it, and that may be readily
understood. The internal heat produced by the animal unites with
the acquired heat, and the renewal of the blood, which is the condi-
tion of the heating, then occurs with much greater activity. Let us
add that quite lately Demarquay applied this toxic action of heat on
the muscles in the happiest manner, and without suspecting it. He
cured patients suffering from those frightful muscular contractions
which characterize tetanus, by subjecting them to the influence of ca-
loric, and making them take very hot air-baths. The rise of tempera-
ture in the tetanized muscles was sufficient to modify them, and restore
them to a healthy state. Here the poison worked a cure.

4
4.14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Such arc the effects on animals of the elevation of temperature.
Let us now see what becomes of them when immersed in cold media.
Some curious facts with respect to the freezing of certain animals have
long been known. During his voyage to Iceland, in 1828 or 1829,
Gaimard, having exposed in the open air a box filled with earth in
which toads were put, opening it after a certain time, found the rep-
tiles frozen, hard and brittle ; but they could be restored to life when
put in warm water. Many ancient authors cite similar cases, and we
can almost bring ourselves to understand how a great English physi-
ologist might for a moment have given them the whimsical interpreta-
tion that he did. John Hunter fancied it might be possible to prolong
life indefinitely by placing a man in a very cold climate, and there
subjecting him to periodical freezing. The man, he said, would per-
haps live a thousand years, if, at the end of every ten years, he were
frozen for a hundred, then thawed out at the end of the term for ten
years more, and so continuously. " Like all inventors," Hunter adds,
" I expected to make my fortune by this scheme, but an experiment
completely undeceived me." Putting carp into a freezing mixture, he
observed, in fact, that, after being entirely frozen, they were dead,
past recovery. The case is the same with all other animals, as the
late and very remarkable experiments of F. A. Pouchet have proved.

The influence of cold on organized beings varies, according as we
regard superior animals or the inferior species. In general, it may be
said that it requires a very low surrounding temperature to chill many
animals, because the vital heat they develop resists the process with
energy. Yet the mammals of arctic regions, in spite of their thick coat
of fur, can only brave the temperature of the pole (sometimes equal to
40° (cent.) below zero, the freezing point of mercury) by living under
the snow where they make their lair. The Esquimaux, too, dig huts
in it, where they pass their wretched days. When the organism can
neither react nor protect itself against temperatures so low, death by
freezing quickly overtakes it. The body is stiffened, and retains after-
ward a state of remarkable incorruptibility. Every one knows the
story of the antediluvian mammoths, discovered in the polar ice, where
they had been buried, as fresh as animals just dead. While heat
destroys the tissues, cold preserves them.

Through what mechanical means does cold become mortal ? It
seems to act on the nervous system. Travellers relate that in polar
regions an unconquerable disposition to sleep overcomes men attacked
by very low temperatures. On the icy shores of Terra del Fuego,
Solander said to his companions, " Whoever sits down falls asleep,
and whoever falls asleep never wakes again." This inclination is so
overpowering that many of his attendants gave up to it, and he
himself sank down for a moment on the snow. It is said that, during
the winter of 1700, two thousand soldiers of Charles XII.'s army
perished in the sleep to which they surrendered, under the influ-

HEAT AND LIFE. 415

enco of cold. Its action on the nervous centres, however, is only-
secondary and consequent on another phenomenon, studied hy Pouchet,
which reveals this as the secret of death. "When the temperature of
the interior of the body sinks to 10° or 12° below zero (cent.) the cold
freezes the blood more or less, thoroughly disorganizing its globules,
and it is this alteration which, either at once or when the blood becomes
fluid again, destroys all the vital functions. Larrey relates the case of
Sureau, chief apothecary of the French army in Russia, who, when chilled
to freezing by a painful march in the snow, did not die until the moment
they began to restore warmth. Experiments on animals show that
they keep themselves alive as long as they are maintained in a state
of half congelation, and die whenever their temperature and circula-
tion are so far restored as to permit the blood-globules, disorganized
by cold, to be diffused throughout the vessels. Death occurs, there-
fore, whenever the quantity of these globules is sufficient to produce a
considerable disturbance in the system, that is, whenever the frozen
part is at all extensive. An animal entirely frozen, and consequently
containing in its congealed blood no globules but those unfit for life,
is dead, without possibility of resurrection. Thawing it only restores
a soft flaccid, discolored body, with opaque eyes. If freezing only
attacks a limb, it becomes gangrenous, and is destroyed. Pouchet
deduced from these examinations a judicious, practical conclusion.
If it is true that, in cases of partial freezing, the death of the individual
is due to the disorganized globules reentering the circulation and cor-
rupting the blood, it is plain that, the more sudden the invasion of
these globules is, the more rapidly death will supervene. It follows,
that, by resisting this invasion, by means of ligatures, or extremely
slow thawing, we might succeed in preventing the poisoning. The
diseased globules which, pouring in a flood into the heart and lungs,
would imperil life by the sudden alteration of the blood, will apparently
disturb it merely in an unimportant way, if they are dropped into the
blood by slow degrees.

Thus the late researches of experimental physiology explain for us
the effects of heat and cold, regarded as toxic agents. The former is a
poison of the muscular fibre, the latter a poison of the blood-globules.
The case is the same with heat as with the other elements of the
cosmic medium, in which the animated being lives. It enfolds the
most contradictory powers, like the tender flower, spoken of by Friar
Lawrence, in " Romeo and Juliet," from which may be distilled both
safety and danger. It can by turns support health, heal disease, or
inflict death.

Man is, then, the weak plaything of all those silent forces that sur-
round and press upon him. In vain he enslaves them ; he cannot
escape the inflexible laws that subject the equilibrium of life to that of
the lowest physico-chemical conditions. lie has at least the consola-
tion of knowing these laws, and guiding his existence so as to soften

4i 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their severity as far as possible. When Nature crushes him, she is
unconscious of it, unconscious of herself: man, so small, is greater than
these blind greatnesses, because his peculiar greatness is consciousness.
The subject we have been studying is a grand proof of this ; but its
full, imposing interest would not be understood were we to end without
giving the answer to the last question it suggests. Whence comes this
heat developed by chemical phenomena in the living system ? It comes
from aliments which, in the last resort, are all drawn from plants, and
they have borrowed it from the sun. When the vegetables, whose com-
bustion takes place within the animal, there throw off a certain amount
of potential energy, as heat, they do but transmit to it the force which
the sun has supplied them with. It is, then, a portion of solar radiation,
stored up at first by the plant, which the animal makes disposable and
converts to use, whether for resisting cold or for securing the regular
play of his motive functions. Thus we may say, with exact truth, the
sun is the inexhaustible source, as it is the perpetual spring of life.
From this point of view, science confirms the intuitions of oldest date,
and man's poetic dreams in the childhood of the race. Reason com-
pletes the instructions of its long experience by harmonious agreement
with the simple and natural sentiment felt by the first of men, when
for the first time they looked on the splendor of day. — Revue des Deux
Mondes.

NERVOUS HEALTH AND MORAL HEALTH.

AN able article in the Times some weeks ago on " Brain-work and
Longevity," which has since been discussed and rediscussed in
all sections of the press, was remarkable for several characteristics,
especially for a curious thesis apparently indorsed by the Lancet of a
subsequent week, that overwork of the brain, through late hours and
the like, is a physiological impossibility. The argument was something
of this kind : All brain-work means the destruction of nervous tissue or
brain-tissue ; all such tissue, when destroyed, must be repaired by food
and sleep before it can be drawn upon again ; therefore, overwork is
impossible. A man may try to steal hours from sleep; but, if he does,
he will only find how hopeless the attempt is the moment he passes the
bounds of what the existing amount of tissue permits. He will strug-
gle feebly against sleep, drop asleep, find he is doing no good, and be
compelled, in the interests of his work, to shorten the hours of his
work. The argument is full of fallacies, as any one might tell who ap-
plied a parallel argument to prove the impossibility of overwalking ;
and we are astonished at the sort of sanction given to it by the Lancet.
It is quite as easy to prove that no man can overwalk himself. He can-
not walk except by the destruction of muscular tissue, and, when as

NERVOUS HEALTH AND MORAL HEALTH. 417

much has been destroyed as makes him weary, he ought to drop down
and go to sleep on the high-road, if the argument he worth much ! As
a matter of fact, of course, a man may destroy a great deal more of the
supply of either brain or muscular tissue than he ought to destroy, be-
fore the process of reparation begins, just as he may live for days of
comparative starvation on a great deal less food than he needs to keep
his system in health, or even on the flesh he has made in past days.
The brain-work done under such conditions may not be quite as sound,
but yet it may draw a certain hectic fire from the glow of anxiety,
which, to many a taste, would more than replace the defective sound-
ness of thought. Indeed, the writer of the Times article admits anxi-
ety as one of the causes of ill-health, through its effect in preventing
sleep and proper nutrition ; and why, if it prevents sleep, should it not
prevent the sleepiness which alone prevents the destruction of more
nervous tissue than is desirable at any one time ? The writer is hardly
consistent with himself ; but we mention his argument, not for its own
sake, but because his able paper represents the rise of a physiological
school of ethics, which is, as we believe, gaining rapid ground and do-
ing a great deal to supplant a true ethical doctrine. The real drift of
all this skilful argument, partly indorsed by the Lancet, against the
possibility of overworking the brain, is to strike a blow at the root of
all ethics — the limited freedom of the human will. The physiologists,
want to identify moral action so completely with the physiological,
conditions of moral action, as to represent all life as the mere result of
the growth and destruction of tissue, and as containing no provision^
for any real alternative choice at all. If a man can't overwork, as-
this writer says, but can very easily underwork, and can be overwor-
ried by any involuntary spring of care, the natural inference would
seem to be that the secret of what looks like "will" in life is really not
" will " at all, but some involuntary emotion which plays our actions as.
we play chessmen ; and hence the rules of right action will have more and
more to be sought in the manipulation of the influences to which our
bodies and tastes are subjected, rather than in useless appeals to the'
will to do what the will has no power to do.

What would be the kind of ethics which would spring out of such
a theory ? We find traces of it in plenty of medical journals, and'
pretty distinct traces in the able paper on " Brain-work and Longevi-
ty " itself. " One who is insulted or offended," said the writer, " feels
an instantaneous impulse to attack the offender. A mere brute,
whether human or bestial, acts upon the impulse without reflection. A
man may either act upon it after reflection, or restrain himself, and
perhaps go peacefully away. If so, he will probably bang the door
after him ; and will feel better for doing it. A child or a woman will
obtain the same relief from a gush of tears. In either case, the impris-
oned force is discharged, is gone out from the system. Whatever may-
be the nature of an emotion, its repression is hurtful ; but the repreS'
vol. n. — 27

fi8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sion of the depressing emotions is far more hurtful than th'at of the
pleasurable. Grief, disappointment, or envy, when restrained from ex-
ternal display, lias a marked tendency to exert a very hurtful influ-
ence upon the nervous system of organic life, which governs the pro-
cesses of secretion and of repair." Now, if we take this doctrine along
with the other, which denies to man all power over the physiological
conditions of life, most men will infer that physiology is a far better
source of guidance than any considerations of right and wrong. If the
will has no power over the physiological conditions of life, while the
physiological conditions of life have great power over the will, natural-
ly we shall seek the guidance of the latter, and not try to find rules for
the guidance of the former. Here, for instance, is a new rule of the
physiological sort at once : " The suppression of all emotions, but espe-
cially of depressing emotions, is injurious." Therefore, in place of at-
tempting to repress and conquer selfish anger by an inward effort, one
ought, in deference to one's nervous physiology, to go and bang the
door of some empty room at least, or indulge in a flood of tears with
the women and children. Or, if envy — one of the most depressing of
passions, as the exponent of the physiological rules for long life justly
remarks — preys upon an ambitious or vain spirit, the depressing effect
ought, we suppose, to be guarded against by inventing some similar
safety-valve. If the sufferer rom that passion be literary or artistic,
an anonymous satire or bitter caricature would become a personal duty,
in order to avoid the injurious gnawing of a " depressing emotion."
If there be no access to literature and art, to secure a confidant to
whom backbiting speeches can be safely made, without danger of their
being retailed, would not seem so much an ignoble indulgence as a
medical precaution. Where is this doctrine, that the complete re-
straint of the " depressing emotions" is injurious to the nervous sys-
tem, to lead us to, in the absence of any code of right and wrong that
assumes the freedom of the will, and the power of obeying or infring-
ing a divine moral law ? It would suggest a perfectly new law of con-
duct, according to which we should shape our inward life, not with re-
lation to any spiritual ideal within us, but in relation to the expediency
of letting off dangerous physiological steam, by expressing whatever it
might be injurious to repress. Quilp's device of keeping a wooden effi-
gy, on which to let loose his evil passions, might become a serious sug-
gestion in this physiological school of ethics ; and what it might
lead to in the direction of physical passion it is not even tolerable to
contemplate.

Certainly there is one tenet of the Physiological school of ethics
which is more and more frequently recommended to the world for its
acceptance, not only by the apostles of these doctrines, but by the
partisans of culture. Goethe was the first famous teacher who not
only taught, but systematically acted upon, the teaching that men
should deliberately turn away from all sources of disturbing emotion,

NERVOUS HEALTH AND MORAL HEALTH. 419

and keep their minds fixed on tranquillizing objects of contemplation.
That was the physiological ethics arrived at from a different side —
from that side of the mind which yearns after unshaken intellectual
dignity, after calm self-possession. In other words, penitence for sin
of any thorough kind should be carefully eschewed, for it involves
strong emotion ; and the inexhaustible craving after a perfection that
cannot be attained shoidd also be kept down, for that implies an in-
ward gnawing of the heart which is dangerous to intellectual calm.
Thus, what the physiologist reaches through the doctrine of "tissue,"
the apostle of culture reaches through the idolatry of intellectual calm.
Does it need to be said that any genuine ethical doctrine, while it will
listen to and not despise the lesson of physiology and the cultus of
serenity, will regard both the one and the other as utterly subordinate
considerations in relation to the moral ideal ? As it may be right to
lay down the life for others, so it may be right to endanger health, to
draw too heavily on the supplies of nervous tissue, to face the possi-
bility of a sacrifice of intellectual calm, in a word to run counter to the
admonitions both of physiology and of culture. "VVe should say, for
instance, that to look any pain that naturally befalls us — intellectual,
moral, or only of the heart — steadily in the face, and realize fully what
it is and means, is one of the most imperative of inward duties, and
that one is sensible of a certain unmanly cowardice in all the expe-
dients for escaping from it by taking refuge in lower though perfectly
innocent excitements, for hiding it away from one's self without learning
all it means. And yet to grasp the full meaning of any real pain,
whether due to one's own unexpected intellectual or moral shortcom-
ings— whether it arises from shrinking of will, or failure of faculty, 01
the sin which brings remorse, or simply from the unfaithfulness of
others, or from death — is one of the most " depressing" of the duties
of the inward life, and one from which the natural man usually turns
away without the need. of warning from the physiologist. And if the
comparative clearness of physiological science should ever lead to the
substitution of a physiological for a truly moral code of conduct, we
are quite sure that the very first result would be to render men less
sincere with themselves, not only less able to govern themselves, but
less willing even to face that which is painful or evil in their own na-
tures. Nervous health is one things and moral health is another. We
suspect that what is good for the one is often bad for the other, and
that the doctrine wThich discourages the simple suppression of feelings
that are beneath us, and the steady encounter with forms of inward
pain from which Nature tempts us to escape, as a shying horse starts
away from an object it dreads, is a doctrine which would sacrifice the
highest part of man — that for which life is given — to the conservation
of the tissues of the brain, and the cultivation of that coolness of tem-
perament which is the best security for a somewhat ignoble longevity.
— London Spectator.

+2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

BRAIN-WOEK AND THE EMOTIONS.

AMONG the legitimate solaces of the toils of the modern biologist,
there should certainly be reckoned the grim delight which he
were less than human if he did not feel in terrifying Mrs. Grundy.
Merely to hear a Huxley or a Spencer shout " Boh ! " to a flock of the
terrified orthodox is amusing, but to the man himself who makes it
the fun must be even perilously fascinating. Doubtless, there is some
danger of carrying the joke too far. One has heard of a philosopher,
who, when courteously asked by a company of the most intelligent of
the London clergy to explain some of the principal points of conflict
between scientific data and conventional religious theory, began his
speech by bluntly telling his audience that he was going to relate im-
portant facts, but that his hearers were such unimportant people that
he did not care a button whether they believed the facts or not. Such
rudeness gives even more pain to the truly scientific mind than it in-
flicts upon the immediate sufferers.

However, there really is legitimate amusement to be had, and even
much good to be done, by the biologist, in shocking the theoretical
prejudices of the metaphysicians. The irony of Von Hutten, and the
delicate wit of Erasmus, when exposing the intellectual contemptibility
of the opponents of the Reformation, were not more truly helpful to
the progress of humanity, than are the assaults of those physiologists
and physicists who are even now smashing the crockeryware of the
metaphysicians and kicking the fragments about with a fury that one
can easily see is partly fun. As for that large section of the clergy
who persist in looking at the phenomena of mind only through the
spectacles of Hamilton and Mansel, there really is no way of dealing
with them at all except that of pelting them with incessant ridicule.
It is inexpressibly comical, and yet provoking, to hear them keep
chattering about the tendency of modern biology to degrade our ideas
respecting mind ; for one has only to look back some fifty or sixty
years to remember the days when mind was considered exclusively
the domain of theologians and metaphysicians, and mental diseases
were treated according to " high priori " notions instead of medical
science. One would think that the cruel and shameful failure of that
old system, and the striking benefits that at once accrued to the men-
tally afflicted when physicians boldly declared that the mind could
only be successfully treated by treating the brain — one would think
that these and many other similar things would have taught the meta-
physicians modesty ; but such is not the case. It was but four years
since that the Archbishop of York delivered himself of a most pre-
sumptuous and densely ignorant attack on modern biological specu-
lation, and was promptly castigated by Dr. Maudsley. To this day,

BRAIN-WORK AND THE EMOTIONS. 421

the typical clergyman — we do not speak of such exceptionally liberal
men as one often meets in London— holds as firmly as ever to the be-
lief that all discussions of moral perversion, which deal with it from
the side of mere bodily organization and health, are an insult to reli-
gion—a lapse into the black gulf of what he calls " materialism."

It is not with such persons, however, that we are now concerned ,
but rather with a class of writers, truly liberal and full of culture,
who, nevertheless, cannot get over what seems to them the hopeless
divergence between recent physiological doctrines and any systematic
teaching of the " higher ethics." To this estimable class belongs the
writer of a thoughtful article in the Spectator, on " Nervous Health
and Moral Health." His text is the recent discussion originated by a
remarkable leader in the Times, which declared that hram-icork does
not kill, but that brain-worry — especially stifled emotion — is the really
fatal agent in nearly all cases where overwork gets credited with a
death. Let us repeat here that the experience of medical men un-
doubtedly shows that this is no fancy, but (with comparatively trifling
exceptions) an important general fact. The Spectator does not ven
ture to deny this statement altogether, but, accepting it provisionally
as correct, argues that such teaching would lead to dangerous results,
unless we acknowledged that what is good merely for nervous health
may be bad for moral health, and vice versa. We certainly cannot
admit this, and we believe that the fears of the Spectator as to modern
physiology leading to bad ethics are quite groundless.

To the writer in the Spectator the danger seems to be that medical
philosophers are proposing to extinguish human emotion, and reduce
all men to a dead level of intelligent but selfish complacency, reaching
the same point, for the sake of preserving health, as Goethe aimed at
for the sake of preserving perfect artistic culture — or " sweetness and
light," as Mr. Matthew Arnold would call it. We cannot, of course,
stand sponsors for the original writer in the Times; but we cannot
see that this was what he intended to say ; and, at any rate, this is
not the voice of modern physiology as we understand it. What the
physiological psychologists do affirm is this: That, whereas serious
and calm intellectual work is only very slowly destructive to the ner-
vous health, emotion, unless directed into proper channels, is highly
destructive to the stability of the nervous system. And they further
say that the conventional ideas as to the propriety and utility of cer-
tain kinds of emotional excitement do visibly bear, in the experience
of medical men, the very worst fruit possible. They do not say, as
the Spectator hints, that the emotion of repentance for real guilt is a
thing to be shunned; but they declare that the habit of self-torturing
introspection, which the clergy and teachers are especially earnest in
recommending as a means of spiritual purification, is so far from pro-
moting the existence of a really high and pure standard of ethics, that
it ruins both body and soul, in the majority of cases, wherever it

422 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is applied on the large scale. More especially they believe that the
habit of inducing unnecessary emotional excitement, in young persons
who are just entering the dangerous period of commencing sexual life,
is so morally and physically injurious to a large number of individ-
uals, that it may well be questioned whether those individuals might
not have been more safely left in total neglect and ignorance. We
suspect the writer in the Spectator little knows — for no one but a med-
ical man can know — the terribly doubly-edged character of all those
more powerful emotions which he believes are so exalting in their ef-
fects upon the spiritual nature. Here and there, it is true, we do find
some one of such stern Roman nature that he can take a torturing
emotion into the recesses of his heart, and discipline himself by the
pain which its repression causes, and by that pain alone. But, for the
common race of man, it seems to be the duty of the physiologist to
insist — first, that the immature and tender system of the young should
never be exposed to the influence of any avoidable emotion, unless it
be such as can be freely and harmlessly expressed, and in particular
that self-invented spiritual tortures should be absolutely interdicted ;
and secondly, that older persons, who must be exposed to disturbing
emotions, should at least be encouraged by all means to balance pain-
ful with pleasing and refining feelings, and, above all, to have confi-
dence in the really soothing and strengthening character of regular
fairly strenuous intellectual work, and the favorable influence which
is exerted, even upon moral character, by the substitution of produc-
tive labor for the fluctuations of sterile excitement. — London Lancet.

THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE.

Bt eeedeeick aenold.

IN once more gathering up the threads of this subject from other
years, and endeavoring to address a lay audience from a laic
point of view, one would naturally desire, according to the limited
measure of one's ability, to grasp some medical subject for which we
all have an affinity, and which may be of usefulness to some. But in
these papers I enter into an implied bargain with my readers to tell
them something picturesque and odd — something that may even be
romantic and sensational : but I am also troubled with the uneasy idea
that I might ventilate some matters that might be for the health and
happiness of some of us. I am like some honest citizen who has only
got some modest extent of garden-plot, which he feels bound to lay out
with flowers, but at the same time he has some yearnings toward
homely but esculent vegetables ; or, to vary the simile, just as mathe-
maticians have their pure and applied mathematics, so in discussing

THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 423

questions of medical life and science, one desires not only to look at
the subject on its abstract and literary side, but to aim at some con-
crete good. I will propose, lector benevole, that we attempt a compro-
mise ; that while, in random, discursive talk, I am permitted, as here-
tofore, to cull some anecdotes, thoughts, and illustrations, such as out-
siders may care to gather from a particular science, I may yet dwell on
matters that may be of essential home interest to us, and hope there
may be a somewhat serious design and meaning underlying our olla
podrida.

In Medicine, the first object of interest and attention is the medical
man himself. An author is to me something more interesting than
any thing he does in authorship ; a great classic's works are only the
fossil remains of a vanished world of intelligence. When patients
ponder on pills and potions, I the rather wonder why they do not ex-
amine into the nature and idiosyncrasy of their medical man. They
may depend upon it that, if he is worth much, he will be examining
into their nature and idiosyncrasy. The great question for the patient
to solve is, whether his doctor has got the mystic gift. He may be
chuckful of science ; tap him anywhere, and there will be a clear-run-
ning stream of fact and comment ; but the practical question is, wheth-
er he will prove a healer to me. High science may leave a man very
stupid for practice. The knowledge of things is but an adjunct to the
knowledge of ends. The physician, aware, in the first instance, of all
the dangers his patient is liable to, should, then, from his own knowl-
edge, select the best means of obviating them ; but, though he had the
whole materia medlca by heart, he would not be nearer his mark if he
knew nothing of disease ; and this is essentially the full-gotten knowl-
edge of good and evil impressed on him through a susceptibility of his
mind altogether distinct from the acquisition of natural history and
chemistry. To remember well the pains and the moments of relief of
all the sufferers he has witnessed is the first requisite of a physician ;
to couple these with their attendant circumstances, and to store them
up too, is a further extension of the practical intelligence. On this
foundation he ought to build a store of Nature-knowledge, of book-
knowledge, and of logical acumen. As a man, prudent for himself,
should remember adequately all his own pains, so a man, skilfully pru-
dent for the sick, should remember all their pains and weaknesses in
the first instance ; his head should be more full of misery than the box
of Pandora, and his only solace should be the hope at the bottom.
This is a wise set of sentences, which I have found stored up among
my medical notes and reflections, and, I believe, goes pretty deep into
the heart of things medical.

If a medical man shows at great advantage in your home or in his
own, there is one place in which he is too often uncomfortable, and
makes other people uncomfortable as well. This is the witness-box.
There is hardly any great trial for murder, but doctors and counsel

|24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

come into fierce collision ; there is the conflict of medical testimony,
and the common-sense of judge and jury is frequently insulted. It
would be a golden rule for a medical man never to use a scientific term
if a popular term would serve his use as well. The medical man not
only states facts, but obtrudes his explanations and theories about
them, and does so in highly technical language. The legal mind re-
volts against the assumption of the medical mind, and in this way
much prejudice is done to science. The lawyers are pretty unanimous
m holding that a medical man is the worst possible witness. He can-
not plead privilege, like the lawyer or the confessor, and his best plan
is to tell his story at once, in the most intelligible and straightforward
way that he can. The eminent German physician, Caspar, who for
many years was forensic physician to the Berlin justiciary courts, is
very severe upon medical witnesses : " How often have I heard physi-
cians talking to the judge and jury of ' excited sensibility,' ' reflex
movements,' ' coma,' ' idiopathic,' etc., without for one minute consid-
ering that they were using words and expressions wholly unintelligible
to unprofessional parties ! " Caspar's work is a perfect thesaurus of
odd incidents and cases ; and, if read, it ought to be compared with
Taylor's "Medical Jurisprudence," that we may compare the difference
between the English and the Prussian systems. The Prussian plan of
having an accredited medical officer attached to a court, who in some
sort of way is a minister of justice, is certainly an improvement on a
scene not infrequently witnessed in English courts, where a criminal
trial is turned into an arena for the conflict of scientific testimony.

If you take the volumes of Caspar, and Prof. Taylor's book, and
throw in a little more sparkling literature, like " Christison on Poisons "
— Christison, like the Fat Boy, will make your flesh creep — you will
have the materials — a veritable huge quarry — out of which you may
hammer all kinds of sensational and romantic stories. You may read
up the murderers, just as old Boffin read up the misers. There is the
eccentric Miss Blandy, of Oxfordshire, who poisoned her father as a
means for promoting her matrimonial projects ; the highly luxurious
and wealthy people who have tried to poison, not with vulgar lead and
arsenic, but with silver and gold ; the aberrant wife who poured poison
down her husband's open mouth as he was sleeping. Then there are
cases where a three-volume plot might easily be elaborated — where a
man or woman had actually taken poison, and secreted poison about
the effects of an innocent person, that suspicion and punishment might
be directed toward the innocent person. These are cases out of Chris-
tison. That learned professor gives a word of caution against a prac-
tice that has received considerable laudation. Some preparation of
antimony "is often foolishly used, in the way of amusement, to cause
sickness and purging, and likewise to detect servants who are suspected
of making free with their mistress's tea-box or whiskey-bottle ; and in
both of these ways alarming effects have sometimes been produced."

THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 425

It is curious to see the race between sin and science : how the tests of
the chemist even more than keep up with the craft of the murderer.
Some of our most celebrated poisons are of comparatively recent date.
Prussic acid was discovered, not so very many years ago, by Scheele —
though poisoning by cherry-laurel was a well-known process ; and the
late Mr. Palmer, of Rugeley, first brought strychnine into such feloni-
ous popularity. The toxicologists can count up their martyrs to sci-
ence. It is curious to observe how each advancing wave of time blots
out the records of crime. The crime that was a national event becomes
a tradition — is lost in a black abyss of forgetfulness. There, so far as
we are concerned, let such traditions rest.

We come back, however, to the point of departure whence we di-
gressed. The culture of the medical man is also combined with a
very large experience of life in its broadest bearings and its intensest
moments. The education, instead of being confined to a single school,
has very commonly been carried on at several great medical centres.
Travel is more than ever becoming one of the marks of a highly-
trained medical man. There is a period of leisure for nearly every
medical man, which, rightly used, may be one of unspeakable precious-
ness and importance for him. This is the time that lies between the
call to a profession and the obtaining any large share of work. As a
rule, all preparatory studies have not done more than to break up the
ground, and prepare it for the fertilizing process. The real work is to
be done when the mind is released from tutors and governors, and can
concentrate itself on the thought and work of maturer years. Travel
is the opportunity that best enables a man to combine study, thought,
and observation. It is astonishing what a large and increasing space
is occupied in medical life by travel. It is now not at all uncommon
for English medical students to spend a great deal of time at the medi-
cal schools of Paris and Vienna. They generally prefer Paris to Vi-
enna, and London to either. The best medical men more than ever
seem to be familiarized with the scientific medical thought of Germany.
The custom of going out as medical officer to vessels is very largely on
the increase. Many young men go with the steamers that traverse the
regular ocean thoroughfares. Men who have risen to, or descended
from, eminence have been glad to take positions on the great lines of
steamers. They are found a most agreeable addition to all the social
arrangements — with the drawback, however, of being obliged to sub-
sist in a chronic state of flirtation. Others take longer voyages, and,
generally speaking, seek a more adventurous line of life. Thus there
are, among men I have known, those who have gone to the Greenland
seas, round Cape Horn, to Australia, to India, and the Pacific islands,
and have gone, again and again, induced by the divine passion for
knowledge and travel. There would be many competitors for the
place of medical officer to travel with some of the expeditions that
nowadays go round the world. What such travel might be can be

426 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seen, with admiring despair, in Darwin's " Voyage of the Beagle."
Then many people, when they travel, are neither easy nor happy unless
they can afford the luxury of a " medical attendant." Some of the
best specimens of medical literature that we have are due to this in-
teresting class of medical men. A Milor on his travels likes a parson,
a doctor, and a traveller's major-domo ; but the doctor is least easily
dispensed with. In this way, by the medical education abroad, by
travelling engagements, and by taking appointments on board ship,
we have a travelled class of medical men who represent, perhaps, the
most interesting, and certainly the most amusing, section of the pro-
fession. Wherever in this wide world the medical man goes, he can
carry his work with him and his own letter of introduction. The wants
which surgery and medicine relieve speak their own vehement, univer-
sal language, and stand in need of no interpreter. The lawyer can do
no good with his law when once he is out of England. The clergyman
must learn the language of the natives, and find his opportunity and
his audience. But the medical man speaks the universal language, in-
asmuch as he answers a universal need. The philosopher and the par-
son can never be quite sure that they have done any good ; the good
is so remote and hidden, and it rarely happens that it is ascertained.
But the surgeon goes to a man in a state of positive torture, and by a
happy bit of carpentering puts him to rights, gives the intense happi-
ness of a sudden cessation from intense pain, and at once earns a
thrilling amount of very transitory gratitude. It would be only recit-
ing truisms to speak of the immense generous good they achieve. The
amount of self-denying generosity which a physician can practise, and
does, is simply incalculable, and there are, indeed, few of us who could
not easily furnish a collection of instances.

The curiosities of medical life and practice are endless. If we hear
very often of medical men doing arduous work for very scanty remu-
neration, sometimes there is an agreeable obverse of receiving very
splendid remuneration for very scanty services. We know of a medi-
cal man whose duty it is to take lunch every day at a great castle be-
longing to a noble lord. The household is immense ; and there is just
the chance that there may be some case of indisposition demanding
attention. He gets some of the best company and best lunches in
England, and duly charges a guinea for each attendance. There is a
very wealthy man near a great city, who cannot bear to be left for the
night. There is a physician of great ability who drives out of town
nightly to sleep at his residence ; he is consequently debarred evening
society, and if he goes out to dinner he has to leave his friends before
wine. He has to charge his patient a thousand a year ; and, I think,
he works hard for his money. Sometimes the services are such that
money cannot repay them. A friend of mine, a young medicus, had a
standing engagement of four hundred a year to look after the health
of an old lady. She required to be inspected three times a day, and

THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 427

make an exhibition of tongue and pulse. What made matters so aggra-
vating was, that she was as strong as a horse, while the doctor was a
delicate man. She was so selfish and perverse, that he was obliged to
tell her that he would have nothing to do with her case. Similarly, I
have known the son of a rich man who proposed to pay a clergyman
several hundred pounds a year for leave to spend his evenings with
him. The parson, however, was obliged to tell his rich friend that he
talked such intolerable twaddle, that he could not accept his company
on any terms that could be named ! But the oddest of these arrange-
ments is the following : A medical man has been attending a patient
several years, and yet he has never seen his patient. The gentleman
firmly believes that he has an oesophagus of peculiar construction, and
that he is accordingly liable at any moment to be choked. That help
may be at hand whenever any sudden emergency may occur, he has a
physician in the house night and day. The physician, being human,
must needs take his walks abroad, and it becomes necessary to provide
a substitute for him two hours a day. Accordingly a doctor attends
daily from twelve to two, fills up his time by disposing of an admira-
ble lunch, and finds the gold and silver coin, in their usual happy com-
bination, neatly put by the side of his plate, in tissue-paper. Up to
the present date he has never had the pleasure of exchanging words
with his interesting patient.

It is in medical biography, or, rather, medical autobiography, that
we must look for our most valuable and authentic instances. Medical
literature is not rich in this way; some half-dozen volumes would
nearly include the whole. It is to be regretted, indeed, that the best
medical men write the least ; those who have obtained the highest
rank in their profession, and who would have most of science, most of
incident to impart. There is all the difference in the world between
books that are written to obtain practice, and books that are written
out of the fulness of practice. ... In medical autobiography we have
such charming narratives as those written by Sir Benjamin Brodie and
Sir Henry Holland. There is no doubt that even fictitious narratives,
such as " Early Struggles," in the "Diary of a Late Physician," really
give us facts substantially as true as any which we find in regular
memoirs. I myself know physicians of singular learning and ability,
who for half a dozen years have not taken half a dozen guineas a year.
Other men, by the happy use of dress and address, though inferior,
leave them far behind. One instance is on record which might well
be worked up into some narrative like Mr. Warren's. An able man
waited and waited hopelessly till ruin stared him in the face. One
night, when brooding on his miseries, he heard a bell ringing violently
at his surgery door. Opening it, he found that a man had been thrown
out of his cab and nearly killed, and they wanted to bring him into
the surgery. The medical man found that there were concussion of the
brain and dislocation of the shoulder-joint. His card-case showed that

+28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he was a man of birth and a well-known politician. He stopped some
time at the surgeon's house, who was thus enabled to lay the founda-
tion of a large and lucrative connection.

Dr. Denman, the father of the great Lord Chief Justice, and the
grandfather of our new judge, who has so worthily been promoted to
the bench, which he will adorn, prefixed an autobiographical narrative
to his " Introduction to the Practice of Midwifery." He was educated
at the Free School at Bakewell, and, going up to London to study at
St. George's Hospital, he boarded and lodged with a hair-dresser at
half a guinea a week. In six months his money was gone, and he
thought, as a desperate chance, he might get a surgeon's appointment
on a king's ship. To his great astonishment, he passed, but he had
to pawn his watch before he could join his ship. Once he tried to set
up a practice, but he was obliged to betake himself to the royal navy
again. However, he tried again. "I had taken a small house in Oxen-
don Street ; but I furnished only one parlor, thinking to complete it
gradually as I was able, and I hired a maid-servant, who cheated me
very much. When I went into this house, excepting my furniture, I
had but twenty-four shillings in the world, but I was out of debt."
He got on gradually, made a very happy marriage, bought houses,
bought land, kept his coach, and, what, as a Bakewell man, pleased
him immensely, he was called in to attend the Duchess of Devonshire.
" I was made happy," he writes, " by the birth of a son, which was an
unexpected blessing, as I had given up all hopes of having any more
children." This son was the celebrated Lord Chief Justice. In time,
Dr. Denman became the head of his profession.

Many similar instances might be supplied. Even John Hunter had
to make his way amid the greatest difficulties, having to satisfy his
brother "William of his genius before he could satisfy the outside world.
Sir James Simpson is another instance of a man who might have taken
nitor in adversum as his motto. He was one of the poorest of poor
students who flock to a Scottish university. There is a pretty little
village called Inverkip on the Frith of Clyde, near which is Sir Michael
Shaw Stewart's great place. He applied for the office of village sur-
geon, but, not having any local influence, the appointment was refused
him. Sir James used to say that he felt a deeper amount of chagrin
and disappointment from this circumstance than from any other event
in his life. Going before a famous pathologist for examination, the
examiner was so pleased with him that he asked him to become his
assistant. When Simpson became a candidate for the chair of Mid-
wifery at Edinburgh, the great local interests were again enlisted
against him. It was alleged that his election would be prejudicial to
the interests of hotel-keepers and city tradesmen, for it was not likely
that many strangers would be induced to visit Edinburgh for the pur-
pose of getting professional advice. It was not for the first time that
the highest intellectual interests had been imperilled at Edinburgh by

THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 429

such petty considerations. As a matter of fact, no physician ever at-
tracted such a number of visitors ; the invalids came in shoals. Simp-
son once, told his pupils that many of his best papers were written by
the bedsides of his patients. His great principle, when he met with
any apparently hopeless case, was to interrogate what Nature did in
the rare instances in which she effected cures. Simpson's great dis-
coveries may be here enumerated ; they form the most thrilling page
of modern medical history. His first great achievement was that he
procured chloroform undiluted, and discovered the effects of the vapor.
This great discovery alone would suffice to associate his name with
that of Harvey. That night of the 2Sth of November, 1847, is much
to be remembered, when this great discovery was made. He then
demonstrated the possibility of banishing pain and subjecting it to
human control. There are noAV a great many manufactories of chloro-
form in Edinburgh alone — one that makes several million doses a year.
His great surgical invention is acupressure — stopping blood from cut
arteries by the use of metallic needles. His third great achievement
was his contributions to that great work in which Dr. William Budd
has preeminently labored. This is to endeavor to stamp out contagious
diseases as completely as the poleaxe could exterminate the rinderpest.
His last great work was in the direction of hospital reform. How was
it, he asked, that, in the hospital, the mortality in cases of amputation
was one in 30, and elsewhere one in 180? Hospitalism has its special
evils, that are fatal in these palaces of human suffering. Sir James
Simpson's final suggestion goes to the root of the matter — that all stair-
cases, etc., should be outside the building, and that no one ward should
ever have even the slightest chink of communication with another.

This last reform of Sir James Simpson's is especially important. It
is not too much to say that all the great triumphs of surgery, such as
those in lithotrity and ovariotomy, have been practically neutralized
by foul hospital air, to which is due one-half of the deaths in our great
metropolitan hospitals. In surgical wards there is a condensation of
foul air, and, in addition, the specific poisonous effluvia given off by
foul air. Mr. Spencer Wells is famous for that wonderful operation
by which the lingering agony of years is prevented by the knife being
used under anaesthetics. He generally uses the new anaesthetic methy-
lene, which, in many cases, is preferable to chloroform. He found that
there was a large mortality in hospitals, which was reduced to one-
eighth in private practice. St. George's Hospital has now a small
institution for ovai-iotomy at Wimbledon, an example which may be
extensively followed. It is to be hoped that in the magnificent sea-side
institutions that are so much increasing among: us there will be a con-
spicuous adherence to the principle of the cottage hospital. The Na-
tional Hospital at Ventnor is constructed on the cottage principle, and
we have before had occasion in these pages to testify to its wonderfid
efficiency.

l3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A case, which, some time ago, was tried in the Court of Queen's
Bench, illustrates, in a striking manner, some of the dangers that be-
long to the annual national migration to the sea-side, and also suggests
some very large and important considerations affecting the national
health. Without going fully into the details of a peculiarly painful
case, it will be sufficient to mention the salient facts. Sea-air having
been ordered for a child by a medical man after an attack of scarlatina,
a lady took her nurse, governess, and children, to the coast, and hired
apartments 'without telling the lodging-house keeper of the nature of
the illness in her family. After a time this most infectious of all in-
fectious diseases broke out afresh, apparently from the neglect of the
proper disinfecting processes, and the poor lady lost two of her chil-
dren, and the unhappy landlady of the lodging-house also lost two
little ones. The anguish of parental grief cannot be measured by a
pecuniary standard, but actual medical and funeral expenses, and the
injury done to the course of business, are susceptible of being assessed,
and the jury gave the lodging-house keeper substantial damages. It
is impossible not to feel commiseration for the sea-side visitors who ex-
perienced this blow in addition to their own calamities, but the verdict
was not iinwarranted by the facts, nor, to use regretfully a harsh word,
undeserved. Those who are acquainted with the history of special
classes among the poor are aware how much deadly illness there has
been at times in the families of laundresses and pawnbrokers, who have
had under their charge the raiment of fever-patients, to which no puri-
fying process had been applied. (Still greater mischief has been done
by milk which has been adulterated with water taken from some im-
pure source.) We know, also, of cases where lodgings or furnished
houses have been let, in the holiday season of the year, after the occur-
rence of contagious illness, and yet no disinfectants have been used,
and no honest warning has been given. It must increasingly be felt
how necessary are some caution and judgment in making holiday ar-
rangements. It is comparatively easy for a lodging-house keeper to
recover damages from a well-to-do family in a case where fever has
been propagated through a want of care and candor; but, if the con-
verse case had occurred — and it happens in at least an equal degree —
it is hardly likely that substantial damages could be obtained from the
landlord, even if bereaved fathers, in their grief, should be inclined to
seek them. Scarlet fever slays in this country annually some twenty
thousand people, and disables, more or less, for a longer or shorter
time, a hundred thousand more. Yet, humanly speaking, the larger
amount of this mortality might be averted by the processes of disin-
fection, separation, and, we may add, a religious adherence to truth.

It is not pleasant to think of the successive steps in the history of
the sad case to which we have alluded, yet they illustrate the dangers
of the travelling public, and might explain the apparently mysterious
origin of many a similar attack. The mischief arose with a conva-

THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 431

lescent patient going to the sea-side. We easily picture him going to
the terminus in a London cab, travelling in a public railway-carriage,
then travelling in another public conveyance, and finally deposited in
a public lodging-house. Early convalescence is often a most danger-
ous period in the disorder, when minute particles from the skin-
invisible, impalpable — take wings, and become elements of danger,
multiplying seeds of disease and death. It is safer to travel in a car-
riage with parcels of nitro-glycerine than with such a patient. If our
national sanitary arrangements were in a satisfactory state, such a
case would be certified from the London to the local physician, and,
both on road and rail, special carriages would be provided, or the
ordinary carriages be at once disinfected. Or if, as is usual in this
country, such things must be left in private hands, there is a propei
treatment which would entirely, or almost entirely, annihilate the
danger of contagion. Many of our readers will recollect the piteous
case set forth some time back by Dr. Bradley, the present head of
University College, when he was head master of Marlborough College.
He wanted to know, in the columns of the Times, and various af-
flicted parents made the same inquiry, when it would be safe for a boy
recovering from scarlet fever to return to his home. Scarlatina is al-
most the one terrible rock ahead which public and private schools
have to fear. Many of us know very sad stories of the premature
deaths of the young, and the losses and even ruin of school-masters
through this terrible visitation. It is not every school which has the
vitality of Marlborough College to withstand such trials. In answer
to these appeals, the whole theory and practice of disinfection were
clearly set forth by competent medical authority. Such obvious meth-
ods were suggested as the isolating the patient, the anointing him
from head to foot with camphorated olive-oil, the destruction or most
thorough cleansing of all things infected, the use of entirely untainted
clothes ; and then we are assured that patients might be restored to
society after a very limited quarantine. The natural apprehension
would be that these simple means might not prove sufficient; but the
real fact is, that it is extremely difficult to make people resort even to
such simple means as these. Not one hundredth part is found of the
energy in preventing disease that is employed in attempting to work
its cure. What is wanted is a wider teaching of the elementary prin-
ciples of such matters, and a greater degree of courage and conscience
iu applying them.

The fact is, that the prevention of diseases should be more regarded
than it is, as a true end and scope of medical science. It is to the
credit of medical men that they are more and more devoting their best
energies in this direction. The skill of medical diagnosis has been
carried to the utmost, but not with the result of any corresponding
subjugation of disease. Indeed, it is a humiliating fact that, in those
chest-cases where medical science has made the most marvellous dis-

432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

coveries, the actual amount of disease is probably greater than ever it
was. The doctors are even quarrelling among themselves, whether
certain illnesses are contagious or non-contagious. There is no doubt
that scarlatina is contagious ; but, at the time of the illness of the
Prince of Wales, it was sharply debated whether typhoid fever was
infectious or not. Even the fact of such a discussion is hardly credit-
able, for it might have been thought that scientific men, by a scientific
induction of facts, could have set such a question at rest by this time.
But we feel quite certain, especially in days when people travel and
sojourn away from home, that no case of illness should be found to
exist which any opinion entitled to respect should consider infectious,
but it should be surrounded with safeguards, and so be saved from be-
coming the source of those terrible domestic tragedies with which we
are all so unhappily familiar.

We have now brought our readers to a point to which we have
been working up in the course of this paper, a point of extreme prac-
tical importance and urgency, on which the opinions of the public and
their suffrages should be collected. We wish to draw more particular
attention to a subject which we have just lightly touched on, one
which we believe cannot be too much ventilated and discussed amonsr
general readers, and on which they are qualified to form an opinion,
and to take action upon it. The theory involved is extremely simple
and interesting, albeit strictly scientific ; but the practical importance
of it is enormous. Somewhere in the dim perspective many of us can
discern the promise of a golden age, when all curable accidents will
be cured, and all preventible diseases will be prevented. There can
be no doubt but a simple contagious disease is susceptible of being
stamped out. We stamped out the cattle-plague, and, if the plagues
of men touched the same obvious and immediate pecuniary interests
as the plagues of cattle, we might stamp out similar calamities among
human beings. To a certain extent the history of the small-pox shows
how much can be done this way. In the remarks we are about to
make we most especially acknowledge our obligations to Dr. William
Budd's writings and teachings on the subject, who has developed his
views, full of import to the happiness and well-being of humanity,
with immense ability and experience, and much literary skill. The
theory is, that any contagious disease can be eradicated ; or, at all
events, limited within a very slender area ; and that various diseases
are in reality contagious, such as typhoid fever and consumption,
where the ordinary medical and general mind does not admit the fact
of the contagiousness. If we resort to the primitive processes of
counting noses, or listening for the largest amount of shouting, we
shall decide against the theory ; but at present legitimate argument
and logical deduction appear to be in its favor.

Mr. Disraeli's policy was lately denounced as a policy of sewage.
What has been called by some a policy of sewage, has been more

THE ROMANCE OF MEDICINE. 433

properly called by others a question of life and death. We do not
mind Mr. Disraeli and his friends having a policy of sewage, but it is
essential that the policy should be accurate and enlightened. The advo-
cates of the contagion theory have no weakness for sewage, especially
in an olfactory point of view. They say, also, that it places disease
under the most favorable conditions for the consummation of its evil
mission. But they assei't, in opposition to former theories of the
Board of Health — that has an unlimited command of print and pay —
that sewage, in itself, does not breed fever and infection, unless it is
charged with specific ingredients of contamination. Infectious dis-
eases are only communicated by the virus of specific poison. Many
of us, in the course of the holiday season of the year, accumulate a
collection of instances on the subject. In the famous cities of the
Continent, and in exquisite Swiss villages, we have the most noisome
stinks and sights, yet we hear nothing of fever. In fact, it almost
seems a rule that, where Heaven throws the greatest beauty and mag-
nificence, man should exhibit the greatest abominations. Natural
beauty goes, like King Cophetua's beggar-maid, in rags. Clovelly, in
Devonshire, is the most romantic spot we know in the western land,
and, till recently, it was the most undisguisedly dirty. But all through
the west of England, and, indeed, we are afraid, all over the three
kingdoms, we shall find lovely villages that, despite their loveliness,
will give the utmost offence to sight and smell. Yet, for whole de-
cades of years, no infectious illness is heard of in these villages ; and
then, suddenly, fever or small-pox breaks out, and, to say the least of
it, simply decimates the humble inhabitants. The contagionists will
assert that the evil state of things was comparatively harmless until
charged with a specific virus. One fact bearing on the subject will be
fresh in the recollection of all readers. Many years ago, the Thames
began to stink horribly in the hot months. The law courts broke up,
the Houses of Parliament were saturated with chloride of lime, the
river steamers lost their traffic, and business-men went miles out of
their way, in order to avoid crossing a city bridge. " India is in re-
volt, and the Thames stinks," were the two national humiliations
bracketed by our severe friend "the intelligent foreigner." It so
happened, also, that a Thames waterman died of the cholera; and that
unfortunate waterman created the utmost consternation in the coun-
try. A frightful outbreak of cholera and fever was expected. But
nothing of the kind happened. The health of the metropolis was re-
markably good ; the death-rate below the average, especially in the
diseases supposed to result from poisonous emanations. There was
certainly a failure in the supposed connection between epidemics and
a bad sanitary state of things ; and the suggestion arises that we were
mercifully saved the introduction of some element that might have
wrought all the misery we dreaded.

When the Prince of Wales was ill, we all of us, unhappily, ac-

TOL. II. — 28

fH THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quired some kind of notion on the subject of typhoid fever. Each
morning paper became a kind of daily Lancet. It is not much to
the credit of the medical profession that there has been a great deal
of confusion between typhus and typhoid. The latter, from which our
prince suffered, is totally distinct from typhus, and has its own dis-
tinctive marks, as much as small-pox itself. An eminent physician
suggests that it should be called the pythogenetic fever, whicli is, how-
ever, begging the question at issue, which is the great medical prob-
lem of our time, whether this disease is the result of malaria or of
contagion. Dr. Budd argues that as it is in typhoid fever, so it is in
small-pox ; as it is in small-pox, so it is in measles ; as it is in measles,
so it is in scarlatina ; as it is in scarlatina, so it is in malignant chol-
era : amid all varying phenomena, one thing constant, a specific morbid
cause, " a cause which is neither a permanent product of the soil, nor of
the air, nor of particular seasons, but which is susceptible of transmis-
sion from place to place ; which breeds as it goes, and then again dies
out, or becomes dormant, without leaving any sign to mark its track."
The slaughter of the Franco-Germanic War is repeated year by
year in England by preventible diseases. This enormous mass of dis-
ease furnishes ample material for infection on every side. A most in-
finitesimal germ, invisible, impalpable, would suffice to infect a single
human body, and that body might suffice to infect very many others.
It may be said that the link of connection is not always sufficiently
clear between the infector and the infectee. In a vast proportion of
cases this is clear enough, and it is no argument where it is not. Peo-
ple have been taken ill of small-pox even in prison, under solitary con-
finement; yet how could we doubt of real though remote infection?
Let each individual do his part in the holy crusade against ignorance
and disease. Let it be asked, amid contemplated legislation, whether
the state cannot give effectual hope. We may then hope to transmit
to our children their heritage of earth and time less stained by scald-
ing tears and passions of regret than it has been to us and to our
fathers. — London Society.

■» * »

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS.

WHATEVER may be the ultimate verdict as to the truth of those
views which are associated with the name of Darwin, it cer-
tainly cannot be denied that Mr. Darwin himself has a profound be-
lief in them. The work which he has just published, under the title
" On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," is a new
test to which he subjects his own doctrines. He considers the subject
from the point of view of evolution, and, though many may consider

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS. 435

that he is far from' having established his case, it will be admitted by
every reader that he has thrown much new light upon it, and made a
most fascinating and instructive book. Mr. Darwin distinguishes be-
tween physiognomy and expression. The former is statical, the latter
dynamical. Physiognomy aims at the recognition of character through
the study of the permanent form of the features. Expression, on the
other nand, deals with actions, or the play of features and gesture in
man and animals, as constituting the natural language of the feelings.
Much has been written upon the subject of Expression by men of vari-
ous countries, but Mr. Darwin recognizes that Sir Charles Bell, in his
"Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression," published in 1806, not only
laid the foundations of the subject as a branch of science, but built it
up into a noble structure. Mr. Darwin is of opinion that the subject
has hitherto been pursued by a false method, or has been vitiated in
its treatment by erroneous assumptions. Bell, Gratiolet, Duchenne,
and the other leading writers upon the question, have dealt with it on
the old hypothesis, that the different animal species came into exist-
ence just as they are now, wholly distinct from each other ; but Mr.
Darwin maintains that, so long as man and all other animals are viewed
in this way as independent creations, the true philosophy of the sub-
ject cannot be reached. The simple before the complex ; the lower
forms of life as interpreting the higher, and the whole as a connected
scheme of development, is now the method of biology, and for this in-
vestigation it is, therefore, necessary to study the manifestations of
character in their simplest forms.

An able writer in the Saturday Review summarizes Mr. Darwin's
views as follows : " The tendency to draw as broadly as possible the dis-
tinction between man and brutes led Sir Charles Bell to deny to the low-
er animals any expression beyond what might be referred more or less
plainly to acts of volition or necessary instincts, their faces seeming to
him to be chiefly capable of expressing merely rage or fear. The facial
muscles in man he thought to be a special provision for the sole object
of expression, and so far distinctive of humanity. But the simple fact
that the anthropoid apes possess the same facial muscles that we do,
renders it most improbable, apart from any reference to teleology in
general, that we were endowed with these muscles for any such purpose,
still more that monkeys had special muscles given to them solely for
the purpose of exhibiting their hideous grimaces. Since distinct
uses can, with much probability, be assigned to almost all the facial
muscles, we may look upon expression as but an incidental result of
muscular or organic function. Mr. Darwin's early inclination toward
the doctrine of evolution, or the origin of man from lower forms, led
him five-and-twenty years ago to regard the habit of expressing our
feelings by certain movements, innate as it has now become, as having
been in some manner gradually acquired at the first. Seeking back
for the origin of movements of this kind, he, in the first place, was

|36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

led to observe infants, as exhibiting emotions with extraordinary force,
as well as with a simplicity and an absence of convention which cease
with more mature years. Secondly, the insane had to be studied, be-
ing liable to the strongest passions, and giving them uncontrolled
vent. Dr. Duchenne's ingenious application of photography, repre-
senting the effects of galvanism upon the facial muscles of an old man,
gave some assistance toward distinguishing varieties of expression.
Less aid than was expected was found to be derived from the study of
the great masters in painting and sculpture ; beauty in works of art
excluding the display of strong facial muscles, and the story of the
composition being generally told by accessories skilfully introduced.
More important it was to ascertain how far the same expressions and
gestures prevail among all races of mankind, especially among those
who have associated but little with Europeans. With this view a list
of 16 questions was circulated by Mr. Darwin within the last five years,
to which 36 answers have been received from missionaries, travellers,
and other observers of aboriginal tribes, whose names are appended to
Mr. Darwin's introductory remarks. The evidence thus accumulated
has been supplemented by the close and keen observation of the author
himself through a wide range of animal life. It seemed to him of
paramount importance to bestow all the attention possible upon the ex-
pression, of the several passions in various animals, not, of course, as de-
ciding how far in man certain expressions are characteristic of certain
states of mind ; but as affording the safest basis for generalization on the
causes or the origin of the various movements of expression. In ob-
serving animals we are not so likely to be biassed by our imagination,
and we may feel sure that their expressions are not conventional.

" As the result of his observations, Mr. Darwin has arrived at three
principles, which appear to him to account for most of the expressions
used by man and the lower animals under the influence of various emo-
tions and sensations. The first of these is the principle of serviceable
associated habits. Movements which are of service in gratifying some
desire, or in relieving some sensation, become by repetition so habitual
that they are performed, whether they are of any service or not, when-
ever the same desire or sensation is felt, even in a very weak degree.
Actions, which were at first performed consciously, become, through
habit and association, reflex or automatic — the sensory nerve-cells ex-
citing the motor nerve-cells, without first communicating with those
cells on which our consciousness and volition depend. Starting at the
approach of danger, and blinking with the eyelids so as to protect the
eyes, become perfectly spontaneous. Reflex actions, too, gained for
one purpose, may be modified independently of the will or of habit, so
as to serve for some other distinct purpose ; or, they may be developed
through natural selection. And they are thus often brought into play
in connection with movements expressive of emotion. When move-
ments associated through habit with certain mental states are partially

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS. 437

repressed by the will, the strictly involuntary muscles retain their ac-
tion, and may be highly expressive ; and when, on the other hand, the
will is relaxed, the voluntary muscles fail before them. Debility of the
brain, Sir C. Bell remarked, is most shown in the case of those muscles
which are in their natural condition most under the control of the will.
A further mode of expression arises when the checking of one habit-
ual movement calls up another.

" The second principle is that of antithesis. When certain move-
ments or gestures have been acquired as aforesaid, and have come to
be habitually performed in connection with a certain state of mind,
there will then be a strange and involuntary tendency under the op-
posite state of mind to directly opposite movements, whether in any
way serviceable or not. Hence alone, Mr. Darwin thinks, can be ex-
plained, not only the sudden and extreme changes of expression in
the attitudes of animals, but many gestures used by savages, or by
the deaf and dumb. This antithesis in attitude, from anger and defi-
ance to affectionate crouching, is illustrated by him in the case of the
dog and the cat, by means of photography. The Cistercian monks,
among whom speaking was sinful, invented a gesture language, founded
upon the principle of antithesis. It is clear that in this principle the
will intervenes largely.

" Mr. Darwin is, however, less confident in referring expressive
signs or gestures to the action of this principle, than to his third origi-
nating cause, the direct agency of the nervous system. When the
sensorium is strongly excited, nerve-force is generated in great excess,
and is transmitted in certain directions, determined by the connection
of the nerve-cells, or, where the muscular system is concerned, by the
nature of the movements of face or limb, which correspond to each
nervous impulse. These are, at the first, at least, independent of the
will, or even of habit, though in later stages habit may have consider-
able play, inasmuch as nerve-force tends to pass along accustomed
channels. Mr. Darwin inclines to think that what seem the most
strictly involuntary actions, such as the bristling of the hair in fear or
anger, may have been effected by the mysterious power of the will.
He is far, however, from laying down dogmatic views upon the opera-
tion of these various agencies in causing or varying expression, nor is
he prepared to draw sharp lines between the action of his three ele-
mentary principles. Many phases or signs of expression may partake,
he considers, of all three, and may be referable to no single or direct
physiological cause. The visible apparatus of expression may ot
course be taken as muscular, and he begins with laying down dia-
grams of the various muscles of the face in man, those in particular

which are connected with the eyes and mouth Suppose we take

as an illustration the oblique or upturned eyebrows of a man suffering
from grief or anxiety. Every one must be familiar, both from Nature
and works of art, with the way in which the inner angle of the eye-

438

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

brow is drawn up under this emotion, the forehead being contracted
or wrinkled at the same time. Mr. Darwin evolves the origin of this
involuntary movement, through the same logical train of sequence by
which we have seen him, in his earlier and more elaborate works, draw
out the extraordinarily complex chain of laws, which runs through
natural history. When infants scream loudly from hunger or pain,
the circulation is affected, and the eyes tend to become gorged with
blood. In consequence, the muscles surrounding the eyes are strongly
contracted by an involuntary action as a protection. This action, in
the course of many generations, has become firmly fixed and inherited.
With advancing years and culture, the habit of screaming is partially
repressed ; but the muscles round the eyes still tend to contract when-

FlG. l.

Dog approaching another Dog with Hostile Intentions. — (By M. Riviere.)

ever even slight distress is felt. Of these the pyramidal .muscles of
the nose are less under the control of the will than the others, and
their contraction can be checked only by that of the central fascise of
the frontal muscle. These latter fascise draw up the inner ends of the
eyebrows, and wrinkle the forehead in the peculiar manner which we
immediately recognize as the expression of gi-ief or anxiety. Laugh-
ter and tears form media of expression, which have been often sub-
jected to analysis, but never with the same physiological minuteness
and precision as in Mr. Darwin's special chapters on the phenomena
of the vaso-muscular and nervous systems. The excess of nervous

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS.

439

energy produced by pleasure and enjoyment, passing on by an efflux
through the motor nerves to various classes of the muscles, finds a
vent in joyous merriment, dancing, clapping the hands, and, above all,
in emissions of sound and motions of the zygomatic muscles, which
draw the mouth backward and upward. From the manner in which
the upper teeth are exposed in laughter and broad smiling, Mr. Dar-
win cannot doubt that some of the muscles running to the upper lip
are likewise brought into moderate action. The upper and lower or-
bicular muscles of the eyes are at the same time more or less con-
tracted, while the contractile force exerted upon the vessels or glands
of the eye causes the same flow of tears in extreme laughter as in sor-
row. Both laughing and weeping are seen in a minor degree in many
of the lower animals. In children tears do not flow, Mr. Darwin as-
sures us, at the first, but are induced by the effect of prolonged scream-
ing, in gorging the vessels of the eye. This suffusion, leading at first
consciously, and at last habitually, to the contraction of the muscles
round the eyes, in order to protect or relieve them, the lachrymal
glands become affected through reflex action. Thus, although in the

Fig. 2.

The same ln a Humble and Affectionate Feame of MrsD. — (By M. Riviere.)

first instance a merely incidental result, as purposeless as the secretion
of tears from a blow outside the eye, or as a sneeze from bright light
affecting the retina, we may understand how the shedding of tears
serves as a natural relief to suffering."

Mr. Darwin's work is profusely illustrated by woodcuts and pho-
tographs of the human face, and of the attitudes and expressions of
various animals. We give some of his figures, with his accompanying
descriptions, exemplifying the principle of antithesis in the dog and cat.

f4o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

He says : " When a dog approaches a strange dog or man in a sav-
age or hostile frame of mind, he walks upright and very stiffly ; his
head is slightly raised, or not much lowered ; the tail is held erect and
quite rigid ; the hairs bristle, especially along the neck and back ; the
pricked ears are directed forward, and the eyes have a fixed stare.
(See Figs. 1 and 3.) These actions, as will hereafter be explained, fol-
low from the dog's intention to attack his enemy, and are thus to a
large extent intelligible. As he prepares to spring with a savage
growl on his enemy, the canine teeth are uncovered, and the ears are
pressed close backward on the head ; but with these latter actions we
are not here concerned. Let us now suppose that the dog suddenly

Fig. 3.

Half-bred Shepherd Dog in the same State as in Fig. 1. — (By Mr. A. May.)

discovers that the man whom he is approaching is not a stranger, but
his master; and let it be observed how completely and instantaneously
his whole bearing is reversed. Instead of walking upright, the body
sinks downward or even crouches, and is thrown into flexuous move-
ments : his tail, instead of being held stiff and upright, is lowered and
wagged from side to side ; his hair instantly becomes smooth ; his ears
are depressed and drawn backward, but not closely to the head ; and
his lips hang loosely. From the drawing back of the ears, the eyelids
become elongated, and the eyes no longer appear round and staring.
It should be added that the animal is at such times in an excited con-

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS.

441

dition from joy ; and nerve-force will be generated in excess, which
naturally leads to action of some kind. None of the above move-
ments, so clearly expressive of affection, are of the least direct service
to the animal. They are explicable, as far as I can see, solely from
being in complete opposition or antithesis to the attitude and move-
ments which, from intelligible causes, are assumed when a dog intends
to fight, and which consequently are expressive of anger. I request

Fig. 4.

The same oabbssdjo his Master. — (By Mr. A. May.)

the reader to look at the four accompanying sketches, which have been
given in order to recall vividly the appearance of a dog under these
two states of mind. It is, however, not a little difficult to represent
affection in a dog, while caressing his master and wagging his tail, as
the essence of the expression lies in the continuous flexuous move-
ments.

442

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" We will now turn to the cat. When this animal is threatened
by a dog, it arches its back in a surprising manner, erects its hair,
opens its mouth and spits. But we are not here concerned with this
well-known attitude, expressive of terror combined with anger; we
are concerned only with that of rage or anger. This is not often seen,
but may be observed when two cats are fighting together ; and I have

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seen it well exhibited by a savage cat while plagued by a boy. The
attitude is almost exactly the same as that of a tiger disturbed and
growling over its food, which every one must have beheld in mena-
geries. The animal assumes a crouching position, with the body ex-

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS.

443

tended ; and the whole tail, or the tip alone, is lashed or curled from
side to side. The hair is not in the least erect. Thus far, the attitude
and movements are nearly the same as when the animal is prepared to
spring on its prey, and when, no doubt, it feels savage. But, when
preparing to fight, there is this difference, that the ears are closely
pressed backward ; the mouth is partially opened, showing the teeth ;
the fore-feet are occasionally struck out with protruded claws ; and the
animal occasionally utters a fierce growl. [See Figs. 5 and 6.) All,
or almost all, these actions naturally follow (as hereafter to be ex-
plained) from the cat's manner and intention of attacking its enemy.

Cat, in an Affectionate Feame of Mind. — (By Mr. Wood.)

" Let us now look at a cat in a directly opposite frame of mind,
while feeling affectionate and caressing her master ; and mark how op-
posite is her attitude in every respect. She now stands upright, with
her back slightly arched, which makes the hair appear rather rough,
but it does not bristle ; her tail, instead of being extended and lashed
from side to side, is held quite stiff and perpendicularly upward; her

444

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ears are erect and pointed ; her mouth is closed ; and she rubs against
her master with a purr instead of a growl. Let it further be observed
how widely different is the whole bearing of an affectionate cat from
that of a dog, when, with his body crouching and flexuous, his tail
lowered and wagging, and ears depressed, he caresses his master.
This contrast in the attitudes and movements of these two carnivo-
rous animals, under the same pleased and affectionate frame of mind,
can be explained, as it appears to me, solely by their movements
standing in complete antithesis to those which are naturally assumed,
when these animals feel savage and are prepared either to fight or to
seize their prey.

"In these cases of the dosr and cat, there is everv reason to believe
that the gestures both of hostility and affection are innate or inherit-
ed; for they are almost identically the same in the different races of
the species, and in all the individuals of the same race, both young
and old."

Fig. 7.

Hen deittjjg away a Dor. from her Chickexs. — (Drawn from Life by Mr. Wood.)

Mr. Darwin has an interesting chapter on the erection of the der-
mal appendages as expressive of emotion. He observes : " Hardly
any expressive movement is so genei*al as the involuntary erection of
the hairs, feathers, and other dermal appendages ; for it is common
throughout three of the great vertebrate classes. These appendages
are erected under the excitement of anger or terror ; more especially
when these emotions are combined, or quickly succeed each other.
The action serves to make the animal appear larger and more fright-

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS.

445

ful to its enemies or rivals, and is generally accompanied by various
voluntary movements adapted for the same purpose, and by the utter-
ance of savage sounds. Mr. Bartlett, who has had such wide expe-
rience with animals of all kinds, does not doubt that this is the case ;
but it is a different question whether the power of erection was pri-
marily acquired for this special purpose.

" With the carnivora the erection of the hair seems to be almost
universal, often accompanied by threatening movements, the uncover-
ing of the teeth, and the utterance of savage growls. The enraged
lion erects his mane. The bristling of the hair along the neck and
back of the dog, and over the whole body of the cat, especially on
the tail, is familiar to every one. With the cat it apparently occurs
only under fear ; with the dog, under anger and fear ; but not, as far
as I have observed, under abject fear, as when a dog is going to be
flogged by a severe game-keeper. If, however, the dog shows fight, as
sometimes happens, up goes his hair. I have often noticed that the
hair of a dog is particularly liable to rise, if he is half angry and half
afraid, as on beholding some object only indistinctly seen in the dusk.

Fig. S.

Swan driving away an Intbudee. — (Drawn from Life by Mr. Wood.)

" I have been assured by a veterinary surgeon that he has often
seen the hair erected on horses and cattle, on which he had operated
an^l was going again to operate.

" Birds belonging to all the chief orders ruffle their feathers when
angry or frightened. Every one must have seen two cocks, even quite

446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

young birds, preparing to fight with erected neck-hackles ; nor can
these feathers when erected serve as a means of defence, for cock-
fighters have found by experience that it is advantageous to trim
them. The male ruff {Machetes pugnax) likewise erects its collar of
feathers when fighting. When a dog approaches a common hen with
her chickens, she spreads out her wings, raises her tail, ruffles all her
feathers, and, looking as ferocious as possible, dashes at the intruder.
The tail is not always held in exactly the same position ; it is some-
times so much erected, that the central feathers, as in the accompany-
ing drawing, almost touch the back. Swans, when angered, likewise
raise their wings and tail, and erect their feathers. They open their
beaks, and make by paddling little rapid starts forward, against any
one who approaches the water's edge too closely. Tropic birds ' when
disturbed on their nests are said not to fly away, but ' merely to stick
out their feathers and scream.' The barn-owl, when approached, ' in-
stantly swells out its plumage, extends its wings and tail, hisses and
clacks its mandibles with force and rapidity.' a So do other kinds of
owls. Hawks, as I am informed by Mr. Jenner Weir, likewise ruffle
their feathers, and spread out their wings and tail under similar ch>
.cumstances. Some kinds of parrots erect their feathers ; and I have
seen this action in the cassowary, when angered at the sight of an
ant-eater. Young cuckoos in the nest raise their feathers, open their
mouths widely, and make themselves as frightful as possible.

" Small birds, also, as I hear from Mr. Weir, such as various finches,
buntings, and warblers, when angry, ruffle all their feathers, or only
those round the neck ; or they spread out their wings and tail-feathers.
With their plumage in this state, they rush at each other with open
beaks and threatening o-estures. Mr. Weir concludes from his larsre
experience that the erection of the feathers is caused much more by
anger than by fear. He gives as an instance a hybrid goldfinch of a
most irascible disposition, which, when approached too closely by a
servant, instantly assumes the appearance of a ball of ruffled feathers.
He believes that birds when frightened, as a general rule, closely ad-
press all their feathers, and their consequently diminished, size is often
astonishing. As soon as they recover from their fear or surprise, the
first thing which they do is to shake out their feathers. The best in-
stances of this adpression of the feathers and apparent shrinking of
the body from fear, which Mr. Weir has noticed, have been in the quail
and grass-parrakeet. The habit is intelligible in these birds from their
being accustomed, when in danger, either to squat on the ground or
to sit motionless on a branch, so as to escape detection. Though, with
birds, anger may be the chief and commonest cause of the erection of
the feathers, it is probable that young cuckoos when looked at in the

1 Phaeton rubricauda : "Ibis," vol. iii., 1861, p. 180.

2 On tbe Strix fammea, Audubon, " Ornitbological Biography," 1864, vol. ii., p. 407
I have observed other cases in the Zoological Gardens.

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS. 447

nest, and a hen with her chickens when approached by a dog, feel at
least some terror. Mr. Tegetmeier informs me that, with game-cocks,
the erection of the feathers on the head has long been recognized in
the cockpit as a sign of cowardice."

In his chapter on the special expressions of animals, Mr. Darwin
thus speaks of the monkeys : " With monkeys the expression of slight
pain, or of any painful emotion, such as grief, vexation, jealousy, etc.,
is not easily distinguished from that of moderate anger; and these
states of mind readily and quickly pass into each other. Grief, how-
ever, with some species is certainly exhibited by weeping. A woman,
who sold a monkey to the Zoological Society, believed to have come
from Borneo, said that it often cried ; and Mr. Bartlett, as well as the
keeper, Mr. Sutton, has repeatedly seen it, when grieved, or even
when much pitied, weeping so copiously that the tears rolled down
its cheeks. There is, however, something strange about this case, for
two specimens subsequently kept in the Gardens, and believed to be
the same species, have never been seen to weep, though they were
carefully observed by the keeper and myself when much distressed
and loudly screaming. Rengger states that the eyes of the Cebus
azarcB fill with tears, but not sufficiently to overflow, when it is pre-
vented getting some much-desired object, or is much frightened.
Humboldt also asserts that the eyes of the Callithrix sciureus 'in-
stantly fill with tears when it is seized with fear ; ' but when this
pretty little monkey in the Zoological Gardens was teased, so as to
cry out loudly, this did not occur. I do not, however, wish to throw
the least doubt on the accuracy of Humboldt's statement.

" The appearance of dejection in young orangs and chimpanzees,
when out of health, is as plain and almost as pathetic as in the case
of our children. This state of mind and body is shown by their listless
movements, fallen countenances, dull eyes, and changed complexion.

" Baboons often show their passion and threaten their enemies in a
very odd manner, namely, by opening their mouths widely, as in the
act of yawning. Mr. Bartlett has often seen two baboons, when first
placed in the same compartment, sitting opposite to each other and
thus alternately opening their mouths ; and this action seems fre-
quently to end in a real yawn. Mr. Bartlett believes that each ani-
mal wishes to show to the other that he is provided with a formi-
dable set of teeth, as is undoubtedly the case. As I could hardly
credit the reality of this yawning gesture, Mr. Bartlett insulted an old
baboon and put him into a violent passion ; and he almost immediately
thus acted. Some species of Macacus and of Cercopithecus behave in
the same manner. Baboons likewise show their anger, as was observed
by Brehm with those which he kept alive in Abyssinia, in another
manner, namely, by striking the ground with one hand, ' like an angry
man striking the table with his fist.' I have seen this movement with
the baboons in the Zoological Gardens ; but sometimes the action

448

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

8eems rather to represent the searching for a stone or other object in
their beds of straw.

"A young orang, made jealous by her keeper attending to another
monkey, slightly uncovered her teeth, and, uttering a peevish noise

Fig. !>.

Cynopithecu* rviger, rn a Placid Condition. — (Drawn from Life by Mr. Wolf.)

like tish-shist, turned her back on him. Both orangs and chimpanzees,
when a little more angered, protrude their lips greatly, and make a

Fig. 10.

The same, when pleased bt being oaeessed.

harsh barking noise. A young female chimpanzee, in a violent pas-
sion, presented a curious resemblance to a child in the same state.

THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS.

449

She screamed loudly with widely-open mouth, the lips being retracted
bo that the teeth were fully exposed. She threw her arms wildly
about, sometimes clasping them over her head. She rolled on the
ground, sometimes on her back, sometimes on her belly, and bit every
thing within reach. A young gibbon {Hylobates syndactylies) in a
passion has been described ' as behaving in almost exactly the same
manner.

" The lips of young orangs and chimpanzees are protruded, some-
times to a wonderful degree, under various circumstances. They act
thus, not only when slightly angered, sulky, or disappointed, but when
alarmed at any thing — in one instance, at the sight of a turtle2 — and

FlQ. 11.

Chimpanzee disappointed and sulky. — (Drawn from Life by Mr. Wood.)

likewise when pleased. But neither the degree of protrusion nor the
shape of the mouth is exactly the same, as I believe, in all cases ; and
the sounds which are then uttered are different. The accompanying
drawing represents a chimpanzee made sulky by an orange having
been offered him, and then taken away. A similar protrusion or pout-
ing of the lips, though to a much slighter degree, may be seen in sulky
children."

1 G. Bennett, " Wanderings in New South Wales," etc., vol. ii., 1834, p. 153.
* W. C. Martin, " Natural History of Mamnriferous Animals," 1841, p. 405.

vol. ii. — 29

4?o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

By HEEBEET SPENCEE.

VII. — Subjective Difficulties — Emotional.

THAT passion perverts judgment, is an observation sufficiently
trite ; but the more general observation of which it should form
part, that emotion of every kind and degree disturbs the intellectual
balance, is not trite, and, even where recognized, is not duly taken into
account. Stated in full, the truth is that no propositions, save those
which are absolutely indifferent to us, immediately and remotely, can
be contemplated without likings and repugnances affecting the opin-
ions we form about them. There are two modes in which our conclu-
sions are thus falsified. Excited feelings make us wrongly estimate
probability, and also make us wrongly estimate importance. Some
cases will show this.

All, who are old enough, remember the murder committed by
Miiller on the North London Railway some years ago ; for, even after
reaching that stage at which accounts of crime lose their interest, and
police-reports become unreadable, it is impossible to avoid gathering
from gossip some knowledge of startling tragedies. Most persons,
too, will remember that for some time afterward there was universally
displayed a dislike to travelling by railway in company with a single
other passenger — supposing him to be unknown. Though, up to the
date of the murder in question, almost innumerable journeys had been
made by two strangers together in the same compartment without
evil being suffered by either — though, after the death of Mr. Briggs,
the probabilities were immense against the occurrence of a similar fate
to another person similarly placed — yet there was habitually roused a
fear that would have been appropriate only had the danger been con-
siderable. The amount of feeling excited was quite incommensurate
with the risk. Though the chance was a million to one against evil,
the anticipation of evil was as strong as though the chance had been a
thousand to one or a hundred to one. The emotion of dread destroyed
the balance of judgment, and a true estimate of likelihood became im-
possible ; or, rather, any rational estimate of likelihood that might be
formed was wholly inoperative on conduct.

Another instance was thrust on my attention during the small-pox
epidemic, which a while since so unaccountably spread, after twenty
years of compulsory vaccination. A lady living in London, sharing
in the general trepidation, was expressing her fears to me. I asked
her whether, if she lived in a town of 20,000 inhabitants, and heard
of one person dying of small-pox in the course of a week, she would
be much alarmed. Naturally she answered, "No;" and her fears

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 45i

were somewhat calmed when I pointed out that, taking the whole
population of London, and the number of deaths per week from small-
pox, this was about the rate of mortality at that time caused by it.
Yet in other minds, as in her mind, panic had produced an entire in-
capacity for forming a rational estimate of the danger. Nay, indeed,
80 perturbing was the emotion that an unusual amount of danger to
life was imagined at a time when the danger to life was smaller than
usual. For the returns showed that the mortality from all causes was
rather below the average than above it. While the evidence proved
that the risk of death was unusually small, this wave of feeling which
spread through society produced an irresistible conviction that it was
unusually great.

These examples show in a clear way, what is less clearly shown
in countless other examples, that the associated ideas constituting a
judgment are much affected in their relations to one another by the
coexisting emotion. Two ideas will cohere feebly or strongly accord-
ing as the correlative nervous states involve a feeble or a strong dis-
charge along the lines of nervous connection ; and hence a large wave
of feeling, implying as it does a voluminous discharge in all directions,
renders such two ideas more coherent. This is so even when the feel-
ing is irrelevant, as is shown by the vivid recollection of trivialities
observed on occasions of great excitement ; and it is still more so
when the feeling is relevant — that is, when the proposition formed by
these ideas is itself the cause of excitement. Much of the emotion
tends in such case to discharge itself through the channels connecting
the elements of the proposition; and predicate follows subject with a
vividness and persistence out of all proportion to that which is justi-
fied by experience.

We see this with emotions of all orders. How greatly maternal
affection falsifies a mother's estimate of her child, every one ob-.
serves. How those in love fancy superiorities where none are visible
to unconcerned spectators, and remain blind to defects that are
conspicuous to every one else, is matter of common remark. Note,
too, how in the holder of a lottery-ticket hope generates a belief
utterly at variance with probability as numerically estimated, and
how an excited inventor has a confidence in success which calm
judges see to be impossible. That " the wish is father to the
thought," here so obviously true, is true more or less in nearly all
cases where there is a wish. And in other cases, again, as where
horror is aroused by the fancy of something supernatural, we see
that, in the absence of wish to believe, there may yet arise belief
if violent emotion goes along with the ideas that are joined to-
gether.

Though there is some recognition of the fact that men's judgments
on social questions are distorted by their emotions, the recognition is

452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

extremely inadequate. Political passion, class-hatred, and feelings of
great intensity, are alone habitually admitted to be large factors in
determining opinions. But, as above implied, we have to take account
of emotions of many kinds and of all degrees, down to slight likes and
dislikes. For, if we look closely into our own beliefs on public affairs,
as well as into the beliefs of those around us, we find them to be
caused much more by aggregates of feelings than by examinations of
evidence. No one, even if he tries, succeeds in preventing the slow
growth of sympathies with, or antipathies to, certain institutions, cus-
toms, ideas, etc. ; and, if he watches himself, he will perceive that un-
avoidably each new question coming before him is considered in rela-
tion to the mass of convictions which have been gradually moulded
into agreement with his sympathies and antipathies.

When the reader has admitted,, as he must if he is candid with
himself, that his opinion on any political act or proposal is commonly
formed in advance of direct evidence, and that he rarely takes the
trouble to inquire whether direct evidence justifies it, he will see how
great are those difficulties in the way of sociological science, which
arise from the various emotions excited by the matters it deals with.
Let us note, first, the effects of some emotions of a general kind, which
we are apt to overlook.

The state of mind we call impatience is one of these. If a man
swears at some inanimate thing which he cannot adjust as he wishes,
or if, in wintry weather, slipping down and hurting himself, he vents
his anger by damning gravitation, his folly is manifest enough to
spectators, and to himself also when his irritation has died away. But
in the political sphere it is otherwise. A man may here, in fact if not
in word, damn a law of Nature, without being himself aware, and with-
out making others aware, of his absurdity.

The state of feeling often betrayed toward Political Economy ex-
emplifies this. An impatience, accompanying the vague consciousness
that certain cherished convictions or pet schemes are at variance with
politico-economical truths, shows itself in contemptuous words ap-
plied to these truths. Knowing that his theory of government and
plans for social reformation are discountenanced by it, Mr. Carlyle
manifests his annoyance by calling Political Economy " the dismal
science." And, among others than his adherents, there are many be-
longing to all parties, retrograde and progressive, who display repug-
nance to this body of doctrine with which their favorite theories do
not agree. Yet a little thought might show them that their feeling is
much of the same kind as would be scorn vented by a perpetual-motion
schemer against the principles of mechanics.

To see that these generalizations which they think of as cold and
hard, and acceptable only by the unsympathetic, are nothing but
statements of certain modes of action arising out of human nature,

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 45 3

that are no less beneficent than necessary, they need only suppose a
moment that human nature had opposite tendencies. Imagine that,
instead of preferring to buy things at low prices, men habitually pre-
ferred to give high prices for them ; and imagine that, conversely, sell-
ers rejoiced in getting low prices instead of high ones. Is it not ob-
vious that production and distribution and exchange, supposing them
possible under such conditions, would go on in ways utterly different
from their present ways ? If men went for each commodity to a place
where it was difficult of production, instead of to a place where it could
be produced easily, and if, instead of transferring articles of consump-
tion from one part of a kingdom to another along the shortest routes,
they habitually chose roundabout routes, so that the cost in labor
and time might be the greatest, is it not clear that, could industrial
and commercial arrangements of any kinds exist, they would be of
natures so unlike the present ones as to be inconceivable by us ? And,
if this is undeniable, is it not equally undeniable that the processes of
production, distribution, and exchange, as they now go on, are pro-
cesses determined by certain fundamental traits in human nature, and
that Political Economy is nothing more than a statement of the laws
of these processes, as inevitably resulting from such traits ?

That the generalizations of political economists are not all true,
and that some, which are true in the main, need qualification, is very
likely. But, to admit this, is not in the least to admit that there are
no true generalizations of this order to be made. Those who see, or
fancy they see, flaws in politico-economical conclusions, and there-
upon sneer at Political Economy, remind one of the theologians who
lately rejoiced so much over the discovery of an error in the estimation
of the sun's distance, and thought the occasion so admirable a one for
ridiculing men of science. It is characteristic of theologians to find
cause for extreme satisfaction in whatever shows human imperfection ;
and in this case they were much elated because astronomers discovered
that, while their delineation of the Solar System remains exactly right
in all its proportions, the absolute dimensions assigned were too great
by about one-thirtieth. In one respect, however, the comparison fails :
for, though the theologians taunted the astronomers, they did not ven-
ture to include astronomy within the scope of their contempt — did
not do as those to whom they are here compared, who show con-
tempt, not for political economists only, but for Political Economy
itself.

"Were they calm, these opponents of the political economists would
see that as, out of certain physical properties of things there inevi-
tably arise certain modes of action, which, as generalized, constitute
physical science ; so out of the properties of men, intellectual and
emotional, there inevitably arise certain laws of social processes, in-
cluding, among others, those through which mutual aid in satisfying
wants is made possible. They would see that, but for these processes,

+54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the laws of which Political Economy seeks to generalize, men would
have continued in the lowest stage of barbarism to the present hour ;
they would see that, instead of jeering at the science and those who
pursue it, their course should be to show in what respects the gen-
eralizations thus far made are untrue, and how they may be so
expressed as to correspond to the truth more nearly.

I need not further exemplify the perturbing influence of impatience
in sociological inquiry. Along with the irrational hope so conspicu-
ously shown by every party having a new project for the furtherance
of human welfare, there habitually goes this irrational irritation in
presence of stern truths which negative sanguine anticipations. Be
it some way of remedying the evils of competition, some scheme for
rendering the pressure of population less severe, some method of
organizing a government so as to secure complete equity, some plan
for reforming men by teaching, by restriction, by punishment; any
thing like calm consideration of probabilities, as estimated from expe-
rience, is excluded by this eagerness for an immediate result ; and,
instead of submission to the necessities of things, there comes vexa-
tion, felt if not expressed, against them, or against those who point
them out, or against both.

That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible
in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in
others, though not so clearly in ourselves. Especially can we see it
when these others belong to an alien society. France, during and since
the late war, has furnished us almost daily with illustrations. The fact
that, while the struggle was going on, any foreigner in Paris was liable
to be seized as a Prussian, and that, if charged with being a Prussian,
he was forthwith treated as one, sufficiently proves that hate makes
rational estimation of evidence impossible. The marvellous distortions
which this passion produces were abundantly exemplified during the
reign of the Commune ; and yet again after the Commune was sub-
dued. The " preternatural suspicion," as Mr. Carlyle called it, which
characterized conduct during the first revolution, characterized con-
duct during the late catastrophe. And it is displayed still. The
sayings and doings of French political parties, alike in the Assembly,
in the press, and in private societies, show that mutual hate causes
mutual misinterpretations, fosters false conclusions, and utterly viti-
ates sociological generalizations.

While, however, it is manifest to us that, among our neighbors,
strong sympathies and antipathies stand in the way of reasonable views
and well-balanced policy, we do not perceive that among ourselves
sympathies and antipathies distort judgments in degrees, not perhaps
so extreme, but still in very great degrees. Instead of French opin-
ion on French affairs, let us take English opinion on French affairs
— not affairs of recent date, but affairs of the past ; and, instead of a
case showing the false estimation of evidence which sympathies and

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

455

antipathies produce, let us take a case showing how perverted may-
be the estimates of the relative gravities of evils, and the relative
degrees of blameworthiness of actions.

Feudalism had decayed : its benefits had died out, and only its
evils had survived. While the dominant classes no longer performed
their functions, they continued their exactions and maintained their
privileges. Seignorial power was exercised solely for private benefit,
and at every step met the unprivileged with vexatious claims and
restrictions. The peasant was called from his heavily-burdened bit
of land to work gratis for a neighboring noble, who gave him no
protection in return. He had to bear uncomplainingly the devouring
of his crops by this man's game ; to hand him a toll before he could
cross the river ; to buy from him the liberty to sell at market — nay,
such portion of grain as he reserved for his own use he could eat
only after paying for the grinding of it at his seigneur's mill, and for
having it baked at his bakehouse. And then, added to the seignorial
exactions, came the exactions of the Church, still more mercilessly
enforced. Along with all these local abuses and exasperating ob-
stacles to living, there had gone on at the governing centre mal-
administration, corruption, extravagance: treasures were spent in
building vast palaces, and enormous armies were sacrificed in inex-
cusable wars. Profuse expenditure, demanding more than could be
got from crippled industry, had caused a chronic deficit. New taxes
on the poor workers brought in no money, but only clamor and discon-
tent ; and to tax the rich idlers proved to be impracticable : the pro-
posal, that the clergy and noblesse should no longer be exempt from
burdens such as were borne by the people, brought from these classes
" a shriek of indignation and astonishment." And then, to make more
conspicuous the worthlessness of the governing agencies of all orders,
there was the corrupt life led by the court, from the king downward
— France lying " with a harlot's foot on its neck." Passing over the
various phases of the break-up which ended this intolerable state —
phases throughout which the dominant classes, good for nothing and
unrepentant, strove to recover their power, and, enlisting foreign rulers,
brought upon France invading armies — we come presently to a time
when, in a storm of anger and fear, the people revenged themselves
on such of their past tormentors as remained among them. Leagued,
as many of these were, with those of their order who were levying
war against liberated France — leagued, as many others were supposed
to be, with these enemies to the Republic at home and abroad — incor-
rigible as they proved themselves by their plottings and treacheries ;
there at length came down upon them the September massacres and
the Reign of Terror, during which nearly 10,000 of those implicat-
ed, or supposed to be implicated, were killed or formally executed.
The Nemesis was sufficiently fearful. Lamentable sufferings and death
fell on innocent as well as guilty. Hate and despair combined to

f56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

arouse an undistinguishing cruelty, and, in some of the leading actors,
a cold-blooded ferocity. Nevertheless, recognizing all this — recogniz-
ing also the truth that those who wreaked this vengeance were intrin-
sically no better than those on whom it was wreaked — we must admit
that the bloodshed had its excuse. The panic of a people threatened
with reimposition of dreadful shackles was not to be wondered at.
That the expected return of a time like that, in which gaunt figures
and haggard faces about the towns and the country indicated the so-
cial disorganization, should excite men to a blind fury, was not unnat-
ural. If they became frantic at the thought that there was coming
back a state under which there might again be a slaying of hundreds
of thousands of men in battles fought to gratify the spite of a king's
concubine, we need not be greatly astonished. And some of the hor-
ror expressed at the fate of the ten thousand victims might fitly be
reserved for the abominations which caused it.

From this partially-excusable bloodshed, over which men shudder
excessively, let us turn now to the immeasurably greater bloodshed,
having no excuse, over which they do not shudder at all. Out of the
sanguinary chaos of the Revolution, there presently rose a soldier
whose immense ability, joined with his absolute unscrupulousness,
made him now general, now consul, now autocrat. He was untruthful
in an extreme degree, lying in his dispatches day by day, never writ-
ing a page without bad faith,1 nay, even giving to others lessons in
telling falsehoods.2 He professed friendship while plotting to betray,
and quite early in his career made the wolf-and-lamb fable his guide.
He got antagonists into his power by promises of clemency, and then
executed them. To strike terror, he descended to barbarities like those
of the blood-thirsty conquerors of old, of whom his career reminds us :
as in Egypt, when, to avenge fifty of his soldiers, he beheaded 2,000
fellahs, throwing their headless corpses into the Nile ; or as at Jaffa,
when 2,500 of the garrison, who finally surrendered, were at his order
deliberately massacred. Even his own officers, not over-scrupulous,
as we may suppose, were shocked by his brutality — sometimes refus-
ing to execute his sanguinary decrees. Indeed, the instincts of the
savage were scarcely at all qualified in him by what we call moral
sentiments ; as we see in his proposal to burn " two or three of the
larger communes " in La Vendee ; as we see in his wish to introduce
bull-fights into France, and to revive the combats of the Roman
arena ; as we see in the cold-blooded sacrifice of his own soldiers,
when he ordered a useless outpost attack merely that his mistress
might witness an engagement ! That such a man should have
prompted the individual killing of leading antagonists, and set prices
on their heads, as in the cases of Mourad-Bey and Count Frotte, and
that to remove the Due d'Enghien he should have committed a crime

1 Translation of Lanfrey, vol. ii., p. 25.
s Ibid., vol. ii., p. 442.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 457

like in its character to that of one who hires a bravo, but unlike by
entailing no danger, was quite natural. It was natural, too, that, in
addition to countless treacheries and breaches of faith in his dealings
with foreign powers, such a man should play the traitor to his own
nation, by stamping out its newly-gained free institutions, and substi-
tuting his own military despotism. Such being the nature of the
man, and such being a few illustrations of his cruelty and unscrupu-
lousness, contemplate now his greater crimes and their motives. Year
after year he went on sacrificing by tens of thousands and hundreds
of thousands the French people and the people of Europe at large, to
gratify his lust of power and his hatred of opponents. To feed his in-
satiable ambition, and to crush those who resisted his efforts after uni-
versal dominion, he went on seizing the young men of France, forming
army after army that were destroyed in destroying like armies raised by
neighboring nations. In the Russian campaign alone, out of 552,000
French left dead or prisoners, but a small portion returned to France ;
while the Russian force of more than 200,000 was reduced to 30,000
or 40,000 : implying a total sacrifice of considerably more than half
a million lives. And when the mortality on both sides by death in
battle, by wounds and by disease, throughout all the Napoleonic cam-
paigns is summed up, it exceeds, at the lowest computation, two mill-
ions.1 And all this slaughter, all this suffering, all this devastation,
was gone through because one man had a restless desire to be despot
over all men.

And now what has been thought and felt in England about the
two sets of events above contrasted, and about the actors in them ?
For the bloodshed of the Revolution there has been utter detestation,
and for those who wrought it unqualified hate. For the immeasurably
greater bloodshed which these wars of the Consulate and the Empire
entailed, little or no horror is expressed ; while the feeling toward the

1 M. Lanfrey sets down the loss of the French alone, from 1802 onward, at nearly
two millions. This may be an over-estimate ; though, judging from the immense armies
raised in France, such a total seems quite possible. The above computation of the losses
to European nations in general has been made for me by adding the numbers of killed
and wounded in the successive battles, as furnished by such statements as are accessible.
The total is 1,50.0,000. This number has to be greatly increased by including losses not
specified — the number of killed and wounded on one side only, being given in some cases.
It has to be further increased by including losses in numerous minor engagements, the
particulars of which are unknown. And it has to be further increased by allowance for
understatement of his losses, which was habitual with Napoleon. Though the total,
raised by these various additions probably to something over two millions, includes killed
and wounded, from which last class a large deduction has to be made for the number
who recovered, yet it takes no account of the loss by disease. This may be set down
as greater in amount than that which battles caused. (Thus, according to Kolb, the
British lost in Spain three times as many by diseases as by the enemy ; and in the expe-
dition to Walcheren seventeen times as many.) So that the loss by killed and wounded
and by disease, for all the European nations during the Napoleonic campaigns, is proba-
bly much understated at two millions.

+ 58

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

modern Attila who was guilty of this bloodshed is shown by decorat-
ing rooms with portraits and busts of him. See the beliefs which
these respective feelings imply :

Over ten thousand deaths we
may fitly shudder and lament.

As the ten thousand were slain
because of the tyrannies, and cruel-
ties, and treacheries, committed by
them or by their class, their deaths
are especially pitiable.

The suffe rings of the ten thou-
sand and of their relatives, who
expiated their own misdeeds and
the misdeeds of their class, may
fitly form subjects for heart-rend-
ing stories and pathetic pictures.

That despair and the indigna-
tion of a betrayed people brought
about this slaughter of ten thou-
sand, makes the atrocity without
palliation.

Two million deaths may be
contemplated without much shud-
dering and lamentation.

As the two millions, innocent
of offence, were taken against
their wills from classes already
oppressed and impoverished, the
slaughter of them need not ex-
cite our pity.

There is nothing heart-rending
in the sufferings of the two mill-
ions who died for no crimes of
their own or their class ; nor need
we see pathos in the fates of the
poor families throughout France
and all neighboring countries from
which the two million victims were
taken.

That one man's lust of power
was gratified through the deaths
of the two millions, greatly pal-
liates the sacrifice of them.

These are the antithetical propositions tacitly implied in the opin-
ions that have been current in England about the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic wars. Only by acceptance of such propositions
can these opinions be defended. Such have been the emotions of men
that, until quite recently, it has been the habit to speak with detesta-
tion of the one set of events, and to speak of the other set of events
in words betraying admiration. Nay, even now these feelings are but
partially qualified. While the names of the leading actors in the Reign
of Terror are names of execration, we speak of Napoleon as " the
Great," and Englishmen worship him by visiting his tomb and taking
off their hats !

How, then, with such perverting emotions, is it possible to take
rational views of sociological facts ? Forming, as men do, such
astoundingly false concej^tions of the relative amounts of evils and
the relative characters of motives, how can they judge truly among
institutions and actions, past or present ? Clearly, minds thus swayed
by disproportionate hates and admirations cannot frame those balanced

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 459

conclusions, respecting social phenomena, which alone constitute Social
Science.

The sentiment which thus shudders with horror at bad deeds for
which there was much excuse, while to deeds immeasurably more
dreadful and without excuse it gives applause very slightly qualified
with blame, is a sentiment which, among other effects, marvellously
perverts men's political conceptions. This awe of power, by the
help of which social subordination has been, and still* is, chiefly main-
tained— this feeling which delights to contemplate the imposing, be it
in military successes, or be it in the grand pageantries, the sounding
titles, and the sumptuous modes of living that imply supreme author-
ity— this feeling which is offended by outbreaks of insubordination,
and acts or words of a disloyal kind ; is a feeling that inevitably gen-
erates delusions respecting governments, their capacities, their achieve-
ments. It transfigures them and all their belongings, as does every
strong emotion the objects toward which it is drawn out. Just as
maternal love, idealizing offspring, sees perfections but not defects,
and believes in the future good behavior of a worthless son, notwith-
standing countless broken promises of amendment ; so this power-
worship idealizes the State, as embodied either in a despot, or in king,
lords, and commons, or in a republican assembly, and continually hopes
in spite of continual disappointments.

How awe of power sways men's political beliefs will be perceived,
on observing how it sways their religious beliefs. We shall best see
this by taking an instance supplied by people whose religious ideas are
extremely crude. Here is an abstract of a description given by Captain
Burton :

" A pot of oil with a lighted wick was placed every night, by the half-bred
Portuguese Indians, before tbe painted doll, the patron saint of the boat in which
we sailed from Goa. One evening, as the weather appeared likely to be squally,
we observed that the usual compliment was not offered to the patron, and had
the curiosity to inquire why. ' Why ? ' vociferated the tindal (captain), indignantly,
'if that chap can't keep the sky clear, he shall have neither oil nor wick from
me, d — n him ! ' ' But I should have supposed that in the hour of danger you
would have paid him more than usual attention? ' 'The fact is, Sahib, I have
found out that the fellow is not worth his salt : the last time we had an infernal
squall with him on board, and if he does not keep this one off, I'll just throw
him overboard, and take to Santa Caterina ; hang me, if I don't — the brother-
in-law ! ' " (brother-in-law, a common term of insult).1

To us it seems scarcely imaginable that men should thus behave to
their gods and demi-gods — should pray to them, should insult and
sometimes castigate them for not answering their prayers, and then
should presently pray to them again. Let us pause a moment before
we laugh. Though in the sphere of religion our conduct does not pre-

1 Burton's " Goa," etc., p. 167.

^6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

6ent such a contradiction, yet a contradiction essentially similar is
betrayed by our conduct in the political sphere. Perpetual disappoint-
ment does not here cure us of perpetual expectation. Conceiving the
state-agency as though it were something more than a cluster of men
(a few clever, many ordinary, and some decidedly stupid), we ascribe
to it marvellous powers of doing multitudinous things which men
otherwise clustered are unable to do. We petition it to procure for
us, in some way which we do not doubt it can find, benefits of all orders ;
and pray it with unfaltering faith to secure us from every fresh evil.
Time after time our hopes are balked. The good is not obtained, or
something bad comes along with it ; the evil is not cured, or some
other evil as great or greater is produced. Our journals, daily and
weekly, general and local, perpetually find failures to dilate upon ; now
blaming, and now ridiculing, first this department and then that. And
yet, though the rectification of blunders, administrative and legislative,
is a main part of public business — though the time of the Legislature
is chiefly occupied in amending and again amending, until, after the
many mischiefs implied by these needs for amendments, there often
comes at last repeal ; yet from day to day increasing numbers of wishes
are expressed for legal repressions and state-management. This
emotion which is excited by the forms of governmental power, and
makes governmental power possible, is the root of a faith that springs
up afresh however often cut down. To see how little the perennial
confidence it generates is diminished by perennial disappointment, it
needs but to remind ourselves of a few state-performances in the chief
state departments.

On the second page of the first chapter, by way of illustrating
Admiralty mismanagement, brief reference was made to three avoidable
catastrophes which had happened to vessels-of-war within the twelve-
month. Their frequency is further shown by the fact that, before the
next chapter was published, two others had occurred : the Lord Clyde
ran aground in the Mediterranean, and the Royal Alfred was seven
hours on the Bahama reef. And then, more recently, we have had the
sinking of a vessel at Woolwich by letting a 35-ton gun fall through
her bottom. That the authorities of the navy commit errors which
the merchant service avoids, has been repeatedly shown of late, as in
times past. It was shown by the disclosure respecting the corrosion
of the Glatton's plates, which proved that the Admiralty had not
adopted the efficient protective methods long used by private ship-
owners. It was shown when the loss of the Ariadne's sailors brought
out the facts that a 26-gun frigate had not as many boats for saving
life as are prescribed for a passenger-ship of less than 400 tons;
and that for lowering her boats there was on board neither Kynaston's
apparatus nor the much better apparatus of Clifford, which experience
in the merchant service has thoroughly tested. It was shown by the
non-adoption of Silver's governor for marine steam-engines ; long used

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 46i

in private steamships to save machinery from breakage, but not used
in the navy until much machinery had been broken. On going back
a little, this relative inefficiency of administration is still more strikingly
shown: instance the fact that, during the Chinese Expedition of 1841,
a mortality, at the rate of three or four per day in a crew of 300,
arose from drinking muddy water from the paddy-fields, though,
either by boiling it or by filtering it through charcoal, much of
this mortality might have been prevented ; instance the fact that,
within the memory of living officers (I have it from the mouth of one
who had the experience), vessels-of-war, leaving Deptford, filled their
casks with Thames-water taken at ebb-tide, which water during its
subsequent period of putrefaction had to be filtered through handker-
chiefs before drinking and then swallowed while holding the nose ; or
instance the accumulation of abominable abuses and malversations and
tyrannies which produced the mutiny at Spithead. But, perhaps, of
all such illustrations, the most striking is that which the treatment of
scurvy shows us. It was in 1593 that sour juices were first recommend-
ed by Albertus ; and in the same year Sir R. Hawkins cured his crew
of scurvy by lemon-juice. In 1600 Commodore Lancaster, who took out
the first squadron of the East India Company's ships, kept the crew
of his cwn ship in perfect health by lemon-juice, while the crews of the
three accompanying ships were so disabled that he had to send his
men on board to set their sails. In 1636 this remedy was again
recommended in medical works on scurvy. Admiral Wagner, com-
manding our fleet in the Baltic in 1726, again proved it to be a specific.
In 1757, Dr. Lind, the physician to the naval hospital at Haslar, col-
lected and published, in an elaborate work, these and many other proofs
of its efficacy. Nevertheless, scurvy continued to carry off thousands
of our sailors. In 1780, 2,400 in the Channel Fleet were affected by
it; and in 1795 the safety of the Channel Fleet was endangered by it.
At length, in that year, the Admiralty ordered a regular supply of
lemon-juice to the navy. Thus two centuries after the remedy was
known, and forty years after a chief medical officer of the Government
had given conclusive evidence of its worth, the Admiralty, forced
thereto by an exacerbation of the evil, first moved in the matter. And
what had been the effect of this almost incredible perversity of official-
ism ? The mortality from scurvy during this long period had exceeded
the mortality by battles, wrecks, and all casualties of sea-life put
together ! '

How, through military administration, there has all along run, and
still runs, a kindred stupidity and obstructiveness, pages of examples
might be accumulated to show. The debates pending the abolition
of the pui chase-system furnish many; the accounts of life at Alder-
shot and of autumn manoeuvres furnish many ; and many might be
added in the shape of protests like those made against martinet

1 See Tweedie's " System of Practical Medicine," vol. v., pp. 62-69.

462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

riding-regulations, which entail ruptures on the soldiers, and against
" our ridiculous drill-book," as independent officers are now agreeing to
call it. Even limiting ourselves to sanitary administration in the
army, the files of our journals and the reports of our commissions
would yield multitudinous instances of scarcely credible bungling —
as in bad barrack arrangements, of which we heard so much a few
years ago ; as in an absurd style of dress, such as that which led to
the wholesale cutting-down of the Twelfth Cameronians when they
arrived in China in 1841 ; as in the carelessness which lately caused the
immense mortality by cholera among the Eighteenth Hussars at Se-
cunderabad. Or, not further to multiply instances, take the long-
continued ignoring of ipecacuanha as a specific for dysentery, which
causes so much mortality in our Indian service :

" It is a singular fact that the introducers of the ipecacuanha into European
practice, the Brazilian traveller Marcgrav, and the physician Piso (in 1648),
explicitly stated that the powder is a specific cure for dysentery, in doses of a
drachm and upward; but that this information appears never to have been
acted upon till 1813, when Surgeon G. Playfair, of tbe East Indian Company's
service, wrote testifying to its use in these doses. Again, in 1831, a number of
reports of medical officers were published by the Madras Medical Board, show-
ing its great effects in hourly doses of five grains, till frequently 100 grains were
given in a short period; testimony which, notwithstanding its weight, was
doomed to be similarly overlooked, till quite recently, when it has been again
brought directly under the notice of the Indian Government, which is making
very vigorous efforts to introduce the culture of the plant into suitable districts
of India."1

So that, notwithstanding the gravity of the evil, and the pressing
need for this remedy from time to time thrust on the attention of the
Indian authorities, nearly sixty years passed before the requisite steps
were taken.2

That the State, which fails to secure the health of men, even in its
own employ, should fail to secure the health of beasts, might perhaps
be taken as self-evident ; though possibly some, comparing the money
laid out on stables with the money laid out on cottages, might doubt
the corollary. Be this as it may, however, the recent history of cattle-
diseases and of legislation to prevent cattle-diseases yields the same

1 " Report on the Progress and Condition of the Royal Gardens at Kew, 1870," p. 5.

8 My attention was drawn to this case by one who has had experience in various
government services ; and he ascribed this obstructiveness in the medical service to the
putting of young surgeons under old. The remark is significant, and has far-reaching
implications. Putting young officials under old is a rule of all services — civil, military,
naval, or other ; and, in all services, necessarily has the effect of placing the advanced
ideas and wider knowledge of a new generation under control by the ignorance and
bigotry of a generation to which change has become repugnant. This, which is a
seemingly ineradicable vice of public organizations, is a vice to which private organiza-
tions are far lesa liable ; since, in the life-and-death struggle of competition, merit, even
if young, takes the place of demerit, even if old.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 463

lessons as are yielded above. Since 1848 there have been seven Acts
of Parliament bearing the general titles of Contagious Diseases
(Animals) Acts. Measures to " stamp out," as the phrase goes, this
or that disease, have been called for as imperative. Measures have
been passed, and then, expectation not having been fulfilled, amended
measures have been passed, and then reamended measures ; so that
of late no session has gone by without a bill to cure evils which
previous bills tried to cure, but did not. Notwithstanding the keen
interest felt by the ruling classes in the success of these measures, they
have succeeded so ill, that the " foot-and-mouth disease " has not been
" stamped out," has not even been kept in check, but during the past
year has spread alarmingly in various parts of the kingdom. Con-
tinually the Times has had blaming letters and reports of local meet-
ings called to condemn the existing laws, and to insist on better.
From all quarters there have come accounts of ineffective regulations
and incapable officials — of policemen who do the work of veterinary
surgeons — of machinery described by Mr. Fleming, veterinary surgeon
of the Royal Engineers, as " clumsy, disjointed, and inefficient." l

Is it alleged that the goodness of State-agency cannot be judged
by measures so recent, the administration of which is at present
imperfect. If so, let us look at that form of State-agency which is of
most ancient date, and has had the longest time for perfecting its
adjustments — let us take the law in general, and its administration in
general. Needs there do more than name these to remind the reader
of the amazing inefficiency, confusion, doubtfulness, delay, which,
proverbial from early times, continue still ? Of penal statutes alone,
which are assumed to be known by every citizen, 14,408 had been
enacted from the time of Edward III. down to 1844. As was said by

1 Let me here add what seems to be a not impossible cause, or at any rate part-
cause, of the failure. The clew is given by a letter in the Times, signed " Land-owner,"
dating Tollesbury, Essex, August 2, 1872. He bought " ten fine young steers, perfectly free
from any symptom of disease," and " passed sound by the inspector of foreign stock."
They were attacked by foot-and-mouth disease after five days passed in fresh paddocks
with the best food. On inquiry he found that foreign stock, however healthy, " ' mostly
all go down with it' after the passage." And then, in proposing a remedy, he gives us a
fact of which he does not seem to recognize the meaning. He suggests, " that, instead
of the present quarantine at Harwich, which consists in driving the stock from the steamer
into pens for a limited number of hours," etc., etc. If this description of the quarantine
is correct, the spread of the disease is accounted for. Every new drove of cattle is kept
for hours in an infected pen. Unless the successive droves have been all healthy (which
the very institution of the quarantine implies that they have not been), some of them have
left in the pen diseased matter from their mouths and feet. Even if disinfectants are
used after each occupation, the risk is great — the disinfection is almost certain to be inad-
equate. Nay, even if the pen is adequately disinfected every time, yet if there is not
also a complete disinfection of the landing appliances, the landing-stage, and the track to
the pen, the disease will be communicated. No wonder healthy cattle " ' mostly go dojvn
with it ' after the passage." The quarantine regulations, if they are such as here implied,
might with perfect truth be called " regulations for the better diffusion of cattle-
diseases."

464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Lord Cran worth in the House of Peers, 16th February, 1853, the
judges were supposed to he acquainted with all these laws, but, in fact,
no human mind could master them, and ignorance had ceased to be a
disgrace.1 To this has to be added the accumulation of civil laws,
similarly multitudinous, involved, unclassified, and to this, again, the
enormous mass of "case law," filling over 1,200 volumes, and rapidly
increasing, before there can be formed an idea of the chaos. And
then consider how there has come this chaos, out of which not even
the highest legal functionaries, much less the lower functionaries, much
less the ordinary citizens, can educe definite conclusions. Session
after session the confusion has been worse confounded by the passing
of separate Acts, and successive amendments of Acts, which are left
unconnected with the multitudinous kindred Acts and amendments
that lie scattered through the accumulated records of centuries. Sup-
pose a trader should make, day by day, separate memoranda of his
transactions with A, B, C, and the rest of his debtors and creditors.
Suppose he should stick these on a file one after the other as they were
made, never even putting them in order, much less entering them in
his ledger. Suppose he should thus go on throughout his life, and
that, to learn the state of his account with A, B, or C, his clerks had
to search through this enormous confused file of memoranda, being
helped only by their memories and by certain private note-books which
preceding clerks had made for their own guidance, and left behind
them. What would be the state of the business ? What chance would
A, B, and C, have of being rightly dealt with ? Yet this, which, as a
method of conducting private business, is almost too ludicrous for
fiction, is in public business nothing more than grave fact. And the
result of the method is exactly the one to be anticipated. At the pres-
ent time we have two ex-Chancellors giving conflicting judgments in
assurance-arbitrations. The conflict may be taken as typical of the
system from top to bottom. Every day's law-reports remind us that
each decision given is so uncertain that the probability of appeal
depends chiefly on the courage or pecuniary ability of the beaten
litigant — not on the nature of the verdict ; and, if the appeal is made,
a reversal of the verdict is looked for as by no means unlikely. And
then, on contemplating the ultimate result, we find it to be — the mul-
tiplication of aggressions. Were the law clear, were the verdicts cer-
tain to be in conformity with it, and did asking for its protection entail
no chance of great loss or of ruin, very many of the causes that come
before our courts would never be heard of, for the reason that the
wrongs they disclose would not be committed ; and there would not
be committed those yet more numerous wrongs to which the bad are
prompted by the belief that the persons wronged will not dare to seek
rediess. Here, where State-agency has had centuries upon centuries
in which to develop its appliances and show its efficiency, it is so
1 Fischel's " English Constitution," translated by Sb.ee, p. 487.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 465

inefficient that citizens dread employing it, lest, instead of getting sue-
cor in their distress, they should bring on themselves new sufferings.
And then — startling comment on the system, if we could but see it —
there spring up private voluntary combinations for doing the business
which the State should do, but fails to do. Here in London there is
now proposed a Tribunal of Commerce, for administering justice
among traders, on the pattern of that which in Paris settles many
thousands of cases a year.

Even after finding the State perform so ill this vital function, one
might have expected that it would perform well such a simple function
as the keeping of documents. Yet, in the custody of the national re-
cords, there has been a carelessness such as "no merchant of ordinary
prudence " would show in respect to his account-books. One portion
of these records was for a long time kept in the White Tower, close to
some tons of gunpowder, and another portion was kept close to a
steam-engine in daily use. Some records were deposited in a tempo-
rary shed at the end of "Westminster Hall, and thence, in 1830, they
were removed to other sheds in the King's Mews, Charing Cross,
where, in 1836, their state is thus described by the Report of a Select
Committee :

"In these sheds 4,136 cubic feet of national records were deposited in the
most neglected condition. Besides the accumulated dust of centuries, all, when;
these operations commenced" (the investigation into the state of the Records),
" were found to be very damp. Some were in a state of inseparable adhesion to>
the stone walls. There were numerous fragments which had only just escaped
entire consumption by vermin, and many were in the last stage of putrefaction..
Decay and damp had rendered a large quantity so fragile as hardly to admit of
being touched ; others, particularly those in the form of rolls, were so coagulated;
together that they could not be uncoiled. Six or seven perfect skeletons of rats-
were found embedded, and bones of these vermin were generally distributed
througbout the mass."

Thus, if we array in order the facts daily brought to light, but
which, unhappily, drop out of men's memories as fast as others are-
added, we find a like history throughout. Now the complaint is of the-
crumbling walls of the Houses of Parliament, which, built of stone
chosen by a commission, nevertheless begin to decay in parts first
built before other parts are completed. Now the disclosure is about a
new fort at Seaford, based on the shingle so close to the sea that a
storm washes a great part of it away. And now there comes the ac-
count of a million and a half spent in building the Alderney harbor,
which, being found worse than useless, threatens to entail further cost
for its destruction. Scarcely a journal can be taken up that has not
some blunder referred to in a debate, or brought to light by a Report,,
or pointed out in a letter, or commented on in a leader. Do I need an
illustration ? I take up the Times of this morning (November 13th),
and read that the new bankruptcy law, substituted for the bankruptcy

TOL 1L — 30

4.00 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

laws which failed so miserably, is administered in rooms so crowded
and noisy that due care and thought on the part of officials are scarcely
possible ; and, further, that, as one part of the court sits in the City and
another part in Lincoln's Inn, solicitors have often to he in both places
at the same time. Do I need more illustrations ? They come in
abundance between the day on which the foregoing sentence was
written and the day (November 20th) on which I revise it. Within this
short time mismanagement has been shown in a treatment of the police
that has created a mutiny among them ; in a treatment of government
copying-clerks that causes them publicly to complain of broken prom-
ises ; in a treatment of postmen that calls from them disrespectful be-
havior toward their superiors : all at the same time that there is going
on the controversy about Park-rules, which have been so issued as to
evade constitutional principles, and so administered as to bring the
law into contempt. Yet, as fast as there come proofs of mal-adminis-
tration, there come demands that administration shall be extended.
Just as, in societies made restive by despotism, we see that, for the
evils and dangers brought about, the remedy is more despotism; just
as we see that, along with the failing power of a decaying Papacy,
there goes, as the only fit cure, a reassertion of Papal infallibility with
emphatic obligato from a Council ; so, to set right the misdoings of
State-agency, the proposal is always more State-agency. When, after
long continuance of coal-mine inspection, coal-mine explosions keep
recurring, the cry is for more coal-mine inspection. When railway ac-
cidents multiply, notwithstanding the oversight of officials appointed
by law to see that railways are safe, the unhesitating demand is for
more such officials. Though, as Lord Salisbury lately remarked of
governing bodies deputed by the State, " they begin by being enthu-
siastic and extravagant, and they are very apt to end in being wooden "
— though, through the press and by private conversation, men are per-
petually reminded that, when it has ceased to wield the new broom,
each deputy governing power tends to become either a king-stork that
does mischief, or a king-log that does nothing — yet more deputy gov-
erning powers are asked for with unwavering faith. While the unwis-
dom of officialism is daily illustrated, the argument for each proposed
new department sets out wTith the postulate that officials will act wise-
ly. After endless comments on the confusion and apathy and delay
of Government offices, other Government offices are advocated. After
ceaseless ridicule of red-tape, the petition is for more red-tape. Daily
we castigate the political idol with a hundred pens, and daily pray to
it with a thousand tongues.

'to'

The emotion which thus destroys the balance of judgment lies
deep in the natures of men as they have been and still are. This root,
out of which there grow hopes that are no sooner blighted than kin-
dred hopes grow up in their places, is a root reaching down to the

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 467

earliest stages of civilization. The conquering chief, feared, marvelled
at, for his strength or sagacity, distinguished from others by a quality
thought of as supernatural (when the antithesis of this with natural
becomes thinkable), ever excites a disproportionate faith and expecta-
tion. Having done or seen things beyond the power or insight of in-
feriors, there is no knowing what other such things he may not do or
see. After death, his deeds become magnified by tradition ; and his
successor, inheriting his authority, executing his commands, and keep-
ing up secret communication with him, acquires either thus, or by his
own superiority, or by both, a like credit for powers that transcend
the ordinary human powers. So there accumulates an awe of the
ruler, with its correlative faith. As we trace the genealogy of the
governing power, thus beginning as god, and descendant of the gods,
and having titles and a worship in common with the gods, we see there
clings to it, through all its successive metamorphoses, more or less of
this same ascribed character, exciting this same sentiment. " Divinely
descended" becomes presently "divinely appointed," "the Lord's
anointed," " ruler by divine right," " king by the grace of God," etc.
And then as fast as declining monarchical power brings with it de-
creasing belief in the supernaturalness of the monarch (which, how-
ever, long lingers in faint forms, as instance the supposed cure of
kind's evil), the growing powers of the bodies that assume his func-
tions bring to them a share of the still-surviving sentiment. The
" divinity that doth hedge a king " becomes, in considerable measure,
the divinity that doth hedge a Parliament. The superstitious rever-
ence once felt toward the one is transferred, in a modified form, to the
other, taking with it a tacit belief in an ability to achieve any end
that may be wished, and a tacit belief in an authority to which no
limits may be set.

This sentiment, inherited and cultivated in men from childhood
upward, sways their convictions in spite of them. It generates an
irrational confidence in all the paraphernalia and appliances and forms
of State-action. In the very aspect of a law-deed, written in an archaic
hand on dingy parchment, there is something which raises a concep-
tion of validity not raised by ordinary writing on paper. Around a
Government-stamp there is a certain glamour which makes us feel as
though the piece of paper bearing it was more than a mere mass of
dry pulp with some indented marks. To any legal form of words
there seems to attach an authority far greater than that which would
be felt were the language free from legal involutions and legal techni-
calities. And so is it with all the symbols of authority, from royal
pageants downward. That the judge's wig gives to his decisions a
weight and sacredness they would not have were he bareheaded, is a
fact familiar to every one. And, when we descend to the lowest agents
of the executive organization, we find the same thing. A man in
blue coat and white-metal buttons, which carry with them the thought

468 Tllr: POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of State-authority, is habitually regarded by citizens as having a trust-
worthiness beyond that of a man who wears no such uniform ; and this
confidence survives all disproofs. Obviously, then, if men's judgments
are thus ridiculously swayed, in spite of better knowledge, by the mere
symbols of State-power, still more must they be so swayed by State-
power itself, as exercised in ways that leave greater scope for the
imagination. If awe and faith are irresistibly called out toward things
which perception and reason tell us positively should not call them out,
still more will awe and faith be called out toward those State-actions
and influences on which perception and reason can less easily be
brought to bear. If the beliefs prompted by this feeling of reverence
survive even where they are flatly contradicted by common-sense, still
more will they survive where common-sense cannot so flatly contra-
dict them.

How deeply rooted is this sentiment excited in men by embodied
power will be seen, on noting how it sways in common all orders of
politicians, from the old-world Tory to the Red Republican. Con-
trasted as the extreme parties are in the types of Government they
approve, and the theories they hold respecting the source of Govern-
ment authority, they are alike in their unquestioning belief in govern-
mental authority, and in showing almost unlimited faith in the ability
of a Government to achieve any desired end. Though the form of the
agency toward which the sentiment of loyalty is directed is much
changed, yet there is little change in sentiment itself, or in the general
conceptions it creates. The notion of the divine right of a person
has given place to the notion of the divine right of a representative
assembly. While it is held to be a self-evident falsity that the single
will of a despot can justly override the wills of a people, it is held to
be a self-evident truth that the wills of one-half of a people, plus some
small fraction, may with perfect justice override the wills of the other
half, minus this small fraction — may override them in respect of any
matter whatever. Unlimited authority of a majority has been sub-
stituted for unlimited authority of an individual. So unquestioning is
the belief in this unlimited authority of a majority, that even the tacit
suggestion of a doubt produces astonishment. True, if, of one who
holds that power deputed by the people is subject to no restrictions,
you ask whether, if the majority decided that no person should be
allowed to live beyond sixty, the decision might be legitimately
executed, he would possibly hesitate. Or, if you asked him whether
the majority, being Catholic, might rightly require of the Protestant
minority that they should either embrace Catholicism or leave the
country, he would, influenced by the ideas of religious liberty in which
he has been brought up, probably say no. But, though his answers to
sundry such questions disclose the fact that State-authority, when an
embodiment of the national will, is not believed by him to be absolute-
ly supreme, his latent conviction, that there are limits to it, lies so

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 469

remote in the obscure background of his consciousness as to be prac-
tically non-existent. In all he says about what a legislature should
do, or forbid, or require, he tacitly assumes that any regulation may
be enacted, and when enacted must be obeyed. And then, along with
this authority not to be gainsaid, he believes in a capacity not to be
doubted. Whatever the governing body decides to do can be done, is
the postulate which lies hidden in the schemes of the most revolution-
ary reformers. Analyze the programmes of the Communalists, observe
what is hoped for by the adherents of the Social and Democratic
Republic, or study the ideas of legislative action which our own Trades-
Unionists entertain, and you find the implied belief to be that a Gov-
ernment, organized after an approved pattern, will be able to remedy
all the evils complained of, and to secm-e each proposed benefit.

Thus, the emotion excited by embodied power is one which sways,
and indeed mainly determines, the beliefs, not only of those classed as
the most subordinate, but even those classed as the most insubordi-
nate. It has a deeper origin than any political creed, and more or less
distorts the conceptions of all parties respecting governmental action.

This sentiment of loyalty, making it almost impossible to study
the natures and actions of governing agencies with perfect calmness,
greatly hinders sociological science, and must long continue to hinder
it. For the sentiment is all-essential. Throughout the past, societies
have been mainly held together by it. It is still an indispensable aid
to social cohesion and the maintenance of order. And it will be Ions:
before social discipline has so far modified human character that rev-
erence for law, as rooted in the moral order of things, will serve in
place of reverence for the power which enforces law.

Accounts of existing uncivilized races, as well as histories of the
civilized races, show us a posteriori what we might infer with cer-
tainty a priori, that, in proportion as the members of a society are
aggressive in their natures, they can be held together only by a pro-
portionately strong feeling of unreasoning reverence for a leader or a
ruler. Some of the lowest types of men, who show but little of this
feeling, show scarcely any social cohesion, and make no progress —
instance the Australians. Where appreciable social development has
taken place, we find subordination to chiefs; and, as the society
enlarges, to a king. If we need an illustration that, where there is
great savageness, social union can be maintained only by great loyalty,
we have it among those ferocious cannibals the Fijians. Here, where
the barbarism is so extreme that a late king registered by a row of
many hundred stones the number of human victims he had devoured,
the loyalty is so extreme that a man stands unbound to be knocked on
the head if the king wills it : himself saying that the king's will must
be done. And if, with this case in mind, we glance back over the
past, and note the fealty that went along with brutality in feudal

*7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ages ; or if, at the present time, we observe how the least advanced
European nations show a superstitious awe of the ruler, which, in the
more advanced, has become conventional respect ; we shall perceive
that decrease of the feeling goes on, and can normally go on, only as
fast as the fitness of men for social cooperation increases. Manifestly,
throughout all past time, assemblages of men in whom the aggressive
selfishness of the predatory nature existed without this feeling, which
induces obedience to a controlling power, dissolved and disappeared,
leaving the world to be peopled by those who had the required emo-
tional balance. And it is manifest that, even in civilized society, if
the sentiment of subordination becomes enfeebled without self-control
gaining in strength proportionately, there arises a danger of social
dissolution — a truth of which France supplies an illustration.

Hence, as above said, the conceptions of sociological phenomena,
or, at least, of those all-important ones relating to governmental
structures and actions, must now, and for a long time to come, be
rendered more or less untrue by this perturbing emotion. Here, in
the concrete, may be recognized the truth before stated in the abstract,
that the individual citizen, embedded, as it were, in the social organism
as one of its units, mainly moulded by its influences, and aiding recip-
rocally to remould it, furthering its life while enabled by it to live,
cannot so emancipate himself as to see things around him in their real
relations. Unless the mass of citizens have sentiments and beliefs in
something like harmony with the social organization in which they
are incorporated, this organization cannot continue. These sentiments
proper to each type of society will inevitably sway the sociological
conclusions of its units. And, among other sentiments, this awe of
embodied power will take a large share in doing this.

How large a share it takes, we shall see on contemplating the as-
tonishingly perverted estimates of rulers it has produced, and the re-
sulting perversions of history. Recall the titles of adoration given to
emperors and kings ; the ascription to them of capacities, beauties,
powers, virtues, transcending those of mankind in general ; the ful-
some flatteries used when commending them to God in prayers profess-
ing to utter the truth. Now, side by side with these, put records of
their deeds throughout all past times in all nations ; notice how thick-
ly these records are sprinkled with crimes of all orders ; and then
dwell a while on the contrast. Is it not manifest that the conceptions
of State-actions that went along with these profoundly untrue concep-
tions of rulers must also have been profoundly untrue ? Take, as a
single example, King James, who, as described by ]\Ir. Bisset in agree-
ment with other historians, was " in every relation of life in which he
is viewed .... equally an object of aversion or contempt ; " but to
whom, nevertheless, the English translation of the Bible is dedicated
in sentences beginning, " Great and manifold were the blessings, most

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

471

dread sovereign, which Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, be-
stowed upon us the people of England, when first He sent Your Ma-
jesty's Royal Person to rule and reign over us," etc., etc. Think of
such a dedication of such a book to such a man ; and then ask if, along
with a sentiment thus expressing itself, there could go any thing like
balanced judgments of political transactions.

Does there need an illustration of the extent to which balanced
judgments of political transactions are made impossible by this senti-
ment during times when it is strong ? We have one in the warped
conceptions formed respecting Charles I. and Cromwell ; and respect-
ing the changes with which their names are identified. Now that
many generations have gone by, and it begins to be seen that the one
was not worthy to be prayed for as a martyr, while the other deserved
treatment quite unlike that of exhuming his body and insulting it, it
begins to be seen, also, how utterly wrong have been the interpretations
of the events they took part in, and how entirely men's sentiments of
loyalty have incapacitated them for understanding those events under
their sociological aspects.

Naming this as an instance of a more special perverting effect of
this sentiment, we have here chiefly to note its more general pervert-
ing effect. From the beginning it has tended ever to keep in the fore-
ground of consciousness the governing agent as causing social phe-
nomena ; and so has kept in the background of consciousness all other
causes of social phenomena — or, rather, the one has so completely oc-
cupied consciousness as to exclude the other. If we remember that
history has been full of the doings of kings, but that only in quite re-
cent times have the phenomena of industrial organization, conspicuous
as they are, attracted any attention — if we remember that, while all
eyes and all thoughts have been turned to the actions of rulers, no
eyes and no thoughts have, until modern days, been turned to those
vital processes of spontaneous cooperation by which natural life, and
growth, and progress, have been carried on — we shall not fail to see
how profound have been the resulting errors in men's conclusions
about social affairs. And, seeing this, we shall infer that the emotion
excited in men by embodied political power must now, and for a long-
time to come, be a great obstacle to the formation of rational sociolo-
gical conceptions — tending, as it must ever do, to exaggerate the im-
portance of the political factor in comparison with other factors.

Under the title of " Subjective Difficulties — Emotional," I have
here entered upon an extensive field, the greater part of which remains
to be explored. The effects of impatience, the effects of that all-glori-
fying admiration felt for military success, the effects of that sentiment
which makes men submit to authority by keeping up a superstitious
awe of the agent exercising it, are but a few among the effects which,
the emotions produce on sociological beliefs. Various other effects

472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have now to be described and illustrated. We will deal with them in
•chapters on " the Educational Bias," " the Bias of Patriotism," " the
Class-Bias," " the Political Bias," and " the Theological Bias."

-♦♦♦-

THE WAKMING OF HOUSES.

By JOHN P. SEDDON, Esq.

THE usual appliances for wTarming houses, setting aside comprehen-
sive systems, resolve themselves into open grates, close stoves,
and, under special conditions, gas apparatus, and pipes for hot air or
water for warming halls and passages.

For the whole of these certain general rules may be laid down :

1. More cannot be got out of any one of them than is put into it.
This is an axiom which, truism as it appears, is necessary should be
impressed upon the public mind, which is apt to assume that engineer-
ing skill can multiply the heating power of fuel indefinitely. Thus,
materials like fire-clay, which are absorbent of heat and useful to pre-
vent its escape, and retain it till needed, must abstract it first from
the fuel before it can dispense it.

2. There are but 100 degrees of percentage. This simple fact
should be kept in mind in considering methods of saving fuel, the in-
ventors of which would otherwise persuade one that reference to coal-
merchants is a work almost of supererogation.

3. Some proportion of the heat generated must be expended in
maintaining a draught in the flue, which is to carry off the products
of combustion. This is by no means unprofitably lost, since it pro-
motes ventilation as well.

4. To minimize this proportion of escaping heat to as nearly as
possible what is just necessary, and to take toll from it during its pas-
sage, as by warming the air which is to replace that abstracted by the
flue, are the principal directions which efforts to economize fuel should
take.

5. The products of combustion, being noxious, must be wholly re-
moved, unless they can be chemically transformed. It is as barbarous
to allow the fumes from gas to invade rooms, as it is to let the door be
the sole outlet for peat-smoke in an Irish cabin, or as it was to provide
only louvers in the roofs of the halls of our forefathers for the smoke
of their wood-fires. The evil may be disguised, but the poison is the
more insidious from being comparatively unfelt. The lungs of the
living animals, as the leather of dead ones on the book-shelves, become
corroded alike -by its pernicious influence.

G. Warming and ventilation are so intimately connected that, al-
though the latter is not my special subject upon this occasion, it is

THE WARMING OF HOUSES. 473

necessary that it should be kept in mind throughout while treating of
the former. In fact, infusing heated air is a more economical and
pleasanter mode of warming houses than direct radiation, and it is
only by their capability of combining the two methods that open fires
can maintain ascendency over stoves, and it is only by uniting proper
ventilation with stoves that they ought to be tolerated.

Lastly, all appliances should be simple and as self-acting as pos-
sible. This is essential for those intended for the use of the poor,
whose treatment of them is of the roughest, and who neither need nor
understand any thing complicated. If there be a damper to be drawn,
or a handle to be turned by them, neither will be drawn nor turned
except occasionally the wrong way, and if there be any cover or part
that is loose, it is safe to be lost. At the risk, therefore, of some
waste, their scanty fuel must be consumed in the most primitive man-
ner possible. With somewhat less force the same caution may be
given to those who design apparatus for the upper classes. Every
thing even for them should be as self-acting as possible, for, though
individuals may for a time take a fancy to an ingenious arrangement
that requires personal adjustment, they tire of it in time ; servants in
their succession are not to be drilled into its use, and the thing is
soon left to itself, and failure is the inevitable result.

To proceed to the several appliances themselves :

In the race to attain economy ', it must be acknowledged, at the
outset, that close stoves completely distance open grates, and that they
in their turn are as far ahead of all gas-apparatus as at present in-
vented ; and yet all have some advantages as well as disadvantages
peculiar to themselves, to which it is worth giving some consideration.

In stoves, the heat from fuel can be almost wholly extracted and
utilized, and even the little that escapes with the gaseous products of
combustion is heavily taxed when its ultimate exit is by the few in-
significant pipes, or diminutive chimney-stalks, which alone are suf-
fered to peep above the roofs of houses on the Continent. English
ideas of comfort will not, however, permit of the general introduction
of the stove system into this country, and it is hardly to be desired
that it should, unless great improvement be grafted upon that in vogue
abroad, in which stuffiness is ever an accompaniment of warmth.

Our British privilege, however, of being able to poke the fire,
although purchased dearly by its concomitant dust and the labor it
entails upon servants, is not likely soon to be relinquished, and the
luxury of an open fire is a fact which no theory can demolish.

Still, the grates in common use savor of barbarism, and much can
and should be done to gain further refinement, economy, and imnmnity
from nuisance. There is no need, for instance, that our roofs should
be disfigured by the ugly and even comical flue terminals which Dick-
ens satirized in one of his latest Christmas publications. We ought
not to be subject to vexatious down-draughts in windy weather, nor to

474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chimneys that smoke unless a door or -window be open. Our drawing-
rooms should not be invaded by sooty chimney-sweepers, and all
ought not to have to scramble for a place near the fire in a room to be
warm, nor when there to have to rotate like a smoke-jack to prevent
beins frozen on one side while we are scorched on the other.

Such evils are to be obviated by simple means, and yet ninety-nine
out of every hundred Englishmen submit to them supinely if not pa-
tiently. Whole streets, occupied by men of means, have their sky-line
fringed with demon-like excrescences which tell a sure tale of internal
discomfort. Such was the case with that in which my own residence
is situated. When I took my house upon lease, though it had been
well built by an eminent architect for his own use, yet, in common
with all its neighbors, it displayed a grim array of tall-boys and tortu-
ous contrivances as chimney terminals. All these I swept away at
once, without inquiry, feeling that, whatever might be needed, they
certainly could not be. I then introduced an air-pipe to each fireplace
through the floors, and, as I expected, found no smoky chimneys to
complain of, though my neighbors still grumble at theirs, as I do of
their futile and unsightly expedients to remedy them.

So much depends upon the proper construction of fireplaces and
their flues, without which no appliance in the shape of a grate can
have fair play, that I shall in the first place describe the points to be
attended to in the erection of these portions of a building, and in
palliating evils in those which already exist.

The first essential to insure a good draught is that the flue should
be sufficiently rarefied. For this purpose it is desirable that it should
not be in an outer wall ; but, if it be necessarily so,.the enclosing wall
should be thick (at least 9 in. between the flue and the outer air) or
else it should be protected by a double casing, with intermediate hol-
low space. Materials which absorb damp should be avoided for the
construction, as they tend to the evaporation and loss of the heat
generated ; and the interior of the flue should be well pargetted, to
further prevent the suction of external cold by the up-draught within.
Another important point is that the flue be not too large, or currents
of cold air descending will interfere with the ascending heated air. In
old buildings flues are found of large size — as 18 in. by 12 in. — with
wide throats, funnel-shaped, diminishing upward. But the fuel used
in them was wood, and abundant, and men were more hardy, and
minded not the roaring of wind in the chimney, or cowered over the
embers within the vast embrasure of the fireplace, which formed an in-
ner room of itself. There are those who would revive these large flues,
on the ground that no cowls decorate their terminals. If, however, we
are to recur to the practice of our ancestors, we might as well revert
to that of a still earlier age, when the stately hall of Penshurst had its
fire upon a hearth in the centre, and the graceful wreaths of smoke
thence found exit by the lantern in the roof. We must needs then have

THE WARMING OF HOUSES. 475

the same goodly logs as fuel, and a supply which will enable us to af-
ford the blaze that alone would suffice to rarefy a cavern. The ordi-
nary coal-fires of our apartments do not need a larger flue than a pipe
of 9 in. in diameter. Mr. Richardson, in his work, states that the
houses built by Cubitt in Belgravia have flues 9 in. by 9 in. only, while
others erected later have them 14 in. by 9 in., and that these are dis-
tinguishable outside by the absence or presence of objectionable cowls
respectively. Kitchen-flues must be larger, in proportion to their
fires, or better, perhaps, doubled — a practice for which old precedents
may be found, and which seems calculated to avoid down-draughts.

For the avoidance of that particular nuisance, however, special
provision should be made in every flue. This may be done by an en-
larged space, wherein the force of gusts of wind may expend itself
upon, as it were, a cushion of air. If the first pipe above the chim-
ney-mantel be a 9-inch pipe, let the next be a 15-inch one, and the
flue above continued with 9-inch ones. A somewhat similar arrange-
ment has been proposed by Mr. Boyd for brick flues. He discontinues
the vertical flue a few feet above the mantel with an enlarged space or
pocket, and carries an inclined one from the fireplace into this on one
side, and the down-draught, thus meeting resistance at the bottom, ed-
dies round the space, without being able to check the upward draught
from below. Mr. Cubitt's continuation of the flue to the basement also
obviously affords a resisting column of air to accomplish the same pur-
pose. It may be impossible to make such cavities large enough to
overcome the effect of every down-draught, but these provisions against
them will generally secure this desired end if combined with ample pro-
vision of air to the fireplace.

The use of pipes for the lining of flues has the advantage of com-
pelling a good' and non-porous finish, which would otherwise be neg-
lected by careless workmen, who often will not take the trouble to
properly parget and core the flues in stone and brick walls. The inte-
rior of the pipes, however, should be rough, and by no means glazed,
or their inability to give any means of adherence to soot will be found
a nuisance, in consequence of its continual dropping. The old funnel-
shaped throat left a large space above the grate filled with cold air,
which checked the draughts. This depends much upon the grate itself;
but, generally speaking, the flue should be contracted to its smallest
size as soon as possible above the mantel. Iron frames for this pur-
pose, serving as mantel-bars as well, such as Gibbs's registered fire-
place-lintel, are useful appliances. A concrete block may be made of
the shape required at perhaps the least cost. . . .

The construction of the fireplace itself is of the most importance.
The contraction of the flue immediately over it is the first point to be
looked to, and next the provision of a proper supply of air for the com-
bustion of the fuel. To illustrate this in the simplest manner, I may
refer to a small room with a large fireplace in it, belonging to a friend,

47 6 l.EE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

which was complained of as simply uninhabitable by reason of the
draughts that invaded it from all sides. A piece of iron pipe, with
the lower end protruded through the outer wall, the middle brought
through the fire, and the upper end open to the room, stopped all
cause for complaint. The reason for this is so obvious that it seems
hardly credible that a vast majority of dwellers in houses are enduring
continual torture for want of this pipe or some equivalent simple ap-
pliance. One looks in vain along the walls of our streets for any signs
of air-bricks or other inlets of air, and, with closed doors and plate-
glass windows, one wonders where the air comes from to feed the fires
within. There are but few available sources, which are these : 1. The
joints of the window-frames and chinks round doors, through which
cold blasts whistle as they are sucked in, so that these are pasted up,
and as far as possible this means of supply intercepted. 2. Unused
flues of other rooms down which air pours mixed with smoke ; and 3.
The soil and waste pipes, the water in the taps of which cannot hinder
the precious element from coming even by such undesirable channels,
in obedience to the powerful suction of the several fires in the house.
These failing, there are positively no other sources. Then, fortunately,
the fires begin to smoke, and doors and windows are perforce opened
to abate that by far the smallest and least dangerous nuisance of the
whole.

The remedy for this is to provide a sufficiently ample supply of
pure, fresh air in such a manner that it may come in moderately warm,
and from such quarter that it be felt as a draught. There are several
means of doing this, each hotly maintained by its partisans to be the
only fit and proper one. The bottom, the centre, and the top of the
room, are each pointed out as being specially adapted for the purpose
bv those much-enduring laws of Xature, and the course of the currents
of air, demonstrated by flights of the most obedient and flexible ar-
rows. This certainly may be taken for granted : if openings be made
in any or all of the positions indicated, the laws of Xature will make a
beneficial use of them, but it will be capriciously, one moment as an
inlet and one as outlet, as the occasion may need. The fire being the
motive power of the currents, the direction that the air will take if it
can will be in a straight line to the fireplace, and, therefore, to obviate
disagreeable draughts, the air-inlets must not be placed so that cur-
rents thence must necessarily impinge upon the inmates of the room,
as in the case of the undesigned ones of the chinks round the doors
and windows. Again, they should not be so near and below the grate
as to rush direct to feed the fire, and thus, not only not aid to ventilate
the room, but absolutely take from the fire that valuable office. By
far the best mode,, in my opinion, is to introduce the air below tha
hearth, and carry it thence through warming-chambers at the back or
sides of the grate, and allow it to issue into the room above the fire-
place, or from the outer sides from the chimney-piece, so that it must

IS ELECTRICITY LIFE? 477

ascend and mix with the air in the room before it finds its ultimate
exit by the fireplace or outlet-flue. In fact, the fireplace itself should
be the fountain of warmed fresh air to an apartment, since no draught
thence can be annoying to any of the inmates of the room. The air
may be brought, according to its position upon different floors, from
below, by air-bricks inserted in the walls between the joists, or from
above the roof by a flue constructed for the purpose ; and if this flue
be carried in close connection with the chimney-flue, whether in sepa-
rate pipes, as by Mr. Jennings's method, by the use of Boyd's metal
withes, or ordinary brick ones, the air drawn down by the suction of
the fire will have the temperature considerably raised above that of the
outer atmosphere, the coldness of which, entering by windows, is un-
endurable.— Builder.

+»»

IS ELECTRICITY LIFE ?

Br HENRY LAKE.

TTTE have had many specimens of electricity this summer — more,
V V perhaps, than for fifty years previously. Those, particularly,
who lived in the north and west of England, have had a greater demon-
stration of the powers of this extraordinary agent than in any ten
years, rolled into one, of the last quarter of a century. The thunder
season began with five days' successive storms in Liverpool and its
neighborhood. The first arrived on Monday, soon after the fire which
broke out at the Northwestern Hotel had frightened the people half
out of their senses. The storms culminated on Thursday, when the
fire literally " ran along upon the ground," and the thunder bellowed
in the ears of the merchants, so that business was suspended and
" high 'Change " was a desert at mid-day. Fortunately, the only
serious result was the firing of a house at Birkenhead, stunning the
lady inmates, knocking down the chimneys, fusing the bell-wires, and
melting the gas-pipes. After a few discharges here and there, with
more or less injury to life and property (notably in Manchester), the
atmosphere became wonderfully settled, and Monday, the 17th of June,
was one of the finest days, and one of the calmest and brightest even-
ings amid the usual long twilight of the North. Those particularly
who were travelling at that time will not soon forget that extraordinary
evening, when, by the most peculiar clearness of the atmosphere,
every object was brought out with a sharpness which rendered the
whole landscape a new sensation. It was the quiet rest of Nature
before the battle of the elements which was to follow.

The 18th of June will long be remembered by all the people of the
north of England. An Egyptian darkness came down upon the land

l7S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at mid-day. While the sun was shining, the lightning fired the electric
gun at Newcastle three minutes before its time, casting a slur on the
chronometer of the best ship lying in the river ; and then, like a pall,
the clouds descended and literally walked through the town. There
was no looking iip at the lightning ; it was on a level with the eye.
The streets were a deluge, and old people and children and furniture
were burled along in the torrent. At the height of the storm, twenty-
one flashes were counted in a minute, and the thunder rolled without
intermission, only enlivened by a loud discharge as from a sixty-four
pounder. Wherever there was a window open, the lightning ran in
and out in mad revel. Houses were struck in every direction, and
windows of whole streets were smashed, though no one knew whether
by the hail or the thunder. Families assembled for prayer, believing
they had arrived at the final consummation ; and all who witnessed
this storm — whether the population, scared out of their wits for many
a day, or the fifteen people who were struck by the lightning, or the
five who were killed by it (if they could have returned to give their
testimony) — would have decided the question at the head of this paper,
and said, " Electricity is death."

And yet " electricity is life." It is the very soul of the universe.
It permeates all space, surrounds the earth, and is found in every
part of it. Its pristine character is by no means what we have above
described. It is naturally the most peaceful agent in creation. It
is eminently social, and nestles round the form it inhabits. Unlike
many human specimens, it never desires to keep all its good to itself,
but is ever ready to diffuse its beneficence. It is only in abnormal con-
ditions, and in unexpected rencontres, that it displays itself in that
brilliant flash and that deafening roar with which its majestic force
yields up its great spirit.

The ocean, for instance, is compounded of water and salt ; one is an
electric, the other not. The friction of these causes the phosphorescent
appearance so often observed at sea. But, when clouds arise from the
ocean and come inland, they are mostly highly charged with electricity,
and, being naturally anxious to give up the good things they possess,
when they meet clouds not so much electrified, they hand over their
surplus commodity, and the deliverance makes the earth and all created
things in the neighborhood tremble. Or, if clouds arise from fresh
waters, or from land not having much electric fire, the sun himself
warms them up in a friendly manner ; and, as they become charged
with the vital fluid, and, in a drunken sort of way, stumble against the
sides of mountains or against other clouds, the same benignant tendency
to part with what they have too much of induces them to give up their
vital force, and the fire flashes across the sky, and all creation bows
before the artillery of the heavens. And then they weep together
over the kindly exchange, though their tears do sometimes swell the
rivers and produce a number of catastrophes not originally in the pro-

IS ELECTRICITY LIFE? 479

gramme, as at Manchester and throughout Yorkshire this season ; and
their friendly distribution of fire sometimes fails to reach the intended
cloud, and strikes down towers, churches, trees, and houses, and occa-
sionally destroys a human body not possessed of its proper quantity
of electricity. For that is, most probably, the reason why we so often
find one person struck by lightning in a place where several others are
assembled and escape.

A singular instance of the friendly interchange of civilities among
clouds was observable at Bridlington Quay this summer. Those who
know the place will remember the long stretch of table-land lying north
and south, and facing the ocean. A large cloud over the sea lowered
and approached the south point of the table-land. Immediately a flash
ascended from the earth to the cloud, and this again occurred more
than twenty times as the cloud sailed majestically over the fringe of
the table-land from south to north. And now overhead might be seen
a succession of minor clouds, arriving from all directions, but all
evidently having their eye upon the big cloud that was approaching
them, until they hovered round it like a parcel of school-boys round a
newly-arrived cake. At length the cake was cut. A flash came out
from the big cloud, then another and another ; then the nearest clouds
flashed out again to those which were farther removed. Down came
a deluge of rain, the thunder rolled incessantly, till, the distribution of
good things having been completed, the clouds sailed away, and the
sun shone again merrily.

That all created living bodies are electric there can be no question ;
and as little that some persons, animals, and plants, are more electric
than others. Two forms of the latter are familiar. Few school-boys
are guiltless of experiments on poor puss, from whose much-enduring
back electric sparks may be drawn, especially in dry, frosty weather ;
and most young ladies have admired the elegant sensitive-plant, whose
leaves seem to move and feel,

" And with quick horror fly the neighboring hand "

that draws from it the electricity which it contains more than other
plants ; and its leaves at once fall flaccidly, until a new supply of
electric force renders them once more turgid.

But bodies have not only electricity within them, but an electric
atmosphere, of the form of the body which it surrounds, and which is
attracted by it. Without this, we could not shake hands with a friend,
or kiss a lip, without the danger of the excess of electricity flying off
and destroying us, or the he or she that we would greet or kiss. Per-
haps it is the commingling of these electric atmospheres that makes
kissing so nice.

Two conditions of the human body are also illustrative of its varied
electrical action. A person who has the small-pox cannot be electrified,
while sparks of electricity may be drawn from the body of a patient

43o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dying of cholera. In the first instance, it appears that the body is fully
charged with its own electricity, since it is impossible to electrify a
body beyond a certain degree ; in the latter, there seems to be a ten-
dency to part with the electrical force which is essential to the support
of life, and which may account for the distressing and rapid weakness
of cholera patients.

We have hitherto spoken only of electricity of very high tension,
which produces the lightning-spark ; and which boys and girls know
as the product of the frictional electrical machine, the shock of which
their elbow-joints constantly remember. We wish now to refer to
something infinitely more quiet and peaceful, and to which we are
indebted for many of our greatest luxuries.

Galvani's boy-pupil, amusing himself in his master's laboratory,
accidentally bringing the legs of a recently-killed frog into an electric
current, the great philosopher perceived at once the manifestation of a
new power. It remained only for Volta to invent his pile, consisting
of a continued series of zinc and copper plates, with pieces of cloth
between, and the foundation and general principles of electro-galvan-
ism and voltaic electricity were laid down.

Frictional electricity has been compared to the high-pressure steam
of a locomotive, and voltaic electricity to the steam rising quietly
from an open boiler. The chemical action of frictional electricity is
very feeble; it has great intensity but little quantity; while the vol-
taic pile will yield an enormous quantity of electricity but with feeble
intensity. Faraday calculated that it would require a Leyden battery
to be charged by 800,000 turns of a powerful plate machine to decom-
pose a single grain of water, which by one of Pulvermacher's bands
may be done in a few seconds.

It is to this latter agent, voltaic electricity, that we are indebted
for electroplate, which has not only rendered our tables more decent,
but has supplied real works of art, and statues and ornaments innu-
merable. That is also the power by which we are enabled to convey
our thoughts thousands and thousands of miles, over mountains and
through vast oceans, and to converse from our dining-room with our
friends in almost every part of the world ; while by its agency rocks
are blasted, cannons and torpedoes are fired, and even the bells of
some of our houses are run**.

Undoubtedly, however, the greatest marvels of this beneficent
agent are to be fc4md in its influence on the human frame, and in the
cure of disease. But, like every thing that is destined eventually to
be accepted by the public as a matter of course, it has had to pass
+hrough the usual three stages of contempt, controversy, and adop-
tion. More than a hundred years ago John Wesley said : " How
much sickness and pain may be prevented or removed, and how many
lives saved, by this unparalleled remedy ! And yet with what vehe-
mence has it been opposed ! Sometimes by treating it with contempt,

IS ELECTRICITY LIFE? 481

as if it were of little or no use ; sometimes by arguments, such as they
were ; and sometimes by such cautions against its ill-effects as made
thousands afraid to meddle with it." And he thus sums up his opin-
ion of the medical profession, and their opposition to the use of elec-
tricity in disease : " There cannot be in Nature any such thing as an
absolute panacea, a medicine that will cure every disease incident to
the human body. If there could, electricity would bid fairer for it
than any thing in the world. Mr. Lovett is of opinion that the elec-
trical method of treating disorders cannot be expected to arrive at
any considerable degree of perfection till administered and applied by
the gentlemen of the faculty. Nay, then, quantd de spe decidi! all
my hopes are at an end. For when will it be administered and ap-
plied by them ? Truly ad Graicas calendas. Not till the gentlemen
of the faculty have more regard to the interest of their neighbors than
their own. Therefore, without waiting for what probably never will
be, and what indeed we have no reason to expect, let men of sense do
the best they can for themselves, as well as for their poor sick helpless
neighbors. I doubt not but more nervous disorders would be cured
in one year by this single remedy, than the whole English materia'
medica will cure by the end of the century."

This is hard upon the doctors, yet it only fairly expresses their'
conduct at that period. They alone, however, are not to be held re-
sponsible for the delay in adopting the curative powers of electricity..
Every thing worth having has to force its way to acceptance. A pop-
ular writer has well said : " If London could be lit, like the city in the
fairy tale, with a single diamond, which rendered it brighter at mid-
night than at mid-day, it would take ten years to smoothe away preju-
dices and conciliate self-interests, so as to admit of the illuminating
gem being displayed." All the astonishing cures in the early period
of electricity were effected by clumsy and importable machinery, with
" shocks " of high-tension current, which are peculiarly disagreeable
to some persons. They are indeed like the actual cautery — the hot
iron to the wound — when compared with the modern appliances of
chain batteries and bands, whose action is so tender that a baby would!
not wince at it, and which are so portable that the whole apparatus^
may be carried in the pocket. It has fallen to the man of science, and.
not to the medical practitioner, to enforce a belief in the curative
powers of electricity upon the public.

About the centre of the fashionable side of Regent Street may be
seen the establishment of Mr. Pulvermacher. How many suffering
from disease which has baffled the skill of physicians, how many whose
nervous feelings render life a burden to them, how many afflicted with
tic-douloureux or neuralgia, limping with gout or rheumatism, shiver-
ing with palsy, or bent with paralysis, pass that establishment, igno-
rant that therein most probably lies the mitigation of their suffering,
if not their absolute cure !

YOL. II. — 31

482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There can be no question of the curative powers of electricity,
since there is now extant a scientific literature, by the most eminent
physiologists and thaumaturgists, affirming these powers ; but, as we
have said, electricity has been clumsy in its apparatus, and unpleasant
in its action. These difficulties Mr. Pulvermacher has effectually over-
come, to the satisfaction not only of most of the scientific men on the
Continent, but also of such men as Sir C. Locock, Sir H. Holland, Sir
William Ferguson, Sir J. R. Martin, Dr. Sieveking, Dr. Quain, Dr.
Andrew Clarke, Dr. Golding Bird, Dr. Thompson, and a host of other
English celebrities.

The great advantage of electrical action is, that it brings relief in
a large number of diseases confessedly beyond the reach of the ordi-
nary remedies of the physician. How powerless, for instance, is ordi-
nary medical skill in tic-douloureux ! Tic, tic, tic ; it is a recurring
gentle monosyllable, suggestive of something peculiarly quiet and
peaceful; but, madam, that tic shoots through your head like a shot
from a nine-pounder, the only difference being that after the "tic"
you have your head ready for another, while after the shot you wTould
have no head worth mentioning. Or, see the tears rolling down the
cheeks of that pretty girl, whose ideas of love and romance and sen-
timent are scared away by the wearing pain of neuralgia ; or, racking
with the pain of gout and rheumatism, the man of middle age passes
his restless nights, gaining temporary respite from pain by colchicum,
or a fitful repose from morphine, and buying present ease at the cost
of an unhappy and painful old age. Why, madam, do you endure
this tic? Why, dear young lady, do you pine under neuralgia?
Why, old man, do you writhe in gouty or rheumatic agony, when help
is so near? It is the vis inertice, the unbelief in the face of facts, the
idiotic negligence of remedies which appear simple. If they had been
bid to do some great thing, would they not have done it ? But these
little chains, that can be worn like a piece of ribbon, what are they in
the face of tic, and neuralgia, and rheumatism ? These chain-batter-
ies, that look like pieces of jewelry, what can they do to strengthen
the trembling hand, or revive the withering limb ?

We will tell you what they are, and what we have seen them do.
We have seen this little band, which you seem to think so little of —
you, the sufferer from acute pain — we have seen it with only four or
five elements — that is, about a foot long — dry and unexcited, placed
for one second to the upper plate of an electroscope, and it has pro-
duced the phenomena of attraction and repulsion on the gold-leaf.
We have seen a band half an inch wide prove the power of the elec-
tric current, by passing through two persons and decomposing water
in a test-tube. We have seen the little glittering chain-battery, which
could be carried in the waistcoat-pocket, produce a continuous current
that diffused a perfect glow of warmth through the system ; and with
a little instrument, called a " contact-breaker," appended to the same

IS ELECTRICITY LIFE? 483

chain, we have had the intermittent current, which can be regulated,
from a gentle vibratory motion to shocks as powerful as could be
gained from a huge or cumbrous battery, and far more powerful than
we cared to endure.

But, if these chains and bands are small, they are not only power-
ful but valuable ; and, as money is the great test of value in this emi-
nently commercial country, it may be right to state that £10,000 was
the penalty inflicted by the Imperial Court of Appeals in Paris, for the
infringement of the patent.

Here, then, we have an electric source divested of all machinery
and complication, which could be carried in a cigar-case, and which
can be made to furnish both the interrupted and the continuous cur-
rent in large quantities. It can be set in action by the simplest means
— merely a little vinegar and a little water ; and it can be applied not
only, as in the old mode, to the extremities, but so as to surround the
body of the patient.

Although we are not continually made sensible of it, men and wom-
en are electrical machines. The researches of Matteucci, Dubois-Rey-
mond, Rutter, and Faraday, prove that there exists, both in the mus-
cles and nerves of human beings and all animals, a natural electricity,
independent of mechanical, physical, or chemical actions, exterior or
interior ; that this electricity is manifested under the form of closed
currents circulating along the muscles or nerves ; that the presence of
this free electricity is subordinate to the state of the life of the ani-
mal, and disappears with the vital force ; that all parts of the body
furnish signs of free positive electricity, especially when the circulation
is excited, which signs disappear under the action of cold and in rheu-
matic fever ; that quantity currents of low tension are constantly act-
ing throughout the vascular system, while currents of high tension,
but of inferior quantity, are to be found in the cerebral, spinal, and
nervous systems, flowing, in a state of rest of the individual, in direc-
tions defined by Nature, from the centre to the circumference.

The direction of this current is modified by voluntary muscular
contractions, but its flow may be obstructed by hostile, poisonous in-
fluences. A deficiency of the powers of the body for this electro-gen-
eration, or a deficiency in the conducting powers of the vascular and
nervous systems, is to be remedied by an artificial supply of electricity,
precisely as we go to the fire to warm ourselves. But, precisely as we
do not put ourselves on the fire, but take its heat steadily and lasting-
ly, so we do not now take a dose of electricity sufficient to shake us to
pieces, but, by these chains and bands, keep up and sustain a genial
warmth of the parts affected, or of the whole system. Nor is there
the slightest inconvenience in wearing: the bands, which are made to
fit any part of the body, or to surround it altogether, as is advised in
cases of general weakness. Having once been wetted with vinegar-
and-water, the action commences, and the moisture of the body is suffi-

484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

♦
cient to sustain the excitation of the chain or band for an indefinite

time. That the current does exist, even in its dry state, we have al-
ready shown by the test of the electroscope.

An interesting experiment, showing the electricity of the human
frame, and bearing strongly on the importance of these inventions for
restoring the lost or suspended electric powers, was made by Mr.
Rutter, of Black Rock, Brighton. Having brought the two ends of
the conducting wires of a galvanometer into two basins of water, a
lady, acknowledged'to be in consumption, placed a hand in each basin,
and grasped two pieces of wood — with the left hand lightly to com-
plete the contact, while her right pressed the wood firmly with muscu-
lar contraction. The needle of the galvanometer at once deflected from
twelve to fifteen degrees, but in a few moments came back to zero ;
and no muscular effort on her part could deflect it. A stalwart black-
smith was then brought in and the same experiment tried, but with all
his muscular contraction the needle was only deflected about 5 degrees.
He was then made to give 25 strokes on an anvil with his sledge-ham-
mer, and when he afterward rej>eated the experiment the needle de-
flected at once 12 degrees.

By this experiment two things are shown — that, in a state of dis-
ease, the body readily parts with, or rather has not the power to re-
tain, its electricity ; and that, in a state of health, muscular exertion of
considerable severity is requisite to cause it to pass out of the system.
There is just room, however, in this experiment, for the captious spirit
to object that some chemical action took place by the use of the water.
Mr. Pulvermacher has improved on the experiment, by using simply
two metallic handles of the same kind of metal, when precisely the
same effect is produced upon the galvanometer.

It was suggested, in 1850, by the writer of this article, that the
proximate cause of cholera might be found in the rapid passage of elec-
tricity from the human frame ; the peculiarity of the atmosphere, known
to exist during cholera, favoring the passage of that which is the life
itself to the human system.

Since that time, wonderful cures of cholera have been recorded by
Dr. Godwin, of Elboeuf, Dr. Defontaine, of Mons, Dr. Atkinson, and
others. The latter, on one of his cases, remarks : " It was indeed sin-
gular to notice the visible quantity of electric fluid which continually
discharged itself on the approach of any conducting body to the sur-
face of the skin of a patient laboring under the collapse stage." M.
Andraud states that at the height of the epidemic in Paris, in 1849, it
was impossible to obtain from the electrical machine any thing but
slight cracklings without sparks, and on the 7th of June it was quite
dumb. He continued his observations, and on the 9th the machine at
the least touch rendered with facility most lively sparks. It is remark-
able that, in the six days following the 8th of June, the mortality in
Paris fell regularly from 067 to 355.

D 0 BIRD S IMPR 0 VE IN NES T- B UILDING ? 485

It is now only about 150 years since electricity was discovered, not
more than 120 since the discovery of the Leyden jar enabled electri-
cians to concentrate the vital fluid. What has it not done for us in
that time ! And while it was so decried at first, and has met with im-
pediment after impediment, we now accept what it gives us, so quietly
and so much as a matter of course, that a few days ago the announce-
ment that electric communication was completed with the antipodes
called forth nothing more than a short paragraph in the newspapers.
May we not hope, then, the time has come when not only the scientific
medical man, but every practitioner, will look for himself into the cura-
tive powers of electricity ?

Every thing that is good, however, in the present day is sure to
have a host of empirical imitators, and the inventions of which we
have spoken are no exception to this rule. These chains and bands are
really formed on scientific principles, giving the patient the benefit of
the curative powers of electricity in a convenient form. There are
many spurious appliances under the name of magnetic, electro-mag-
netic, and other high-sounding titles, that get confounded with the
continuous current of electricity, which alone, in the opinion of the
highest medical authorities, can have any effect on the diseases we have
enumerated. The mischief done by these spurious imitations is incal-
culable, and they lead, not only to disappointment, but have a dis-
couraging effect upon the public mind.

Judging by the extraordinary cases of cure by the use of these
chains and bands, now well authenticated by the highest professional
authorities, John Wesley was indeed prophetic when he wrote in 1759 :
" It is highly probable a timely use of this means might prevent, be-
fore they were thoroughly formed, and frequently even then remove,
some of the most painful and dangerous distempers — cancers and scrof-
ulous humors in particular — though they will yield to no other medi-
cine yet discovered. It is certain nothing is so likely, by accelerating
the contained fluids, to dilate and open the passages, as well as divide
the coagulated particles of blood, that so the circulation may be again
performed. And it is a doubt whether it would not be of more use,
even in mortification, than either the bark or any other medicine in the
world." — Belgravia. •

♦♦♦-

DO BIRDS IMPROVE IN" NEST-BUILDING?

"A3

TRANSLATED FROM THE REVUE DES DECX MONDES,

By J. FITZGERALD, A. M.
MAN'S house," says a learned hygienist, " is but an extension

of his clothing : the tent is next-door neighbor to the mantle,
and the roof is simply a big head-gear." A house, just like the clothes
we wear, is, first of all, a shelter to protect us against the medium

f86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

around us, and to shield us against the inclemency of the seasons.
The animal, in this happier than man, has no need of dress — Nature
supplying it with plumage or with fur — but yet is required to build
for itself the dwelling-place where it is to find shelter. May we sup-
pose that here, too, Nature provides for every thing, and that blind
instinct guides the bee in the construction of her cell, and the bird in
the building of its nest ? Such, indeed, is the opinion of most natu-
ralists, and their chief argument is drawn from the fact that birds al-
ways follow the same plan in building their nests, while man is ever
modifying and improving bit by bit his methods of construction. But,
now, is this argument based on unquestionable facts, or is the conclu-
sion legitimate ? An English naturalist, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace,
undertakes to prove the contrary, in his work on Natural Selection.
According to him, the bird does not build its nest by instinct ; and
the mental faculties it exhibits in this operation are of an identical
order with those exhibited by man when he builds a house. In short,
it is claimed that these faculties are simply imitativeness, and a sort
of rudimentary ratiocination, which can take account of external sur-
roundings, whatsoever they may be. Hence it is that birds do change
and improve their processes of construction, under the influence of
such causes as determine progress in man ; and, in turn, man is at a
stand-still when he receives no impetus from without.

What is instinct ? It is " the faculty of performing complex acts,
absolutely without instruction or previously-acquired knowledge."
Instinct, then, would enable animals to perform spontaneously acts
which, in the case of man, presuppose ratiocination, a logical train of
thought. But, when we test the observed facts which are usually put
forward to prove the power of instinct, it is found that they are sel-
dom conclusive. It was on such grounds that the song of birds was
taken to be innate, albeit a very ready experiment would have shown
that it comes from the education they receive. During the last century
Barrington brought up some linnets, taken from the nest, in company
with larks of sundry varieties, and found that every one of his linnets
adopted completely the song of the master set over him, so that now
these linnets — larks by naturalization — formed a company apart when
placed among birds of their own species. Even the nightingale, whose
native song is so sweet, exhibits, under domestication, a considerable
readiness to imitate other singing-birds. The song of the bird is, there-
fore, determined by its education, and the same thing must be true as
to nest-building. A bird brought up in a cage does not construct the
nest peculiar to its species. In vain will you supply all the necessary
materials : the bird will employ them without skill, and will oftentimes
even renounce all purpose of building any thing like a nest. Does not
this well-known fact prove that, instead of being guided by instinct,
the bird learns how to construct its nest, just as man learns how to
build a house ? This observation might be made complete, if we were

BO BIRDS IMPROVE IN NEST-B.UIBB1NG ? 487

to shut up in an enclosure, with a wire screen overhead, a pair of birds
brought up in isolation from their kind, with a view to find out what
manner of nest their inexperienced efforts would produce. But, even
though we have not such evidence, there are plenty of other proofs
which confirm Mr. Wallace's theory.

The form and structure of birds'-nests are more dependent than
is usually supposed upon external conditions, and consequently they
vary in proportion as these conditions are changed. Each separate
species employs the materials it has at hand, chooses sites most
agreeable to its habits ; and the shape given to the nests often betrays
very definite purposes, which are not to be detected without some de-
gree of discernment. The wren, which dwells in hedge-rows and
thickets, commonly builds its nest of the moss in which it is accus-
tomed to search for insects ; but at times it departs from this custom,
and employs feathers and hay, when they are to be had. The raven,
which feeds on carrion, frequenting pasture-grounds and warrens,
builds its nest of wool and fur ; the lark builds in a furrow, employ-
ing dry twigs, interwoven with fine blades of grass, which it collects
when looking for worms ; the kingfisher uses the bones of fishes he
has eaten. The long-legged and big-beaked flamingo, which stalks
about in wet flats, builds a conical hillock of mud, and in this de-
posits her eggs, so as to sit easily upon them, and to keep them out of
the water.

In what respect are these animals, which avail themselves of the
circumstances around them for a perfectly determinate object, inferior
to the Patagonian, who builds for himself a rude shelter of foliage ; or
to the African negro, who scoops out a hole in the ground ? It will
be said that man progresses : but that is not universally the case.
What progress is shown in the palm-leaf huts of American savages,
the tent of the Arab, the Irish mud-cabin, the stone hovel of the Scot-
tish peasant, which appear to belong to primitive times ? The art of
house-building remains stationary, if it is in conformity with tastes*
and habits which are unalterable, because the physical conditions
which determine them are ever the same. Sometimes even a habit
once engendered persists, though the exterior conditions be changed.
The Malays from time immemorial built their houses on piles, after
the manner of the lacustrine dwellings of ancient Europe ; and this
mode of building has sunk so deep into the manners of tribes which
have penetrated into the interior of the islands and settled on arid
plains, or on rocky mountains, that they still go on prudently raising
their houses above the surface of the ground. And yet, no one ima-
gines that in these inveterate habits we have a case of instinct ; and
certainly no one would suppose that an Arab infant brought up in
France would feel the need of dwelling in a tent of skins, or that a
young Malay, if brought to Europe, would bring with him his habit
of building on piles. The unvarying processes of barbarous tribes are

488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

explained on the theory of a secular tradition, untroubled by any ex-
ternal influences.

But why not apply the same reasoning to the facts presented to us
by the animal kingdom ? The processes of nidification are determined
by the physical circumstances, as well as by the conformation of the
nest, and by the tools supplied by Nature, and they are modified in
accordance with external conditions. An alteration of climate, any
sensible change in the vegetation of a country, the introduction of new
enemies, bring about architectural variations more or less marked.
Several birds prefer the ends of threads which they pick up on the
streets to the vegetable fibres used by them before, and of their own
accord take up their quarters in boxes or hollow gourds arranged for
their use, thus saving a part of their labor. The common sparrow
readily adapts himself to circumstances : he takes far less pains with
his work when he can avail himself of a nook in a wall, than when he
is obliged to build in the open air, on the branch of a tree, for then his
nest must be solidly built and well covered. The orchard oriole or
bobolink, of the United States, builds his nest almost flat when he can
fasten it on a stout, stiff branch, but far deeper when he has to hang
it on the slender branches* of the weeping- willow, where it may be
swayed by the wind, and the chicks thrown out. Finally, M. J. A.
Pouchet published, in 1870, some very curious observations on the
progressive improvement of martins' nests. He kept for 40 years in
the Rouen Museum some of these nests, which he had himself detached
from the walls of old buildings in that city. Having one day got some
new nests, he was amazed, on comparing them with the old, to perceive
considerable differences. The new-style nests all came from a new
quarter of the town, and were all built on the one plan ; but on ex-
amining churches and other ancient buildings, as also certain rocks in-
habited by martins, he found several nests of the old pattern, together
with others constructed according to the more recent model. The
•figures and descriptions given by old naturalists portray only the
primitive type, which is a quarter-hemisphere, having a very small
circular orifice. The modern nest, on the contrary, has a width greater
than its depth, and forms a segment of an oblate spheroid, the orifice
being very wide. Here we see an evident progress, the new type being
larger, more comfortable. The wider bed gives the chicks greater lib-
erty of movement than they had in the deep and contracted nest of
former times ; the wider opening allows them to look out and take the
air ; in short, it is a sort of balcony, where two chicks find room with-
out being in the way of the old birds. Nor is this all. Being situated
nearer to the top of the nest, the opening is less exposed to rain and
wind. One well-proved case of this kind is enough to show that the
architecture of birds is susceptible of progress ; and this would seem
to overturn the hypothesis of blind instinct. Then, too, the evident
imperfections observed in the nests of some species, and the awkward-

THE ANTIPODES AND PERKECI. 489

ness, not to say stupidity, of some birds, cannot be reconciled with the
theory of infallible instinct.

To conclude, then, the nidification of birds exhibits phenomena
which, if compared with the constructive processes of primitive man,
show no essential difference in the nature of the faculties employed.
We have here no innate ideas, or blind and irresistible tendencies.
The bird learns how to build its nest, and each species has its own tra-
dition, which can be modified according to external circumstances.
As regards the origin of these constructive processes, it can be readily
understood without supposing a special instinct, if we show that, at
bottom, these processes are simpler than at first sight would appear.
For we must not exaggerate the grade of intelligence needed by a bird
in order to build a nest which to us appears simply marvellous, because
it is so small. But' this nest was first roughed out — twig on twig,
fibre on fibre ; next, the little architect stopped up the gaps with ma-
terial easily brought in with its supple claws and its slender beak.
We are charmed at the sight of this ; but the rude mud wall of a
peasant's hovel would, in the eyes of a giant, also appear to be fine
handiwork. It all depends on perspective. Levaillant has observed
the habits of an African bird which goes to work in a still more sum-
mary way. This bird gets together a heap of moss and cotton, con-
verts it, by stamping, into a sort of felt, then hollows it out in the
middle, and trims off the edge. Thus the inside of the nest becomes
as smooth and compact as a piece of cloth. Why not admit that
this process is the work of an inventor, whose invention benefits his
posterity, they in turn improving it, and handing it down to succeed-
ing generations, just as we say in the case of human discoveries, of
which we are so vain ? In studying the rise of architecture, we meet
with many a type which attracts the eye, but which answers but im-
perfectly the needs for which it was produced, and which shows less
rational foresight than do the nests constructed by sundry birds.

+»»

THE ANTIPODES AND PERKECI.

By HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH, E8q.

ABOUT few geographical positions are there more mistakes made
by intelligent people than the situation of the antipodes and
the perioeci. It has been commonly taught in the schools, at least in
New England, that the antipodes of the Eastern States, or of dwellers
near parallel 40, are in China, and that the antipodes of Boston are in
Peking. Of course, this error is not made by the best instructors, but
it is often made, and that without correction, in the presence of the
" honorable committee." Editors, too, are often as much at fault as

{go THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

teachers, in speaking of antipodal places. Thus, after the earthquake
at Lone Pine, California, and that which destroyed a part of the ancient
city of Antioch, the New York World published an article on these
phenomena, from the pen of a correspondent, entitled " The Antipodes
shaking." The editor of the World corrects its correspondent, who
supposes that Lone Pine and Antioch are antipodal, and says: "A
point immediately under Antioch is in the Pacific Ocean, ahout half-
waj- between San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands." These errors
were copied by other papers.

The word antipodes is of Greek origin, from avrl, against, and
novg, afoot, and means literally, with feet opposite. Hence the Latin
wrord antipodes, which is plural, and as a pure Latin plural should he
pronounced as in the original, or in four syllahles, an-tip-o-des. But,
as the English word antipode is used, the plural of this may he formed
regularly in three syllahles. This pronunciation is sanctioned hy Dr.
Webster, and may ultimately prevail. At present, however, the hest
scholars give the division and the accent of the pure Latin plural.

The word literally signifies, those who have their feet against each
other, or, those whose feet point toward each other; that is, those
whose feet are diametrically opposite. As applied to geography, it
means, the dwellers at the opposite extremities of the diameter of the
earth.

The perioeci, or periecians, are often mistaken for the antipodes.
The perioeci are the inhabitants on the opposite side of the globe, on
the same parallel of latitude. Hence, when people say that the antipo-
des of the Eastern States are in China, they mean the perioeci.

Two antipodal parts of the earth have the same number of degrees
of latitude, one north and the other south, unless one of these points
is on the equator

Two antipodal points must be on one and the same meridional
circle, separated from each other by half the circumference.

Being on one and the same meridional circle, they may differ in
longitude 180°, with the exception of the poles themselves, which have
no longitude.

And being separated from each other by half the circumference,
they must be equidistant from the equator in opposite directions.

The longitude of two antipodal points, if east and west longitude
is used, must together make up 180°, or 12 hours, one east, and the
other west. The antipodes of a point in 40° north latitude and 60°
east longitude are in 40° south latitude and 120° west longitude. The
antipodes of a place in the eastern part of the United States, situated
on parallel 40° north latitude, and on the meridian marked 7°, must
be on the same parallel south latitude, and on that meridian which,
added to 7°, will make up 180°, or 173°, wdiich would be in the South
Indian Ocean, a point between St. Paul's Island and Van Diemen's
Land This point would be antipodal to Boston or New York.

USEFUL THINGS. 49i

The following principal cities and places in the world are antipodal

London Antipodes Island, southeast of New Zealand.

New York South Indian Ocean.

Lima Siam.

Nankin g Buenos Ayres.

Quito Sumatra.

Bermudas Swan River.

Azores Botany Bay.

Antipodal places have the same climate, with all of the seasons,
days, and nights, completely reversed. When it is noon in London,
it is midnight at Antipodes Island ; and the noon of the longest day
at the Bermudas is midnight of the shortest day at Swan River.
When the sun is rising at New York, it is setting on the South Indian
Ocean.

Antipodes Island, a small strip of land in the South Pacific Ocean,
southeast of New Zealand, is so called because it is the nearest inhab-
itable point to the antipodes of Greenwich, latitude 49° 32' south, lon-
gitude 178° 42' east.

We said that the seasons at the antipodes were reversed. Take,
for example, New Zealand, which is nearly antipodal to England.
New Zealand has one of the finest climates in the world. The sum-
mer is a little longer and warmer than in England, the atmosphere
more moist, and fogs are frequent. Spring begins in September, sum-
mer in December, autumn in April, and winter in June. January
and February are the warmest months of the year, while July is the
coldest. The flowers bloom in January, and the snow falls in June.

So, in a figurative sense, antipodes means opposite. As Shakespeare
says, or makes one of his characters to say, in the play :

" Thou art as opposite to every good,
As the antipodes are unto us."

-♦♦♦-

USEFUL THINGS.1

By EDMOND ABOUT.

TT1LITY does not require to be defined. Nevertheless, an expla-
v-J nation of it may be profitable.

Many years have elapsed since man appeared on the earth. Geol-
ogists affirm that, before our appearance, this little globe moved round
the sun for thousands and thousands of ages. During that period the
soil, the sea, and the air, were of no benefit to anybody, because no
one existed here below. A multitude of plants and animals was

1 From advance-sheets of the " Hand-book of Social Economy." By Edmond About.
D. Appleton & Co.

{9z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

created before the germs of the first men were formed: these plants
and animals, whatever properties and powers they might have had,
were entirely useless, because utility, as we understand it, means the
service which a thing might render to man ; therefore, there was noth-
ing useful prior to man's advent in the world.

Man is born, and all beings at once take rank in relation to him.
The wild beast, rushing to devour him, enters into the first category
of noxious things ; the poisonous plant reveals to him its baneful prop-
erties ; the thorns which prick his limbs, the insects which prey on his
body, are noxious to him in degrees varying according to the amount
of pain which he suffers or dreads.

The timid animals that flee before him, the plant which neither in-
jures nor nourishes him, the hidden mineral lying in unseen veins
under his feet, are all either unimportant or useless.

The useful is that which makes man's life more easy or more agree-
able. But we have agreed, in the hypothesis of the shipwrecked
sailor, that Nature by herself supplies us with very few useful things.
Excepting the soil which sustains us, the air we breathe, the water we
drink, there is nothing which, to my mind, is due to her.

Our first resources, or, more properly speaking, all the gifts of hu-
manity, are the conquests of labor.

Man can neither create nor destroy an atom of matter, yet he can
assimilate and identify himself with whatever suits him ; he can turn
aside whatever menaces him ; above all, he can adapt for his use and
employ for his profit, that which was originally valueless or even dan-
gerous. By means of labor he impresses the stamp of utility upon all
he touches, and thus little by little annexes, as it were, the entire earth.

Utility proceeds from and returns to man. If we do not create
things themselves, we create their usefulness. But that costs some-
thing. Nothing is got for nothing. We are not Nature's spoiled
children. After man was created, he appears to have been told : " I
leave you to yourself. Whatever you produce is your own."

Do you wish to see by some examples how man does his part and
becomes the producer of utility ?

If, on leaving home an hour hence, you meet a lion at the bottom
of the stair, should you hesitate for an instant in regarding it as a
noxious animal ? Is not this true ?

However, thanks to the strenuous exertions of several generations,
lions, driven from Europe, have now no abode save Africa. The dis-
tance which separates you from them enables you to think of them
with indifference.

When an agile, a brave, and skilful man succeeds at the risk of his
life in accomplishing the trifling task of lodging a ball between a lion's
eyes, the animal is no longer noxious, nor even indifferent and useless.
Its skin is worth 100 francs ; it will make a rug.

Suppose that, instead of shooting the brute, a prudent hunter, by

USEFUL THINGS. 493

means of greater strategy, should entrap and imprison it in an iron
cage and bring it to Marseilles ! The lion disembarked at the dock
would fetch many thousand francs.

If, by means of still more skilful and longer-continued labor, a lion-
tamer, like Batty, subdues the dread monster, the lion would fetch
thirty thousand francs at least. Nature creates a devouring animal :
human skill converts it into a bread-winner.

The whole race of domesticated animals in man's service, yielding
him eggs, milk, wool, and even flesh, was wild at first, that is to say,
was so far separated from, as to be of no use to him. By his skill he
not only tamed these animals, but, as it were, he has modified and re-
modelled them after a pattern supplied by himself.

Man fashions at will draught-horses and racers, oxen for the plough
and oxen for the table, sheep which furnish wool and sheep which fur-
nish tallow, fowls which lay eggs and fowls which are fitted for the
spit, fat pigs and lean pigs : from one breed of dogs, man has produced
the greyhound and the bull-dog, the setter and the harrier, the pointer
and the lapdog. 'When you go to an exhibition of any sort of live
animals, remember that art has as great and Nature as little a share
in it as in an exhibition of pictures.

Apply the same method of reasoning to all agricultural, arboricul-
tural, and horticultural exhibitions. Neither our gardens, our fields,
nor our woods, are masterpieces of Nature,, as is ignorantly said ; they
are masterpieces of human industry.

All double flowers, without exception, are man's work. Pluck a
wild rose from a hedge-row, and then go and see a collection of Ver-
dier's roses : you will learn how much Nature has bestowed, and what
man has made of it.

All the pulpy and juicy edible fruits are man's work. Man went
as far as Asia, and even farther, in quest of the coarse products which
resemble our peaches, our cherries, our pears, as much as the wild-rose
resembles the "Palace of Crystal " or the "Remembrance of Mai-
maison " rose.

Each of our vegetables represents not only distant voyages, but
also centuries of skilled labor and assiduous elaboration.

It was not Nature that gave the potato to the poor of our land.
Human industry went in quest of it to America, and has cultivated,
modified, ameliorated, varied, and brought it step by step to its pres-
ent state, accomplishing the result in less than a century. Yet to this
century of culture must be added the prior labor bestowed on the
plant by the natives of America. When the products of a distant
country are brought to us, we are prone to believe that Nature alone
has done every thing. But, when the Spaniards discovered America,
it had been cultivated from time immemorial. Hence man had turned
Nature to his advantage there, as well as in Europe and elsewhere.

Wheat, such as we see it, is not a gift of Nature. It grows spon-

494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taneously in Upper Egypt, yet there it yields but a poor and miserable
seed, unfitted for making bread. Many ages and a prodigious expen-
diture of labor were required in order to develop, swell, and perfect
the seeds of this useful food for man. Have you ever been told that
wheat is distinguished from other cereals by its containing a notable
proportion, sometimes a quarter, of nitrogenous substances ? This
valuable gluten represents the blood and flesh of thousands of genera-
tions that perished in the culture of wheat.

While labor supplied the most precious of its useful properties to
this grain, of which each of us consumes three hectolitres yearly, phar-
macy altered the use of fifty vegetable poisons, and converted them to
the profit of our species. Not merely does man add a portion of util-
ity to that which possesses none naturally, but he turns bad into good.

During how many ages did the electric fluid hold a place among
the number of curses ! "We knew it only by the dreaded effects of
lightning.

Franklin discovered the lightning-conductor, and conferred on
everybody the means of neutralizing this great curse. A force, emi-
nently mischievous, becomes indifferent to the man who is prudent and
Avise. Security during a storm is henceforth the price of easy and in-
expensive labor.

But does man halt in so fine a path ? No. Hardly has he con-
quered this hostile power, than he undertakes to domesticate it.
Lightning, snatched from old Jupiter's hands by Franklin, becomes an
instrument of progress. We employ it to transmit our thoughts, to
reproduce our works of art, to gild our utensils, and we shall soon
make it perform a thousand other services. Before the lapse of half a
century we shall see electricity rendered more and more docile, furnish-
ing us with movement, light, and heat, at pleasure.

Will you now study with me how human labor, incessantly multi-
plied, infinitely increases the usefulness of all our things ?

An invisible, disregarded iron-mine renders no service to the men
who tread upon it.

On the day the geologist, by the travail of his mind, divines this
source of useful things beneath our feet, the soil which conceals it
gains to some extent an increased value.

When laborious boring has proved the existence of the mineral, ex-
pectation is converted into certainty, and the value of the land is far-
ther increased.

The result of employing labor to work the mine is to bring to the
surface some tons of reddish stones containing iron. This matter is
not really more useful than the pebbles in the neighboring stream ;
yet it is more valuable, because it is known that things more profitable
to man can be extracted from it by labor. The mineral is treated,
and the crude metal, which is of greater value, is obtained. The crude
metal is refined, and iron is got, which is better. The iron is treated,

USEFUL THINGS. 495

and, by cementation, it is converted into steel. The steel is wrought,
and a thousand things directly useful to man are produced.

The utility of these last products increases in a direct ratio to the
amount of labor which men have expended. An anvil weighing a
thousand pounds is less useful than a thousand wrought files ; it costs
less labor. A thousand pounds' weight of files costs less labor than a
thousand pounds' weight of watch-springs ; they contain in themselves
a smaller sum of utility. You can easily understand that if the anvil
made in a day contained as much utility and was of as great value as
a ton of watch-springs, which it took several months to make, every-
body would prefer to forge anvils, and no one would weary himself in
flattening watch-springs.

Neither a decree, nor a decision, nor a political law, has arranged
matters in this wise ; Nature herself has done it.

It is necessary, indispensable, inevitable, that labor should con-
stantly augment the utility of things, and that men should buy them
at the price of greater efforts on learning that they are more useful.
Not only is the existence of utility merely relative to man, but it con-
tinually varies with our natural or artificial wants.

A stove is useless at Senegal ; an ice-making machine is useless at
Spitzbergen. In a locksmith's eyes, pincers are objects of first neces-
sity ; a duchess has no use for them. Oil the other hand, a little bon-
net, which does not cover her head, is more useful to her than sixty
pairs of pincers, for she requires it to drive in her carriage in the
park, and she pays for it accordingly. The agreeable and the useful
are perpetually confounded in an advanced state of civilization : I
have explained why, in showing that our wants increase with our re-
sources.

Time and distance augment or diminish .the utility of our goods.
A thing in your hand is of more use to you than if it were ten leagues
off. At the distance of ten leagues it is more useful than if it were in
America. The greater the distance, the greater is the labor required
to enjoy it ; you must either pay the cost of carriage or go for it your-
self. This fatigue and this outlay are equivalent to the labor that
must be expended, for instance, in order to convert iron into steel. A
thousand francs in Paris are worth more to a Parisian than a thousand
francs in Brussels ; a thousand francs in Brussels are worth more than
if they were in New York. In like manner a thousand francs which
are given you to-day are evidently of greater use than a thousand
francs which will be given to you ten years hence. A thousand francs
obtainable in ten years are more useful and are worth more than a
thousand francs of which the possession is postponed for fifty years.
The return may indeed be safe and certainly guaranteed ; the question
is utility as regards yourself, and you are not sure of living long
enough to enjoy a benefit so long deferred.

The utility clearest to all eyes is that residing in material things.

496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Man understands without any effort that a bird in the hand is worth
two in the bush, and that it is still more useful when leaving the spit.
It is needless to tell you that first the sportsman and then the cook
has added a surplus value to the bird. If I put before you a ton of
pig-iron, worth fifty francs, and then a ton of fine needles, worth nine-
ty thousand, you will instantly see the enormous supplement of utility
which the work of men has added to the metal.

But there are other benefits of which the utility is not as directly
visible to our eyes, though it be at least as great. An impalpable, in-
visible, imponderable idea is often more useful than a mountain of
benefits clear to the naked eye. Man is a thinking body ; his hands
have done much to render the earth habitable, but his brain has done
a hundred times more.

Suppose that a great manufacturer had converted a thousand million
pounds of iron into steel. "Would he have performed as much useful-
ness in his life as the discoverer of cementation, as he who has put it
within the reach of all men to convert iron into steel ? He who should
transport a mountain ten miles would produce less utility than the dis-
coverer of the lever. For, by teaching us a simple law of mechanics
we have been put in a position to transport a hundred mountains, if
we please, with less outlay and effort. An economy is thus rendered
possible which will profit all men who have been and may be born.

If Pascal had said to the men of his day, " I am rich, I possess a
hundred miles of pasturage around Montevideo, and a thousand ves-
sels on the Atlantic ; I have caused half a million of horses to be trans-
ported hither, which I present to you, and which will work for you till
their deaths," Pascal would have been less useful to the human race
than on the day when, in his study, he invented the wheel-barrow.

Studious men, by a series of discoveries, superinduced the one upon
the other, have given to us all the machines which abridge and facili-
tate labor. England alone possesses a hundred millions of horse-power
which work for the profit of thirty millions of men.

The history of civilization may be summarized in nine words : the
more one knows, the more one can perform.

In proportion as scienoe and reasoning simplify production, the
quantity of benefits produced tends to increase without augmentation
of expense ; work done helps the work to be done. The tools of the
human race are nothing else than a collection of ideas. All levers are
worn out in the long-run, and all wheel-barrows also ; steam-engines
are not everlasting, but the idea remains, and enables us indefinitely
to replace the material which perishes. It follows from this that the
first of useful things for man, is man himself.

You are of the greater use to yourself the more you are instructed,
rendered better, and, so to speak, more perfect. The development of
your personal faculties also enables you to be more useful to others,
and to obtain from them greater services through reciprocity.

CHARLES DARWIN, M. A., P. R. S., Etc.

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 497

CHARLES KOBEKT DARWIN.

MR. CHARLES R. DARWIN", the most eminent philosophic natu-
ralist of the age, is now sixty-four years of age, having been
born in Shrewsbury, England, in 1809. He is descended from distin-
guished ancestors on both sides. His father was Dr. Robert Waring
Darwin, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his paternal grandfather
was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, author of the once-famous books, the " Bo-
tanic Garden " and the " Zoonomia." Mr. Darwin's grandfather on the
maternal side was the celebrated Josiah Wedgwood, whose name is
intimately associated with the progress of the art of pottery in Eng-
land. Mr. Darwin attended the Shrewsbury School, spent two years
in the University of Edinburgh, and took his degree of B. A. at
Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1831.

Mr. Darwin inherited from the author of " Zoonomia " that love of
natural history and the allied sciences which has been the labor and
the pleasure of his life. In the autumn of 1831, Captain Fitz Roy,
R. N., having offered to give up part of his own cabin to any naturalist
who would accompany H. M. S. Beagle in her surveying voyage and
circumnavigation, Mr. Darwin volunteered his services without salary.
His scientific acquirements were already so well known that the offer
was at once accepted, Mr. Darwin stipulating only that he should have
the absolute disposal of all his collections. The Beagle sailed from
England, December 27, 1831, and returned on the 27th October, 1836.

In 1839, Mr. Darwin published a volume as a part of Captain Fitz
Roy's general work, descriptive of this voyage. The interest excited
by this, one of the most graphic, and at the same time most philosophic
book of travels that was ever published, led to its reproduction in a
modified form, in 1845, under the title of "Journal of Researches into
the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the
Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle round the World." This Journal shows
Mr. Darwin to have been a singularly close observer of every phenome-
non in natural history, and of every variety of condition, physical and
mental, of the people whom they visited during this remarkable voyage,
and exhibits the possession of perceptive powers of the highest order.
No single phenomenon is described by Mr. Darwin until after it has
been most cautiously examined, and the reader of the Journal is soon
impressed with the persuasion that the facts narrated are placed beyond1
a doubt, and that his reasonings on those facts are ever guided by a
system of most severe inductive philosophy. This is most especially
exemplified in Mr. Darwin's reasonings on the origin of the coral-reefs
of the Pacific.

In the beginning of 1839 Mr. Darwin married his cousin, Emma
Wedgwood, and shortly after took up his residence at Down, near
vol. i:.— 32

4q8 the popular science monthly.

Farnborough, in Kent. For twenty-six years, in the retirement of his
home, Mr. Darwin has devoted himself to the care of a large family,
and the quiet and close investigation of the works of Nature. His
first labors, after this date, were editing the " Zoology of the Voyage
of the Beagle," giving an account of the habits and ranges of the
various animals therein described. In aid of the publication of this
and other works bearing on the same subject, the Lords of the Treasury
granted £1,000. In 1842, Mr. Darwin published his work on " The
Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs;" in 1845, "Geological
Observations on Volcanic Islands ; " and in 1846, " Geological Observa-
tions on South America."

Continuing, without rest, his researches, we find the results of his
unwearying industry in two volumes published in 1851 and 1854, "On
Pedunculated and Sessile Cirripedes," and, in two other volumes, on
the fossil species of the same class.

Toward the close of 1859, Mr. Darwin published his "Origin of
Species by means of Natural Selection." Of this work four English
editions have appeared, and nine foreign editions, in French, German,
Dutch, Italian, and Russian. Its popularity is shown by the fact that
more than one hundred reviews, pamphlets, and separate books, have
been published upon it, while the earnestness with which the question
is still discussed shows that these will probably be doubled in a short
time.

In 1834, Mr. Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1853, the Royal Society awarded to him the royal medal, and
in 1859 the Wollaston medal was given to him by the Geological
Society. In 1862, he published a book full of curious research, "On
the Various Contrivances by which Orchids are fertilized." Of sepa-
rate papers, published by this naturalist, we find the following among
the more important : " On the Connection of Certain Volcanic Phe-
nomena in South America ; " " On the Distribution of Erratic Bowlders
in South America ; " " On the Formation of Mould by the Earthworm ; "
and " On the Geology of the Falkland Islands " — all published in the
Transactions of the Geological Society. In the Journal of the Linnean
Society, three papers have appeared from the pen of Mr. Darwin, " On
the Dimorphous and Trimorphous States of Primula," and one paper
" On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants." This last one
has since been published as a separate wrork. In 1864, the Royal
Society awarded to Mr. Darwin the Copley medal, and he has been
elected a member of various foreign scientific bodies.

The latest works of this indefatigable naturalist are, " The Varia-
tion of Animals under Domestication," in two volumes ; the " Descent
of Man," in two volumes ; and a book " On the Expression of the Emo-
tions in Man and Animals," just published, and some account of which
h given in the present number of The Popular Science Monthly.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

499

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TYNDALL'S LECTURES IN NEW YORK.

PROF. TYND ALL'S course of lec-
tures in New York has met with
a success that is commensurate with the
reputation of the lecturer, and the in-
terest of the suhject which he selected
for popular elucidation. One of the
largest halls in the city has been densely
crowded throughout the course of six
lectures by the most cultivated and in-
telligent people of New York and the
adjacent towns, and he has been lis-
tened to with close and absorbing atten-
tion throughout. The first lecture tests
a man's reputation, and its degree of
success is a measure of the desire to
see as well as to hear him. As a re-
salt, the first performance often dissi-
pates a reputation. The second lecture
tests character and capacity, and an
extended course applies the test still
more rigorously. Had Prof. Tyndall
given but a single lecture, however
large may have been his audience, it
might have been considered as gathered
by curiosity ; but when a vast audito-
rium, like that of the Cooper Institute,
is packed to the last by the ablest men
in all the professions — science, law,
medicine, divinity, and education —
with many of our strongest and shrewd-
est men of business, and a large pro-
portion of our most cultivated ladies,
the verdict is unequivocal and assured,
and the highest compliment possible
is paid to the genius and power of the
'teacher. No such assemblages as have
greeted Prof. Tyndall, and followed
him with sustained enthusiasm through
his course, have ever before been gath-
ered in New York.

But one interpretation can be given
to this success, and that is the growing
interest in matters of science, and the
increasing appreciation of ability in its
expounders. If it be said that the au-

ditors were in search of mere pleasura-
ble excitement, it comes to the same
thing, for the pleasurable excitement
is derived from a prolonged scientific
demonstration. Something was due to
the attractiveness of the experiments,
and much to the felicity of the profess-
or's manner, but there were abundant
and gratifying indications of an ear-
nest desire to comprehend the argu-
ment, and get a thorough understand-
ing of the phenomena presented. The
strength of this feeling has been put
to a significant test in the present case.
Just before sailing, Prof. Tyndall had
exposed himself to the reprobation of a
large class of the community by con-
senting to introduce to the public Dr.
Thompson's paper proposing the so-
called prayer-gauge. He thus became
an object of bitter attack from religious
quarters, and so considerable was the
feeling aroused that it was said by
many the step he had taken would
cost him his American audiences. But
the strength of public prejudice was
over-estimated, and the progress of
liberal feeling forgotten. Twenty-five
years ago it would have been different ;
but such has been the conquest of pre-
judice, and the enlargement of ideas,
that Prof. Tyndall's lecture-rooms, in
all the cities where he has spoken,
have been filled to overflowing with
those who are prepared to accept sci-
ence on its own merits, without mixing
up with it questions of theology.

Another circumstance deserves men-
tion in relation to the success of Prof.
Tyndall's lectures in New York. His
audience came together upon the bare
announcement that he would give them
a course of lectures. There were nono
of the usual trumpetings of mana-
gers— puffs, placards, show-bills, por-
traits in the windows, staring sensa-

jOO

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tional advertisements, and the custom-
ary arts and tricks by which notori-
ety is manufactured and "success " se-
cured. It is to the credit of New York
intelligence, and evinces a growing ap-
preciation of the intrinsic claims of
science, that the customary clap-trap of
agents, whose maxim is, "The public
must have a certain amount of humbug,
you know," was entirely dispensed
with in the present instance.

Prof. Tyndall's course of lectures
was any thing but child's-play for his
audience. Boston, indeed, has com-
plained that they were elementary , \i 'not
rudimentary ; but Boston is in many
things exceptional — there has been no
such complaint in other cities. In New
York the prevailing criticism has been
rather of an opposite kind— not, per-
haps, that the lecturer's presentations
had been too abstruse for ordinary in-
telligent apprehension, but that they
have been too incomplete to be satis-
factory. The phenomena shown have
been out of proportion with their ex-
planations, a defect which could only
be remedied by giving thirty-six lec-
tures in the place of six. But this was
impossible, as Prof. Tyndall's time to
tarry with us was short. The method
that he has followed, we think, has
*been very skilfully adapted to the cir-
cumstances. There has been a great
amount of general reading in books
and magazines, and of study in our
schools and colleges, upon the subjects
he has selected, but the ideas acquired
have been vague and unsatisfactory,
from lack of observing the actual phe-
nomena that have been read about.
The lecturer assumed this state of
mind in his hearers, and that the liter-
ature of the subject is everywhere ac-
cessible for further reference, and he*
accordingly constructed his course so
as to bring under direct observation a
wide range of the actual phenomena he
had chosen to deal with. These were
presented in their beauty and variety,
with consummate skill and impressive-

ness, and as much of elucidation as
time allowed. The ideas of many upon
the subject of Light, the theory of its
nature, and its various complex affec-
tions, were clarified and rendered
more precise, while many others for
the first time witnessed a series of
marvellous effects, which gave them a
new conception of the exquisite and
wonderful play of natural forces, and
which will incite them to further study
and prepare them for it.

The triumph of Prof. Tyndall, so
far from being his first lecture with all
its advantages of novelty, was really
his last lecture, and what is more, the
concluding part of it, which was with-
out experiments. He closed his course
by an estimate of the work, and a state-
ment of the claims of original investi-
gators, and this was listened to by his
vast audience with a close and almost
breathless attention, which attested
both the intellectual quality of the as-
semblage and their interest in the
highest scientific objects and themes.

MRS SOMERYILLE.

To the question " "Who is the most
intellectual woman that has yet ap-
peared?" a variety of answers will
probably be returned ; but to the ques-
tion " "Who is the most scientific woman
that has yet appeared? " but one answer
will be given ; it is — " Mary Somer-
ville." Not only was she a woman of
eminent capacity, but, what is very
remarkable, her mental vigor was_pro-
longed to a period surpassing by many
years the allotted life of man. The first
work that made her name known to
the world was in 1826, and her last
book, an able treatise in two volumes,
was published forty-three years later,
in 1869, and that long interval was
fruitful in works of ability in different
departments of science.

Mrs. Somerville died at Naples No-
vember 29th, within rather less than a
month of the ninety-second anniversary

EDITOR'S TABLE.

501

of her birth. Her' maiden name was
Mary Fairfax; she was of Scotch an-
cestry and an admiral's daughter. She
was twice married, first to Captain
Greig, of the Russian Navy, an officer
of scientific accomplishments, and to
whom she is said to have owed the
mathematical and physical culture
which subsequently made her name
illustrious as the wife of Dr. "William
SomerTille. She became first known by
a paper in the Philosophical Transac-
tions, printed in 1S20, describing her
experiments on the magnetizing power
of the more refrangible solar rays. " In
her experiments, sewing-needles were
rendered magnetic by exposure for two
hours to the violet ray, and the magnetic
virtue was communicated in still shorter
time when the violet rays were concen-
trated by means of a lens. The indigo
rays were found to possess a magnetiz-
ing power almost to the same extent
as the violet ; and it was observed,
though in a less degree, in the blue and
green rays. It is wanting in the yellow,
orange, and red. Needles were like-
wise rendered magnetic by the sun's
rays transmitted through green and
blue glass." Such is the statement made
by Dr. Turner in his old chemistry,
but he adds that "the accuracy of the
experiments had been doubted, and that
the result must therefore be regarded as
one of the disputed points in science."
Dr. J. "W. Draper went over the subject
in 1835, with the sunlight of Virginia,
and, although adopting far more deli-
cate methods than Mrs. Somerville,
failed to produce the alleged effects.

In 1831 Mrs. Somerville published
" The Mechanism of the Heavens," an
abridgment and attempted populariza-
tion of Laplace's "Mecanique Celeste,"
which she was induced to undertake
by Lord Brougham. The " Connection
of the Physical Sciences," perhaps her
most valuable work, was issued in
1834, and her "Physical Geography"
in 1838. Her last work, on "Molecular
and Microscopical Science," published

when she was near ninety years of age,
is beyond doubt the most remarkable
exploit of her life. It is a survey of
what has recently been done in the field
of Molecular Physics, describes the
brilliant discoveries in dialysis and at-
molysis, the crystalline and colloid
states of matter, spectrum analysis in its
celestial applications, the microscopical
structure of the vegetable world, and
the physics of organization, and all in a
constantly clear and often an attractive
style. Mrs. Somerville was the recipi-
ent of many honors on account of her
scientific labors. She received a pen-
sion from the Government, was made
an honorary fellow of the Royal Astro-
nomical Society, at the same time with
Miss Caroline Herschel, received a gold
medal from the Royal Geographical
Society, and had her bust placed in the
library of the Royal Society. She main-
tained her interest in the movements of
the scientific world, was supplied with
the latest works in various branches
of knowledge, and kept up her corre-
spondence with many of the leading
mathematicians and physicists, to with-
in a few weeks of her death. It has to
be added that Mrs. Somerville did not
neglect the lighter accomplishments
and tastes of her youth, but continued
her painting, and music, and even her
lace-work and other feminine trifles.

If it be asked how she contrived to
do these things which are such con-
sumers of time, while also making such
extensive scientific acquisitions, the
reply is, first, that she was a woman
of great capacity and great industry;
and, second, that her scientific work
was by no means of that highest or
creative kind which is produced only
by genius and requires the concentra-
tion of a life within a narrow sphere
of effort. "We prefer, however, to ab-
stain from estimating Mrs. Somerville's
intellectual character, but will quote
the opinions expressed upon this sub-
ject by her own countrymen. The
Saturday Review says :

502

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

" A final lesson of importance is forced
upon us by the retrospect of so exceptional
a career. We may hear it asked Low, in the
face of powers of intellect and capacity for
brain-work such as these, it can be pre-
tended that the minds of women are essen-
tially inferior to those of men. There are, it
may be, those among us who would see in
this highly-endowed and eloquent expositor
of Nature a female Humboldt or Laplace.
Far be it from us to speak disparagingly in
a case in which the estimate of undoubted
merit is enhanced by the sense of recent
loss. Still in the balance of truth we must
not allow affectionate regard to prevail over
judicial candor, or gallantry outweigh criti-
cal and sober sense. No one would have
been more prompt than Mrs. Somerville
herself to disown any idea of intellectual
rivalry between the sexes. It was in no
sense as a rival to the great discoverers in
science, or even as the author or setter-forth
of truths novel and original, but simply as
the interpreter and expounder in a popular
form of what the masters of scientific truth,
each in his own province of research, had
brought to light, that she set herself her
distinctive task. What the laureate has said
of the passions of mankind and womankind
applies, as experience shows, no less truly
to their respective intellects. It is not in-
vidious, still less discourteous, in us to say
that the one is to the other as moonlight is
to sunlight. Eeceptive, bright, and keen,
the mind of woman may give back or diffuse
the rays of knowledge for the source or
emanation of whicli a stronger and more
originative power is necessary. The knowl-
edge of mathematics displayed in the
' Mechanism of the Heavens ' took the
world by surprise because it was that of a
woman. Women have made themselves
names before now in exact science, even
among its higher branches. Maria Agnesi,
we cannot forget, was Professor of Mathe-
matics at Bologna in the last century, and
Sophie Germain, whose works in pure and
applied mathematics won her the Academy's
medal, excited the esteem and wonder of
the leading savants of France. But the high
places of science, the seats of supreme
authority and prime origination, exalted and
few, are for a class apart."

A writer in the London AtTienmum
remarks:

" It is not too much to say that, the chief
value of her version of Laplace's master-
piece resides in the fact that the work ex-
hibits an unmistakable proof of her mathe-

matical power. It it difficult to conceive
that any student of science could profit by
the study of the work. As a first introduc-
tion to celestial mechanism it fails, because
all the portions which present any difficulty
are left uninterpreted : while to the more
advanced student the work is useless, be-
cause such explanations as are given relate
to the simpler parts of the subject. But it
is impossible to rise from the perusal of the
work without feeling that Mrs. Somerville
herself had fully grasped the meaning of
the great mathematician, and had followed
his reasoning even where it had led him to
the highest range of the modern methods of
analysis. At the same time, it must be ad-
mitted that nothing in this work suggests
the idea that Mrs. Somerville possessed in
any considerable degree the inventive power
which is the distinguishing attribute of great
mathematicians. When we consider her
work in other branches of science, a similar
quality of mind is discernible. We cannot
recall any experimental researches of hers
which were characteiized by originality, or
any passage in her writings suggesting new
ideas on the scientific questions which she
discussed. She possessed but little power
of generalization ; and we believe it is this
peculiarity of mind rather than any want of
distinctness in expression which has led to
the defect characterizing her attempts to
popularize science. It is not commonly
recognized, but is nevertheless the fact, that
the perfect concatenation of ideas through-
out a chapter or section of a science treatise
is altogether more important than distinct-
ness of expression in individual sentences,
desirable though the latter quality neces-
sarily is. But in Mrs. Somerville's science
writings there is a want of sequence ; and
this is seen not merely in her general treat-
ment of her subjects, but even in paragraphs
and sentences. We may take the following
sentence from her latest work, 'Molecular
and Microscopic Science,' as a noteworthy
instance. Endeavoring to prove the eternity
of the soul, she says : ' To suppose that
the vital spark is evanescent while there is
every reason to believe that the atoms of
matter are imperishable, is admitting the
superiority of mind over matter; an assump-
tion altogether at variance with the result
of geological sequence ; for Sir Charles Lyell
observes that sensation, instinct and sensa-
tion of the higher mammalia bordering on
reason, and lastly, the improvable reason
of man himself, presents us with a picture
of the ever-increasing dominion of mind
over matter.' The readers whom the popu-

LITERARY NOTICES.

503

larizer of science addresses are more apt to
be perplexed by a non sequitur such aa this
than by mere verbal peculiarities."

LITERARY NOTICES.

Transactions ok toe Wisconsin Academy
of Sciences, Arts, and Letters (1870-
'72). Atwood & Culver : Madison, Wis.

The State of Wisconsin is but just of age,
having emerged from its Territorial infancy
and entered upon its sovereignty only twenty-
two years ago. This is but a short period
in the lifetime of an independent political
community, yet much has been done within
that period to give the State an impulse in
the direction of civilized development. Tak-
ing journalism as a standard, the number
of newspapers and periodicals printed in
Wisconsin, in 1870, was no less than 174 —
of which 6 were monthly, 1 semi-monthly,
14 daily and weekly, and 153 weekly. In
1870, was organized, at Madison, the capi-
tal, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences,
Arts, and Letters, devoted to the material,
intellectual, and social advancement of the
State. This association numbers at present
55 annual members, 29 corresponding mem-
bers, and 12 life-members. The first vol-
ume of the proceedings, now before us, is a
very interesting document, the first part of
which is a report to the Legislature by Dr.
J. W. Hoyt, President of the Academy,
which gives an account of its establishment,
and a valuable inventory of the contribu-
tions to philosophy, political science, social
science, natural science, and the useful and
the fine arts, by distinguished citizens of
the State, within the last few years. The
remainder of the volume of proceedings is
filled with a series of original papers in the
several departments, many of which are
able and instructive. The plan of the in-
stitution is comprehensive, and if it is sus-
tained, as it ought to be, it cannot fail to
be of great service in promoting the higher
prosperity of the State.

Physics and Politics ; or, Thoughts on
the Application of the Principles of
"Natural Selection" and "Inherit-
ance " to Political Society. By Walter
Bagehot,1 Esq., author of " The Eng-
lish Constitution." D. Appleton & Co.
The second volume of the " Interna-

1 Pronounced Ba-jote.

tional Scientific Series" is now issued, and
it is but just to say that it ably sustains the
character of the enterprise. It was no easy
task to follow Prof. Tyndall, the clearest of
our scientific thinkers, and most elegant
and eloquent of our scientific writers ; and,
had a similar subject been chosen, we could
have hardly expected a monograph so fin-
ished as the " Forms of Water." But Mr.
Bagehot's theme is widely dissimilar from
that of Prof. Tyndall, and, although treat-
ing of a subject at the opposite pole of sci-
ence (if we may so speak), is not less at-
tractive, and is presented with great literary
skill, keenness of analysis, and originality
of view. The author is unknown in this
country, except through various essays in
the Economist, of which he is the editor,
and in the periodicals ; but he takes a high
rank among the thinkers of England. His
book on " The English Constitution," which
will shortly be republished here, is unques-
tionably the ablest work on the philosophy
of modern politics that has appeared in a
long time, and at once placed its author in
the front rank of writers upon the science
of government.

The volume now issued is not only from
the latest point of view, and stamped with
all the freshness of recent inquiry, but it is
a pioneer discussion which clears a path of
investigation that is certain to be followed
up in the future with the most marked and
valuable results.

If any one were asked to name that field
of thought which is at present most chaotic
and discordant, where there are the fewest
settled principles, and the most arbitrary
assumptions, in which everybody can dab-
ble with equal claims to attention, and
where scientific knowledge is utterly scout-
ed as of no manner of use or application —
it would of course be that of politics. In *
almost every other field where the human
mind requires to be used, a certain amount
of knowledge is regarded as indispensable ;
but in politics the charlatan and the ignora-
mus put forth equal claims with the trained
and painstaking thinker. This state of
things cannot last. The advance of knowl-
edge is irresistible, and it will as certainly
produce a revolution in politics as it has
already produced revolutions in so many
other departments of thought. This pestifer-

;o4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

0U9 swamp of humbugs and impostures is
bound to be drained and reclaimed to the
higher uses of civilization.

" Physics and Polities " has been writ-
ten to show that the noble field of politi-
cal thought and activity#is not necessarily
the chaos it is generally supposed, but that
it involves great natural laws, which it is
the destiny of science to trace out and
formulate, just as it has done with other
branches of knowledge which have been
made scientific by modern inquiry. In
what does the progress of political com-
munities consist, and how has it arisen?
What were the first conditions and steps
of social advancement ? What are the
uses of slavery, war, and other barbari-
ties in the early tutelage of races ? And
when the rude stages of barbarism and
violence are passed, what are the recent
agencies which take up the work of ameli-
oration and carry it up to still better and
finer results ? These are the questions
whick Mr. Bagehot answers in his succes-
sive disquisitions on " The Preliminary
Age," "The Use of Conflict," "Nation-
Making," "The Age of Discussion," and
" Verifiable Progress Politically consid-
ered." In treating these questions, the au-
thor brings out the action of those laws of
Nature and of human nature that precede
the age of legislation, and are a thousand
times more potent than the edicts of kings or
the enactments of congregated law-makers.

To the cultivated reader who enjoys
literary excellence, fine analysis, fresh and
striking views, with many passages of pict-
uresque eloquence, and all vivifying and
illuminating a current of close and vigor-
ous reasoning, this little treatise on
" Physics and Politics " will prove a rare
treat. We had marked several passages
for quotation, but lack of space prevents
their insertion.

Deductive and Inductive Training. An
Address before the Chemical Society of
the Lehigh University, by B. Silliman,
M. A., M. D. Printed by the Society.

In this discourse, which was given at
the first annual celebration of a young
chemical society, Prof. Silliman regards the
problem of higher education from the mod-
ern and American Doint of view — not as a

radical innovator, but as a friend of rational
progress and judicious reform. He says :

" Public opinion, however, has made it-
self felt by the outward pressure it has ex-
erted, and the demand, which has grown up
for men better trained in general science,
and in its several departments, has brought
about a change, visible on every hand, alike
in the modification of the studies, as in the
development of new departments with sep-
arate Faculties devoted to science-training ;
as also occasionally in the establishment of
new institutions, on entirely independent
foundations, in some of which only special
subjects are taught, while in others the ex-
periment is on trial of a curriculum, in which
the modern languages, either wholly, or in
part, replace the ancient, and where the stu-
dent is trained during three or four years by a
course of studies in which the inductive sci-
ences have a prominent part."

Prof. Silliman admits the former excess
of deductive training in our colleges, and
recognizes the necessity of so modifying
the curriculum as to introduce a larger
amount of inductive science to correct the
evil, and afford a sounder and more sym-
metrical culture. On this point he ob-
serves :

" The defect of an education based on
the study of the deductive methods of geom-.
etry, the pure mathematics, jurisprudence,
and ancient literature, will now be readily
understood. Intuitive principles, those
which underlie geometrical and mathe-
matical studies, or those principles ob-
tained by common consent, and of human
authority, which are the foundations of
jurisprudence ; or again, the study of the
historical, poetical, and literary precedents,
images, and ideas of ancient writers, and
their rendering into English, which is the
staple of the ancient classics, leaves com-
pletely undeveloped the entire body and
soul of ideas connected with the experi-
mental and demonstrative sciences, which
have to do with natural phenomena, and
the entities of natural history in the broad-
est sense. In other words, no room is left
for the study of the inductive methods, the
logic of science, by the aid of which we, in
this nineteenth century, find ourselves so
immeasurably in advance of * all former
times, in our ability to comprehend and
control the powers of Nature, and adapt
them not only to the service of our human
wants, but, what is more, to the interpre-

MISCELLANY.

5°5

tation of cosmieal laws, and the hidden
mysteries of molecular physics."

The professor protests alike against the
narrowness of the traditional culture on
one side, and the newer policy of our scien-
tific and technological schools.

" In urging the plea for sciente-educa-
tion, let it be remembered that we speak of
education in its broad and well-rounded
sense, by which all the powers of the
human mind are to be developed into a
symmetry which shall dwarf none of them.
We claim, with great reason, the existing
system does not do this, and is incapable of
doing it, owing to the overshadowing im-
portance attached to the ancient classics,
absorbing so much of the time given to edu-
cation that only a fragment can be grudg-
ingly given to the study of the inductive
sciences. But no institution, as we have
before remarked, which is confined to the
training of men for special professional
work can be regarded, in the broader sense
of that term, as an educational institution,
however ably it may discharge the more
limited work which is assigned to it. The
want of ethical and literary training and
general culture at West Point has always
been recognized as a deficiency, in a system
in many other respects unsurpassed, and
the same is true of all institutions similarly
organized."

Recent Discussions in Science, Phlloso-
pht and Morals. By Herbert Spencer.
New and enlarged edition. D. Appleton
& Co., 350 pages.

This volume completes the first collec-
tion yet made of Mr. Spencer's miscellaneous
essays. It contains thirteen papers, most
of which have not before appeared in this
country, and there are sis more articles
added to the present edition. The volume is
especially valuable, as containing Mr. Spen-
cer's complete discussion of the system of
Comte, the classification of the sciences, the
genesis of knowledge, and the work of dis-
covery of general laws. The other articles
are " Specialized Administration " — a reply
to some views of Prof. Huxley in his arti-
cles on " Administrative Nihilism," " What
is Electricity ? " " The Constitution of the
Sun," " The Collective Wisdom," "Political
Fetichism," and " Miss Martineau on Evolu-
tion." As remarked in the preface to this
work, " these several discussions have been
drawn from Mr. Spencer at various times to

correct misapprehensions and misrepresen-
tations that have been made regarding the
doctrines of his system of philosophy. Some
of them form valuable extensions of these
doctrines, and all will be useful in pro-
moting their right interpretation."

MISCELLANY.

Volcanic Energy. — Mr. Mallet, in a pa-
per read before the British Royal Society,
claims that volcanic heat results simply
from the secular cooling of a terraqueous
globe subject to gravitation. He rejects
the chemical theory, on the ground that
facts show the chemical energies of the
globe almost wholly exhausted prior to the
consolidation of its surface. The mechani-
cal theory he also rejects, it being, accord-
ing to him, proved untenable by the known
thickness of the earth's crust. He then
points out various relations and points of
connection between volcanic phenomena,
seismic phenomena, and the lines of moun-
tain elevation, attributing all three to one
set of cosmieal forces, which decay with
time. As our globe contracted, there oc-
curred deformations of the spheroid, form-
ing the ocean-basins ; next came the fold-
ings-over and elevations of the thickened
crust into mountains ; and, lastly, we have
volcanic action. The author accepts C. Pre-
vost's theory of mountain elevation, viz.,
tangential pressures propagated through a
solid crust, and produced by the relative
rate of contraction of the nucleus and of the
crust. As the nucleus shrinks, the crust is
partially unsupported. During the very
rapid cooling from a high temperature,
with a thin crust, we should have mountain
elevation as a result ; but the same causes
give rise, in the present state of things, to
volcanic heat. As the solid crust sinks
after the nucleus, its crushing together is
transformed into heat sufficient to fuse the
rock. The access of water then determines
volcanic action. Mallet made two series of
experiments to test his theory. He first
crushed sixteen species of -rocks, repre-
senting the whole series of formations from
oolites to the hardest crystalline rocks. The
second series of experiments, conducted on
a very large scale, was to ascertain the co-
efficients of total contraction, between fusion

506

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

and solidification at existing mean atmos-
pheric temperature, of basic and acid slags
analogous to melted rocks. Mallet thus
rinds that less than one-fourth of the heat
annually lost by our globe is sufficient to
account for its total annual vulcanicity.
lie then shows the accordance of his views
with sundry facts of vulcanology and seis-
mology. Finally, he accounts, on his the-
ory, for the elevations on our moon's sur-
face, and the evidence there of former

1 m

volcanic energy, on a grander scale than
on our planet.

'i ho Vibrations produced by Various Ex-
plosives.— It is known that the instanta-
neous combustion of an explosive body is
brought about by vibrations, independently
of the agency of heat. An interesting in-
quiry here arises, whether these vibrations
are identical for all explosives ; and whether
we can determine in advance the action of
one explosive upon another. Two French
savants, MM. Champion and Pellet, have in-
vestigated this subject, and the following
is an account of their experiments : First,
they set up an apparatus with eight gas-
burners, to give " singing " flames, answer-
ing to the eight notes of the gamut. For
the first experiment an anvil was placed at
a distance of sixteen feet from this appara-
tus, and on it they placed in succession 0.03
grammes of iodide of nitrogen and fulminate
of mercury, both enclosed in sacks of gold-
beater's skin. The iodide, on being ex-
ploded, had no effect on the flames, while
the fulminate caused the following flames to
play : la, do, mi, fa, and sol. The conclu-
sion is, that the vibrations produced by the
two agents differ mutually, and further,
that the vibrations caused by the fulminate
act on some notes, passing over the others.
In the second experiment the flame-appara-
tus and the anvil were placed twelve feet
apart. It was now found that the iodide
acted on the higher notes, whereas the ful-
minate affected the entire scale. But. if
now we make each charge two decigrammes,
and bring the anvil very close to the appa-
ratus, the whole gamut will respond to both
explosions. The third experiment was a
repetition of the foregoing two, with this
exception, that nitro-glycerine was substi-
tuted for iodide of nitrogen. The result did

not show any difference between these two
agents in their action on the flames ; and
yet it is known that there is a difference be-
tween their respective vibrations; for the
fulminate will explode compressed gun-cot-
ton, but nitro-glycerine will not, under iden-
tical conlditions. No doubt, if a more per-
fect flame-apparatus, with a series of low
notes, had been employed, a difference
would have been manifested in the course
of the experiment.

Economy of Fuel.— A self-feeding fur-
nace is now in use in several English manu-
facturing towns, which is said to effect a
great economy in the consumption of coal,
besides possessing the additional advantages
of burning all the refuse and completely con-
suming the smoke. A small and uniform
amount of fuel, just enough to replace that
consumed, is being constantly added to the
fire, which is supplied with exactly as much
air as is required to carry on the combus-
tion in the most economical and effective
manner. The apparatus is known as Vicar's
Furnace, and is readily fitted to any kind
of boiler, and to reverberatory furnaces of
all descriptions.

Ammonia in Snow-water.— Dr. Vogel has
an article on ammonia in snow-water in the
Sitzungsberivhte der mathematico-pliysiJcali-
schen Classe, of the Munich Academy of
Sciences. The method employed by him
is that of Schlbsing, for estimating the
amount of ammonia in arable soil. The
results obtained were as follows, one litre
(2.113 pints) being the unit: Freshly fallen
snow, caught in a porcelain basin, at zero,
gave 0.003 grammes ; at —3° gave 0.002 ;
at from —9° to —15° gave no ammonia.
Water from snow which had stood 24 hours
on a piece of manured garden-ground, con-
tained 0.012 grammes; from snow which
had stood on a meadow for 24 hours, 0.009
grammes ; from a zinc roof, 0.004 grammes.
Dr. Vogel observes that the quantity of
ammonia in snow depends on a variety ol
conditions, and that, since snow, owing to
its porosity, absorbs ammonia (and the same
is true of snow-water), it is necessary to
melt it in closed vessels. The amount of
ammonia in snow is also dependent on the
temperature at which it falls. At a rather

MISCELLANY.

S°7

ow temperature (—15°), the author could
not detect ammonia in snow.

Cultivation by Steam. — At an agricul-
tural meeting, recently held in Scotland,
some interesting statements were made re-
specting the origin, progress, and results of
cultivation by steam in Europe. In 1855, a
Mr. John Fowler, of Essex County, England,
started his first steam-plough. Now, in Great
Britain, there are single establishments for
manufacturing steam-ploughs, so extensive
that they furnish constant employment for
not less than 1,200 men. In England, be-
tween 400 and 500 sets of steam-ploughg,
held, some by companies and others by indi-
vidual owners, are worked for hire, and are
found to be a profitable investment. A tract
of 500 acres, near London, so unproductive
that it could not be rented for $3 per acre,
was bought by an enterprising farmer, who
removed the fences, under-drained, and, with
a steam-plough, put the whole into grain-
crops. Last year, after allowing 10 per
cent, on the money invested in the land, his
clear profits were $1 8,000. The soil he thus
improved by deep steam-ploughing is a stiff
clay that could not be profitably worked by
horse-power. Another tract of 5,000 acres,
that had been regarded as worthless, wa3
bought by a farmer who ploughed it with
steam-power to the depth of 3 feet, and wa3
rewarded by crops of astonishing thrift. In
Scotland, cultivation by steam is becoming
general, and producing results equally mar-
vellous. Joint-stock companies are invest-
ing in land and steam -machinery, and secur-
ing large dividends, while individual farmers
have invested from $6,000 to $10,000 in
steam-machinery with very profitable re-
sults. In Germany also steam-power is
working a revolution in agriculture.

It was also stated that the Pasha of
Egypt now employs on his extensive do-
main 400 steam-ploughs, and is building " on
his farm" 400 miles of railway, and, for
transporting and manufacturing the raw
material produced, has ordered thirty loco-
motive-engines and $3,000,000 worth of su-
gar-machinery.

Perhaps the most successful cultivator
by steam in America is Mr. E. Lawrence,
of Magnolia Plantation, parish of Plaque-
mine, Louisiana. In a letter to the Agricul-

tural Department, he speak3 of the results
of his trial of the steam-plough as follows :'

" Two hundred and twenty acres of my
cane-crop, 140 acre3 of which were plant-
canes, and 80 acres first-year rattoons, were,
I believe, as thoroughly ploughed and cul-
tivated by steam as could be desired. The
80 acre3 of first-year rattoons, grown from
the stubble3 of the steam-ploughed cane
planted in a similar manner last year, were
barred off and well dug in the month of
March, then subsoiled and cultivated by
steam precisely as the plant-canes. The
yield was over 2,500 pounds of sugar to
the acre."

Mr. Lawrence closes his letter with the
prophecy :

" Necessity will soon compel us to take
a ' new departure.' The constant increase
of immigration and population in the grain-
growing States of our country will soon de-
mand a better cultivation and increased
production. In England, steam-ploughing
has increased the yield of wheat from 16
bushels to 28 bushels to the acre.

" I do not believe the agricultural in-
terest of our country can much longer turn
a deaf ear to this last and greatest achieve-
ment of steam — its successful application
to the cultivation of the soil. It has bro-
ken the yoke and lifted the burden which,
for ages, held both man and beast in bond-
age, ameliorating their condition by making
that which was most onerous easy and at-
tractive ; it has elevated labor, and dignified
the plough."

Ozone by a New Process. — An apparatus
for manufacturing ozone, patented by Dr.
Loew, is mentioned in the Journal of the
Franklin Institute. Some time since Dr.
Loew observed that cold air blown through
a flame is in part converted into ozone, and
his apparatus is constructed with a view to
turn this observation to practical account.
It consists of a number of Bunsen burners,
set up in a row, with an equal number of
horizontal tubes at some distance above tho
burners. The cold air is blown through the
tubes against the flames, and is then col-
lected, in the shape of ozone, by a number
of funnels placed on the opposite side of tho
flames. The ozone is to some extent con-
taminated by acetylen and nitrou3 acid.

508

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The English Sparrow. — In a paper lately
read before the Long Island Historical So-
ciety, by Mr. E. Lewis, Jr., and since pub-
lished in the Brooklyn Union, we find the
following interesting particulars concerning
the importation into this country of the
English sparrow, and the valuable service
it has since rendered in clearing our city
trees of insect-pests. As many are aware,
the trees of Brooklyn some years ago were
overrun by a species of caterpillar (Ennomos
subsignaria), which, commencing when the
leaves were young and tender, devoured
them so rapidly that in a short time the
branches were completely bared, making
the tree an unsightly object, and greatly
injuring its health and growth. The creat-
ures also had the disgusting habit of sus-
pending themselves from the limbs, whence
they would drop in great numbers both
upon the pavements and passing pedestrians.
The maple, horse-chestnut, elm, and willow,
were- thus attacked, and their destruction, or
that of the caterpillars, was the alternative
presented to the Brooklyn people. All sorts
of expedients were proposed, and among
them the introduction of the English spar-
row. In spite of the failure of a previous
attempt, a second was decided on, and in
the fall of 1856 Mr. Thomas Woodcock, of
Brooklyn, at the instance of the Brooklyn In-
stitute, brought over from Manchester about
a dozen sparrows, which were liberated in the
following spring, when they flew away
toward Brooklyn Heights. Nothing more
was heard of them until the spring of
1858, when two pair were observed among
the ivies of Grace Church, where it is prob-
able that one or more nests were built, as
during the summer young sparrows were
noticed in the vicinity. Since that time their
increase has been enormous, and almost sole-
ly through their agency the caterpillar nui-
sance has been completely removed.

According to Mr. Lewis, though feeding
largely on seeds, and in cities upon almost
every article of human food, the sparrows
feed their young chiefly with worms, larvae,
the soft portions of coleoptera, moths, and
other tender animal food. " By this means
the number of devouring worms has been
greatly diminished. The leaf-rolling caterpil-
larof the sycamore and the currant-bush are
known to be taken and devoured by sparrows.

The inch-worm, too, is taken when young, as
is the Japanese silk-worm, which feeds upon
the ailantus-leaf.

" But the sparrows destroy the caterpil-
lar family in a more effectual way than this.
The large female moths of the Samia cynthia,
or Japanese silk-worm, are seized for the
eggs which they contain, torn to pieces, and
the eggs devoured. So persistent are the
sparrows in watching for and catching these
moths, that a gentlemen in this city has been
unable to raise either worms or moths unless
protected from the birds.

" The moths, both male and female, of
the inch-worm or tree-caterpillar, are eaten
by sparrows. After seizing the moth, they
will beat off its head and wings and feed to
their young the soft parts of the insect.

" The destruction of the female moths
arrests the increase of the caterpillars in
a most effective way. But this is not all.
We have referred to the sparrows feeding
upon the eggs of moths after being de-
posited upon branches of trees. I have
watched them at this frequently during the
winter. These eggs are usually deposited in
places where they are sheltered by raised
or fractured fragments of the old bark, and
are covered with a glutinous substance.
The sparrow labors until1 fairly weary in
breaking away the old bark and laying bare
the eggs, which it removes with some diffi-
culty, but which it nevertheless removes and
devours.

" It is thus apparent that the chance for
a full crop of caterpillars is small where spar-
rows are abundant. Indeed, the disgusting
tree-caterpillar has disappeared from our
city altogether."

The Brooklyn Institute has also attempt-
ed the introduction of English song-birds,
but as yet with indifferent success. Among
those brought over are the skylark, wood-
lark, goldfinch, robin, and thrush. Some are
known to have survived and produced
young ; but the general impression is that
our winters are too severe for them to do
well in this climate. " The sparrows," says
Mr. Lewis, " seem to be well acclimated, al-
though many have been found dead, after
severe frosts and snow. It is evident
that the severity of the climate, or some
other cause, has somewhat arrested their
growth, &s, persons, who are competent to

MISCELLANY.

509

judge, say they are a little smaller than in

the English towns."

The Uses of Asbestos. — The mineral for-
mation called asbestos — which term denotes
rather a peculiar form assumed by sundry
minerals than any particular species — is
coming to be used very largely in practical
mechanics and manufactures. The name
asbestos, signifying indestructible, was given
by the ancients to various amphibolic and
augitic minerals, which occur in long, hair-
like crystals, placed side by side, forming a
fibrous mass. These crystals may easily be
taken apart, and, as they are very elastic
and pliant, have been used to manufacture
a sort of cloth. The Romans used some-
times to envelop the bodies of their dead in
a wrapping of this fabric, thus keeping their
ashes separate from the ashes of the funeral-
pile, for fire does not consume asbestos. We
even read of napkins and articles of dress
being made of thi3 material — when soiled
they were cleansed by being subjected to
the action of fire. In ancient times the
wicks of the ever-burning lamps in temples
and shrines were often of asbestos, and at
the present time the Greemlanders make a
like use of it. A few years ago a Mr. Au-
desluys, proprietor of a large asbestos-de-
posit in the vicinity of Baltimore, com-
menced the manufacture of a paper con-
taining about 30 per cent, of asbestos.
Characters written on such paper, in com-
mon ink, are still legible after it has been
subjected to the action of fire, and it is like-
ly that advantage will be taken of this
property of asbestos to manufacture a pa-
per for important records. The great ob-
jection to all the asbestos paper so far made
is its want of toughness, its friability. The
Journal of the Society of Arts makes mention
of an asbestos paper covering for roofs, but,
as this mineral is not proof against moisture
as it is against fire, experience alone could
determine its value for that purpose. But,
perhaps, the most important service yet ren-
dered by asbestos is the furnishing us with
a fire-resisting packing for piston and pump
rods, the necks of revolving retorts, etc.
Asbestos packing was used for the piston
of a locomotive on the Caledonian Railway
from July 27 to November 18, 1871, and was
then as good as when it was first put in ;

while the best common packing would have
lasted not above two months. It is better
to make rings of asbestos, and put them on
the piston, than to wind it round. There
are very extensive deposits of this impor-
tant mineral within the limits of the United
States, that found on the eastern slope of
the Green Mountains and of the Adiron-
dacks being of the best quality for fineness
and tensile strength. The fibre of New
York and Vermont asbestos varies in length
from two to forty inches, and resembles un-
bleached flax, when found near the surface ;
but when taken at a greater depth it is pure
white, and very strong and flexible. It is
found also in considerable quantities in the
Tyrol, in Hungary, Corsica, and Wales.

British Scientific Expedition.— The en-
lightened liberality of the British Govern-
mant in fitting out the steam-corvette Chal- '
lenger, 2,306 tons, for a scientific voyage
around the globe, receives the heartiest
commendation from the English press, and
from the whole world of science. The com-
mander of the corvette, Captain Nares, R. N.,
is a distinguished seaman and explorer, and
the second in command, Commander J. P.
Maclear, R. N., is scarcely less eminent.
We have space only for the names of a few
of the scientific men who go out on this
cruise. The director is Prof. Wyville
Thompson, and he has under him J. J.
Wild, of Zurich ; J. Y. Buchanan, of Edin-
burgh, chemist ; H. N. Mosely, naturalist ;
Dr. Von W. Suhm, do. ; John Murray, Edin-
burgh University, do. The vessel has been
thoroughly repaired and fitted for her work,
with auxiliary screw, two engines of 400
horse-power each, boats, 40 dredges, etc.
She carries an abundance of traps, har-
poons, scientific apparatus, etc. The route
of the vessel will probably be, first, to Gib-
raltar and the Bay of Biscay ; thence to
Madeira, St. Thomas, the Bahamas, Ber-
muda, and the Azores. From the Azores she
will sail for Bahia, touching at Fernando
Noronha. Thence she crosses to the Cape
of Good Hope, from which point her course
is southward to the Crozetts and Marion
Islands and Kerguelen's Land. Thence her
direction will still be southward, as far as
the ice will permit, and then the vessel will
steer for Sydney, New Zealand, the Camp-

5io

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bell and Auckland Groups, Torres Straits,
New Guinea, and New Ireland. A cruise
among the Pacific Islands will probably
take up a twelvemonth, when the expedi-
tion, passing between Borneo and Celebes,
and visiting Luzon and its neighborhood,
will make for Japan, there to remain for a
couple of months. Kamtchatka will next
be visited, whence a run will be made north-
ward through Behring's Straits ; thence
through the Aleutian Islands, southward to
Vancouver's Island, and so through the
deep eastern region of the Pacific by Easter
Island, and possibly to the Horn, through
the Galapagos, and home. The voyage will
take between three and four years, and from
it results of the highest importance for sci-
ence may be expected.

The Venomous Snakes of India. — A new

* book has been recently published by Dr.
Fayrer on the venomous snakes of India,
and the treatment of their poisonous bites.
In Bengal the people suffer terribly from
these reptiles. Dr. Fayrer says : " The
frightful scourge of these animals is shown
by the fact that the recorded deaths in 1869
were 11,416. But it is more than probable,
considering the imperfection of Indian rec-
ords, that 20,000 was nearer the true mor-
tality." He has given a description of some
new species of Hydrophidce or poisonous
sea-snakes which infest the Indian seas.
These elegant creatures, with small heads
and tiny jaws, will bite a man while bathing,
inflicting an almost imperceptible wound,
unnoticed at the time, but of which he dies
in a day or two. About the most poisonous
of the Indian reptiles is the cobra de capello,
or hooded snake. The elevated skin of the
back of the neck presents, when the animal
is viewed in front, much the appearance of
a hood. It is also sometimes called the
spectacle snake, from a singular mark on
the back of its neck, closely resembling a
pair of old-fashioned spectacles. The cobra
is some three or four feet long, of a pale,
rusty-brown color above, and bluish or yel-
lowish-white below. Its venom is extremely
powerful, the bite sometimes causing death
in less than two hours. This venom, though
so exceedingly poisonous when introduced
into the system, is comparatively harmless
when taken into the stomach. It has a

sharp taste, but no odor. Usually tho
cobra is a sluggish creature, and is easily
killed. It seldom uses its fangs except for
the purpose of obtaining food. One of its
most disagreeable habits is an evident lik-
ing for the habitations of men, being fre-
quently found near houses, and not rarely
in the dwellings themselves.

In regard to cures for the bite of the
cobra, Dr. Fayrer's experiments, :_o less
than universal experience, bear testimony
to the efficacy of the ligature, if applied
promptly and tightly, near the wound,
between it and the heart, and followed by
excision of the wounded part and the appli-
cation of the actual cautery. In case a
finger or toe is bitten, amputation should
immediately be performed at the next joint.
Dr. Fayrer's principal snake-man was once
bitten by an echis. Immediate excision
and cauterization fortunately saved him.
When the virus is once in the blood no
known agent is capable of neutralizing it.

Some of Dr. Fayrer's results are ex-
tremely interesting and of great practical
value. He finds that these snakes have the
greatest repugnance to carbolic acid, which
acts as a powerful and fatal poison to them.
The practical advantage of using carbolic
acid freely in and about houses in India
must therefore be great. The practice of
sucking a bite is not so absolutely safe as
has been hitherto supposed. The poison
may. be absorbed through the buccal mu-
cous membrane, or the lining membrane of
the stomach, when it will produce its fatal
effects.

The most venomous of these snakes
seem to possess a perfect immunity from the
poison of their own species, and consider-
able immunity from the poison of other
species. Dr. Fayrer says : " In many of the
various experiments I have performed, the
cobra, daboia, and krait, did not appear to
be able to poison themselves or each other.
This result was not absolutely invariable,
but sufficiently constant to be remarkable."
On this point Dr. Fayrer's observations
confirm those made by Dr. Russel. Snake-
poison acts with most vigor on warm-blooded
animals ; birds die very quickly. The power
of resistance is generally in proportion to
the size of the animal, but not invariably so.
For instance, a cat will resist the poison aa

NOTES.

ill

long as a dog three or four times its size.
Cold-blooded animals, fish, non-venomous
snakes, and invertebrate animals, all die
when bitten. There seems to be a certain
difference in the action of the colubrine and
viperine snakes. In poisoning by the colu-
brine snakes, the blood coagulates firmly,
but in death by the viperine it remains per-
manently fluid— at least this was the case in
many of Dr. Fayrer's experiments.

A New Fire-Eseape. — At the Interna-
tional (London) Exhibition of 1872, Major
E. R. Wethered exhibited a fire-escape, con-
sisting of a canvas cradle, with a guard-
band to be passed beneath the arms, a
strong rope, and a pulley furnished with a
clamp, which can be worked by the hand,
as the fugitive descends. At an alarm of
fire, the sashes of the window are to be
thrown into close correspondence at the
top. The rope is then thrown around them
at one side and hitched with a hook. The
lateral pull of the weight will jam the sashes
in the frame. The pulley, having five fric-
tion rollers, between which the rope runs
sinuously, and a clamp worked by lever and
handle, is fixed a little above the cradle.
The free end of the rope is coiled on a reel,
and is thrown out of the window, unwind-
ing as it falls. In addition to the clamp,
the descent of the cradle may be governed
by the left hand of the fugitive, running
along the rope.

Necessity of Carefulness in Old Age. — An

old man is like an old wagon; with light
loading and careful usage it will last for
years ; but one heavy load or sudden strain
will break it, and ruin it forever. Many
people reach the age of fifty, sixty, or even
seventy, measurably free from most of the
pains and infirmities of age, cheery in heart,
and sound in health, ripe in wisdom and ex-
perience, with sympathies mellowed by age,
and with reasonable prospects and oppor-
tunities for continued usefulness in the
world for a considerable time. Let such
persens be thankful, but let them also be
careful. An old constitution is like an old
bone — broken with ease, mended with diffi-
culty. A young tree bends to the gale, an
old one snaps and falls before the blast. A
single hard lift ; an hour of heating work j

an evening of exposure to rain or damp; a
severe chill ; an excess of food ; the unusual
indulgence of any appetite or passion ; a
sudden fit of anger ; an improper dose of
medicine — any of these, or other similar
things, may cut off a valuable life in an hour,
and leave the fair hopes of usefulness and
enjoyment but a shapeless wreck.

NOTES.

The friends of Prof. Huxley will be
glad to learn that the latest reports of his
health are most encouraging. He broke
down last year, and went to Egypt to recu-
perate, but returned but little better than
he left. He seemed to have been very hard
hit, and his friends feared that it might be
long before he would recover himself. He
has lately been elected Lord Rector of Ab-
erdeen University, for three years, which is
significant, as showing the way the currents
of thought and sympathy are setting.

It is reported that a cargo of Australian
beef, in the fresh state, has been brought to
New Orleans without damage, notwithstand-
ing the fact that the temperature of the
atmosphere, for a large part of the distance,
ranged as high as 90 degrees. The carcasses
were packed in ice, also produced in Aus-
tralia, by a process so economical that it is
thought this method of transportation may
be made a pecuniary success.

A very good liquid glue is got by dis-
solving glue in nitric ether. It is more te-
nacious than that made with hot water, and
may be rendered almost damp-proof, by in-
troducing a few pieces of caoutchouc, and
letting the solution stand a few days, with
frequent stirring. As the ether will dissolve
only a fixed amount of glue, the mixture
cannot be made too thick.

The Mechanics' Magazine notes the cast-
ing, at Woolwich, of an enormous steam-
hammer, consuming 100 tons of metal.
The anvil-block, to serve as a piece de re-
sistance for this enormous engine, after cool-
ing off for three months, was not yet cold
enough to be removed.

An apparatus has been recently de-
vised in Germany for obtaining specimens
of water at any desired depth pf the ocean.
A strong, heavy vessel, entirely closed and
empty, has a valve through which water
may be admitted, but which is only put in
motion by means of powerful electro-mag-
nets connected therewith. These magnets
are also connected with a wire which ac-
companies the rope, by means of which
the apparatus is lowered from the ship.
When the empty vessel, which is in fact a

512

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

plummet, has reached the required depth,
an electric current is sent from the battery
on shipboard to the coils below ; the mag-
netism thus generated opens the valves,
and the vessel is filled and ready to be
drawn up.

In his evidence before the Royal Com-
mission on the water-supply of London, Dr.
Parkes states that where the population of
any town shows a considerable amount of
diarrhoea, and also of typhoid fever, it
would lead him to regard the water-supply
with suspicion ; for the health of the popu-
lation, as regards these diseases of the intes-
tines, seems to be very much influenced by
the purity or impurity of the water con-
sumed.

It is proposed to employ tin-foil in place
of paper for decorating walls. The foil for
this purpose is cut in sheets about 16 feet
long and 40 inches wide. After having
been painted and dried at a high tempera-
ture, the sheets receive the ornamental fig-
ures, and are then varnished and again
dried. The hanging is done much like
paper-hanging, varnish being applied to the
wall instead of paste. The foil excludes
damp, and can be laid as readily on an ir-
regular as on an even surface, and thus
the highest artistic effects can be produced
at pleasure.

A writer in Hardwicke's Science Gossip
tells of a water-wagtail which he saw act-
ing as purveyor to a young cuckoo. The
wagtail was seen, again and again, to fly
down from a tree, and run along the rail on
which the cuckoo was perched, bringing
each time to the latter some insect to sup-
ply its hunger.

Orange Cultivation in Louisiana. —
There is a steady increase, in the orange
district of Louisiana, of this species of hus-
bandry. In Plaquemine Parish some 2,000
acres are occupied by orange-groves. Usu-
ally, there are one hundred trees to the
acre, and a healthy tree will bear from 500
to 2,000 oranges, 1,000 being a fair average
field. They bring, on an average, $10 per
thousand.

The iron mountains of Missouri, accord-
ing to Prof. Waterhouse, contain enough
ore above the surface, to afford, for 200
years, an annual supply of 1,000,000 tons.
Shepherd Mountain is 600 feet high, and
its ore contains a large percentage of
iron. Pilot Knob rises 1,114 feet above
the Mississippi; its base, 581 feet from
the summit, is 300 acres, and the upper
section of 141 feet i3 judged to contain
14,000,000 tons of ore. Iron Mountain has
an elevation of 228 feet, and an area of
500 acres at its base. The soild contents
of the cone are 230,000,000 tons. At the

depth of 150 feet, the artesian auger was
still penetrating solid ore. The iron from
all these mountains is strong, tough, and
fibrous.

Dieh, October 28th, aged sixty-five, Dr.
Friedrich Welwitsche, the distinguished
African botanist. He got his first lesson in
his favorite science from a village apothe-
cary, and so an interest was awakened for
botanical studies. The " Flora of Tropical
Africa " has received from him very im-
portant contributions. He acquired distin-
guished reputation also as an entomologist
and zoologist.

In criticising the evidence given by Dr.
Letheby before the Royal Commission on
the London water-supply, Dr. Hassel, in
" Food, Water, and Air," maintains that " it
is a fact, notwithstanding Dr. Letheby's
evidence, well-established and generally ac-
cepted, that cholera is communicable by
water, and has, over and over again, been
disseminated by the water contaminated by
cholera-discharges. It is also a fact that
on more than one occasion that dreadful
disease has been communicated by Thames-
water."

A recent issue of French coin, made
from Australian gold, has been found so
brittle as to break easily under ordinary
use ; it has accordingly been recalled. The
brittleness is supposed to be due to the
presence of a small percentage of antimony
and arsenic, both extremely difficult to re-
move. These substances are said to pro-
duce a like effect in all metals or alloys
which are subjected to the molecular changes
induced by the pressure and heat devel-
oped under the action of the dies in the
copying-press.

The -archives of the Paris Jardin des
Plantes contain 6,000 volumes and over
1,500 manuscripts that have hitherto been
huddled away as so much lumber. Recent-
ly M. Milne-Edwards has arranged for ex-
amining, cataloguing, and placing at the dis-
position of the scientific world this valuable
collection. There are several MS. by Buf-
fon, Cuvier, and Daubenton, and a series of
pen-and-ink drawings by the last-named
naturalist, representing the various types
of merinoes ; also many albums filled with
drawings of plants and flowers.

Dr. Gunther shows that the whitebait,
a fish highly esteemed by epicures, is noth-
ing but the fry or young of the herring, and
this he proves by showing that both fish
have the same number of vertebrae and of
lateral scales, as also the same arrangement
of fins and teeth. This statement is fur-
ther confirmed by the fact that an adult
whitebait in roe has never been found.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MARCH, 1873.

EARTHQUAKE-PHENOMENA.

By ELIAS LEWIS, Esq.

IN the afternoon of the 1st day of June, 1638, 18 years after the
landing of the pilgrims, there occurred the first earthquake in
New England, of which we have an authentic record.

It is 234 years since that event, and, according to a catalogue pre-
pared by W. T. Brigham, published in the Memoirs of the Boston
Society of Natural History, it appears that, down to October 20,
1870, 231 earthquakes are recorded as having taken place in New Eng-
land. From this able paper we learn that, in 1663, portions of Canada,
New England, and New York, were convulsed by earthquake-shocks.

In 1727, at Newbury, and near the mouth of the Merrimac River,
an earthquake took place during the evening when the atmosphere was
perfectly calm and clear. The sound preceded the shock. The earth
opened, and a sulphurous blast threw up mounds of calcined dust.
Several days previous to the earthquake, water in the wells became
fetid, and of a pale brimstone color. In 1755, on the 18th day of No-
vember, a hollow, roaring noise was heard in various parts of New
England. In a minute the earth seemed to undulate as if a wave were
passing. This was followed by a vibratory and jerking motion, famil-
iar in earthquake countries. The first shock of this earthquake oc-
curred 17 days after the terrible one at Lisbon, the vibrations of which
had not yet ceased.

The great earthquake at New Madrid, in Missouri, took place in
1811-'12. The shocks here were vertical, pi-oving, as we shall see here-
after, that the centre of energy was directly underneath. At other
times, the shocks, which continued many months, were undulatory.
The ground rose in huge waves, which burst, and volumes of water,
sand, and pit-coal, were thrown high as the tops of the trees. The for-

?OL. 11. — 3b

5H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ests waved like standing corn in a gale of wind, and an area 70 miles
long by 30 miles wide was submerged, and became a swampy lake.

On the 13th of August, 1868, a fearful earthquake took place in
Peru, which laid waste much of the country lying between the Andes
and the Pacific. The shocks were felt through a distance of 1,400
miles north and south, and three important cities were destroyed. At
Arequipa, in Peru, 40 miles from the sea, a slight undulatory shock
was felt, followed by others so violent that in five minutes not a house
was standing in that city of 44,000 inhabitants. A subterranean
rumbling, like the rush of an avalanche, was heard above the crash,
and a cloud of dust rose in the still air over the city. On the sea-
coast were situated Iquique and Arica — both were destroyed by the
shocks, and overwhelmed by a tremendous wave. The ocean thus
took up the vibrations of the land, and waves of tremendous volume
were put in motion, which rolled, not only upon the coast, but away
from it with a velocity in the deep ocean of not less than 400 miles an
hour. The great wave — for one was of much greater volume than
the others — has been estimated at upward of 200 miles breadth, with
a length along its curved crest of 8,000 miles. This rolled into the har-
bor of Yokohama, in Japan, 10,500 miles distant, and was felt at Port
Fairy, in South Victoria, distant nearly one-half of the earth's cir-
cumference.

In 1797, a province of Ecuador, about 100 miles south of Quito,
was visited by what is described by Humboldt as " one of the most
fearful phenomena recorded in the physical history of our planet."
The shocks were vertical, and occurred as " mine-like explosions."
The town of Riobamba was over the central area, and many of its
inhabitants were thrown 100 feet into the air.

The shocks, in this instance, were not announced by any subter-
ranean thunder, but, just 18 minues after, a terrific roar was heard be-
neath Quito. It thus appears that shocks are not always preceded by
sounds, nor do the sounds increase with the violence of the shock.

Sometimes, says Humboldt, there is a " ringing noise, as if vitrified
masses were struck ; again, a continuous rumbling and hollow roar ;
at others, a rattling and clanking as of chains or near thunder." With
the lightning's flash we know that the danger is over, and await the
coming thunder without alarm ; but thunder, rolling deep in the earth,
announces possible if not certain calamity.

Throughout the region of the Andes a connection between volcanic
and earthquake action has been recognized by the people. It was
supposed by Strabo that volcanoes are safety-valves, and scientific
observation suggests that they may relieve the pressure and tension
which would otherwise lay the earth in ruins.

For two years previous to 1538 earthquakes had been violent and
frequent at Pozzuoli on the Bay of Baise, and elsewhere in the vicinity
of Naples. On the 27th and 28th of September they did not cease day

EARTH Q UAKE-PHENOMENA. 5 1 5

or night. On the night of the 29th, flames issued from the ground
near the baths of Nero, the earth rose and burst at the top with tre-
mendous roar, and discharged steam, gas, pumice, mud, and ashes. A
mountain 1,000 feet high was formed, known as Monte Nuovo, which,
at the present time, is 8,000 feet in circumference, and 440 feet above

Fio. 1.

Monte Nuovo.

the bay. The present aspect of Monte Nuovo is represented in Fig.
1, and the region around is shown in the frontispiece, from the last
edition of Lyell's " Principles of Geology."

The Phlegrsean Fields, of which Monte Nuovo now forms a part,
have, in the opinion of Sir Charles Lyell, a " mutual relation with Ve-
suvius— a violent disturbance in one district serving as a safety-valve
to the other — both never being in full activity at once."

In the Sandwich Islands, in 1868, Mauna Loa and the craters of
Kilhauea on its flank were in active eruption. The valleys of the
mountains were filled with rivers of fire, and a cloud of smoke and
vapor arose, it is said, over the mountain, to a height of eight
miles. During these fearful phenomena, which continued more than
a month, 1,500 earthquake-shocks occurred, 300 of which were counted
in five days. But whether shocks occur in the immediate vicinity of
volcanoes during eruptions, or whether activity of the one diminishes
the violence of the other, it is certain that they have a mutual relation,
and probably a common origin.

The opening and closing of fissures and chasms in the ground dur-
ing earthquakes is a common phenomenon. Men, animals, and dwell-
ings, are sometimes swallowed in them, and forever disappear. In
1848 an earthquake shook a large portion of New Zealand, and a
fissure of great depth opened along a chain of mountains from 1,000

5i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to 4,000 feet hi<rh, extending 60 miles, but of not more than 18 inches
in average width.

During the Calabrian earthquake of 1783 the surface of the ground
opened and closed in immense fissures, by means of which new lakes
were formed and others drained or were dried up.

At Jerocarne the earth is described, by Sir Charles Lyell, as lacer-
ated in an extraordinary manner. " Fissures ran in every direction,
like cracks in a broken pane of glass."

Fig. 2.

FisauEES neab Jeeocabne, in Calabbia.

In another instance, several dwellings were engulfed in a fissure,
and were found to be jammed with their contents into a compact mass.
Chasms of immense length and depth were formed. Some were cres-
cent-shaped, and a mile in length.

The plains of Calabria were covered in many places with circular
hollows from one foot to three or four feet in diameter. Some of these
were filled with water, others with dry sand.

Fig. 4 is a section of one of these circular holes, which appears to
be funnel-shaped.

But changes in the earth's crust occur during earthquakes, on a
still grander scale. Evidences of local disturbance, however disastrous
it may have been, are often effaced if not forgotten in a few centuries
frequently in a few years. But the slow upheaval of mountain-chains
and the dislocation of strata through profound depths are results which
alter at last the physical aspect and contour of the surface of the
globe. It would not be proper, however, to say that these changes are
caused by earthquakes, but rather that the earthquake vibration is a
concomitant of the displacement by which they are produced.

Humboldt, Lyell, Dana, and other authorities, consider earth

EARTHQ TJAKE-PHENOMENA.

517

quakes to be the dynamic result of action of the earth's heated in-
terior upon its cooled exterior. Whether the central portions of the
earth be tiuid or not, it is quite certain that heat increases as we de-
scend ; and it is estimated by Sir Charles Lyell that the heat at a depth
of 25 miles would be sufficient to melt granite, and at 34 miles to render
fluid or incandescent every known substance. We have no means of
knowing the condition of matter under the enormous pressure which
prevails at a depth of 34 miles, and are most concerned with the fact
that the heat of fusion exists at no very great depth beneath the sur-
face. The earth's crust is, therefore, its cooled exterior.

Fig. 3.

Ciboular Hollows in the Plain of Rosarno.

It is found that nearly all rocks contract by cooling and expand
by heat. Lyell estimates that sandstone a mile in thickness, and
heated to 200° Fahr., would expand so as to lift a mass of rock upon
it 10 feet above its former level ; and if a mass of the earth's crust
equally expansible, 50 miles in thickness, be heated to 800°, it would
rise 1,500 feet. From cooling we have the reverse effect — shrinkage,
contraction, lateral pressure, and ultimately bending of the strata.

The strain thus produced will at last cause fracture, and the vibra-
tion that results is an earthquake. In Fig. 5 we have an illustration
of fracture and displacement.

This form of tension is being continually and everywhere produced
in the earth's crust, and there is probably no instant of time when that
crust is entirely free from vibrations.

" There is nothing," observes Darwin, " not even the wind that
blows, so unstable as the level of the crust of the globe."

5i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. Tyndall observes that, " where the acting force is small and
the time great, the result is a slow and almost inappreciable change."
Thus, great areas of land may be elevated or depressed. " But where
the intensity is great and the time small, sudden convulsion must en-
sue." Thus, in an instant, mountains may undergo a change of eleva-
tion, or be shaken to fragments, or tracks of land sunken and over-
flowed. In the delta of the Indus are extensive areas of level ground,
over which native villages were scattered, with fortifications and other
defences. Of these, the fort at Sindree is shown in Fig. V as it was

Section of one of the Cibcflab Hollows.

before the disastrous earthquake of 1819. 2,000 square miles of the
delta sank from six to 12 feet, and was thus overflowed by the sea.
The village of Sindree and its fortifications were upon the sunken area.

Northward, about 5^ miles from Sindree, a range of very low hills
was elevated during the earthquake. It was seen over the expanse of
waters, and extended about 50 miles, with a breadth in places of 16
miles, and was called by the natives, " Ulla Bund, or the Mound of
God."

In 1822, just half a century ago, an earthquake occurred^ in Chili,
of terrific violence, even for that region of convulsions. It was estimat-
ed that 100,000 square miles of land were elevated from two to seven
feet, the rise being greatest inland, and probably included a portion of
the Chilian Andes. The location of the force must have been at great
depth, perhaps not less than 20 miles below the base of the Andes ;
and it is probable that the entire superincumbent mass underwent a
change of level of from two to seven feet of perpendicular elevation.

The earthquake at Lisbon, in 1*755, has impressed the public mind
more than any other in modern times. The shocks, one of which ex-
ceeded all the others in violence, continued six minutes. The moun-
tains near were shaken to their foundations, and everywhere split and
rent. No part of the city was seriously injured which was built on the
limestone or basaltic formations ; but the shocks were most violent and

EARTEQ UAKE-PEENOMENA.

519

disastrous in the tertiary and blue clay on which the ruined portion of
the city stood.

The sea-wave put in motion by this earthquake exceeded in volume
all others of which we have a record, except the one already noticed,
which traversed the Pacific Ocean in 1868. It was observed, during
this convulsion, that the sea retired from the shore before the great
wave rolled in.

Fig. 5.

Curved Strata, as seen m the Swiss Juba,

It was Darwin who first suggested that waves first draw the
waters from the shore on which they are advancing to break. He
calls attention to the familiar fact that waves thrown up by the pad-
dles of a steamer, as they approach the shore, are alway preceded by a
receding of the water. An under-draught seems to first suck the wa-
ter back, and such actually is the fact. Now, in the sea-wave raised
by the earthquake, what takes place ? We have remarked that an

Fig. 6.

f d c h a

Strata broken and displaced.

earthquake is a vibration of the earth's elastic crust, and moves with
tremendous velocity. When it occurs beneath the sea, or when the
undulations reach the surface beneath the sea, the motion is com-
municated to the water, which it elevates in a wave. Simultaneously
with this lifting of the water, an under-draught toward that point takes
place. Were it not so, the elevation of the wave could not be sus-
tained. Directly the great wave moves from the area of disturbance

520

TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at the rate before stated, of 400 miles an hour, or about 6£ miles in
a minute, in the deep ocean. It is described by Mallet as " a low,
broad swell of the sea. It might pass beneath the vessel unobserved."
Approaching the shore, the front becomes elevated. The under-
draught has continually preceded it, and has withdrawn the water
from the shore, so that vessels at anchor are frequently grounded,
and the wave seems to stand upon the bottom like a gigantic wall.
At Arica it was unbroken by a ripple, and " shone in the sun like bur-
nished silver."

A notion prevails that earthquakes are always preceded by unusual
conditions of the atmosphere, but careful observations have shown
that they occur during all kinds of weather. The Lisbon earthquake,

Fig. 7.

FOET OF SlNDBEE, ON THE EASTERN BEANCn OF THE INDUS, BEFOBE IT WAS SUBMERGED BY THB

Earthquake of 1S19.

which took place in the morning of the 1st of November, was pre-
ceded by a " period of clear autumnal weather," but the morning was
calm, foggy, and warm. At Arica, as we have learned, the sky was
serene and the atmosphere tranquil. Some of the greatest convulsions
have been preceded by a close, hazy sky. Sir Charles Lyell observes
that " irregularities in the seasons frequently precede and follow
shocks. Sudden gusts of wind interrupted by dead calms, violent
rains at unusual seasons, or in countries where they seldom occur, are
phenomena often attending earthquakes."

The number of important earthquakes up to the year 1881, of which
we have a reliable account, is, according to Prof. Ansted, 7,000. So
meagre are early records that only 787 of these are spoken of previous
to the year 1500. There is a catalogue of 3,340 which occurred from

EARTHQ UAKE-PHENOMENA.

521

1800 to 1850, or one in about five days. The means of detecting and
recording shocks are now so perfected, that, when applied in all parts
of the globe, they will, doubtless, fully justify our statement that in no
instant°of time is the earth's crust free from vibrations. The seismo-
graph is an instrument for the " automatic registration of earthquake-
shocks."

An interesting account of this instrument, by George Forbes,
was published in the September number of The Popular Science

Monthly.

Earthquakes have been defined to be a " travelling zone of vibra-
tion." The movement is in every direction from the area of disturb-
ance, and the velocity depends on the substance and structure of the
material through which it is transmitted. In New Zealand, in 1848,
people on the shore witnessed the disastrous progress of the earthquake
along the mountains before they felt the shocks. At Messina, during the
Calabrian earthquake, the terrified inhabitants saw villas overthrown
upon the coast by shocks which they had not felt, but which in a mo-
ment laid in ruins a portion of their own city. The velocity with

Fig. 8.

View of the Fokt of Sindree feom the West, in Maeoh, 1838.

which the vibrations travel has been a subject of careful investigation.
The Lisbon earthquake moved about 20 miles in a minute ; that which
occurred in 1819, in the delta of the Indus, appears to have moved at
the rate of 53 miles in a minute, or nearly 5,000 feet in a second.
Other observations show that the movement may be from 1,000 to
5,000 feet per second. It has been ascertained that in blasting rocks
the vibrations move in a second from 1,000 to 1,700 feet. The sound-
waves move more rapidly, and, for this reason, shocks are usually pre-
ceded by subterranean rumbling. The velocity of sound through
uniform strata is ascertained to be from 8,000 to 10,000 feet in a sec-
ond. Tyndall found that sound-waves moved through burnt clay
nearly ten times more rapidly than through air at a temperature of
32° Fahr. From this the phenomena of earthquake movement might

522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

occur in the following order : Supposing the centre of the disturbance
to be beneath the ocean, as at Lisbon, an observer on the shore might
expect to experience —

1. The underground rumble, moving at the rate of 8,000 to 10,000
feet per second.

2. The shock, moving from 1,000 to 5,000 _'eet per second.

3. The sea-wave, moving about 528 feet per second.

4. Sound, through the air moving at the rate of 1,090 feet per sec-
ond. It should be noted, however, that the velocity of the sea-wave
depends on depth of water.

The vibrations of an earthquake, it is evident, differ in no respect
from those produced by other causes, excepting in intensity. The jar
arising from a discharge of artillery, by a carriage rolling over pave-
ments, or slamming of heavy doors, puts in motion a series of moving
waves just as truly as does the rending of rocks, or an explosion of
steam or gas in a fracture thus produced. But, a question arises, What
moves when the earthquake is progressing. The phenomena maybe
explained thus : Around the source of disturbance the rock is pressed
outward in every direction as air is pressed outward around a vibrating
bell, forming what is called a zone or shell of compressed rock. The
extent of this compression is the width of the earthquake-wave, and
depends on the force exerted and the elasticity of the rock. In each
zone or shell there is always a point of maximum density — and that is
where the energy of compression and the rock's elastic force are equal.

As the wave passes, another zone is formed, and the particles behind
return by their elasticity to their former position. From this it is
obvious that, as the wave is passing, the individual particles of the
rock have first a forward and then a backward motion — a swing or
excursion to and fro. The extent of this motion is the amplitude of
vibration, and may be very small compared with the breadth of the
wave.

Mallet found by computation that, given a certain depth of fissure,
and a certain heat of steam, the expansive force would produce a wave
of nine inches amplitude at the surface. His observations of the Nea-
politan earthquake of 1857 show that the maximum amplitude at the
surface was only 2.5 inches. In his elaborate and beautiful volume on
the eruption of Vesuvius, in 1872, just published, Mr. Mallet reaffirms
a statement previously made by him, that " it is the vibration of the
wave itself, i. e., the motion of the wave-particles, that does the mis-
chief, not the transit of the wave from place to place on the surface."

We understand, then, that there is motion of particles as well as
a transit-wave ; that the " travelling zone or shell of vibration " is a
zone or shell of "elastic compression."

Fig. 9 illustrates the " shells " as they move away from B, the
focus of disturbance. The transit-wave, with its interstitial vibrations,
reaches the surface in the manner shown in the diagram Fig. 10.

EARTHQ UAKE-PHENOMENA.

523

The diagram shows the waves radiating from the earthquake focus
A to c d ef and g successively, and reaching the surface at B, where
the shocks would be vertical. At 1 2 3 they become more and more
oblique, and at greater distances appear almost horizontal.

Fig. 9.

Continuous Waves fbom a Single Shock.

Now, while the movement of the transit-wave may be very rapid,
that of the particles of matter is surprisingly small. At Lisbon the
velocity of the wave was 20 miles a minute, or 1,200 miles an hour.
According to Mallet, where the velocity of the transit wave was 1,000

DlAGBAM SHOWING THE MOVEMENT OP WAVES FBOM THE CeNTBE OB FOCUS.

B, point where the shocks would be vertical. ] 2 3 and 1' V y are points where the waves would reach

the surface.

feet per second, the movement of the particles was only 12 feet per
second, or eight miles an hour, and he states that three columns of the
Temple of Serapis, on the shore of the Bay of Baise {see frontispiece),
a region subject to earthquake-shocks, would be overthrown by a shock
" whose wave-particles had an horizontal velocity of 3$ feet per second."
The shock which threw human being-s 100 feet in the air, at Riobamba,

O 7 7

must have had a velocity of 80 feet per second. The theory of Mr.

5 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Hopkins, published in 1847, was that the disastrous results of
earthquakes were caused by the velocity of the wave of translation,
and that theory is probably accepted by many who will distrust the
conclusions of Mr. Mallet. But it is obvious to every observer that
the enormous velocity of 1,200 miles an hour is not communicated to
objects on the surface as the wave passes. They are rarely thrown
to any considerable distance. Buildings are overthrown, but they fall
where they stood.

We have already remarked that objects standing directly on the
uniform strata are seldom injured by earthquake-shocks. Such was
the case, as we have seen, with that portion of Lisbon which was built
on the limestone and basalt. But where the surface, perhaps hundreds
of feet deep, is of loose unelastic material, the transit-wave, with its vi-
brations, in passing through it, becomes broken into oscillations, its
force is dissipated and motion reduced, but the vibratory swing which
it communicates is sufficient to fissure the earth's surface and strew it
with ruins.

On the coast of Dublin Bay, Mallet exploded gunpowder buried
several feet beneath the surface, in the sand, and ascertained the in-
tensity and velocity of the shock by a delicate seisometer. Other ex-
periments gave the rate and intensity of movement in more compact
formations with the following results : In sand, 824.9 feet in a second;
in divided granite, 1,306.4 feet; in compact granite, 1,664.6 feet. It
is found by observation that objects, as walls and chimneys, fall back-
ward or forward, but generally in a line with the direction in which
the wave travels, while fractures of walls occur in a line transverse to
the direction of the wave. And by diagram, Fig. 10, it will be obvious
that, given the position of the ruins over an extended area, not only
the centre but depth of disturbance may be ascertained. If the focus be
C, as shown in the diagram, the wave would reach the surface at an
angle other than if the focus be at A, and the result would appear in
the manner of displacement on the surface. By the principle here
indicated, Mallet was able to locate the central ai-ea and depth of the
Neapolitan earthquake of 1857, and states that the great fissure, the
forming of which caused the first shock, was 7| miles in length, and
5f miles in average depth.

The filling of the fissure with water, and its conversion into
superheated steam, may have produced the subsequent shocks. By
calculation, the same author shows the enormous pressure and rend-
ing power of steam if admitted Avithout limit into such a fissure. " If
the temperature increase 1° Fahr. for 60 feet depth, then, at the focal
centre of the fissure, the temperature would be 883.4° Fahr., and the
pressure on the walls of the cavity not less than 640,528,000,000 tons.
But the pressure would be vastly increased if the temperature be near
that of melted rock." That this may be the case is rendered probable
from recent investigations of Mallet, by which he shows that the heat

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EARTHQUAKE-PHENOMENA. 525

which melts the great lava-beds, and fills cavities in the earth's crust
with steam and gases, may not arise directly from the earth's central
heat, but from the crushing of strata as it contracts and settles upon
the cooling interior.

By a series of experiments and observations made by Mr. Mallet,
it is shown that the " annual loss of heat into space of our globe at
present is equal to that which would liquefy, at 32° Fahr., about 777
cubic miles of ice; and this is the measuring unit for the amount
of contraction of our globe now going on."

The amount of shrinking depends, therefore, on the amount of heat
lost — a view long since insisted on by Prof. Dana ; and this, according
to Mallet, is sufficient to account for all the phenomena. To this cause,
then, we refer the never-ending oscillations of the earth's cooled ex-
terior, and the enormous lateral strain by which it is bent and frac-
tured, and its broken ridges made to grind and crush with terrific
vibrations.

In many areas the earthquake energies of former times have been
long at rest, but, according to Sir Charles Lyell, the total energy
may not have diminished.

He finds evidence of convulsions as great and obvious in recent as
in earlier time. Mallet, however, remarks that " seismic energy may
be considered as possibly constant during historic time, but is probably
a decaying energy viewed in reference to much longer periods."

Everywhere we see, in exposed portions, crevices open or filled —
ejections of trap and basalt ; and wall-like dikes stand out upon the
slopes of mountains. These are legible and significant chapters in the
earth's dynamic history.

Do earthquakes occur with any order or system, so that their
coming may be foretold ?

Prof. Palmieri, in his observatory on Mount Vesuvius, is able, says
George Forbes, " to predict eruptions." " This is a small eruption,"
remarked the professor, " but there is going to be a greater one ; it
may be a year hence, but it will come." " In almost exactly a year,"
continues Mr. Forbes, " the great eruption did come."

From Mallet's catalogue of European earthquakes it appears that,
during 15£ centuries, 1,157 took place during the winter, against 875
in the summer months.

Although science has cleared up some of the mystery which hung
over earthquakes in less enlightened times, it has not divested them of
their sublimity and terrible reality.

Their work of destruction is done in a moment. The great battles
of the -world have scarcely been so destructive of human life.

We read that 250,000 persons perished during the earthquake at
Antioch in 526. At Lisbon 60,000 people were destroyed. During
one of the Calabrian earthquakes 35,000 ; and during the one at Are-
auipa in 1868. 40.000 persons perished. Pestilence, famine, and fire.

526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

add to the fatality. Visitations so severe and disastrous permanently
affect the inhabitants of earthquake regions. Their minds lose their
calm equipoise — they become nervous, and the first considerable shock
6ends them to the street or cathedral for safety.

Humboldt remarks that, when " we feel the ground move beneath
us, our deceptive faith in the repose of Nature vanishes, and we feel
ourselves transferred into a realm of unknown and destructive forces.
Every sound, the faintest motion of the air, arrests attention. To man,
the earthquake conveys the idea of unlimited danger." And Von
Tschudi adds his testimony, that " no familiarity with earthquakes can
blunt this feeling of insecurity. The traveller from the north of
Europe waits with impatience to feel the movement of the earth, and
with his own ear to listen to the subterranean sounds, but, soon as his
wish is gratified, he is terror-stricken, and is prompted to seek safety
in flight." Thus it is that physical phenomena aid in moulding the
mental and moral character of a people. The earthquake records it-
self, not only on the inorganic world, but in man's spiritual nature.

♦**

ELECTEICITT AND LIFE.

By FEENAND PAPILLON.

TRANSLATED BY A. R. MACDONOUGH, ESQ.

GALVANI discovered, in 1794, that the muscles of animals ex-
perience contractions in contact with certain metals. In his
view, this contact merely calls out the discharge of a fluid inherent in
the animals themselves. The fact was not to be contested, but its ex-
planation was. Lively discussions in the schools of physiology fol-
lowed— fortunately, with a clear understanding that the difficulty could
only be determined by experiments. A vast number were made, the
name of Volta being connected with the most remarkable of them.
Alexander Volta maintained, in opposition to Galvani, that the elec-
tricity which produces contractions in the muscles, far from originating
in those organs, is introduced by the metals used in the process. In
proof of this he constructed, in 1800, the pile that bears his name, and
which is an arrangement in which the connection of two different met-
als becomes an abundant source of the electric fluid. Galvani and
Volta were two men of distinguished genius, who thoroughly under-
stood physics and physiology, and advanced nothing heedlessly. Their
discoveries were the point of departure for one of the most admirable
movements in all the history of science, a movement which is still
most active, and is the more remarkable because it resulted but yester-
day, as it were, in the complete demonstration that Galvani and Volta
were both in the right. Science to-day proves that there is an elec-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 527

tricity peculiar to animals, as Galvani declared. It decides also that
electricity produced by external causes has an influence over animals,
as Volta taught. From profound study of the two orders of phenom-
ena, it deduces a system of procedure for the cure of very many
maladies by electricity. Consequently, an exposition of the relations
between electricity and life must begin with examining the electricity
that exists naturally, in the same way that heat does in animals, and
then go on to explain the action of the fluid on the organism, whether
in a healthy or a morbid state. Such a description will complete what
has been written in the Review respecting the relations of life with
light and heat — relations that we may to-day consider as forming the
features of a new science.

The most authentic witnesses to the existence of animal electricity
are fish. The torpedo, the silurus, the gymnotus, the ray, and other
fishes, develop spontaneously a more or less considerable quantity of
electricity. This fluid, the production of which depends upon the ani-
mal's will, is identical with that of common electrical machines ; it
gives the like shocks and sparks at a certain tension. The apparatus
for its formation consists of a series of small disks of a peculiar sub-
stance, kept apart by cells of laminated tissue. Fine nerve-end fibres
are scattered over the surface of these disks, and the whole represents
a sort of membranous pile, usually placed in the region of the head,
sometimes toward the tail.

These fishes are the only animals provided with an appai-atus spe-
cially devoted to the production of electricity ; but all animals are elec-
tric, in this sense, that a certain quantity of that fluid is constantly
forming within their organs. The existence of electricity peculiar to
the nerves and muscles, and independent of their special modes of ac-
tion, has been settled by numerous experiments, particularly by those
of Nobili, Matteucci, and Dubois-Reymond. To prove the currents
of nervous electricity, it is sufficient to prepai-e a frog's muscle, and
touch it at two different points with the two ends of a nerve-filament
of the same animal. The muscle then undergoes contraction under
the influence of the nervous current. Another experiment, as simple,
proves the existence of the muscular current. In an animal living or
just killed, a muscle is exposed and cuts made in it perpendicularly to
the course of the fleshy fibres, and communication effected by the two
wires of a very sensitive galvanoscope between the natural surface of
the muscle and the surface made by incision. The needle of the in-
strument then betrays the passage of a current. This muscular elec-
tricity may be obtained in tolerable quantity by placing a number of
slices of muscle together in the form of a pile. The positive pole of
the system will be the natural surface of one of the terminal slices, and
the negative pole the cut surface of the other. Such a battery acts

528 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

upon galvanic instruments, and can even excite contractions in otber
muscles.

Independent of these nervous and muscular electric currents, other
sources of this fluid exist in the animal economy. Currents are pro-
duced between the outer and inner surfaces of the skin, in the blood, in
the secreting vessels — in fine, almost throughout the whole organism.
The experiments, as delicate as original, to which Becquerel has for
several years devoted all the activity of his green old age, authorizes
him now to assert the preponderance of electro-capillary phenomena in
animal life. According to this accomplished physicist, two solutions
of different nature, both conductors of electricity, separated by a mem-
brane or a capillary space, compose an electro-chemic circuit ; and, if
we reflect on the anatomical elements of the various tissues, cells,
tubes, globules, etc., in their connections with the fluids that moisten
them, we find that they give rise to an infinite number of pairs con-
stantly evolving electricity. The blood of the arteries with that of the
veins forms a pair, having an electro-motive power of 0.57, that of a
pair with nitric acid being 100. Becquerel explains, by the interven-
tion of these currents, many physiological phenomena hitherto imper-
fectly understood. Granting the reality of such actions, yet it must
be acknowledged that the general doctrine which combines them each
with the other, and links the whole together with the various modes
of action of the organism, is far from being clear and precise. We
need to know how these currents are distributed and circulate, what
lines and courses they follow. It is now time for experimental physi-
ology to attack these difficult problems, the solution of which is abso-
lutely necessary for accurate knowledge of vital determinations, that
is, for the computation and the estimate of those various factors which
are terms in all the equations of organic movement.

Vegetables, too, develop electricity. Pouillet has clearly demon-
strated that vegetation throws it off. Other physicists, particularly
Becquerel, have proved the existence of currents in the fruits, stems,
roots, and leaves of plants. Becquerel took a branch of young pop-
lar full of sap, introduced a platinum wire into the wood and another
into the bark, and brought the two ends of the conductors together in
a galvanoscope — the needle at once showed the passage of a current.
Buff has lately made experiments, taking care not to injure the organs.
Two vessels containing mercury receive platinum wires; over the mer-
cury stood water containing the vegetables to be examined as to their
electric condition. Taking the leaves and roots, Buff proved a cur-
rent passing through the plant from the roots to the leaves ; in a branch
severed from the stem the current passed toward the leaves, too. To
sum up, the existence of vital electricity is incontestable, though we
do not yet precisely understand the conditions of this internal excite-
ment, and know nothing of its true relations with the unity of physico*
chemical operations in the living organism.

ELECTRICITY u\ND LIFE. 529

The latter are, at all events, exceedingly complex. There is in us,
and in every organized being, an infinite world of the most various ac-
tions going on. The forces penetrating us are as manifold as the ma-
terials we are moulded from. In every point of our "bodies, and at
every moment of our existence, all the energies of Nature meet and
unite. Yet, such order rules in the course of these wonderful work-
ings, that harmonious blended action, instead of bewildering confusion,
characterizes beings endowed with life. Every thing in them com-
mands and answers, with balance and counterpoise. Buffon long ago
felt and expressed this. " The animal," he said, " combines all the
forces of Nature : his individuality is a centre to which every thing is
referred, a point reflecting the Avhole universe, a world in little." A
deep saying, coming from the great naturalist as the flash of an intui-
tion of genius, rather than the result of rigid investigation — words
which the movement of science confirms with ever stronger proofs,
while borrowing from them light for its path.

Having: determined that living- bodies are in themselves sources of
the electric fluid, we next inquire into the nature of the effects pro-
duced in the animal organism by electricity under different forms.
The atmosphere contains a variable quantity of positive electricity ;
the earth itself is always charged with negative electricity. It is
not yet j^recisely known how this diffused and silent force originates.
Physicists suppose that it proceeds from vegetation and the evapora-
tion of water. Becquerel has quite lately set forth a number of rea-
sons, more or less plausible, for the belief that the chief part of atmos-
pheric electricity is derived from the sun, and diffused by it into space
together with light. Whether this be true or not, while the sky is
clear this fluid has no visible effect on human beings ; but, whenever it
accumulates in the clouds, and gives rise to storms, it produces effects
that are the most manifest proofs of the influence exerted over life by
electricity. Persons killed by lightning present a great variety of ap-
pearances. Sometimes one struck by lightning is killed outright on
the spot, the body remaining standing or sitting ; sometimes, on the
contrary, it is thrown to a great distance. Sometimes the flash tears
off and destroys the victim's dress, leaving the body untouched, and
sometimes the reverse is the case. In some instances the destruction
is frightful, the heart is torn apart and the bones crushed ; in others
the organs are observed entirely uninjured. In certain cases flaccidity
of the limbs occurs, softening of the bones, collapse of the lungs ; in
others, contractions and rigidity are remarked. Sometimes the body
of the person struck decomposes rapidly, but at times it resists decay.
Lightning, which shatters trees and overturns walls, seems not to pro-
duce mutilations in animals at all readily. When the stroke does not
produce death, it creates at least serious disturbances — sometimes tem-
porary, but oftener beyond remedy. Besides the burns and various
eruptions noticed on the skin of those struck with lightning, they often.
vol. n. — 34

53o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

suffer, very curiously, a complete loss of hair ; they are affected with
paralysis, dumbness, deafness, amaurosis, or imbecility. In brief, the
destructive attacks of atmospheric electricity touch all the functions of
the nervous system.

The action of electric fishes may be likened to that of lightning, in
being independent of our intention. The shocks of the gymnotus are
particularly formidable. Alexander Humboldt relates that, having
put both his feet on one of these fish, just taken from the water, he ex-
perienced so violent a shock that he felt pains in all his joints the rest
of the day. These shocks throw the strongest animals down, and it is
necessary to avoid rivers frequented by the gymnotus, because, in at-
tempting to ford them, horses or mules might be killed by the dis-
charges. To capture these fish the Indians drive wild horses into the
water, stirring the eels up out of the mud by their trampling. The
yellowish livid creatures press against the horses under their bellies,
throw down the greater part and kill some of them, but, exhausted in
their turn, they are then easily taken with the aid of small harpoons.
The savages employ them to cure paralysis. Faraday compares the
shock of a gymnotus, which he had an opportunity to study, to that of
a strong battery of fifteen jars. A live eel out of water, when touched
by the hand, communicates a shock strong in proportion to the extent
of surface in contact, and the stroke is felt up to the shoulder, and fol-
lowed by a very unpleasant numbness. It may be transmitted through
twenty persons in a chain, the first one touching the back, and the last
the belly of the eel. The fishermen discover the presence of an eel in
their nets by experiencing a shock in throwing pailfuls of water on,
to wash them. Water is a good conductor, and this fish kills or be-
numbs the animals it feeds on by delivering a discharge through the
water.

Other sources of electricity are known to exist, besides thunder-
storms and fishes. Friction-machines, batteries, and induction instru-
ments, yield three kinds of currents that act on vital functions, some-
times in a similar way, but oftener with marked differences, which have
only recently been clearly distinguished. The action of static electri-
city, and that of electricity of induction, more sudden and violent, is
particularly marked by mechanical effects so striking that they have
long distracted experimenters from examining with due attention those
effects of another sort, produced by the galvanic current. Yet, the lat-
ter in reality affects the animal tissues in a deeper way, and its result-
ing phenomena deserve the liveliest interest from a theoretical point
of view, as well as from their applied uses.

Dutrochet proved, by remarkable experiments, that, when a tube
closed below by a membrane, and containing gum-water, is placed in
a vessel containing pure water, the level of the gum-water rises little
by little through the gradual introduction of pure water into the tube,
while a certain quantity of the gum-water inside mingles with the

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 531

pure water outside. In a word, a mutual exchange takes place be-
tween these two fluids, communicating by the membrane, and the
current, passing from the thinner liquid toward the denser one, is
ascertained to be more rapid than that moving in the opposite direc-
tion.

This experiment reveals one of the most important phenomena of
life in plants and animals, noted by the word endosmosis. Now, Du-
trochet had before observed that if the positive pole of a battery be
inserted in the pure water, and the negative pole in the gum-water,
the acts of endosmosis are effected more energetically. Oniraus and
Legros discovered further, that, if the contrary arrangement be adopt-
ed, that is, if the positive pole be placed in the gum-water, and the
negative pole in the pure, the level of the liquid in the tube descends
noticeably, instead of rising. Electricity, therefore, can reverse the
usual laws of endosmosis. It exerts an influence not less distinct on
all the other physico-chemical movements, taking place deep in the or-
gans. In them it decomposes the salts, coagulates the albuminoid ele-
ments of the blood and the' tissues, just as it does in the vessels of the
laboratory. Take a very curious instance : In chemistry, on decom-
posing the iodide of potassium, iodine is freed, and betrays itself by
the tinge of intense blue which it develops on contact with starch.
Now, if an animal be injected with a solution of iodide of potassium,
and then electrified, it is noticed, after a few minutes, that all the parts
near the positive pole of the battery turn blue in presence of the
starch, proving that they are impregnated with iodine. The iodide
has been almost instantly decomposed, and the iodine carried by the
current toward the positive pole.

It is not surpi-ising, then, that the action of electricity influences
the whole system of the nutritive operations. Onimus and Legros
found that ascending continuous currents quicken the twofold move-
ment of assimilation and diassimilation. Animals electrified under
certain conditions throw off a greater proportion of urea and carbonic
acid, proving a higher energy of the vital fire. On the other hand, if
young individuals, in growing development, are subjected to the ac-
tion of the current, they grow tall and large more quickly than in or-
dinary circumstances, furnishing the proof of an increase in the quan-
tity of substances assimilated. To show how far vital phenomena are
stimulated by electricity, we will cite another experiment made by
Robin and Legros on noctilucaa. These are microscopic animals,
which, when existing in great numbers in sea-water, render it almost
as white as milk, and at certain times phosphorescent. Now, a current,
directed into a vessel filled with such water, suffices to bring out a
trace of light marking all its course. Electricity stimulates the phos-
phorescence of all the noctilucoe met on its passage between the two
poles.

Interrupted currents, or currents of induction, contract the blood-

532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vessels and slacken the circulation in almost every case : if they are
intense, they even effect its complete check by a strong contraction of
the little arterial branches. Continuous currents do not act in this
way ; usually they quicken the circulation, while occasioning an en-
largement of the vessels, at least, this has been established by Robin
and Hiffelsheim, in the microscopic examination of the flow of blood
under electric stimulus. Onimus and Legros afterward proved that
these movements are governed by the following law : The descending
current dilates the vessels, and the ascending current contracts them.
A striking experiment proves the value of this law : A part of the
skull of a vigorous dog is removed, so as to expose the brain. The
positive pole of a pretty strong battery is then placed on the exposed
brain, and the negative pole on the neck. The slender and superficial
vessels of the brain contract visibly, and the organ itself seems to col-
lapse. Arranging the poles in the contrary order, the reverse is re-
marked ; the capillary vessels swell and distend, while the substance
of the brain protrudes through the opening made in the walls of the
skull. This experiment proves the possibility of increasing or lessen-
ing at will the intensity of circulation in the brain, as indeed in any
other organ, by means of electric currents. Onimus lately made an
equally interesting experiment. Many persons know that the famous
physiologist Helmholz introduced into medicine the use of a simple
and convenient instrument called the ophthalmoscope, by means of
which the bottom of the eye may be quite distinctly seen, that is to
say, the net formed by the nerve-fibres, and the delicate vessels of the
retina. Now, on examining this net, while the head is put under elec-
tric influence, the little blood-tubes are plainly seen to dilate and
grow of a more lively crimson.

Let us now study the effect of the electric current on the functions
of the motor system, and on sensibility. Aldini, a nephew of Gal-
vani, undertook the first investigations of this kind upon human be-
ings. Convinced that the proper study of the effects of electricity on
the organs required the human body to be taken at the immediate in-
stant after the extinction of life, he believed he would do well, as he
relates himself, to take his place beside the scaffold, and under the
axe of the law, to receive from the executioner's hand the blood-
stained bodies which were the only really suitable subjects for his ex-
periments. In January and February, 1802, he availed himself of the
occasion of the beheading at Boulogne of two criminals, whom the
government willingly gave up to his scientific inquiry. Subjected to
electric action, these bodies presented so strange a sight as to terrify
some of the assistants. The muscles of the face contracted in fright-
ful grimaces. All the limbs were seized with violent convulsions.
The bodies seemed to feel the first stir of resurrection, and an impulse
to spring up. For several hours after decapitation, the vital centres
of movement retained the power of answering to the electric excite-

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 533

ment. At Glasgow, Ure made some equally noted experiments on the
body of a criminal, which had remained on the gallows nearly an
hour. One of the poles of a battery of 270 pairs having been con-
nected with the spinal marrow, below the nape of the neck, and the
other pole touching the heel, the leg, until then bent back, was forcibly
thrown forward, almost oversetting one of the assistants, who had a
strong hold on it. Placing one of the poles on the seventh rib, and the
other on one of the nerves of the neck, the chest rose and fell, and the
abdomen underwent the like motion, as in the act of breathing. On
touching a nerve of the eyelid at the same time with the heel, the mus-
cles of the face contracted, " rage, horror, despair, anguish, and fearful
grins, combined in hideous expressions on the dead man's face." At
the terrible sight one person fainted, and several were obliged to leave
the room. Afterward, by exciting convulsive movements of the arms
and fingers, the corpse was made to seem to point at one or another
of the spectators.

Later researches have precisely fixed the conditions of this influ-
ence of electricity upon the muscles. Continuous currents, led di-
rectly to these organs, produce contractions at the moments of open-
ing and of closing the circuits ; but the shock produced on closing is
always the strongest. While the continuous current is passing, the
muscle remains persistently in a half-contracted state, as to the nature
of which physiologists disagree. Influenced by excitements rapidly
repeated and prolonged for a short time, the muscles assume a state
of contraction and shortening, like that seen in tetanus. In this state,
as Helmholz and Marey have shown, the muscle suffers a repetition of
very slight shocks. Contraction is the result of the fusion of these
elementary vibrations, indistinguishable by the eye, but capable of
recognition and measurement by certain contrivances. Currents of
induction produce more powerful contractions, but not lasting ones,
which are succeeded, if electrization is prolonged, by corpse-like rigid-
ity. Muscular contraction effected in such a case is attended by a
local rise in temperature, proportioned to the force and length of the
electric action. This increase of heat reaches its maximum, which
may in some cases be four degrees, during the four or five minutes fol-
lowing the cessation of the electric impulse, and is due to the muscu-
lar contraction, which always gives rise to disengagement of heat.

The effect upon the nerves is very complex, and betrayed by move-
ments and sensations very variable in intensity. Onimus and Legros
state in general its fundamental laws thus : In acting on the nerves of
motion, we see that the direct or descending current works more en-
ergetically than the other, with the reverse result on the nerves of
sensation. The excitability of those nerves of a mixed kind is less-
ened by the direct and increased by the inverse current. This is true
as to battery-currents, but currents of induction behave differently.
"While the sensation called out by the first is almost insignificant, the

534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

others, besides the permanent muscular contraction,, produce a pain
lasting as long as the nerve retains its excitability. The spinal mar-
row is one of the most active parts of the system. In the form of a
thick, whitish cord, lodged inside the vertebral column, it constitutes a
real prolongation of the brain, of which, under some circumstances, it
takes the place. The unconscious depositary of a part of the force
animating the limbs, by means of the nerves sent out from it, it trans-
mits to them their direction and power to move, while the brain is un-
aware of its action. This takes place in what are called reflex mo-
tions, and these occur in beheaded animals, through the simple excite-
ment, direct or indirect, of the spinal marrow. Experiments may be
cited, showing the action of electricity on those phenomena which
have their seat in the spinal marrow. If a frog is plunged into luke-
warm water, at a temperature of 40°, it loses respiration, feeling,
and motion, and would die if kept in it a long time. "When taken out
of the water, and placed in this state under the action of the current,
it contracts strongly when its vertebral column is electrified by an as-
cending charge ; but no motion follows if the descending current is
applied. On the other hand, if the latter is sent into a beheaded ani-
mal, stimulated to reflex motions, by the excitement of the spine, it
tends, as experiment shows, to paralyze these motions. In general,
this is the law discovered by Onimus and Legros — the ascending bat-
tery-current, directed on the spine, increases the excitability of that
organ, and consequently its power of producing reflex phenomena;
the descending current, on the contrary, acts in the reverse way.

When the brain of animals is directly electrified, the modifications
in circulation already spoken of result, but no special phenomena are
observed. The animal shows no pain, and makes no movement, ex-
periencing a tendency toward sleep, a sort of calm and stupor. Some
physicians have gone so far as to propose electrization of the brain as
a means of developing and perfecting the mental powers. Nothing
hitherto justifies the belief that such a course could have the slightest
influence for good over the functions of thought. On the contrary, it
is verv certain that the electric agent must be applied only with ex-
treme caution to the regions of the head, and that it very easily occa-
sions mischief in them. A strong current might readily cause rupture
of the vessels, and dangerous haemorrhage in consequence.

Ao-ain, electricity stimulates all the organs of sense. Directed
upon the retina, it excites it, producing sensations of glare and daz-
zling. When sent through the organ of hearing, it produces there a
peculiar buzzing noise, and, if brought in contact with the tongue, it
calls forth a very characteristic metallic and styptic sensation. And
in the olfactory mucous membrane it creates a sneezing irritation, and
also, it seems, an odor of ammonia.

The currents not only act on the cerebro-spinal nerves, and the
muscles concerned in life, as related outwardly, but affect also the parts

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 535

of the nervous and muscular systems devoted to the functions of nu-
tritive life. Electricity by induction, applied to these muscles, causes
contraction in them at the point of contact with the poles, while the
part situated between the poles remains without motion. Continuous
currents produce, at the instant of closing the circuit, a local contrac-
tion at the junction with the poles, and then the organ becomes quiet;
if it is previously in action, motion ceases. In the case of the intes-
tine, for instance, peristaltic movement is checked; and by means of
electricity contractions of the uterus may be suspended in an animal,
during parturition. In general, the fluid suppresses spasms of all the
involuntary muscles.

All these facts relating to electric action upon the muscles and
nerves have been the occasion, particularly in Germany, of laborious
investigations, with which are connected the names of Dubois-Rey-
mond, Pfltiger, and Remak. The doctrines of these learned physiolo-
gists, regarding the molecular condition of the nerves in their various
modes of electrization, are still very much disputed. It must be said
that they are not supported by any experimental certainty, and per-
haps the ideas developed by Matteucci supply better means for the
general solution of these difficulties. This eminent experimenter op-
posed, to the German theories about the electrotonic faculties of the
nerves, cei'tain evident phenomena of electrolysis, that is, of chemical
decompositions effected by the currents. He supposed that the modi-
fications of excitement in the nerves, brought about by the passage
of electricity, depended on the acids and the alkalies resulting from the
separation of the salts contained in animal tissues. To this first class
of phenomena may be added those electro-capillary currents lately
observed by Becquerel. Here must be sought the deeper causes of
that complicated and as yet obscure mechanism of the strife between
electricity and life.

The effects of electricity on plants have been much less studied,
experiments made on this subject being neither accurate nor numerous
enough. We know that electricity causes contractions in the various
species of mimosa, particularly in the sensitive-plant, that it checks
the flow of sap in certain plants, etc. Becquerel has studied its ac-
tion on the germination and development of vegetables. Electricity
decomposes the salts contained in the seed, conveying the acid ele-
ments to the positive pole, and the alkaline ones to the negative.
Now, the former injure vegetation, while the latter benefit it. Quite
lately, the same experimenter has made a series of researches upon the
influence of electricity on vegetable colors. Employing strong dis-
charges obtained from friction-machines, he has noticed very remark-
able alterations of color, usually due to the rupture of the cells con-
taining the coloring-matter of the petals. This matter, freed from its
cellular covering, disappears on simply washing with water, and the
flower becomes almost white. In leaves showing two surfaces of dif-

536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ferent shades, as the begonia discolor, a kind of mutual exchange of
colors between the two surfaces has been noticed.

II.

The physiological phenomena just spoken of are usually confounded
in books with the facts of electric medical treatment, and it seems
better to distinguish the two classes. The true method consists in
first explaining the phenomena displayed in the healthy organism, as
the only way of understanding afterward those that are peculiar to
disorders. Electric treatment forms a group of methods to be classed
among the most efficacious in medicine, provided they are applied by
a practitioner well trained in the theory of his art. Indeed, the most
thorough physiological knowledge is essential for the physician who
would make the electric current serviceable. Mere experimenting,
even the most sagacious, must here be barren of good results — a fact
of which it is well to remind those who impute to the method itself
the failures it meets with in unskilful hands. It is true that, since the
days of Galvani and Volta, physicians have used galvanism in the
treatment of many diseases. Early in the century, galvanic medicine
was much talked of, and supposed to be the universal panacea. Gal-
vanic societies, journals, and treatises, undertook to spread its useful-
ness. The fashion lasted a certain time, and would perhaps have
grown indifferent, when the discovery of induced electricity, due to
Faraday, in 1832, called professional attention once more to the vir-
tues of the electric fluid, and led to a new and interesting range of ex-
periments. Yet it is likely that the true systems of electric medical
treatment, after the extraordinary illusions of their earlier days had
vanished, would at length have sunk into disuse, had they not escaped
from the ruts of empiricism. With its usual boldness, it had at first
gained them a high rank, which it had no power to maintain. It was
experimental physiology, with its exact analysis of the mechanical
effects of this fluid upon the springs of the organism, which made its
application in the healing art sure, true, and solid, as it now is. In
this, as in all things, blind art has been the impulse to scientific re-
search, which in turn steadily enlightens and perfects art.

It is singular that induction-currents have met with much better
fortune than galvanic ones. The latter, the use of which introduced
electric treatment, have gained real importance in physiology and
medicine only within a few years, and after the reputation of induc-
tion-currents was well established, thanks chiefly to the efforts of
Duchenne. A German physiologist and anatomist, Remak, who died
six years ago, was the first to urge the singular remedial virtues of the
voltaic current. Remak, after devoting twenty years to the study
of the most difficult questions in embryology and histology, un-
dertook, in 1854, the systematic examination and ascertainment of
the actidn of continuous currents on the vital economy. He soon

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 537

gained remarkable dexterity in dealing with, the electric agent, and
detecting with the readiest insight the proper points for applying the
battery-poles in each malady. Those who, with ns, witnessed in 1864
his practice at the hospital, will remember it clearly. The methods
of Duchenne were almost the only ones accepted in practice in France,
till Remak came to prove to Paris physicians the powers of electriza-
tion by constant currents, in cases where Faraday's currents had been
without eifect. The teaching of the Berlin practitioner bore its fruits.
A rising young physician, Hiffelsheim, was beginning to spread
throughout Paris the use of the constant current as a healing agent,
when death removed him in 18GC, in the flower of his age. Another
physician, who benefited by the lessons of Remak, Onimus, resumed
the interrupted labors of Hiffelsheim, and is now busy in completing
the system of the methods of electric medical practice, by subjecting
them to an exact knowledge of electro-physiological laws. A few in-
stances, from the mass of facts published on the subject, will serve to
show how far the efficiency of these methods has actually been car-
ried.

Experiment proves that, under certain conditions, the electric cur-
rent contracts the vessels, and thus checks the flow of blood into the
organs. Now, a great number of disorders are marked by too rapid
a flow of blood, by what are known as congestions. Some forms of
delirium and brain-excitement, as also many hallucinations of the dif-
ferent senses, are thus marked, and these are entirely cured by the ap-
plication of the electric current to the head. No organ possesses a
vascular system so delicate and complex as the brain's, nor is there
any so sensitive to the action of causes that modify the circulation.
For this reason, disorders seated in the brain are peculiarly amenable
to electric treatment, and, when carefully applied, it is remedial in
brain-fevers, mental delirium, headaches, and sleeplessness. Physicians
who first employed the current were quite aware of this benign influ-
ence of the galvanic fluid over brain-disorders, and even had the idea
of utilizing it in the treatment of insanity. Experiments in that di-
rection have not been continued, but the facts published by Hiffel-
sheim justify the belief that they would not be barren. These facts
testify to the benefits that electric currents (we mean only continuous
ones) may some day yield in brain-diseases — a point worth the atten-
tion of physicians for the insane. Till lately it was thought that elec-
tricity was a powerful stimulant only, but what is true of interrupted
currents is not true as to currents from the battery. Far from being
always a stimulant, the latter may become in certain cases, as Hiffel-
sheim maintained, a sedative and calming agent. This control over
circulation, joined with the electrolytic power of the galvanic current,
allows its employment in the treatment of various kinds of conges-
tions. A congested state of the lymphatic ganglia, the parotid glands,
etc., may be relieved by this means, the current acting in such cases

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

both on the contractility of the vessels, and the composition of the
humors.

In cases of paralysis, more than any others, electricity displays all
its healing power. Paralysis occurs whenever the motor nerves are
separated from the nervous centres by any injuring cause, or by any
modification of texture impairing their sensitiveness. With a de-
stroyed nerve, paralysis is incurable, but, in case of its disease only, its
functions can almost always be restored by electric treatment. As
there is always some degree of muscular atrophy in the case, electri-
city is directed upon the nerves and the muscles at once, and the bat-
tery and the induction current usually employed together. As a rule,
the first modifies the general nutrition, and restores nervous excitabil-
ity, while the last stimulates the contractile power of the muscular
fibres. The difference of action between the two kinds of currents is
clear in certain paralyses, in which the muscles show no contraction
under induction-currents, while under the influence of constant cur-
rents they contract better than the uninjured muscles. Experiments
made some years ago in Robin's laboratory, on the bodies of criminals
executed, proved that, after death, muscular contraction can still be
produced by Volta's currents, though Faraday's current has no such
effect.

When the motor nerves are in a state of morbid excitement, they
compel either muscular contractions that are lasting, as tonic spasms,
or intermittent ones. The different motor nerves most commonly ex-
cited are the facial nerves, the nervous branches of the forearm or the
fingers, which are affected in "writer's cramp," and the branches of
the spinal nerve, whose irritation occasions tic-douloureux, chronic
wryneck, etc. Now, electricity cures, or at least noticeably benefits
these different morbid states, and exei-ts the like influence over neural-
gic and neuritic affections, wherever these disorders are not the symp-
toms of other deeper maladies. Currents restore the normal activity
of nutrition in the diseased nerves, and the corresponding muscles ;
they act on rheumatism, too, in the most beneficial way, modifying the
local circulation, quieting the pain, and stimulating reflex phenomena,
which are followed by muscular contractions. Erb, Remak, Hiffel-
sheim, and Onimus, have proved beyond question this salutary action
on swellings of the joints, either in acute or chronic cases.

The discoveries respecting the influence of electricity over the
spinal marrow have been used with advantage in the treatment of
such disorders as arise from unduly-excited activity in this organ,
such as chorea, St. Vitus's dance, hysteria, and other nervous convul-
sions, more or less similar. We cite two instances of this sort pub-
lished by Dr. Onimus, giving an idea of the mode of applying the cur-
rent in such cases. A child, twelve years old, was seized with a
frightful attack. Every five or six minutes it lost consciousness, rolled
on the ground, its eyes turned upward, then grew so rigid that none

ELECTRICITY AND LIFE. 539

of its limbs could be bent. The attack over, it regained its senses,
but the least impression, at all vivid, sufficed to bring on a new attack.
Ascending currents were first applied to the spinal marrow. The child
was at once seized with a violent crisis. Descending currents were
then used for fifteen days in succession, after which the little patient
regained health. A young girl aged seventeen, in an hysteric condition,
presented very strange symptoms in the larynx, the velum of the pal-
ate, and the facial muscles, among others a sort of barking, followed
by vehement sniffing and horrible grimaces. By placing the positive
pole in the patient's mouth against the arch of the palate, and the
negative pole on the nape of the neck, all these morbid affections were
completely subdued. The disposition of the poles in the reverse or-
der, on the other hand, aggravated them. After sixteen repetitions of
electric treatment, the young girl was almost completely cured, retain-
ing only a muscular twitch of little importance, compai'ed with her
former ailments. Several cases of tetanus also were treated with com-
plete success by similar methods. This terrible disease, the most fear-
ful of all surgical complications, is due to an acute inflammation of
the spinal marrow. It is followed by such an alteration of the motor
nerves, that all the muscles of the body experience general contrac-
tion, and a painful rigidity that by degrees attacks the vitally essen-
tial organs. When an attack of this kind reaches the muscles of the
chest and heart, death occurs, through asphyxia. In such a case the
continuous current restores the motor nerves to their normal state.
Two other chronic diseases of the spine, the first being particularly
serious — progressive muscular atrophy and locomotive ataxy — often
yield to the rational use of electricity, or at least are checked in their
progress, the natural issue of which is death. It is worth remarking
that these two disorders were discovered and described by Duchenne,
in the course of his researches into this method of treatment. Elec-
tricity served his purposes of diagnosis, as it serves in physiology as
a means of study, taking in that science the place of a kind of reac-
tive agent, and revealing functional differences that no other process
could have detected. To it alone, according to the way in which it
affects a nerve or a muscle, belongs the power, under certain circum-
stances, of determining the nature and even the degree of alteration
in nervous or muscular elements.

Aldini said that galvanism afforded a powerful means of restoring
vitality when suspended by any cause. Several physicians, at the be-
ginning of this century, restored life by this means to dogs, after they
had undergone all the processes of drowning, and seemed dead.
Halle and Sue proposed at that period to place galvanic machines in
the different quarters of Paris, particularly near the Seine. This wise
and useful plan has not yet been put into execution, though all experi-
ments made since that time confirm the proof of the efficiency of elec-
tricity in cases of asphyxia and syncope, produced either by water or

540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by poisonous gases. The galvanic cm-rent also restores respiration in
cases of poisoning by ether or chloroform, even when recovery seems
hopeless. Surgeons who understand this effect, remember it whenever
chloroform seems dangerous to the patient under its influence.

Electricity is transformed into heat with great ease. If an intense
current is passed through a very short metallic wire, it heats, reddens,
and sometimes vaporizes it. This property has been taken advantage
of by surgeons for the removal of various morbid excrescences. They
introduce a metallic blade at the base of the tumors or polypi to be
extirpated, and when this kind of electric knife becomes incandescent,
under the influence of the galvanic current, they give it such a move-
ment that the diseased part is separated by cauterization, as neatly as
with a cutting instrument. This method, which avoids effusion of
blood, and is attended by only slight pain, has yielded excellent re-
sults in the hands of Marshall, Middeldorpf, Sedillot, and Amussat.
Besides this application, in which heat plays the chief part, electricity
has been used to destroy tumors, by a kind of chemical disorganiza-
tion of their tissue. Crusell, Ciniselli, and Nelaton, have made deci-
sive experiments of this nature. Petrequin, Broca, and others, suggest
the same method to coagulate the blood contained in sacs, in aneu-
risms. If this novel surgery is not so widely known and used as it de-
serves to be, the reason is that the manipulation of electric instruments
requires much practice and dexterity, and surgeons find the classic use
of the scalpel more convenient.

This rapid historical view shows that the method of treatment by
electricity is useful in very many diseases. Whether resorted to to
modify the nutritive condition, to quicken or check circulation in the
small vessels, to calm or excite the nerves, to relax or stimulate the
muscles, to burn or detach tumors, electricity, if managed rationally,
is destined to do distinguished service in the healing art. The range
of treatment by heat is less considerable, yet of some extent. The
examination of the medical value of treatment by light has scarcely
begun, nor has much been done toward the study of weight or press-
ure, in their relations to medical science. At all events, there is now
forming and gaining increased development, alongside of the medicinal
use of bodies, a medicinal use of forces — besides the physic of drugs,
a physic of powers. It is impossible to say at present which of the
two will definitely prevail — more probably both will be called on to
render valuable services to art.

The first savants who studied the action of galvanic electricity on
dead bodies, and saw them recover motion, and even an appearance
of sensation, supposed they had touched the secret of life, likening to
the vital principle that other force which seems to warm again the
frozen organs, and restore their springs. Slight reflection on the facts
collected in the foregoing pages reveals the thorough illusiveness of
such a hope. Not only is electricity far from being the whole of life,

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF RACES. 541

but it cannot even be regarded as one of the elements of life, or be
compared, for instance, with nerve-force. In fact, the experiments of
Helmholz have proved conclusively that such a comparison contra-
dicts the truth. What is the peculiar sign of the vital forces and of
vital unity, or the definite expression of their simultaneous action in
one organism, is, precisely, organization. But electricity has no causal
relation with organization proper. That is the work of some higher
activity. That power in action, whatever it be, takes to itself all the
forces of Nature, but it links them, coordinates them, and, fixing them
into special conditions, compels their service to the purposes of life.
Gravitation, heat, light, electricity, all these forces are maintained
within living beings — only they are there disguised under a new phe-
nomenal unity, just as the oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and
phosphorus, that make up a nerve-cell, vanish in it into a new unity of
substance, without ceasing to exist in it as distinct chemical elements.
The inorganic powers of Nature are as essential to life as lines and
colors are in the composition of the painter's picture. What would
the picture be without the painter's soul and labor? The picture is
his peculiar work : the physico-chemical forces are the lines and colors
of that homogeneous and harmonious composition, which is life. In
it they would want meaning or power, if they did not in it, by the
operation of a mysterious artist, undergo a transformation which
raises them to a dignity not theirs before, and assigns their place in
the supreme harmony. Thus, in the infinite solidarity of things, there
is, as Leibnitz dreamed, a constant uprising of the lower toward the
higher, a steady progress toward the best, a ceaseless aspiration toward
a fuller and more conscious existence, an immortal growth toward
perfection. — Revue des Deux Mondes.

*-•-♦

PHYSICAL CHAEACTEES OF THE HUMAN EACES.

By Prof. A. DE QUATKEFAGES.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ELIZA A. YOUMANS.

f^\ ENTLEMEN : I have already given you three lectures on the
V3T history of man. They have all been devoted to the examination
of general questions, the solution of which can alone throw light on
the study of the human races, and guide us in the midst of thousands
of facts of detail involved in it.

These three lectures constitute the first part of the collection of
facts and ideas that I have undertaken to expound to you. In these
lectures, you know, I considered man in his relation to the universe
and to the earth he inhabits. We found that there exists only one

542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

species of man ; that this species, much more ancient than was for-
merly believed, was the contemporary of the elephant and rhinoceros
on the soil of France. Although spread everywhere at present, the
human species, like other organic and living beings, had its special
centre of creation. It must have appeared at first on a particular and
circumscribed part of the globe, situated probably in the centre of
Asia. Our earth then was peopled by way of migration. In the va-
ried journeyings performed to reach all points of his domain, man has
encountered thousands of conditions of existence. He has accommo-
dated himself to them all — in other words, he has become acclimated
everywhere.

There is another question we had to meet, because it was seriously
put to us, but, to answer which, we had to confess the insufficiency of
present knowledge : it is the question of the first origin of man. Our
answer to this question was founded on science alone. I have made
this declaration many times ; I repeat it every time I speak before a
new audience. For the most part, the problems we have considered
are treated by theologians and philosophers. Neither here, nor at the
museum, am I, nor do I wish to be, either a theologian or a philosopher.
I am simply a man of science, and it is in the name of comparative
physiology, of botanical and zoological geography, of geology and
paleontology, in the name of the laws which govern man as well as
animals and plants, that I have always spoken.

To-day, however, I shall not need to recur, as much as in preceding
lectures, to these terms of comparison. We have to commence the
study of man considered in himself ; and, in the first place, to account
in a general way for the modifications presented by the human type.

These modifications constitute the characters which serve to dis-
tinguish divers groups of men — the different human races. Before
studying these races in detail, we must fix somewhat the extent and
the meaning of these modifications of character.

To give order even to the brief study of the characters of the hu-
man race, it is necessary to separate them into a certain number of
groups. This division is easily made, because of the multiple nature
of man, wThich at the same time connects him with the rest of creation,
and gives him a position apart.

Like all organic and living beings, man has a body. This body
will furnish a first class of characters — the physical characters. Like
animals, man is endowed with instinct and intelligence. Though in-
finitely more developed in him, these characters are not changed in
their fundamental nature. They appear in the different human groups
in phenomena, sometimes very different, as for instance the different
languages. The differences of manifestation of this intelligence will
constitute the second class of characters — the intellectual characters.

Finally, it is established that man has two grand faculties, of which
we find not even a trace among animals. He alone has the moral sen-

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF RACES. 543

timent of good and of evil ; 'he alone believes in a future existence
succeeding this actual life; he alone believes in beings superior to
himself, that he has never seen, and that are capable of influencing his
life for good or evil.

In other words, man alone is endowed with morality and religion.
These two faculties are revealed by his acts, by his institutions, by
facts that differ from one group to another, from one race to another.
From these is drawn a third class of characters — that of moral and
religions characters.

Let us attend to-day to the physical characters, to those furnished
by the body.

In man, as in animals, the body is made up of organs. We can not
only study the exterior of the body, but we can also penetrate the in-
terior and discover its anatomy. Indeed, this is the only means of
finding out its most important organs. In this study we can stop
with the form, the arrangement, or we can go further, and seek to un-
derstand the actions of the parts, the functions they perform. We
thus pass from anatomy to physiology. But these functions may be
disturbed by many maladies that cannot be neglected, and which are
the province of pathology.

In our present study, we must not neglect any of these orders of
facts. You see how we are led to draw, from the body alone, four
categories of characters, namely: 1. Exterior characters; 2. Anatomic
characters ; 3. Physiological characters ; 4. Pathological characters.

PHYSICAL CHARACTEES.

I. Exterior Characters. — When we see a man or an animal, the
first thing that strikes us is its size. Our domestic species are made
of great and small races, and it is the same with man.

The extreme dimensions of the human form, whether great or
small, have been very much exaggerated. Everywhere there has
been a belief in the existence of races of dwarfs and races of giants.
For instance, the Greeks believed in the existence of a people, called
by them pigmies, whose country they placed sometimes in one direc-
tion, sometimes in another, but always beyond the limits of the world
they truly knew. These were little men about fourteen inches in
height, who, it was believed, were obliged to pluck down the corn with
strokes of the axe, and who passed a part of their time defending
themselves against the cranes. In the last century this fable of the
pigmies was, so to speak, renewed and applied to the kymos, who
were said to inhabit Madagascar. It is needless to add that, since we
have seen them more closely, pigmies and kymos have disappeared.

The fables relative to giants are the contrary of the preceding.
Among these fables there are some modern ones, for a time believed
to be founded on real observation. The first voyagers who doubled

544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Cape Horn found there the Patagonians, whose dimensions they sin-
gularly exaggerated. Pigafetta, the companion of Magellan in the
first voyage round the world (1520), pretended that he and his com-
panions scarcely reached to the height of their waists. One of his
successors, Jofre Loaysa, with still greater extravagance, declared
that the heads of the Christians reached only to the upper part of their
thighs. This was, you see, to attribute to these people a height of
13 to 1G feet,

Time and science have done justice to these fables and exaggera-
tions. Let us see what are in reality the extremes presented by the
human stature.

It is plain that in this research we must leave out exceptional in-
dividuals, of which we see a certain number in the fairs and museums,
or anywhere, for money. It is a question neither of General Tom
Thumb, whom you have perhaps met sometimes in the Champs
Elysees, nor of the French or Chinese giants, recently exhibited in
Paris. I will only remark, in passing, that these individual exceptions
appear among all nations, although more rarely, perhaps, in the midst
of savage populations.

The smallest known race is that of the Bushman, which inhabits
the southern part of Africa ; the greatest is the Patagonian, of which
we just named the country. An English traveller, Barrow, measured
all the inhabitants of a tribe of the first; a French traveller, Alcide
d'Orbigny, took the exact measure of a great number of individuals
belomnnfir to the second of these two extreme races.

It results from these measurements that the mean height of the
Bushman is 4 feet 3-J inches, and that of the Patagonian 5 feet 8
inches. The mean difference between the greatest and the smallest
human race is then 16 -J inches.

The smallest Bushman measured by Barrow was a woman who
was only 3 feet 10£ inches. The largest Patagonian measured by
D'Orbigny attained 6 feet 3 inches. The greatest difference existing,
then, between normal human individuals is 2 feet 8|- inches. The ratio
between the extremes of height just named is nearly as 1 to 0.6. These
figures signify much and lead to important consequences.

First, the difference in size among our domestic animals is much
greater than that above indicated. From the great dogs that prom-
enade in our court-yards, down to certain dogs which have figured at
dog-shows, the ratio is 1 to 0.3. The difference is also as great be-
tween the lar<?e brewers' horses of London and horses from Shetland,
which are sometimes not larger than a Newfoundland dog. These
horses and these dogs are, however, only different races of a single
species. One cannot reason, then, from differences of height to sustain
the multiplicity of human species.

There is another consideration not less important :

From all the data I can gather, it results that the mean stature of

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF RACES. 545

men, the world over, is about 5 feet 3 inches. But this mean, like that
given above, results from very numerous and very diverse heights.
If in thought we place all men in one line according to their height, it
is easy to see that we should obtain a series in which the difference
from one to the next will not be, perhaps, the j^g-g-th of an inch.

But this is not all. In this graduated series, the men of the same
race will be far from being placed together. There will be in this re-
spect the strangest mixture. All the Patagonians are not nearly 6
feet 3 inches in height, nor all the Bushmen as short as 3 feet 10^
inches. Among our cuirassiers and the hundred guards of the em-
peror many individuals would be found with the first ; the Lapps of
the north of Europe and the Mincopees of the isles of Andaman in the
Gulf of Bengal would mix with the second.

Now, in no other kind of animal, with numerous species and of
limited growth, is there any thing parallel. The domestic races alone
present something like its analogue. So that, by themselves, these
considerations drawn from the height furnish excellent proof of the
unity of the human species.

The study of proportions would show us like facts and conduct to
similar conclusions. But I leave considerations of this kind, to pass to
other characters almost as striking as those of height. I wish to
speak of those drawn from the complexion, and first of all from the
color of the skin. The general coloration of the body is a well-defined
character ; but we need not exaggerate its value.

If you observe several portraits representing individuals of the
white race, you may see that their tint is sometimes as dark as that
of the Guinea negro. In the portrait of Rammohun-Roy, the cele-
brated Bramin reformer, the fineness and regularity of his profile at-
test that he is of the purest Aryan blood, and his color is that of a
negro just a little blanched. Again, there are Abyssinians whose
features recall the fine Semitic type, and yet few negroes surpass them
in blackness. So all black men are not negroes. Reciprocally, Liv-
ingstone has found in the centre of Africa negroes of the color of cafe
au lait.

The color of the human race varies from white, such as is seen in
Dutch and Danish women, to violet or yellow, to yellow-citron or
smoke, to copper-red or brick. By appealing to your recollections, you
can establish a series passing from light to dark by insensible shades
such as could scarcely be reproduced upon the palette of a painter.

Recollect that some of these extremes of color are frequent among
domestic animals, and are sometimes much greater. With black hens,
it is not the skin alone that is colored. All the great interior mem-
branes, the sheaths of the muscles, the aponeuroses, as well as the flesh
of the wings, present an aspect very little appetizing. So it is sought
to weed them out of the poultry-yard ; and still in certain parts of the;
globe they are constantly produced and would evidently soon become
vol. n. — 35

546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a race if left to multiply. Here, again, in the case of animals, the dif-
ference from race to race is much greater than in the case of man.

Sometimes, in the presence of variations of color like these we have
described, we ask if, between the negro and the white, there do not
exist anatomical differences in the skin? The minute study of this
organ answers us in the negative.

The skin is composed of three layers, which together constitute a
true organ having its proper functions. So it is often called the cu-
taneous organ. On the exterior is the epidermis, that dry and in-
sensible layer which covers the entire body, and protects it against the
action of outer agents.

Interiorly, and immediately above the greasy body, is the true
skin — it is the essential and living part of the cutaneous organ ; it is
this which receives the blood-vessels and nerves.

Between the true skin and the epidermis is a dark layer, composed
of distinct cells. It is the mucous membrane of Malpighi, so named
from the anatomist who first described it. The cells that form it are
a simple secretion of the true skin. It is this layer which is the seat
of color. It exists in all men, but the cells that it contains are more
or less colored according to race. In whites themselves, in certain
parts of the body, around the nipples, in the specks of freckles, in the
beauty-spots, etc., we sometimes see them as deep as in the negro.

You see that the color in different human races is, when developed,
only a phenomenon of local coloration, of exactly the same nature as
those we encounter in races of domestic animals. If time permitted
me to enter more fully into the subject, I could make this fact much
more evident, but the hour advances and I must hasten.

To the skin are attached a certain number of organs, which may be
considered as adjuncts to the cutaneous organ. These are chiefly the
villosities or hairs, the sebaceous glands, and the sweat-glands. Be-
tween these annexed organs there exists a certain balance which
physiology easily explains. So in glabrous races, that is, races with
little or no villosities on the body, the sebaceous apparatus is much
more developed. This fact is very marked in the African negro, whose
skin sometimes bears slight prominences, sketching a sort of arabesque
by the extraordinary development of these little organs.

It is to the development of the sebaceous apparatus that the odor
developed by the negro is due. This odor is so strong, so persistent,
that it suffices to the identification of a negro-ship a long time after it
has left the trade. But it is not negroes alone that are characterized
by malodorous exhalations. It is the same with the whites themselves.
You all know that a dog follows his master by the scent. Savage
people, whose senses are more exercised than ours, distinguish very
quickly the general odor which characterizes a race ; and, in Peru, they
give special names to that of the white and of the black as well as to
their own,

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF RACES. 547

As to the hair which may be seen on different parts of the body, a
special mention is due to that of the head. All people have more or
less hair on the head, and this gives also very good characters. Among
these the most essential are drawn from the form presented by the
transverse cut when examined under the microscope. In the yellow
people, the Americans and the white allophyles, this cut is more or
less circular. In the Aryans, of which we are a part, it is oval ; in the
negroes it takes the form of an elongated ellipse. It is evident that a
circular cut indicates a cylindrical hair. Such hair is very coarse and
stiff, and never curling or frizzled ; an oval cut indicates a slight and
regular flattening. In this form the hairs are finer, and may be made
into curls or waves more or less marked. Finally, the elliptical cut
can only appear when the hair is much flattened, almost like a thick
ribbon. These are the finest, and these alone have the aspect of
wool which characterizes the head of the negro.

Crosses between these different races sometimes produce very re-
markable heads of hair. The negro crossed with the Brazilian pro-
duces the Cafuso, whose hair, forming an immense wig, is at the same
time long, stiff, and kinked.

I would further enlarge upon these exterior characters, as being
the ones of which we can most easily give account, but time fails me,
and I pass to the second class of characters, to those which we must
seek in the interior.

II. Anatomic Character. — The anatomic character may be drawn
from the solid parts of the body, that is, the skeleton, from the soft
parts, and even from the liquids. I shall at first confine myself par-
ticularly to those drawn from the head.

In the head itself we must distinguish the cranium from the face.
The first encloses the brain, whence proceed the organs of sense,
with the exception of those of touch, properly speaking. Above all, it
is the seat of intelligence ; on these various accounts it merits a sepa-
rate examination.

The general form of the cranium, that is, the relation between the
longitudinal and transverse diameter, furnishes an excellent character.
"When this relation is less than that of 100 to 78, the cranium is con-
sidered as elongated from front to back : it is dolichocephalic. When
the relation varies from 100 to 78 or 80, the cranium is medium or
average ; we say it is mesocephalic. Finally, when the relation is from
100 to 80, and above, the cranium is considered short, and is said to be
~br achy cephalic.

These forms sometimes characterize very large human groups. So
almost all the negroes are dolichocephalic; nearly all the yellow
people, and most of the Americans, are brachycephalic or niesoce-
phalic. Among the whites, and even sometimes in two populations
belonging to the same branch of the white race, we find the two ex-

5+8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tremes. The Germans of the north are dolichocephalic, the Germans
of the south brachycephalic.

While recognizing the importance of the characters drawn from
these general forms, we must guard ourselves against exaggerating
their import or giving them a wrong signification. Some authors,
belonging to the dolichocephalic races, have pretended that the elonga-
tion of the head behind is a sign of intellectual superiority. The fact
I have just stated suffices to refute this conclusion, and nothing justi-
fies it. The Germans of the south are noways inferior to their country-
men of the north. In the Academy of Sciences in Paris, the brachy-
cephalic crania, or at most the mesocephalic, are in very great major-
ity ; and still, what association of men is superior, in an intellectual
point of view, to this philosophical body ?

Analogous indications have been drawn from the greater or less
capacity of the cranium. It has been supposed that this exactly cor-
responded in measure to the volume of the brain, and this volume has
been regarded as a sort of measure of intellectual power.

That there is some truth at the bottom of the idea that a brain
sufficiently developed is necessary to give the power to fulfil its func-
tions, is what all the world admits. But that intellectual power is
measured by the quantity of cerebral matter entering into the composi-
tion of the organ is in contradiction to the observations and the figures
of many anatomists, among others, of R. Wagner.

In considerations of this nature we do not generally take account
of the stature. Now, although the head does not enlarge in the same
proportion as the rest of the body, it is not the less true that its form
has an influence on its dimensions and on those of the cranium.

Besides, with organized and living beings, the volume, the mass of
organs, is not all. Their special energy is much more. Certainly you
all know small persons, of slender aspect, who are more active and
strong than some of their comrades who are larger and more muscular.
Well, how is it that what is true of flesh, of muscle, is not also true
of brain ?

After the cranium we come to the face. But I will only speak of
a single order of characters drawn from the jaws and teeth.

Observe a negro, and a European. Look at the jaws and teeth
of the first. You see them project in front. In the second, on the
contrary, teeth and jaws are equally vertical. The first of these is
called prognathism, and the peoples or individuals who present them
are said to be prognathous ; the second takes the name of orthognathism
and characterizes the orthognathous races or individuals.

Prognathism has long been considered as characterizing the negro
races. Since, we have found it in people who could not be afiiliated
with the negro ; and, finally, looking closely into the matter, we have
found it in the heart of white populations. At Paris, even, it is fre-
quent enough, particularly among women. This is a fact of which

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF RACES. 549

you cau convince yourself, as I have often done during my rides in
the omnibus.

Judging by the crania that we possess, prognathism is characteristic
of a population incontestably European which lives at the south of
the Baltic, the Esthonians. This people is, furthermore, the remains
of the most ancient race of Western Europe. It is this race, without
doubt, wlrich, mixing its blood with new-comers, has left in the midst
of our great cities those indications of a prognathous race to which I
have just referred.

After studying the cranium and face separately, we must examine
the head in its ensemble. From this also we draw important charac-
ters. I will only mention one, which has a certain real value, but the
signification of which some have exaggerated and falsified.

Camper, an anatomist of Holland, studied comparatively the Greek
and Roman medallions and statues, and struck with the air of majesty,
presented by the Greeks, gave for a reason that the facial angle was
greater than in the Romans. This angle is formed by two lines which
meet at the extremity of the front teeth, and of which one passes by
the middle of the orifice of the ear, while the second is tangent to the
forehead.

Pushing these researches much further, Camper believed that he
discovered a regular decrease of the facial angle in the human race, so
that he could characterize a race by its facial angle. Going further,
and applying it to animals, he placed in a descending scale, man,
monkeys, carnivora, birds, all characterized by smaller and smaller
angles. Whence, to conclude that the facial angle measures, so to say,
the intelligence, is but a step, which was taken without hesitation.

As this conclusion gives great interest to the measurement of the
facial angle, many processes and many instruments have been proposed
to obtain it with all possible exactitude. The goniometre, invented by
my assistant M. Docteur Jacquart, attained this end better than any
other.

Jacquart did not stop with making this instrument. He used it ;
and, in a beautiful work, he shows among other things that the right
angle exists in the white race, contrary to what Camper believed ;
that we may observe it, without doubt, in intelligent persons, but who
are, however, not sensibly superior to others whose angle is much less
considerable. The facial angle cannot, then, be considered as measur-
ing the intelligence, the reach of the mind.

M. Jacquart shows, besides, that, in the single population of Paris,
the angular differences of which we are speaking are much more con-
siderable than those that Camper regarded as characterizing races.
He shows that here, again, there is from race to race that entanglement
of characters which I have so many times pointed out. Yet, here as
elsewhere, the average furnishes good characters to determine human
groups.

5 5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Again, the skeleton presents important characters. We ought, at
least, to examine the breast, the pelvis, the hones of the limbs, etc. ;
but we must leave this subject, to say a word on the soft parts.

Regarded in the two extremes of humanity, the white European
and the negro, the nervous system presents a fact which it is impor-
tant to point out. With the first, the nervous centres — the brain and
spinal cord — are relatively more voluminous. In the second, on the
contrary, it is the expansions from the centres — the nerves — which are
more voluminous.

The circulatory apparatus presents a balance somewhat analogous.
With the white, the arterial apparatus, which carries the blood to the
organs, is relatively more developed than the venous apparatus that
draws the blood toward the heart.

The blood of the negro, studied in his native country, is more vis-
cous and darker colored than that of the white. That of the creole
negro of New Ox-leans is, on the contrary, paler and more aqueous,
and recalls the blood of the anaemic. So, a simple change of habitat
sometimes modifies a human race in this most profound character — in
this liquid pabulum destined to penetrate and nourish all parts of the
body.

III. Physiological Characters. — I shall dwell briefly on the
physiological characters, and only point out two general facts, of which
you will easily see the importance :

As regards all the great periods of life and all the great functions,
there is an almost complete identity among all men, to whatever race
they belong.

When tbis resemblance is not apparent, the cause is not in the na-
ture of the races, but in the influence of conditions of existence. This
is well proved by the fact that races the most widely separated resem-
ble each other completely wrhen they are exposed to identical condi-
tions through a change of habitat. So, the precocity of the negro has
been cited as distinguishing this race from European nations ; but,
when white people live for generations in hot countries, they take on
the same peculiarity. The negress and the English Creole of the isles
of the Gulf of Mexico are just alike in precocity.

On the contrary, the study of secondary functions shows that they
vary from one group to another, and sometimes very widely. But,
then, also, we see that the environment, the manners, the habits, etc.,
are the cause of these variations ; and, again, we see races the most un-
like come to resemble each other so much as to be confounded together.
There are hunters of English and French descent who have the senses
of sight and hearing as quick and sharp as the red-skins.

In concluding, the study of physiological characters strongly attests
the fundamental unity of the human race, by throwing light on the
marvellous flexibility of our organism.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF RACES. 551

IV. Pathological Characters. — The study of diseases presents
entirely similar facts, and conducts to the same conclusions.

All the human races are accessible to the same diseases. If any
circumstances — isolation, for instance — have preserved some one of
them from affections common to the others, a simple coming together
suffices for the propagation of the disease. The eruptive maladies
seem to have been implanted in America by the Europeans ; but, once
implanted among the indigenous races, they have raged with a violence
that we know not — a violence which is accounted for by the kind of
life led by these people.

Yet immunities, at least relative, have been proved. For instance,
the negro race is much less sensible to the emanations of marshes, to
the miasms from stagnant waters, than the white race. In return, it is
much more easily affected by phthisis.

Other more complete immunities have been observed, and some
have even wished, in consequence, to justify the admission of a distinct
human species. But these immunities, even the best marked, disappear
with time, and still more under the influence of conditions of existence.
I will give you a curious example :

Elephantiasis is a hideous malady, peculiar to certain warm coun-
tries, which swells and deforms, sometimes in the strangest way, the
parts of the body it attacks. In one of the Antilles, in Barbadoes, this
disease was seen from the first among the negroes, but had constantly
spared the whites, till 1704. That year a white person was seized, and
since then the malady has extended in this race ; but it never attacks
any but Creoles. Up to the present time, Europeans, who settle in this
isle, enjoy the ancient immunity. You see it is only a question of com-
plete acclimation.

Gentlemen, I believe I have sketched, in this one lecture, a body of
facts and ideas which, at the museum, occupied at least ten lectures,
each as long as this to-day. So, you see how many things I have been
compelled to omit. Incomplete as I have been compelled to make this
presentation, it is sufficient, I think, to establish clearly some general
facts, and prepares the way for an important conclusion.

You have seen that, considering man from the point of view of his
height and color, we may form a graduated series which passes from
one extreme to the other by insensible shades. You have seen further
that, in this series, groups the most distinct by other characters — the
most separated by their habitat — are found intermixed.

Permit me to add that we should get the same result, whatever the
exterior or anatomical character upon which we establish our series.

The study of functions, whether performed in a normal manner,
in a state of health, or under the perturbing influence of disease,
shows us identical fundamental facts revealing the unity of human
nature.

Even apparent exceptions come under the general facts when we

55z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

take account of the influence of the environment which, as you have
seen, effaces some of the most marked differences.

In this examination of the physical man, every thing leads to the
conclusion which we had already reached in our earlier lectures ; and
we can repeat with redoubled certainty : the differences among human
groups are characters of race, and not of species ; there exists only one
human species ; and, consequently, all men are brothers — all ought to
be treated as such, whatever the origin, the blood, the color, the race.

Gentlemen, the lectures I have given here require a special prepa-
ration, and are not always easy to prepare ; but I shall not regret
either my time or my pains-, if I am able, in the name of science, and
that alone, to render a little more clear and precise for you this great
and sacred notion of the brotherhood of man.

-4^»-

OX THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES.1

SIR : In the foregoing letter I have examined the theory of the con-
nection between equality and justice, with the view of showing
that the only real connection between the two ideas is to be found in
the fact that, as justice implies general rules, it also implies an impar-
tial application of those rules to all the particular cases to which they
may apply. I also showed that when equality is spoken of as being
just or unjust in any more general sense than this, the expression can
mean nothing else than that it is or is not generally expedient. The
doctrine upon this subject which I deny, and which I am disposed to
think Mr. Mill affirms — though, if he does, it is with somewhat less
than his usual transparent vigor and decision — is that equality is in
itself always expedient, or, to say the very least, presumably expedi-
ent, and that in every case of inequality the burden of proof lies on
those who justify its maintenance.

If I had time to do so, I might give in proof or illustration of this
the whole of his essay on the " Subjection of "Women," a work from
which I dissent from the first sentence to the last, but which I will con-
sider on the present occasion only with reference to the particular topic
of equality, and as the strongest distinct illustration known to me of
what is perhaps one of the strongest, and what appears to me to be
by far the most ignoble, contemptible, and mischievous of all the popu-
lar feelings of the age.

The object of Mr. Mill's essay is to explain the grounds of the
opinion that " the principle which regulates the existing social rela-
tions between the two sexes, the legal subordination of one sex to the
other, is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human
1 From the letters of " F.," in the Pall Mall Budget.

ON THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 553

improvement ; and that it ought to he replaced hy a principle of per-
fect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor dis-
ability on the other."

Mr. Mill is fully aware of the difficulty of his task. He admits that
he is arguing against "an almost universal opinion," but he urges that
it and the practice founded on it is a relic of a by-gone state of things.
" We now live — that is to say, one or two of the most advanced na-
tions of the world now live — in a state in which the law of the strong-
est seems to be entirely abandoned as the regulating principle of the
world's affivirs. Nobody professes it, and, as regards most of the rela-
tions between human beings, nobody is permitted to practise it. . . .
This being the ostensible state of things, people natter themselves that
the rule of mere force is ended." Still they do not know how hard it
dies, and in particular they are unaware of the fact that it still regu-
lates the relations between men and women. It is true that the actu-
ally existing generation of women do not dislike their position. The
consciousness of this haunts Mr. Mill throughout the whole of his argu-
ment, and embarrasses him at every turn. He is driven to account for
it by such assertions as that " each individual of the subject class is in
a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined," by reference to
the affection which slaves in classical times felt for their masters in
many cases, and by other suggestions of the same sort. His great
argument against the pi*esent state of things is that it is opposed to
what he calls " the modern conviction, the fruit of a thousand years
of experience " —

"That things in which the individual is the person directly interested never
go right but as they are left to his own discretion, and that any regulation of
them by authority except to protect the rights of others is sure to be mischievous.
. . . The peculiar character of the modern world ... is that human beings are
no longer born to their place in life and chained down by an inexorable bond to
the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties and such favor-
able chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desira-
ble. Human society of old was constituted on a very different principle. All
were born to a fixed social position, and were mostly kept in it by law or inter-
dicted from any means by which they could emerge from it. . . . In consonance
with this doctrine it is felt to be an overstepping of the proper bounds of author-
ity to fix beforehand on some general presumption that certain persons are not
fit to do certain things. It is now thoroughly known and admitted that if some
such presumptions exist no such presumption is infallible. . . . Hence we ought
not ... to ordain that to be born a girl instead of a boy shall decide the per-
son's position all through life."

The result is that " the social subordination of women thus stands out
as an isolated fact in modern social institutions." It is in " radical
opposition " to " the progressive movement, which is the boast of the
modern world." This fact creates a " prima-facie presumption"
against it, " far outweighing any which custom and usage could in
such circumstances create " in its favor.

554 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I will not follow Mr. Mill through the whole of his argument, much
of which consists of matter not relevant to my present purpose, and
not agreeable to discuss, though many of his assertions provoke reply.
There is something — I hardly know what to call it, indecent is too
strong a word, but I may say unpleasant in the direction of indecorum
— in prolonged and minute discussions about the relations between
men and women, and the characteristics of women as such. I will
therefore pass over wdiat Mr. Mill says on this subject with a mere
general expression of dissent from nearly every word he says. The
following extracts show the nature of that part of his theory which
bears on the question of equality:

" The equality of married persons before the law ... is the only means of ren-
dering the daily life of mankind in any high sense a school of moral cultivation.
Though the truth may not be felt or generally acknowledged for generations to
come, the only school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals.
The moral education of mankind has hitherto emanated chiefly from the law of
force, and is adapted almost solely to the relations which force creates. In the
less advanced states of society, people hardly recognize any relation with their
equals. To be an equal is to be an enemy. Society, from its highest place to
its lowest, is one long chain, or rather ladder, where every individual is either
above or below his nearest neighbor, and wherever he does not command he
must obey. Existing moralities, accordingly, are mainly fitted to a relation of
command and obedience. Yet command and obedience are but unfortunate
necessities of human life ; society in equality is its normal state. Already in
modern life, and more and more as it progressively improves, command and
obedience become exceptional facts in life, equal association its general rule.
. . . "We have had the morality of submission and the morality of chivalry and
generosity; the time is now come for the morality of justice."

In 'another part of the book this doctrine is stated more fully in a
passage of which it will be enough for my purpose to quote a very few
lines :

"There are many persons for whom it is not enough that the inequality" (be-
tween the sexes) "has no just or legitimate defence; they require to be told what
express advantage would be obtained by abolishing it. To which let me first
answer, the advantage of having all the most universal and pervading of all
human relations regulated by justice instead of injustice. The vast amount of
this gain to human nature it is hardly possible by any explanation or illustration
to place in a stronger light than it is placed in by the bare statement to any one
who attaches a moral meaning to words." .

These passages show what Mr. Mill's doctrine of equality is, and
how it forms the very root, the essence, so to speak, of his theory about
the subjection of women. I consider it unsound in every respect. I
think that it rests upon an unsound view of history, an unsound view
of morals, and a grotesquely distorted view of facts, and I believe that
its practical application would be as injurious as its theory is false.

The theory may be shortly restated in the following propositions,

ON THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 555

which I think are implied in or may be collected from the extracts
given above. They are as follows :

1. Justice requires that all people should live in society as equals.

2. History shows that human progress has been a progress from a
" law of force " to a condition in which command and obedience be-
come exceptional.

3. The " law of the strongest " having in this and one or two other
countries been " entirely abandoned " in all other relations of life, it
may be presumed not to apply to the relation between the sexes.

4. The notorious facts as to the nature of that relation show that
in this particular case the presumption is, in fact, well founded.

I. dissent from each of these propositions. In the present letter I
shall examine the first and the fourth, which may be regarded as an
illustration of the first. On a subsequent occasion I shall consider the
second and third. First, as to the proposition that justice requires
that all people should live in society as equals. I have already shown
that this is equivalent to the proposition that it is expedient that all
people should live in society as equals. Can this be proved ? for it is
certainly not a self-evident proposition.

I think that if the rights and duties which laws create are to be
generally advantageous, they ought to be adapted to the situation of
the persons who enjoy or are subject to them. They ought to recog-
nize both substantial equality and substantial inequality, and they
should from time to time be so moulded and altered as always to rep-
resent fairly well the existing state of society. Government, in a word,
ought to fit society as a man's clothes fit him. To establish by law
rights and duties which assume that people are equal when they are
not is like trying to make clumsy feet look handsome by the help of
tight boots. No doubt it may be necessary to legislate in such a man-
ner as to correct the vices of society, or to protect it against special
dangers or diseases to which it is liable. Law in this case is analogous
to surgery, and the rights and duties imposed by it might be compared
to the irons which are sometimes contrived for the purpose of support-
ing a weak limb or keeping it in some particular position. As a rule,
however, it is otherwise. Rights and duties should be so moulded as
to clothe, protect, and sustain society in the position which it naturally
assumes. The proposition, therefore, that justice demands that people
should live in society as equals may be translated thus : " It is inexpe-
dient that any law should recognize any inequality between human
beings."

This appears to me to involve the assertion, " There are no inequali-
ties between human beings of sufficient importance to influence the
rights and duties which it is expedient to confer upon them." This
proposition I altogether deny. I say that there are many such differ-
ences, some of which are more durable and more widely extended than
others, and of which some are so marked and so important that, un-

556 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

less human nature is radically changed, we cannot even imagine their
removal ; and of these the differences of age and sex ai*e the most
important.

The difference of age is so distinct a case of inequality that even
Mr. Mill does not object to its recognition. He admits, as every one
must, that perhaps a third or more of the average term of human life
— and that the portion of it in which the strongest, the most durable,
and beyond all comparison the most important impressions are made
on human beings, the period in which character is formed — must be
passed by every one in a state of submission, dependence, and obedi-
ence to orders the objects of which are usually most imperfectly un-
derstood by the persons who receive them. Indeed, as I have pointed
out in previous letters, Mr. Mill is disposed rather to exaggerate than
to underrate the influence of education and the powers of educators.
Is not this a clear case of inequality of the strongest kind, and does it
not at all events afford a most instructive precedent in favor of the
recognition by law of a marked natural distinction ? If children were
regarded by law as the equals of adults, the result would be something
infinitely worse than barbarism. It would involve a degree of cruelty
to the young which can hardly be realized even in imagination. The
proceeding, in short, would be so utterly monstrous and irrational that
I suppose it never entered into the head of the wildest zealot for equality
to propose it. Upon the practical question all are agreed ; but con-
sider the consequences which it involves. It involves the consequence
that, so far from being " unfortunate necessities," command and obedi-
ence stand at the very entrance to life, and preside over the most im-
portant part of it. It involves the consequence that the exertion of
power and constraint is so important and so indispensable in the great-
est of all matters that it is a less evil to invest with it every head of a
family indiscriminately, however unfit he may be to exercise it, than
to fail to provide for its exercise. It involves the consequence that, by
mere lapse of time and by following the promptings of passion, men
acquire over others a position of superiority and of inequality which
all nations and ages, the most cultivated as well as the rudest, have
done their best to surround with every association of awe and rever-
ence. The title of Father is the one which the best part of the human
race have given to God, as being the least inadequate and inappropri-
ate means of indicating the union of love, reverence, and submission.
Whoever first gave the command or uttered the maxim, " Honor thy
father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land," had a
far better conception of the essential conditions of permanent national
existence and prosperity than the author of the motto " Liberty, Equal-
ity, and Fraternity."

Now, if society and government ought to recognize the inequality
of age as the foundation of an inequality of rights of this inrportance,
it appears to me at least equally clear that they ought to recognize the

ON THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 557

inequality of sex for the same purpose, if it is a real inequality. Is it
one ? There are some propositions which it is difficult to prove, be-
cause they are so plain, and this is one of them. The physical differ-
ences between the two sexes affect every part of the human body,
from the hair of the head to the sole of the feet, from the size and
density of the bones to the texture of the brain and the character of
the nervous system. Ingenious people may argue about any thing, and
Mr. Mill does say a great number of things about women which, as I
have already observed, I will not discuss ; but all the talk in the world
will never shake the proposition that men are stronger than women in
every shape. They have greater muscular and nervous force, greater
intellectual force, greater vigor of character. This general truth,
which has been observed under all sorts of circumstances and in every
age and country, has also in every age and country led to a division
of labor between men and women, the general outline of which is as
familiar and as universal as the general outline of the differences be-
tween them. These are the facts, and the question is, whether the law
and public opinion ought to recognize this difference. How it ought
to recognize it, what difference it ought to make between men and
women as such, is quite another question. The first point to consider
is, whether it ought to ti-eat them as equals, although, as I have shown,
they are not equals, because men are the stronger. I will take one or
two illustrations. Men, no one denies, may, and in some cases ought
to, be liable to compulsory military service. No one, I suppose, would
hesitate to admit that, if we were engaged in a great war, it might be-
come necessary, or that if necessary it would be right, to have a con-
scription both for the land and for the sea service. Ought men and
women to be subject to it indiscriminately ? If any one says that they
ought, I have no more to say, except that he has got into the region
at which argument is useless. But if it is admitted that this ought not
to be done, an inequality of treatment founded on a radical inequality
between the two sexes is admitted, and, if this admission is once made,
where are you to draw the line ? Turn from the case of liability to
military service to that of education, which in Germany is rightly re-
garded as the other great branch of state activity, and the same ques-
tion presents itself in another shape. Are boys and girls to be edu-
cated indiscriminately, and to be instructed in the same things ? Are
boys to learn to sew, to keep house, and to cook, as girls unquestiona-
bly ought to be, and are girls to play at cricket, to row, and be drilled
like boys ? I cannot argue with a person who says Yes. A person
who says No admits an inequality between the sexes on which educa-
tion must be founded, and which it must therefore perpetuate and per-
haps increase.

Follow the matter a step further to the vital point of the whole
question — marriage. Marriage is one of the subjects with which it
is absolutely necessary both for law and morals to deal in some way

553 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or other. All that I need consider in reference to the present purpose
is the question whether the laws and moral rules which relate to it
should regard it as a contract between equals, or as a contract between
a stronger and a weaker person involving subordination for certain
purposes on the part of the weaker to the stronger. I say that a law
which proceeded on the former and not on the latter of these views
would be founded on a totally false assumption, and would involve
cruel injustice in the sense of extreme general inexpediency, especially
to women. If the parties to a contract of marriage are treated as
equals, it is impossible to avoid the inference that marriage, like other
partnerships, may be dissolved at pleasure. The advocates of women's
rights are exceedingly shy of stating this plainly. Mr. Mill says noth-
ing about it in his book on the " Subjection of Women," though in one
place he comes very near to saying so, but it is as clear an inference
from his principles as any thing can possibly be, nor has he ever dis-
avowed it. If this were the law, it would make women the slaves of
their husbands. A woman loses the qualities which make her attrac-
tive to men much earlier than men lose those which make them attrac-
tive to women. The tie between a woman and young children is gen-
erally far closer than the tie between them and their father. A
woman who is no longer young, and who is the mother of children,
would thus be absolutely in her husband's power, in nine cases out of
ten, if he might put an end to the marriage when he pleased. This is
one inequality in the position of the parties which must be recognized
and provided for beforehand if the contract is to be for their common
good. A second inequality is this : When a man marries, it is gen-
erally because he feels himself established in life. He incurs, no doubt,
a good deal of expense, but he does not in any degree impair his
means of earning a living. When a woman marries, she practically
renounces in all but the rarest cases the possibility of undertaking any
profession but one, and the possibility of carrying on that one profes-
sion in the society of any man but one. Here is a second inequality.
It would be easy to mention others of the deepest importance, but
these are enough to show that to treat a contract of marriage as a
contract between persons who are upon an equality in regard of
strength and power to protect their interest is to treat it as being what
it notoriously is not.

Again, the contract is one which involves subordination and obe-
dience on the part of the weaker party to the stronger. The proof
of this is, to my mind, as clear as that of a proposition in Euclid, and
it is this :

1. Marriage is a contract, one of the principal ones of which is the
government of a family.

2. This government must be vested either by law or by contract in
the hands of one of the two married persons.

3. If the arrangement is made by contract, the remedy for breach

ON THE EQUALITY OF THE SEXES. 559

of it must either be by law or by a dissolution of tlie partnership at
the will of the contracting parties.

4. Law could give no remedy in such a case. Therefore the only
remedy for breach of the contract would be dissolution of the mar-
riage.

5. Therefore, if marriage is to be permanent, the government of
the family mwst be put by law and by moral rules in the hands of the
husband, for no one proposes to give it to the wife.

Mr. Mill is totally unable to meet this argument, and apparently
embraces the alternative that marriage ought to be dissoluble at the
pleasure of the parties. After much argument as to contracts which
appear to be visionary, his words are these : " Things never come to
an issue of downright power on one side and obedience on the other
except where the connection has been altogether a mistake, and it
would be a blessing to both parties to be relieved from it."

This appears to me to show a complete misapprehension of the
nature of family government, and of the sort of cases in which the
question of obedience and authority can arise between husband and
wife. No one contends that a man ought to have power to order his
wife about like a slave, and beat her if she disobeys him. Such con-
duct in the eye of the law would be cruelty, and ground for a separa-
tion. The question of obedience arises in quite another way. It may,
and no doubt often does, arise between the very best and most affec-
tionate married people, and it need no more interfere with their mutual
affection than the absolute power of the captain of a ship need inter-
fere with perfect friendship and confidence between himself and his first-
lieutenant. Take the following set of questions : " Shall we live on this
scale or that ? Shall we associate with such and such persons ? Shall
I, the husband, embark in such an undertaking, and shall we change
our place of residence in order that I may do so ? Shall we send
our son to college ? Shall we send our daughters to school or have a
governess ? For what profession shall we train our sons ? " On these
and a thousand other such questions the wisest and the most affection-
ate people might arrive at opposite conclusions. What is to be done
in such a case ? for something must be done. I say the wife ought to
give way. She ought to obey her husband, and carry out the view at
which he deliberately arrives, just as, when the captain gives the word
to cut away the masts, the lieutenant carries out his orders at once,
though he may be a better seaman and may disapprove them. I also
say that, to regard this as a humiliation, as a wrong, or as an evil in
itself, is a mark not of spirit and courage, but of a base, unworthy,
mutinous disposition — a disposition utterly subversive of all that is
most worth having in life. The tacit assumption involved in it is that
it is a degradation ever to give up one's own will to the will of another,
and to me this appears the root of all evil, the negation of that which
renders any combined efforts possible. No case can be specified in

560 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which people unite for a common object, from making a pair of shoes
up to governing an empire, in which the power to decide does not rest
somewhere ; and what is this but command and obedience ? Of course
the person who for the time being is in command is of all fools the
greatest if he deprives himself of the advantage of advice, if he is
obstinate in his own opinion, if he does not hear as well as determine ;
but it is also practically certain that his inclination to hear will be
proportioned to the degree of importance which he has been led to
attach to the function of determining.

To sum the matter up, it appears to me that all the laws and moral
rules by which the relation between the sexes is regulated should pro-
ceed upon the principle that their object is to provide for the common
good of two great divisions of mankind who are connected together
by the closest and most durable of all bonds, and who can no more
have really conflicting interests than the different members of the same
body, but who are not and never can be equals in any of the different
forms of strength.

This problem law and morals have solved by monogamy, indis-
soluble marriage on the footing of the obedience of the wife to the
husband, and a division of labor with corresponding differences in the
matters of conduct, manners, and dress. Substantially this solution
appears to me to be right and true ; but I freely admit that in many
particulars the stronger party has in this, as in other cases, abused his
strength, and made rules for his supposed advantage, which, in fact,
are greatly to the injury of both parties. It is, needless to say any
thing in detail of the stupid coarseness of the laws about the effects
of marriage on property — laws which might easily be replaced by a
general statutory marriage settlement analogous to those which every
prudent person makes who has any thing to settle. As to acts of vio-
lence against women, by all means make the law on this head as severe
as it can be made without defeating itself.

As to throwing open to women the one or two employments from
which they are at present excluded, it is rather a matter of sentiment
than of practical importance. I need not revive in this place a trite
discussion. My object at present is simply to establish the general
proposition that men and women are not equals, and that the laws
which affect their relations ought to recognize that fact.

In my next letter I shall examine the opinion that laws which rec-
ognize any sort of inequality between human beings are mere vestiges
of the past, against which as such there lies the strongest of all pre-
sumptions.— I am, sir, your obedient servant, "F."

INSTINCT IN YOUNG BIRDS. 56i

INSTINCT IN YOUNG BIKDS.

Br D. A. SPALDING.

WITH regard to instinct we have yet to ascertain the facts. Do
the animals exhibit untaught skill and innate knowledge ?
May not the supposed examples of instinct be after all but the results
of rapid learning and imitation ? The controversy on this subject has
been chiefly concerning the perceptions of distance and direction by
the eye and the ear. Against the instinctive character of these per-
ceptions it is argued that, as distance means movement, locomotion,
the very essence of the idea is such as cannot be taken in by the eye
or ear ; that what the varying sensations of sight and hearing corre-
spond to, must be got at by moving over the ground by experience.
The results, however, of experiments on chickens were wholly in favor
of the instinctive nature of these perceptions. Chickens kept in a state
of blindness by various devices, from one to three days, when placed
in the light under a set of carefully-prepared conditions, gave conclu-
sive evidence against the theory that the perceptions of distance and
direction by the eye are the result of associations formed in the expe-
rience of each individual life. Often, at the end of two minutes, they
followed with their eyes the movements of crawling insects, tuiming
their heads with all the precision of an old fowl. In from two to fif-
teen minutes they pecked at some object, showing, not merely an in-
stinctive perception of distance, but an original ability to measure dis-
tance with something like infallible accuracy. If beyond the reach of
their necks, they walked or ran up to the object of their pursuit, and
may be said to have invariably struck it, never missing by more than
a hair's-breadth ; this, too, when the specks at which they struck were
no bigger than the smallest visible dot of an %. To seize between the
points of the mandible at the very instant of striking seemed a more
difficult operation. Though at times they seized and swallowed an in-
sect at the first attempt, more frequently they struck five or six times,
lifting once or twice before they succeeded in swallowing their first
food. To take, by way of illustration, the observations on a single
case a little in detail : A chicken, at the end of six minutes, after hav-
ing its eyes unveiled, followed with its head the movements of a fly
twelve inches distant ; at ten minutes, the fly, coming within reach of
its neck, was seized and swallowed at the first stroke ; at the end of
twenty minutes it had not attempted to walk a step. It was then,
placed on rough ground within sight and call of a hen, with chickens
of its own age. After standing chirping for about a minute, it went
straight toward the hen, displaying as keen a perception of the quali-
ties of the outer world as it was ever likely to possess in after-life. It
never required to knock its head against a stone to discover that there-
tol. ii. — 36

562 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was " no road that way." It leaped over the smaller obstacles that lay
in its path, and ran round the larger, reaching the mother in as nearly
a straight line as the nature of the ground would permit. Thus it
would seem that, prior to experience, the eye — at least the eye of the
chicken — perceives the primary qualities of the external world, all ar-
guments of the purely analytical school of psychology to the contrary,
notwithstanding.

Not less decisive were experiments on hearing. Chickens hatched
and kept in the dai'k for a day or two, on being placed in the light
nine or ten feet from a box in which a brooding hen was concealed,
after standing chirping for a minute or two, uniformly set off straight
to the box in answer to the call of the hen which they had never seen
and never before heard. This they did struggling through grass and
over rough ground, when not able to stand steadily on their legs.
Again, chickens that from the first had been denied the use of their
eyes, by having hoods drawn over their heads while yet in the shell,
were, while thus blind, made the subject of experiment. These, when
left to themselves, seldom made a forward step, their movements were
round and round and backward ; but, when placed within five or six
feet of the hen-mother, they, in answer to her call, became much more
lively, began to make little forward journeys, and soon followed her
by sound alone, though of course blindly. Another experiment con-
sisted in rendering chickens deaf for a time by sealing their ears with
several folds of gum-paper before they had escaped from the shell.
These, on having their ears opened when two or three days old, and
being placed within call of the mother, concealed in a box or on the
other side of a door, after turning round a few times ran straight to
the spot whence came the first sound they had ever heard. Clearly, of
these chickens it cannot be said that sounds were to them at first but
meaningless sensations.

One or two observations favorable to the opinion that animals have
an instinctive knowledge of their enemies may be taken for what they
are worth. "When twelve days old, one of my little proteges, running
about beside me, gave the peculiar chirp whereby they announce the
approach of danger. On looking up, a sparrow-hawk was seen hover-
ing at a great height overhead. Again, a young hawk was made to
fly over a hen with her first brood of chickens, then about a week old.
In the twinkling of an eye, most of the chickens were hid among
grass and bushes. And scarcely had the hawk touched the ground,
about twelve yards from where the hen had been sitting, when she fell
qpon it, and would soon have killed it outright. A young turkey gave
even more striking evidence. "When ten days old it heard the voice
of a. hawk for the first time, and just beside it. Like an arrow from
the bow it darted off in the opposite direction, and, crouched in a cor-
ner, remained for ten minutes motionless and dumb with fear. Out
of a vast number of experiments with chickens and bees, though the

INSTINCT IN YOUNG BIRDS. 563

results were not uniform, yet, in the great majority of instances, the
chickens gave evidence of instinctive fear of these sting-bearing in-
sects.

But to return to examples of instinctive skill and knowledge, con-
cerning which I think no doubt can remain, a very useful instinct may
be observed in the early attention that chickens pay to their toilet.
As soon as they can hold up their heads, when only from four to five
hours old, they attempt dressing at their wings, that, too, when they
have been denied the use of their eyes. Another incontestable case
of instinct may be seen in the art of scraping in search of food. With-
out any opportunities of imitation, chickens begin to scrape when from
two to six days old. Most frequently the circumstances are sugges-
tive ; at other times, however, the first attempt, which generally con-
sists of a sort of nervous dance, was made on a smooth table. The
unacquired dexterity shown in the capture of insects is very remark-
able. A duckling one day old, on being placed in the open air for the
first time, almost immediately snapped at, and caught, a fly on the
wing. Still more interesting is the instructive art of catching flies
peculiar to the turkey. When not a day and a half old I observed a
young turkey, which I had adopted while yet in the shell, pointing its
beak slowly and deliberately at flies and other small insects without
actually pecking at them. In doing this its head could be seen to
shake like a hand that is attempted to be held steady by a visible ef-
fort. This I recorded when I did not understand its meaning. For it
was not until afterward that I observed a turkey, when it sees a fly
settle on any object, steals on the unwary insect with slow and meas-
ured step, and, when sufficiently near, advances its head very slowly
and steadily until within reach of its prey, which is then seized by a
sudden dart. In still further confirmation of the opinion that such
wonderful examples of dexterity and cunning are instinctive and not
acquired, may be adduced the significant fact that the individuals of
each species have little capacity to learn any thing not found in the
habits of their progenitors. A chicken was made, from the first and
for several months, the sole companion of a young turkey. Yet it
never showed the slightest tendency to adopt the admirable art of
catching flies that it saw practised before its eyes every hour of the
day.

The only theory in explanation of the phenomena of instinct that
has an air of science about it is, the doctrine of Inherited Association.
Instinct in the present generation of animals is the product of the ac-
cumulated experiences of past generations. Great difficulty, however,
is felt by many in conceiving how any thing so impalpable as fear at
the sight of a bee should be transmitted from parent to offspring. It
should be remembered, however, that the permanence of such associa-
tions in the history of an individual life depends on the correspond-
ing impress given to the nervous organization. We cannot, strictly

564 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

speaking, experience any individual act of consciousness twice over ;
but as, by pulling the bell-cord to-day we can, in the language of or-
dinary discourse, produce the same sound we heard yesterday, so,
while the established connections among the nerves and nerve-centres
hold, we are enabled to live our experiences over again. Now, why
should not those modifications of brain-matter that, enduring from
hour to hour and from day to day, render acquisition possible, be, like
any other physical peculiarity, transmitted from parent to offspring ?
That they ai'e so transmitted is all but proved by the facts of instinct,
while these, in their turn, receive their only rational explanation in this
theory of Inherited Association. — Nature.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

By HERBERT SPENCER.

VIII. — The Educational Bias.

IT would clear up our ideas about many things, if we distinctly recog-
nized the truth that we have two religions. Primitive humanity
has but one. The humanity of the remote future will have but one.
The two are opposed ; and we who live midway in the course of civili-
zation have to believe in both.

These two religions are adapted to two conflicting sets of social re-
quirements. The one set is supreme at the beginning ; the other set
will be supreme at the end ; and a compromise has to be maintained
between them during the progress from beginning to end. On the
one hand, there is the necessity of social self-preservation in face of
external enemies. On the other hand, there is the necessity of cooper-
ation among fellow-citizens, which can exist only in proportion as fair
dealing of man with man creates mutual trust. Unless the one neces-
sity is met, the society disappears by extinction, or by absorption into
some conquering society. Unless the other necessity is met, there
cannot be that division of labor, exchange of services; consequent in-
dustrial progress and increase of numbers, by which a society is made
strong enough to survive. In adjustment to these two antagonist ne-
cessities, there grow up two antagonist codes of duty ; which severally
acquire supernatural sanctions. And thus we get the two coexisting
religions — the religion of enmity and the religion of amity.

Of course, I do not mean that these are both called religions. Here
I am not speaking of names ; I am speaking simply of tilings. Now-
adays, men do not pay the same nominal homage to the religion of
enmity that they do to the religion of amity — the religion of amity

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 565

occupies the place of honor. But the real homage is paid in large
measure, if not in the larger measure, to the religion of enmity. The
religion of enmity nearly all men actually believe. The religion of
amity most of them merely believe they believe. In some discussion,
say, about international affairs, remind them of certain precepts con-
tained in the creed they profess, and the most you get is a tepid assent.
Now, let the conversation turn on the " tunding" at Winchester, or on
the treatment of Indian mutineers, or on the Jamaica business ; and
you find that, while the precepts tepidly assented to were but nomi-
nally believed, quite opposite precepts are believed undoubtingly and
defended with fervor.

Curiously enough, to maintain these antagonist religions, which in
our transitional state are both requisite, we have adopted from two
different races two different cults. From the books of the Jewish New
Testament we take our religion of amity. Greek and Latin epics and
histories serve as gospels for our religion of enmity. In the education
of our youth we devote a small portion of time to the one, and a large
portion of time to the other. And, as though to make the compromise
effectual, these two cults are carried on in the same places by the same
teachers. At our Public Schools, as also at many other schools, the
same men are priests of both religions. The nobility of self-sacrifice,
set forth in Scripture-lessons and dwelt on in sermons, is made con-
spicuous every seventh day ; while during the other six days the nobil-
ity of sacrificing others is exhibited in glowing words. The sacred
duty of blood-revenge, which, as existing savages show us, constitutes
the religion of enmity in its primitive form — which, as shown us in
ancient literature, is enforced by divine sanction, or rather by divine
command, as well as by the opinion of men — is the duty which during
the six days is deeply stamped on natures quite ready to receive it ;
and then something is done toward obliterating the stamp, when, on
the seventh day, vengeance is interdicted.

A priori, it might be thought impossible that men should continue
through life holding two doctrines which are mutually destructive.
But their ability to compromise between conflicting beliefs is very re-
markable— remarkable, at least, if we suppose them to put their con-
flicting beliefs side by side ; not so remarkable if we recognize the fact
that they do not put them side by side. A late distinguished physicist,
whose science and religion seemed to his friends irreconcilable, retained
both for the reason that he deliberately refused to compare the propo-
sitions of the one with those of the other. To speak in metaphor —
when he entered his oratory he shut the door of his laboratory ; and
when he entered his laboratory he shut the door of his oratory. It is
because they habitually do something similar, that men live so con-
tentedly under this logically-indefensible compromise between their
two creeds. As the intelligent child, propounding to his seniors puz-
zling theological questions, and meeting many rebuffs, eventually ceases

5 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to think about difficulties of which he can get no solutions ; so, a little
later, the contradictions between the things taught to him in school
and in church, at first startling and inexplicable, become by-and-by
familiar, and no longer attract his attention. Thus while growing up
he acquires, in common with all around him, the habit of using first
one and then the other of his creeds as the occasion demands ; and at
maturity the habit has become completely established. Now he en-
larges on the need for maintaining the national honor, and thinks it
mean to arbitrate about an aggression instead of avenging it by war ;
and now, calling his servants together, he reads a prayer in which he
asks God that our trespasses may be forgiven as we forgive the tres-
passes against us. That which he prays for as a virtue on the Sunday,
he scorns as a vice on the Monday.

The religion of amity and the religion of enmity, with the emotions
they respectively enlist, are important factors in sociological conclu-
sions; and rational sociological conclusions can be produced only
when both sets of factors come into play. We have to look at each
cluster of social facts as a phase in a continuous metamorphosis. We
have to look at the conflicting religious beliefs and feelings included
in this cluster of facts as elements in this phase. We have to do more.
We have to consider as transitional, also, the conflicting religious be-
liefs and feelings in which we are brought up, and which distort our
views, not only of passing phenomena in our own society, but also of
phenomena in other societies and in other times ; and the aberrations
they cause in our inferences have to be sought for and rectified. Of
these two religions taught us, we must constantly remember that dur-
ing civilization the religion of enmity is slowly losing strength, while
the religion of amity is slowly gaining strength. We must bear in
mind that at each stage a certain ratio between them has to be main-
tained. We must infer that the existing ratio is only a temporary
one, and that the accompanying bias to this or that conviction respect-
ing social affairs is temporary. And if we are to reach those unbiassed
convictions which form parts of the Social Science, we can do it only
by allowing for this temporary bias — only by analyzing and criticising
the sentiments and dogmas they respectively sanctify, with the view
of discovering how far these need qualification.

To see how greatly our opposite religions respectively pervert
sociological beliefs, and how needful it is that the opposite perversions
they cause should be corrected, we must here contemplate the ex-
tremes to which men are carried, now by the one and now by the
other.

As from antagonist physical forces, as from antagonist emotions in
each man, so from the antagonist social tendencies men's emotions
create, there always results, not a medium state, but a rhythm between
opposite states. The one force or tendency is not continuously

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 567

counterbalanced by the other force or tendency; but now the one
greatly predominates, and presently by reaction there comes a pre-
dominance of the other. That which we are shown by variations in
the prices of stocks, shares, or commodities, occurring daily, weekly,
and in longer intervals — that which we observe in the alternation of
manias and panics, caused by irrational hopes and absurd fears —
that which diagrams of these variations express by the ascents and
descents of a line, now to a great height and now to an equivalent
depth, we discover in all social phenomena, moral and religious in-
cluded. It is exhibited on a large scale and on a small scale — by
rhythms extending over centuries and by rhythms of short periods.
And we see it, not only in waves of conflicting feelings and opinions
pervading societies as wholes, but also in the opposite excesses gone
to by individuals and sects in the same society at the same time.
There is never a balanced judgment and a balanced action, but always
a cancelling of one another by contrary errors : " Men pair off in insane
parties," as Emerson puts it. Something like rationality is finally ob-
tained as a product of mutually-destructive irrationalities. As, for ex-
ample, in the treatment of our criminals, there alternates or coexists an
unreasoning severity with an unreasoning lenity : now we punish in a
spirit of vengeance, now we pamper with a maudlin sympathy. At
no time is there a due adjustment of penalty to transgression such as
the course of Nature shows us — an inflicting of neither more nor less
evil than the reaction which the action causes.

The religion of unqualified altruism, coming as it did to correct by
an opposite excess the religion of unqualified egoism, exhibits to us
this general law on a great scale. Against the doctrine of entire self-
ishness it sets the doctrine of entire self-sacrifice. In place of the
aboriginal creed not requiring you to love your fellow-man at all, but
insisting only that certain of your fellow-men you shall hate even to
the death, there comes a creed directing that you shall in no case do
any thing prompted by hate of your fellow-man, but shall love him as
yourself. Nineteen centuries have since wrought some compromise
between these opposite creeds. It has never been rational, however,
but only empirical — mainly, indeed, unconscious compromise. There
is not yet a distinct recognition of what truth each extreme stands for,
and a perception that the two truths must be coordinated ; but there
is little more than a partial rectifying of excesses one way by excesses
the other way. By these persons purely-egoistic lives are led. By
those, altruism is carried to the extent of bringing on ill health and
premature death. Even on comparing the acts of the same individual,
Wo find, not an habitual balance between the two tendencies, but now
an effort to inflict great evil on some foreign aggressor or some male-
factor at home, and now a disproportioned sacrifice on behalf of one
often quite unworthy of it. That altruism is right, but that egoism is
also right, and that there requires a continual compromise between

568 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the two, is a conclusion which but few consciously formulate and still
fewer avow.

Yet the untenability of the doctrine of self-sacrifice in its extreme
form is conspicuous enough ; and is tacitly admitted by all in their
ordinary inferences and daily actions. Work, enterprise, invention,
improvement, as they have gone on from the beginning and are going
on now, depend on the principle that, among citizens severally having
unsatisfied wants, each cares more to satisfy his own wants than to
satisfy the wants of others. The fact, that industrial activities proceed
on this basis, being recognized, the inevitable implication is that un-
qualified altruism would dissolve all existing social organizations:
leaving the onus of proof that absolutely-alien social organizations
would act. That they would not act becomes clear on supposing the
opposite principle in force. Were A to be careless of himself, and to
care only for the welfare of B, C, and D, while each of these, paying
no attention to his own needs, busied himself in supplying the needs
of the others, this roundabout process, besides being troublesome,
would very ill meet the requirements of each, unless each could have
his neighbor's consciousness. And after observing this we must infer
that a certain predominance of egoism over altruism is beneficial, and
that in fact no other arrangement would answer. Do but ask what
would happen if, of A, B, C, D, etc., each declined to have a gratifica-
tion, in his anxiety that some one else should have it, and that the
some one else similarly persisted in refusing it out of sympathy with
his fellows — do but contemplate the resulting confusion and cross-
purposes and loss of gratification to all, and you will see that pure
altruism would bring things to a dead-lock just as much as pure
egoism. In truth, nobody ever dreams of acting out the altruistic
theory in all the relations of life. The Quaker who proposes to accept
literally, and to practise, the precepts of Christianity, carries on his
business on egoistic principles just as much as his neighbors. Though,
nominally, he holds that he is to take no thought for the morrow, his
thought for the morrow betrays as distinct an egoism as that of men
in general ; and he is conscious that to take as much thought for the
morrows of others would be ruinous to him and eventually mischievous
to all.

While, however, no one is entirely altruistic — while no one really
believes an entirely altruistic life to be practicable, there continues the
tacit assertion that conduct ought to be entirely altruistic. It does not
seem to be suspected that pure altruism is actually wrong. Brought
up, as each is, in the nominal acceptance of a creed which wholly
subordinates egoism to altruism, and gives sundry precepts that are
absolutely altruistic, each citizen, while ignoring these in his business,
and tacitly denying them in various opinions he utters, daily gives to
them lip-homage, and supposes that acceptance of them is required of
him though he finds it impossible. Feeling that he cannot call them

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 569

in question ■without calling in question his religion as a whole, he
pretends to others and to himself that he believes them — believes
things which in his innermost consciousness he knows he does not
believe. lie professes to think that entire self-sacrifice must be right,
though dimly conscious that it would be fatal.

If he had the courage to think out clearly what he vaguely per-
ceives, he would discover that self-sacrifice, passing a certain limit,
entails evil on all — evil on those for whom sacrifice is made as well as
on those who make it. "While a continual giving-up of pleasures and
continual submission to pains is physically injurious, so that its final
outcome is debility, disease, and abridgment of life, the continual
acceptance of benefits at the expense of a fellow-being is morally
injurious. Just as much as unselfishness is cultivated by the one,
selfishness is cultivated by the other. If to surrender a gratification
to another is noble, readiness to accept the gratification so surrendered
is ignoble ; and if repetition of the one kind of act is elevating, repeti-
tion of the other kind of act is degrading. So that, though up to a
certain point altruistic action blesses giver and receiver, beyond that
point it curses giver and receiver — physically deteriorates the one and
morally deteriorates the other. Every one can remember cases where
greediness for pleasures, reluctance to take trouble, and utter disregard
of those around, have been perpetually increased by unmeasured and
ever-ready kindnesses ; while the unwise benefactor has shown by
languid movements and pale face the debility consequent on disregard
of self: the outcome of the policy being destruction of the worthy in
making worse the unworthy.

The absurdity of unqualified altruism becomes, indeed, glaring
enough on remembering that it can be extensively practised only if in
the same society there coexist one moiety altruistic and one moiety
egoistic. Only those who are intensely selfish will allow their fellows
habitually to behave to them with extreme unselfishness. If all are
duly regardful of others, there are none to accept the sacrifices which
others are ready to make. If a high degree of sympathy characterizes
all, no one can be so unsympathetic as to let another receive positive
or negative injury that he may benefit. So that pure altruism in a
society implies a nature which makes pure altruism impossible, from
the absence of those toward whom it may be exercised !

Equally untenable does the doctrine show itself when looked at
from another point of view. If life and its gratifications are valuable
in another, they are equally valuable in self. There is no total
increase of happiness if as much is gained by one as is lost by another ;
and if, as continually happens, the gain is not equal to the loss — if the
recipient, already inferior, is further demoralized by habitual accept-
ance of sacrifices, and so made less capable of happiness (which he
inevitably is) — the total amount of happiness is diminished : benefactor
and beneficiary are both losers.

570 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The maintenance of the individuality is thus demonstrably a duty.
The assertion of personal claims is essential ; both as a means to self-
happiness, which is a unit in the general happiness, and as a means to
furthering the general happiness altruistically. Resistance to aggres-
sion is not simply justifiable but imperative. Non-resistance is at
variance with altruism and egoism alike. The extreme Christian
theory, which no one acts upon, which no one really believes, but
which most tacitly profess and a few avowedly profess, is as logically
indefensible as it is impracticable.

The religion of amity, then, taken by itself, is incomplete — it needs
supplementing. The doctrines it inculcates and the sentiments it
fosters, arising by reactions against opposite doctrines and sentiments,
run into extremes the other way.

Let us now turn to these opposite doctrines and sentiments, incul-
cated and fostered by the religion of enmity, and note the excesses to
which they run.

"Worthy of highest admiration is the " Tasmanian devil," which,
fighting to the last gasp, snarls with its dying breath. Admirable,
too, though less admirable, is our own bull-dog — a creature said some-
times to retain its hold even when a limb is cut off. To be admired
also for their " pluck," perhaps nearly in as great a degree, are some
of the carnivora, as the lion and the tiger ; since when driven to bay
they fight against great odds. Nor should we forget the game-cock,
supplying as it does a word of eulogy to the crowd who witness the
hanging of a murderer, and who half condone his crime if he " dies
game." Below these animals come mankind ; some of whom, indeed,
as the American Indians, bear tortures without groaning. And then,
considerably lower, must be placed the civilized man ; who, fighting
up to a certain point, and bearing considerable injury, ordinarily
yields when further fighting is useless.

Is the reader startled by this classification ? Why should he be ?
It is but a literal application of that standard of worth tacitly assumed
by most, and by some deliberately avowed. Obviously it is the
standard of worth believed in by M. Gambetta, who, after bloodshed
carried to the extent of prostrating France, lately reproached the
French Assembly by saying, "You preferred peace to honor; you
gave five milliards and two provinces." And there are not a few
among ourselves who so thoroughly agree in M. Gambetta's feeling,
that this utterance of his has gone far to redeem him in their estima-
tion. If the reader needs encouragement to side with such, plenty
more may be found for him. The Staffordshire collier, enjoying the
fio-htino- of doers when the fio-htino; of men is not to be witnessed, would
doubtless take the same view. In the slums of Whitechapel and St.
Giles's, among leaders of "the fancy," it is an unhesitating belief that
pluck and endurance are the highest of attributes ; and probably most

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 571

readers of BelVs Life in London would concur in this belief. More-
over, if he wants further sympathy to support him, he may find entire
races ready to give it ; especially that noble race of cannibals, the
Feejeeans, among whom bravery is so highly honored that, on their re-
turn from battle, the triumphant warriors are met by the women, who
place themselves at their unrestricted disposal. So that whoever in-
clines to adopt this measure of superiority will find many to side with
him — that is, if he likes his company.

Seriously, is it not amazing that civilized men should especially
pride themselves on a quality in which they are exceeded by inferior
varieties of their own race, and still more exceeded by inferior animals ?
Instead of regarding a man as manly in proportion as he possesses
moral attributes distinctively human, we regard him as manly in pro-
portion as he shows an attribute possessed in greater degrees by be-
ings from whom we derive our words of contempt. It was lately re-
marked by Mr. Greg that we take our point of honor from the prize-
ring ; but we do worse — we take our point of honor from beasts.
Nay, we take it from a beast inferior to those we are familiar with ;
for the " Tasmanian devil," in structure and intelligence, stands on a
much lower level of brutality than our lions and bull-dogs.

That resistance to aggression is to be applauded, and that the
courage implied by resistance is to be valued and admired, may be
fully admitted while denying that courage is to be regarded as the
supreme virtue. A large endowment of it is essential to a complete
nature ; but so are large endowments of other things which we do not
therefore make our measures of worth. A good body, well grown,
well proportioned, and of such quality in its tissues as to be enduring,
should bring, as it does bring, its share of admiration. Admirable,
too, in their ways, are good stomach and lungs, as well as a vigorous
vascular system ; for without these the power of self-preservation and
the power of preserving others will fall short. To be a fine animal is,
indeed, essential to many kinds of achievement ; and courage, which
is a general index of an organization capable of satisfying the require-
ments, is rightly valued for what it implies. Courage is, in fact, a
feeling that grows by accumulated experiences of successful dealings
with difficulties and dangers ; and these successful dealings are proofs
of competence in strength, agility, quickness, endurance, etc. No one
will deny that perpetual failures, resulting from incapacity of one
kind or other, produce discouragement ; or that repeated triumphs,
which are proofs of capacity, so raise the courage that there comes a
readiness to encounter greater difficulties. The fact that a dose of
brandy, by stimulating the circulation, produces " Dutch courage," as
it is called, joined with the fact well known to medical men, that
heart-disease brings on timidity, is of itself enough to show that
bravery is the natural correlative of ability to cope with circum-
stances of peril. But while we are thus taught that, in admiring cour-

572 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

age, we arc admiring physical superiorities and those superiorities of
mental faculty which give fitness for dealing with emergencies, we are
also taught that, unless we rank highest the bodily powers and those
powers which directly conduce to self-preservation, we cannot say
that courage is the highest attribute, and that the degree of it should
be our standard of honor.

That an over-estimate of courage is appropriate to our phase of
civilization may be very true. It is beyond doubt that, during the
struggle for existence among nations, it is needful that men should ad-
mire extremely the quality without which there can be no success in
the struggle. While, among neighboring nations, we have one in
which all the males are trained for war — while the sentiment of this
nation is such that students slash one another's faces in duels about
trifles, and are admired for their scars, especially by women — while
the military ascendency it tolerates is such that, for ill-usage by sol-
diers, ordinary citizens have no adequate redress — while the govern-
ment is such that, though the monarch as head of the Church con-
demns duelling as irreligious, and as head of the Law forbids it as a
crime, yet as head of the army he insists on it to the extent of expel-
ling officers who will not fight duels — while, I say, we have a neigh-
boring nation thus characterized, something of a kindred character in
appliances, sentiments, and beliefs, has to be maintained among our-
selves. When we find another neighboring nation believing that no
motive is so high as the love of glory, and no glory so great as that
gained by successful war — when we perceive the military spirit so per-
vading this nation that it loves to clothe its children in gwas^-military
costume — when we find one of its historians writing that the French
army is the great civilizer, and one of its generals lately saying that
the army is the soul of France — when we see that the vital energies
of this nation run mainly to teeth and claws, and that it quickly grows
new sets of teeth and claws in place of those pulled out ; it is needful
that we, too, should keep our teeth and claws in order, and should
maintain ideas and feelings adapted to the effectual use of them. There
is no gainsaying the truth that, while the predatory instincts continue
prompting nations to rob one another, destructive agencies must be
met by antagonist destructive agencies ; and, that this may be done,
honor must be given to the men who act as destructive agents, and
there must be an exaggerated estimate of the attributes which make
them efficient.

It may be very needful, therefore, that our boys should be accus-
tomed to harsh treatment, giving and receiviug brutal punishments
without too nice a consideration of their justice. It may be that, as
the Spartans and as the North- American Indians, in preparation for
warfare, subjected their young men to tortures, so should we ; and
thus, perhaps, the " education of a gentleman " may properly include
giving and receiving " hacking" of the shins at foot-ball: boot-toes

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 573

being purposely made heavy that they may inflict greater damage.
So, too, it may be well that boys should all in turn be subject to the
tender mercies of elder boys, with whose thrashings and kickings the
masters decline to interfere ; even though they are sometimes carried
to the extent of maiming for life. Possibly, too, it is needful that
each boy should be disciplined in submission to any tyrant who may
be set over him, by finding that appeal brings additional evils. "That
each should be made callous, morally as well as physically, by the
bearing of frequent wrongs, and should be made yet more callous
when, comino- into power, he inflicts punishments as whim or spite
prompts, may also be desirable. Nor, perhaps, can we wholly regret
that confusion of moral ideas which results when breaches of conven-
tional rules bring penalties as severe as are brought by acts morally
wron"-. For war does not consist with keen sensitiveness, physical or
moral. Reluctance to inflict injury, and reluctance to risk injury,
would equally render it impossible. Scruples of conscience respecting
the rectitude of their cause would paralyze officers and soldiers. So
that a certain brutalization has to be maintained during our passing
phase of civilization. It may, indeed, be that "the Public School
spirit," which, as truly said, is carried into our public life, is not the
most desirable for a free country. It may be that early subjection to
despotism, and early exercise of uncontrolled power, are not the best
possible preparations for legislators. It may be that those, who, on
the magistrate's bench, have to maintain right against might, could
be better trained than by submission to violence and subsequent exer-
cise of violence. And it may be that some other discipline than that
of the stick would be desirable for men who officer the press and
guide public opinion on questions of equity. But, doubtless, while
national antagonisms continue strong and national defence a necessity,
there is a fitness in this semi-military discipline, with pains and bruises
to uphold it. And a duly-adapted code of honor has the like defence.
Here, however, if we are to free ourselves from transitory senti-
ments and ideas, so as to be capable of framing scientific conceptions,
we must ask what warrant there is for this exaltation of the destruc-
tive activities and of the qualities implied by them ? We must ask
how it is possible for men rightly to pride themselves on attributes
possessed in a higher degree by creatures so much lower ? "We must
consider whether, in the absence of a religious justification, there is
any ethical justification for the idea that the most noble traits are
such as cannot be displayed without the infliction of pain and death.
When we do this, we are obliged to admit that the religion of enmity
in its unqualified form is as indefensible as the religion of amity in
its unqualified form. Each proves itself to be one of those insane
extremes out of which there comes a sane mean by union with its
opposite. The two religions stand respectively for the claims of self
and the claims of others. The one religion holds it glorious to resist

574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

aggression, and, while risking death in doing this, to inflict death
upon others. The other religion teaches that the glory is in not re-
sisting aggression, and in yielding to others while not asserting the
claims of self. A civilized humanity will render the one glory just
as impossible of achievement as the other. A diminishing egoism
and an increasing altruism must make each of these opj^osite kinds
of honor unattainable. For such an advance implies a cessation of
those aggressions which make possible the nobility of resistance ;
while it implies a refusal to accept those sacrifices without which
there cannot be the nobility of self-sacrifice. The two extremes must
cancel ; leaving a moral code and a standard of honor free from ir-
rational excesses. Along with a latent self-assertion, there will go a
readiness to yield to others, kept in cheek by the refusal of others to
accept more than their due.

And now, having noted the perversions of thought and sentiment
fostered by the religion of amity and the religion of enmity, under
which we are educated in so chaotic a fashion, let us go on to note
the ways in which these affect sociological conceptions. Certain im-
portant truths, apt to be shut oirt from the minds of the few who are
unduly swayed by the religion of amity, may first be set down.

One of the facts difficult to reconcile with current theories of the
Universe is, that high organizations, throughout the animal kingdom,
habitually serve to aid destruction or to aid escape from destruction.
If we hold to the ancient view, we must say that high organization
has been deliberately devised for such purposes. If we accejDt the
modern view, we must say that high organization has been evolved
by the exercise of destructive activities during immeasurable periods
of the past. Here we choose the last alternative. To the never-
ceasing efforts to catch and eat, and the never-ceasing endeavors to
avoid being caught and eaten, is to be ascribed the development of
the various senses and the various motor organs directed by them.
The bird of prey with the keenest vision has, other things equal, sur-
vived when members of its species that did not see so far died from
want of food ; and, by such survivals, keenness of vision has been
made greater in course of generations. The fleetest members of an
herbivorous herd, escaping when the slower fell victims to a carnivore,
left posterity ; among which, again, those with the most perfectly-
adapted limbs survived : the carnivores themselves being at the same
time similarly disciplined and their speed increased. So, too, with in-
telligence. Sagacity that detected a danger which stupidity did not
perceive, lived and propagated; and the cunning which hit upon a
new deception, and so secured prey not otherwise to be caught, left
posterity where a smaller endowment of cunning failed. This mutual
perfecting of pursuer and pursued, acting upon their entire organiza-
tions, has been going on throughout all time ; and human beings have

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 575

been subject to it just as much as other beings. "Warfare among men,
like warfare among animals, has had a large share in raising their or-
ganizations to a higher stage. Here are some of the various ways in
which it has worked :

In the first place, it has had the effect of continually extirpating
races which, for some reason or other, were least fitted to cope with
the conditions of existence they were subject to. The killing-off of
relatively-feeble tribes, or tribes relatively wanting in endurance, or
courage, or sagacity, or power of cooperation, must have tended ever
to maintain, and occasionally to increase, the amounts of life-preserv-
ing powers possessed by men.

Beyond this average advance caused by destruction of the least-
developed races and the least-developed individuals, there has been
an average advance caused by inheritance of those further develop-
ments due to functional activity. Remember the skill of the Indian
in following a trail, and remember that under kindred stimuli many
of his perceptions and feelings and bodily powers have been habitually
taxed to the uttermost, and it becomes clear that the struggle for ex-
istence between neighboring tribes has had an important effect in cul-
tivating faculties of various kinds. Just as, to take an illustration
from among ourselves, the skill of the police cultivates cunning among
burglars, which, again, leading to further precautions, generates fur-
ther devices to evade them; so, by the unceasing antagonisms be-
tween human societies, small and large, there has been a mutual cul-
ture of an adapted intelligence, a mutual culture of certain traits of
character not to be undervalued, and a mutual culture of bodily
powers.

A large effect, too, has been produced upon the development of the
arts. In responding to the imperative demands of war, industry made
important advances and gained much of its skill. Indeed, it may be
questioned whether, in the absence of that exercise of manipulative
faculty which the making of weapons originally gave, there would
ever have been produced the tools required for developed industry.
If we go back to the Stone- Age, we see that implements of the chase
and implements of war are those showing most labor and dexterity.
If we take still-existing human races which were without metals when
we found them, we see in their skilfully-wrought stone clubs, as well
as in their large war-canoes, that the needs of defence and attack were
the chief stimuli to the cultivation of arts afterward available for pro-
ductive purposes. Passing over intermediate stages, we may note in
comparatively-recent stages the same relation. Observe a coat-of-
mail, or one of the more highly-finished suits of armor — compare it
with articles of iron and steel of the same date ; and there is evidence
that these desires to kill enemies and escape being killed, more extreme
than any other, have had great effects on those arts of working in
metal to which most other arts owe their progress. The like relation

576 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is shown us in the uses made of gunpowder. At first a destructive
agent, it lias become an agent of immense service in quarrying, mining,
railway-making, etc.

A no less important benefit, bequeathed by war, has been the for-
mation of large societies. By force alone were small nomadic hordes
welded into large tribes ; by force alone were large tribes welded into
small nations; by force alone have small nations been welded into
large nations. While the fighting of societies usually maintains sepa-
rateness, or by conquest produces only temporary unions, it produces,
from time to time, permanent unions ; and as fast as there are formed
permanent unions of small into large, and then of large into still larger,
industrial progress is furthered in three ways. Hostilities, instead of
being perpetual, are broken by intervals of peace. When they occur,
hostilities do not so profoundly derange the industrial activities. And
there arises the possibility of carrying out the division of labor much
more effectually. War, in short, in the slow course of things, brings
about a social aggregation which furthers that industrial state at va-
riance with war ; and yet nothing but war could bring about this so-
cial aggregation. These two ti'uths, that without war large aggre-
gates of men cannot be formed, and that without large aggregates of
men there cannot be a developed industrial state, are illustrated in all
places and times. Among existing uncivilized and semi-civilized races,
we everywhere find that union of small societies by a conquering so-
ciety is a step in civilization. The records of peoples now extinct
show us this with equal clearness. On looking back into our own his-
tory, and into the histories of neighboring nations, we similarly see
that only by coercion were the smaller feudal governments so subor-
dinated as to secure internal peace. And, even lately, the long-desired
consolidation of Germany, if not directly effected by "blood and iron,"
as Bismarck said it must be, has been indirectly effected by them.
The furtherance of industrial development by aggregation is no less
manifest. If we compare a small society with a large one, we get clear
proof that those processes of cooperation by which social life is made
possible assume high forms only when the numbers of the cooperating
citizens are great. Ask of what use a cloth-factory, supposing they
could have one, would be to the members of a small tribe, and it be-
comes manifest that, producing as it would in a single day a yeai-'s
supply of cloth, the vast cost of making it and keeping it in order
could never be compensated by the advantage gained. Ask what
would happen were a shop like Stewart's, in New York, supplying all
textile products, set up in a village, and you see that the absence of
a sufficiently-extensive distributing function would negative its con-
tinuance. Ask what sphere a bank would have had in the Old-English
period, when nearly all people grew their own food and wove their
own wool, and it becomes obvious that the various appliances for fa-
cilitating exchange can grow up only when a community becomes so

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 577

large that the amount of exchange to be facilitated is great. Hence,
unquestionably, that integration of societies effected by war has been
a needful preliminary to industrial development, and consequently to
developments of other kinds — Science, the Fine Arts, etc.

Industrial habits too, and habits of subordination to social require-
ments, are indirectly brought about by the same cause. The truth
that the power of working continuously, wanting in the aboriginal
man, could be established only by that persistent coercion to which
conquered and enslaved tribes are subject, has become trite. An allied
truth is, that only by a discipline of submission, first to an owner, then
to a personal governor, presently to government less personal, then to
the embodied law proceeding from government, could there eventually
be reached submission to that code of moral law by which the cirilized
man is more and more restrained in his dealings with his fellows.

Such being some of the important truths usually ignored by men
too exclusively influenced by the religion of amity, let us now glance
at the no less important truths to which men are blinded by the re-
ligion of enmity.

Though, during barbarism and the earlier stages of civilization,
war has the effect of exterminating the weaker societies, and of weed-
ing out the weaker members of the stronger societies, and thus in both
ways furthering the development of those valuable powers, bodily and
mental, which war brings into play ; yet, during the later stages of
civilization, the second of these actions is reversed. So long as all
adult males have to bear arms, the average result is that those of most
strength and quickness survive, while the feebler and slower are slain ;
but when the industrial development has become such that only some
of the adult males are draughted into the army, the tendency is to
pick out and expose to slaughter the best-grown and healthiest ; leav-
ing behind the physically inferior to propagate the race. The fact
that among ourselves, though the number of soldiers raised is not rela<-
tively large, many recruits are rejected by the examining surgeons^
shows that the process inevitably works toward deterioration. Where^.
as in France, conscriptions have gone on generation after generation^
taking away the finest men, the needful lowering of the standard
proves how disastrous is the effect on those animal qualities of a race
which foro a necessary basis for all higher qualities. If the depletion-
is indirect also — if there is such an overdraw on the energies of the
industrial population that a large share of heavy labor is thrown on
the women, whose systems are taxed simultaneously by hard work
and child-bearing, a further cause of physical degeneracy comes into
play: France again supplying an example. War, therefore, after a
certain stage of progress, instead of furthering bodily development
and the development of certain mental powers, becomes a cause of

retrogression.

toi.. 11. — 37

578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In like manner, though war, by bringing about social consolida-
tions, indirectly favors industrial progress and all its civilizing conse-
quences, yet the direct effect of war on industrial progress is repres-
sive. It is repressive as necessitating the abstraction of men and ma-
terials that would otherwise go to industrial growth ; it is repressive
as deranging the complex interdependencies among multitudinous,
productive, and distributive agencies ; it is repressive as draughting
off much administrative and constructive ability, which would else
have gone to improve the industrial arts and the industrial organiza-
tion. And if we contrast the absolutely-military Spartans with the
partially-military Athenians in their respective attitudes toward cul-
ture of every kind, or call to mind the contempt shown for the pursuit
of knowledge in purely-military times like those of feudalism, we can-
not fail to see that predominant warlike activity is at variance not
only with industrial development, but also with the higher intellectual
developments that aid it and are aided by it.

So, too, with the effects wrought on the moral nature. While war,
by the discipline it gives soldiers, directly cultivates the habit of sub-
ordination, and does the like indirectly by establishing strong and
permanent governments ; and while in so far it cultivates attributes
that are not only temporarily essential, but are steps toward attributes
that are permanently essential ; yet it does this at the cost of main-
taining, and sometimes increasing, detrimental attributes — attributes
intrinsically antisocial. The aggressions which selfishness prompts —
aggressions which, in a society, have to be restrained by some power
that is strong in proportion as the selfishness is intense, can diminish
only as fast as selfishness is held in check by sympathy ; and perpetual
warlike activities repress sympathy : nay, they do worse — they culti-
vate aggressiveness to the extent of making it a pleasure to inflict
injury. The citizen made callous by the killing and wounding of
enemies, inevitably brings his callousness with him into society. Fel-
low-feeling, habitually trampled out in military conflicts, cannot at the
same time be active in the relations of civil life. In proportion as the
giving pain to others is made a habit during war, it will remain a
habit during peace : inevitably producing, in the behavior of citizens
to one another, antagonisms, crimes of violence, and multitudinous
aggressions of minor kinds, tending toward a disorder that calls for a
coercive government. Nothing like a high type of social life is pos-
sible without a type of human character in which the promptings of
egoism are duly restrained by regard for others. The necessities of
war imply absolute self-regard and absolute disregard of certain
others. Inevitably, therefore, the civilizing discipline of social life is
antagonized by the uncivilizing discipline of the life war involves. So
that, beyond the direct mortality and miseries entailed by war, it en-
tails other mortality and miseries by maintaining antisocial sentiments
in citizens.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 579

Taking the most general view of the matter, we may say that only
when the sacred duty of blood-revenge, constituting the religion of
the savage, becomes less sacred, does there arise a possibility of emer-
gence from the deepest barbarism. Only as fast as the retaliation,
which for a murder on one side inflicts a murder or murders on the
other, becomes less imperative, is it possible for larger aggregates of
men to hold together and civilization to commence. And so, too, out
of lower stages of civilization higher ones can emerge, only as there
diminishes this pursuit of international revenge and re-revenge, which
the code we inherit from the savage insists upon. Such advantages,
bodily and mental, as the race derives from the discipline of war, are
outbalanced by the disadvantages, physical and moral, but especially
moral, which result after a certain stage of progress is reached. Se-
vere and bloody as the process is, the killing-off of inferior races and
inferior individuals leaves a balance of benefit to mankind during
phases of progress in which the moral development is low, and there
are no quick sympathies to be continually seared by the infliction of
pain and death. But as there arise higher types of societies, implying
types of individual character fitted for closer cooperation, the destruc-
tive activities exercised by such higher societies have injurious reac-
tive effects on the moral natures of their members, which outweigh the
benefit resulting from extirpation of inferior races. After this stage
lias been reached, the purifying process, continuing still an important
one, remains to be carried on by industrial war — by a competition of
societies during which the best, physically, emotionally, and intellect-
ually, spread most, and leave the least capable to disappear gradually,
from failing to leave an adequately-numerous posterity.

Those educated in the religion of enmity — those who during boy-
hood, when the instincts of the savage are dominant, have revelled in
the congenial ideas and sentiments which classic poems and histories
yield so abundantly, and have become confirmed in the belief that war
is virtuous aud peace ignoble — are naturally blind to truths of this
kind. Rather should we say, perhaps, that they have never turned
their eyes in search of such truths. And their bias is so strong that
nothing more than a nominal recognition of such truths is possible to
them ; if even this. What perverted conceptions of sociological phe-
nomena this bias produces, may be seen in the following passage from
Gibbon :

"It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in
the public felicity the causes of decay and corruption. The long peace, and the
uniform government of the Romans, had introduced a slow and secret poison in-
to the vitals of the empire." x

In which sentences there is involved the abstract proposition that in
proportion as men are long held together in that mutual dependence

1 11

Decline and Fall," chapter ii.

580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which social cooperation implies, they will become less lit for mutual
dependence and cooperation — the society will tend toward dissolution.
While, in proportion as they are habituated to antagonism and to
destructive activities, they will become better adapted to activities
requiring union and agreement.

Thus the two opposite codes in which we are educated, and the
sentiments enlisted on behalf of their respective precepts, inevitably
produce misinterpretations of social phenomena. Instead of acting
together, now this and now the other sways the beliefs ; and, instead
of consistent, balanced conclusions, there results a jumble of contra-
dictory conclusions.

It is time, not only with a view to right thinking in social science,
but with a view to right acting in daily life, that this acceptance in
their unqualified forms, of two creeds which contradict one another
completely, should come to an end. Is it not a folly to go on pretend-
ing to ourselves and others that we believe certain perpetually-repeat-
ed maxims of entire self-sacrifice, which we daily deny by our business
activities, by the steps we take to protect our persons and property,
by the approval we express of resistance against aggression ? Is it
not a dishonesty to repeat, in tones of reverence, maxims which we
not only refuse to act out, but dimly see would be mischievous if act-
ed out ? Every one must admit that the relation between parent and
child is one in which altruism is pushed as far as is practicable. Yet
even here there needs a predominant egoism. The mother can suckle
her infant only on condition that she has habitually gratified her appe-
tite in due degree. And there is a point beyond which sacrifice of
herself is fatal to her infant. The bread-winner, too, on whom both
depend — is it not undeniable that wife and child can be altruistically
treated by their protector, only on condition that he is duly egoistic
in his transactions with his fellow-citizens ? If the dictate, "Live for
self," is wrong in one way, the opposite dictate, " Live for others," is
wrong in another way. The rational dictate is — live for self and oth-
ers. And, if we all do actually believe this, as our conduct conclu-
sively proves, is it not better for us distinctly to say so, rather than
continue enunciating principles which we do not and cannot practise ;
and thus bringing moral teaching itself into discredit ?

On the other hand, it is time that a ferocious egoism, which re-
mains unaffected by this irrational altruism, hppocritically professed
but not believed, should be practically modified by a rational altruism.
This "sacred duty of blood-revenge, insisted on by the still-vigorous
religion of enmity, needs qualifying actually and not verbally. In-
stead of senselessly reiterating in catechisms and church services the
duty of doing good to those that hate us, while an undoubting belief
in the duty of retaliation is implied by our parliamentary debates, the
articles in our journals, and the conversations over our tables, it would

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 581

be wiser and more manly to consider how far the first should go in
mitigation of the last. Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which
leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a
cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to
the death, when they trespass against us ? Is it blindness, or is it an
insane inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the
bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration
on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small
ones suffered ? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and
our barbarian standard of honor should be somewhat changed. Let
us deliberately recognize what good they represent and what mixture
of bad there is with it. Courage is worthy of respect when displayed
in the maintenance of legitimate claims and in the repelling of aggres-
sions, bodily or other. Courage is worthy of yet higher respect when
danger is faced in defence of claims common to self and others, as in
resistance to invasion. Courage is worthy of the highest respect
when risk to life or limb is dared in defence of others ; and becomes
grand when those others have no claims of relationship, and still more
when they have no claims of race. But though a bravery which is
altruistic in its motive is a trait we cannot too highly applaud, and
though a bravery which is legitimately egoistic in its motive is praise-
worthy, the bravery that is prompted by aggressive egoism is not
praiseworthy. The admiration accorded to the "pluck" of one who
fights in a base cause is a vicious admiration, essentially demoralizing
to those who feel it. Like the physical powers, courage, which is a
concomitant of these, is to be regarded as a servant of the higher
emotions — very valuable, indispensable even, in its place ; and to be
honored when discharging its function in subordination to these
higher emotions. But otherwise not more to be honored than the like
attribute as seen in brutes.

Quite enough has been said to show that there must be a com-
promise between the opposite standards of conduct on which the
religions of amity and enmity respectively insist, before there can be
scientific conceptions of social phenomena. Even on passing affairs,
such as the proceedings of philanthropic bodies and the dealings of
nation with nation, there cannot be rational judgments without a bal-
ance between the self-asserting emotions and the emotions which put
a limit to self-assertion, with an adjustment of the corresponding
beliefs. Still less can there be rational judgments of past social evo-
lution, or of social evolution in the future, if the opposing actions
which these opposing creeds sanction are not both continuously
recognized as essential. No mere impulsive recognition, now of the
purely-egoistic doctrine and now of the purely-altruistic one, will
suffice. The curve described by a planet cannot be understood by
thinking at one moment of the centripetal force and at another
moment of the tangential force ; but the two must be kept before con-

582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sciousness as acting simultaneously. And similarly, to understand
social progress in the vast sweep of its course, there must he ever
present to the mind the egoistic and the altruistic forces as coopera-
tive factors equally indispensable, and neither of them to he ignored
or reprobated.

The criticism likely to be passed on this chapter, that "The
Educational Bias" is far too comprehensive a title for it, is quite
justifiable. There are in truth few, if any, of the several kinds of
Mas that are not largely, or in some measure, caused by education —
usino- this word in an extended sense. As, however, all of them could
not be dealt with in one chapter, it seemed best to select these two
opposite forms of bias which are so directly traceable to teachings of
opposite dogmas, and fosterings of opposite sentiments, during early
life. Merely recognizing the fact that education has much to do with
the other kinds of bias, we may now most conveniently deal with
these, each under its specific title.

THE STRENGTH OF TIMBER.1

By JOHN ANDERSON, C. E., LL. D., F. E. B. E.

ALTHOUGH it is of less importance to investigate the strength
of timber at the present time than it was formerly, in conse-
quence of the diminished use of that material in permanent structures,
and the more general employment of iron, still it will always be a
very valuable material for certain purposes, and ought not to be neg-
lected. Timber is variously used, even now, in permanent works, and
is applied much more extensively in temporary structures— such as
centerings and scaffolding. Hence its properties are well worthy of
careful attention ; and the student should be familiar, not only with
the external appearance of the principal kinds of wood, but also with
their relative strength, stiffness, toughness, and durability.

One of the most obvious inferences to be drawn from the experi-
ments previously recorded is, that very wide variations exist in the
strength and other elastic properties of different metals, and even of
different specimens of the same metal. If we could investigate the
properties of timber with the same care which has been bestowed on
the metals, we should find that there is an even greater variation in
the properties of different kinds of wood. This arises, in part, from
the fact that timber is much affected by a number of external and in-
ternal conditions, during its growth and seasoning, and in its subse-
quent treatment, which gradually modify and change its properties.
1 From " Strength of Materials and Structures." D. Appleton & Co.

THE STRENGTH OF TIMBER. 583

It will only be necessary here to speak of the powers of resistance
of a few among the many kinds of wood now employed in the me-
chanical arts. The greater number of the varieties of wood owe their
commercial value to special characteristics, such as beauty of grain
and capability of being polished — the description of which does not
fall within the scope of the present article.

As a general rule, we may judge of the hardness of a wood by its
specific gravity, if it is in its natural state. But the density may be
increased by artificial compression, and this increase of density is gen-
erally accompanied by increase of strength. Some varieties of wood,
as, for instance, lignianvitce, are so dense that they sink in water,
while some of the softer woods have not half the density of that fluid.
The presence of gum or resin in any wood adds both to its strength
and durability. Many woods will last a long time if kept constantly
under water, but scarcely any wood is very durable when allowed to
become wet and dry alternately.

The strength of a piece of timber depends upon the part of the tree
from which it is taken. Up to a certain age, the heart of the tree is
the best ; after that period, it begins to fail gradually. The worst
part of a tree is the sap-wood, which is next the bark. It is softer
than the other parts of the wood, and is liable to premature decay.
The deleterious component of the sap-wood is absorbed, if the tree is
allowed to grow for a longer period, and in time the old sap-wood be-
comes proper timber-fibre similar to heart-wood. Hence, the goodness
of a tree, for timber purposes, depends on the age at which the tree
was cut down. When young, the heart-wood is the best ; at maturity,
with the exception of the sap-wood, the trunk is equally good through-
out ; and, when the tree is allowed to grow too long, the heart-wood is
the first to show symptoms of weakness, and deteriorates gradually.

The best timber is secured by felling the tree at the age of matu-
rity, which depends on its nature as well as on the soil and climate.
The ash, beech, elm, and fir, are generally considered at their best
when of 70 or 80 years' growth, and the oak is seldom at its best in
less time than 100 years, but much depends on surrounding circum-
stances. As a rule, trees should not be cut before arriving at maturity,
because there is then too much sap-wood, and the durability of the tim-
ber is much inferior to that of trees felled after they have arrived at
their full development.

The strength of many woods is nearly doubled by the process of
seasoning, hence it is very thriftless to use timber in a green state, as
it is not only weak, but is exposed to continual change of bulk, form,
and stability. After timber is cut, and before it is properly seasoned,
the outside is found to crack and to split more than the inside of the
mass, because it is more exposed to the desiccating effect of the sur-
rounding atmosphere, but, as the outside dries, the air gradually finds
its way to the interior. If timber is cut up by the saw when green,

584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and allowed to season or dry in a gradual manner, it is found to be the
most durable. In the arts, however, artificial drying is often resorted
to, as in the case of gun-stocks. These are put into a desiccating
chamber, where a current of air at 90° or 100° is passed over them, at
such a rate as to change the whole volume of air in the chamber every
three minutes, and it is found that a year of seasoning may thus be
saved. The walnut-wood is as good, after this process, as if the sea-
soning had been accomjdished by time and exposure, and works
more smoothly under the cutting instruments of the stock-machinerv.

Wood will always warp after a fresh surface has been exposed,
and will likewise change its form by the presence of any moisture,
either from that contained in the atmosphere or from wetting the sur-
face. The effect of moisture on dry wood is to cause the tubular
fibres to swell ; hence it is that, if a plank or board is wetted upon one
side, the fibres there will be distended, and the plank, in consequence,
must bend.

The natural law that governs the shrinking or contraction of tim-
ber is most important to practical men, but it is too often overlooked.

The amount of the shrinkage of timber in length, when seasoning,
is so inconsiderable that it may in practice be disregarded. But the
shrinkage in transverse directions is much greater, and presents some
peculiarities which can only be explained by examining the structure
of the wood, as resulting from its mode of growth. An examination
of the end section of any exogenous tree, such as the beech or oak,
will show the general arrangement of its structure. It consists of a
mass of longitudinal fibrous tubes, arranged in irregular circles, which
are bound together by means of radial plates or rays, which have been
variously named : they are the " silver grain " of the carpenter, or the
" medullary rays " of the botanist, and are in reality the same in their
nature as the pith. The radial direction of these plates or rays, and
the longitudinal disposition of the woody fibre, must be considered
in order to understand the action of seasoning. For the lateral con-
traction or collapsing of the longitudinal fibrous or tubular part of the
structure cannot take place without first tearing the medullary rays,
hence the shrinking of the woody bundles finds relief by splitting the
timber in radial lines from the centre parallel with the medullary
rays, thereby enabling the tree to maintain its full diameter. If the
entire mass of tubular fibre composing the tree were to contract bodily,
then the medullary rays would, of necessity, have to be crushed in the
radial direction to enable it to take place, and the timber would thus
be as much injured in proportion as would be the case in crushing the
wood in a longitudinal direction.

If an oak or beech tree is cut into four quarters, by passing the
saw twice through the centre at right angles, before the splitting and
contracting have commenced, the lines a c and b c in Fig. 1 would be
of the same length, and at right angles to each other, or, in the tech-

THE STRENGTH OF TIMBER.

585

nical language of the workshop, they would be square ; but, after being
stored in a dry place, say for a year, a great change will be found to
have taken place, both in the form and in some of the dimensions.
The lines a c and b c will still be of the same length as before, but
from a to b the wood will have contracted very considerably, and the
two lines a e and b c will not be at right angles to each other, the angle
being diminished by the portion shown in black in Fig. 1. The me-
dullary rays are thus brought closer by the collapsing of the vertical
fibres.

Fig. 1.

But, supposing that six parallel saw-cuts are passed through the
tree, so as to form it into seven planks, what will be the behavior of
the several planks ? Consider the centre plank first. After due sea-
soning and contracting, it will be found that the middle of the board
still retains the original thickness, from the resistance of the medullary
rays, while the thickness will be gradually reduced toward the edges
for want of support, and the entire breadth of the plank will be the

Fig. 2.

same as it was at first for the foregoing reasons, and as shown in Fig.
2. Then, taking the planks at each edge of the centre, by the same
law their change and behavior will be quite different : they will still
retain their original thickness at the centre, but will be a little reduced
on each edge throughout, but the side next to the heart of the tree

536

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

will be pulled round or bent convex, while the outside will be the re-
verse, or hollow, and the plank will be considerably narrower through-
out its entire length, more especially on the surface of the hollow side.
Selecting the next two planks, they will be found to have lost none of
their thickness at the centre, and very little of their thickness at the
edges, but very much of their breadth as planks, and will be curved
round on the heart-side and made hollow on the outside. Supposing
some of these planks to be cut up into square prisms when in the
green state, the shape that these prisms will assume after a period of
seasoning will entirely depend on the part of the tree to which they
belong, the greatest alteration would be perpendicular to the medul-

Fig. 8.

Fig. 4.

lary rays. Thus, if the square was originally near the outside, as seen
in Fig. 3, then the effect will be as shown in Fig. 4, namely, contrac-
tion in the direction from a to b. After a year or two the square end
of the prism will become rhomboidal, the distance between c and d
being nearly the same as at first, but the other two edges brought
closer together by the amount of their contraction. By understand-
ing this natural law, it is comparatively easy to predict the future be-

Fig. 5.

Fig. 6.

havior of a board or plank by carefully examining the end-wood, in
order to ascertain the part of the log from which it has been cut, as
the angle of the ring-growths and the medullary rays will show this,
as in Figs. 5 and 6. If a plank has the appearance of the former, it
must have been cut from the outside, and for many years it will grad-

THE STRENGTH OF TIMBER. 587'

ually shrink in the breadth; while the next plank, shown in Fig. 0,
must have been derived from near the centre or heart of the tree, and
it will not shrink in the breadth but in thickness, with the full dimen-
sion in the middle, but tapering to the edges.

The foregoing remarks apply more especially to the stronger ex-
ogenous woods, such as beech, oak, and the stronger firs. The softer
woods, such as yellow Canadian pine, are governed by the same law ;
but, in virtue of their softness, another law comes into force, which to
some degree affects their behavior, as the contracting power of the tu-
bular wood has sufficient strength to crush the softer medullary rays
to some extent, and hence the primary lawT is so far modified. But
even with the softer woods, such as are commonly used in the con-
struction of houses, if the law is carefully observed, the greater part
of the evils of shrinking would be obviated. Hence, also, it is that
when a round block, as a mast, is formed out of a tree, it retains its
roundness because it contracts uniformly or nearly so, whereas, if a
round spar is formed out of a quartering of the same tree it will be-
come an oval, or otherwise contorted toward that shape.

It would , not be in accordance with the object to enumerate
all the woods that are employed in the arts, therefore a few only
are selected, or such as are employed for purposes where strength
is the primary object, viz., ash, beech, elm, fir, hornbeam, mahogany,
oak, and teak.

Ash is a coarse wood, but possessed of considerable strength, and
is distinguished for its great toughness and elasticity, and is usually
employed where severe shocks and wrenches have to be encountered,
such as for agricultural implements, the felloes and spokes of wheels,
and the shafts of carriages, for hammer-shafts, and for spring purposes
generally wherever wood is employed for that purpose.

From its great flexibility it is seldom employed where rigidity is a
desideratum. The combination of strength with flexibility is the char-
acteristic of ash, and when the wood is from a young tree, or a tree
not too old, it is an invaluable wood in many respects ; but as the tree
becomes older, the change to brittleness sets in and soon renders it less
valuable. It is also remarkable for its endurance when kept dry, but
when exposed to damp or to wet it rapidly decays. The numerical
value of its properties varies considerably, but in general terms it
may be stated that, as compared with oak, good ash has frequently a
still greater tenacity and likewise a greater degree of toughness, but,
from its flexibility, especially when young, it has considerably less
stiffness, which unfits it for many purposes.

Beech has frequently considerable strength, and is chiefly distin-
guished for its uniformity, its smoothness of surface, and closeness of
grain. It likewise possesses no little beauty, and takes a good polish,
more especially when its silver grain is skilfully exposed. "When well
seasoned and not too old, it is frequently used for the cogs of mill-gear-

588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing, and is usually considered by millwrights as next to hornbeam,
both in strength, toughness, and general suitability for that purpose.
It requires, however, to be kept very dry, for in damp situations it
quickly wears out, but, when beech is immersed in water constantly,
its endurance is considerable. The strength of beech is nearly the
same as that of oak ; it is also tougher, but its stiffness is inferior to
that of oak, even to the extent of 25 per cent.

Elm, although a cross-grained, rough wood, and mostly used for
rough purposes, is yet held in great estimation for its toughness and
non-liability to split by the driving of bolts. It is much used in the
construction of blocks for pulley-tackle, for heavy naval gun-carriages,
and for the naves of carriage-wheels. It is a wood which is little af-
fected by constant immersion in water, but decays rapidly when alter-
nately wet and dry, and consequently is not very durable for purposes
involving exposure to a wet climate. Its chief defect in ordinary use
is its great liability to warp, and twist, and get out of form ; and, as
regards strength, toughness, and rigidity, it is inferior to oak, as well
as in almost every other respect.

The fir and pine woods are members of a large family, and are of
great variety, and differ much in most of their properties. These
classes of timber, in addition to being employed for building purposes,
are likewise the chief materials that are used in great works, where the
question of strength combined with cost becomes the most prominent
consideration. The most durable varieties are the larch, the pitch-
pine, and the firs, from Memel and Norway, and are valued mostly on
account of the large quantity of resin, pitch, and turpentine, which
they contain. The Canadian pine, variously termed white or yellow,
is not a strong wood, but is much used by engineers for making pat-
terns or models, on account of its smoothness of surface, its non-liability
to warp, its comparative freedom from knots, and the facility with
which it can be cut. The white or yellow pine is not nearly so strong
or so stiff as oak, yet sometimes it is almost equal to it in its tenacity
and toughness. In such a large family as that of the resinous firs and
pines, there is almost an equal variation in their strength, toughness,
and rigidity.

Hornbeam is a wood which is comparatively little used, except by
engineers, for the teeth or cogs of wheels, and for mallets, for which
purposes it is perhaps superior to all other woods, and this is mostly
due to its great toughness and remarkably stringy coherence of fibre.
Its cohesive strength and other properties depend much upon its age,
as a plank, and still more on the age of the tree from which the plank
was taken. When in the most favorable condition, it is fully equal to
the average of oak (even when considered merely as a wood), but
when cut from older trees, and when over-seasoned, it is frequently
found worthless, and has soon to be renewed. When of proper age
and quality, it has no equal for its own special purposes.

ON THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 589

Mahogany is a beautiful, close-grained wood, but is used not so
much on account of its strength, but more frequently because of its
non-liability to shrink, warp, or twist, and from the peculiar property
of taking a firm hold of glue. In the last respect it is superior to any
other wood. Mahogany differs greatly in regard to its closeness, hard-
ness, strength, and beauty. That from Honduras, called "bay-wood,"
is much inferior to that called " Spanish " mahogany, which comes
from the West Indies ; the former is much used in the construction of
light textile machinery, but chiefly on account of its cheapness; and
the latter is used for furniture or for other ornamental purposes. As
regards strength, this wood is inferior to oak in all respects, and its
great characteristic defect is unsuitability for exposure to the weather,
or, indeed, for any purpose where it is made alternately wet and dry.
When so subjected, it rapidly decays, and loses all its good qualities.

Oak, taken as a whole, is one of the strongest and most durable of
woods, and is especially adapted for exposure to the weather of a damp
climate, and is indeed suitable for almost every purpose where the
properties of strength, stiffness, and toughness, combined with endur-
ance, are required. Its value for ship-building is proverbial, and in its
employment for the staves of casks, for treenails, for carriage-wheels,
and for all such purposes requiring lightness and strength in combina-
tion, it is equally useful. From time immemorial it was esteemed the
best timber for heavy roofs, and the condition in which some of these
grand old roofs have reached our era fully attests the wisdom of the
selection.

Oak is found of many degrees of quality, but probably none, taking
every property into account, is superior to that which grows in Eng-
land, and which is perhaps more durable than any other. Some of the
foreign oaks are as good in some respects, but, as a whole, English is
the best.

-♦♦*-

(M THE CAUSES OF CKIME.1

Br Ho». HORATIO SEYMOUE.

THE name of this Association fails to give a full idea of its scope
and aims. In terms they seem to be limited to that class of men
who have brought themselves under the penalties of the law ; but the
moment we begin to study the character of criminals and the causes
of crime we find that we are forced back to a scrutiny of our social
system and of the weakness as well as the wickedness of our fellow-
men. It is because the subjects of pauperism and crime thus lead to
an analysis of human nature and to the consideration of social aspects

1 Address before the National Prison Association at Baltimore.

590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that they have been made the matters of profound thought by able
publicists and large-minded statesmen. At first thought it seems that
the condition of a small body of men who have offended local laws
should be left to the thoughtful control of local authorities, but it is
soon found that the considerations involved are as broad as the spread
of the human race. For these reasons leading men of different nations
were drawn together at the late International Convention at London,
and for these reasons this Association was formed. Crime knows no
geographical limits, no boundaries of states. It is its nature to war
with the welfare of the human family. It must be opposed by the
united wisdom and virtue of all nationalities and of all forms of civili-
zation. While local laws must frame penal codes, and local societies
do the work of lifting up fallen men, still much is gained by a wide-
spread sympathy and cooperation. There are many things which are
beyond the reach of state action, in a moral point of view — things
which do not come under the cognizance of laws, but which deeply
affect the welfare of the whole country. At the first view our efforts
seem to be limited to the justice which punishes crime, and to the
charity which tries to reform the criminal, but we are soon led into a
wider field of duty. We are apt to look upon the inmates of prisons
as exceptional men, unlike the mass of our people. We feel that they
are thorns in the side of the body politic which should be drawn out
and put where they will do no more harm. We regard them as men
who run counter to the currents of society, thus making disorder and
mischief. These are errors. In truth they are men who run with the
currents of society and who outrun them. They are men who in a
great degree are moved and directed by the impulses around them.
Their characters are formed by the civilization in which they move.
They are in many respects the representative men of a country. It is
a hard thing to draw an indictment against a criminal which is not in
some respects an indictment of the community in which he has lived.
An intelligent stranger who should visit the prisons of foreign coun-
tries, who should hear the histories of their inmates, would get a bet-
ter idea of the inner workings of their civilization than could be gained
by intercourse with a like number of their citizens moving in more
conventional circles of society. As a rule, wrong-doing is the growth
of influences pervading the social system, as pestilences are bred by
malaria. Our study into this subject soon teaches us that prisons are
moral hospitals where moral diseases are not only cared for, but
science learns the moral laws of life — where it learns what endangers
the general welfare of the community, what insidious, pestilential
vapors permeate society, carrying moral disease and death into its
homes. Prisoners are men like ourselves, and if we would learn the
dangers which lurk in our pathways we must learn how they stumbled
and fell. I do not doubt that some men are more prone to vice than
others, but, after listening to thousands of prayers for pardon, I can

ON THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 59i

hardly recall a case where I do not feel that I might have fallen as my
fellow-men have done if I had been subject to the same demoralizing
influences, and pressed by the same temptations. I repeat here what
I have said on other occasions — that, after a long experience with
men in all conditions of life, after having felt, as most men, the harsh
injustice springing from the strife and passion of the world, I have
learned to think mox-e kindly of the hearts of men, and to think less of
their heads. If we find that crimes are in a large degree the hot-bed
growth of social influences ; if the weakness of human nature is always
open to their attacks; if they may at any time enter into our homes
and strike at our family — then we must at least guard against them as
we do the pestilence. To protect the public health and to learn the
laws of life, we build and sustain with liberal hand hospitals where
the sick and wounded can be cured. The moral hospital should be
regarded with an equal interest. In each of them we should seek to
cure the inmates. In each of them we should seek to find out the
secret cause of disease. With regard to both we should in a large-
minded way feel that the laws of moral and physical life are a thousand
times more important to the multitudes of the world at large than
they are to the few inmates that languish in their gloomy walls. The
public hold in high honor the man of science who treads the walks of
the hospital to find out the facts which will enable him to ward off
sickness and death from others. This Association appeals to the
public for the same sympathy and support for those who labor to lift
up their unhappy brethren from moral degradation, and at the same
time to do the greater work of tracing out the springs and sources of
crime, and of warning the public of its share of guilt in sowing the
seeds of immorality by its tastes, maxims, and usages. "We love to
think that the inmates of cells are unlike ourselves. We should like
to disown our common humanity with the downcast and depraved.
We are apt to thank God we are not like other men ; but, with closer
study and deeper thought, we find they are ourselves under different
circumstances, and the circumstances that made them what they are
abound in our civilization, and may at any time make others fall who
do not dream of danger. It is a mistake when we hold that criminals
are merely perverse men, who are at war with social influences. On
the other hand, they are the outgrowth of these influences. Crimes al-
ways take the hues and aspect of the country in which they are com-
mitted. They show not only guilty men but a guilty people. The
world holds those nations to be debased where crime abounds. It
does not merely say that the laws are defective and the judges corrupt,
but charges the guilt home to the whole society. This is just, for
most of the crimes which disc-race us could not be done if there were
not an indifference to their causes on the part of the community. As
certain plagues which sweep men into their graves cannot rage with-
out foul air, so many crimes cannot prevail without wide-spread moral

592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

malaria. It is the greed for gold, the love of luxury in the American
people, which have caused the legislative frauds, the municipal corrup-
tions, the violations of trust which excite alarm in our land. It is the
admiration of wealth, no matter how gained, which incites and embold-
ens the desperate speculator in commercial centres to sport with the sa-
cred interests of labor, to unsettle the business of honest industry, by
playing tricks with the standards of value. Those who use the stocks
of great corporations as machines for gambling schemes are more de-
liberately and artfully dishonest than the more humble swindler wrho
throws his loaded dice. Many of the transactions of our capitalists are
more hurtful to the welfare of our people than the acts of thieves and
robbers. In the better days of American simplicity, honesty, and patri-
otism, these things could not have been done. No one would then dare
to face a people indignant at such rapacious greed. Such influences
have led to frauds, defalcations, breaches of trust. They have tilled
our prisons and overwhelmed many households with shame and sorrow.
Yet the authors of such things are honored for their wealth, and we ask
with eagerness how rich do they get, and not how do they get riches.
To make the public feel that criminals are men of like passions with
ourselves, and that crime is an infectious as well as a malignant dis-
ease, that its sources are not so much personal inclination as general
demoralization, are the great first steps toward reform. When we feel
the disease may enter our own bouses and seize upon the mental and
moral weakness of those we love, we are ready to study its causes and
its workings. We shall then uphold and honor those men of humanity
and true statesmanship who study out the cause of moral stains as we
honor and support those men of science who search out in sick-rooms
and hospitals the cause, and cure the complaint, which kills the body.
He who masters the diagnosis of crime gains a key to the mysteries of
our nature and to the secret sources of demoralization which opens to
him a knowledge of the great principles of public and private reform
— the true methods of a good administration of the laws. Pauperism
and crime have been the subjects of earnest thought by the best and
wisest men of the world, not only on account of their direct interest,
but also on account of their relationship to all other matters of good
government. Neither of them can be driven out of existence. They
will always be problems to vex statesmanship, but they must always
be battled with. In the social edifice they are like fires ever kindling
in its different parts, which are to be kept under by watchfulness and
oare. If neglected, they burst out into the flames of anarchy and revo-
lution, and sweep away forms of government. These subjects must be
studied directly, and in their moral aspects. There is a pervading idea
in our country, that the spread of knowledge will check crime. No
one values learning more than I do ; but it is no specific for immorality
and vice. Without moral and religious training, it frequently becomes
an aid to crime. Science, mechanical skill, a knowledge of business-

OiV THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 593

affairs — even the refinements and accomplishments of life — are used by-
offenders against law. Knowledge fights on both sides in the battle
between right and wrong. At this age it lays siege to banks. It
forces open vaults stronger than old castles. It forges and counter-
feits. The most dangerous criminal is the educated, intellectual vio-
lator of the law, for he has all the resources of art at his command —
the forces of mechanics, the subtlety of chemistry, the knowledge of
men's ways and passions. Learning by itself only changes the aspect
of immorality. Virtue is frequently found with the simple and unedu-
cated, and vice with the educated. Surrounded by glittering objects
within their reach, our servant-girls resist more temptations than any
other class in society. We must look beyond the accidents of knowl-
edge or ignorance if we wish to learn the springs of action. To check
vice, there must be high moral standards in the public mind. The
American mind must move upon a higher plane. To reform convicts,
their hopes must be aroused and their better instincts worked upon.
I never yet found a man so untamable that there was not something
of good upon which to build a hope. I never yet found a man so good
that he need not fear a fall. Through the warp and woof of the worst
man's character there run some threads of gold. In the best there are
base materials. It is this web of entwined good and evil in men's
character which marks the problems and perplexities of the Legisla-
ture and judge, while there is no honest dealing with this subject unless
the American people are charged with their share of guilt ; and, while
Christian charity leads us to take the kindest view we can of every
man, it does not follow that crime should be dealt with in a feeble
way. Let the laws be swift, stem, and certain in their action. "What
they say let them do, for certainty more than severity carries a dread
of punishment. Let the way of bringing offenders to justice be direct,
clear, and untrammelled. The technicalities of pleading, proof, and
proceedings, in many of our States, are painfully absurd. To the minds
of most men a criminal trial is a mysterious jumble. The public have
no confidence that the worst criminal will be punished. The worst
criminal cherishes at all times a hope of escape. In every part of our
country there is a vague idea that certain men of legal skill can extri-
cate offenders without regard to the merits of their case. This is a
fruitful cause of crime. There is not in the minds of the American
people a clear, distinct conception of our penal laws, their actions, and
their results. Not less hurtful to justice are those fluctuations of the
public mind, which shakes off spasmodically its customary indifference
and fiercely demands a conviction of those who happen at such times
to be charged with crime, and thus make popular clamor take the
place of judicial calmness and impartiality. No one feels that there is
in this country a clear, strong, even flow of administration of criminal
law. The mood of the popular mind has too much to do with judicial
proceedings. The evils connected with the administration of justice in.
vol. 11. — 38

594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

our land are due in a good degree to the swift changes in the material
condition of our country. An increase of our numbers of more than
1,000,000 each year, of more than 2,500 each day, of more than 100
each hour, explains many of the causes of our overburdened system
of penal laws. Framed for a different state of society, our pei-plexities
are increased by the fact that more than one-quarter of this daily addi-
tion to our population is made up of those who come from other coun-
tries strangers to our customs and laws, and in many instances ignorant
of our language. History gives no account of such a vast increase of
the numbers of any country by constant peaceful action. Conquest
rarely makes as many prisoners of war as we make captives to the
peaceful advantages of our continent. They bring us wealth and
power. They also bring us many problems to solve. British laws
deal with British subjects. French courts decide upon the guilt or
innocence of Frenchmen. Germany keeps by its usages and customs
the ideas of right; and wrong in the minds of the Teutonic race. But
we in America have to deal with and act upon all nationalities, all
phases of civilization. While these facts palliate the defects of our
penal laws and their administration, they certainly make more clear
and urgent the duty that we keep pace with the swift changes going
on around us. More than this, it enables us to take the lead in the
great work of reform as we deal with more plastic materials than are
found in the fixed conditions of older nations. Here, too, we have a
broader field filled with men of varied jdiases and aspects of different
civilization, in which we can study the wants and the weaknesses, the
virtues and the vices, of the human race. For a series of years nearly
300,000 immigrants are annually landed at the harbor of New York.
Disorder and crime are always active along the line of march of great
armies. I believe there is no instance in history of a movement of the
human race so vast and long continued. I am glad to state a fact which
in some degree palliates the disgrace which attaches to the administra-
tion of justice and the conduct of public affairs in that great city, but
I should fall short of telling the truth if I did not also say that the dis-
credit of that great city mainly springs from the sad fact that its men
of wealth as a body lack that genuine self-respect which leads to a faith-
ful, high-minded performance of the duties each citizen owes to the
public. Is there any other basis upon which we can found this great
work of patriotism and philanthropy than the one contemplated by
this Association ? It may at first view seem to be limited to a small
class, but it opens up into a broad field of unpartisan, unsectarian labor.
The objects we have in view, although they make our prisons their
starting-point, are so wide in their bearing that they brought together
at the London International Association, in the interests of our common
humanity, men of the best minds of most countries of Europe and
America. These, in spite of the differences of religion, language, and
form of civilization, could act in accord in devising measures to lift up

ON THE CAUSES OF CRIME. 595

the fallen and to spread the principles of morality and justice among
the peoples of the world. It is found that true statesmanship, like
true religion, begins with visiting the prisoners and helping the poor.
It is certain that in our own country Edward Livingston, the public
man who ranks high in European regard for intellectual ability, gained
his position by his great work on the penal laws of Louisiana. When
it was the fashion in the scientific world to hold that men and animals
were dwarfed on this continent, this work -was brought forward by our
friends in Europe as a proof that statesmanship wras full-grown here.
It is a remarkable fact that an able foreign writer selected the Louisiana
code and the proclamation of General Jackson against the doctrine of
secession as the two ablest productions of the American mind, not
knowing that they both came from the same pen. An exposition
of Mr. Livingston's system has lately been published in France by
M. Charles Lucas, a member of the Institute, and formerly president
of the Council of Inspectors of the Penal Institutions of that country.
M. Lucas is a distinguished writer and leader in the work of criminal
reform. He belongs to that body of large-minded, philanthropic men,
who seek to benefit humanity by wise systems of legislation. A cer-
tain breadth and reach of mind seem to mark those men who have en-
tered upon the study of penal laws and the reformation of criminals.
While there is much to condemn in our system of laws and in their
administration, there is much to admire in the practical workings of
many of our prisons. In some respects we are in advance of other
people. Much has been done in many of our States to improve the
condition of our criminals, and much more to rescue the young from
vice and destruction. I should be glad to speak of the instances of
ability and self-devotion shown by men who have charge of public or
private charities established for the reformation of offenders. They
would lend a weight to my argument which my reasoning cannot give,
but I must leave these things to be brought out by the discussions
of this congress. I only seek to show the ends at which it aims ; I
only seek to make for it the sympathy and support of the public in its
efforts to combine and organize the forces of those who, in different
parts of our country, are working in this field of philanthropic and
patriotic labor. Crime has its origin in the passions which live in
every breast, and the weakness which marks every character in its na-
ture. It concerns each of us, as clearly as the common liability to fall
prematurely before disease and death. No man can know human na-
ture, no man can be a great teacher to his fellow-men, no man can
frame laws wisely and well, who has not studied character in convict-
life. There he can best see the lights and shadows of our natures, see
in the strongest contrasts what is good and what is bad. The prisons,
to which all vice tends, are the points from which the reform can be
best urged which seeks to find out where vice begins. Starting from
the sad ends of crime and running back along the tracks, it is seen that

$96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in a large degree they are engendered by public tastes, habits, and
demoralizations. It is in our prisons we can best learn the corrupting
influences about us which lead the weak as well as the wicked astray,
ay, and sometimes make the strong man fall into disgrace and misery.
In these moral hospitals the thoughtful man, the philanthropist, and
the statesman, will look for the causes of social danger and demoraliza-
tion. When we begin at the prison and work up, we find opening be-
fore us all the sources of crime, all the problems of social order and
disorder, all the great questions with which statesmanship, in dealing
with the interests and welfare of a people, must cope when it seeks to
lift up high standards of virtue and patriotism. In the most highly-
civilized countries the subjects of pauperism and crime secure the most
attention and thought. They turn men's minds from selfish to unself-
ish fields of labor. Those who enter those fields will find in them
marks of toil and care by the best human intellects. The grandest
minds have worked at their intricate problems. The ambition of the
first Napoleon sought to gain immortality in his code of laws as well
as in victories on the fields of battle. Much has been done in many of
our States to improve prison discipline. Something has been done
toward reforming prisoners, but the largest view of the subject, which
looks to the moral health of society, and the baleful influences at work
in its organization, have not received the attention they deserve. When
prisons are visited by men of mind, when prisoners are looked upon
with kindly eyes by those who can study their characters and learn
from them the virtues, vice, and wickedness which mark our race;
when, tracing back the courses of their lives, they shall find the secret
sources of their errors and their crimes — then we shall have not only
our laws justly enforced and reformed, wrong-doers punished, but,
more and better than these, we shall gain a public virtue and intelli-
gence which will secure the safety and happiness of our homes and the
glory and stability of the republic. Then wealth gained by unworthy
means will no longer be respected. No one can recall the events of
the past few years, particularly those of the great commercial centres,
without feeling there is an ebb-tide in American morals. Not a little
of the glitter of our social and business life is a shining putrescence.
Fungus men have shot up into financial prominence to whom a pervad-
ing deadening moral malaria is the very breath of life. They could
not exist without this any more than certain poisonous plants can
flourish without decaying vegetation. While I have tried to present
in clear terms the claims of this Association upon the public sympathy
and support, it must be understood that we claim for it only the merit
of being a useful auxiliary to moral and religious teachings. If those
who take part in its work should fall short of it3 broader and higher
objects of a national character, they will at least get this great gain :
they will learn to think more humbly of themselves, more kindly of their
fellow-men, and to see more clearly the beauties of Christian charity.

RECENT PROGRESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE. S97

THE RECENT PROGRESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE.

ON the occasion of the celebration at Breslau of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of Prof. Goeppert's presidency of the Silesian Society
for National Culture, Prof. Ferdinand Cohn delivered an address, char-
acterized by eloquence of the highest kind, on the above subject. As the
wanderer, he said, who is climbing toward a high mountain-peak, feels
from time to time the desire to stand still a little, and look back on
the way over which he has passed, to enjoy the wider outlook which
he gains from his higher stand-point, so, he thinks, there are moments
in the uninterrupted progress of science, when we long in some meas-
ure to strike a balance, and see how much acquired property the
present puts aside as useless, how much it uses only for temporary pur-
poses, and how many enduring acquisitions have been made.

Dr. Cohn refers, no doubt with justice and some pardonable pride,
to the foremost place held by Germany, during the last quarter of a
century, in the march of science. At the same time he awards due
praise to other European states, and above all to England, which, dur-
ing that time and more particularly at present, he thinks, abounds in
men of the highest eminence, whose scientific achievements stand
prominently out on account of their astonishing energy, clearness,
depth, and independence of thought. Still, we cannot but admit that
Dr. Cohn is right in asserting that Germany is free from the dilettante-
ism which abounds in this country, and that as a rule science in Ger-
many is both far more wide-spread and far more thorough than it is
among ourselves, and that the opportunities furnished there to all
classes for scientific study at the ordinary educational establishments
have until recently left us almost nowhere. But, happily, signs of the
beginning of the end of this state of things among us are becoming rife.

After briefly referring to the intellectual awakening of Germany
along with the rest of Europe at the time of the Reformation, and
showing how this start forward was, especially in the case of Germany,
in a great measure frustrated by the Thirty Years' War, Dr. Cohn
pays a high and justly-merited tribute to France, and especially to
Paris, on account of the supreme place she took during the first thirty
or forty years of the present century in nearly all the sciences. The
glory of France in this direction has, however, he thinks, departed,
and Germany is becoming daily more and more the intellectual centre
of the world. Had Dr. Cohn written his lecture now, he might have
somewhat modified his language ; for, within the last few months, the
signs have been many, that in the direction of science the French are
determined to try to hold their own with the foremost in Europe.
Their professors are prosecuting an amount of research which puts our

598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

own to shame, while they are at the same time forming a school of in-
vestigators. We do not grudge to Germany all the praise she well
deserves, and the influence which the results of German research exer-
cise on other nations is likely to urge them to such vigorous and de-
termined efforts, that, sooner or later, science and every other pro-
gressive influence shall be " great gainers." Meantime, however, Ger-
many is doubtless in the ascendant.

In the year 1845 appeared the first volume, and in 1846 the second,
of Humboldt's " Cosmos." As comprising a view of the whole created
universe depicted with the most wonderful sympathy, the book is as
it were a canon forming a key to every thing that was known of Na-
ture at the time. No man was then more suited for such work than
was in the highest degree A. von Humboldt. A "Divina Comraedia"
of science, the " Cosmos " embraced the whole universe in its two
spheres, heaven and earth. Under the leadership of the great searcher
of Nature, as Dante once by the hand of Virgil, we climb from the
depths of the universe, with its farthest nebulae and double stars,
down through the star depths to which belongs our solar system, to
the air- and sea-enveloped earth, where form, temperature, and mag-
netic condition, are unveiled to us ; then to the wealth of organic life,
which, stimulated by the light, unfolds itself on its surface. It is an
overwhelming picture of Nature, of surpassing beauty of outline,
abounding in grand perspective, with the most careful execution of the
smallest detail.

But we cannot conceal from ourselves that the " Cosmos," pub-
lished twenty-five years ago, is in many of its parts now antiquated,
not merely because it is wanting in many facts which have since been
discovered, but most particularly because Humboldt was ignorant of
some highly-important questions which have since taken their place in
the foreground of scientific discussion, while our scheme of the uni-
verse during the last ten years has been considerably modified by the
introduction of new and influential ideas. Any one, who to-day would
attempt to recast the " Cosmos," must proceed like the Italian archi-
tect who took the pillars and blocks of the broken temples of antiquity,
added new ones, and rebuilt the whole after a new plan.

There are three discoveries which, during the last quarter of a cen-
tury, have entirely changed the position of natural science : the me-
chanical equivalent of heat, spectrum analysis, and the Darwinian
theories.

Since, in the year 1842, an unknown physician in a Swabian coun-
try-town, Dr. Mayer, of Heilbronn, pointed out that a hammer 424
kilogrammes in weight, which falls from the height of a metre on an
anvil, raises the heat of the latter by one degree centigrade, and that
by this process of bringing a falling motion to a stand-still it is con-
verted into a fixed quantity of heat — since then has science gained a
new conception of the conditions of matter and of the powers of Na-

RECENT PROGRESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 599

ture. This new doctrine appears in the mechanical theory of heat an-
nounced by Joule, Kronig, Maxwell, and Clausius, in the doctrine of
the conservation of energy of Ileltnholtz and Thomson, and by means
of the brilliant writings of Tyndall it has become the common property
of the educated world. Electricity and magnetism, heat and light,
muscular energy and chemical attraction, motion, and mechanical work
— all forces in the universe are only different forms of one and the
same power, which has dwelt from the first in matter in invariable
quantity, neither increased nor diminished ; not the least trifle of it
can be annihilated or created. Only the phenomenal forms of power
are changeable ; light can be converted into a chemical equivalent,
this again into heat, heat into motion, and indeed a fixed quantity of
one force always and only into an equivalent quantity of another. In
like manner also the quantity of matter has remained unchanged from
the beginning ; not the least particle or molecule can be annihilated
or ci'eated out of nothing, and only in the transformation of perishable
bodies are the molecules formed into ever-new combinations. What
we distinguish as natural forces are only movements of molecules, for
the least particles of matter out of which bodies are comj^osed are not
inseparably united to each other, but are loosely held together and in
continuous whirling and undulatory motion ; according to the swift-
ness and width of undulation of the molecule will this motion of our
nerves be ^regarded, now as sound, now as heat, then as light or as
color. Moreover, the chemical union of the elements of matter, the
attractive power of gravitation in all the bodies of the universe, are
but varied forms of this universal motive force. The unity and per-
manency of substance with its two attributes, matter and force, and
their innumerable modifications, which go to form the bodies of the
universe, were in the first instance enunciated as a philosophical
maxim by the great thinker Spinoza. Now it is established as a philo-
sophic fact by means of exact measure and weight.

Again, on the inner organization of the system of the universe has
unexampled light been thrown by the wonderful researches which
were begun in 1859 by two men, united by the closest bonds of a
friendship which bore rich fruit for science. After the light of the sun
had, in the third decade of this century, been brought into the service
of art by Niepce and Daguerre, Bunsen and Kirchhoff compelled it
also to render service to chemistry and astronomy. Like those ma-
gicians of the legend who, through the power of their knowledge,
compelled the spirits of the elements to disclose their most recondite
secrets, the genius of these men compelled the rays of light imprisoned
in the spectrum apparatus to make revelation of tilings in the world
of stars which the curiosity of men had deemed forever inaccessible.
Already had Kirchhoff ascertained what terrestrial elements were pres-
ent in the sun's atmosphere, and what were not ; quite recently has it
been discovered that there is even present in the sun a substance

600 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

(helium) which hitherto has been unknown on the earth. Moreover,
also, the inner structure of the sun, the distribution of its incandescent,
liquid, and gaseous parts, its luminous and colored envelop, the nature
of its spots and protuberances — all this is no longer a play-ground for
fantastic imaginings, but the subject of exact research. Since the
great eclipse of 1868, Lockyer and Janssen, Zollner, Huggins, and
Father Secchi, have observed, day after day, storms, whirlwinds,
flame-sheaves, outbursts of burning hydrogen to the height of 20,000
miles : thus has been developed an entirely new science — the meteor-
ology of the sun. Moreover, on other obscure regions of the heavens,
on the physical and chemical conditions, even on the laws of the move-
ments of the fixed and double stars, on nebuloe and milky ways, on
planets and comets, on zodiacal and northern lights, has spectrum
analysis thrown its enlightening rays. No less by rigorous mathe-
v matical method, through which astronomy, even at an earlier period,
had been brought to a certain amount of perfection, has she in the
most recent time enjoyed an unexpected triumph, by solving, through
the researches of Schiaparelli, the riddle of the comets, in being able
to recognize the identity of their nature with that of the swarms of
shooting-stars whose remarkable brilliancy long ago made them uni-
versally known.

II.

During the last quai'ter of a century, the history of the formation
of our earth has assumed a new aspect. When the " Cosmos " appeared,
the opinion prevailed that our earth, once a globe of liquid fire, became
covered with a crust of congealed scoria?, on which, by-and-by, the first
animal- and plant-life made its appearance. After an almost infinite
length of time, during which the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous,
and Permian strata were deposited, a terrible catastrophe, affecting
simultaneously the whole earth, so completely destroyed the first
palaeozoic life, that not a single species survived the universal devas-
tation. Upon the lifeless expanse, it was supposed, appeared then
the Secondary Fauna and Flora, entirely unconnected with and dif-
ferent from the extinguished one, until, after frequent repetitions
of the same process at longer or shorter intervals, man made his ap-
pearance, and along with him all existing plants and animals: with
him begins the Historical Period, whose duration has not exceeded
6,000 years. The causes of these world-wide revolutions geology
sought in the violent reaction of the molten interior against the once
extremely slender crust.

In opposition to these views, the opinion peculiarly associated with
the name of Lyell has made way, that no violent revolutions, return-
ing at intervals, destroyed the external structure of the earth and all
the life it sustained, but that all changes even in the earliest times
affected only the earth's surface, and that these could only be the re-

RECENT PROGRESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 601

suits of the same powers of Nature which are actively at work on the
earth at the present time ; and that, moreover, the gradual but ever
active powers of water, of air, and of chemical change, have perhaps
had a greater share in accomplishing these transformations than the
fierce heat of subterranean masses of lava. The explorers of the buried
remains of plants and animals show it to be impossible that all life in
those geological formations could have been destroyed simultaneously,
for many species are common at several stages ; in particular, many
existing animals and plants reach far back into the primitive world.
Man himself could be shown to have been contemporary with many
extinct species of plants and animals, and therefore his age on the
earth must be extended back to an indefinite period. Man was wit-
ness to that inundation which buried the plains of the old and the new
world under the waves of the sea of ice. Even in the immediately
preceding period, when the sub-tropical elephant, rhinoceros, and
hippopotamus, disported themselves in the lignite woods of Middle
Europe, have traces of mankind been found. Only in the most recent
times has a foundation been laid for the prehistoric records of man-
kind, by means of which we may be able to obtain a kuowledge of the
state of civilization, weapons, implements, and dwellings, of that primi-
tive race.

No book of recent times, Dr. Cohn thinks, has influenced to such
an extent the aspects of modern natural science, as Charles Darwin's
work " On the Origin of Species," the first edition of which appeared
in 1859. For, even to so late a period, was the immutability of spe-
cies believed in ; so long was it accepted as indubitable that all the
characteristics which belong to any species of plants and animals
were transmitted unaltered through all generations, and were under
no circumstances changeable ; so long did the appearance of new fauna
and flora remain one of the impenetrable mysteries of science. He who
would not believe that new species of animals and plants, from the
yeast-fungus to the mammalia, had been crystallized parentless out of
transformed matei'ials, was shut up to the belief that in primeval time
an omnipotent act of creation, or, as it may be otherwise expressed, a
power of Nature, at present utterly unknown, interfered with the regu-
lar progress of the world's development ; yea, according to the re-
searches of D'Orbigny and Elie de Beaumont, twenty-seven different
acts of creation must have followed each other previous to the appear-
ance of man — but, after that, no more. It Avas Darwin who lifted
natural science out of this dilemma, by advancing the doctrine that
the animals and plants of the late geological eras no more appeared all
at once upon the scene, than those of the preceding epochs simultane-
ously and suddenly disappeared ; on the contrary, these are the direct
descendants of former species, which gradually in the course of an ex-
ceedingly long period, through adaptation to altered conditions of life,
through the struggle for existence, through natural and sexual selec-

6o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion, Lave been changed into the new species. Prof. Cohn does not
doubt but that Darwin and his school may have over-estimated the
reach of the explanations given by him to account for the transmuta-
tion of species, and especially the importance of natural and sexual
selection, but the fundamental fact has been established, and will re-
main so for all future time. This fact is, that the collective life of the
earth, from the beginning even until now, and from the fungus-cell up
to man, represents a single series which has never once been broken,
whose members through direct propagation have proceeded out of each
other, and in the course of a vast period have been developed into
manifold and, on the whole, perfect forms.

The sciences which are concerned with life have during late years
been cultivated on all sides ; even in earlier years Cuvier and Jussieu
had done as much for zoology and botany as the state of discovery in
their time permitted, but since 1858 the boundaries of both kingdoms
have been widely extended by the labors of Carpenter, Huxley, and
Pourtales.

After referring to the researches of Goethe in the last century, and
those of Bauer and of Johannes Mtiller in the present, in reference to
the physiology of plants and animals, Prof. Cohn says it was only in
our own time, and first in 1843 in Schleiden's " Grundzugen der Wis-
senschaftlichen Botanik," that the new principle was followed out ; the
principle, namely, that all vegetable phenomena and all the various
forms of plants proceed from the life and the development of their
cells. After Schwann discovered that animal bodies also were built
up from an analogous cell, mainly by Virchow was then developed
from this principle the modern cellular physiology and pathology which
trace the condition both of healthy and diseased men and animals
back to the life-function of their cells. But, as the lecturer says, to
attempt to follow out the advances made by science in these directions
during the last twenty-five years would require a large volume, and
cannot be done in the space of a lecture or an article.

Even the cell itself has been changed. Until Schleiden's time it
was a little bleb filled with fluid ; we now regard it as a soft glutinous
body constructed out of the albuminous protoplasm first distinguished
by Mohl in 1845, and which is covered with a cellular integument, as
the oyster is with its cell. After waxing eloquent over the cell as an
entity, an "ego" by itself, and its relations to the outer world, Prof.
Cohn says that science now teaches us that there is only one life and
one cell, the cell of plants and of animals being essentially the same.
The most highly-developed animal differs from the simplest plant only
in the number and greater development of the matter composing the
cells, but, above all, to the more complete elaboration {Arbeitstheilung),
and the stricter subordination of the separate cells to the collective
life of the organism. Between the two extremes of the living world,
the yeast-fungus and man, there is the same difference as there is be-

RECENT PROGRESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 603

tween a group of individual men who do not know how to organize
their strength, and a strictly-disciplined, well-ordered army suitably-
formed and well armed, and which, by the strict subordination of the
many wills to the central authority, is always equal to the highest
achievements.

It is true that these scientific researches into biology have left as
yet the most important questions unsolved. It is not yet possible to
regard all life-processes as simple modifications of the other forces of
Nature and to ascertain their mechanical equivalents ; we cannot yet
convert absolute heat or light into life ; and, although chemistry is
daily doing more and more to bridge over the gaping chasm which
once separated the organic and inorganic systems, it has not yet suc-
ceeded in finding out the precise matter which exclusively supports
the life-process, on which alone the cells subsist. Thus, then, the be-
ginning of life is still wrapped in obscurity.

After referring in this connection to the transmission of epidemics
among plants, animals, and man, and to the microscopical labors of
Leeuwenhoek, Ehrenberg, Gagniard-Latour, Schwann, and Kiitzing,
Prof. Cohn goes on to say that the investigators of the present time,
to whom Pasteur has given a powerful impulse, have been the first to
establish beyond doubt that without Bacteria no putrefaction, and
without yeast-fungi no fermentation takes place; that this decomposi-
tion is accomplished only through the sustenance and living activity
of those microscopic cells.

Many a mystery of life will doubtless be unfolded to us if our
opticians during the next twenty-five years should manage to raise the
power of the microscope in the same projDortion as in the previous
quarter of a century, in which it has been at least quadrupled. The
best microscope of Schick and Plossl in 1846 did not magnify more
than 500 diameters ; the " immersion-lens xv." of Hartnack over 2,000
diameters. Still Dr. Cohn does not venture to hope that during the
next twenty-five years all the questions of science which are at present
being agitated will be solved. As one veil after another is lifted, we
find ourselves behind a still thicker one, which conceals from our long-
ing eyes the mysterious goddess of whom we are in search.

Dr. Cohn, in concluding his eloquent address, attempts to point out
the characteristics which distinguish the present from the past genera-
tion. In the former epoch, students confined their researches to single
and carefully-marked-off divisions of Nature, without any regard to the
neighboring and closely-allied regions, which must necessarily lead to
theone-sided view that these divisions belong to Nature herself. In the
present generation, on the other hand, the several physical sciences
have entered into the closest organic union. Physics and chemistry,
along with mathematical astronomy and geology, have been blended
into a new science — the history of the development of worlds ;
palaeontology, systematic botany, and zoology, have been joined into a

604 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

united science of organisms ; the physiology of plants and of animals
have become coalesced in universal biology ; the boundary between
the organic and inorganic aspects of Nature is being ever more and
more obliterated, and out of the several natural sciences a single uni-
form, universal natural science is being constructed.

But the deeper natural science penetrates from outward phenomena
to universal laws, the more she lays aside her former fear to test the
latest fundamental questions of being and becoming (Sem undWerden),
of space and time, of matter and force, of life and spirit, by the scale
of the inductive method, and the more confidently she lifts her views
concerning the universe out of the cloudy atmosphere of hypothesis
into the clear ether of theory grounded on fact, so much the more will
the gap be narrowed which since Kant has separated science from
philosophy. Schiller's advice to philosophers and men of science —

"Feindschaft sei zwischen euch ; noch ist das Btlndniss zu frilhe;
Uur wenn in Kampf ihr euch trennt, dann wird die "Wahrheit enthiilt,"

has been followed for more than half a century, to the gain of the
natural sciences, but often to the injury of philosophy, which would
knock away the firm ground from under our feet. But since Herbart
and Schopenhauer, and especially through Hartmann's labors, have
the two chief drifts of the work of the human mind been approaching ;
and if natural science has a mission to mould the future of our race,
she must court the purifying influence of philosophical criticism ; and
this mission, in Dr. Cohn's estimation, the science of the future cannot
reject. Its importance rests not merely in the much interesting and
useful information which can be made available to trade and industry,
for daily economy and universal civilization ; she must build a sure
foundation for our collective view of the universe, for our knowledge
of ultimate and highest things. It must be no longer the case that
even our most educated classes, in consequence of insufficient education,
have neither interest nor intelligence for the pursuit and acquisition
of scientific knowledge. Moreover, science will be no more able to
shun battle with other systems of the universe which have been hal-
lowed by the traditions of a thousand years, than were Socrates and
Aristotle, Copernicus and Galileo. Victory will lie on the side of
truth.

But if anxious souls should fear that, with the advance of a scientific
knowledge of the universe among the people, would come a breaking
up of political and social order, let them be assured by the teaching
of history. When we perceive the flash of an electric spark, we cer-
tainly do not take it for a bolt darted by the revengeful Jupiter ; and,
as the vault of heaven is resolved into air and light, so also must the
Olympus be shattered which was built thereon. But the ideas of the
true, the beautiful, and the good, remain unshaken ; they have been all
the more firmly established, for they have been deduced from the order

EPILEPTIC ORIGIN OF ISLAMISM. 6o5

of the universe and from the mind of man himself. And that the pur-
suit of natural science does not lead to materialism, and in no way in-
jures the ideal mind, is vouched for by the case of Alexander von
Humboldt himself, who, even in extreme old age, kept up his love for
research and power of work as well as his lively susceptibility for and
energetic share in all the noble pursuits of mankind.

Dr. Cohn concludes his lecture, so brimful of true eloquence
founded on sober fact, with a high compliment to the many worthy
qualities of the president of the Silesian Society, Dr. Goeppert. Such
a man as he is said to be, the lecturer truly says, may hope, like
Goethe, Humboldt, and other previous philosophers, to maintain, to the
utmost limit of existence, life, heart, and spirit, full of the freshness of
youth, and, moreover, in later generations be honored as a true guar-
dian of the highest good of grateful mankind. — Nature.

♦»»

EPILEPTIC ORIGIN OF ISLAMISM.

DR. J. C. HOWDEN", medical superintendent of the Montrose
Royal Lunatic Asylum, recently read an able paper before the
Edinburgh Medico-Psychological Association on the mental condition
of epileptics in relation to the religious sentiment. He states that
these patients manifest the strangest mental contradictions. Irrita-
bility, suspicion, impulsive violence, egotism, and strong homicidal
propensities, are among the most commonly-observed characteristics
in the insane epileptic ; but these traits are very frequently combined
. with strong devotional feeling, manifested in simple piety or in de-
cided religious delusions. Dr. Howden has the following remarks on
the peculiar mental characteristics of epileptics :

" The mysterious nature of the disease — the consciousness of infirm-
ity and helplessness — develops a craving for sympathy in the epileptic
which we rarely see in other lunatics. In the wards and airing-courts of
our asylums, epileptics may be distinguished from their fellow-patients
by the fact that they are generally found associating in little groups of
twos or threes. They sympathize with each other, lean on each other
for help in the time of trouble, and, however much they exhibit violence
and viciousness to others, they rarely attack each other. Along with
this desire for sympathy, the epileptic is mercifully endowed with
strong hope. He is always getting over his trouble, he thinks the
turns are less severe, and will tell you, perhaps the day before a fatal
seizure, that he thinks he will have no more fits. We all know how
much hope has helped the physician in his efforts to combat this dis-
ease with a whole battery of drugs, each of which in its turn seems for
a time to promise success, only too surely to fail in the end. This

THE POPULAR SCIEr E MONTHLY.

crav. _ : *hy find* a deep response in the highest development

— I . _ . : and the snfferir. _ - f - . - .

aasur . ....

where suffering and - . re.

when r - itself in del

another element ?lav- Vanity :ism

.v. I I rm to L. .:...-"

m commr.: :. with the on I ogh

the senses ever-waking mind - rates on ti. ii mem-

- ".....'. I np th - uderful visions in wL

: . -■ __ 1 ..-:..: Is gratif mint "iews with I

Aim . . •"- '.'.- ith th 5 >ur, • :• r - -

. fthe hum.;., n ."
S veral remarkable ins! - I in which derontf

. _■ ' strongest - - : renuineness. -" i ■ . ..

most dangex il mm f ....... A yc:: ; : n, aged

-- - " " in _• . - fits, read his Bi

I i f i > i ■ '..... Eram I mind. While in

the asylum, hewrot st letl r tc Ube i rg :.-. a I the

_• -....-._•■■• be ] attedto part;;".-, f the sacs

and i ' .-;•". fear we .-ward':

■ — i poor, dean • — becar.- . i.im a

ian, and 1. - - to 1 angular

I .

- lelnsio:. - " . -

.'onnded on visions i -.-..._• _ a? ti

- ".etimes. as in the following -ision eonl

bw una j : the i alios n which it was f .. i I I - :
am .- ." -. i . ■ " it . ' . i ft I batons, 1 ." b ■ I

ft rm was a boy onh irteen years old, an
... . ~~. On adn. -. I inm he - a an

- _ - mises, an intelligence be^

its. He told me i. - Adam, the _ - the

ri i. When . -■ i U ' i - :: of

- long iead tt:." i. . I ■ -
bed. to n bnt added that it '.~ true

bad eaten ti ' idden fruit, and had

done so, i.erepliei If blame

". .. _ i had been in my place.' He

i tc icture oi a woman on ti - . was the

7- : I e. He I le has been in heaven, a: . i

:e. He -. - fits every two or three weeks, and on :
ing from I hem he is dnD - hen he becomes possessed of

some e:: visions, alw . 7 _ious nature, S mes

her 1 to his ' .- is Adam, som : 'xod,

When qnes-

EPILEPTIC 0 BIG IX OF IS L AMIS M.

tinned as to the ground of his belief, he generally says that it has been
revealed to bini, and that he feels that it is true, pointing with his
finger to his epigastrium.

After describing a variety of cases of trances, visions, and religions
delusions, occurring in the epileptic, Dr. Howden remarks that t!.
and like cases naturally suggest the inquiry as to how far epilepsy has
had to do with the origin of certain religious creeds, and how far the
visions of the many so-called religious impostors may have had an
epileptic origin.

'• There is evidence that many religious fanatics were epileptics or
cataleptics. Ileeker, describing the dancing mania of the fourteenth
centurv, says : ' "While dancing, they neither saw nor heard, being in-
sensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted
by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits, whose names they shrieked
out. . . . Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open, and the
Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious
notions of the a^e were stran^elv and variously reflected in their ima-
ginations. "Where the disease was completely developed, the attack
commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the
ground senseless, panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at
the mouth, and, suddenly springiug up, began their dance amid strange
contortions.'

M Aun Lee, the mother of the Shakers, is described as ' a wild creat-
ure from birth, a prey to hysteria and convulsions, violent in her con-
duct, ambitious of notice, and devoured by the lust of power.' "While
in the prison at Manchester a light shone upon her, and the Lord Jesus
stood before her in the ceil, and became one with her in form and sjurit.
A writer >avs : ' A combination of bodily disease — perhaps catalepsy
— and religious excitement appears to have produced in her the most
distressiu"- consequences. During the spasms and convulsions into
which she occasionally was thrown, her person was dreadfully distort-
ed, and she would clinch her hands until the blood oozed through the
pores of her skin. She continued so long in these fits that her flesh
and strength wasted away, and she required to be fed, and was nursed
like an infant.' "

There is strong evidence that Mohammed was an epileptic, and
that, though a man of undoubted power and strong religious feeling,
he founded his pretensions as a medium of revelation on visions which
appeared to him during epileptic trances. Washington Irving, in his
" Life of Mohammed,"' says :

••Dr. Gustav "Weil, in a note to 'Mahommed der Prophet,' dis-
cusses the question of Mohammed's being subject to attacks of epi-
lepsv, which has generally been represented as a slander of his enem a
and oi Christian writers. It appears, however, to have been asserted
bv some of the oldest Moslem biographers, and given on the authority
of persons about him. He would be seized, they said, with violent

608 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

trembling, followed by a kind of swoon, or rather convulsion, during
wbich perspiration would stream from his forehead in the coldest
weather ; he would lie with his eyes closed, foaming at the mouth, and
bellowing like a young camel. Ayesha, one of his wives, and Zeid,
one of his disciples, are among the persons cited as testifying to that
effect. They considered him at such times as under the influence of a
revelation. He had such attacks, however, in Mecca, before the Koran
was revealed to him. Cadijah feared that he was possessed by evil
spirits, and would have called in the aid of a conjurer to exorcise them,
but he forbade her. He did not like that any one should see him
during these paroxysms. His visions, however, were not always pre-
ceded by such attacks. Hareth Ibn Haschem, it is said, once asked
him in what manner the revelations were made. l Often,' replied he,
* the angel appears to me in a human form and speaks to me. Some-
times I hear sounds like the tinkling of a bell, but see nothing.' (A
ringing in the ears is a symptom of epilepsy.) ' When the invisible
angel has departed, I am possessed of what he has revealed.' Some
of the revelations he professed to receive direct from God, others in
dreams ; for the dreams of prophets, he used to say, are revelations."

Bayle says (" Dictionnaire Historique et Critique," article " Mo-
hammed") that he was subject to the mat caduc (epilepsy), and that
he tried to make his wife Cadijah believe that " he only fell into con-
vulsions because he could not sustain the glory of the appearance of
the angel" Gabriel, who came to announce many things from God
concerning religion.

The following passage is quoted by Moreau (de Tours) from " Gis-
bert Voctins : " j

" Non video cur hoc negandum sit (epilepsia et maniacis delirii&
aut enthusiasmis diabolicis Mahommedi ad fuisse energema) si vitami
et actiones ejus intueamur." — "I do not see how it can be denied1
(that the fanaticism of Mohammed arose from the maniacal delirium
or diabolic enthusiasm of epilepsy), if we look carefully into his life
and actions." l The inhabitants of Mecca considered him to be a mad-
man and possessed, and his wife thought he was a fanatic deceived by
the artifices of a demon.

" By his ecstatic visions " (says Moreau), " had he not become the
dupe of his visions, whence sprung the first idea of his divine mission,
and then had not these visions become the principal, if not the sole
basis of his apostolic works, as well as the source of his audacity, and
of his prophetic power over the ignorant and superstitious spirit of his
countrymen ? " a

It seems incredible that a religion which sways the minds of
200,000,000 of the human race at the present day should have no
better foundation than the visions and dreams of an epileptic.

1 " Life of Mohammed," by Washington Irving, p. 30.

3 " Psvchologie Morbide," par le Dr. J. Moreau (de Tours), p. 552.

ASPHALT PAVEMENTS. 609

Religious systems must not, however, be judged of by the ordinary
laws of reason ; they must be estimated rather by their influence for
good or evil on men's lives and on society.

The imagination may, when unfettered, during a state of trance,
work upon what was during consciousness a constant theme of reflec-
tion, and elaborate therefrom ideas and theories pregnant with many
moral truths, and, though vanity has, no doubt, influenced the actions
of most of the so-called religious impostors, it has taken the direction
of attempts to benefit their fellow-men, and to satisfy that craving
which seems instinctive in the human mind to lean for aid and sym-
pathy on something stronger and better than itself, to connect the
present life with an eternal state of existence, and to attain a high
standard of moral perfection.

Imperfect though the doctrines of such men as Swedenborg and
Mohammed may be, they attempted to satisfy, and to a certain extent
have succeeded in satisfying, those yearnings in many human beings,
whom they have made, if not better, at least more contented with life
than if left to the unbridled guidance of their own passions and impulses.

A millennium of reason may be in store for the human race, but
the day is yet far distant ; and we cannot afford at present to sneer at
the credulity of our fellow-men, when in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century we hear of a learned bishop consecrating a cave where
Bernadotte Soubarons, a girl of fourteen, saw the Virgin Mary, and
read of thousands of pilgrims flocking to this sacred grotto in the year
1872 to worship with the most earnest convictions.

Need we wonder that the ignorant Arabs, 1,300 years ago, living,
as far as a knowledge of Nature's laws was concerned, in a state of
heathen darkness, should have been attracted to the Moslem faith,
which, while it held out bright hopes for a future life, consorted well
with their inclinations in the present.

The mere act of believing is, to most men, a source of happiness,,
and the happiness appears sometimes to be in the inverse ratio to the
credibility of the thing believed in, as Moreau (de Tours) says : " lis
croient, mais pour croire, en tout etat de cause, ils faut d'abord qu'ila
ne comprennent pas." — Abstract from the Journal of 3fental Science.

-♦♦♦-

ASPHALT PAVEMENTS.

WITHIN the past few years several streets in the city of New
York have been overlaid with a compound called by its in-
ventors " asphalt," but better characterized by the public as " poultice
pavement." When first laid down, this material appeared to fulfil all
the requirements of a serviceable pavement, being smooth, hard, and
apparently durable. Actual experience, however, showed the material

TOL. II. — 39

610 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to be so friable that in a short time the ordinary travel on the streets
reduced it to a fine, black powder, which, in dry weather, was thrown
up in murky clouds by every passing vehicle and every gust of wind,
finding entry into the adjacent houses through the minutest crevices,
and in wet weather was kneaded into a nasty, viscous mud. Soon the
streets thus paved were impassable, and the commissioners were forced
to order the removal of what was left of the " poultice " pavement.

This experience was not well calculated to conciliate public opinion
in favor of asphalt as a material for paving ; and, though travellers
returning home from Paris were loud in praise of the asphalted road-
ways of that capital, contrasting the roar of our granite-paved, filthy
thoroughfares, with the smooth, noiseless, cleanly streets of the French
capital, they were listened to with incredulity. Their " odious com-
parisons," instead of causing us to envy the Parisians for their happy
solution of the great question of pavements, had only the effect of ex-
citing compassion for the poor outside barbarians who put their trust
in asphalt. For, had we not tried asphalt here, and found it wanting ?

Yet it was not the asphalt pavement at all which proved a failure
in these experiments. The material used was a spurious compound ;
a mixture of sand and gas-house refuse, which had this only in com-
mon with asphalt, that the two substances went by the same name.
Here the adage, " Give a dog a bad name," was reversed. The genuine
asphalt pavement was thus involved in the ill-fortune of its base
counterfeit ; only for a little while, it is to be hoped. So soon as we
discover within convenient distance from our centres of population
native deposits of asphalt, we shall avail ourselves of the improve-
ments introduced into the art of road-making in France, and the " com-
ing man " can go about his affairs without having his ears stunned by
the clatter and roar of vehicles ; the horse of the future perform his
service without constantly risking life and limb ; and the carriage of
the future roll along without being jolted to pieces. In France the
asphalt pavement is as much a success as the railway, and, as we are
still seekers, still experimenters in this matter, it is perhaps well that
we learn the processes followed by French engineers.

Dr. L. Meyn, of Halle, has published a pamphlet on "The As-
phalts," which sums up all the information that is accessible regarding
this material. In the present paper we propose to give, mostly in his
own words, the history of asphalt as a material for paving foot-paths
and roadways.

Natural asphalt, or asphalt-stone, is a porous, calcai*eous rock, satu-
rated with bitumen, or natural tar, and capable of being worked into
a tough, hard mastic. It is not unlike mortar in general appearance,
and its color is usually chocolate, giving a fracture of lighter color.
Its grain is fine, and each molecule of limestone is coated with the bit-
umen. The proportion of the latter in the mass varies from 7 to 15
per cent. At a temperature of between 338° and 356° Fahr., asphalt-

ASPHALT PAVEMENTS. 611

stone falls to powder, and may then be dissolved in hot melted bitu-
men.

This substance does not occur very abundantly in Nature, the only
deposits of any importance, so far as yet known, being found in the
Val de Travers and at Seyssel, in Switzerland ; Seefeld, in the Tyrol ;
Lobsan, in Alsace ; Holle, in Holstein ; and Limmer, in Hanover. The
deposit at Holle is by far the most extensive in Europe ; but, though
here the particles of the limestone are thoroughly permeated by the
bitumen, the material is not considered by the Paris Asphalt Company
to be suitable for pavements, because it contains an excess of pure pe-
troleum. Yet Dr. Meyn thinks that by exposure to air the greater
part of this surplus may be dissipated, and the remainder oxidized.

Ancient authors state that Babylon was partly built with asphalt,
and that an asphalt cement was used for the walls of Nineveh. A
Greek physician, Eirinus, endeavored to bring this substance into use
as a buildinsr material in 1712. He was the first to discover a method
of reducing the asphalt of the Val de Travers to the liquid state,
and obtained the monopoly from the King of Prussia of all the asphalt
beds he might ^discover in the principality of Neufchatel. He pub-
lished in 1721 a "Dissertation on Asphalt," in which he gives as fol-
lows the process of making asphalt cement : " The preparation of this
cement is very easy. The stone must be slightly warmed till it can
be coarsely powdered. A small quantity of pitch is added, to make it
thinner and more soluble, and then the whole is melted over a slow
charcoal-fire." This cement was to be used instead of mortar, and
also to protect wood and stone-work against decay. There is still to
be seen at Couvet, a little village in the Val de Travers, a flight of
stone steps, dating from the time of Eirinus; the lower steps are
coated with asphalt, and are almost entirely unimpaired, while the
upper ones, which were not so protected, are worn into holes. But
the material did not continue long in use for building purposes, for in
1802, after the discovery of asphalt-stone at Seyssel, near Geneva, we
find the preparation of a mastic, from bituminous limestone and tar,
heralded as a new invention.

In 1832, the Seyssel quarries fell into new hands, and from that
period we date the progress made in the matter of asphalt pavements.
The new proprietor of the quarries, Count Sassenay, devoted himself
exclusively to producing a continuous and homogeneous material, and
carefully instructed his workmen in the best manner of laying this
pavement. The celebrated foot-path of the Pont Royal, the fine pave-
ment of the Place de la Concorde, Paris, as well as many pavements
at Lyons, belong to that period. Sassenay's process is still employed
in preparing asphalt for paving foot-paths, and the mode of laying
down the pavement is as follows: The foundation must be even,
for any inequality of its surface will cause the pavement to wear out
more rapidly in some parts than in others. The mastic is broken into

6iz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pieces, and melted in caldrons with bitumen at a temperature be-
tween 150° and 170° Cent. Then from 60 to 70 per cent, of sand is
added, and the mixture is ready for application to the surface to be
covered.

But still a good pavement for roadways was a desideratum. First
the experiment was tried of laying down a bed of broken freestone,
and pouring over this melted asphalt mastic. This method, however,
proved unsuccessful, for, when cold, the mastic was too brittle, and if
one of the corners of the stones was struck and broken by carriage-
wheels, a hole was made, which gradually widened, and was difficult
to mend. In Lyons, a layer of asphalt mastic, two inches in thickness,
was spread over four inches of concrete. This was found to be an ex-
cellent pavement, but a fatal objection to it was its costliness.

It was at last observed that the roads and paths leading to the
quarries of the Val de Travers were always in good condition, firm,
solid, and elastic. Here was an asphalt pavement, formed of the small
pieces of the mineral which fell from the carts, and which were pressed
down and flattened by the wheels. The first highway asphalted on
this principle was that between Bordeaux and Rouen. The road was
first macadamized, and then covered to the depth of an inch and a
half with asphalt, broken up in small pieces. As the plan appeared to
be a complete success at first, several other roads were asphalted in
the same way. Soon, however, the crushed granite of the macadam
began to cut its way through the asphalt, and broke its continuity,
thus allowing it to be permeated with dirt and water. Finally the
problem was solved by a Swiss engineer, A. Merian, of Basle, who
proposed to lay down powdered asphalt in a warmed state on the
street, and, by applying strong pressure, to form at once an imper-
meable, elastic surface. The French engineers readily adopted the
suggestion, and the first trial of the new method was made in the Hue
Bergere. The engineers cried " Eureka ! " and well they might, for
experience in Paris shows that — 1. The asphalt costs, in the first in-
stance, one-third less than stone pavement ; and 2. That the annual
cost of maintenance is three-quarters less than that of a macadamized
road.

The process of preparing the asphalt pavement is thus described
by M. Leon Malo : The asphalt-stone is brought direct from the quar-
ries, and broken up into small pieces, about the size of those used for
macadamized roads ; it is then heated over a stove in a drum-shaped
iron vessel with feet, till it crumbles into powder. In order that the
powder may not lose its heat, the whole apparatus is conveyed on to
the street where it is to be applied. Then a foundation of b'eton is
laid, about four inches deep, which may, however, be thicker or thin-
ner, according to the nature of the soil. On a macadamized road the
concrete may be omitted ; but on loose soil it should be laid as thick
as six inches. The arch of the roadway should only be just sufficient

ASPHALT PAVEMENTS. 613

to drain off the rain-water. The powdered asphalt is then spread over
the surface, to a depth of 16 to 20 inches (according to the amount of
traffic), and stamped down. Then a heavy roller is drawn over it.

With regard to the danger of horses slipping and falling on the
smooth surface of the asphalt pavement, the following facts are of
interest :

At Lyons, which has long had mastic roads, a number of cavalry-
horses fell on a street of compressed asphalt. This accident arose from
the circumstance that the asphalt had been laid on an old macadamized
road, and had therefore that considerable arch which is unnecessary
and dangerous for the asphalt road. The cavalry riding in a long
line, those horses near the side of the road slipped on the steep incline.

At Marseilles, where the asphalt roads from the harbor to the
town were made with a very gentle curve, there has been no increase
in the -number of accidents, though the traffic is enormous. A very
slight arch of the road is quite sufficient to allow the rain to run off
from such a smooth surface.

It is also not advisable to lay the asphalt on any street with a
gradient greater than 1 in 60, though in London some streets having
a gradient of 1 in 57, and even to 1 in 46, have been covered with as-
phalt without any apparent danger. It is of course extremely difficult
to get any accurate information about the number of accidents on the
streets, general vague impressions being worthless ; but in Paris the
number of horses which were observed to fall in the Rue Neuve des
Capucines, during two months, was as follows : In the former, which
was paved with sandstone, in blocks, from Fontainebleau, one horse in
1,308 fell ; on the latter, which was covered with asphalt, one in 1,409,
so that the balance was in favor of the asphalt.

In snow or frost asphalt is not so slippery as granite, being in it-
self warmer, and also more easily warmed by the slightest rays of the
sun ; hence, the ice is more slow in forming, and quicker in melting,
than on granite.

It has been proved that the greatest number of accidents to horses
happen when the asphalt is not cleaned, for the surface is never
muddy or greasy, except with foreign matter, and this ought to be
constantly washed off with water, which is plentifully laid on in Paris,
and to some degree in London. At any points where this cannot be
done, a slight sprinkling of coarse sand will prevent the horses slip-
ping. This is only a temporary remedy, but valuable in case of emer-
gency. It is one of the great advantages of asphalt, however, that it
is so easily and cheaply cleaned.

In case of a conflagration, the asphalt pavement will not help to
spread it. In London heaps of wood were set fire to on asphalt pave-
ments, but, when the embers were raked away, there were only a few
weak flames seen issuing from the asphalt, and they went out of their
own accord in a few moments.

514 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Iu conclusion, we give the results of experience with these pave-
ments in London, and these are : 1. The first cost of the asphalt road
is the same as that of a granite pavement. 2. The annual cost of
maiutenance is a trifle less. 3. Where a granite pavement is worn
out in from seven to ten years, an asphalt pavement is still in perfect
condition. 4. Asphalt, when taken up, may be used again and again.

REGARDING MATTERS IN INDIA.

Bt CAPTAIN LYON.

A LECTUEE BEFOEE THE IOXDOS SOCIETY OF AETS.

IN describing the various views, the lecturer said : I beg to ask
your assistance this evening in what I am going to do. I want
you to use your imagination, and fancy yourselves on board ship, and
— so that it may be pleasant and agreeable — in one of these new
Bessemer ships, where you have no sea-sickness to endure. We will
go down the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal, down the Red
Sea — where the heat is frightful, and the thermometer 120° on deck
and any number below, in fact perfectly suffocating — to Aden. We
will not stay there, but press on to Ceylon, where we shall arrive in
ten days, and where the beauty of tropical vegetation is seen for the
first time — lovely beyond description. Thence we go on to Madras ;
but before we arrive I will show you the god Ganesa. There he is, in
all his glory. He is the god most worshipped of all the Hindoo gods
— a beauty, you see. His history is as follows : For certain reasons it
was considered necessary that Siva should marry, and as he was an
old bachelor he did not like it. However, the marriage took place
between him and Parvatee, who unfortunately gave birth to a son.
Parvatee had a brother, called Vishnu, who was always upbraiding
her, and Ganesa, who was a most lovely child, always took his mother's
part. At last, Vishnu one day began upbraiding her again, and Ganesa
threatened to thrash him, and the result was that they had a fight,
and Ganesa got a tremendous thrashing instead, and Vishnu, with one
blow of his cimeter, cut off his head. Parvatee took a fit of the sulks
at this ; but in the end Siva was asked to restore Ganesa to life.
Siva at last consented to do so ; but on looking for him they could
only find his body, but no head. Here was a difficulty. The gods
were consulted as to what was to be done, and the result was that a
god was sent to bring the head of the first animal he saw and put it on
Ganesa's body ; and this animal, unfortunately, was an old elephant,
with one tooth. They took his head and stuck it on to Ganesa's body,
and you see the result. Parvatee did not like this, and in return, to

REGARDING MATTERS IN INDIA. 615

pacify her, Brahma said that Ganesa should be most worshipped of all
the gods. Before a Hindoo buikls a temple, or a house, or goes a
journey, he prays to Ganesa. And so I say : " O Ganesa — glorious
and honorable Ganesa — grant me success this evening. May I please
all this people ! All reverence to you, Ganesa."

I will now go back to our steamer, and we must fancy ourselves
coming into Madras. There is the steamer just as she appears soon
after daylight off the roads. Madras has no harbor whatever, and so
every captain arrives as early as possible, to get away before night ; as
soon after daylight as he can he casts anchor in the roads, and if you
come on deck in the morning you will see round the vessel the boats
in which you will be expected to land, one of which you are now look-
ing at. I leave you to imagine the effect when an English lady sees for
the first time twenty or thirty of these fellows in the morning. The boat
is called a catamaran, and it is the only chance you have of landing if
the surf is high. You are lashed to this thing, and they bring you to
shore. The sea washes right over you, but, as the water is warm, ex-
cept that you do not like the ducking, it does not much hurt you.
These fellows are off the boat, and in the water, and on to the boat
again in a moment. Although they say the sea abounds in sharks,
they are never eaten, and they actually say the sharks will not touch
a black man.

Well, the first thing you do, having landed, is to go to an hotel,
and find yourself a carriage. There are three kinds you can choose
from. There is the old palanquin, put upon wheels, called the palan-
quin coach, which is what Europeans generally use. The horse looks
sorry, but he can go ; every horse has his ghora-walla to attend him,
and a woman too. You buy the ghora-walla and the woman when
you buy the horse. It is the man's business to clean and feed the
horse, and the woman's to cut grass for him. The next carriage is
called a shigrampoo. You pay Is. Gd. an hour for this, and have to
pay beforehand, and whether the pony goes or not it is all the same.
The Hindoo has no idea of time ; he prefers that the pony should not
go, and so Europeans seldom use this. The next is a bullock bandy —
no springs. The bullocks come from Mysore, and are admirable goers.
The native standing by the side is the owner, and the other is the fel-
low that drives. The natives are all vain, and want to be photo-
graphed, and are sure to stand wherever they see a camera. Now we
start on our way to the hotel, having chosen one of the conveyances.
We shall not have gone far before we see something of this sort at the
corner of nearly every street — an almost naked barber, engaged in the
act of shaving, all for one penny. They say they are most wonderful
fellows at it. They actually shave people while they are asleep. I
found them very indifferent hands. If they are not engaged in that,
these very fellows are shaving the natives' heads. It is wonderful to
relate that, although there is the most intense heat, the natives invari-

5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ably shave their hair off. They say it cools them. You never hear
of a sunstroke.

We will now turn into the main street of Madras. The large
building to the left is a sort of emporium, where every thing is sold.
The building on the right is the Bank of Madras. Passing through
this, at the end we come to the bazaar, and we will just pass through
a comer of it and see one or two of the shops, such as everybody is
obliged to use if he is not prepared to go to one of the few Europeans
in the place. There you see the cap used by the natives as a substitute
for a hat — it is nothing but a piece of linen folded in a peculiar shape.
You see the two men who are making these caps are wearing similar
ones. Another shop is that of a native tailor. The natives themselves
never wear much that requires any shaping, and consequently there
is little for them to do in the way of cutting out. But they are won-
derfully good hands, nevertheless.

Having passed these, we soon get to the hotel, hoping to find peace
and rest. But when the Peninsular and Oriental steamers come in
everybody knows it, and hundreds of the natives are on the lookout
to get money. They see what hotel you go to, and then begins the
cry for bakshish — nothing but bakshish. But first of all let us
look at the picota, the machine that is used for drawing water. There
it is, and the natives run along the top of the long pole to press it
down, and then they turn round and run backward and foreward,
keeping the machine at work all day ; and in the rice-season it is very
disagreeable, and even perfect purgatory, to live near where one of
these machines is, and hear the two bits of wood rubbing together,
and going on "cah, cab" all night and all day. It drives you almost
mad. "Woe betide the unhappy fellow who gets a bed near one of
these picotas.

Arrived at the hotel, you find a lot of fellows asking for bakshish,
and playing drums. You give them some money, only too glad to
be rid of them. They are succeeded by fellows who play tricks with
some stuff dipped in turpentine, through which a man jumps backward
and forward. When they are gone, they are succeeded by a conjurer
who shows you the way to get rid of your wife if you have got one ; or,
if you have not, the way you can if you get one and don't like her.
He ties the woman up tightly in a net first, and, when he has done that,
he puts a basket on the ground. He then takes the top off, and pro-
ceeds to put her into the basket. There is the unhappy wife in the
basket. The little boy plays the tom-tom, beating it all the time, the
fellow standing looking on. As soon as the woman is packed up, he
covers up the basket, and, seizing a sword, he plunges it in. The
woman shrieks and yells frightfully, the blood pours out in torrents,
the ladies who are looking on faint, and the gentlemen curse and
swear, and pull him away. When they tear open the basket, they find
it empty, and the woman comes out of the house where you are staying

REGARDING MATTERS IN INDIA. 617

and asks for bakshish. This fellow is succeeded by two other jug-
glers, who spread a cloth before you over the sand, and in some mys-
terious way cause a fine large branch of the mango-tree to appear, and
grow up under the cloth. It is a curious fact that in Egyptian his-
tory we read of the same trick with the lotus-tree as this with the
mango-tree.

Now we come to the snake-charmers, the most wonderful race of
men in the whole of India. They take up a cobra, the most deadly of
all reptiles, and still hardly ever are bitten. There is the photograph
of these snake-charmers before you. The snakes are never still. The
poison-bag is in the roof of the mouth ; and, by certain means, this
bag is pressed, and the poison ejected. But, when you remember that
two hours is about the limit one lives after the bite of a cobra, you
cannot help wondering at the carelessness of these fellows. And
though nowadays they say that by ejecting certain alkali, ammonia,
or something of the kind, into the blood, the bite can be cured and the
poison destroyed, yet still, in the wilds of India, who would be able to
do this in the short space of time allowed to live after having been
bitten? There is one little animal alone that enjoys exemption from
the fearful bite of the deadly cobra. It is a favorite amusement to
some people to watch the struggle. They will turn a large cobra
loose in the room, and then immediately place a mongoose before it.
The mongoose instantly attacks the cobra, and a desperate fight en-
sues ; the cobra bites the mongoose over and over again, but the poison
seems not to have the slightest effect on it, and the battle will certain-
ly result in the death of the cobra. If the mongoose dies, it is from
sheer loss of blood and exhaustion, and not from the effects of the poi-
son, as thousands can testify. Dr. Short has held for many minutes
the mouth of a cobra fixed on to a mongoose, but it has got up and
run away, without any hurt. What peculiar antidote he possesses
science has not yet been able to discover.

Having now taken a cursory view of Madras and its people, and
the jugglers, such as they are, we pass on to consider their religion
and their temples.

First, I must tell you that the word temple does not exist in India.
It is merely a word imported by us. The word they use is clevila,
and means the house of God. A temple does not consist of one, but
four component parts. What we generally call a pagoda is nothing
but the gopurum, answering to the Egyptian pylon over the door.
The four parts of each temple are the gopurum,, or door ; the munda-
pum • the teppa kolum, or tank ; the vimanum, or sanctuary.

Now, I propose to show you these, and give you some idea of what
they are. We will take the train at night from Madras, and at twelve
next day we find ourselves at Trichinopoly, close to which is one of
the largest and finest temples in all India. The view is taken from the
gate-way at the south entrance. The pyramids are called the gopura,

618 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and mark the entrance into each separate court. The houses are in-
habited by 8,000 Bramins, who are not all necessarily priests ; but,
like the tribe of Levi among the Jews, from whom the priests were
taken, so among the Hindoos the priests are taken from among the
Bramins. The others hold their shops in the temple. There are 21
of these gopura ; the large gopurum to the right is 300 feet. high. The
next view gives the gopurum more in detail, and shows it exactly as
it is. The lower part is of stone, the upper part of brick, and this is
covered with figures, representing different scenes in their holy history.
Sometimes these gopura are very much more ornamented than others;
but they are always for the same purpose, that is, to cover the entrance
into the different parts of the temple.

We now come to a mundapum. A mundapum may be composed
of simply eight stones. Take four stones and put them upright in the
ground, about eight feet high ; put the other four along the top, and
you have got a mundapum, and such exist in thousands all over India ;
and, whether elaborate as this is, or perfectly plain, whether square, or
round, the result is the same, and you have a mundapum. In this
case each pillar is one single block of granite, out of which those
figures 15 feet high have been carved; it is covered with a flat stone
roof. It constitutes one of the finest mundapa in India.

We next proceed to look at a teppa kolum, or tank, as you see
here. The god not only is treated in every way like a human being,
but he must have his excursion in the water, and his ride in the car —
21 times he goes round that centre pavilion you see in the middle. On
the left and on the right you see mundapa, and the small gopurum
covers the entrance into the sanctuary.

I may as well tell you that the sanctuary is nothing but an oblong
building, perfectly plain, dark as pitch, not the smallest glimmer of
light being admitted. No European is ever allowed to enter it, except
a prince of royal blood, and he must enter it alone; and, if any other
European, or heathen, or low-caste man, dares to put his foot inside
the sacred portals, the temple must be abandoned, or the man must die.
Such is the rule of the Hindoos.

I will just show you, in passing, the interior of a mundapum — that
is, a very plain one — one of those we just saw the outside of. That
curious thing in the middle, called a flag-staff, was used formerly to
mark the distance a man was allowed to approach toward the sanctu-
ary. He was not allowed to pass nearer than that. But gradually it
has fallen into disuse, and now he may walk within three or four
yards of the sanctuary-door. It is so dark, though, that nothing can
be seen.

Passing from Trichinopoly we here leave the railway, and have to
choose the way we will travel. There are three ways before us. We
can go on horseback, and, starting an hour before sunrise, and gallop-
ing all the time till the sun rises, accomplish 12 or 14 miles at the out-

REGARDING MATTERS IN INDIA. 619

side. The next way, which is more comfortable by far, is by the
palanquin, carried by men on their shoulders, and you go along very
easily. But if you are heavy it is a great misfortune, for more bearers
are required to carry it, and. consequently more money to pay them.
But this is now almost obsolete, except in the native states, and so you
are obliged to fall back upon the bullock-coach, which I will show you.

That is the vehicle in which you have to travel all over the south
of India, except on the few spots where there may be railroads. This
one is occupied by natives ; turn them out and get in, and be sure to
sleep with one eye open, or you will not travel very far. If you close
your eyes the man will immediately stop, and the bullocks will lie
down and go to sleep too, and the man will get under the carriage,
and you will be lucky if you get over two miles instead of twenty.
I have known a native go three times round his own village, and come
back to his own door, and when you awoke, thinking you were twenty
miles on the road, and routed him out from his own house, and asked
him where it was, he would tell you it was a village eight or nine miles
off, but you saw it was the same man and the same bullocks, which
you ought to have changed long before getting that distance.

Nominally, there are plenty of roads in India, and good ones, too.
The government pay enormous sums to keep them in repair. The con-
tractors are natives, and they keep them in good order for five or six
miles out of the town where the Europeans are likely to drive, because
if they saw bad roads they would make a row ; but nothing is more ex-
ecrable than they are farther on ; there are holes big enough and deep
enough to bury a man in; you will often be 24 hours doing 12 miles.

However, we go on to Madura, the Koine of India. It is one of
the lai-gest and most noted places, and has one of the richest temples.
The first building we are going to see is a mundapum. Opposite the
entrance to all these mundapa are what are called the guardians of the
gods, of which you see one here. There he stands, carved out of a
single block of granite 15 feet high, beckoning with one hand, and with
the other warning you not to come unless you are properly prepared,
with his foot on the head of a cobra — whether typical of the triumph
of the Hindoo religion over the worship of the serpent, is a question I
dare not go into, for it is enough to mention that one subject among
savants and you set them all arguing. However, passing in beyond
this, we see one of the most beautiful buildings in the whole of India.
It is a mundapum, and was built by the last King of Madura before we
took it. It cost one million of money, and took 22 years to build.
The story is, that the reason of his doing so was that he asked the god
to come and pay him a visit. The god said he had no objection, but
he had not a house fit to receive him in. So the king at once set to
work and built what you see, and, though he is long since dead and
gone, the god is brought ten days every year to pay a visit to this
mundapum. It is 333 feet long and 84 feet wide, and is considered

6zo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by all to be one of the finest in India. It is built of pure gray granite.
Every pillar in it to the right and left is whitewashed. The natives
always whitewash them to a certain height. On each side are repre-
sentations of the king and his successors. You see him on the right
under his canopy, and beside him his two wives. The story goes that
Trimul Nayak married a daughter of the Rajah of Tanjore. The day
after he brought her home he took her to see this magnificent building,
which was just completed. After walking through it, as she did not
say a word, he asked her why she had not spoken, and what she
thought of it. She answered that her father had a better stable for
his horses. In a fury he drew his dagger and stabbed her in the side,
and it is said that, when the pillar was cut, and they sculptured
the figure of the wife, the hole appeared in the side ; and, although
they changed the pillar three times, every morning after, they found
the hole still there, as a warning to passionate husbands to keep their
tempers. One of the pillars outside this temple, being very much
exposed to the weather, is consequently much damaged. It represents
Vishnu giving his sister in marriage to Siva, and every year there is a
cermony of marriage performed. But, while the ceremony is going on,
a Bramin invariably sneezes, and as that is an omen of bad auspices,
the marriage is postponed, and, as this has been going on year after
year, it probably will to all eternity. That sneezing puts a stop to it.

The outside of this celebrated mundapum is similar to that we saw
before at Trichinopoly, the two side-pillars being carved differently,
the one on the right being Ravana, the celebrated giant, who was con-
demned to bear a mountain on his back in punishment for his sins.
Exactly opposite is situated the celebrated Temple of Madura, the
richest in India, with an income of £4,000 a year, and an enormous
number of priests. The difference between this and the other at
Trichinopoly is that this is all covered over, while that is uncovered.
That one is very poor, while this is enormously rich. I ought to have
said a few words here respecting Hindoo worship. There is not a
single Hindoo temple dedicated to the worship of the one God, and
they have no representation of Him. He is something too awful for
that. They never address Him except through a priest, or one of his
personifications, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. These are the three
principal deities. Brahma is Creation, Vishnu is Preservation, and
Siva Destruction. And, although it is said that there are 330,000,000
gods in India, yet the simple truth is, all these are only names given to
one or other of these in any particular place where the god is wor-
shipped. He is always named for some act or other which he is sup-
posed to have performed at or near the place of worship. One or other
of these three is the god, and there are 330,000,000 names of these
gods. That is the whole secret of the Hindoo religion.

Passing into this celebrated temple, we come to the golden lotus-
tank, one of the most celebrated tanks in India. It is supposed that

REGARDING MATTERS IN INDIA. 621

in this temple originally there was no tank, and so Siva was obliged
to make a passage under the sea to allow the water of the Ganges to
come a thousand miles and supply this tank with water. Alongside this
tank there was a bench, and there was a sect of holy men who had a
right to sit upon it. This bench had the peculiar faculty of elongating
itself at pleasure, or becoming shorter, as the case might be, and there-
fore, when anybody applied to be admitted a member of this holy sect,
he was ordered to sit on the bench. If the bench elongated, he was to
be received as a member ; if the bench became shorter, he went head
over heels into the water, and could not become a member ; and, as the
water was in a very foul state, he did not have a very pleasant bath.

Now we come to the Palace of Madura. It formerly covered a
square mile of ground, and was a most splendid building. Every pillar
you see is 50 feet high. There is very little of it left now, and what
little there is, is used as a court of justice every day in the season.
The next view will give you a better idea of this wonderful place. It
is taken from the inside, looking outward, and gives a side-face view
of the square, three sides of which still stand. The interior of one of
the colonnades also gives a very good idea of the grandeur of the place.

We now strike across the sea-shore, and on going a little to the
north we cross a small arm of the sea, and come to Ramisseram, which
has the most celebrated temple in the south, if not in the whole of In-
dia. Its corridors are considered the finest in the south — the door at
the end marks the entrance to the sanctuary — they are 300 feet long ;
each pillar is one block of solid gray granite. Unfortunately, from its
being whitewashed, much of the beauty is hidden. If at any future
day it should be cleaned, it will, of course, be in a better state of pres-
ervation thereby.

This gives, an idea of the strange way the Hindoos sculpture the
pillars in their temples. The figure is nothing but that of a juggler,
and yet he is carved out of one of the pillars in one of the most sacred
temples in India. The side-aisle of the Temple of Ramisseram is 700
feet long ; the window at the end is five feet high, and gives some idea
of its length. When we consider that the pillars are of granite, and
the enormous time it must have taken to build such a temple, and
carve such a wonderful corridor, I think you will agree with me that
it is a work which the world can hardly excel. Four thousand feet is
the aggregate length of the corridors. The temple is situated at the
edge of the sea, and receives the pilgrim after his long and toilsome
march of 3,000 miles from the north. Only those who know what In-
dian travel is can conceive what he must have gone through ; when he
leaves the Ganges he is laden with bottles, one of which he is bound
to leave at every temple till he arrives here, and leaves the last, and
here he hopes for rest. But he has no rest yet, for the Bramins take
him to the sea, and the actions they make him go through at daylight
are very absurd. Then, between here and Ceylon, is a long sand-bank,

622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seven miles long, which formerly was a portion of the land, and
through this the pilgrim is condemned to wade to a temple built on a
rock. At last the Braruins have done with him, and he finds rest and
repose here. He wanders through the splendid corridor late in the
evening — in the dark night — and knows he has earned the right to re-
main. He feels that he has insured to himself beatitude hereafter, and,
he hopes, prosperity in this world.

Before finishing, I must ask you to understand what Indian caste
is. It is compared to our society, but in reality is very different from
it. A high-caste man, no matter what his position, though he may be
a beggar and perform the most extraordinary offices, still always has
the right of entree into the houses of the richest natives, and is wel-
comed wherever he goes, and always received well. On the other
hand, a low-caste man, though with millions of money, is never allowed
to enter a temple. Among the higher caste are the fakirs. There is
one, such as I saw him. He confessed to me that water had never
touched his body, his nails had never been cut, he had never been
shaved, and his hair was bound up with rags, and was a solid mass of
dirt and filth, and yet this man was received with open arms in the
magnificent palaces of the rich natives, where he was always welcome
Such as I saw him I show him to you.

«*♦

TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD.1

The years are many since, in youth and hope,
Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope
We drew thick-studded with all-favoring stars.
Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed with scars
From life's hard battle, meeting once again,
We smile, half sadly, over dreams so vain ;
Knowing, at last, that it is not in man
Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan
His permanent house of life. Alike we loved
The Muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved
To measures of old song. How, since that day,
Our feet have parted from the path that lay
So fair before us ! Rich, from life-long search
Of truth, within thy academic porch
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,
Thy servitors the sciences exact ;
Still listening, with thy hand on Nature's keys,
To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies
And rhythm of law. I, called from dream and song,
Thank God ! so early to a strife so long
That, ere it closed, the black, abundant hair
Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare
On manhood's temples, now at sunset chime
Tread with fond feet the path of morning-time.
And if perchance too late I linger where
The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare,
Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely blame
The friend who shields his folly with thy name.
Amesbukt, Mass., Tenth Month, 1870.

1 Whittier's beautiful dedication of "Miriam" deserves a wider circulation than it has received.

EDITORS TABLE.

623

EDITOR'S TABLE.

COERCION I2T EDUCATION.

THE question of collegiate reform has
again broken out in public dis-
cussion. Dr. McCosh has, written a
letter to the Evening Post, protesting
against certain contemplated changes
in the management of the students in
Harvard University. It is proposed to
abolish the compulsory recitations, to
allow the students greater freedom,
but to hold them rigorously to the final
examinations — a proceeding which
Dr. McCosh thinks is not only in itself
mistaken, but, by its adoption in so
influential an institution as Harvard,
would exert an injurious influence on
other colleges of the country. The im-
mediate question is that of college dis-
cipline. While there is a great stir in
behalf of general compulsory educa-
tion, Harvard proposes to relax its co-
ercive practices. President Elliot, in
his report to the Board of Overseers,
suggests that the time has come for
allowing more liberty to students, and,
as their average age of admission to his
institution is now above eighteen years,
he thinks that the school-boy tactics
might be dispensed with, and the stu-
dents be treated more as responsible
men, preparing for the work of life.
Dr. McCosh holds, on the contrary, that
the college is a place for discipline,
which is to be acquired by the enforce-
ment of external rules and the close su-
pervision of the students by tutors, and
the method of enforced recitations.

President Elliot assumes that the
policy of European universities is more
free than that of American colleges,
and in this respect is worthy of our
imitation. Dr. McCosh denies this.
He says: " In all the good colleges of
Great Britain and Ireland, the ten-
dency of late years has been toward a
weekly or daily supervision of studies.

In Oxford and Cambridge, which have
produced such ripe scholarship and
high culture, the teaching is conducted,
not by loose lectures of professors, but
by numerous erudite tutors, who may
not have more than half a dozen pu-
pils present at a time, possibly not
more than one, but who rigidly insist
that the pupils be present and do their
work." In regard to the German sys-
tem, Dr. McCosh states that the G-ym-
nasien and Realsclmle — the prepara-
tory schools — take charge of the pupils
from the age of ten or twelve to eigh-
teen, and carry their scholarship as far
as the freshmen or sophomore classes
in our American colleges. And he
says that at these institutions " attend-
ance is rigidly required, and the in-
struction is of a thoroughly drill-char-
acter. Every one ought to know that
the foundation of German scholarship
is laid, not in the universities, but in
the Gymnasien. In the universities ot
Germany there is much to commend.
Berlin, with its two hundred teachers,
can furnish high instruction in every
department of human learning. It is
the very place for an American youth
to go to, when, having taken his de-
gree at home, he wishes to perfect
himself in some special department ot
scholarship. At all the universities
a few studious youth work with great
assiduity and success. But a very
large portion are not studious, and
take a deeper interest in beer-drinking,
Burschen, songs, and sword-duels, than
in careful reading."

The question here raised is not to
be settled by European precedents, be-
cause— first, as we see, the doctors disa-
gree as to the facts; and, second, be-
cause it is a radical question affecting
our whole educational system, and can
only be settled by an appeal to first

624

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

principles. The difficulty encountered
is by no means confined to the higher
institutions ; it is coextensive with all
modes of public education, and is just
as palpable and refractory in the mid-
dle and lower schools as in the colleges.
The trouble arises from the massing
together of students of unequal moral
and intellectual capacities. Between
those of superior and inferior grade,
there is an undoubted antagonism of
interests and requirements. The man-
agement that is best suited for the one
class, under existing views of educa-
tion, is not best for the other, and we
see in every school the evils that arise
from uniformity of system. For the de-
velopment of the highest character, self-
restraint and self-direction, with free
and responsible action, are indispensa-
ble ; and, in every school, there are those
who are capable of this self-education,
and who suffer from a meddlesome and
offensive coercion. On the other hand,
there is the great majority who seem
to require external direction and police
supervision, and of whom, perhaps, lit-
tle can be made under any system.
"Which shall be sacrificed ?

That there is a tendency to escape
from the low agency of external rules
and regulations, and to give greater
scope to the principle of individual self-
government, is unquestionable. Presi-
dent Elliot's remark, that " the time
has come for allowing more liberty to
students," is but the recognition of a
great change in regard to the best
method of controlling human beings
in all branches of social regulation.
With the gradual disappearance of sla-
very within the sphere of civilization ;
with the decline of political tyranny
and interference with the individual;
with the relaxation of the severities of
family government, and the manage-
ment of apprentices; with the passing
away of religious coercion in matters
of belief, and with the substitution of
the principles and practice of non-re-
straint for the old methods of violence,

even in lunatic asylums, there has been
a corresponding change in the school-
room ; its barbarisms of discipline have
ceased, and the question is now one
mainly of the degree of supervision.
Many evil consequences undoubtedly
flow from this profound transition, but
it must be accepted as an on-working of
humanity, and a phase of the action of
Nature. To assume that the forces in
play have now reached their final equi-
librium, we think is irrational, and to
arrest the movement at its present
stage we hold to be impossible.

It is now virtually conceded that
the highest results of scholarship in
the universities are not attained by
the coercive drill-system. Speaking of
the German institutions, Dr. McCosh
says that " at all the universities a few
studious youth work with great as-
siduity and success ; but a very large
portion are not studious, and take a
deeper interest in beer-drinking, songs,
and sword-duels, than in careful read-
ing." Such is the outcome of that
thorough-going preliminary drill which
characterizes the lower or preparatory
schools of Germany. The passage of
students from these to the universi-
ties is regarded as an escape from
drudgery, which produces a vicious re-
action when the sphere of freedom
is reached. At all events, this thorough
drill-system is a failure with the great
mass of students. It is the same in
England. Dr. McCosh speaks of " the
ripe scholarship and high culture "
which marked the educational policy
of Oxford and Cambridge, but this de-
scription is applicable to but a very
small proportion of the students. Not-
withstanding the vigorous coercion of
discipline in the great public schools
which prepare for the universities, and
notwithstanding the supervision that
Dr. McCosh alleges in the universities
themselves, the number of whom ripe
scholarship and high culture can be
affirmed is scandalously few. "What-
ever truth there may be in Sydney

EDITOR'S TABLE.

625

Smith's remark that the universities
are in the habit of taking credit for all
the mind they do not succeed in ex-
tinguishing, it is pretty certain that
the small number of graduates who
give character to the school are those
who would succeed under any system.
So far, indeed, as the great body of the
students are concerned, there is small
ground for boasting of the success of
the English system. When we con-
sider the wealth and resources of the
English universities and great public
schools, when we remember their
ancient prestige, the talent at their
command, and their high place in pub-
lic confidence, in the light of the re-
sults produced, we can cordially agree
with Prof. Blackie, of Edinburgh, in
his letter to Dr. Hodgson, when he
pronounces the whole system "a su-
perstition, a blunder, and a failure."

School-discipline can never be di-
vorced from the nature of school-occu-
pation. If the studies are repulsive,
if they do not take hold of the feelings,
or if they produce indifference or an-
tagonism, force is the teacher's only al-
ternative, to keep the school in order,
and carry on its work. The essential
implication of coercion in influencing
conduct is a penal policy. A compul-
sory system is one that punishes for a
breach of rules. In civil society, where
the object is simple protection, govern-
ment has nothing to do but to attach
penalties to the violation of law. But
it is widely different in education, the
object of which is to incite the student
to put forth his energies ; for, in the
end, all true education is self-education.
But a punitive system appeals to the
lowest motive, the fear of the infliction
of some form of pain, and it can never
stimulate to the best or highest action.
In the past history of education, flog-
ging has been its almost constant ac-
companiment, and this has been coin-
cident with schemes of study that have
failed to enlist the sympathies of pupils,
and to quicken their nobler emotions.
vol. 11. — 40

Take the one element of language, the
study of which constitutes the staple of
school-drudgery, and which is habitual-
ly pursued as arbitrary and irrational
task- work, and what can we expect but
that students will require to be driven
through the irksome routine of daily
toil. Prof. Halfourd Vaughn indulged
in no exaggeration, when, called before
a committee of the British Parliament
to testify as to the working of the Eng-
lish system, he said : " There is no study
that could prove more successful, in
producing, often thorough idleness and
vacancy of mind, parrot-like repetition
and sing-song knowledge, to the abey-
ance and destruction of the intellectual
powers, as well as to the loss and paral-
ysis of the outward senses, than our
traditional study and idolatry of lan-
guage." Two hundred years ago, Milton
criticised the education of his time from
exactly this point of view. He de-
nounced it unsparingly, and went so far
as to declare that a better system was
not only possible, but might do more
even for dunces than the prevailing
method could do for brighter minds,
and he put the statement in the follow-
ing quaint and pungent form : " I doubt
not that ye shall have more ado to
drive our dullest and laziest youth, our
stocks and stubs, from the infinite de-
sire of such a happy nurture, than we
have now to haul and drag our hope-
fullest and choicest wits to that asinine
feast of sow-thistles and brambles,
which is commonly set before them as
the food of their tenderest and most
docible age."

THE FAREWELL BANQUET TO PRO-
FESSOR TYXDALL.

Peof. Ttndall having closed his la-
bors in this country, has sailed for home.
His work has made a deep impression
upon the public mind, as was testified
by the farewell dinner given in big
honor in this city, before leaving.
The affair was, in several respects, re-

626

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

markable. No sucli brilliant gather-
ing of scientific, literary, and profes-
sional gentlemen has ever before as-
sembled on a festive occasion in this
metropolis. As his lecture-rooms, in
the various cities he has visited, have
been crowded by the most intelligent
and cultivated people, so the dining-
hall at Delmonico's was filled with two
hundred guests, many from abroad, and
representing the colleges and scientific
institutions of the country, together
with a large body of the most eminent
gentlemen of our cit^. The spirit of
the occasion was one of harmonious
enthusiasm for the distinguished pro-
fessor in whose honor it was made, and
of lively interest in the subjects and
ideas he represents. The speaking was
excellent, and, although graver and more
didactic than is customary at such times,
was yet by no means unexciting, and
met with the most cordial responses.
Of course Delmonico, prince of caterers,
lost no reputation in the elegant and
sumptuous repast which he furnished,
but the social and intellectual treat was
the great feature of the evening. Prof.
Tyndall made a happy address, in which
he explained the motive of his coming
to this country, the laborious character
of the work which his lectures involved,
and the reasons which compelled him
to decline the numerous urgent invita-
tions that have poured in upon him
from all directions, to lecture in the
cities of the interior and the West. "We
have no space now to refer to the sev-
eral admirable speeches that were made,
upon subjects variously connected with
the interests of science. They were
too valuable to be left in the incom-
plete shape in which the reporters gave
them to the newspapers, and they will
be shortly published as an appendix to
the little volume of his lectures which
Prof. Tyndall has carefully prepared,
and which will be given to tbe public
in a few days.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Earth a Great Magnlt. . A Lecture
delivered before the Yale Scientific Club.
By Alfred Marshall Mater, Ph. D.,
Professor of Physics in the Stevens
Technological Institute. Chatfield & Co.,
New Haven.

The author of this lecture is well known
to the scientific world, both iu this country
and Europe, as an original investigator in
the field of physics. He has made nu-
merous researches in various physical
branches, the results of which have been
published in the scientific journals, domes-
tie and foreign. He is now prosecuting
various inquiries at the Stevens Institute
of Technology, in Hoboken, where they have
the finest collection of physical apparatus
that can be found in any institution in this
country, if not in the world. Having won
his spurs as an original experimenter, and
established his place among those who ex-
tend and create scientific knowledge, he
now turns his attention to the work of dif-
fusing it among the people. It is common
to say that original investigators are not
good expositors ; and this is often true, but
it is also true that they are frequently the
very best of teachers. We have recently
had a conspicuous example of this in Prof.
Tyndall, and we now have another in Prof.
Mayer. The lecture before us is a model, in
its logical form, its copious and beautiful
experiments, and its lively and graphic lan-
guage. As an exposition of the elements
of terrestrial magnetism in a compressed
and readable form, it is perfect. Triibner,
of London, has caught it up and issued it ;
and the London and Edinburgh Philosophical
Magazine, the first scientific authority, has
reviewed it in so just and discriminating a
way that we cannot do better thau to quote
a portion of its statement : " This is the
report of a lecture delivered before the Yale
Scientific Club on February 14, 1872, in
which the lecturer proposed to present to
his audience ' one prominent truth in simple
and striking experiments.' The truth which
is kept steadily before the mind throughout
the lecture is, that the earth is a great mag-
net ; and this truth is developed step by
step by experiments of the most conclusive
kind, each having been rendered distinctly

LITERARY NOTICES.

627

visible to the audience by means of the ver-
tical lantern, so that the processes of de-
magnetizing, with all the interesting mo-
tions of the needles, were seen projected
on a luminous screen, eighteen feet in di-
ameter.

" The lecture itself is a masterly pro-
duction, and exhibits the result of much
close reading as well as experimental re-
search. Quotations are given from earlier
writers 011 magnetism, illustrative of the
sound knowledge which they possessed;
and, as each experiment illustrative of the
lecture is described, as well as the apparatus
employed in manipulation, the reader is
conducted from a consideration of the most
ordinary magnetic phenomena presented by
bar and electro-magnets to that of the same
phenomena evolved from terrestrial mag-
netism. A paragraph selected from the
closing portion of the lecture will fully sub-
stantiate this statement: 'Now we have
finished our experiments ; and what have
they shown ? I have temporarily magnetized
a bar of soft iron, by pointing it toward a
pole of our large magnet. I did the same
with the bar and the earth. I permanently
magnetized an iron bar by directing its
length toward the pole of the magnet, and
vibrating it with a blow of a hammer. I
did the same with a bar, struck when point-
ed toward the earth's magnetic pole.. I
have shown you the action of a small mag-
netic disk on iron filings placed above and
around it. You saw the earth produced the
same action on the beams of the aurora. I
showed you the action of this disk on a
freely-suspended magnetic needle, and point-
ed out to you the earth's similar action on a
dipping-needle carried over its surface. I
have evolved a current of electricity from a
magnet, by cutting with a closed conductor
across those lines in which a magnetic nee-
dle, freely suspended, places its length. I
did the same with the earth by cutting
across those lines which are marked out by
the pointing of the dipping-needle. There-
fore, what am I authorized to infer ? When
the effects are the same, the causes must
be the same ; for, according to all the
principles of philosophy, and conformably
to that universal experience which we call
common-sense, like causes produce like
effects.' "

Family Thermometry. A Manual of Ther-
mometry for Mothers, Nurses, Hospital-
lers, etc., and all who have charge of the
Sick and of the Young. By Edward Se-
guin*, M. D. Pp. 72. Putnam & Sons.
This is a valuable monograph upon an
important subject, and is an interesting in-
dication both of the progress in medical
science, and of the need and possibility of
diffusing its benefits among the people.
More and more as physiology and pathology
advance, are we discerning the fundamental
nature of the thermal processes in the living
economy. That the animal body is, first of
all, a furnace to which the digestive system
furnishes fuel, and the respiratory system
the agent of combustion, is not a mere cu-
rious chemical fact, but it is a central and
vital physiological law, which is involved
with the whole subject of health and dis-
ease, of life and death. It may not be
proper to say that heat is life, but it is an
essential condition of it, and is unquestion-
ably the raw material of it — if not life, it is
yet transformable into life. But the organ-
ism generates its heat and loses it by fixed
physical laws, while the whole scheme of its
activities depends upon the maintenance of
the vital temperature at a given point, the
norme of health, which is 98° Fahr. in the
Caucasian race. Any deviation from this
point is an indication of disturbance and dis-
ease. The rise of temperature above the
standard involves one class of disturbances ;
its fall below, another class. The physician
alone can deal with the special complications
which arise when the temperature ascends
or sinks abnormally, but it is in the power
of those not physicians to observe the indi-
cations, and thus to determine not only
when the medical man should be called, but
to furnish him with positive and valuable
data for his treatment. The use of the
thermometer has become indispensable in
intelligent medical practice, but Dr. Seguin
has shown that it is equally indispensable
to mothers in the intelligent management
of their children. The only difficulty is to
get them to use it, and to give a little atten-
tion to the method of registering the results
observed. The ordinary thermometer is
badly graduated with reference to this use,
and so Dr. Seguin has devised a physiolo-
gical thermometer marked in so simple a
way that it may be employed by anybody

628

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with facility. The health-point, or nornic,
is marked zero ; 0 = II, or health. From
this point, in fever, the index runs up, and,
in depression, it runs down, proportionally
to the danger in both directions, the points
of significance being indicated upon the
scale. Careful directions are given for using
the instrument, and simple charts are pre-
pared for recording the observations. These
charts, and the systematic records they con-
tain, are indispensable as forming a history
of the case, for it is not only the deviations
of temperature, but the train of variations
and intermittent changes, that it is desirable
to know. Dr. Seguin says : " The supreme
importance of the first observation of the
first abnormal temperature, at the first mo-
ment of a sickness, cannot be overrated. If
it rarely shows, by name, what the intrud-
ing illness will be, at least it can often, by
exclusion, tell what it will not be. For in-
stance, a high first temperature, as of 3
to 4° above the point of health, cannot
herald typhoid fever, but can measles or
scarlatina. Moreover, the first observation
serves as a mile-post to start the reckoning
of the future stages, of increase or effer-
vescence, of full force or diminution, of
convalescence or relapse." Dr. Seguin ob-
serves : " The A B C of motherhood is the
name I would give to that part of nurs-
ing which mainly consists in spying the
subtle and bold invasion of disease, and of
measuring from the first its deadly strides
into the vitals of the innocent. The mother
who can do that is the sentry. When she
detects the moment of the invasion of the
cradle, and measures the strength of the
enemy on the stem of her thermometer, and
can transfer and read its warnings on her
chart, she is prepared for the struggle with
death itself." Yet there is a difficulty here
which Dr. Seguin has not been slow to per-
ceive, and which he states without reserve
or circumlocution. He says : " But where
shall we find a mother who has been taught
her duty in that matter of life and death ?
No use to mince it ; it is a shame and a
scandal that, in the curriculum of education
devised for our sisters and wives, there is
room for algebra, trigonometry, etc., and
none for the fine art of nursing ; that they
are taught to look through microscopes and
telescopes, but not in the faces of the little

ones to read therein health or sickness ;
that they can tell the latitude of Peking, the
height of Chimborazo ; know at what point
potassium fuses, or mercury solidifies, but
that not one ever heard at what point of ele-
vation, of the latter metal in a thermometer
life escapes from their dearest."

The Forces of Nature. A Popular Intro-
duction to the Study of Physical Phe-
nomena. By Amedee Gcillemin.
Translated from the French by Mis.
Norman Lockyer, and edited, with Ad-
ditions and Notes, by J. Norman Lock-
yer, F. R. S. Macmillan & Co.

The novel and interesting feature of this
book is its profuse and sumptuous illustra-
tions. Its author has won some reputation
as a popular writer on science, and the work
has evidently lost nothing in translation
and editing ; yet its text alone would give
it little claim to attention. The pictorial
part of the work is not only copious and
varied, but is finely executed, and renders
the volume both attractive and instructive.
It has no value as a text-book, and not
much as an authority for reference ; but it
may be read with pleasure, and many of the
illustrations cannot fail to be helpful to the
student. The work is unique as a popular
scientific luxury.

Epidemic Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis. With
an Appendix. By Meredith Clymer,
M. D. Philadelphia : Lindsay & Blak-
iston. 1872.

In this little work, which is mainly a re-
print of the author's additions to Dr. Ait-
ken's " Science and Practice of Medicine,"
we have, in compact form, a large amount
of valuable information concerning one of
the most dreaded, because most deadly, of
man's diseases. As first published in 1866,
and revised two years later, Dr. Clymer's
monograph contained a sketch of the geo-
graphical and clinical history, the pathology
and treatment of cerebro-spinal meningitis,
as also, under the head of " Etiology," a
brief account of the conditions attending
outbreaks of the disease, and a very full
list of authors upon the general subject.
This new edition contains all the matter of
the first two, and has, besides, a most val-
uable appendix, which deserves to be in the
hands of every family that is capable of

LITERARY NOTICES.

629

studying intelligently its own welfare. This
portion of the work was prepared on the heels
of the terrible epidemic of cerebro-spinal
meningitis in New York during the first six
months of last year, when, out of 790 per-
sons attacked, 607 died. Availing himself
of the records of the Health Department,
and of the observations of Dr. Russell,
Registrar of Vital Statistics, the author has
been able, in this appendix, to throw much
light upon the vexed question of the causes
of the disorder. Thorough investigation
proved these to be filth, overcrowding, de-
fective sewage-pipes, and the like. It would
appear that the disease is not propagated
by contagion or infection, and consequently
its origin must be ascribed to unwholesome
conditions in the household or neighbor-
hood where it manifests itself. If the pub-
lic would be awake to the dangers they may
themselves be creating, they would do well
to procure this book, and give the appendix,
at least, a careful perusal.

The following discriminating notice of
" Physics and Politics," from the pen of
Prof. John Fiske, appeared in the February
Atlantic. It gives so clear an insight into
the quality of that remarkable little volume,
that our readers will thank us for reprodu-
cing it :

"If the International Scientific Series pro-
ceeds as it has begun, it will more than ful-
fil the promise given to the reading public
in its prospectus. The first volume, by
Prof. Tyndall, was a model of lucid and at-
tractive scientific exposition ; and now we
have a second, by Mr. Walter Bagehot,
which is not only very lucid and charming,
but also original and suggestive in the high-
est degree. Nowhere, perhaps, since the
publication of Sir Henry Maine's ' Ancient
Law,' have we seen so many fruitful thoughts
suggested in the course of a couple of hun-
dred pages.

" The principal aim of Mr. Bagehot's book
is to point out some of the conditions essen-
tial to progress in civilization, and to show
how it is that so small a portion of the hu-
man race has attained to permanent pro-
gressiveness. It has been customary to con-
trast man with inferior animals as alone ca-
pable of improving his condition from age
to age; the implication being that, while
none of the inferior animals show any ca-
pacity for progress, on the other hand all

men, without distinction save as to degree,
possess such capacity. And some meta-
physical writers have gone so far as to de-
scribe progressiveness as a tendency inher-
ent in humanity. The gulf between man
and other animals, wide enough in any
event, has in this way been unduly exag-
gerated. In reality it need not take a very
lon^ survey of human societies, past and
present, to assure us that beyond a certain
point stagnation has been the rule, and prog-
ress the exception. Over a large part of
the earth's surface the slow progress pain-
fully achieved during thousands of prehis-
toric ages has stopped short with the savage
state, as exemplified by those African, Poly-
nesian, and American tribes which can
neither work out a civilization for them-
selves, nor appropriate the civilization of
higher races with whom they are brought
into contact. Half the human race, having
surmounted savagery, have been arrested
in an immobile type of civilization, as in an-
cient Egypt, modern China, and in the East
generally. It is only in the Aryan race,
with the Jews and Magyars, that we can find
evidences of a persistent tendency to pro-
gress; and that there is no inherent race-
tendency at work in this is shown by the
fact that some of the Aryans, as the Hindoo,
and Persians, are among the most unpro-
gressi ve of men. The progress of the Euro-
pean Aryans, like the evolution of higher
forms of life, has been due only to a concur-
rence of favorable circumstances.

"It is one of the puzzles of sociology that
the very state of things which is preeminent-
ly useful in bringing men out of savagery,
is also likely to be preeminently in the way
of their attaining to a persistently progressive
civilization. 'No one,' says Mr. Bagehot,
' will ever comprehend the arrested civili-
zations unless he sees the strict dilemma of
early society. Either men had no law at all,
and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging
together, or they had to obtain a fixed law
by processes of incredible difficulty. Those
who surmounted that difficulty soon de-
stroyed all those that lay in their way who
did not. And then they themselves were
caught in their own yoke. The customary
discipline, which could only be imposed on
any early men by terrible sanctions, contin-
ued with those sanctions, and killed out of
the whole society the propensities to varia-
tion, which are the principle of progress.'

" A word to the wise will suffice to show
that Mr. Bagehot has here struck nearer to
the explanation of the arrested civilizations
than any previous writer. Among numer-

630

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ous tribal groups of primitive men, those
will provail in the struggle for existence in
which the lawless tendencies of individuals
are most thoroughly subordinated by the
yoke of tyrannical custom — the only yoke
which uncivilized men can be made to wear.
These communities will grow at the ex-
pense of less law-abiding tribes, until the
result is a strong nation ruled by immovable
custom, as in the case of Egypt, or China, or
India. The problem now is how to get be-
yond this stage, and to relax the despotism
of custom without entailing a retrogression
toward primeval lawlessness. This prob-
lem has never been successfully solved ex-
cept where a race, rendered organically law-
abiding through some discipline of the fore-
going kind, has been thrown into emulative
conflict with other races similarly disci-
plined. And this condition has been com-
pletely fulfilled only in the case of the mi-
grating Aryans who settled Europe.

" This is but one of Mr. Bagehot'smany
bright thoughts. "We have barely room to
hint at another. It was formerly assumed
that, instead of mankind having arisen out
of primeval savagery, modern savages have
fallen from a primeval civilization, having
lost the arts, the morals, and the intelligence
which they originally possessed ; and in our
time some such thesis as this has been overt-
ly maintained by the Duke of Argyll. Mr.
Bagehot shows that in every way such a
falling off is incompatible with the principle
of natural selection. Take, for example,
the ability to anticipate future contingencies
— to abstain to-day that we may enjoy to-
morrow. This is the most fundamental of
the differences between civilization and sav-
agery. Now, obviously, the ability to post-
pone present to future enjoyment is, in a
mere material, economic, or military aspect,
such an important acquisition to any race or
group of men, that when once acquired it
could never be lost. The race possessing
this capacity could by no possibility yield
ground to the races lacking it. Or take the
ready belief in omens by which the life of
the savage is so terribly hampered. Could
a single tribe in old Australia have sur-
mounted the necessity of searching for
omens before undertaking any serious busi-
ness, it would inevitably have subjugated
all the other tribes on the continent. So,
because the men who possess the attributes
of civilization must necessarily prevail over
the men who lack these attributes (and this
is always true in the long-run, though now
and then a great multitude of barbarians
may temporarily overthrow a handful of civ-

ilized men), because this is so, it follows
that there cannot have been, in prehistoric
times, a general loss of the attributes of civ-
ilization.

" To do justice to Mr. Bagehot's fertile
book would require a long article. With
the best of intentions, we are conscious of
having given but a sorry account of it in
these brief paragraphs. But we hope we
have said enough to recommend it to the at-
tention of the thoughtful reader. We are
glad to see that the young science of soci-
ology has received such an early and satis-
factory treatment in Dr. Youmans's series of
popular books.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

The Ten Laws of Health.
Black, M. D. "Philadelphia:
1872.

By J. R.

Lippincott,

The American Chemist. A Monthly
Journal of Theoretical, Analytical, and
Technical Chemistry. Edited by Charles F.
Chandler, Ph. D., F. C. S. Vols. I. and II.

Annals of the Dudley Observatory. Al-
bany, 18*71.

The Le Boulenge Chronograph. By
Brevet-Captain 0. E. Michaelis. New York :
Van Nostrand, 1872.

Theoretical Navigation and Nautical As-
tronomy. By Lewis Clark, Lieutenant-
Commander U. S. N. New York : Van
Nostrand, 1872.

Primeval Man. An Examination of some
Recent Speculations. By the Duke of
Argyll. New York : De Witt C. Lent &

Co., 1872.

A Century of Medicine and Chemistry.
A Lecture Introductory to the Course of
Lectures to the Medical Class at Yale Col-
lege. By Prof. B. Silliman, M. D. New
Haven, 1871.

A School siei generis. An Essay read
before the New York State Teachers' Asso-
ciation at Syracuse. By C. H. Anthony,
A. M. Albany : Weed, Parsons & Co.,
1872.

The Commonwealth Reconstructed. By
C. C. P. Clark. Oswego, 1872.

Introductory Lecture to the Course on
Pathological Anatomy at the University of

MISCELLANY.

631

Pennsylvania. By Joseph G. Eichardson,
M. D. Philadelphia : Lippincott, 1871.

Juries and Physicians on Questions of
Insanity. By R. S. Guernsey, Esq., of the
New York Bar

Organization and Constitution of the
American Health Association. New York,
1872.

Report on the Water-Supply of the City
of Rochester, New York.

Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the In-
diana Hospital for the Insane.

Biennial Catalogue of the University of
South Carolina, 1871-'72.

MISCELLANY.

Antiquity of Civilization, — II. Oppert
read an essay at the Brussels Congress, to
show, from the astronomical observations
of the Egyptians and Assyrians, that 11,542
years before our era man existed on the
earth at such a stage of civilization as to be
able to take note of astronomical phenom-
ena, and to calculate with considerable ac-
curacy the length of the year. The Egyp-
tians, says he, calculated by cycles of 1,460
years— zodiacal cycles, as they were called.
Their year consisted of 365 days, which
caused them to lose one day in every four
solar years, and, consequently, they would
attain their original starting-point again
only after 1,460 years (365 x 4). There-
fore the zodiacal cycle ending in the year
139 of our era commenced in the year 1322
B. c. On the other hand, the Assyrian
cycle was 1,805 years, or 22,325 lunations.
An Assyrian cycle began 712 B. c. The
Chaldeans state that between the deluge
and their first historic dynasty there was a
period of 39,180 years. Now, what means
this number? It stands for 12 Egyptian
zodiacal cycles plug 12 Assyrian lunar cy-
cles.

Zodiacal Cycle.

1,460

1,322

Lunar Cycle.
... 1,805
... 712

12 X 1,460=17,520) _39)

180

12 x 1,805 = 21,660
These two modes of calculating time are
in agreement with each other, and were
known simultaneously to one people, the
Chaldeans. Let us now build up the series
of both cycles, starting from our era, and
the result will be as follows :

2,732
4,242
5,702
7,102
8,622
10,032
11,542

. 2,517
. 4,322
. 6,127
. 7,933
. 9,737
.11,542

At the year 11542 b. c. the two cycles
came together, and consequently they had
on that year their common origin in one
and the same astronomical observation.

A Plant-Battery.-— Under the heading
" Arceuthobium shedding its Seed," L. A.
M., in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical
Club, gives the following account of what
deserves to be called a vegetable mitrail-
leuse: "I visited the swamp in Warrens-
burg, the first week in October. I found
its female plants of Arceuthobium nearly
all gone. Every effort that I made to cut
twigs from the matted clumps, where the
colonies of these strange parasites grow,
brought them down in showers. Fearing
that I should fail to get plants with full
seed-vessels, I picked a single plant with
vessels much swollen. While holding it
gently between my thumb and finger, to ob-
serve it more closely, I felt the tiniest recoil
of the capsule, and the seed struck me a
smart blow in the face. I gathered an-
other, and another, and each pretty little
bomb went off with a force that must have
carried it several feet away. The seed
flies out of the base of the capsule, instead
of the top; but its position on the plant
makes that the top, as, when ripe, the ves-
sels hang with the true summit turned
downward. I found the seeds and empty
seed-vessels lodged all about on the
branches. The plants which have ripened
seed fall off nearly all together : those which
have not blossomed, or have failed to be
fertilized, probably remain for another year.
When the seeds are being sown, there must
be quite a brisk bombardment going on for
several days. Isolated colonies of Arceu-
thobium in forests may have been planted
by seed adhering to the feet of birds."

Government Tekgraphy.— The first num-
ber of the London Telegraphic Journal, in
a leading article on Government telegraphv.

652

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

has some very pointed criticisms on the
working of the new system in England.
The end sought by the Government in as-
suming control of the telegraph interests of
the country was, by cheapening the rates
and extending the lines, to bring the advan-
tages of the system within the reach of a
larger number of people, expecting thereby,
just as in the case of the post-office, to de-
rive sufficient income for the maintenance of
the lines by the increased patronage that
cheap rates would secure. As was anticipated,
a large increase of business has resulted;
but this very increase promises to defeat
the chief advantage which the telegraph is
designed to afford, viz., speed of communica-
tion. " Speed," says the Journal, " is the
very essential of the telegram ; it is its rai-
son d'etre ; therefore, there is no good in re-
ducing the charge for this convenience, if
the convenience itself vanishes. It becomes,
in fact, much more expensive. We now pay
a shilling for a telegram, when a penny
stamp, or even a half-penny card, would
have sufficed. In former days a telegram
was an outlay, certainly, but we paid much
for a speed that we obtained. Many would
still pay as much for the same advantage,
but find they pay a reduction for a ghost of
it." The writer does not despair of a remedy
for this state of things, but says that the
reticence of the authorities concerning the
details of their management prevents the
suggestion of any means of relief. The
case adds one more to the already long list
of examples where the Government plays
the part of an obstructive.

Silica as a Basis of Paint.— There was
lately discovered in North Wales a deposit
of almost pure silica, several feet in depth,
which on analysis shows the following con-
stitution: silex, 79 parts; water, 13; oxide
of iron, 3 ; alumina, 4 ; magnesium, 1. In
the manufacture of crystal glass and porce-
lain this discovery is of considerable inter-
est, but it is perhaps still more valuable as
furnishing an excellent fire-proof and water-
proof paint. When taken from the bed
the silica is freely washed in water, and on
being dried it becomes brilliantly white, and
is then an impalpable powder. In prepar-
ing it as a base for paint, the water is dried
out. It mixes readily with pigments and

oils, is worked with the greatest ease, and
resists the action of acids and of heat.
When perfectly dry, the paint is extremely
hard and polished on the surface. Applied
on the inside or outside of houses, it ex-
cludes damp.

White Spots on Photograph Proofs.—

Ever since the invention of photography on
paper, says the Monileur Scientifiqne, pho-
tographers have been trying to discover the
cause of those white points which so fre-
quently appear on their proofs, destroying
their value as works of art, and rendering
them unsalable. It is commonly supposed
that these spots are owing to a defect in
the paper — the presence in it of hypochlo-
rite of soda, used by the paper-maker for
bleaching purposes. But, as the manufac-
turers claim that chemical analysis fails to
detect in their goods the faintest trace of
the hypochlorite, M. Ernest Baudrimont set
himself to discover where the fault lay. He
first made a thorough analysis of the paper
and the size used in taking photographs,
but without finding there the cause of the
spots. One thing, however, he did discover,
which helped him to find the true solution
of the problem, and this was that the spots
always occurred on the face of the picture,
but never on the back. He next artificially
produced some spots on a perfect proof, by
the employment of the hypochlorite of soda,
the hyposulphite of soda, and the cyanide
of potassium. After drying the pictures,
he applied to the spots a solution of nitrate
of silver. It was found that the white spots
produced by the hypochlorite and by the
cyanide remained totally unchanged, where-
as those produced by the hyposulphite very
rapidly changed, first to a yellow, then to a
brownish tint. M. Baudrimont next touched
with the silver solution spots appearing
spontaneously on some pictures, and the re-
sult was, that at first a yellow point, which
soon turned to brown, appeared in the cen-
tre of the spots, finally extending over their
entire surface. Hence, the author con-
cludes that the white spots occurring in
photograph proofs are entirely owing 10
the hyposulphite of soda, used to fix the
positive impression. If the proof is not
thoroughly washed after the application of
the hyposulphite, or if it is dried between

MISCELLANY.

633

sheets of blotting-paper, which are impreg-
nated with the hyposulphite, from having
served the same purpose before, the white
points will inevitably make their appear-
ance.

Aiidsat Ferus. — At a late meeting of
the Torrey Botanical Club of this city, Dr.
J. Newberry exhibited a fossil fern which
he had obtained from the Miocene forma-
tion in the western part of the continent.
It was an Onoclca, and was not distinguish-
able from the recent Linnaean species, Ono-
clea scnsib'dls. This certainly carries back
the lineage of our common sensitive fern to
a very ancient period.

At the same meeting of the club, there
was also exhibited a fine specimen of that
singular plant which grows parasitic on the
roots of the pine-tree, and is hence called,
in the Eastern States, pine-drops. The plant
is rare at the Eist, and seldom attains the
height of two feet. The specimen exhibited
was four feet high.

Onr Native Birds acquiring New Habits.

— In a late number of the American Nat-
uralist, Prof. Samuel Lockwood gives an
interesting account of that beautiful bird
known as the golden robin, or Baltimore
oriole, in connection with one of our car-
penter-bees. He states that last June large
numbers of these humble-bees were found
under the horse-chestnut trees, then in full
bloom, in the campus of Rutgers College.
The strange fact was, that every one of
these insects was decapitated, and the heads
were lying around with the bodies ; further,
it appears that every one of the headless
bees was a stingless male. The professor
worked out the case with much patient per-
severance, and found to his surprise that
this wholesale slaughter was the work of four
orioles. Another fact which astonished him
was, that the bodies of all these insects were
empty, the viscera having been drawn out
at the ring-like opening where the head had
been neatly snipped by the birds. The
process was to catch the bees while hover-
ing at the ball-like opening of the flowers.
After severing the head, they extracted the
viscera for the sake of the honey-sac. Sev-
eral very interesting considerations are
brought out in the course of the article —

such as the acquired taste ; the birds had
found out that honey was nice. Wa3 it not
singular, too, that they had learned that it
could be got in such a manner ? And there
was also the curious fact that the bird con-
fined its marauding to the white-headed bees,
the stingless males — thus carrying on his
terrible work with impunity, and almost
wantonness, as it contented itself with
simply the honey-bearing sac.

Prof. Lockwood also notes a curious
change of habit in the kingbird. Speaking
of the wonderfully plucky manner of this
courageous little bird in attacking crows
and other large birds, as securing the gen-
eral admiration, he says that for himself
that admiration has gone down to zero, as
he has noticed that the bird has not any true
knightly qualities, but can do some very
mean things. The professor then instances
a case in which a pair of robins had built a
nest in a tree so near by that the process
could be watched from the house. A pair
of kingbirds kept all the time near, and
watched progress with genuine royal in-
dolence, and, when all was finished, with
kingly impudence took possession. The
rightful owners made but a feeble effort to
resist this invasion. The kingbirds retained
possession until their young were raised.

More than a year ago, Prof. Lockwood
likewise called attention to the fact that the
great butcher-bird, or Northern shrike, con-
trary to all precedent, had begun to visit
in winter the cities where the European
sparrows have become naturalized. The
bird in summer collects grasshoppers, small
lizards, etc., and impales them on the spines
of the locust or other trees, eating them at
its leisure. He notices the case in which a
shrike in its winter visit gibbeted a sparrow
in, the city by putting its neck in the crotch
of a small branch of a larch, and then, hav-
ing knocked in the top of its head, the bird
extracted its victim's brains.

Paper as a Bailding-Material. — An Eng-
lish company prepare a water-proof mate-
rial out of paper-pulp, or any fibrous sub-
stance, by saturating it with ammoniated
copper solution — a digest of copper scraps
in concentrated ammonia. This treatment
dissolves the fibres and renders the paper
impervious to water. A number of sheets

634

TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of paper arc moistened on the surface,
placed on each other, and thoroughly pressed.
They thus are made to adhere firmly to-
gether, and are then fashioned into the
various forms required. The product may
replace corrugated iron for roofing, or it
may be made into columns and flutings for
internal decoration. It is said to be a very
durable material even when exposed to air
and rain.

Bowlder-like Masses of Clay in the Long
Island Drift. — An extensive excavation in
the side of Harbor Hill, near Brooklyn, Long
Island, has revealed the presence of de-
tached bowlder-like masses of clay embed-
ded in the drift. Mr. Elias Lewis, of Brook-
yn, who has examined these objects, writes
that they lie unbroken like bowlders of
granite, and have the same rounded outline.
One mass, consisting of a tough, fine-grained
bluish-gray clay, was eight feet in vertical
diameter, and seven feet through from side
to side. Mr. Lewis is of the opinion that
these masses were transported by ice and
deposited in a frozen state, but adds that it
is difficult to understand how they should
have retained their form beneath moving
water during the long time necessary for
the accumulation of the layers of gravel and
sand which surround them ; nor is it clear
how stratification of deposits could occur in
water deep enough to float icebergs.

Will some one familiar with glacial de-
posits inform the readers of The Monthly
whether similar masses of clay or earth of
any kind are common in the recognized
glacial drift ?

Fnzi-Yania and Hakusan. — These, the
two highest and most famous mountains
of Japan, have lately had a new determina-
tion of their respective heights. A British
officer made the ascent of Fuzi-Yama, on
the 9th of September, and found, by ap-
proved and carefully-conducted methods,
the height to be 13,080.32 feet, which is
less than its accepted altitude, namely
14,177 feet. This same officer ascended
Hakusan, being the first foreigner that has
done so. His measurement makes this
mountain higher than the accepted figures,
which Stieler sets down at 8,178 feet. The
new measurement gives 9,200 feet. Both

these mountains are held sacred by the Ja-
panese, Fuzi-Yama perhaps being specially
so, as its singular name would imply, which
means the " No-two-mountain ;" that is, the
none-such, the peerless, the inimitable.
They are both volcanic mountains, with vast
craters. Hakusan i3 snow-capped the whole
year, while it may be called a snow-moun-
tain for two-thirds of the year. It is some-
times called " Siro-Yama," White Mountain,
and is truly the Mont Blanc of Japan.
Both mountains are yearly visited by many
thousand pilgrims. This last explorer de-
scribes Fuzi-Yama as an ash-heap, with a
cone of lava and clinker. The only vegeta-
tion at top were lichens. " The crater, by
approximate measurement, was found to be
2^- miles in circumference, and its depth
about 440 feet." As the mountain is a cone,
and stands by itself, it is regarded as the
most beautiful mountain in the world. It
would be rare to find a Japanese landscape
in which the artist has not by some in-
genuity introduced the peerless Fuzi-Yama.

Combustion under Pressure. — It is

shown from the observations of James B.
Eads, C. E., as given in the Journal of the
Franklin Institute, that combustion goes on
at the same rate in compressed as in free
air. There is, however, this difference be-
tween the phenomena of combustion under
the two conditions, that a flame is more
readily extinguished in free than in com-
pressed air. This is demonstrated by Mr.
Eads's experiments with the flame of a
candle under varying pressures. Thus, at
the depth of 108| feet in a shaft, the flame
having been blown out thirteen times in
rapid succession, it reappeared at the wick
each time, except the last. At a somewhat
greater depth, and under 52 lbs. pressure
to the square inch, the flame was in the
same way extinguished fifty-two times, with
the same result. Mr. Eads's explanation is,
that the abnormal pressure brings the oxy-
gen of the air into close contact with the
incandescent body, and so tends to keep up
combustion ; but the process is not more
rapid than under ordinary circumstances,
for the reason that the increased density of
the air retards the movement of the gases
resulting from combustion and surrounding
the flame.

MISCELLANY.

635

A Spider's Engineering. — A writer in
Hardmicke's Science- Gossip saw a spider's
web stretched across a small mill-stream,
and attached on either side to stems of
grass and other herbage. The stream was
about three feet in width, and the web re-
sembled a cart-wheel in general outline,
having a diameter of at least six feet. The
writer asks how "an animal that neither
flies, leaps, nor swims," could accomplish
such an engineering feat. But is it true
that the spider does not swim or leap ? In
fact, the animal can run on the surface of
water, can leap from place to place, and can
float after the manner of Mr. Home the
medium. It can even dive in water. But,
further, it can swing like a pendulum,
suspending itself like a thread from some
elevated point. The writer in Hardwicke
does not tell whether there was any object
near the web on either margin of the stream
of sufficient height to allow of the animal's
so swinging from one side to the other.

Geology of the Great Plain of Morocco.

— The Journal of the Geographical Society
(British) has a paper by George Man, F. G.
S., on the geology of Morocco, of which we
give the substance. The plain of Morocco
rises 1,700 feet above the sea-level, and is
covered with a tufaceous crust, from a few
inches to three feet thick, which is burnt
for lime near the city of Morocco. The
underlying rock is of similar composition
but not so hard, and is called by Mr. Man a
" cream-colored limestone and gray marl of
cretaceous or tertiary age." Midway be-
tween Mogador and Morocco are flat-topped
hills 200 or 300 feet high, covered with
tabular masses of chalcedony. This sug-
gests an enormous erosion of the plain.
The author contradicts Rolfe and others
who assert that snow remains upon Mount
Atlas during the entire year, and says that
in the first week of May snow was to be
found only in deep gullies and in drifts.
The mass of the Atlas rauge is mainly com-
posed of porphyrites and porphyritic tufas,
overlaid by cretaceous rocks, with basalts
rising in erupted dikes and masses evident-
ly post-cretaceous. Metamorphic rocks ap-
pear in rugged hills near Morocco, and
white limestone on the high Atlas. Glacial
moraines may be seen on this range nearly

8,000 feet above the sea, forming gigantic
ridges and mounds of porphyritic blocks,
in some places damming up the ravines;
and at the foot of Atlas are enormous
inound3 of bowlders. These mounds often-
times rise 2,000 feet above the level of the
plain, and according to Mr. Man were pro-
duced by glaciers. Of marine drift no trace
is visible.

Cross between the Zebu and European
Cattle. — The organ of the Royal Prussian
Agricultural Department contains a notice
of some experiments on the cross between
the zebu, or Indian ox {Bos Indicus), and
European cattle, by W. Nathusius-Konigs-
born. The doubts that have existed in re-
gard to the fecundity of this cross led to
the experiments which, the writer thinks,
must forever set the question at rest. The
male zebu made use of was a yearling calf
from the Zoological Gardens, of the peculiar
bluish-white color characteristic of the zebu
race. Four heifers of Holland stock were
got with calf by this animal, and produced
two heifers and two bull-calves, all of which
were successfully raised. Though the dams
were variously colored, all the calves had
white stars in their foreheads. When they
arrived at suitable age, they were bred with
each other and with other cattle, and both
sexes proved in every respect capable of
propagating their race. The amount of
milk given by the half-bloods was about 500
quarts per annum. This was so much below
the ordinary average as to prevent all hope
of their being a desirable breed. In addi-
tion, the oxen, from which much was ex-
pected in speed and endurance, proved so
incorrigibly obstinate as to defy all efforts
to train them for the yoke, lying down on
the smallest provocation, and in one case,
where it was necessary to lead one of them
a short distance, the animal died the next
day, it was supposed from the effects of
anger and excitement. They acted much
more like half-tamed wild-beasts than like
domestic cattle. The only redeeming feat-
ure was the quality of their flesh, which, in
those that were sent to the butcher, proved
to be excellent.

Solidifying Petroleum. — The Journal dt
VEclairage au Gaz describes as follows a

636

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

process invented by Jo-rdery and Pasehkoft"
for the solidification of petroleum, thus
making it more easily and more safely trans-
portable : " First make a decoction of the
root or leaves of the Saponaria officinaria,
quillay, or any other substance possessed
of saponific properties. Then an amount
of this decoction or extract, equal to one-
twentieth of the petroleum to be solidified,
is placed in a vat, and the petroleum suf-
fered to flow in upon it slowly, the whole
being constantly stirred in the mean time.
This process may be followed with oils in
general, and with volatile oils it will prevent
loss from leakage and obviate many of the
dangers now attending their transportation."

Cnrioas Phenomenon in Vegetable Phys-
iology.— It has long been known to botanists
that, occasionally, after the felling of pine
and fir trees, their stumps would continue
to increase in diameter, i. e., form new
woody layers for several years. Dutrochet
mentions some cases of extraordinary lon-
gevity in the stock of Pinus picea after the
trunk had been felled. He says that, in the
year 1836, a stock of Pinus picea, felled in
1821, was still alive, and had formed 14 thin
new layers of wood — that is, one each year;
and another, felled in 1743, was still in full
vegetation, having formed 92 thin layers of
wood, or one each year. This singular
phenomenon was long a puzzle to botanists
and vegetable physiologists. Over thirty
years ago Goeppert, an accomplished bota-
nist of Breslau, undertook an investigation
of the subject. The result is published at
large in the " Annales des Sciences Natu-
relles " for 1843. It appears that in all the
cases examined by Goeppert there was a
union of the roots of the fallen trees with
the roots of living trees growing in the im-
mediate vicinity, and his explanation of the
phenomenon was that the stumps maintained
their growth by drawing their supplies of
eap from the trees with which they were
thus connected. The union of roots in
these cases was sometimes woody, and some-
times only by the bark of the roots. So far
as observed, this anastomosis, or natural
grafting, is confined to coniferous trees,
and to only a few species of them, chiefly
the silver-fir, the spruce, and occasionally
the Scotch fir. In the London Gardeners'

Chronicle of August 31st is an account of
an instance of this kind of anastomosis of
the roots of a larch, and a figure is given
of the specimen, in which the stump and its
root -connections are exhibited. The cut
stump shows rotten wood in the centre, with
the new wood at the circumference surging
over the edges of the wound.

Although the discovery of this root-
union explains some of the questions in-
volved in this curious phenomenon, it does
not explain them all ; for instance, why does
not the sap, which is thus robbed from the
roots of the nurse-tree, pass up in the
usual channels and overflow at the top of
the stump, as is the case when a grape-vine
or deciduous tree is cut during the active
ascent of the sap ? As the growth of new
wood in exogenous trees takes place from
the cambium, and the cambium is supposed
to be the sap which has been elaborated in
the leaves, what is the source of the cam-
bium in these stumps ?

It would seem as if there was here a
complete contradiction of the ingenious
theory of some of the French botanists that
wood growth begins in the leaves or leaf-
buds, and descends continuously thence to
the roots, so that, in fact, wood may be con-
sidered the united mass of roots which
emanate from the leaves of the plant.

The theory of De Candolle is, that the
woody and cortical layers originate laterally
in the cambium furnished by preexisting
layers, and nourished by the descending sap.
To use the words of De Candolle, " The
whole question may be reduced to this :
either there descend from the top of a tree
the rudiments of fibres which are nourished
and developed by the juices springing later-
ally from the body of the wood and bark,
or new layers are developed by preexisting
layers which are nourished by the descend-
ing juices formed in the leaves." The lat-
ter part of this statement, though somewhat
vague and unsatisfactory, probably involves
the true theory of the formation of wood.
The preexisting layers mentioned in De Can-
dolle's statement include the medullary rays
which reach the circumference. These me-
dullary rays are composed of cellular tissue
derived from the pith, and, like it, are ca-
pable of indefinite extension by cell-multi-
plication.

MISCELLANY

637

The primary state of all the tissues of
the plant is the condition of simple cells,
each of which is, in a certain sense, an in-
dependent body, having its own life-work
and history in the complicated mass of
which the tree is composed. All extension
of the tree in any direction is made through
the medium of cell-growth and cell-modifi-
cations, and, wherever there is cellular tis-
sue in a state of vitality, there may be cell-
multiplication whenever material for growth,
i. e., sap in different stages, is brought into
contact with such tissue.

In the case of the pine-stumps alluded
to, the medullary rays of the recent wood
retain their vitality, and, when the sap rises,
it is transmitted through these rays and
through the interspaces of the woody matter
to the surface beneath the bark, these being
appropriated to the organization of new
cells whose walls are thickened by con-
tinuous secondary deposits, as in the normal
formation of woody tissue. Of course, the
amount of this woody formation will be
limited, from the deficient supply of sap
and want of concentration which it would
obtain by passing through the leaves.

Puncturing the Pericardium. — The peri-
cardium, or membranous sac surrounding
the heart, sometimes becomes so filled with
liquid that the movements of that organ are
impeded. This is called dropsy of the
heart. The surplus fluid may be relieved
by the introduction of a trocar into the sac,
but the operation is regarded as extra
hazardous. Dr. Chairou, of the Paris Acad-
emy of Medicine, has tried a new method of
treating the disorder in question. A young
soldier just recovered from a pleurisy was
found presenting all the symptoms of dropsy
of the heart. The physician made a punc-
ture into the pericardium with a capillary
needle, and sucked out a considerable quan-
tity of thick sero-sanguineous liquid, which
soon became coagulated. The following
morning the patient was pacing the corridors
of the hospital in the very best of spirits.

Slag as a Building -Material.— " What
shall be done with the slag ? " is always a
very urgent question for the proprietors of
iron-works. Many are the plans which have
been proposed for the utilization of this

waste material, but, if we are to judge of
their value by the amount of slag utilized,
it must be confessed that they do not help
to answer the iron-manufacturers' question.
And yet many of the processes for the con-
version of slag into a material for building
would seem to promise very fair results.
Mr. S. Egleston lately read a paper before
the American Institute of Mining Engi-
neers, in which he gives a history of these
processes, stating at the same time, in a few
words, the salient peculiarities of each.
After recounting the failures which attended
the first efforts, the writer sets forth the
process followed in Kbnigshutte, Silesia.
There the slag is run from the furnace into
a hemispherical basin on wheels, the bottom
being strewed with sand or fine coke-dust to
the depth of an inch. It is then drawn to
the place where it is moulded into bricks.
The slag and sand having been mixed to-
gether till most of the gases have escaped,
the whole is pressed into a mould, and
punctured frequently to let out the gas. A
close-fitting cover then compresses it. The
red-hot brick is next taken to the kiln, cov-
ered with powdered coal, and left to anneal.
Four men make 500 bricks in five hours.
In Silesia these bricks cost 25 per cent, less
than ordinary bricks. The lead-slag of the
furnaces in the Hartz Gebirge gives bricks
of inferior quality, being very brittle. A
Belgian engineer, M. Sepulchre, was the
first to successfully transform slag into a
stone which could be generally used. He
caused the slag-channels to terminate in an
excavation, the sides of which had an in-
clination of 30°. This steep inclination
causes the section of the pits to increase
very rapidly, allowing the solid crust on the
surface of the liquid slag to rise with it
without being attached. The mass takes
from five to ten days to cool. The product
is a stone which, rather soft at first, grows
hard on exposure to air. Slag suitable for
such treatment should contain from 38 to
44 per cent, of silica. Experiment shows
that stone of this kind made from the slag
coming from white iron can bear a pressure
of 242 kilogrammes (500 pounds) to the
square centimetre (one-third of an inchN'
without fissure. If from gray iron, it will not
crush at a pressure of 405 kilogrammes. It
is, therefore, stronger than the best marble.

638

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Antiquity of Man in America. — The dis-
coveries that are constantly being made in
this country are proving that man existed
on this continent as far back in geological
time as on the European Continent; and it
even seems that America, really the Old
World geologically, will soon prove to be
the birthplace of the earliest race of man.
One of the late and important discoveries is
that by Mr. E. L. Berthoud, which is given
in full, with a map, in the " Proceedings of
the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for
1872," p. 46. Mr. Berthoud there reports
the discovery of ancient fireplaces, rude
stone monuments, and implements of stone
in great number and variety, in several
places along Crow Creek, in Colorado, and
also on several other rivers in the vicinity.
These fireplaces indicate several ancient
sites of an unknown race differing entirely
from the mound-builders and the present
Indians, while the shells and other fossils
found with the remains make it quite cer-
tain that the deposit in which the ancient
sites are found is as old as the Pliocene,
and perhaps as the Miocene. As the fossil
shells found with the relics of man are of
estuary forms, and, as the sites of the an-
cient towns are on extended points of land
and at the base of the ridges or bluffs, Mr.
Berthoud thinks the evidence is strongly in
favor of the locations having been near
some ancient fresh-water lake, whose ves-
tiges the present topography of the region
favors. — American Naturalist.

Effects of Coal-Gas on Plants.— Some of

our readers will remember that, in Philadel-
phia, a few years ago, a florist, Mr. Thomas
Robertson, had his plants destroyed by gas
escaping from the street mains. He applied
to the city for damages, but judge and jury
decided that coal-gas would not injure plants.
Since that time reports have been given of ex-
periments by some learned Frenchman, who
also decided that no injury resulted, and now
it is said experiments have recently been
made in Berlin to ascertain the effect of coal-
gas upon the roots of trees exposed to its
influence. Three trees were selected, two
limes and a maple, and, after seventy days,
the gas was cut off, to see whether the trees
which had become blasted would recover.
One of the lime-trees again put forth foliage,

but exhibited evidences of ill health, while
the remaining two trees were killed. That
part of the earth which was compacted
around the roots appeared to transmit most
rapidly the poison of the gas. We suppose
there i3 no one who has had any unbiassed
experience in the matter but knows that
coal-gas will destroy plants in the manner
stated. Those who have had eo experience
had better take care to guard against it. —
Gardener's Monthly.

Cromlechs in Algeria. — The Cromlechs
(dolmens) of Algeria was the subject of an
address made by General Faidherbe at the
Brussels International Congress. He consid-
ers these structures to be simply sepulchral
monuments, and, after examining five or six
thousand of them, maintains that the dol-
mens of Africa and of Europe were all con-
structed by the same race during their emi-
gration from the shores of the Baltic to the
southern coast of the Mediterranean. The
author does not, however, attempt to ex-
plain the existence *of these monuments in
other countries — Hindostan, for instance,
and America. In Africa, he says, cromlechs
are called tombs of the idolaters — the idol-
aters being neither Romans, nor Christians,
nor Phoenicians, but some antique race. He
regards the Berbers as the descendants of
the primitive dolmen - builders. Certain
Egyptian monuments tell of invasions of
Lower Egypt 1,500 years before our era
by blond tribes from the West. The bones
found in the cromlechs are those of a large
and dolichocephalous race. General Faid-
herbe gives the average stature (including
the women) at 1.65 or 1.74 metre, while the
average stature of French carabineers is
only 1.65 metre. He did not find a single
brachycephalous skull. The profiles indi-
cated great intelligence. The Egyptian
documents already referred to call the in-
vaders Tamahu, which must have come
from the invaders' own language, as it is not
Egyptian. The Tuaregs of the present day
may be regarded as the best representatives
of the Tamahus. They are of lofty stature,
have blue eyes, and cling to the custom of
bearing long swords, to be wielded by both
hands. In Soudan, on the banks of the
Niger, dwells a negro tribe ruled by a royal
family (Masas), who are of rather fair com-

NOTES.

639

plcxion, and claim descent from white men.
Masas is perhaps the same as Mashash,
which occurs in the Egyptian documents
applied to the Tamahus. The Masas wear
the hair in the same fashion as the Tama-
hus, and General Faidherbe is inclined to
think that they, too, are the descendants of
the dolmen-builders.

Dcep-Sca Photometer. — A deep-sea pho-
tometer, or instrument for measuring the
chemical power of the solar ray at great
depths in water, was shown at the late Lon-
don Exhibition by Mr. C. W. Siemens. A
roll of sensitive paper, hermetically closed
in a glass tube, is placed in a thick disk at-
tached to the bottom of an iron frame to be
dropped by a wire into the sea. In the
frame is an electro-magnet. The tube is
held in a dark recess till the magnet is
formed, and then it springs into the light,
but is withdrawn again when the electric
current ceases. The actinic force of the
rays is, of course, determined from the
amount of darkening produced on the paper
in a given time.

Cheap Hydrogen Gas.— The statement
comes from Paris that a Mr. Giffard has de-
vised a process for the rapid production
of hydrogen from water, which promises to
make its use as an illuminator more eco-
nomical than that of ordinary coal-gas. It
is claimed that by this method hydrogen
may be generated on a large scale, 18,000
cubic feet per hour, at a cost of from fifteen
to thirty cents per thousand cubic feet, so
that by combustion with solid refractory
substances, such as magnesium, platinum,
lime, marble, etc., it may advantageously
compete with coal-gas for illuminating pur-
poses.

Building-Stone and Fire.— Dr. Adolph
Ott, in the Engineering and Mining Journal,
treats of the resistance offered to fire by the
various kinds of stone employed in build-
ing. According to this author, the presence
of magnesia in limestone (magnesian lime-
stone, dolomite) hastens the decomposition
of the mass under the action of heat, the
magnesia parting with its carbonic acid at
the comparatively low temperature of 600°
Fahr. Common limestone will stand a high-

er temperature without decomposition. As
our Westchester and also Vermont marble
is a magnesian limestone, this fact is of very
considerable interest for this city. It ap-
pears that, in Chicago, as also probably in
Boston, the sandstones made the most ob-
stinate resistance to the heat. This is ex-
plained by the fact that the chief ingredient
in stones of that class is quartz, a substance
remarkable for its infusibility. As for
granite, gneiss, mica-slate, and other rocks
of the primary formation, which are com-
monly esteemed indestructible, Dr. Ott
shows that they can make but very feeble
resistance to heat. The water enclosed in
such rocks accounts for their bursting and
exploding when heated. Portland cement-
stone is said to show extraordinary resist-
ent power, almost equalling sandstone in
this respect. Of brick walls the author is
disposed to think well, provided they be
honestly built of hard material throughout,
and of the requisite degree of thickness.

NOTES.

Notwithstanding the high price of meat
and the great scarcity of potatoes in Eng-
land, there are this winter, says the Satur-
day Review, 40,000 less paupers in London
than three years ago. This is owing to an
organized system of transferring labor to
portions of the country where it is most
needed, and thus relieving the overstocked
points where pauperism is always most rap-
idly developed. The Review calls for an ex-
tension of the system, and urges those who
are wasting their funds in ill directed chari-
ties, which oftentimes actually increase the
number of paupers, to give this one, which
aims to make the lower classes self-sustain-
ing, a fair amount of consideration.

Mr. T. C. Webb, of Philadelphia, has
made experiments with a plate electrical
machine, in an insulated room, that seem to
show the fallacy of the ordinary theory of
the discharge of a charged conductor. A
room eight by nine feet, and about eight
feet high, was constructed, and suspended
upongutta percha, and its perfect insulation
shown by a Thomson galvanometer. The
plate-machine acted in all respects the same
as in an uninsulated room ; sparks were
given off, and the conductor completely dis-
charged when touched to the sides of the
building. The experiments given in the
Philadelphia Magazine seem to show con-
clusively that the common theory of the
electrical machine is erroneous. — American
Manufact u rer.

640

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Writing on the subject of malaria, Dr.
Re)' urges upon the inhabitants of malarious
districts the adoption of every safeguard
against becoming chilled. He considers the
chill, often felt in warm climates at sunset,
as very pernicious, and agrees with all au-
thorities in pronouncing cold, with damp,
to be exceedingly dangerous. Residents in
lowland or damp situations should, there-
fore, take special precautions to keep the
circulation in such a condition that the ex-
tremities are not cold, and the surface gen-
erally is comfortably warm. By maintain-
ing this condition of body, other diseases
besides the so-called malarial would also be
warded off.

The American Journal of Science and
Art has a letter from a correspondent in
Mississippi who states that beavers are on
the increase in that State, as also in Ala-
bama. When the writer first settled in
Hinds County, Mississippi, thirty-five years
ago, he could scarce find one beaver-dam in
the vicinity of his residence; but, in 1850,
every considerable stream in the county had
its dams, which caused serious injury to the
low lands. A few years ago a trapper
caught over seventy beavers in less than
one month's time within the limits of the
county. The animals are still multiplying,
and the writer has no doubt that this is
true, not alone of his particular locality,
but of all Central Mississippi and Alabama.

A correspondent of the London Times,
writing on the potato-disease, says its pre-
vention depends upon attention to three
things : 1. The choice of seed. 2. The re-
moval of mycelium and resting spores from
the seed chosen, to be accomplished by dry-
ing in the sunlight, and by dipping the seed-
potatoes in a solution of lime with a little
carbolic acid; and 3. The preservation of
seed in a temperature which will prevent
the growth of mycelium. It will not grow
in a temperature below 48° Fahr.

The immense fields of sea-wrack which
are found in the neighborhood of the Gulf
Stream are estimated to cover a superficial
area equal to that of France. M. Leps, of
the French Navy, thinks that this sea-weed
could be utilized for agricultural and indus-
trial purposes, and suggests that it might be
brought home in compressed bundles, or
burned on the spot, and its soda and iodine
thus secured. — American Journal of Science
and Art.

A curious cause is assigned, by M. Col-
las, for the blue color of the sky. In oppo-
sition to M. Lallcmand, who attributes the
color to a fluorescent phenomenon — a reduc-
tion of refrangibility in the actinic rays be-
yond the violet end of the spectrum — M.
Collas maintains that the color is due to the
presence of hydrated silica in a very finely-

divided state, carried into the atmosphere
with the aqueous vapor. The blue color of
the Lake of Geneva is referred to a similar
cause. — A thenceum.

The Australian meat preserving com-
panies have commenced the exportation of
bone-dust to England. By strong pressure,
the crushed bones are moulded into briquets
6 inches square and 3 thick, weighing about
6 pounds. A ton weight of this compressed
bone-dust occupies 26 cubic feet.

A vert simple remedy for echo in large
public halls, churches, and the like, is sug-
gested by a writer in the Railway Times,
viz., the stretching of thin wires. These
break the waves of sound, and prevent re-
verberation.

The London Times reports that Mr.
Aden, in-door engineer in the Edinburgh
Telegraph-Office, has invented a system by
which, with existing instruments, it has
been found practicable to send messages
from both ends of a single wire simulta-
neously. The invention has been tested
between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and it has
been found that one wire is capable of doing
double work.

The manufacture of spirits from mosses
and lichens is becoming an important branch
of industry in Northern Russia. The al-
cohcl is said to be of good quality. The
development of this industry will have an
important bearing on the question of food-
supply in the Russian Empire; the more
spirits made from Iceland moss, the more
cereal grains will there be left to subsist
the people.

When the working-collier is provided
with a safety-lamp, ingenuity must be fur-
ther taxed to provide the means of guarding
against his mad recklessness. The man
will open the lamp, if it is at all possible, to
get better light for his work, to light his
pipe, or merely from foolhardiness. Lamps
have, therefore, been contrived which go
out on being opened. Another plan is to
lock the lamp with a plug of lead, on which
a device is punched, and which cannot be
opened without breaking the plug. The
latest contrivance is a lamp which is closed
with a steel spring, and which cannot be
opened except by the action of a very pow-
erful magnet, such as the colliers would not
be likely to possess.

It is proposed in France to supersede
gold and silver coinage by platinum. The
use of this metal for coins is nothing new,
for the Russian Empire had a platinum
coinage over a quarter of a century ago.
As early as 1799, experiments were made
at the Paris Mint, and some beautiful speci-
mens of platinum medals were produced.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

APRIL, 1873.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CULTIVATION OF

SCIENCE.1

Bt JOSEPH HENEY, LL. D.,

SECBETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.

aENTLEMEN : I beg leave to tender you my sincere thanks for
the honor you have conferred upon me by inviting me to preside
at the farewell banquet to Professor Tyndall. I need scarcely say that
it would give me great pleasure to be with you on that interesting
occasion, although I would prefer not to occupy the place your par-
tiality would assign to me, since I fear I should not be able, from want
of experience, to do justice to so conspicuous a position.

I regret, however, to have to inform you that my official duties in
Washington, at this season of the year, are such as to render it im-
proper for me to be absent for even a single day; and, although
I deeply sympathize "with you in the objects of the banquet, I am
obliged very reluctantly to forego the pleasure and profit of accept-
ing your kind invitation.

The objects of this banquet, as I understand them, are, first, to do
honor to our illustrious visitor, who has generously devoted so much
time and labor to gratify his friends and the public in this country
with a course of lectures ; and, second, to advocate the claims of ab-
stract science to higher appreciation and more liberal support. In
regard to these topics I ask permission to indulge in a few remarks
which may not be deemed inappropriate to the occasion. Dr. Tyndall
is eminently worthy of all the attention he has received from the
people and press of this country, and all the expressions of kindness
and regard we can now bestow upon him. As Professor of Physics in
the Royal Institution of Great Britain, he is the worthy successor of a

1 Letter to the Coramittoe of Arrangements of the Farewell Banquet to Professor
Tyndall, at Delmonico's, New York, February 4, 1873.
VOL. II. — 11

642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

series of the most remarkable men of the present century. He is not
only a distinguished laborer in the line of original research, but also
one of the best living expounders of scientific principles. His books
are everywhere read in this country with avidity, and have done more
to give precise and definite knowledge of the principles of the sciences
of which they treat than any other series of works ever published.
Indeed, it is only a master in science who is capable of preparing ele-
mentary scientific works. "With a modesty — or, perhaps, self-respect —
which constitutes a distinguishing trait of the man of true science?
Professor Tyndall omitted to mention the fact that many of the phe-
nomena which he presented in his lectures were his own discoveries.
In the proposition which he has announced of giving the proceeds of
his lectures to advance the cause of abstract science in this country,
he has evinced another characteristic of the higher type of the scien-
tist— namely, a paramount regard for his mission and a generous sym-
pathy with humanity, as expressed in an aphorism of the founder of
the Smithsonian Institution, that " the man of science is of no coun-
try ; the world is his country, and mankind his countrymen."

In an age and country which boasts of its intelligence it might
seem superfluous to say a word in regard to the importance of the
cultivation of science, or, in other words, of a knowledge of the laws
of the phenomena of the universe of which we form a part, yet it is
lamentably the case that few comparatively, especially among states-
men and politicians, and even among those devoted to literature and
the fine arts, properly appreciate the influence of abstract science on
the present condition of the civilization of the world. Living in the
present, enjoying its innumerable comforts and facilities of life, they
do not realize the conditions of the past, or, if they imperfectly realize
them, the changes are attributed to fortuitous circumstances really
exercising a subordinate influence, or to apparent proximate causes
such as the immediate practical application of science to art.

It is only of late years that the investigations of the tendencies
and changes of the human family have been systematically studied
under the general denomination of anthropology, and its subdivisions
of ethnology and archaeology. From these studies we may infer that
man is a being capable of indefinite moral and intellectual develop-
ment ; not that he is a progressive being from the result of a law of
necessary development, but, as it were, providentially so under the
influence of certain essential conditions, among which are, first, free-
dom of intercourse of different peoples, and the ready interchange of
thought ; second, a prevailing religion which shall enjoin purity, love,
justice, and truth ; and, third, an ever-increasing knowledge of the
laws, or principles, of the changes of the phenomena of Nature which
constitute abstract science. That man is not necessarily a progressive
being is shown by the fact that large portions of the inhabitants of
the world are still in a condition of barbarism, from which they show

OiV THE CULTIVATION OF SCIENCE. 643

no indications of emerging, and cannot probably do so except by-
influences from without.

Whatever opinion may be adopted as to the origin of man, it can-
not be denied that we have descended from a race of ancestors but
little elevated above the brute — from naked savages, the denizens
of caves, feeding upon wild fruits, devouring shell-fish, or struggling
for mere existence with the larger quadrupeds of the times, gradually
emerging from this state by the invention of weapons of flint and bone,
through long geological periods, into a pastoral condition ; thence,
again, into a higher state of mental development, which culminated in
the civilization of Greece and Rome, in which the true in sentiment,
and the beautiful in art, were developed in an astonishing degree.
This progress was mainly due to the migratory character of the races
which contributed to the condition we have mentioned. Tribes which
remain entirely isolated may utilize the suggestions and facilities of
life which are afforded them by their localities, and when these are
exhausted become permanently stationary, but tribes impelled by want
of subsistence, or the desire of conquest to migrate to other localities,
as is stated to have been the case with the Aryan race in their migra-
tion from the East to the West, gather up the separate civilizations
as they advance, and hence, by accretion or intercourse with others,
rise to a higher plane. But this mode of advance is limited, and
could make no further progress than that exhibited in the brilliant
though unsymmetrical civilization of Greece and of Rome. This
civilization, though it challenges our admiration and marks an im-
portant era in the history of the human race, was deficient in two of
the essential elements of further progress, namely — first, in the pre-
vailing influence of the higher and holier morality of Christianity;
and, secondly, in that scientific knowledge of the laws of Nature
which enables man to control its operations and to employ its ener-
gies to effect his purposes in ameliorating the condition of the earth.
Without these elements of progress the Romans could not advance
beyond a limited degree, and finally fell a prey to their barbarian
conquerors.

Being confined in my remarks on this occasion to the discussion of
the influence of physical science, I can only advert to the ameliorating
effect produced by Christianity in its restraining influence on the semi-
barbarism which followed the fall of the Roman Empire,- and its aid
in preserving the learning of the past through the darkness of the
middle ages, and must leave to our theological brethren the full dis-
cussion of this part of our theme.

It is a fundamental principle of political economy that the physi-
cal state of man can only be ameliorated by means of labor, or, in
other words, by the transformation of matter from a crude to an arti-
ficial condition. But this cannot be effected, except by expending
what is called poioer or energy. In ancient times, almost the ex-

644 TIIE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

elusive source of this energy was muscular force, derived from com-
pulsory human labor; and all the monuments and objects that have
been left to us, as marks of ancient civilization, are the results of
organized systems of slavery. The rock-sculptures of Elephanta, the
Pyramids of Egypt, and the temples of Greece, were all the result of
the labor of slaves, directed by the minds of freemen. It is said that a
hundred thousand slaves were employed at one time in the construc-
tion of the Pyramids of Egypt ; one hundred and twenty thousand
were engaged in hewing the obelisks of Thebes, and an equal num-
ber in digging the ancient canal which joined the Nile and the Red
Sea. These slaves were treated as beasts of burden, or as mere ma-
chines, of which Athens, in her palmy days, had four hundred thou-
sand, with but twenty thousand freemen.

Now, we owe the abolition of this condition of humanity, in the
higher civilized nations of the world at the present day, to the study
of the laws of the operations of Nature. By a knowledge of these
laws the energies of the elements of Nature are substituted for hu-
man labor, and by this substitution mankind is not only relieved
from brute-labor, but also given control of energies which enable
him to produce effects which could only result from the muscular
power of beings of a superior order. It may be shown by a simple
calculation that about fifteen tons of anthracite coal burned in the
furnace of one of our best steam-engines exerts an energy equal to that
of an able-bodied slave, working ten hours a day for thirty years of his
active life. It is this substitution of the energies of Nature for the
power of human muscle that, as we have said, has abolished sla-
very and elevated humanity to a higher plane than was ever dreamed
of by the wisest sages of ancient times. To illustrate this, a few
examples will suffice. As one of these, we may refer to the progress
of the arts of locomotion, and the means which science has afforded
for the instantaneous interchange of thought between men in the
most distant parts of the earth ; as another, to the production of
clothing fabrics, in which a single individual, directing the energies
of an engine of one-man power, is capable of doing three thousand
times the work of an ordinary weaver. As a third example, we may
point to the art of printing by means of the steam-press, in which a
single man will make more copies in a given time of a composition,
than a million of ancient transcribers could do. Science is every day
creating new arts, and modifying and improving the processes of old
ones. We are skeptical as regards the value of lost arts. It is true
there are arts which have fallen into disuse, and others which de-
pend upon the skill and patience of the individual, but none, which
rests on any lost secret of Nature which science cannot restore.

The results we have mentioned are frequently attributed by super-
ficial observation to immediate practical invention of persons having
little or no knowledge of abstract science. But, in regard to this, it

OX THE CULTIVATION OF SCIENCE. 64 5

must be recollected that ourwnole civilization is pervaded by a knowl-
edge of facts primarily derived from scientific investigation. Such
inventions as those we have alluded to are not produced in a barbarous
country, or even in those of a comparative high civilization without
science.

If we desire an illustration of the condition of civilization based
upon empirical art, upon facts accidentally discovered, or invention
without science, we have merely to turn to China and Japan. These
countries have long since utilized all the facts and empirical processes
the result of accident or simple invention, and have, consequently,
remained stationary for thousands of years, and must remain so con-
tinually, unless they borrow a knowledge of science from abroad.

It is not, however, merely the material wants of man that are grati-
fied by the results of science ; it administers also to his highest intel-
lectual development. Placed in a universe of constant change, on an
isolated globe, surrounded by distant celestial objects on all sides,
subjected to influences of various kinds, it is a sublime occupation to
measure the earth and weigh the planets, to predict their changes, and
even to discover the materials of which they are composed ; to inves-
tigate the causes of the tempest and volcano, to bring the lightning
from the clouds, to submit it to experiment by which it shall reveal
its character, and to estimate the size and weight of those invisible atoms
which constitute the universe of things. It is the pursuit, above all,
which impresses us with the capacity of man for intellectual and moral
progress, and awakens the human intellect to aspirations for a higher
condition of humanity, and gives a pleasurable consciousness to those
who successfully pursue it, of contributing, in however small a degree
it may be, to such a desirable consummation. The effect of such pur-
suits on the mind of the individual himself cannot be otherwise than
salutary. While it exalts the understanding, it exercises the imagi-
nation, and awakens and constantly cherishes a love of truth for its
own sake. The man imbued with the proper spirit of science does not
seek for immediate pecuniary reward from the practical applications
of his discoveries, but derives sufficient gratification from his pursuit
and the consciousness of enlarging the bounds of human contempla-
tion, and the magnitude of human power, and leaves to others to
gather the golden fruit he may strew along his pathway. This fact is
strikingly illustrated in the generous devotion by our illustrious vis-
itor of the proceeds of his labors in this country to the advance of
science.

In the foregoing remarks it is not our wish to disparage any other
pursuit, or to diminish the love of ancient literature, but, on the con-
trary, we would cherish whatever tends to develop the human mind.
We would carefully preserve the knowledge of the past, and transmit
it to posterity, enlarged by the achievements of the present. We
hold that every age of the world has had its mission, and has left its

646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

impress upon all the ages that have followed. The lessons taught by
the Greeks have not been forgotten. The examples of beauty and
the vestiges of truth they have bequeathed to us, still exist to ameli-
orate the condition and improve the moral character of a thousand
times greater number of individuals than was effected by them in the
palmy days of Hellenic development. But we should not unduly
exalt the past, or claim for it a superiority over the present. There
never was a time in which the realms of actual thought were so ex-
tended as at present, nor when so many individuals were occupied in
the contemplation of abstract truths.

Such being the results proceeding from science as we have stated,
it appears strange that so little encouragement is given to its prosecu-
tion, and that it should not be more liberally fostered by governments
and wealthy individuals. In a new country like this, where a whole
continent is to be subdued, and there is so great a demand for the
practical application of science to art, it is not surprising that the great
principles which underlie these applications while they can be borrowed
from Europe should not at first receive much attention 5 but, since our
country has become so much advanced in wealth and in intelligence,
this state of things should no longer exist, and it is therefore proper
on an occasion like this to call public attention to the importance and
wants of abstract science.

In this country, science is almost exclusively prosecuted by those
engaged in the laborious and exhaustive employment of imparting in-
struction. Science among us brings comparatively little emolument,
and is accompanied with but little honor. High talents are therefore
driven into other pursuits more remunerative and more favored with
popular applause. Those who from a love of truth would pursue it
for its own sake are so overworked with the drudgery of elementary
teaching, and so poorly supplied with the implements of investigation,
that it is not surprising that science has made comparatively little
advance among us, but that, under existing conditions, it should have
made so much. "What is especially wanted at present is an improve-
ment in our higher institutions of learning, and on this point permit me
to dwell a few moments.

Three things are essential to a well-constituted college or univer-
sity: 1. An unencumbered, free endowment, which shall liberally
provide for the support of the faculty, and defray all the expenses of
the operations of the establishment ; 2. A faculty consisting of men
of profound learning and powers of original thought and fluent ex-
pression; and — 3. A full supply of all the objects and implements
of instruction and research. I say a " free endowment," in contradis-
tinction to one invested in buildings intended for external display more
than for internal use, as is unhappily too often the case in this country.

The faculty should be men of intrinsic worth, chosen, not on ac-
count of influential connections, social position, denominational j)re-

ON THE CULTIVATION OF SCIENCE. 647

dilections, nor for any vague popular reputation, but especially in the
line of science, from having given evidence of their power in the way
of original research. A man of this class must be possessed of enthu-
siasm which in a measure he can scarcely fail to impart to his pupils.
The latter, again, by a reflex action, will stimulate the teacher to new
efforts. Furthermore, the reputation of the teacher is shared by his
pupils ; and to have sat under the instruction of a Cuvier, a Laplace,
a Faraday, or a Herschel, is no small recommendation. It is to the
men of which the faculties of the German universities are composed,
that those establishments owe their reputation, and they are the at-
traction which draws pupils from every part of the world to these
centres of high intelligence. But men of this character " are not made"
but, like poets, " born." Profound learning is not sufficient ; however
versed a man may be in the knowledge of others, he is not of the first
order unless he be endowed with the peculiar mental powers which
enable him to originate new truths. When such men are found — and
they exist in every community in a certain, perhaps small ratio, they
should be consecrated to the advancement and diffusion of knowledge.
They should be secured by our colleges and universities, and all the
facilities given them for original investigation. They should be re-
lieved from the drudgery of drilling in the elementary branches, and
be assisted by tutors in the general instruction, being themselves only
called upon to give a limited number of lectures on the general prin-
ciples of the branch of knowledge under their care.

Again, no college or university is properly equipped that is not
furnished with a complete series of the objects and implements of
instruction and research. In regard to instruction, the impressions
made through the eye are the most definite and indelible, and may
serve as nuclei around which by association to group facts and sug-
gestions the most varied.

In science, to present the actual phenomena of Nature and reproduce
them before the eye of the pupil, instead of giving him a mere descrip-
tion of them, is as different in effect, as travelling in a foreign country
is from merely obtaining a knowledge of it through the writings of
others.

In reference to original research, as well as to higher instruction in
science, besides apparatus of illustration, instruments of precision are
required, without which the power of the investigator, however gifted,
must be greatly limited.

In what I have said in regard to science in this country, I do not
wish to be understood as undervaluing what has already been done.
Indeed, in view of the small encouragement which has been given and
the limited facilities which have been afforded, the contributions which
have been made from this country, especially in the line of astronomy,
geology, geodesy, topography, and natural history, are numerous and
important. At the commencement of the General Government, in the

648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

union of the several States, a large demand was made for a certain
degree of practical astronomical knowledge in determining the bound-
aries of the different States, and Territories ; and, later, the establish-
ment of the Coast Survey, and an Engineering Bureau, has tended to
keep up an interest in investigations relative to these subjects. The
wide extent of our national domain, and the gigantic scale on which
its geological formations are presented, have served as the basis of
valuable contributions to geology, mineralogy, botany, and zoology.
The contributions that have been made within the last forty years to
meteorology, especially in the simultaneous observations over the
large extent of our country, and the subsequent comparison of results,
have materially assisted in developing the laws of storms, and have
almost advanced meteorology to the character of an exact science.
While there have been no especial facilities for prosecuting chemistry
or physics, yet American researches in these lines have not been un-
fruitful of results worthy of a place in the history of science.

But whatever maybe said as regards the value of the contributions
of this country to the scientific knowledge of the day, it must be
admitted that there is a great popular craving among us for a knowl-
edge of the results of scientific investigation, and that in no other part
of the wrorld could Prof. Tyndall have been more highly appreciated
or more enthusiastically welcomed.

It must be to him a source of high gratification to have his sympa-
thies so widely extended, and his kindly feelings so warmly recipro-
cated. There is a spirit of improvement awakened in this country in
regard to scientific investigation which I doubt not will be stimulated
into more active exercise by the visit of our illustrious friend, which
will induce men who, by the exercise of peculiar talents, have accumu-
lated wealth, to endow institutions for the special cultivation of scien-
tific investigation, and to set apart with liberal support as the priests
or interpreters of Nature, those who by special mental endowment are
capable of benefiting their fellow-men by the discovery of new prin-
ciples.

We trust the time is not far distant when the grand philosophical
vision of the father of modern science, which has waited so long for its
fulfilment, will be realized, " by the union and cooperation of all in
building up and perfecting that House of Solomon " (as Bacon quaintly
termed it), " the end of which is the knowledge of causes and of the
secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human
empire to the effecting of all things possible."

While we have endeavored to show that abstract science is entitled
to high appreciation and liberal support, we do not claim for it the
power of solving questions belonging to other realms of thought.
What we would claim for it, however, in addition to liberal apprecia-
tion and support, is, that it may be untrammelled in its investigations
so long as they are conducted with the single intention of the dis-

ON THE CULTIVATION OF SCIENCE. 649

covery of truth, and according to the strict methods of inductive phi-
losophy. Much harm has been done by the antagonism which has
sometimes arisen between the expounders of science on the one hand,
and those of theology on the other, and we would deprecate the ten-
dency which exhibits itself in certain minds to foster feelings antago-
nistic to the researches into the phenomena of Nature, for fear they
should disprove the interpretations of Holy Writ made long before the
revelations of physical science, which might serve for a better exegesis
of what has been revealed ; and also the tendency in other minds to
transcend the known, and to pronounce dogmatically as to the possi-
bility of modes of existence on which physical research has not, and
we think never can throw, positive light. We freely admit that the
laws which relate to dead matter apply equally well to all living
organic bodies, but we are constrained at the same time to believe in
the existence of a mysterious something lying beyond this, working
through the laws of Nature as it were by immediate intelligence and
by p rearrangement, producing results marked in the future by evi-
dences of design.

The analogy between crystallization and organization has never
impressed me as being well founded. If we allow the existence of
atoms endowed with the simple force of attraction in right lines, these
must, of mathematical necessity, group themselves in geometrical
figures — three forming an equilateral plane triangle, four a solid
tetrahedron, and so on. But this i3 very different from the case of
atoms spontaneously grouping themselves in the form of eyes, ears,
and limbs, instruments of optics, of acoustics, and of locomotion, or
organs of thought and emotion.

In all cases of transformation of organic matter, a definite amount
of potential energy is expended ; for example, in the incubation of an
egg, a considerable portion of the material within the shell runs down
irom an organic condition in combining with the oxygen of the atmos-
phere, into carbonic acid and water, and in this evolves the power or
energy necessary to build up the future animal out of the remaining
material.

The work accomplished in this operation is at the expense of the
energy evolved by the chemical action ; that is, this energy instead
of evolving heat or other mechanical motions, when suffered to expend
itself without direction, is, in this case, employed in accomplishing
results of intellectual character, or, in other words, precisely such as
are produced when the energy of coal is employed by an intelligent
being in manufacturing articles intended for useful purposes. Again,
when we pass from the phenomena of life to those of mental and moral
emotions, we enter a region of still more absolute mystery, in which
our light becomes darkness, and we are obliged to bow in profound
humiliation, acknowledging that the highest flights of science can only
reach the threshold of the temple of faith.

65o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Gentlemen, I have restricted my remarks to a few divisions of the
general subject of the importance of the cultivation of science, and
leave it to others to develop other points of the same subject in their
bearing on the welfare of man.

-♦»*-

TILE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.

By JOHN LE CONTE, M. D.,

FItOFESSOB OF PHYSICS IK THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

THE speculative views of Lambert and Kant led them to the adop-
tion of a Nebular Hypothesis, and to the idea of a perpetual
development in the regions of space. Sir William Herschel, after long
hesitation, was ultimately led, by the surer path of observation and
cautious induction, to the adoption of similar views, in relation to the
existence of a seK-luminous substance of a highly-attenuated nature,
distributed through the celestial realms. At a later period, in 1811,
he communicated to the Royal Society an exposition of his famous
hypothesis of the transformation of nebulae into stars.

Sir William Herschel made no attempt to extend his hypothesis to
a cosmogony of our solar system. If, therefore, the " Nebular Hy-
pothesis " is restricted to the theory which professes to explain the
genesis of our solar system, it is only analogically related to the loftier
speculations of Sir William Herschel, in regard to the processes of
star-formation going on in the stellar realms. In this restricted sense,
the " Nebidar Hypothesis " is due to Laplace. This illustrious math-
ematician, with a modesty and diffidence befitting a true philosopher,
endeavored to lay rational foundations for a cosmogony of the solar
system. This sublime speculation has been egregiously misunderstood
and misrepresented alike in itself and in its tendencies.

The lecturer proposed to disconnect Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis
from the question of the general diffusion of cosmical vapor in the
celestial regions. Indeed, the origin of Laplace's hypothesis did not
lie in Herschel's speculations in relation to the transformation of neb-
ula? into stars and clusters of stars. In contemplating our solar sys-
tem, he discerned numerous harmonies and adjustments, which were
not accounted for by the law of gravitation, which induced him to infer
that all its members were of one family — of a common origin. The
Nebular Hypothesis was framed to explain and coordinate these facts,
and, if possible, to refer them to established mechanical principles.
Under this view, the lecturer considered the Nebular Hypothesis in
two aspects — viz. : As a pure hypothesis, framed to explain the arrange-
ments of the solar system ; and as a physical reality, indicating the
actual process by which the phenomena were evolved or produced.

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 651

Notwithstanding the number of orbs of which the solar system is
composed, and the consequent almost infinite variety of their possible
dispositions, the following coincidences — wholly independent of the !
law of gravitation — are found to obtain : 1. The sun rotates on his axis
from west to east. 2. All the planets (now 104 in number) revolve
about the suu from west to east. 3. All the planets (as far as known
rotate on their axes from west to east. 4. All the satellites (excepting
those of Uranus and Neptune) revolve about their primaries from west
to east. 5. All the satellites (as far as known) rotate on their axes in the
same direction in which their primaries turn on their axes. 6. All the
planets (with the exception of a few minute asteroids) revolve about
the sun, nearly in the plane of the solar equator. 1. All the satellites
(as far as known) revolve about their primaries nearly in the planes of
the equator of their respective planets. 8. All the planets (with the
exception of a few asteroids) have orbits of small eccentricity. 9. All
the satellites have, in like manner, orbits of small eccentricity.

These nine independent coincidences in the arrangements of more
than 127 separate bodies, cannot be supposed to be fortuitous — they
naturally suggest the existence of some grand and comprehensive law,
pervading the whole solar system. That they are not consequences
of the law of gravitation, is evident from the fact that the comets
transgress every one of these laws which could be applicable to them.
According to the laws of probability, the chances against the concur-
rence of so many unconnected phenomena are almost infinite. Laplace
estimated that the chances were four millions of millions to one, that
these were not arbitrary acciendtal phenomena. Since his time, facts
of a similar bearing have largely accumulated, and the chances against
their fortuitous concurrence are now almost beyond the power of num-
bers to express. " The coordination of these divers and unconnected
phenomena — the grouping them into one coherent and harmonious
scheme — the referring them to one common cause and origin, and
thereby imparting to this fair work of the Eternal the semblance of a
Unity worthy of a Divine Idea" — these were the sublime and lofty
aims of the famous " Nebular Hypothesis" of Laplace. He imagined
" that this consummate fabric — this gorgeous planetary scheme — like
the blossom, had a bud — and deeper yet, that it had a mysterious
germ, within which rested the necessities of its present glorious un-
folding ! . . . . He sought, by penetrating the deep recesses of the
past, to reveal the mystery of its development, and conceived the bold
thought of portraying the modus operandi of the genesis of our Solar
System."

In its original form, the Nebular Hypothesis required three assump-
tions, viz. : 1. An agglomerated nebulous mass ; 2. That this mass
be rotating about its centre of gravity ; and 3. That it be incandescent
from excessive heat. The successors of Laplace have endeavored to
simplify the hypothesis, by showing that rotation of the nebulous mass,

652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and perhaps also its incandescence, may be simple consequences of
the processes of aggregation.

The lecturer proceeded to show that if we suppose the great nebu-
lous mass to have been a continuous gas or fluid, symmetrical in form,
and either homogeneous or heterogeneous in structure, provided the
component strata were homogeneous in themselves — " the fundamental
principles of mechanics assure us that the process of cooling and con-
densation by contraction, would not generate a motion of rotation."
Nay, more ; he thought it was very difficult to conceive the mechan-
ical possibility of a continuous gaseous or liquid mass of any form —
whether homogeneous or otherwise — acquiring a motion of rotation by
the internal motions of its several parts. The mass being isolated, and
out of the sphere of external forces — all of its parts being in inter-
communication through fluid continuity — how can we reconcile a gen-
eration of rotation in the whole mass, with the fundamental principles
of the equality of action and reaction ? Any force, that begins and
ends in a body — whose parts are in continuous material connection —
cannot impart motion to the whole mass — whatever relative move-
ments might be communicated to portions of it.

The lecturer was disposed to look for the origin of the primitive
rotation of the nebulous mass in the discontinuous structure of the
primordial nebulous matter. Adopting Sir John Herschel's idea, that
the nebulous condition indicates not the gaseous, but the cloudy form
of matter, we must look upon nebulous masses as consisting of dis-
crete portions of matter — of various density and bulk — aggregated into
special forms, under the influence of mutual attraction. By the gradual
subsidence and condensation of these discrete particles by the effect
of gravity, a central aggregation or nucleus would be formed — the
germ of our sun. Let us hasten to see what light this view throws
upon the physical cause of the rotation of the primitive solar nebula.
It is obvious that a crowd of aggregating bodies, animated by inde-
pendent and partially-opposing impulses, must produce collision, de-
struction of velocity, and a subsidence toward the centre of attrac-
tion. It is also evident that those impulses which conspire or remain
outstanding after such conflicts, must ultimately give rise to circulation
or rotation of a permanent character about some axis. It will be ob-
served that the causes imparting motion to the central mass are, in
this view, entirely exterior to it. For the subsiding and conflicting
bodies, being discrete and independent of each other, act like the im-
pinging of a comet, or any cosmical mass, on the central nucleus. Un-
der this aspect, the Nebular Hypothesis becomes identical with Sir
John Herschel's " Theory of Sidereal Aggregation ; " the only differ-
ence consisting in the magnitudes of the agGregating bodies.

Instead of supposing that the primitive or chaotic condition of
matter was intensely hot, is it not more rational to suppose that it was
originally deficient in heat or cold, and that the high temperature was

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 653

subsequently developed during the processes which brought about its
organization ? According to the preceding view of the structure and
constitution of a nebulous mass, the idea of the chaotic matter beinsc
maintained in a diffused and attenuated condition through the agency
of heat, is by no means necessary. Indeed, the assumption that the
primitive matter of the universe existed in a diffused gaseous condition,
through the agency of excessive heat, is itself, prima facie, improbable.
If it were absolutely universal, what became of the heat, and how did
the cooling and condensation commence ? Even if we suppose that
the chaotic matter existed in enormous detached masses, what an in-
conceivable amount of heat must have been created, merely to be dis-
sipated throughout the infinitudes of space ! Such a view ill accords
with our conceptions of the economy of the Creator's operations..

According to the views previously announced, the original concen-
tration of the nebulous matter about a central nucleus was not the
result of cooling and contraction, but of a gradual process of aggre-
gation of discrete bodies under the action of mutually-attractive forces.
Now, in the collisions and frictions necessarily incident to this process
of aggregation, we have an indefinite supply of heat. The establish-
ment of the " Dynamical Theory of Heat," on the sure basis of experi-
ment and observation, assures us that when motion is checked or
arrested, it is transformed into heat. Hence, we see that the collisions
and destruction of velocity, incident to the process of aggregation,
while imparting a motion of rotation to the nebulous mass, at the same
time evolved heat, more or less, throughout its structure — and espe-
cially toward the nucleus, where the bodies, whose velocities had
been checked, were gradually subsiding. The larger portion of the
"dynamical energy" of the crowd of bodies aggregating toward the
nucleus, was thus transformed into heat — a smaller portion remaining
in the motion of rotation of the solar nebula. This view makes the
heat- and light-producing process continuous and gradual, and the true
gaseous and fused conditions of the nebula, subsequent states, induced
by the evolution of intense heat.

We thus reach a lofty point of view. Given diffused or chaotic
matter, and mutual attraction, and the whole machinery of the Nebu-
lar Hypothesis is set in action! The " star-dust," or "world-stuff"
begins to aggregate — heat is evolved — rotation is imparted — and all
the apparatus required for the formation of suns, planets, and satel-
lites, is established ! Assuming that the processes of aggregation and
heat-evolution had so far progressed that the rotating spheroid con-
sisted of a more or less continuous mass of liquid or gas, extending far
beyond the orbit of Neptune, and we are furnished with all the con-
ditions assumed by Laplace.

It is unnecessary to follow the lecturer in his exposition of Laplace's
reasoning, by which it was shown, upon mechanical principles, that,
as the rotating spheroid slowly contracted and condensed by the grav-

654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

itation of its parts toward the centre, and the process of cooling at its
(surface, the rotation must necessarily be accelerated, and consequently
the centrifugal force augmented, particularly at its equatorial parts.
In fact, this could not be done -without the use of illustrative diagrams.
Suffice it to state, that the final result would be, the development of a
system of planets, revolving in a common direction around a vast cen-
tral solar mass, with subordinate systems of satellites circulating in a
like direction around their primaries. These are precisely the arrange-
ments which are found to exist in our solar system.

Assuming that the primitive solar nebula rotated on its axis, as the
sun does, from west to east, the following consequences were deduced
from the theory, viz. : 1. All the planets should move around the sun
from west to east. 2. All the planets should rotate on their axes from
west to east. 3. All the satellites should rotate on their axes from
west to east. 4. All the planets should revolve about the sun in orbits
nearly coincident with the plane of the solar equator. 5. All the
satellites should revolve about their primaries nearly in the planes of
the equators of their respective planets. 6. All the planets should
revolve in orbits of small eccentricity. V. All the satellites shoiald
revolve in orbits of small eccentricity. 8. The central mass — the sun
— should rotate on his axis in less time than any of the planets revolve
about him in their orbits. 9. The primary planets should revolve on
their axes in less time than any of their satellites revolve around
them; and 10. The central mass, left after the process of genesis was
completed, should contain a much larger quantity of matter than the
sum of the masses separated. All of these arrangements (with a few
unimportant deviations), were shown to exist in the solar system.
Recapitulating these coincidences, we obtain the following significant

results, viz. :

8 planets satisfy

3 of t

G " "

1 "

3 " "

1 "

5 " "

1 "

'96 asteroids "

3 "

13 satellites "

3 "

22 " "

1 "

1 sun "

3 "

u

6

u

u

3

«

((

5

u

u

288

u

(C

39

a

u

22

a

u

3

u

Total, 390 coincidences.

" We thus see that there are no less than 390 independent phe-
nomena— of which the law of gravitation gives no account — which are
simple consequences of the Nebular Hypothesis. In the aggregate,
they imply a very large number of facts — complex — diverse — uncon-
nected with each other — having no mutual dependence — all accounted
for by a simple supposition, and the aid of the known laws of matter
and motion." It can hardly be denied that, regarded as a pure hy-

TEE NEBULAR EYPOTEESIS. 655

pothesis, framed to account for a certain set of facts, its remarkable
success in explaining them invests it with a high degree of probability.

It was admitted that the theory had encountered some apparent
difficulties — some want of coincidences — the most serious one beinsr
the retrograde direction of revolution of the satellites of Uranus. It
was shown that this anomaly might be reconciled with the Nebular
Hypothesis during the first stages of planet-formation.

But, it has been asked, may not these coincident phenomena be
explained by other means than the Nebular Hypothesis ? May they
not be arrangements instituted by the Creator, for the purpose of giv-
ing perpetuity to our solar system, and making the planets suitable
habitations for organized beings? And do we not transgress the
legitimate domain of scientific research in attempting their explana-
tion?

In reply to this, it was urged that such a view implies a total mis-
conception of the doctrine of final causes. In such inquiries, " we are
not to assume that we know the object of the Creator's design, and put
this assumed purpose in the place of a physical cause." In these prov-
inces of speculation, the principle of final causes is no longer the basis
and guide, but the sequel and result of our physical reasonings. . . .
As physical science advances, final causes do not disappear. The prin-
ciple of design changes its mode of application, but loses none of its
force ; it is merely transferred from the region of facts to that of laws."
We do not consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the
tribes of plants and animals, because we find evidences that the earth and
other planets were developed in the vast periods of past ages, from a
common nebulous mass ! We are rather, by the discovery of so gen-
eral a law, led into a scene of wider design — of deeper contrivance —
of more comprehensive adjustments. " The object of such views is
not to lead to physical truth, but to connect such truth — obtained by
its proper processes and methods — with our views of God — the Master
of the universe."

But even admitting this application of the principle of final causes,
it was shown that the conditions of stability of the solar system, and
its adaptability to living beings, are totally insufficient to account for
all the observed coincidences. There are many other phenomena in
the arrangements of our system, which have no relations to these ends
or purposes. It was shown that there are no less than seven sets of
phenomena, of which the principle of final causes affords, as far as we
can see, no explanation.

The Nebular Hypothesis not only accounts for and coordinates all
the arrangements of the solar system, but the conditions of stability
and adaptability to living beings are simple consequences of its mode
of genesis ! Does not the cheering doctrine of final causes — of design
and purpose — become strengthened and invigorated by leading us to a
view so comprehensive ? " How simple the means — how multiform the

656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

effects — how far-reaching and grand the design!" How deeply they
impress ns with the wisdom, power, and glory of the Creator and Gov-
ernor of the universe !

"We now come to consider the physical reality of the fundamental
assumption of the Nebular Hypothesis. Have nebulous masses a real
existence in the universe ? Is the Star-dust — the "World-stuff — a
physical reality, or a mere figment of the brain of the theorist ? If the
actual existence of self-luminous nebulous matter — the chaotic ele-
ments of future worlds and suns — can be established — the fundamen-
tal assumption of Laplace loses the character of a pure hypothesis : his
concej3tion becomes a physical theory, which, in proportion as it is
Aerified by phenomena, approaches the domain of fact — a vera causa.

It was shown that the highly-diffused and attenuated matter con-
stituting comets, as well as that constituting the zodiacal light — while
affording some suggestive analogies to nebulous masses — do not fur-
nish examples in all respects identical with the supposed nebula of
Laplace. We are, therefore, compelled to fall back on Sir William
Herschel's opinion, that there are numerous nebula? which really con-
sist— not of "clusters of stars, but of a diffused, self-luminous, vapori-
forrn matter. Such bodies are, beyond all question, self-luminous, but
the question is, Are they clusters of stars or true nebula? ? In other
terms, are they optically or physically nebulous ?

For a long time, this question was keenly discussed, and opinions
fluctuated in regard to the tenability of the fundamental assumption
of the nebular hypothesis. It is well known that, since 1846, the ten-
dency of telescopic observations, as revealed by the magnificent instru-
ments of Lord liosse, and corroborated by the splendid achromatic of
Harvard University, has been to break down Sir William Herschel's
distinction between stellar clusters and true nebuke. After the sword-
handle of Orion was broken into glittering fragments, shining- with
separate and distinct lustre, Sir John Herschel himself was disposed to
abandon the opinion of his illustrious father.

But the development of a new and wonderful branch of physical
science Jias recently furnished the most satisfactory proofs of the re-
ality of such bodies. We allude to the application of Spectrum Anal-
ysis to the study of the celestial bodies. The well-matured specula-
tions of Sir William Herschel, and the mathematical theory of Laplace,
have been vindicated from the doubt under which they have been la-
boring, and the early nebulous condition of the cosmical matter has
been demonstrated. The accomplished Sir John Herschel has been
permitted to witness the complete verification of the previsions of his
illustrious father ; to see the link connecting the past with the present
in the cosmogony of the universe — which seemed to have been almost
ruptured by the extension of telescopic vision — restored and strength-
ened by this new branch of physical investigation.

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 657

Until recently the light from the heavenly bodies, even when col-
lected by the largest telescopes, conveyed to us but very meagre in-
formation. With regard to the moon, sun, and some of the planets, in
addition to their form and size, we have been able, by this means,
to obtain some slight knowledge of their physical structure. But,
with reference to the myriads of stars, clusters, and nebula?, which
people the depths of space, the telescope reveals little more than
variety in color, brightness, and shape. (In relation to the nebulae,
this was' illustrated by diagrams contrasting the appearance presented
by the same objects when viewed in the telescopes of Sir John Her-
schel and of Lord Rosse.)

The discovery of " Spectrum Analysis " — the optical Analysis of
Light — enables us to interpret symbols and indications hidden within
the light itself. Wherever the tiny waves of light — the swift messen-
gers of the celestial realms — can penetrate, they bear with them intel-
ligence of their orisrin ! " Bodies, so remote that astronomers fail to
give us an idea of their distance, are brought, as it were, into our
grasp, and are analyzed with certainty ! We recognize in them the
same elements which compose the soil we tread — the water we drink
— the air we breathe ! "

Before proceeding to explain the manner in which this new method
of investigation decides the question of the existence of true nebulous-
masses in the regions of space, it is necessary to recall certain well-
known and long-established principles in optical science. In 1675, the
immortal Newton demonstrated the composite nature of solar light.
When a ray of sunlight is made to pass through a glass prism, it is re-
fracted and spread out into a fan-like band, so as to exhibit exquisite
gradations of color, from red at one end to violet at the other. Thia
constitutes the Prismatic or Solar Spectrum. In 1802, Wollaston dis-
covered that this spectrum is not continuous, but is interrupted by a
number of dark lines. In 1815, Fraunhofer, by great improvements in
the optical arrangements employed, rediscovered these lines — ascer*
tained that their relative distances from each other were fixed for sun-
light— and succeeded in mapping no less than fifty of them as belong*
ing to the solar spectrum. Since that time, the number of these lines
has been increased to thousands. The sagacious Fraunhofer traced
these same dark fixed lines in reflected as well as in direct solar light :
he found them quite unaltered in position, in the spectrum of moon-
light and Venus-light. He, likewise, discovered, that the spectra of
the fixed stars contained dark lines differing from those seen in the
solar spectrum. He thence drew the important conclusion that these
lines have their origin in the luminary. Fraunhofer thus opened the
inquiry; but the explanation and import of these lines were reserved
for a subsequent epoch.

Modern investigations have established the existence of three or-
ders of spectra depending upon the source of the light : 1. A continu-
vol. 11. — 42

658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ous spectrum — uninterrupted by lines — is produced, when the light
emanating from solid and liquid incandescent bodies is passed through
a prism. 2. A spectrum interrupted by bright lines is produced when
the light emanates from flames or ignited vapors and gases. 3. A
spectrum interrupted by dark lines is produced, when light emanating
from a source giving a continuous spectrum, is passed through gaseous
or vaporous matter giving spectra of the second order.

Now, it has been found that, when various elements are volatil-
ized in the flame of a lamp, the light gives a spectrum interrupted
by bright lines — whose character and position are different for different
elements. It has also been discovered that the dark lines of spectra
of the third order correspond precisely in position with the bright
lines in spectra of the second order : they thus indicate the existence
of elements which are volatilized in the ignited vapors or gases. The
coincidence of position of these bright and dark lines was first ob-
served and described by Foucault, of Paris, in 1849; but their real
significance was first indicated in 1859, by Kirchhoff, of Heidelberg.
These delicate lines carry across the immeasurable abysses of the ce-
lestial spaces evidences of their origin !

The numerous lines of the spectrum are separated from one another
— the fan of light is opened out — its entire pattern is brought distinct-
ly under view — and all of its minute details are revealed — by trans-
mitting the light through a succession of prisms : this constitutes the
Spectroscope. (This was illustrated by a diagram.)

By means of the spectroscope, no less than fourteen terrestrial ele-
ments have been identified as existing in the sun's atmosphere. Mr.
Willian Huggins and Prof. W. A. Miller, by ingenious modifications
of this instrument, have been able to extend spectrum analysis to more
than sixty of the brighter fixed stars. Like our sun, they give spectra
with dark lines ; thus indicating that the stars (as the sun) must have
intensely heated solid or liquid nuclei, surrounded by ignited gaseous
atmospheres.

Encouraged by his success with the fixed stars, Mr. William Hug-
gins applied the potent method of spectrum analysis to the examina-
tion of the nebula?. He was rewarded by a most important discovery
in relation to the physical constitution of these wonderful objects. On
the 29th of August, 1864, he applied his spectroscope to a planetary
nebula in Draco. He was astonished to find that there was no appear-
ance of a band of colored light, such as a star would give ; but, in
place of this, there were three isolated bright lines on a dark ground —
a true gaseous or vaporous spectrum. In other words, the object was
not a cluster of stars, but a true nebula. Mr. Huggins was not slow in
following up this line of investigation. During the two years succeed-
ing his first observation, he examined the spectra of more than sixty
nebulae and clusters. Of this number, about twenty gave spectra
with bright lines ; that is, were gaseous bodies. The remaining forty

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 659

gave stellar spectra. Among the true nebulae may be mentioned, the
Annular Nebula in Lyra ; the Dumb-bell Nebula ; and the great
Nebula in the Sword-handle of Orion — concerning the nature of which
there has been so much discussion,

These spectrum investigations afford tangible and unmistakable
evidence that there are in space, masses of ignited gaseous or vaporous
matter of prodigious extent, shining by their own light, and resem-
bling the vast nebula which the Nebular Hypothesis declares to have
been the original condition of our solar system. The nebulous matter,
assumed as the basis of the hypothesis, is no figment of the theorist !

What great results have been achieved by the power of means
apparently the most trivial ! Immense objects, seemingly unattain-
able, have been grasped by the smallest conceivable handle ! A little
instrument, which is scarcely any thing more than a small triangular
piece of glass, solves questions which hundreds of thousands of dollars
expended in telescopes, and years of observation, could not have
settled ! Penetrating into the illimitable depths of space, it reveals to
us something of the physical and chemical constitution of stellar clus-
ters and nebulae, so remote, that the light which the spectroscope ana-
lyzes, must have left them thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago !

The lecturer concluded with the following reflections, which are
given without abridgment :

In contemplating the vastness of the sidereal universe, every person,
in every age and country, must recognize as irresistibly natural, the
train of thought expressed by the Hebrew Psalmist, when he ex-
claims : " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that
thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest
him ? " (Psalm viii. 3, 4.)

How incalculably has this withering sense of insignificance been
augmented by modern telescopic excursions into the remote recesses
of the stellar universe ! When, by measurements, in which the evi-
dence of the method advances pari passu with the precision of the re-
sults, the volume of the earth is reduced to less than one-millionth
part of the volume of the sun ; when the sun himself, transported to
the region of the stars, takes up a very modest place among the thou-
sand of millions of those bodies revealed to us by the telescope; when
the ninety-five millions of miles which separate the earth from the sun,
by reason of their comparative smallness, have become a base totally
insufficient for ascertaining the dimensions of the visible universe ,
when even the swiftness of light barely suffices for the common valu-
ations of science ; when, in short, by a chain of irresistible j)roofs, cer-
tain stars and nebulae have retired to distances that light could not
traverse in less than millions of years — we feel as if annihilated by
the immensity of the scale of the universe ! In assigning to man, and
to the planet he inhabits, so small — so insignificant — a position in the

660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

material world, science seems only to have made progress to humiliate
and to humble us !

Let us accept the lesson of humiliation, with a proper sense of rev-
erence ! But, while humbling ourselves in the presence of the over-
whelming vastness of God's creation, let us not degrade ourselves : let
us not imagine that so insignificant — so ephemeral a being — groping
about on so minute a speck in the universe — is totally unworthy of a
Creator's care ; or entertain the debasing idea that there is no life — no
hope — beyond this transient state of existence ! Such a view is not
the legitimate result of the proper sense of humility which true science
demands. She teaches us that grand humility which annihilates self,
and places the soul as a child-like learner in the face of God's uni-
verse ! Like the sacred Shepherd, with unsandalled feet, we advance
with reverential awe upon the holy ground, and receive assurances
that our minute sphere is benignly noticed by the eye of Omniscience ;
that, amid the surrounding grandeur, man is not overlooked !

But let us not forget, that there is another aspect under which such
contemplations may be viewed, which is calculated to exalt man in
the scale of creation. When we reflect on the extreme feebleness of the
natural means by the help of which so many great problems have been
attacked and solved : if we ask ourselves how such results have been
attained ; how have we been enabled to assure ourselves of this stu-
pendous scale of creation — of the resplendent glories of the illimitable
realms of space — the feeble being resumes all his wonted dignity !
By the side of such wonderful achievements of the mind, what signifies
the weakness and fragility of our body; what signifies the dimensions
of the planet — our residence — the grain of sand on which it has hap-
pened to us to appear for a few moments !

From this point of view, man is exalted to his true dignity, through
his spiritual and intellectual nature. A mind capable of accomplish-
ing such results must indeed be an emanation from Deity ! We
must have within us some feeble spark of Divinity ! Yes, there is
a life and a hope beyond and above this transient existence !

" 'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us,
'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates Eternity to man."

Yes, the lofty aspirations of humanity are not delusions ; they are
realities. They link us with a purer order of existence, which makes
us heirs of immortality. We repose under a confident and unwaver-
ing assurance that, in God's own time, these earth-mists will be dis-
persed, and the dim twilight of conjecture will yield to the glorious,
unclouded noonday of knowledge. — The California Teacher — Abstract
of a Lecture.

RIVER AND LAKE TERRACES. 661

RIVER AND LAKE TERRACES.

TRAVELLERS along the river-valleys of New England, and in
other sections of our Northern States, will observe that the
banks in many places rise by a series of terraces, which at a distance
resemble the steps of au amphitheatre. Carved with singular uni-
formity upon the slopes, they are everywhere a striking and beautiful
feature of these most picturesque and beautiful landscapes. In the
valleys of the Connecticut, Merrimac, St. Lawrence, Kennebec, Hud-
son, and innumerable other streams, these levels have been utilized as
sites for villages, country-seats, forest, and cultivation.

Northampton, Brattleboro, and Springfield, are built on ter-
races; and part of the charming village of North Conway, at the
gate of the White Mountains, stands upon a similar level. Dartmouth
College is upon an elevated terrace.

Terraces occur on both sides of the Niagara River, and on the east
side four levels are described, the highest being 38 feet above the top
of the American Fall. They occur also on the Hudson Highlands at
Cornwall 180 feet, and at Cozzens 130 feet above tide-level. The Cat-
skill Mountains are fringed with terraces almost to their summits ; and
on the east "side of the Hudson, at Albany, eight distinct levels are
passed on the line of the Boston and Albany Railway before reach-
ing the summit station.

On Hoosac Mountain is a terrace 1,813 feet above the level of the
sea, and near it an ancient beach 200 feet higher. They occur at Que-
bec, 500 feet ; at Montreal, 400 feet ; and, on the Genesee River, 1,410
feet above the ocean-level.

But terraces abound on lake-margins with the same distinctness
as on the banks of rivers. Prof. Agassiz counted fifteen on the shore
of Lake Superior, and the writer counted six, beautifully defined, at
Portage Lake. Visitors at "Watkins Glen may notice terraces sculp-
tured on the amphitheatre of hills at the head of Seneca Lake, whose
geological history is contemporary with that of the great gorge, the
object of their visit. In Northern Utah lake-terraces are found, ac-
cording to Hayden, nearly a mile above the ocean, and on islands in
Barrow's Straits they occur at 1,000 feet elevation.

On some of the great Western prairies terraces extend like vast
coast-lines bounding the plain.

Nor are they confined to North America. They have been noticed
on the slopes of the Ural and Altai Mountains, around the Dead Sea,
on the banks of the river Jordan, on the mountain-sides in the Great
Sahara, and on the banks of the Nile above the first cataract.

The ocean, too, has its terraces. Darwin observed that, around
Patagonia, the ocean had eaten deep into the rocky coast " a series of

66z

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

step-like plains." Roads are carried up the Cordillera on elevated ter-
races to a height of 9,000 feet.

These formations, so widely distributed and so uniform in their
aspects, have an important geological significance. They are evidently
among the latest results of the dynamic agents which have modified,
and are still modifying, the surface of the globe. Those along the
banks of rivers have been formed during the erosion of the valleys.
Their history, therefore, begins with the development of the present

Fig. 1.

Terraces in Limestone Cliffs, worn by 'Waves.

river-systems, and comprises what is known in geoiogy as the "Ter-
race Epoch." They are most abundant and perfect in the drift lati-
tudes— that is, where the continental floors are deeply covered by the
waste and debris of the Glacial Period, which closely preceded that of
the Terraces. If we examine the valley of a gently-flowing river, we
may study all the- processes by which it was formed, and step-like ter-
races distributed along its banks.

There is the channel along which the stream is flowing. By the
side of it, at intervals, are verdure-covered meadows and deposits of
shingle and sand, overflowed during periods of rain and freshet.
These constitute what may be termed the river-flats or flood-plains.
Something is added to it during each overflow. Meanwhile, the river-
channel is deepening by the wearing action of the current and trans-
portation of the materials of its bed. At length the waters are dis-
charged along the channel, and no longer overflow the flood-plain,
which becomes at once a terrace, the last formed and newest of the
series, the oldest of which may be more than a thousand feet up the
bank. Fig. 2 shows a section of a river-valley with terraces on one
side only, a circumstance which frequently arises from sinuosities of
the stream.

The newly-made terrace now really forms the bank or banks of the

RIVER AND LAKE TERRACES. * 663

stream, and is itself slowly worn away and distributed elsewhere by
the abrasion of annual freshets. Portions of it may thus disappear,
but other portions remain.

Fig. 2.

Tkeeaced Rivee- Valley.— 1, 2', 8', 4', and 5, are Terraces,

It is obvious that terrace-formations occur in greatest perfection
where the stream is not very rapid. Where it flows as a torrent, a
flood-plain or delta may form only at its mouth. Sometimes, however,
a swift stream is checked by the accumulations of debris or by rocky
gorges, forming lake-like basins around which terrace-formations occur
with great uniformity and beauty. The Connecticut River is 1,589
feet higher at its source than at its mouth ; and, according to Prof.
Hitchcock's excellent report on the Surface Geology of New England,
twenty-two such basins, or levels, occur in its descent.

It is evident, as we have observed, that the highest terrace of a
series is the one first formed and the oldest, but, when formed, was
equally, with the last one, the flats, or flood-plain, of the river;
whence it follows that the river was then much higher as regards
the general level of the land than now. Its present deep valley was
not excavated, but it by no means follows that the river was any
higher as regards the level of the sea. A change of level has, indeed,
taken place, but it has been of the land, not of the ocean. No truth
in geology is better established than this perpetual oscillation of the
crust of the globe, and from the unchanging ocean-level is measured
the extent of the movement.

The process by which a river-valley is excavated, and terraces
formed upon its banks, is directly connected with this elevation of the
land. Indeed, it could occur only during a period of elevation, and
may have commenced with the emergence of the land above the
waters, for then would begin the flowing of streams and their concen-
tration into larger ones, forming at last our magnificent system of
rivers. During a period of subsidence, however, the rivers disappear,
as their valleys are filled, and the land is overflowed by the invading
ocean. Nor is j^roof wanting of submergence of a very large portion'
of this continent, especially that which is north of the fortieth parallel,
directly following the Glacial and preceding the Terrace Epoch ; and
nowhere is that fact more apparent than in New England.

664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The occurrence of ancient beaches above the terraces on Iloosac
Mountain, and among the White and Green Mountains 2,200 and 2,600
feet above the ocean, proves its former presence and the movement
of its currents and waves.

At that period the site of the present rivers was the bottom of an
ocean. It was during the progress of that period of continental de-
pression and submergence that the glacial drift was modified and re-
distributed, forming enormous deposits, filling old basins and river-
valleys, so that when the land emerged from the waters it was com-
paratively level, a few mountain-peaks rising above the plain.

It is at this point, as we have seen, that the present river-system
with its terraced valleys begins, and the phenomena may occur in the
following order :

1. Elevated beaches, indicating ancient sea-shores.

2. The highest river-terraces.

3. Continuous excavation of river-valleys, and formation of flats, or
flood-plains.

4. Elevation of those plains above the overflow of the river, form-
ing terraces.

The process of formation we have already described ; nor does it
appear that any dynamic agent was then in operation which is not in
operation now. The work has been continuous.

The superposition of terraces early suggested the idea that their
origin was due to a succession of sudden elevations of the land rather
than to a continuous movement, and such, indeed, may have been the
case in some instances. But their usual want of uniformity through
long distances and of correspondence on opposite sides of the valley
induces the conclusion that their immediate distribution is controlled
by local circumstances, while the general cause has been a continuous
and gradual elevation of the land, and the equally continuous action
of running water. Currents of rivers are thrown from side to side by
ice-borne bowlders and accumulations of debris, and pebbles will be-
come so adjusted in the river's bed as to resist erosion, as shown in
Fig. 3.

Fig. 8.

Showing the Position assumed by Pebbles in the Bed of a Stbeam.

This is one of the causes of the sinuosities of rivers. The water,
as Sir Charles Lyell observes, is thus frequently forced to cut new
channels, by which means new terrace flats may be formed by redis-
tribution of materials.

The transporting power of running water depends on its velocity.
Hopkins, cited by Prof. Dana, says that its force varies as the sixth

APPLIED SANITARY SCIENCE. 665

power of its velocity — that is, doubling the rate, increases the force
sixty-four times. "If a stream running 10 miles an hour would just
move a block of five tons' weight, one of 20 miles would move one of
320 tons." When shallow streams are suddenly swollen to torrents,
bowlders of considerable size are borne along with heavy roar— are
broken by collision, and ground to pebbles and sand. Hence we
find that heavy rock-masses are abundant near the sources of a river,
finer materials along its valley, fine sand and silt at its mouth. The
material thus comminuted is prepared for distribution over the terrace-
flats and plains along the river's bed.

The following table is from Mather's " Report on the Geology of
the State of New York : "

A stream having a velocity of —

3 inches per second wears away fine tough clay

6 " " removes fine sand.

12 " " removes gravel.

24 " " removes pebbles one inch in diameter.

36 " " moves angular fragments having a diameter of two or three inches.

The latter velocity is, however, very moderate, being little over two
miles an hour. In estimating the transporting power of rivers, we
must consider the important fact that rocks lose nearly one-third of
their weight in water.

The formation of terraces on the borders of lakes has, equally
with those along the banks of rivers, arisen from elevation of the
land. By this means the drainage of Lake Superior became pos-
sible, and its terraces represent former levels of its waters. Nor less
interesting is the fact that the great plains of Northern Africa, includ-
ing the Sahara and the valley of Egypt, were emerging from the sea
while the Nile was excavating its valley and carving into terraces the
sands of the Nubian Desert more than 200 feet above the present bed
of the river. The wave-eaten shores of Patagonia have been elevated
above the ocean, and its terrace-plains, equally with those of lake and
river valleys, constitute an epoch of geological history, and record the
most profound of the earth's secular changes.

-♦♦♦-

APPLIED SANITARY SCIENCE.

Bt J. R. BLACK, M. D.

IN the intellectual field there are two distinct classes of laborers :
the discoverers, or those who pursue science for its own sake ; and
the appliers, or those who seek to make the knowledge it confers use-
ful, and so turn it into a direct source of profit to themselves, and, in a
general way, to the public. The genius each displays differs from the

666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other : the one being delighted in finding out and making his way into
the unknown, while the pleasure of the other consists in seizing results,
and putting them into shape, so that they may be servants to our will.
The history of electricity strikingly displays these distinct aptitudes
and pursuits. Volta, Franklin, Arago, and Faraday, were leading dis-
coverers of the properties and laws of electricity. They cared far less
about the every-day use which might be made of the newly-discov-
ered force, than of gaining a complete insight into its nature, and of
making it the means of unlocking other secrets of the natural world.
On the other hand, Morse and Wheatstone thought only of electricity
as a means to an end, or of reaching, through some ingenious contriv-
ance, the means of rendering human communication, at distant points,
practically instantaneous.

A knowledge of the leading facts upon which sanitary science is
founded is, at least, as old as history itself. It antedates the time of
Moses ; many of the rules of hygiene having been taught by the Egyp-
tian priests. But more especially within the past two centuries has
the knowledge of the ways in which disease is produced, and may be
avoided, been corrected and extended. It is within this period that
the first attempt was made in Europe to establish quarantines. The
sum of the precautions taken in London during the middle ages to
guard against the ravages of the plague, was the isolation of infected
houses, and putting a red cross on house-doors, on which were in-
scribed the words, " Lord, have mercy on us."

The physician of to-day, who has devoted half as much thought to
the prevention of disease as to its cure, firmly believes in human abil-
ity to avoid nearly all the ills to which flesh is now subject. Given a
good constitution, and the conditions of health or sickness are almost
wholly in our own power. He believes this, and on precisely the same
grounds that the geologist believes that fossils are not what was once
universally believed, the primary result of the action of a plastic or
creative force in Nature. A like belief exists in the popular mind in
reference to health and longevity, though in a less positive form.
Families known to be of good constitution, and of ancestry noted for
their length of days, are not expected to be sickly and short-lived.
"When any member of such a family does become a permanent invalid,
and likely soon to die, it is a familiar expression, and notoriously true,
that he or she has abused the endowment inherited.

Passing over the evidence which has convinced those the most com-
petent to judge in reference to the prevalence of disease — the physi-
cians— to their conclusion, that if all possessed good constitutions, and
lived as they ought to live, in accordance with hygienic law, there
would be no disease, or next to none, and death would not come upon
the human family through a morbid process, but by the only truly nat-
ural mode of dying — old age ; the question arises, How do men come
by good constitutions? Through a course of life by progenitors for

APPLIED SANITARY SCIENCE. 667

several generations, precisely the opposite of that course which makes
a bad constitution out of a good one. Any one who has attained to
life's meridian will be able to recall examples of good constitutions
converted into bad ones. Children, parents, and grandparents, in some
families, often stand thus in regard to constitutions :

Grandparents scarcely know what sickness is, and die of old age ;

Parents : constitutions much impaired, often sick, and die in mid-
dle life ;

Children : constitutions very defective, and are rarely well a week
at a time.

This is the downward career of life-force, which almost every one
has witnessed ; the upward career being the result of a precisely oppo-
site course. In place of abusing the constitution there is the most
careful husbanding of its resources, and avoidance of all the causes
which will impair its vigor. The purity and strength which such a
course of conduct begets is transmitted ; the child starts in the world
on a higher plane of life-force than the parents did ; and if the offspring
continue to carry out the reformation thus inaugurated, the result will
be to bring back the pristine vigor, health, and longevity, which an
opposite course had destroyed.

Such are some of the elementary truths forced upon the attention
by every-day experience on the great problem of obliterating sickness
and death by disease. As has been stated, these elements of sanitary
science have long been known. But in spite of this, and of the facts
that this science has of late been purged of many errors, and its bear-
ings and capabilities greatly extended, disease, deformity, decrepitude,
and untimely death, prevail almost as much as ever. Where, then, is
the weak point in sanitary science ? Is it in the imperfection of the
science itself, or is it in its applications ? Reverting to the history of
electrical discovery and its applications, will give us aid in solving the
question. We have seen that the discovery of the great truths about
the electrical force employed one class of scientific experts, and apply-
ing these truths employed another class of scientific experts. Now,
we have had in abundance the discoverers of the truths of sanitary
law, but we have not, nor can we have, as in electricity, experts who
can carry out for the advantage of all, the benefits which hygienic
law is capable of conferring. There cannot be, in sanitary matters,
ingenious contrivances, by which a certain class of men can manipulate
health and long life into their fellow-beings. Its truths, if applied at
all, must be mainly applied by those who desire its benefits ; or every
one must apply the science for himself or herself, else nearly all the
knowledge there may be on the subject will be as if it were not.
Here we have plainly before the mind the great and peculiarly weak
point, so far as the practical benefits are concerned, which this science
may be capable of conferring. To make it profitable and useful, or,
in other words, to make it an applied science in a community, that

668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

community must be made, one and all, experts in its knowledge and in
its applications.

This last consideration should lead educators to bestow a preemi-
nent importance to a thorough course of instruction in hygiene. It is
all well enough for the young to learn more or less about the philoso-
phy of electricity and magnetism, but, as the great majority of them
in after-life will make very little, if any, use of this knowledge, its
importance practically dwindles to very small proportions. Wholly
different is it in the case of sanitary science. Every one can make of
it in after-life most important, and ultimately momentous uses, not
occasionally, but during every day and hour of life. And, if thus
applied, its benefits would transcend those of any other branch of
knowledge ; it would tend to make man a master of himself, of his
pains, deformities, and mortal afflictions.

"We have said that the applications of sanitary science must be
made mainly by the individual members of society. This is true of
the kind of air breathed, of the food and drinks partaken, of the
clothing worn, etc., etc. But where human beings are clustered to-
gether, their sanitary relations are so intimate that it becomes ab-
solutely necessary for the general good to define and regulate some
sanitary matters by law, which each member of a community cannot,
as an individual, regulate for himself. It is not possible, for example,
for one in a densely-populated place, to enforce regulations for a sup-
ply of wholesome water, for carrying off to a safe distance all the ref-
use and noxious matters of a great city, or to protect himself from the
presence of persons suffering from infectious diseases. It is here
plainly the duty of the State to exercise supervision for the general
good, and to protect all, as far as may be possible, against evils which
a few persons may fight against in vain. There is absolutely no dif-
ference, except in the matter of will, between the danger of allowing
a person who has a mania for putting poison into the drinking-water
of a city, by which many perish, and one who puts the poison of small-
pox into the air of a city by which hundreds are slain. In the former
case, even if it were the work of an idiot, or of an irresponsible person,
and if he were known to be travelling over the country, liable at any
moment to enter a city, would not the officers of the law be considered
exceedingly derelict in duty if they did not carefully guard against
his entrance ? And, if such a class of persons were in a city infecting
others with their mania, would not all applaud the law and the efforts
of its officers in securely confining them where they could do no harm,
taking from them the means by which they injured and destroyed the
lives of others ? This is precisely what ought to be done with every
one in a densely-populated place laboring under an infectious or con-
tagious disease. When out of a city, such dangerously-affected per-
sons should be watchfully excluded until cured of their disorder ; and,
when in, a cordon should be placed around them, so that the com-

APPLIED SANITARY SCIENCE. 669

munity would be in no danger; all the while carefully stamping out
with disinfectants the means or the germs by which disease and
death are carried from house to house.

It should for these reasons be a maxim with the law-making power
to protect the health and lives of the people, whenever individual effort
is powerless or insufficient ; and, moreover, to provide that pure air,
wholesome drink and food, should be made possible to every inhabitant
of a town or city. If the refuse matter and excreta of a city are not
promptly and carefully removed ; if the streets are not of the proper
width, and regularly cleansed ; if houses are allowed to be so con-
structed that effective ventilation is impossible ; if the water-supply is
insufficient, or tainted with organic matter ; and if persons are allowed
free entrance, suffering with dangerous infectious diseases, and no well-
directed efforts are made to destroy the noxious matters thus intro-
duced, misery, disease, and a fearful rate of mortality, will be the nor-
mal results. The few who make diligent efforts to apply the rules of
sanity are powerless in removing the obvious causes of the prevailing
misery and death-gloom, and, like Lot, for safety, must flee the city.

With a private and public hygiene thoroughly understood and
effectively maintained, there is not an intelligent physician in our land
who would not acknowledge that the result would be to diminish the
prevalence of disease at least one-half, and to send the average ex-
pectation of life, at a bound, up a decade of years.

Taking into consideration the fact that it is within the power of
sanitary regulations to prevent yellow fever, as was shown in New
Orleans while under occupancy during the late war by the Union
forces for more than two years, where over 100,000 unacclimated sol-
diers were stationed, or passed through the city, without a single case
of the disease originating there ; that it is possible to stamp out the
germs of Asiatic cholera and small-pox, and say, " Thus far shalt thou
go, and no farther ; " and taking into consideration that the average
duration of life has been extended during the past two centuries from
nineteen to thirty-one years, by a slow appreciation and imperfect ap-
plication of sanitary law alone ; taking these, and many other facts of
a like character, into consideration, it does not seem too much to say
that it is within the power of any one with a moderately good consti-
tution to say whether he will choose to cut short his days and die the
violent death of disease, or whether he will extend the powers of his
body to their normal limits, and so die from the effects of old age,
or from the gradual wearing out of the most imperfect organ of his
body.

Pecuniarily, the results of properly-applied sanitary law would be
immensely successful ; the cent of prevention would be more than
worth the dollar of cure. It is estimated that from a half to three-
fourths of the inhabitants of our principal cities are sick some time
during each year of ordinary salubrity. The loss of time which there-

670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by results, the expense of nurses and medicines, and, above all, the
permanent impairment of the health and shortening of life which
thereby ensue, are fruitful sources of the worst misery and the deepest
indigence. These conditions become, in turn, the great nurseries for
crime, and for filling our poor-houses, asylums, hospitals, and peniten-
tiaries. During the years when an epidemic scourges a city, its busi-
ness becomes for the time paralyzed, and a serious check is put upon
its growth and prosperity.

But, more than these, sickness throughout the United States sup-
ports in comparative affluence, at least, 75,000 persons with their fam-
ilies. The physicians and dentists amount in round numbers, accord-
ing to the last census, to 55,000, and the druggists, pharmaceutists,
and patent-medicine venders, to about 20,000 more. Add to all this
the munificent charities maintained for those who are directly or indi-
rectly sufferers from the effects of preventable diseases, such as the
deaf, the blind, the insane, and the imbecile asylums, and the aggre-
gate outlay for avoidable evils assumes enormous proportions.

In reference to health and sickness, the civilization of the nine-
teenth century presents this remarkable spectacle : millions of dollars
annually spent, indescribable torments and anguish endured from an
evil which it is possible, but never seriously attempted, to remove.
The dark shadow of a barbarous ignorance yet overspreads the popu-
lar mind, that sickness is somehow produced by evil causes, whose
dreadful attacks we may patiently watch and fight with drugs, but
whose ultimate destruction belongs alone to the gods. The danger of
an attack by some dreadful disease is yet looked upon with a feeling
akin to superstition, not with the calm confidence of security which a
thorough knowledge of cause and effect alone can bestow. Slowly, oh,
how slowly ! does the human mind awaken to the truth that in this, as
in every thing else pertaining to the natural world, nothing happens
by chance, nothing of arbitrary will, but all is subject to immutable
law. This truth once fully recognized and acted upon, man would ex-
hibit the same power and success in subduing in his own body the
one great obstacle to his weal, as he has shown in subduing the ob-
stacles to his weal in the external world, and he will then become the
most healthy instead of the most sickly of beings.

The proper means for accelerating such a hygienic reformation
consists in making it possible for all to become experts in the applica-
tion of the science of life. In effecting this, the State has the two great
requisites in its own hands : first, to educate and train the youth of
our country so that they may realize the importance, and be enabled
to apply, sanitary science for themselves ; and, second, to make it pos-
sible, wherever there is a dense population, for every one to carry the
laws of hygiene into effect, and to protect the people against those
who have disregarded its injunctions, and so have become focii for
multiplying and disseminating the seeds of infectious diseases.

BARBARISM IN ENGLISH EDUCATION. 671

BARBARISM IN ENGLISH EDUCATION.

By E. E. WHITE.

PROF. W. H. YOUNG, formerly of Athens, Ohio, now United States
consul at Carlsruhe for Baden and Alsace-Lorraine, has sent us a
very interesting epitome of the recent odd discussion in the English pa-
pers, chiefly in the Times, of the oddest feature of English public
schools. The discussion contains so much that is English, unique, and
suggestive, that we regret that we are obliged to condense the epitome
to bring it within our space. We have made as few changes as possi-
ble, but, that Prof. Young may not be responsible for the sketch in its
present shape, we have given it an editorial position.

The term public school is commonly applied in England to such
schools as Eton, Rugby, Harrow, Winchester, etc., which correspond
with an American endowed boys' academy on the dormitory plan.
Each school comprises several " houses " and about six classes called
" forms," and is under the immediate management and instruction of
ten to twenty assistant " masters " presided over by a " head-master,"
and subject to a corporate board of control. In all of these schools
Monitorial Discipline has prevailed more or less for centuries, with this
striking feature, that all the boys in the lower "forms" are subject,
not only in ordinary school discipline, but for personal service of what-
ever kind, as cleaning rooms, brushing clothes, bringing wood and
water, all kinds of errand-running, etc., to the " sixth form," commonly
limited in number from fifteen to thirty of the best of the most ad-
vanced boys, who are clothed with authority, and are held responsible
for keeping order at all times, in study, in dormitory, on the play-
ground, etc. This service by the lower form is called " fagging," and
is enforced with rigor just as other discipline — the ashen rod being in
constant use. Of the " sixth-form " boys a designated few, called in
the school " preposters " or " prefects " and in sports " leaders " or
" captains," are of still higher authority — a sort of court of appeal, and
the real disciplinarians of, the school. A boy when abused may appeal
to these, next to an " assistant master " (teacher), and finally to the
" head-master " or principal ; but these appeals are, in fact, almost
never made. The " code of honor " is against it, and an English boy
will bear almost any amount of cuffing, kicking, and beating, before he
will appeal. Of course such a system is liable to the grossest abuse.

Further, in these, as in other English schools, physical prowess in
sports ranks little, if any, behind mental excellence. The " prefects "
in the schools are " captains " in the field-sports, and feel themselves
responsible, rather to the English sport-loving public, than to the
school authorities, for the athletic proficiency of their several divisions.
All of these sports involve a large amount of slang that must be famil-

672 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

iarly understood to secure successful cooperation in such games as
cricket, football, etc.

The case of discipline which gave rise to the recent discussion, is
this- A prefect at Winchester sent for a " house " (the boys of a par-
ticular building) to examine them in their " notions," i. e., perhaps, in
their general school-boy proficiency in matters out of study. One boy
refused to come, on the ground that, being a senior fifth-form boy, he
could not be fagged. The prefects held a meeting, decided his con-
duct rebellious, and that he must be "tunded" — that is, should be
whipped with ground-ash rods. The boy appealed to the head-master,
who told him he must submit to the "tunding." The number of
" cuts " which a prefect may give, is theoretically limited to twelve ; in
this case thirty were given.

A Mr. Maude reports the matter to the London Times as a speci-
men of " licensed tyranny," worse than any " bullying " (by which the
English understand a large boy imposing on a small one), a gross
relic of past centuries, disgracing English public schools, and demand-
ing the interference of English public opinion for its suppression. He
says a " tunding " is far worse than any master's flogging ; the ash
rod is as large as the finger, three feet long, seasoned until tough as
whalebone, and that not less than four must have been broken over
the boy's back, leaving it in a condition horrible to be thought upon.
The head-master, when appealed to afterward, condemned the decision
of the prefects, pronounced the punishment excessive, but only re-
quired of the " tunding " prefect a private apology, instead of expel-
ling him and punishing his associates. Mr. Maude had been five years
at "Winchester, and remembered scores of these " tundings," but never
one so gross as that described.

Next a Mr. Fischer, in the Times, applauds Mr. Maude's " admira-
ble letter," condemning without stint the " cruel and cowardly ini-
quity " long prevailing at Winchester ; could give cases where the
punishment had been more barbarous than garroter-flogging at New-
gate; for the latter was inflicted by law, within legal limits, and in
the presence of responsible officials, while the former was in violation
of all law, and in the absence of all authority or protection to shield
the lad from the anger of his school-fellows ; boys should be punished
by the masters or in their presence, and the latter should not be al-
lowed to delegate such authority to other boys ; the system is bru-
talizing to punisher and punished — the one hardened by indulgence
in cruelty, the other only maliciously biding his turn to inflict on
others the harm he has received, and both made brutal and cowardly
men.

A Mr. Lechmere deplores the public censure likely to fall upon his
revered preceptors of a former generation as a result of Mr. Maude's
painful letter. No such torture as " tunding " was known at this
peaceful time ; was four years a junior at Winchester, and never knew

BARBARISM IN ENGLISH EDUCATION. 673

a severer punishment than a moderate knuckle rap on the head, in-
flicted by prefects deemed " bullies."

An " Old Wykehamist " (Winchester was founded by Mr. Wyke-
ham), who recently spent six years at Winchester, admits the main
facts of the "deplorable case" reported by Mr. Maude, but protests
against his conclusions as to the general condition of things at the

school. The power of the prefects is limited by the right of appeal
and their own sense of a grave responsibility, and " tundings are rarely
ami reluctantly inflicted, and only for grave moral offences and grave
breaches of discipline." The system is perhaps wrong, because liable
to abuse, but the " brutality," which Mr. Maude had so justly stigma-
tized, was very exceptional, as was proved by its general condemna-
tion by even the friends of the system.

These letters call out the "victim," who speaks for himself, avowed-
ly of his own will and motion, " in defence of my school." He thinks
that a " Winchester tunding " is not, as alleged by Mr. Maude, " the
most dreadful punishment imaginable." He says :

" The tunding I received in the fracas, a month ago, had no such terrible
effect as imagined. Played football after two days without the least incon-
venience. Ground ashes not as ' tough as whalebone,' but slight sticks rarely
lasting for more than three or four strokes. The punishment I received is uni-
versally admitted (and readily by the prefect himself) to have been excessive ;
yet I firmly believe, as does every one else here, that there was no tyranny or
brutality in the matter. On the contrary, it was done in an honest, though
mistaken impression, that serious insubordination was intended by my refusal
to obey him ; hence, while his action may be condemned, he himself and his
motives deserve respect," etc.

In the letters to his father, which are published, he states that he
was little hurt ; that he cared nothing for the " licking ; " had con-
tended for a principle, and, when this was decided against him, he
went promptly for his tunding. The prefect wanted to " argue the
case," but he told him he had come for his " licking," and wanted it at
once. It had since been admitted, on all hands, that the vote was
wrong, and the punishment excessive in the number of strokes, but he
was thoroughly disgusted with the fuss made over so small a matter.

In the course of the discussion, the " father of the victim " states
that he had written Dr. Riddle (head-master of the school) immedi-
ately on hearing of the case, asking that the prefect be required, at
least, to make a public apology to the boy. The doctor replied in a
letter of twelve closely-written pages, admitting and deploring the
facts, which were the result of " grave error of judgment and zeal for
discipline." Not satisfied with this, he (the father) called a bishop
into counsel, through whose intercession Dr. Riddle wrote again, say-
ing the prefect had apologized to "the victim" in his presence, and
adding, somewhat reprovingly, that the matter were better left where
it was. He wrote again, offering to let the matter drop, if the apology
vol. n. — 43

6/4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were made known to the school. This letter being unanswered, after
three weeks he resorted to the press.

These letters and statements subjected the system to a sharp dis-
cussion. " C. F." thinks the system not a bad one, if two things are
clearly understood, namely, that an appeal will always be heard, and the
prefect's punishing be limited to six cuts. The first rule would check
abuse of power ; the second would enable the prefects to settle many
offences " out of court," thus preventing the brutality sometimes dis-
gracing schools. "M. A. Oxon" was at Winchester five years during
the " peaceful times," spoken of by Mr. Lechmere, and could testify
that the " tortures of tunding " were then not infrequent. For " going
out of bounds during play-hours," he and others had once undergone
a prefect's tunding, in which he received twenty-five to thirty cuts,
" laid on with such a will" that his jacket was cut to ribbons, and was
never worn again," and his " arms and back were black and blue with
wheals. . . . We were not, however, milksops in those days, and we
bore with Spartan fortitude, and without a murmur, a punishment which
now makes a cowardly, rascally ' garroter ' howl and cry to the attend-
ant surgeon for mercy." He had, however, hoped, until enlightened
by Mi\ Maude, that these tortures were gone by — the relics of a less
civilized age. He describes the system as it was in his day, and adds
that, while he endured it and was none the worse, he would not like
to have a child of his subjected to a similar discipline. " W." gives a
chapter of his experience, from which it appears that he was subjected
to the bullying of his school-fellows. He states that he can give many
instances of " prefect tyranny." " An Older Wykehamist " answers
" An Old Wykehamist," and asks, " What's the use of an appeal after
a thrashing ? " and adds that an appeal before would provoke the ire
of the prefects and the jeers of companions. He states that it was only
three years since a prefect tunded, at one time, thirty or more boys
for some trivial offence, and that he himself had received more than
one hundred and sixty tundings, of from four to sixteen cuts each, in
seven and a half years' attendance at Winchester !

Mr. Maude writes a second letter, answering the charges of " exag-
geration." He reasserts that there is no limit to the power exercised
by the prefects, and shows that the right of appeal is of little value.
He give? cases showing the barbarity of the system. About fifty boys
were "licked" one afternoon for being absent from an " irregular"
roll-call, " the floor of the room looking like a fagot-yard." The head-
master disapproved of the irregular roll-call, but excused the prefects
" on the ground of an excess of zeal in performance of duty ! " In one
case the prefect gave a boy several cuts on the face (" facers "), be-
cause he was supposed to be " padded."

Edmund D. Wyckham states that he frequently witnessed abomi-
nable cruelty in the " peaceful times " of Dr. Williams ; once saw a
boy tunded with a cricket-stump and lamed for life. The boys, on

BARBARISM IN ENGLISH EDUCATION. 675

this occasion, rebelled, rescued the victim, and fell upon the prefects,
and cuffed and kicked them out of the Commons' Hall. After the
boy had sufficiently recovered, he was publicly flogged by Dr. Wil-
liams for having resented a prefect ! " An Old Winchester Prefect "
gives similar testimony, and adds that the system is " an indefensible
and barbarous practice," which should be ended at once and forever."

The system is as vigorously defended. " An Old School Discipli-
narian " believes tunding to be infinitely better than caning by a mas-
ter and less dangerous than knuckle-hitting on the head ; " save me
from sly kicks and boxes." The system creates good feeling between
the seniors and juniors — gives the former responsibility ; the latter
protection from bullies — and is " a good training for the world." In-
stead of making boys " weak milksops," it makes them " Englishmen
like their ancestors." " A Wykehamist " is proud of the old school,
and believes that prefects are high-minded, deliberate, and just. His
family had been connected with Winchester for fifty years, and he had
never before heard a complaint.

" W." thinks the less a master "thrashes" the better — it takes a
rare man to counterbalance the mischief done by " perpetual lickings."
When the boys do the flogging, the result is very different. They
know each other's tricks and ways, and can be more just. The system
protects boys from brutality. When in school he was brutally kicked
by a big bully whenever sent above him in class. Such treatment
was not possible at Winchester. " The great distinguishing character
of every judiciously-managed English school is, that the boys are sure
of being properly kicked ! . . . By all means let the masters control
the system and effectually punish its abuse, but as 'kicking' will go
on in every big school, let my boys go where it is reduced to a system,
in the hands of a recognized class."

" A Civilian," one of Dr. Arnold's Rugby boys, is gratified that,
while many see no cure for the abuse of the system but its abolition,
others see a good use in the government of the public schools through
prefects. He was six and a half years at Rugby, and only knew two or
three cases of gross injustice or cruelty, but remembers scores of cases
of sharp caning of " fags " for impertinence, neglect of duty, etc. " This
punishment was infinitely preferred to one hundred lines of Homer
or Virgil." Under this system, hundreds of boys govern themselves
" without the continued interference of the eminent man at the head of
the school."

"Expertus" contrasts, at length, the monitorial or prefectorial
system with the " system of lock and key, usher and spy, and Jesuitical
surveillance." While the former is liable to abuse and needs to be
carefully guarded, it is " wonderfully strong in the argument from gen-
eral success, from the characters which it has helped to train, and from
the qualities it has naturalized in Englishmen."

A former " Acting Head-Master at Rugby," Sir Bonamy Brice,

676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

also thinks that the excellence of the system has been abundantly
proved by its success. To train great schools to govern themselves is
a task of great responsibility, and mistakes will occur, as in all human
government. He asserts that it would be easy to array a terrible
catalogue of abuses or failures in the opposite system. ,

A number of other letters, pro and con, have been published,
among them a card by Dr. Riddle, stating that the whole matter had
been referred to the Governing Body, then in session, for examina-
tion and action. The decision, which we have not yet seen, was
looked for with great interest when our correspondent wrote. It is
probable that this discussion will result in a modification of the moni-
torial system, but we do not look for its immediate abolition. It is too
characteristic of the English people. — The National Teacher.

-•—■■*-

THE HOE1ED FROG.

By FKANK BUCKLAND.

IN July, 1872, a sensational paragraph went the rounds of the pa-
pers that a " horned frog " had ai-rived at the Zoological Gardens ;
so I went to see it, and here, kind reader, you have a portrait of this
celebrated animal.

In the first place, any one can see that the little beast, though car-
rying horns, is not a frog at all, but a lizard. It rejoices in the name
of the " Crowned Tapayaxin " (Phrynosoma cornutum), from (ppvvog,
a toad, and oopa, a body. This is not a bad name when it is construed,
for it really is very Like a toad in general appearance. It belongs to a
family of Saurian reptiles (Agamidce), this species being widely dis-
tributed in Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. Why Nature
has made these little creatures so hideous, as some would call them —
though I call nothing hideous — I do not know. The Moloch horridus
of Australia is also covered with spines, and looks even more formi-
dable than our friend the horned frog, and yet they are quite harmless,
and will hurt nothing but insects. If the fly in the picture is not
speedily off about his business, Mr. Horned Frog will snap him up be-
fore, as the Yankees say, " he knew what hurt him." Holland, the
civil and obliging keeper at the reptile-house at the Zoological, took
the horned frog out of his box, and, as he sat upon my arm, I made
notes about him.

Imagine a large bug, about four inches long and two inches across,
with a tapering tail, which he can cock up after the manner of a scor-
pion, or the beetle known as the " devil's coach-horse," and you have
some idea of the " Crowned Tapayaxin." The body is very flat,
though, I believe, he can blow himself out quite fat if he likes, like the

THE HORNED FROG.

677

frog in iEsop's fables trying to make himself as big as a cow ; and he
is covered all over with a number of spines, which are not unlike the
spines on a blackthorn-bush. The edges of the flattened body are
armed with a row of sharp prickles like the teeth of a saw ; the head,
which the little beast twists about in a Punch-like manner, is separated
from the body by a short neck. Near the nape of the neck there are
two sharp-pointed horns directed backward ; the sides of the neck are
armed with three or four shorter horns, so that the animal appears to
have on a collar such as we see depicted upon the necks of wolf-hounds

The Hobned Feog.

in Reidinger's splendid old German hunting pictures. The general
color is like that of the toad, and he has a mottled belly, like that poor
old toad about which so many " crammers " have been told relative to
his being found buried in coal, stone, trees, etc. — antediluvian toads,
" who swam about in the limpid streams wherein Adam bathed his
sturdy limbs," etc. Toads, nevertheless, will stand a deal of burying ;
and so will horned frogs, for the individual whose likeness is now
before you came by post all the way from Santiago, in Southern Cali-
fornia. He was packed in a thin pasteboard box, and it is a wonder

678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that he had not been smashed by the metal stamp-obliterators of the
post officials.

By-the-way, curious things are sent me by post. Every week I
receive fish of some kind or another by post : young salmon, young
trout, young whitebait; also young pheasants, three-legged kit-
tens, six-legged kittens, no-headed kittens ; and they generally smell
frightfully. The postman always knows my letters without reading
the address. Sometimes live things are sent me by post. I lately re-
ceived a scorpion, caught alive at Woolwich. He was packed in a
jeweller's box, and when he arrived was poisonous enough to sting a
mouse severely ; and, once, some kind person killed a viper, and put
him into a paper sweet-stuff box ; but, during the journey, the
scotched viper came to life, and had to be killed again by the post-
master-general, who wrote me an official note about it. I once heard
of a pair of jack-boots being sent by parcels post. What next, I can't
tell. Send what you like, my friends, only pay the postage, and, if you
send vipers or scorpions, kill them first.

When at home, the habits of the horned frog are, I believe, very
much the same as the toad's, lurking about stones, ruins, rocks, etc.
Their spines, I believe, are given them for neither offence nor defence,
but simply for the purpose of concealment from their enemies. The
polar bear among the icebergs wears a coat as white as snow for con-
cealment. It is exceedingly difficult to distinguish a sitting partridge
when crouched down in a ploughed field. The tiger carries stripes
like the jungle. The grouse is like the heather. In fact, most animals
have coats given them to conceal them from their enemies, and it is
more than probable that the spines of this little lizard serve for the
same purpose.

I do not observe that in the so-called educational programme the
subject of natural history is in any way introduced. This is, I think, a
great mistake. Children and young people are naturally fond of ani-
mals, but they are too often brought up to kill and destroy any thing
that looks, as they call it, ugly. I have known ladies scream, and even
sometimes nearly faint, if they see an unfortunate spider, and then they
go and kill the spider. Others are afraid of mice, frogs, and other
harmless creatures. If these individuals had in their youth been
taught how there was " evidence of the power, wisdom, and goodness
of the Creator" in all created things, they would look upon these
common ones with wonder and admiration, instead of being foolish
enough to be frightened — or pretend to be frightened — at them. —
Leisure Sour.

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 679

ON THE TBANSFUSION OF BLOOD.

By GUSTAVE LEMATTRE.

' TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY A. R. MACDONOUGH, ESQ.

IN all ages the most different opinions as to the seat and the princi-
ple of life have been expressed ; yet, the systems bequeathed to
us by the ancients on this subject contain a general belief, simple
enough to be very widely shared, and seemingly well founded enough
to endure for centuries. One fact of commonest observation — death
resulting from haemorrhage — gave rise to the notion that life dwells
solely in the blood. Homer's heroes breathed out their souls with
their blood ; among the Hebrews, as among the Greeks, offering the
sacrifice of a life, and shedding the blood of a victim, were equivalent
expressions. On this point the religions of the West have consecrated
the belief of all ages and all people ; a verse in Leviticus thus sums it
up : " The life of all flesh is in the blood."

From Galen to Harvey, men of science supposed that the heart
only sends out the fluid of the blood from the centre to the surface.
In their theories, the blood was incessantly formed and renewed within
the liver, and was impelled by centrifugal force into the veins and ar-
teries alike. Harvey first demonstrated that the blood returned in its
course. " It moves," he said, " in the same circle, as the planets all
describe the same orbit in moving through space." The idea of the
transfusion of blood takes its starting-point from the discovery of
Harvey. As soon as it was known that the blood can return to the
heart, and be taken up again by the vessels, what was more natural
than to seek to introduce it into a diseased body ? Is not the blood
still regarded as the sole principle of life, as it was in the early ages
of medicine ? And, since it can be transfused in kind, we shall be able
to restore health, to heal disorders, perhaps, even to lengthen life. In
a moment of pride the human mind believes it has penetrated the secret
of life, and supposes that henceforward it will be its master. The
most famous alchemists of the middle ages never surrendered them-
selves to hopes so wild. Besides, the sixteenth and seventeenth cen*
turies saw the birth of so many discoveries in natural sciences, that
nothing seemed impossible. The schools of medicine enter with fever-
ish ardor on these questions, so full of promise ; but, amid the light
that bursts upon them, they often neglect that severe observation of
facts which led to the discovery of the circulation. Physicians of that
day trouble themselves very little with inquiries whether the ancient
notions about the blood are true or false ; they accept them without 0
reserve, and publish them abroad with those forms of discussion and
those obsolete principles which brought upon them the well-deserved

680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ridicule of our satirists. Medicine and physiology in that era were
treated under the form of philosophic argument, science and imagina-
tion were blended, and " reasoning banished reason." The history of
transfusion, at its beginning, looks like an important but empirical dis-
covery ; new experience rests simply on scholastic discussions, the
true miugles with the false, and, after the spectacle of a barren con-
test presented by detractors and enthusiasts, transfusion was pro-
scribed, and doomed to oblivion ; and it will be long before its recov-
ery, for the true scientific method has not yet been found.

In the last half-century we have returned to the method of observa-
tion ; nor is that method now, as it was in Harvey's time, the privilege
of a few savants ; it has become the guide of all men of science in our
day, and the real cause of scientific progress. Amid the general de-
velopment of the sciences, transfusion has come up once more, trans-
formed and widened ; it will not satisfy the extravagant hopes in-
dulged at first, but it will throw a broad light on the problem of
health and disease. The principles on which this grand experience
now rests are well settled — the functions of the blood have been clearly
determined. We know that life dwells in every fragment of our be-
ing ; the mass of nerves, the flesh of our muscles, the tissue of our
glands, need the indispensable assistance of the blood, yet live by them-
selves. If general anatomy has followed out the work of Bichat, in
studying the elements of dead Nature, physiology has realized Haller's
conception, in analyzing the functions of these elements. Comparative
study of animal and vegetable organization and the independent de-
velopment of the tissues, after the evolution of the germ, has supplied
general views upon the life of the parts ; physiological dissection on
the living animal, and particularly the mode in which poisons act,
has completed the former results, and shown that each element in the
organism has its individual activity. The experience of transfusion
gains greater importance at this day, proportioned to the advanced
state of science. Transfusion is not simply an operation practised on
man ; it finds its peculiar reason for existing as a process in scientific
investigation. By it the properties of tissues and organs are analyzed,
the independent life of the elements is once more made plain, and,
when the secrets of the mechanism of our organization have thus been
laid bare, transfusion is no longer an experimental remedy — it has be-
come a process of reasoning.

At a time like our own, while the movement of minds is turning,
with almost exclusive devotion, toward the justly-valued labors of Ger-
many, it is not without interest to recall a course of discoveries pe-
culiarly French. The history of transfusion in the nineteenth century,
after the account of the fruitless efforts made in the seventeenth, has
the advantage, besides, of allowing us to judge of the worth of meth-
ods by the nature of their results. These scientific triumphs of late
date have hitherto been preserved only in special publications ; but

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 681

they are of too general an interest to be reserved for physiologists and
physicians ; they must enter into the wide domain of Science.

In the order of scientific facts a great discovery never remains iso-
lated, but opens unknown horizons, and leads to useful applications,
by the conquest of new principles. No one, nowadays, is ignorant
that the labors of Ampere in electricity and magnetism created the
telegraph. In Harvey's time, circulation was accepted, spite of pro-
tests by the faculty and the disciples of Galen ; a genius like Descartes
publishes it in his famous " Discourse on Method ; " demonstration by
experiment confirms the position of theory in every point ; and the
most important consequences immediately follow. They affect the
knowledge of drugs and poisons, the anatomy of man, and the medical
art that heals him. It was easily understood that medicinal and in-
jurious substances will act more promptly if introduced directly into
the vessels, and Fabricius, a doctor of Dantzic, infused purgative salts
into the veins. Fracassati, a professor of anatomy at Pisa, injected
alcohol, spirits of vitriol, oil of sulphur and of tartar. These experi-
ments did not advance the healing art much, but they led to one im-
portant consequence, probably unlooked for by their authors : they
were the commencement of a process which allows us to study the
nature of poisons ; and the history of poisoning afterward took a new
direction.

To the physician and the anatomist the process of transfusion was
directly and immediately useful. A century earlier, the illustrious
Andreas Vesalius had created human anatomy ; after the publication
of Harvey's works, the arteries and veins were studied in preference.
In the class-room where dissections are going on, it is out of the ques-
tion to transfuse living blood ; but, for the advantage of following the
course and distribution of the vessels, it is useful to inject them with
such colored matters as will solidify. The Dutch Frederic Ruysch is
the leader in this advance. In the land of Rembrandt the art of har-
monizing colors aims not merely to bring the human countenance
to life again on canvas ; the anatomist of Leyden so well understands
the secret of injections that, by imparting color to the interior of the
tissues, he will restore the semblance of life to inanimate bodies ; when,
near the end of his long career, Ruysch put to press in Amsterdam the
remarkable book in which he describes the wonders of the anatomical
museum of his native town, like an artist content with the perfection
of his work, he exclaims, at the first page, " I have babies there that
have been embalmed for twenty years ; they are so rosy and fresh that
you would say they are not dead, but asleep."

Ruysch's anatomical preparations, of which the secret is now lost,
were contemporary with that marvellous experience, also founded on
the discovery of Harvey — we mean transfusion of actual blood. About
1660 the notions in medicine of the ancients were strongly and per-

68z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sistently maintained, the blood more than ever believed to be the
principle of life, and, with the knowledge of its circulation in the or-
ganism, comes the suggestion " to transfer blood from a young to an
old person, from a healthy to a sick one, from cold to warm, from bold
to timid people, from tamed to wild animals." But Galen's words are
fully accepted; the theory of " animal spirits " rules unquestioned, and
Descartes has given the system new vigor. That philosopher holds
that there are in us two things — the spiritual life, comprising the soul,
and the material life, formed by spirits, which he ingeniously compares
to the restless particles of a wavering flame An unknown disciple of
the great master, De Gurue, maintains the ideas of the new school in
speaking of the transfusion of blood. " The blood of animals," he says,
" containing a great quantity of spirits, cannot be mingled with that in
the body of another animal of the same kind without fermentation, and
cannot ferment without causing fever." For some persons, as Martin
de la Martiniere, the transfusion of blood is a barbarism, and those
who practise it are " butchers and cannibals." Others think of it,
with Eutyphronis, that it errs by oversetting traditions. This " prac-
tice," he says, "cannot be allowed, short of altering all ancient medi-
cine." The partisans of bleeding, disciples of Guy Patin, thought that
transfusion of blood would overwhelm the patient, and increase what
should be taken away from him. The eclectics, in fine, believe that
this operation brings its supporters and its opponents into agreement :
the first, because it carries off corrupt blood ; and the last, because,
by the supply of new blood in place of that removed, the strength of
the patient is not lessened.

All these theoretical discussions might have continued forever,
had not Dr. Denis cut them short in 1667. He looks for the solution
of most questions in physics by experience, not by argument. Zeno
affirms that every thing in the world is immovable. Diogenes walks9
. for his only answer. Denis allows no other rule of action ; he will
not lose time in refuting the reasons of those who have written asrainst
the operation, but will oppose them by experience alone. The first
two transfusions successfully practised on man are recorded in " a let-
ter written to M. de Montmor, privy councillor to the king, and chief
master of requests, by J. Denis, doctor of medicine, professor of philoso-
phy and the mathematics." It is worth while to introduce, in few words,
the eminent man to whom this work was addressed. M. de Montmor,
a member and one of the founders of the French Academy, lived in the
centre of scientific movement. Gassendi honored him with his friend-
ship, and when that learned philosopher died, after many personal
labors in the most varied branches of knowledge, De Montmor pub-
lished a complete edition of his works. In the years preceding and
following the foundation of the Academy of Sciences, before and after
1666, his house was a centre at which physicists and savants gathered
every week to discuss the interesting questions of the day, and the

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 683

society thus formed had its rules intended to aid the progress of
science. A few years before, a Benedictine monk, Robert des Gabets,
had preached a sermon there on transfusion of the blood. The king's
councillor took interest in a discovery of which he foresaw the range,
and gave the new experimenter the support of his influence.

" The first trial," Denis says, " was made on a young man, fifteen
or sixteen years old. This youth was attacked by a slow fever, for
which the doctors had bled him twenty times. He had become dull
and sleepy, from the treatment, to the point of stupidity. Some little
warmth was felt during the operation. Eight ounces of blood were
taken from him, and arterial blood from the carotid of a lamb was
immediately introduced by the same opening. He got up about ten
o'clock, dined with excellent appetite, and went to sleep at four in the
afternoon. He bled slightly from the nose."

This operation having succeeded, Denis tried a second, but more
from curiosity than necessity this time. The author relates it himself
as concisely as before. " The transfusion was effected upon a chair-
porter, of vigorous constitution, forty-five years old. Ten ounces of
blood were taken from him, and lamb's blood substituted. The man
complained of no pain during the operation, and was delighted beyond
measure with the new invention, which seemed to him very ingenious.
When it was all over, he declared that he never felt better. Employ-
ment offering about noon, he carried a sedan as usual for the rest of
the day. Next day he begged that no one but himself might be taken
as the subject of new experiments."

Three years before, transfusion of blood had been practised by
Lower in England, but only on dogs. Denis repeated with these
animals the experiments he had made on men. These were varied in
the most interesting ways. He not only transfused the blood of one
animal into the veins of another ; but, from the 8th to the 14th of March,
in 1667, he caused the same blood to pass into three different dogs
successively. Granting the correctness of the views then prevalent,
he then realized the famous Pythagorean fable of the transmigration
of souls. The experimenter was also bent on making his discoveries
generally known, proposing to make trials in public, and, for this pur-
pose, he fixed for the first day of his lectures " Saturday, the 19th
of March, of the same year, at two in the afternoon, on the quay of
the Augustins." History does not inform us whether Denis carried
out his plan ; but the Journal des Savants gives a tedious account of a
controversy that broke out more fiercely. In this previous war of
ideas, facts are neglected and forgotten, arguments are only dealt with,
and they control opinions. Denis declared at the outset that he would
depend solely on experiment ; but, at the same time, with a contradic-
tion explained by the tendencies of the times, he comes forth into the
scientific arena with the usual weapons — he discusses. The works de-
voted to this warm contest are all inserted in the Journal des Savants /

684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and such pages, long ago forgotten, show into what extravagances the
fancies of the so-called scientific mind may be betrayed. Reading
them, we involuntarily repeat the poet's line :

" The learned fool outfools the fool untrained."

The absurd was carried to its farthest limits in the arguments of a
master of arts of the Paris University, named G. Lamy. " Since the
blood of a calf," he says, " is made up of many different particles fitted
to nourish the different parts of the body, if this blood is thrown into
a man's veins, what will become of the particles of blood intended by
Nature to produce horns ? The case is not like that of a calf's flesh
used for food, because those particles that are unfit for man's nourish-
ment are altered in the stomach by coction. In the next place, since
the mind and habits usually follow the bodily temperament, there is
danger lest the blood of a calf, transfused into a man's veins, may
give him also the stupidity and brutal dispositions of that animal."

Lamy finds followers among the opponents of circulation, his argu-
mentative deductions are connected and consequent, but his starting-
point is arbitrary and wrong. It is true his adversaries' reasoning is
to blame for the same fault, but it will be accepted, if for nothing else,
because it is addressed to those innovators who follow Harvey. A
fragment of one of Denis's letters, on the question of the transfusion
of blood, is worth quoting : " In the practice of this operation we
only copy Nature, which, for the support of the embryo, makes a con-
stant transfusion of the mother's blood into the child through the
umbilical cord. Applying transfusion is only feeding one's self in a
shorter way than usual ; that is, it is putting ready-made blood into
the veins instead of taking aliment that will turn into blood after sev-
eral changes. The blood of animals is better for men than men's own
blood ; the reason is, that men, being agitated by various passions,
and irregular in the way of living, must have more impure blood than
beasts, which are less subject to such disorders. Corrupted blood is
never found in animals' veins, while some corruption is always noticed
in men's blood, how healthy soever they may be, and even in that of
little children, because, having been fed with their mother's blood and
milk, they have sucked in corruption with their nourishment."

All these quotations are curious, though they express mere obsolete
ideas, because they show how far from the mark scientific discussions
may wander, if they rest only on argument. Once started on that
road, transfusion of the blood could run no long career. It yielded in
a singular way. An isolated fact was enough to cause its fall. One
of Dr. Denis's patients went mad after undergoing the operation of
transfusion. His adversaries seized this accident as a weapon, and,
Denis not having a diploma from the University of Paris, they pro-
cured a condemnation of the new doctrine. Transfusion suffers the
same fate as antimony, a century later. On the petition of the Faculty

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 685

after decision by the Parliament, Du Chatelet, the deputy prosecutor,
publishes an edict proscribing it in the name of the law. What was
the real cause of the downfall of the system? That it rested on mis-
taken physiological ideas. The blood was still regarded as the sole
principle of instinct, intellect, and life. The physician who practised
transfusion could only defend it by hypotheses, and justify its em-
ployment by explanations and reasonings. The labors of our own
time alone can give it lasting life ; transfusion will revive two hun-
dred years later to a new and vigorous existence, for it will rest on
the best-established truths of physiology.

The light thrown by Harvey upon the knowledge of life did not
give a complete account of the mechanism of our organization ; the
opening of an era of progress by grand discoveries awaited the coming
of Lavoisier, at the close of the last century. General physiology was
founded at that period, and the office and functions of the blood were
soon learned by degrees and clearly settled. Between 1815 and 1830
the history of transfusion passes into a new phase. Atwood, Blun-
dell, and Diffenbach, make it generally known by important works.
In France two eminent savants, Prevost and Dumas, devote themselves
to new researches, of which the "Annals of Chemistry," for 1821,
preserve the record ; but the transfusion of blood has made decisive
steps only within the last twenty years, due particularly to the labors
of a modern physiologist, Brown-Sequard. We shall sketch the bold
and interesting experiments he employed in attacking and dealing so
successfully with the most difficult problems of life ; the history of
physiology hardly presents a more exciting and instructive page. For
its full comprehension, the nature and functions of the blood must first
be explained.

As it circulates within the vessels, the blood is to be regarded as
a fluid in which an innumerable quantity of colored corpuscles are
floating. On account of their shape, these little bodies are called glob-
ules, and they are invisible without the aid of magnifiers; in fact,
their diameter scarcely exceeds two ten-thousandths of an inch. The
vehicle of these globules has the scientific name of plasma ; the mat-
ters elaborated by the digestive apparatus, and the products of decom-
position of the tissues, are the essential components of this liquid ;
albuminoid substances, analogous to white of egg, fats, sugars, salts
of a mineral nature, appear in it under different forms, and constantly
repair it ; while the excretory ducts as constantly carry off from it
those particles that become useless to life. The elements of our tis-
sues have their nutrition kept up by a constant movement of supply
and withdrawal, new molecules replace the old ones, and acts of as-
similation and disassimilation find by turns in the plasma their point
of origin and completion. The blood-globule is nourished just as the
constituent parts of the glands, the muscles, the nerves, and the brain

636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are, and the only difference to be noted in this respect is that the pro-
cess takes place within the very plasma itself, while the other elements
are parted from it by the thin membrane of the capillary vessels. The
o-lobule has so distinct an existence of its own, that the chemical prin-
ciples composing it are not found in its plasmatic medium. The va-
rious reactions shown by these little bodies in presence of chemical
agents lead to the belief that they are found in the plasma in all
stages of their development ; their dimensions are not the same at the
different ages of our organization. When the human germ is in pro-
cess of evolution, the first lineaments of the vessels are traced in the
depths of the tissues, and the heart begins to beat ; the sanguine fluid
is then formed, but the globules it contains are much larger than they
will be after birth and in adult age. During this embryonic life the
newly-formed blood does not communicate with the vessels in the
maternal system — the two circulations being juxtaposed, but indepen-
dent ; there is not, as the belief in the seventeenth century was, a natu-
ral transfusion of the mother's blood into that of the embryo, because
the solid particles or globules of each circulate and remain in each
of unequal size. The study of the blood-elements in the animal series
is interesting ; they are found larger in fish and reptiles than in birds
and mammals, whose vital activity depends on other powers. In spite
of the resemblances presented by the sanguine fluid in these different
groups, the blood of a fish could not vivify the body of a reptile for
any length of time, nor could a bird's blood be substituted for a mam-
mal's. The animal species whose nutritive fluid is mutually transfused
must be closely related as regards natural classification : the globule
which emigrates into a foreign medium can only become acclimated
there in so far as its conditions of existence are not profoundly modi-
fied. *

The blood-globule not only lives its individual life within the
plasma, but it needs, in order to complete its function of vivifying
every part of the body, to absorb oxygen from the air, and it then
takes that bright vermilion color which is characteristic. The phe-
nomenon of that new coloring is an essentially vital act, a chemical
reaction taking place between two bodies, one solid, the other gaseous.
Precisely the same thing happens with the commonest copper coin
placed in contact with the air — it absorbs a gas, and its surface is
soon covered by a colored product. In the lower animals that have
copper in their blood, the vine parasite, for instance, the globules take
a bluish color on contact with air. The same phenomenon is remarked
in the vegetable kingdom ; indigo, which is white in the plant, turns
blue when exposed to the air, and many coloring substances are
formed in the same way. The red globule contains iron, and the chem-
ical action taking place in it may perhaps be compared to the forma-
tion of rust. Exposed to atmospheric air, it takes a dark-red color,
while continuing crimson in the arteries. Deep in the tissues, the

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 687

oxygen of the globule is disengaged ; combustion occurs with produc-
tion of heat, but without flame, as is the case with starch; the blood
becomes venous and darkish ; then, sent back to the vessels of the
lungs, it resumes its arterial coloring with the vital air.
i In connection with the history of transfusion it is important to
know the quantity of blood contained in the organism ; this has been
estimated, by approximation, and attempts have been made to ascer-
tain it in the human subject. A criminal named Langguht was be-
headed at Munich, July 7, 1855: about eleven pounds of blood were
collected by Professor Bischoff. The weight of the body was one hun-
dred and forty pounds ; the pi-oportion of blood being one thirteenth.
This estimate has been accepted by many physiologists, although
some believe it is too low. Nothing certain can be arrived at on the
subject; does not the quantity of blood in our bodies vary according
to very many conditions ? It does not remain the same before and
after eating, while asleep and while awake. In hibernating animals,
as the marmot, or the dormouse, if the weight of the body decreases
one-fourth in the period of rest, that of the blood is considerably
reduced. The same fact is observed in fasting, the globules losing size
and color. Disease produces a similar result, and nothing is more
correct than the commonly-held opinion that "grief and privation
consume the blood." The precise ideas we now have of the nature of
this fluid have largely corrected Broussais's errors, and more than one
practitioner in our day would assent to Galen's precept, that "in
bleeding the measure of a half-pint must not be exceeded, and in any
case the veins of a patient under fourteen must be spared." The study
of transfusion proves the importance of the sanguine fluid better than
any genei-al considerations. We shall presently point out those well-
settled cases in which the physician may practise the operation ; but
the reader is now prepared to understand how each part of the body
derives supplies of life from contact with this fluid. The functions of
the tissues will be briefly analyzed in turn ; glands, muscles, nerves,
spinal marrow, brain, will display their special activity. We shall see
how the blood-globules feed singly all these flames, which blend and
mingle to light the torch of life.

Secretion takes place by means of the glandular tissue. This func-
tion is connected with nutrition, and in the lower products of organ-
ized matter is identical with it. The simplest vegetables, and the
lowest animals, are instances of this blending. In the higher degrees
of animated beings, the elements of secretion separate and maintain
their own life, finding in the surrounding air or the moistening fluids
the conditions of their nourishment and work. In perfect organiza-
tions the glandular tissue becomes more complex, receiving nerves and
vessels ; natural transfusion of the blood begins to play an important
part. The size and secreting energy of the glands are directly related
to the quantity of blood passing through them ; thus the kidneys, in-

688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cessantly at work, have a highly-developed arterial system. The
blood is renewed in the glands as in all the tissues, and the dilatable
walls of the vessels admit it in different proportions, according to the
state of rest or activity of the organ. In this case, as in all others,
particular facts are merely the expression of a more general law. The
flow of blood increases when a stimulant exerts its action. When a
glandular element acts with energy, it produces a high degree of ful-
ness of blood in all the neighboring parts ; and physiologists have
thoroughly proved this fact in the case of the salivary glands of ani-
mals. In a state of rest, the congestion of these glands is slight, the
blood dark in the veins issuing from them ; the organ is then gaining
growth. When the animal taken for experiment emits saliva under
the influence of artificial stimulus, the glands, on the contrary, fill with
blood, the vessels grow turgid, and take a high vermilion color. Thus
variations in the supply of blood always coi-respond with degrees in
secreting activity, and secretion ceases when the blood no longer
comes to the glands. If the vessels of the liver are obliterated, bile '
ceases to be formed ; if the arteries of the kidneys are compressed,
secretion by those organs stops. The statement of the conditions of
the problem suffices to suggest its solution ; the blood is a medium
whence the glands draw the principles of their growth and functions ;
the circulation of the sanguine fluid within the glandular tissue is a
true transfusion kept up incessantly by the heart, and which only arti-
ficial transfusion can be a substitute for.

Nutrition and secretion by their constant work keep up the organ-
ized state of vegetable and animal matter. Plants possess only these
two functions, and we may almost say the same thing as to animals
while asleep; but these are not the only functions assigned to the
waking animal, which comes into relations with the external world,
through motion, sensibility, and intelligence. The muscular fibre, the
special organ of motion, has its activity, independent of the nervous
system ; local transfusion confirms this scientific view, which now
rests on manifold proofs. Like the secreting element, the muscular
fibre is distinct in some lower animals ; the microscope detects it in
that state in the transparent body of the infusoria called vorticelli. In
the his/her decrees of the animal series this fibre is found in connection
with nerves and vessels, and, , though it enjoys an excitability peculiar
to itself, it receives an impulse to movement from the motor nerve.
The contact of the muscular fibre with blood-vessels is very close ; but
the chemical composition of the blood that moistens it varies ac-
cording to the quantity of work yielded ; thus it is indispensable that
new fluid should be constantly transfused into the net-work of veins
in the muscle. If the motor fibre is at rest, the blood passing through
it is scarcely modified. If it is in a state of half contraction, the
oxygen decreases in the blood, and the carbonic acid increases. If
contraction is evident and powerful, combustion and production of car-

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 689

bonic acid are then at their maximum ; the blood of the veins is ex-
tremely dark — the muscle is growing and acting both at once.

These are modifications which the muscular fibre undergoes during
life. When death occurs and the blood is no longer renewed, mus-
cular irritability disappears after a time which varies, and in an order
which is fixed. The left ventricle of the heart first ceases to be ex-
citable, then the intestine, the bladder, the iris, the muscles of animal
life ; the right auricle of the heart dies last ; it is the ultimum moriens.
The organic matter making up what is called the flesh decomposes,
and is thenceforth governed entirely by chemical forces. The juices
it contains become acid, coagulations take place, and then comes on
the condition called by the name of corpse-like rigidity. Thus
changed, the muscle is no longer excitable ; but, if it is subjected at
this instant to a current of arterial blood, it immediately revives,
rigidity disappears, the muscle-fluids regain their former composition,
and the individual activity of the fibre displays itself anew. Experi-
ments establishing this great fact have been tried, not only on
animals, but also on man even, and under circumstances that present
some difficulty in the recital ; the dramatic side of the subject is vivid
enough to allow of a strictly scientific narration by itself. We will
relate the transfusions performed by Brown-Sequard on two persons
beheaded at Paris in June and July, 1851.

The first experiment was tried on a man aged twenty. He was be-
headed at eight o'clock in the morning ; eleven hours later all trace
of irritability had disappeared from most of the muscles of the body.
Injection into the muscles was begun at ten minutes past nine in the
evening ; the quantity of blood (which the operator took from his
own veins) was enough for a limited part of the body ; he therefore
confined his experiment to the hand. Injection was made by the
artery in which the pulse is usually sought, a little above the wrist,
and, of course, in the direction of the fingers ; it was urged at first
quite fast, then slowly. The blood which went in bright colored,
passed out dark from the vein, as is the case in life. The operation
continued thirty-five minutes, and, ten minutes after that time, irri-
tability had returned ; a movement in the muscles of the hand could
be artificially excited.

With the second subject, injection of the blood of a healthy dog
was made ; the blood had been first deprived of its coagulable matter,
and beaten up in the air ; there was about a pound of it. The subject
was a strong man, forty years old. Death had occurred at eight
o'clock in the morning ; at twenty-five minutes past ten in the evening
rigidity was complete, without a trace of contractility under the in-
fluence of stimulus. The arm was amputated, and at twenty minutes
past eleven Brown-Sequard effected injection by the brachial artery.
The skin at first took a livid color, but very soon the rpots of the hair
grew erect, giving the effect of goose-flesh, as it is called. This arti-
tol. 11. — 44

690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ficial circulation was so entirely successful that the veins on the hack
of the hand presented a bluish tinge ; a heating like that of the pulse
lifted the main artery of the wrist, muscular life revived ; the fingers
soon lost their stiffness, and at forty-five minutes after eleven irrita-
bility had reappeared in the muscles of the arm ; it was still percepti-
ble at four in the morning of the next day.

Experiment has never more clearly proved that the blood is essen-
tial to muscular life. In the limbs of these subjects the organic
matter was decomposed, and all vital manifestation had become im-
possible. A flow of blood throughout them was effected, and at once
this muscular flesh becomes contractile again ; the special activity of
the motor fibre is reanimated, and its functions performed as in life.
It will, of coux*se, be objected that the muscular element receives its
conditions of activity from the motor nerves, and that the blood-
globules only vivified it indirectly, by restoring excitability to the
nerves ; but has not the mode of action of curare proved that the life
of the muscle persisted after the physiological death of the nerve ? If
the arteries of the lower limbs of a living animal are tightened by a
compress, the withdrawal of the blood will in the same way cause the
properties of the nerves to disappear before those of the muscles ; an
artificial stimulus, directly applied to the muscular fibre, will still pro-
duce movement, after nervous excitability has ceased to exist. If you
then remove the compress, you set the flow of the blood free, and the
peculiar action of the motor nerves is completely restored. Thus the
life of the nervous element itself has been successively extinguished
and revived ; after that the inciting stimulus from the train of the
spinal marrow may be transmitted through the medium of this con-
ductor, which possesses a real autonomy.

The nerves of general sensation, like the nerves of motion, demand
the contact of arterial blood. The anatomical distribution of these
nerve-elements does not allow the action of the sanguine fluid upon
them to be studied as to their surfaces ; yet sensation constitutes too
well-defined a function not to be the object of experimental analysis,
as motion is ; this analysis is made by the help of transfusion upon
the spinal marrow, the organ that receives all impressions made on
the skin. Physiologists have used an ingenious process to prevent
the blood from moistening this nervous centre : they inject a liquid
filled with an inert powder into the vessels, in a uniform direction ;
the capillary parts of the circulation are soon clogged, the spinal mar-
row ceases to be in relations with the blood, and ceases at once to
receive impressions from the skin. The same phenomenon is observed
when all the blood-vessels that go from the main artery of the body
to this nervous centre are artificially destroyed ; the return of sensa-
tion takes place only when arterial blood is restored to the spinal
cord. This fact is also proved by the transfusion of new blood into
the veins of an animal that has yielded to a haemorrhage. Again, an-

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 691

other experiment, made in the following way, furnishes a proof of it.
Two dogs were submitted to the section of the nervous centre which
contains the vital knot, occasioning death. The appearance of death
was produced as soon as the starting-point of the respiratory nerves
was deeply injured. By slow degrees the nervous tissues lose their
properties, and, before they are entirely extinct, the spinal cords of
the two animals are exposed. One is subjected to the action of oxy-
gen gas, and its sensibility increases ; the other is influenced by hydro-
gen gas, and its sensibility remains unchanged. These facts show
with absolute certainty that the nervous centres find their conditions
of activity in the oxygen of the blood, or, to speak more precisely, the
oxygen of the blood-globule.

The brain, the organ of the highest manifestations of life, performs
its action like the spinal cord, and an elaborate net-work of blood-
vessels distributes the nutritive fluid throughout all its parts. Yet
the mass of the brain does not keep its functional activity constantly
at work. The whole organism rests after the day's labor ; the brain,
when not waking, preserves only its life of nutrition ; therefore the
religions of ancient Greece, not without reason, regarded Sleep as the
brother of Death. The quantity of blood transfused into that organ
during these two conditions, so different, of sleep and wakefulness, is
not the same. Dr. Pierquin had the opportunity of making observa-
tions upon a woman in whom disease had destroyed a large part of the
bones of the skull, and deprived the brain of its membranous cover-
ing ; the nerve-mass, quite exposed, shone with that brilliant lustre
observed in all living tissue. While at rest in sleep, the substance of
the brain was pink, almost pale ; it was depressed, not protruding
beyond its bony case. At once, when all the organs were quiet, the
patient uttered a few words in a low voice ; she was dreaming, and in
a few seconds the appearance of the brain completely changed ; the
nerve-mass was lifted, and prominent externally ; the blood-vessels,
grown turgid, were doubled in size ; the whitish tinge no longer pre-
vails ; the eye sees an intensely red surface. The tide of blood in-
creases or lessens in its flow, according to the vividness of the dream.
When the whole organism returns to quiet, the lively colors of the
infused blood fade away by degrees, and the former paleness of the
organ is observed again. The succession of these phenomena per-
mitted the conclusion that increasing action of the cerebral cells
attracts a considerable quantity of blood to them.

The general circulation in the brain is weak during sleep ; in faint-
ing it suffers complete suppression, and every one must have noticed
the effects that result in this ors;an from the abstraction of blood. The
least emotion, the smell of a flower, can bring on impressions that re-
act on the heart, and for a moment suspend its movements ; the blood
then ceases to stimulate the brain, and paleness of the face indicates
the bloodlessness of the deeper parts. The organism no longer puts

692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

forth that outward activity which is peculiar to life ; it droops, no in-
tellectual manifestations occur, no impressions from light or sound are
felt ; but let a current of cool, fresh air touch the face, and life revives,
the heart resumes it movements, color comes to the cheeks, and the
phenomena of intellect and sensation reappear in the inverse order of
their cessation. The English surgeon, Astley Cooper, produced simi-
lar phenomena in dogs by compressing the arteries of the brain at the
neck ; the animal fell into utter insensibility, and seemed to die. On
suspending compression, cerebral life immediately returned; yet this
was but an imperfect representation of what takes place in fainting.
It was reserved for one of our own physiologists to go more deeply
into the mechanism of the phenomenon. To bring life back again for a
moment to a head severed from the body, and to restore it by the ar-
terial blood, this was the problem which Brown-Sequard proposed and
solved. The details of this memorable experiment were these : A dog
is beheaded, and the head, still warm, separated from the trunk at the
junction between the neck and chest. The evidences of life disappear
by degrees, the eye losing its expression last. An electric current
sent through the remaining part of the spinal cord no longer excites
any contractions, the respiratory movements of the nostrils and lips
cease entirely. After ten minutes have elapsed, Brown-Sequard ad-
justs to the four arteries of the head an arrangement of tubes commu-
nicating with blood deprived of its coagulable part, and charged with
oxygen. By the help of artificial mechanism, imitating the action of
the heart, the experimenter makes the blood circulate throughout the
brain and spinal cord. A very few moments pass before irregular
quiverings give life to the face, growing more decided, and at length
movements reappear in all the muscles, and the eyes resume motion.
" All these movements," says Brown-Sequard, " seem directed by the
will." The experiment was continued for a quarter of an hour, and
during all that time the vital manifestations and the appearance of
their being voluntary continued. They soon ceased after the injection
was stopped, and then followed the group of phenomena observed in
dying, the pupil contracted and again dilated, and the last effort of
life was a sti'ong convulsion of all the facial muscles.

The naturalist experiences the strongest emotions at the sight of
so extraordinary a spectacle. The physician now understands the ne-
cessity of contact between arterialized blood and the matter of the
brain. He knows why a reclining position is proper in cases of faint-
ing, giving easy access for the vivifying fluid to the brain. He knows
that by throwing water on the face he will act upon the nervous cen-
tres, reanimate the movements of the heart, and cause circulation of
blood in the mass of the brain. The philosopher asks himself one of
those questions which are as old as the world, and more than ever of
present interest, since the animated discussions of Barthez and Ga-
banis : Does or does not organized matter engender the phenomena

ON THE TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 693

which it manifests ? A grave problem, which Claude Bernard, in his
admirable " Report on the Progress of Physiology," seems to us to
have solved. That savant holds that the brain of the animal subjected
to the experiment of transfusion of the blood acts like a complicated
piece of mechanism upon the restoration of the blood belonging to it :
the cerebral organ is only the instrument of the intellect, and the hu-
man machine marks life, as a clock marks time.

A physiological dissection, like that which transfusion of blood may
be said, in some sort, to perform upon the glandular, nervous, and
muscular systems, how complete soever it may be, has no value, unless
the results of the analysis are combined ; the experimental cutting up
of the human body ought to end by recomposing the whole of it.
That is the mode of procedure in the physical sciences. The colorless
beam of white light is separated through the prism as it is by the
drops of water that form the rainbow, and after passing through the
glass it spreads into a wonderful gathering of colored rays. Each ray
is studied in its properties, calorific, chemic, or luminous ; then, when
the work of analysis is ended, another prism directs all these rays in
an inverse course toward convergence and the beam of colorless light
is re-formed. It is so with the organism and its constituent parts.
The individual life of the glands, the muscles, the nerves, the brain,
is demonstrated by the aid of local transfusion, and the synthesis of
the living being is accomplished at once by general transfusion. The
blood coming from the heart is disti'ibuted into all parts of the body,
no longer confined by art in a fixed space ; thus the partial lives of the
tissues and organs are simultaneously renewed, and the life of the in-
dividual becomes an admirable collective unity.

These important results, which the physiologist regards from the
high point of view of theory, the physician meets on practical ground
and in his patient's presence. And clinical triumphs have confirmed
scientific views, which find their reasonable explanation partly in our
knowledge of the normal life of the elements, partly in the morbid
changes they are subject to. Transfusion of blood has sometimes
served as an heroic remedy for arterial haemorrhages, and losses of blood
occurring after confinement. In these situations there is no injury to
the elements of the nervous tissues, the glands and muscles ; thus the
supply of new blood restores life to them ; it is replenishing a lamp,
with its machinery all in order. When, on the contrary, the glands,
muscles, and nerves, are changed in the first place, and the injury to
the blood is the consequence of alteration in the tissues, instead of
being its cause, transfusion cannot be as serviceable ; it is almost
always powerless ; and, to repeat our comparison, the process is like
pouring oil into a lamp more or less out of order in its inner con-
struction.

Transfusion is not only employed to replace blood lost by a pa-
tient, but used also to substitute pure for vitiated blood. It is success-

694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fully applied to resist poisoning by carbonic oxide. This gas, formed
by the combustion of charcoal and the oxygen of air, is a powerful
poison. Breathed in moderate quantity, it induces death by well-de-
fined action ; the carbonic oxide, acting on the blood-globules, dis-
places their oxygen, and forms a stable combination with them, which
is inert as regards vital properties. The constituent elements of the
organs soon cease to act, and they die as they do after arterial
haemorrhage. For some hours, immediately after the poisoning, the
blood-globules only are concerned, the other tissues remaining un-
touched ; it will be enough, then, to restore a healthy state, to empty the
vascular system, and replace the poisoned blood by new blood, and life
will revive. Thus the history of transfusion once more proves that
triumphs in the healing art may find their starting-point in the physi-
ologist's table, as advances in industrial art often originate in the
chemist's alembic.

In the centuries regarded as a whole, the epoch oi*Harvey and our
own seem to belong to a similar period. The demonstration by physi-
ology of the individual life of the parts, and the practical applications
of transfusion, are wholly modern, as the circulation of the blood itself
is. In ancient days the general belief was, that the life dwells in the
blood, andyet some ancients seem to have had a suspicion that the ele-
ments of the organization live of themselves, and that, perhaps, the
blood has a movement of circulation. Yet the ancients observed the
life of the parts only in their outward forms. It is as a child studies
the works of a watch : give it to him, and he is satisfied to hear it tick ;
open it, and he follows with his eye the movement of the wheels, but
does not go further than to note appearances. Progress comes with
age, and the child, seeing the same watch when he is a grown man,
asks why and how it goes ; taught by experience, by dint of persever-
ance and labor, he takes off and replaces every wheel, gains a precise
idea of the mechanism of each part, and the arrangement of the whole
is then clearly understood. Men of science in our times have studied
the human machine so : the life of the parts has not only been observed,
but traced and detected in its most secret machinery. Transfusion of
blood, so useful in this respect, never acquired any true scientific im-
portance in the seventeenth century. At first it appears as a universal
panacea, aiming at the mastery of life, and triumph over disease itself.
We have seen how the mere imaginings of that idle dream passed away.
In our day the true method, the method of observation, is rightly hon-
ored, and scientific questions, no longer agitated with mere parade of
eloquence, are modestly studied by their facts in the seclusion of labo-
ratories. Transfusion again comes up, but not with its old extravagant
pretensions ; it no longer aspires to give universal, indefinite life. Re-
duced to the simple duty of a scientific process, it unveils the most
mysterious secrets of the organization ; it throws light upon the life

SCIENCE AND OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 695

of the parts ; it demonstrates that each element in the organism lives
of itself, and finds in the blood the conditions required for its action. —
Mevue des Deux Mondes.

■♦»»

SCIENCE AND OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.1
Bt f. a. p. baknakd, ll. d.,

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

MR. PRESIDENT : I am expected to deal, this evening, with a
theme which, under the actual circumstances, it is somewhat
difficult to handle. The degree to which our systems of education
tend to foster or discourage original investigation into the truths of
Nature is a topic which might better befit an assembly more gravely
disposed than the present. Didce est desipere in loco — it is pleasant
to put on the cap and bells when circumstances favor, says Horace,
and he says quite truly; but he does not say, difficile est sapere inter
pocida — it is hard to imitate the solemnity of Minerva's bird, when
champagne is on the board, as I think he ought to have said, and as he
would, perhaps, have said if prosody had allowed, and which would
have been equally true. I shall not aim at such an imitation. I do
not mean to be didactic if I can help it. If I am so, I trust you will
be indulo-ent.

I say, then, that our long-established and time-honored system of
liberal education — and when I speak of the system I mean the whole
system, embracing not only the colleges, but the tributary schools of
the lower grade as well — does not tend to form original investigators
of Nature's truths ; and the reason that it does not is, that it inverts
the natural order of proceeding in the business of mental culture, and
fails to stimulate in season the powers of observation. And when I
say this, I must not be charged with treason to my craft — at least,
not with treason spoken for the first time here — for I have uttered the
same sentiment more than once before in the solemn assemblies of the
craft itself.

I suppose, Mr. President, that at a very early period of your life you
may have devoted, like so many other juvenile citizens, a portion of
your otherwise unemployed time to experiments in horticulture. In
planting leguminous seeds you could not have failed to observe that
the young plants come up with their cotyledons on their heads. If,
in pondering this phenomenon, you arrived at the same conclusion
that I did, you must have believed that Nature had made a mistake,
and so have pulled up your plants and replanted them upside down.
Men and women are but children of a larger growth. They see the

1 Address at the Tyndall Banquet.

696 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tender intellect shooting up in like manner, with the perceptive fac-
ulties all alivre at top ; and they, too, seem to think that Nature has
made a mistake, and so they treat the mind as the child treats his
bean-plant, and turn it upside down to make it grow better. They
bury the promising young buds deep in a musty mould formed of
the decay of centuries, under the delusion that out of such debris
they may gather some wholesome nourishment ; when we know all
that they want is the light and warmth of the sun to stimulate them,
and the free air of heaven in which to unfold themselves. What
heartless cruelty pursues the little child-martyr every day and all the
day long, at home or at school alike ; in this place bidden to mind his
book and not to look out of the window — in that, told to hold his
tongue and to remember that children must not ask questions ! A lash
from a whalebone-switch upon the tender little fingers too eagerly out-
stretched could not sting more keenly, or be felt with a sharper sense
of wrong, than such a rebuke coming across the no less eagerly ex-
tended tentacles of the dawning and inquiring intellect.

Now, a system of education founded on a principle like this is
not going to fit men to engage successfully in that hazardous game
of life in which, in Prof. Huxley's beautiful simile, we are all of us
represented as playing with an unseen antagonist, who enforces
against us relentlessly every minutest rule of the game, whether
known to us or not. Still less can it fit them to bring to light new
rules of this difficult game, never yet detected by any human intelli-
gence. Yet it is precisely of this kind of men that the world has pres-
ent need. For, grand as are the triumphs of scientific investigation
already achieved, it is impossible to doubt that there are still grander
yet behind to reward the zealous laborers of the time to come. I
know that it sometimes seems to us otherwise ; I know that the very
grandeur of the achievements of the past makes us sometimes doubt-
ful of the future ; for it is generally true that the portals of Nature's
secret chambers, yet unexplored, are only dimly discernible before
they are unlocked.

I remember a time — it is now long gone by — when this skeptical
feeling as to the possibilities of large scientific progress in the time to
come was extremely prevalent — so prevalent that a learned professor
of a nei<j;hborina: college thought it worth his while to combat, in an
energetic public address, the discouraging notion that Nature has no
longer any important secrets to yield. Subsequent history has mag-
nificently corroborated his argument. For that was a time when, as
yet, no Faraday had drawn a living spark from the lifeless magnet ;
no Daniell, or Grove, or Bunsen, had given us an enduring source of
electro-dynamic power ; no Ohm had taught us how to measure such
a power when obtained j no Bessel had detected the parallaxes of the
fixed stars ; no Adams or Leverrier had thrown his grapple into
space, and felt the influence of an unseen planet trembling, to use the

SCIENCE AND OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 697

beautiful language of Herschel, along the delicate line of his analysis ;
no Draper, or Daguerre, or Talbot, had revealed the wonders of actin-
ism ; no Mayer or Joule had laid a sure foundation for the grand doc-
trine of the conservation of force; no Carpenter had unravelled the in-
tricacies of nervous physiology, or analyzed the relations of mind and
brain ; no Agassiz had ridden down the Alps on the backs of the gla-
ciers and proved their steady flow ; no Darwin had lifted the veil from
the mysteries of organic development ; no Schiaparelli or Newton had
put the harness of universal gravitation upon the wayward move-
ments of the shooting-stars; no Mallet had presented an intelligible
theory of volcanic flames and of the earth's convulsive tremors ; no
Kirchhoff had furnished a hey to the intimate constitution of celestial
bodies or a gauge of stellar drift ; no Huggins, or Secchi, or Young,
had applied the key thus presented to enter the secret chambers of the
sun, the comets, the fixed stars, and the nebulae ; no Stokes had made
the darkness visible which lies beyond the violet ; no Tyndall had done
the same for the darkness beyond the red, or had measured the heat-
absorbing powers of aeriform bodies, or shown how the tremors of the
ether shake asunder the elements of vapors. In short, that period of
presumed scientific omniscience seems now, as we look back to it, but
the faint dawning of a day of glorious discovery, which we dare not,
even yet, pronounce to be approaching its meridian.

How much of all this has been due to our system of education ?
Among the great promoters of scientific progress before or since, how
large is the number who may, in strict propriety, be said to have
educated themselves ? Take, for illustration, such familiar names as
those of William Herschel, and Franklin, and Rumford, and Ritten-
house, and Davy, and Faraday, and Henry. Is it not evident that
Nature herself, to those who will follow her teachings, is a better guide
to the study of her own phenomena than all the training of our
schools ? And is not this because Nature invariably begins with the
training of the observing faculties ? Is it not because the ample page
which she spreads out before the learner is written all over, not with
words, but with substantial realities ? Is it not because her lessons
reach beyond the simple understanding and impress the immediate
intuition ? — that what she furnishes is something better than barren
information passively received — it is positive knowledge actively
gathered ?

If, then, in the future we would fit man properly to cultivate Na-
ture, and not leave scientific research, as, to a great extent, we have
done heretofore, to the hazard of chance, we must cultivate her own
processes. Our earliest teachings must be things and not words. The
objects first presented to the tender mind must be such as address the
senses, and such as it can grasp. Store it first abundantly with the
material of thought, and the process of thinking will be spontaneous
and easy.

698 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This is not to depreciate the value of other subjects or of other
modes of culture. It is only to refer them to their proper place.
Grammar, philology, logic, human history, belles-lettres, philosophy —
all these things will be seized with avidity and pursued with pleasure
by a mind judiciously prepared to receive them. On this point we
shall do well to learn, and I believe we are beginning to learn some-
thing, from contemporary peoples upon the Continent of Europe. Ob-
ject-teaching is beginning to be introduced, if only sparingly, into our
primary schools. It should be so introduced universally. And in all
our schools, but especially in those in which the foundation is laid of
what is called a liberal education, the knowledge of visible things
should be made to precede the study of the artificial structure of lan-
guage, and the intricacies of grammatical rules and forms.

The knowledge of visible tilings — I repeat these words that I may
emphasize them, and, when I repeat them, observe that I mean knowl-
edge of visible things, and not information about them — knowledge
acquired by the learner's own conscious efforts, not crammed into his
mind in set forms of words out of books. Our methods of education
manifest a strong tendency in these modern times to degenerate in
such a sort of cramming. Forty years ago, the printed helps to learn-
ing, now supplied to the young men of our colleges in so lavish pro-
fusion, were almost unknown ; and teachers lent about as little aid, at
least during the earlier years, as books. What the student learned
then he learned for himself by positive hard labor. Now we have
made the task so easy, we have built so many royal roads to learning
in all its departments, that it may be well doubted if the young men
of our day, with all their helps, acquire as much as those of that earlier
period acquired without them.

The moral of this experience is that mental culture is not secured
by pouring information into passive recipients ; it comes from stimu-
lating the mind to gather knowledge for itself. When our systems of
education shall have been remodelled from top to bottom, with due
attention to this principle, then, if we have minds among us which are
capable of pursuing Nature into her yet uncaptured strongholds, we
shall find them out and set them at their work. Then neither " mute
inglorious Miltons " on the one hand, nor on the other silent, unsus-
pected Keplers, nor Newtons " guiltless " of universal gravitation,
6hall live unconscious of their powers, or die and make no sign.
Then the progress of science will no longer be dependent, as in
the past it has been to so great a degree, ou the chance struggles
of genius rebelling against circumstances, such as have given us a
Herschel, a Franklin, a Hugh Miller, or a Henry ; nor will the world
be any more astonished to see the most brilliant of the triumphs of the
intellect achieved by men who have cloven their own way to the fore-
front, in defiance of all its educational traditions ; as it has seen in the
case of a Rumford, a Davy, a Faraday, and a Tyndall.

TEE CAVE-DWELLERS OF FRANCE,

699

THE TROGLODYTES, OR CAVE-DWELLERS OF

FRANCE.1

By PAUL BROCA.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY J. FITZGERALD, A. M.

1. Their Manner of Life.

IN the southwest of France, at no great distance from the river
Vezere, are situated the caves which were inhabited by a race of
Troglodytes toward the close of the Quaternary geological period.
The openings of these caves faced all points of the compass, except
the north. They were inhabited throughout the entire year, as is
shown by the remnants still found there of young reindeer, in every
stage of development. From the teeth, bones, and budding horns of
these animals, we can determine their age, and the season of the year
when they were killed; and the evidence of this kind furnished us by
the contents of the caves shows that the Troglodytes had a fixed
abode; or, in other words, that they were not nomadic in their
habits.

Fig. 1.

Pestle and Mobtab.

When the inhabitants of the caves went fishing or hunting, they
closed up the door-ways to exclude beasts of prey. Only one bone
has been fonnd, and that at La Madelaine, which bears any tokens
of having been gnawed by a wild beast. It shows the marks of a
hyena's teeth, the animal having in some way gained admittance to
the cave. Hyenas were scarce in the time of our Troglodytes, but wolves
and foxes abounded ;^ and we should find the marks of their teeth upon
the bones strewed about in the caves, were it not that the inhabitants

1 This article is a part of the elaborate address before the French Association for the
Advancement of Science, by M. Paul Broca, one of the most eminent anthropologists
of Europe.

7oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kept their dwellings carefully shut against such intruders. But what
were the means employed to keep them out ? In sepulchral caves we
find the entrance closed by a stone slab ; but a dwelling-place would
require a door more easily opened and shut than that. Besides, we
find no trace whatsoever of stone doors, and therefore it is supposed
that the Troglodytes barricaded their door-ways with hurdles.

They lived by the chase, and by fishing. But, did they use vege-
table food ? We cannot find any evidence that they did. There have
been discovered, it is true, in the caves of Les Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse,
and La Madelaine, a number of stones — granite, freestone and quartzite
— worn round and smooth by rubbing, which exhibit on one side a pretty
regular depression, in the form of a cupule, and not unlike a small mor-
tar (Fig. 1). Some have supposed that this cupule might have been
intended to receive the end of a piece of dry wood, which would then
be whirled between the hands to produce fire, according to the well-
known process in use among the ancient Aryans, and among some
savage tribes of the present day. But the depression is too shallow,
considering its diameter, to have served such a purpose, and hence we
take these stones to have been mortars, while other round stones, of
dimensions answering to the cupules, would serve as pestles. Hence
came the supposition that the Troglodytes brayed grain for food :
but every thing goes to show that they were unacquainted with agri-
culture. It is far more probable that they used the mortars to pound
fish, or to grind pigments.

Their chief occupation and their principal resource was the chase.
The remnants of bones accumulated in the soil forming the floor of
the caves, show that they hunted animals of every size, from the little
bird to the mammoth. That old giant of the early Quaternary period
still survived, but had now become rare. . For a long time it was sup-
posed that the mammoth became extinct about the middle of that
period ; and when it was announced that several teeth of that animal
and sundry pieces of wrought ivory had been discovered in the most
recent Troglodytic stations of the Vezere, many persons were of opin-
ion that these remains must have come down from an earlier period,
and been gathered by our Troglodytes, just as the inhabitants of
Siberia do at present. But it must be remembered that the carcasses
of mammoths found in Siberia have been preserved by the extreme
cold, and consequently their flesh and ivory are still fresh, whereas,
fossil ivory is so cracked and foliated as to be useless for the purposes
of art. Now, the climate of France in the Reindeer Age, though still
frigid, had long ceased to be glacial ; and, even though the men of that
period had been accustomed to dig the earth — and they were not — the
fossil ivory they might have found would have been unserviceable.
Therefore, the mammoths, whose ivory they wrought, must have been
contemporary with themselves. Of this conclusion we have a decisive
proof in the plate of ivory discovered at the La Madelaine, in 1864, by

THE CAVE-DWELLERS OF FRANCE.

701

E. Lartet, De Verneuil, and Falconer. It will be seen to contain an
engraved design of the mammoth, as his carcass is to this clay found
on the banks of the Lena. (See vol. i. of The Popular Science
Monthly, p. 215.)

The Troglodytes of the Reindeer Age had but rarely the opportu-
nity of measuring strength with the mammoth. Their game was more
commonly the aurochs, the horse, the ox ; and doubtless it was in the
pursuit of these great animals that they used their long spears tipped
with flint. Still, nearly all their weapons were light, and mostly
tipped with reindeer-horn. The bow became their principal weapon,
in proportion as the animals they hunted grew more timid and wary.
Their arrows were of two kinds: a small one, with pointed tip, without
a barb, for small game and birds ; and a large one, with two rows of
barbs, for hunting the reindeer. The rest of their equipment consisted
of light lances with blunt heads, darts with conical points, and long,
sharp daggers, for close quarters. They had also a whistle to summon
their companions in the chase ; this was made of reindeer-bone.

Tnat our Troglodytes followed fishing also is shown by the number
of fish-bones found in their caves ; but, strange to say, salmon was their
only fish. At the present day salmon does not go up the Vezere, nor
is it found in the Dordogne as far up as the mouth of the Vezere. There is
every reason for believing that these ancient fishers did not use a line,
for with a line the fisherman takes fish of every kind. If they em-
ployed only the harpoon, we can well understand why they could take
only large fish, and why among these they should select the salmon,
whose flesh they prized most. But did they fish from boats ? We
have no evidence bearing on this point ; but the Vezere was so closely
confined by steep banks, that the salmon might easily be harpooned
from the shore. The harpoon used by our Troglodytes was a small
dart of reindeer-horn, with barbs on one side only, and having a pro-
jection at its base, to fasten it to the line.

Fig. 2.

Bone Haepoon feom Tekea Del Fuego.

On returning from the chase or from fishing, the Troglodytes got
ready the feast in their cave. The carcasses of reindeer and the
smaller game were brought in whole, but large-sized animals, the
horse or the ox, being too heavy to carry away whole, were cut up on
the spot, the head and legs being carried off, and the rest of the skel-
eton left behind. Hence, among the leavings found in the caves,
we scarcely ever meet with any bones from the trunk of large mam-

702 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mals, while every part of the skeleton of reindeer and smaller animals
is to be found. The soil in the caverns, wherever it contains crushed
bones, contains also an immense amount of charred wood. This mix-
ture of bones and charcoal occurs so generally, so uniformly, that it
is not easy to suppose that the Troglodytes lighted fires merely for
the purpose of keeping themselves warm. They must have lighted
fires daily at all seasons of the year, and hence it is likely that they
cooked their food.

We are unable to say whether they got their fire from flint, or
from wood by friction. They had no pottery, and could not boil their
provisions over the fire. And yet they did not roast their meat either,
for you will rarely find in their caves a calcined bone, or only such
bones as were evidently burned by mere chance. They may have
boiled their meats in wooden troughs, bringing the water to a boil by
casting into it red-hot stones. But I think it more likely that they
cooked their meat beneath the ashes, as is still the custom of many
savage tribes.

A tid-bit for them was the brain of animals, or the marrow, as is
evidenced by the fact that all the skulls are cracked and all the mar-
row-bones (and they only) broken. All savages have a special liking
for marrow, and have a peculiar way of cracking the bones containing
it. The chief is always the first to suck the marrow-bone. Our
Troglodytes had little wedge-shaped pieces of flint, which they used
as hatchets to break these bones. We find also in their caves an im-
plement of reindeer-horn which was probably used for getting out the
marrow, though archaeologists are divided as to its purpose.

After a meal, the Troglodytes left the bones scattered about the
floor. In a warm climate these remnants would have given out an
insupportable stench ; but in those early times the temperature was
very low in France, and our Troglodytes were not paragons of clean-
liness. To their uncleanly habits we are indebted for what we know
about their food. Their chief staple was reindeer meat ; but they also
eat the flesh of the horse, the aurochs, several species of the ox, the
chamois, the wild-goat, and even some carnivora. They used also fish,
and, by means of the bow and arrow, they could take winged game.
The caves contain the remains of birds of many different species. But,
among all these bones, we find no human remains ; and, hence, we
know that our good Troglodytes were not cannibals. That supreme
delight of the savage soul was all unknown to them — devouring a
vanquished foeman. I record this with pleasure, albeit I attach no
exceptional importance to the question of anthropophagy. In the eyes
of the philosopher the crime is not in devouring, but in killing a hu-
man being. Judging from the style of weapons these Troglodytes
employed, we should say that they were quiet folk, not given to war.

It has been supposed that they wore no clothing, as all the human
figures portrayed by their artists are nude (Fig. 5). This, however,

THE CAVE-DWELLERS OF FRANCE.

7°3

proves just nothing, because it proves too much. By parity of reason-
ing, the Greeks would have gone naked also. But we find in the caves
all the necessary outfit of the (Troglodytic) tailor. There are needles
of bone and of reindeer-horn, some of them being mere awls, but

Fig. 8.

Drawing of a Fish on Reindeeb-Horn. — (From La Madelaine.)

others having an eye to hold the thread. Some of these needles
were very slender, and a needle-case, made of a bone from a bird, has
been found, which might contain several of them. Lartet and Christy
discovered the mode of manufacturing these needles. They give an
engraving of the metacarpal of a horse, having a number of parallel
cuttings lengthwise, all executed with a fine saw. The work was
incomplete, but it is evident that here we have needles in process of
manufacture.

Fig 4.

Drawing of an Ibex. — (La Madelaine.)

The threads they used were doubtless of various kinds. But did
they employ for this purpose vegetable fibres, or fine strips of hide ?
It is possible, or even probable, that they used both ; but this at least is
certain, that they made threads, or, at all events, cords, out of tendons.
They removed carefully from the members of animals the long ten-
dons, as is shown by the scratches on the bone at the point of inser-
tion.

Needle-work implies clothing, not simply that primitive garment
which consists of an animal's skin thrown over the shoulders, but a
more complete vesture, made up of sundry skins. The quantity of
needles and awls, and of scrapers for preparing skins for use, which
we meet with in the caves, shows that the use of clothing was general
among our Troglodytes.

704 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But further, they wore ornaments, which perhaps served as marlc9
of distinction. Thus, they had collars and bracelets made of pierced
shells, hung on a string. Such shells have been found in most of the
caves, and they occur in great numbers in the ancient place of sepul-
ture at Cromagnon. Pieces of ivory, nicely fashioned, and bored with
two holes, would appear to have been used to fasten the collar ; and
no doubt this is not the only outcropping of petty vanity of attire
amono- our Troglodytes. Most savages have the habit of painting
and tattooing their bodies ; nor is the latter practice yet quite extinct
among civilized races. In the caves are found several pieces of the
bloodstone, showing signs of having been scraped. Hence we con-
clude that they prepared a red paint, and made constant use of it,
probably in ornamenting their persons. Probably they also practised
tattooing, for, when their artists picture, as they often do, the hand
and forearm on a man on reindeer-horn, the lower part of the forearm
bears a figure which may well be taken to represent a tattoo.

It has been already shown that our Troglodytes were not nomads ;
and, though individuals may have wandered abroad, the tribe never
travelled to any distance away from their cave. Hence they must
have acquired by barter objects coming from remote parts. The shells
of their necklaces came from the Atlantic coast. They also used
rock-crystal, which must have come from the Pyrenees, the Alps, or
the mountains of Auvergne. Thus it is seen that the Troglodytes had
relations with distant localities.

Fig. 5.

Group of Figttres — Snake or Eel, Man, and Two Horse-Heads. — (La Madelaine.)

If they had any religious belief, it has left no trace. They wore
talismans or amulets, however, the incisor-teeth of wolves or rein-
deer, the ox, or the horse, with a hole in them, through which a string
was passed. Similar talismans are still worn by savage huntsmen, to
insure good luck in the pursuit of game. In Italy, down to the pres-
ent day, a swine's tooth, set in silver, is attached to the swaddling-
clothes of new-born infants, as a charm against the Evil Eye, and
afterward serves as a hochet, when the child is cutting its teeth. If
the wolves' and other animals' teeth wTe find in the caves were talis-
mans, our Troglodytes had at least a superstition, and, though I am
no theologian, I will say that it is difficult to decide just where supersti-
tion ends and religion begins.

THE CAVE-DWELLERS OF FRANCE.

705

In burying their dead, the contemporaries of our Troglodytes in
other localities practiced certain funeral rites; and consoled them-
selves for their loss by partaking of a feast on a little platform in front
of the sepulchral cave — a kind of solace not yet quite out of vogue.
Only one place of burial has as yet been discovered in the neighbor-
hood of the Vezere, namely, at Cromagnon. This is a mere nook be-
neath an overhanging rock ; and flints and shell ornaments are found
buried with the bodies. We find here no remnants of any 6tone
enclosure.

Society among the Troglodytes had its hierarchical organization,
with dignitaries of various grades. The three caves at Les Eyzies,
Laugerie-Basse and La Madelaine contain the proofs of this assertion,
in the shape of large pieces of reindeer horn, artistically fashioned, and
commonly known as bdtons de commandement, commanders' trun-
cheons. Several of these instruments have been found ; they are
all of one common type, their surface being highly ornamented with
figures of animals, or of hunting-scenes, and are pierced with large

Fig. 6.

GRorp or 'RsiNDEsn.

round holes, from one to four in number. The purpose of these re-
markable objects is matter of much dispute. It is true they much
resemble the pogamagan, or tomahawk of the Mackenzie River Esqui-
maux, but the pogamagan is both longer, thicker, and far more solid,
than the bdtons de commandement. The latter are too frail to be used
for any mechanical purpose, and therefore they were most probably only
insignia of rank, like the king's or the chiefs sceptre, or the marshal's
bdton. But thei'e are so many of them, that we cannot regard them
as regal insignia, and hence they may have been marks of hierarchical
dignity, the holes denoting the rank, like the bars or stars on a mili-

VOL. II. — 45

7o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tary officer's shoulder-straps. Thus the bdton without a hole would
indicate the lowest grade of dignity, those with one or more holes
indicating a higher and higher office, until we reach the fourth grade,
indicated by four holes. The ornamentation commonly surrounds
these holes, and this circumstance would seem to show that the baton
was made for some personage already clothed with official rank. But
sometimes the hole is seen to have been pierced afterward, breaking
up the lines and disfiguring the design. Thus we have a bdton bearing
the figure of a horse, which is found broken in two by one of these
perforations. The happy owner of the truncheon had gained promo-
tion !

This ascending scale of degrees and ranks (which is the sure evidence
of a numerous society) may, no doubt, have been of service in war,
but it is very likely that its chief object was the organization of hunt-
ing expeditions, as the chase was the great employment of the tribe.
In a climate colder than ours, the game would keep for a considerable
time, in winter especially. Hence the caves held a more or less abun-
dant supply of victuals, and a manager in chief was needed, to prevent
waste and to make equitable distribution of the store. We find rods
of reindeer-horn with a number of notches cut in regular series, which
would appear to have been the managers' day-books. These rods,
commonly known as marques de chasse (tallies of the chase), much
resemble the marques used by bakers in small country villages in
France at the present day. There has been also found in one of the
caves a broad plate of ivory, having on its sharp edges a series of
notches, and on its flat sides several rows of points, which would also
appear to have been tallies.

Owing to this social organization and administration of affairs,
Troglodytic society, though it embraced a numerous membership, lived
comfortably enough. They had such an abundance of food that they
could choose the best pieces, rejecting what was of inferior quality.
Thus, they threw away the feet of animals, though these contain a
considerable amount of nutritive substance. Hence we see that they
had plenty to eat : and, as thus the whole time of the tribe need not
have been taken up with the business of making provision for the body's
wants, they could enjoy repose now and then — could enjoy leisure —
and leisure, when improved intelligently, gives rise to the arts.

2. The Arts among the Troglodytes.

To Egypt no longer pertains the glory of having been the originator
of the arts. It was with profound astonishment that the world learned,
some years since, that long, long before the artists of Egypt, the men
of the Age of the Reindeer had cultivated design, engraving, and even
sculpture. At first, their works were greeted only with plaudits of
admiration ; but now, recovered as we are from this first impression,

THE CAVE-DWELLERS OF FRANCE.

707

we are forced to admit that in those ancient days, as in our own, there
were not wanting bad artists ; and, yet, amid a number of coarse de-
signs, there are not a few which are truly worthy of note, and which
betray an able hand, and an eye trained to observe Nature.

Designing undoubtedly preceded sculpture among the Troglcdytes,
and their figures in relief are much fewer in number and less perfect
than their engraved sketches. These latter figures generally form the
ornamentation of the bdton de comma?idement, or of the hafts of dag-
gers ; but sometimes they are found on stone slabs, or on plates of
ivory or of reindeer-horn, which would appear to have been prepared

Fig. 7.

Handle of a Poniaed.

simply to receive the engravings. Nearly all the designs represent
objects in Nature, though some of them are simply ornamental lines,
zigzags, curves, etc. Three small brank-ursines, engraved on a piece
of reindeer-horn, would appear to represent a polypetal flower ; but all
the other figures represent animals. The reindeer occurs most fre-
quently, the ox and the aurochs being more rare. These various ani-
mals are readily distinguishable in the engraved figures, their respec-
tive gait and motion being oftentimes reproduced with considerable
exactness and elegance. Sometimes they are isolated, being represented,
without any order, over the entire surface of some instrument ; but,
again, they are found grouped together, engaged in combat, etc. (Fig. 6).
The engraving of the mammoth was found, in 1864, in the cave of La
Madelaine. The head of the animal is given with remarkable exacti-
tude. The Marquis de Vibraye has since discovered a bdton de com-
mandement, with a mammoth's head sculptured on it. These two
pieces are the only ones representing the mammoth which have come
down to our time from the hands of the Troglodytic artists, but they
suffice to show that the animal was not yet extinct.

Figures offish are not rare, and they all, with one exception, repre-
sent the salmon. Fdie Massenat found at Laugerie-Basse the shoulder-
blade of an ox, bearing a rude sketch of a fishing-scene — a man casting
a harpoon at some aquatic animal, a porpoise, apparently. This design
has a special interest, as going to show that our Troglodytes fished
with the harpoon.

In sketching the human figure (which they did but rarely), these

7o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

artists, who exhibited such skill in animal-sketching, do not show to
much advantage. There is one study of a head, representing a gro-
tesque profile. Two other figures represent the forearm and hand,
four fingers being visible, and the thumb concealed. Add to these the
fishing-scene and two hunting-scenes, and you have the complete list
of figures relating to man in the Troglodytic Museum.

As I have already said, sculptures are of rarer occurrence here than
engraved designs. Of the former we have not above half a dozen, all
found at Laugerie-Basse. One of these, the property of the Marquis
de Vibraye, represents a woman, and all the others represent animals,
viz., a reindeer, head of the same animal, head of a mammoth (re-
ferred to already), and also one of some unknown animal. Finally, we
have M. Massenat's latest discovery, known as the JSceufs Jumeaux
(twin-oxen), which represents a pair of oxen, or, perhaps, of aurochsen.

These sculptures are sometimes incomplete, and always ill exe-
cuted; but in the art of design the artists display surprising abil-
ity. They sketched the human figure badly, but they studied care-
fully the form and the gait of animals, which they sometimes reproduced
with a degree of exactitude, elegance, and spirit, which evince the
true artistic sentiment.

-♦♦♦-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

By HERBERT SPENCER.

IX. — The Bias of Patriotism.

'/"XUR country, right or wrong," is a sentiment not unfrequently
Vy expressed on the other side of the Atlantic ; and, if I remem-
ber rightly, an equivalent sentiment was some years ago uttered in
our own House of Commons, by one who rejoices, or at least who once
rejoiced, in the title of philosophical radical.

"Whoever entertains such a sentiment has not that equilibrium of
feeling required for dealing scientifically with social phenomena. To
see how things stand, apart from personal and national interests, is
essential before there can be reached those balanced judgments re-
specting the course of human affairs in general, which constitute So-
ciology. To be convinced of this, it needs but to take a case remote
from our own. Ask how the members of an aboriginal tribe regard
that tide of civilization which sweeps them away. Ask what the
North- American Indians said about the spread of the wThite man over
their territories, or what the ancient Britons thought of the invasions
which dispossessed them of England ; and it becomes clear that events
which, looked at from an un-national point of view, were steps toward

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 709

a higher life, seemed from a national point of view entirely evil. Ad-
mitting the truth so easily perceived in these cases, we must admit
that only in proportion as we emancipate ourselves from the bias of
patriotism, and consider our own society as one among many, having
their histories and their futures, and some of them, perhaps, having
better claims than we have to the inheritance of the earth — only in
proportion as we do this, shall we recognize those sociological truths
which have nothing to do with particular nations or particular races.

So to emancipate ourselves is extremely difficult. It is with pa-
triotism as we lately saw it to be with the sentiment that causes polit-
ical subordination : the very existence of a society implies predomi-
nance of it. The two sentiments join in producing that social cohesion
without which there cannot be cooperation and organization. A na-
tionality is made possible only by the feeling which the units have for
the whole they form. Indeed, we may say that the feeling has been
gradually increased by the continual destroying of types of men whose
attachments to their societies were relatively small ; and who were,
therefore, incapable of making adequate sacrifices on behalf of their
societies. Here, again, we are reminded that the citizen, by his incor-
poration in a body politic, is in a great degree coerced into such senti-
ments and beliefs as further its preservation : unless this is the aver-
age result, the body politic will not be preserved. Hence another ob-
stacle in the way of Social Science. "We have to allow for the aberra-
tions of judgment caused by the sentiment of patriotism.

Patriotism is nationally that which egoism is individually — has, in
fact, the same root ; and along with kindred benefits brings kindred
evils. Estimation of one's society is a reflex of self-estimation ; and
assertion of one's society's claims is an indirect assertion of one's own
claims as a part of it. The pride a citizen feels in a national achieve-
ment, is the pride belonging to a nation capable of that achievement :
the belonging to such a nation having the tacit implication that in
in himself there exists the superiority of nature displayed. And the
anger aroused in him by an aggression on his nation is an anger
against something which threatens to injure him by injuring his
nation,

As, lately, we saw that a duly-adjusted egoism is essential ; so now,
we may see that a duly-adjusted patriotism is essential. Self-regard
in excess produces two classes of evils : by prompting undue assertion of
personal claims it breeds aggression and antagonism ; and by creating
undue estimation of personal powers it excites futile efforts that end in
catastrophes. Deficient self-regard produces two opposite classes of
evils : by not asserting personal claims, it invites aggression, so foster-
ing selfishness in others ; and by not adequately valuing personal
powers it causes a falling short of attainable benefits. Similarly with
patriotism. From too much, there result national aggressiveness and

710 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

national vanity. Along with too little, there goes an insufficient ten-
dency to maintain national claims leading to trespasses by other na-
tions ; and there goes an undervaluing of national capacity and insti-
tutions, which is discouraging to effort and progress.

The effects of patriotic feeling which here concern us, are those it
works on belief rather than those it works on conduct. As dispropor-
tionate egoism, by distorting a man's conceptions of self and of others,
vitiates his conclusions respecting human nature and human actions ;
so disproportionate patriotism, by distorting his conceptions of his
own society and of other societies, vitiates the conclusions respecting
the natures and actions of societies. And from the opposite extremes
there result opposite distortions : which, however, are comparatively
infrequent and much less detrimental.

Here we come upon one of the many ways in which the corporate
conscience proves itself less developed than the individual conscience.
For, while excess of egoism is everywhere regarded as a fault, excess
of patriotism is nowhere regarded as a fault. A man who recognizes
his own errors of conduct and his own deficiencies of faculty, shows a
trait of character considered praiseworthy ; but to admit that our
doings toward other nations have been wrong is reprobated as un-
patriotic. Defending the acts of another people with whom we have
a difference, seems to most citizens Something like treason ; and they
use offensive comparisons concerning birds and their nests, by way of
condemning those who ascribe misconduct to our own people rather
than to the people with whom we are at variance. Not only do they
exhibit the unchecked sway of this reflex egoism which constitutes
patriotism — not only are they unconscious that there is any thing
blameworthy in giving the rein to this feeling; but they think the
blameworthiness is in those who restrain it, and try to see what may
be said on both sides. Judge, then, how seriously the patriotic bias,
thus perverting our judgments about international actions, necessarily
perverts our judgments about the characters of other societies, and so
vitiates sociological conclusions.

We have to guard ourselves against this bias. To this end let us
take some examples of the errors attributable to it.

■

What mistaken estimates of other races may result from over-
estimation of one's own race, will be most vividly shown by a case in
which we are ourselves valued at a very low rate by a race we hold
to be far inferior to us. Here is an instance supplied by a tribe of
negroes :

"They amused themselves by remarking on the sly, 'The white man is an
old ape.' The African will say of the European, ' He looks like folks ' (men),
and the answer will often be, 'No, he don't.' .... While the Caucasian doubts
the humanity of the Hamite, the latter repays the compliment in kind."1

1 Burton's " Abeokuta," vol. ii., pp. 43, 44.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 7n

Does any one think this instance so far out of the ordinary track
of error, as to have no instruction for us ? To see the contrary he has
but to look at the caricatures of Frenchmen that were common a
generation ago, or to remember the popular statement then current
respecting the relative strengths of French and English. Such re-
minders will convince him that the reflex self-esteem we call patriotism,
has had, among ourselves, perverting effects sufficiently striking. And
even now there are kindred opinions which the facts, when examined,
do not bear out : instance the opinion respecting personal beauty.
That the bias thus causing misjudgments in cases where it is checked
by direct perception, causes greater misjudgments where direct per-
ception cannot check it, needs no proof. How great are the mistakes
it generates, all histories of international struggles show us, both by
the contradictory estimates the two sides form of their respective
leaders and by the contradictory estimates the two sides form of their
deeds. Take an example :

" Of the character in which Wallace first hecame formidable, the accounts
in literature are distractingly conflicting. "With the chroniclers of his own
country, who write after the War of Independence, he is raised to the highest
pinnacle of magnanimity and heroism. To the English contemporary chroni-
clers he is a pestilent ruffian ; a disturber of the peace of society ; an outrager
of all laws and social duties; finally, a robber — tbe head of one of many bands
of robbers and marauders then infesting Scotland." *

That, along with such opposite distortions of belief about conspicu-
ous persons, there go opposite distortions of belief about the conduct
of the peoples they belong to, the accounts of every war demonstrate.
Like the one-sidedness shown within our own society by the remem-
brance among Protestants of Roman Catholic cruelties only, and the
remembrance among Roman Catholics of Protestant cruelties only, is
the one-sidedness shown in the traditions preserved by each nation
concerning the barbarities of nations it has fought with. As in old
times the Normans, savage themselves, were shocked at the vin-
dictiveness of the English when driven to bay ; so in recent times
the French have enlarged on the atrocities committed by Spanish
guerrillas, and the Russians on the atrocities the Circassians perpe-
trated. In this conflict between the views of those who commit
savage acts, and the views of those on whom they are committed,,
we clearly perceive the bias of patriotism where both sides are
aliens ; but we fail to perceive it where we are ourselves concerned
as actors. Every one old enough remembers the reprobation vented
here when the French in Algiers dealt so cruelly with Arabs who re-
fused to submit — lighting fires at the mouths of caves in which they
had taken refuge; but we do not see a like barbarity in deeds of our
own in India, such as the executing a group of rebel sepoys by fusil-
lade, and then setting fire to the heap of them because they were not

1 Burton's " History of Scotland," vol. ii., pp. 281, 282.

7i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

airdead,1 or in the wholesale shootings and burnings of houses, after
the suppression of the Jamaica insurrection. Listen to what is said
at home about such deeds in our own colonies, and you find that
habitually they are held to have been justified by the necessities of
the case. Listen to what is said about such deeds when other nations
are guilty of them, and you find the same persons indignantly declare
that no alleged necessities could form a justification. Nay, the bias
produces perversions of judgment even more extreme. Feelings and
deeds we laud as virtuous when they are not in antagonism with our
own interests and power, we think vicious feelings and deeds when
our own interests and power are endangered by them. Equally in the
mythical story of Tell, and in any account not mythical, we read with
glowing admiration of the successful rising of an oppressed race ; but
admiration is changed into indignation if the race is one held down
by ourselves. "We can see nothing save crime in the endeavor of the
Hindoos to throw off our yoke ; and we recognize no excuse for the
efforts of the Irish to establish their independent nationality. "We en-
tirely ignore the fact that the motives are, in all such cases, the same,
and, in the abstract, are to be judged apart from results.

A bias which thus vitiates even the perceptions of physical appear-
ances, which so greatly distorts the beliefs about conspicuous antago-
nists and their deeds, which leads us to reprobate in other nations
severities and cruelties that we applaud when committed by our own
agents, and which makes us regard acts of intrinsically the same kind
as wrong or right according as they are or are not directed against
ourselves, is a bias which inevitably perverts our sociological ideas.
The institutions of a despised people cannot be judged with fairness;
and if, as often happens, the contempt is unwarranted, or but partially
warranted, such value as their institutions have will certainly be under-
estimated. "When antagonism has bred hatred toward another na-
tion, and has, consequently, bred a desire to justify the hatred by
ascribing a hateful character to members of that nation, it inevitably
happens that the political arrangements under which they live, the
religion they pi-ofess, and the habits peculiar to them, become asso-
ciated in thought with this hateful character — become themselves
hateful, and cannot therefore have their natures studied with the calm-
ness required by science.

An example will make this clear. The reflex egoism we name
patriotism, causing, among other things, a high valuation of the reli-
gious creed nationally professed, makes us overrate the effects this
creed has produced, and makes us underrate the effects produced by
other creeds, and by influences of other orders. The notions respect-
ing savage and civilized races, in which we are brought up, show this.

1 1 make this statement on the authority of a letter read to me at the time by an
Indian officer, written by a brother officer in India.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 713

The word savage, originally meaning wild or uncultivated, has
come to mean cruel and blood-thirsty, because of the representations
habitually made that wild or uncultivated tribes of men are cruel
and blood-thirsty. And ferocity having come to be thought of as a
constant attribute of uncivilized races, which are also distinguished
by not having our religion, it is tacitly assumed that the absence of
our religion is the cause of this ferocity. But if, struggling success-
fully against the bias of patriotism, we correct the evidence which
that bias has garbled, we find ourselves obliged to receive this as-
sumption with great qualifications.

When, for instance, we read Cook's account of the Tahitians, as
first visited by him, we are surprised to meet with some traits among
them, higher than those of their civilized visitors. Though some pil-
fering was committed by them, it was not so serious as that of which
the sailors were guilty in stealing the iron bolts out of their own ship to
pay the native women. And when, after Cook had enacted a penalty
for theft, the natives complained of one of his own crew — when this
sailor, convicted of the offence he was charged with, was condemned
to be whipped, the natives tried to get him off, and, failing to do this,
shed tears on seeing preparations for the punishment. If, again, we
compare critically the accounts of Cook's death, we see clearly enough
that tne Sandwich-Islanders behaved amicably until they had been
ill-used, and had reason to fear further ill-usage. The experiences of
many other travellers similarly show us that friendly conduct on the
part of uncivilized races, when first visited, is very general ; and that
their subsequent unfriendly conduct, when it occurs, is nothing but
retaliation for injuries received from the civilized. Such a fact as
that the natives of Queen Charlotte's Island did not attack Captain
Carteret's party till after they had received just cause of offence,1
may be taken as typical of the histories of transactions between wild
races and cultivated races. When we inquire into the case of the
missionary Williams, " the Martyr of Erromanga," we discover that
his murder, dilated upon as proving the wickedness of unreclaimed na-
tures, was a revenge for injuries previously suffered from wicked Eu-
ropeans. Here are a few testimonies respecting the relative behaviors
of civilized and uncivilized :

" After we had killed a man at the Marquesas, grievously wounded one at
Easter Island, hooked a third with a boat-hook at Tonga-tabu, wounded one at
Namocka, another at Mallicollo, and killed another at Tauna ; the several in-
habitants bebaved in a civil and harmless manner to us, though they might
have taken ample revenge by cutting off our straggling parties." *

" Excepting at Cafta, where I was for a time supposed to come with hostile
intent, I was treated inhospitably by no one during all my travels, excepting by
Europeans, who had nothing against me but my apparent poverty." *

1 Hawkesworth's " Voyages," vol i., p. 573. s Forster's " Observations," etc., p. 406.
8 Parkyns's " Abyssinia," vol ii., p. 431.

7i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" In February, 1812, the people of Winnebah (Gold Coast) seized tbeir com-
mandant, Mr. Mereditb," and so maltreated him that he died. The town and
fort were destroyed by the English. "For many years afterward, English ves-
sels passing Winnebah were in the habit of pouring a broadside into the town,
to inspire the natives with an idea of the severe vengeance which would be ex-
acted for the spilling of European blood." l

Or, instead of these sepai'ate testimonies, take the opinion of one
who collected many testimonies. Referring to the kind treatment ex-
perienced by Encisco from the natives of Cartagena (on the coast of
New Granada), who a few years before had been cruelly treated by
the Spaniards, Washington Irving says :

" "When we recall the bloody and indiscriminate vengeance wreaked upon
this people by Ojida and his followers for their justifiable resistance of invasion,
and compare it with their placable and considerate spirit when an opportunity
for revenge presented itself, we confess we feel a momentary doubt whether the
arbitrary appellation of savage is always applied to the right party." a

The reasonableness of this doubt will scarcely be questioned, after
reading of the diabolical cruelties committed by the invading Euro-
peans in America ; as, for instance, in St. Domingo, where the French
made the natives kneel in rows along the edge of a deep trench and shot
them batch after batch, until the trench was full, or, as an easier
method, tied numbers of them together, took them out to sea, and
tumbled them overboard ; and where the Spaniards treated so horribly
the enslaved natives, that these killed themselves wholesale: the vari-
ous modes of suicide being shown in Spanish drawings.

Does the Englishman say that these, and hosts of like demoniacal
misdeeds, are the misdeeds of other civilized races in other times ; and
that they are attributable to that corrupted religion which he repudi-
ates ? If so, he may be reminded that sundry of the above facts are
facts against ourselves. He may be reminded, too, that the piirer re-
ligion he professes has not prevented a kindred treatment of the North
American Indians by our own race. And he may be put to the blush
by accounts of barbarities going on in our own colonies at the present
time. Without detailing these, however, it will suffice to recall the
most recent notorious case — that of the kidnappings and murders in
the South Seas. Here we find repeated the typical relations ; betray-
als of many natives and merciless sacrifices of their lives ; eventual
retaliation by the natives to a small extent ; a consequent charge against
the natives of atrocious murder ; and then a wholesale massacre of
them, innocent and guilty together.

See, then, how the bias of patriotism indirectly produces erroneous
views of the effects of an institution. Blinded by national self-love
to the badness of our conduct toward inferior races, while remem-

1 Cruiekshank, " Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa," vol. i., p. 100.

2 "Companions of Columbus," p. 115.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 715

bering what there is of good in our conduct ; forgetting how well
these inferior races have usually behaved to us, and remembering only
their misbehavior, which we refrain from tracing to its cause in our
own transgressions ; we overvalue our own natures as compared with
theirs. And then, looking at the two as respectively Christian and
heathen, we overrate the good done by Christian institutions (which
has doubtless been great), and we underrate the advance that has been
made without them. We do this habitually in other cases. As, for
instance, when we ignore evidence furnished by the history of Buddh-
ism ; respecting the founder of which Canon Liddon lately told his
hearers that "it might be impossible for honest Christians to think
over the career of this heathen prince without some keen feelings of
humiliation and shame." ' And ignoring all such evidence, we get
one-sided impressions. Thus our sociological conceptions are distorted
— do not correspond with the facts ; that is, are unscientific.

To illustrate some among the many effects wrought by the bias of
patriotism in other nations, and to show how mischievous are the be-
liefs it fosters, I may here cite evidence furnished by France and by
Germany.

Contemplate that undue self-estimation which the French have
shown us. Observe what has resulted from that exalted idea of
French power which the writings of M. Thiers did so much to main-
tain and increase. When we remember how, by causing undervalua-
tion of other nations, it led to a disregard of their ideas and an igno-
rance of their doings — when we remember how, in the late war, the
French, confident of victory, had maps of German territory but not
of their own, and suffered catastrophes from this and other kinds of
unpreparedness ; we see what fatal evils this reflex self-esteem may
produce when in excess. So, too, on studying the way in which it has
influenced French thought in other directions. Looking at Crimean
battle-pieces, in which French soldiers are shown to have achieved
every thing — looking at a picture like Ingres's " Crowning of Homer,"
and noting French poets conspicuous in the foreground, while the figure
of Shakespeare in one corner is half in and half out of the picture — read-
ing the names of great men of all nations inscribed on the string-course
running round the Palais de V Industrie, and finding many unfamiliar
French names, while (strange oversight, as we must suppose) the name
of Newton is conspicuous by its absence ; we see exemplified a national
sentiment which, generating the belief that things not French deserve
little attention, acts injuriously on French thought and French prog-
ress. From Victor Hugo's magniloquent description of France as the
savior of nations, down to the declamations of those who urged
that were Paris destroyed the light of civilization would be extin-
guished, we see, throughout, the conviction that France, is the great
teacher, and by implication needs not to be a learner. The diffusion

1 Times, January 22, 1873.

7i 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of French ideas is an essential thing for other nations ; while the ab-
sorption of ideas from other nations is not an essential thing for
France : the truth being, rather, that French ideas, more than most
other ideas, stand in need of foreign influence to qualify the undue
definiteness and dogmatic character they habitually display. That
such a tone of feeling, and the mode of thinking appropriate to it,
should vitiate sociological speculation, is a matter of course. If there
needs px-oof, we have a conspicuous one in the writings of M. Comte ;
where excessive self-estimation under its direct form, and under that
reflex form constituting patriotism, has led to astounding sociological
misconceptions. If we contemplate that scheme of Positivist reorgan-
ization and federation in which France was, of course, to be the leader
— if we note the fact that M. Comte expected the transformation he
so rigorously formulated to take place during the life of his own gen-
eration ; and if, then, we remember what has since happened, and con-
sider what are the probabilities of the future, we shall not fail to see
how great are the perversions of sociological belief this bias may pro-
duce.

How national self-esteem, exalted by success in war, warps socio-
logical opinion, is again shown of late in Germany. As a German pro-
fessor writes to me, " there is, alas, no want of signs " that the " happy
contrast to French self-sufficiency " which Germany heretofore dis-
played, is disappearing " since the glory of the late victories." The
German liberals, he says, " overflow with talk of Germanism, German
unity, the German nation, the German Empire, the German army and
the German navy, the German Church, and German science. . . . They
ridicule Frenchmen, and what animates them is, after all, the French
spirit translated into German." And, then, to illustrate the injurious
reaction on German thought, and on the estimates of foreign nations
and their doings, he describes his discussion with an esteemed German
professor of philosophy, against whom he was contending that the psy-
chical and ethical sciences would gain in progress and influence by in-
ternational communion, like that among the physico-mathematical
sciences. He, " to my astonishment, declared that, even if such a union
were possible, he did not think it desirable, as it would interfere too
much with the peculiarity of German thought. . . . Second to Ger-
many," he said, " it was Italy, which, in the immediate future, was
most likely to promote philosophy. ... It appeared that what made
him prefer the Italians .... was nothing else than his having ob-
served that in Italy they were acquainted with every philosophical
treatise published in Germany, however unimportant." And, thus,
adds my correspondent, " the finest German characteristics are disap-
pearing in an exaggerated Teutonomania." One other truth his com-
ments on German feeling make manifest. There is indirectly an an-
tagonism between the sentiment of nationality and the sentiment of
individuality ; the result of which is that exaltation of the one involves

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 717

depression of the other, and a decreased regard for the institutions it
originates. Speaking of the " so-called National Liberals," he says :
" A friend of mine was lately present at a discussion, in the course of

which a professor of philosophy, of the University of , was very

eloquently, and with perfect seriousness, contending that only one
thing was now wanting to complete our German institutions — a na-
tional costume. Other people, who, no doubt, are fully aware of the
ridiculousness of such things, are, nevertheless, guilty of an equally
absurd, and even more intolerable encroachment on individual liberty ;
since, by proposing to establish a national church, they aim at con-
straining the adherents of the various religious bodies into a spiritual
uniform. Indeed, I should hardly have thought it possible that a Ger-
man government could encourage such monstrous propositions, if they
had not been expounded to me at the Ministry of Public Worship."

Saying no more about patriotism and its perverting effects on socio-
logical judgments, which are indeed so conspicuous all through history
as scarcely to need pointing out, let me devote the remaining space to
the perverting effects of the opposite feeling — anti-patriotism. Though
the distortions of opinion hence resulting are less serious, still they
have to be guarded against.

In England the bias of anti-patriotism does not diminish in a marked
way the admiration we have for our political institutions, but only here
and there prompts the wish for a strong government, to secure the en-
vied benefits ascribed to strong governments abroad. Nor does it
appreciably modify the general attachment to our religious institu-
tions, but, only in a few who dislike independence, shows itself in advo-
cacy of an authoritative ecclesiastical system fitted to remedy what
they lament as a chaos of religious beliefs. In other directions, how-
ever, it is displayed so frequently and conspicuously as to affect public
opinion in an injurious way. In respect to the higher orders of intel-
lectual achievement, undervaluation of ourselves has become a fashion,
and the errors it fosters react detrimentally on the estimates we make
of our social regime, and on our sociological beliefs in general.

What is the origin of this undue self-depreciation ? In some cases,
no doubt, it results from disgust at the jaunty self-satisfaction caused
by the bias of patriotism, when excessive. In other cases, it grows out
of affectation : to speak slightingly of what is English seems to imply
wide knowledge of what is foreign, and brings a reputation for culture.
In the remaining cases, it is due to ignorance. Passing over such of
these self-depreciatory estimates of our powers and achievements as
have partial justifications, I will limit myself to one which has no justi-
fication. Among the classes here indicated, it is the custom to speak
disparagingly of the part we play in discovery and invention. There
is an assertion occasionally to be met with in public journals, that the
French invent and we improve. Not long since, it was confessed by

7i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Attorney-General that the English are not a scientific nation. Re-
cently the Times, commenting on a speech of Mr. Gladstone, said :
"There is truth, however, in the assertion that we are backward in
appreciating and pursuing abstract knowledge." ' Such statements
exhibit the bias of anti-patriotism creating a belief that is wholly inde-
fensible. As we shall presently see, they are flatly contradicted by
facts, and can be accounted for only by supposing that those who make
them have had a culture exclusively literary.

A convenient way of dealing with this bias of anti-patriotism will
be to take an individual example of it. More than any other, Mr.
Matthew Arnold has of late made himself an exponent of the feeling.
His motive cannot be too highly respected, and for much that he has
said in reproof of the vainglorious, entire approval may rightly be felt.
Many grave defects in our social state, many absurdities in our modes
of action, many errors in our estimates of ourselves, are to be pointed
out, and dwelt upon, and great good is done by a writer who efficiently
executes the task of making us feel our shortcomings. In his condem-
nation of the ascetic view of life which still prevails here, one may en-
tirely agree. The undue estimation of material prosperity common
with us is a fault justly insisted on by him. And the overweening-
confidence so often shown in a divine favor gained by our greater na-
tional piety, is also an attitude of mind deservedly to be reprobated.
But, by reaction, Mr. Arnold is, I think carried too far in the direction
of anti-patriotism, and weakens the effect of his criticism by generating
a re-reaction. Let us glance at some of his views :

The mode of procedure generally followed by Mr. Arnold is not
that of judicially balancing the evidence, but that of meeting the ex-
pression of self-satisfied patriotism by some few facts calculated to
cause dissatisfaction : not considering what is their quantitative value.
To reprove a piece of national self-laudation uttered by Mr. Roebuck,
he comments on the murder of an illegitimate child by its mother, re-
ported in the same paper. Now this would be effective if infanticide
were peculiar to England, or if he could show a larger proportion of
infanticide here than elsewhere ; but his criticism is at once cancelled
on calling to mind the developed system of baby-farming round Paris,
and the extensive getting-rid of infants to which it is instrumental. By
following Mr. Arnold's method, it would be easy to dispose of his con-
clusions. Suppose, for instance, that I were to set down the many
murders committed in England by foreigners, within our own memo-
ries, including those by Courvoisier, by Mrs. Manning, by Barthelemi,
near Fitzroy Square, by a Frenchman, in Foley Place (about 1854-'o7),
that by Mtiller, that by Kohl, in the Essex marshes, that by Lani, in a
brothel near the Haymarket, that by Marguerite Diblanc, the tragedy
of the two young Germans (Mai and Nagel), at Chelsea, ending with

1 Times, December 23, 18*72.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 719

the recent one in Great Coram Street — suppose I were to compare the
ratio borne by this number of murderers to the number of foreigners
in England with the answering ratio among our own people ; and sup-
pose I were to take this as a test of the Continental culture Mr. Arnold
so much admires. Probably, he would not think the test quite rele-
vant, and yet it would be quite as relevant as that he uses — perhaps
somewhat more relevant. Suppose, again, that, by way of criticism
on German administration, I were to dwell on the catastrophe at Ber-
lin, where, during the celebration of victory, fourteen sight-seers were
killed, and some hundreds injured ; or, suppose I were further to judge
it by the disclosures of the leading Berlin physician, Virchow, who
shows that one out of every three children born in Berlin dies the first
year, and whose statistics prove the general mortality to be increasing
so rapidly that, while "in 1854 the death-rate was 1,000, in 1851-'64 it
rose to 1,164, and in 1864-'68 to 1,817 " '—suppose, I say, that I took
these facts as proof of failure in the social system Mr. Arnold would
have us copy. Possibly he would not be much shaken, though it seems
to me that this evidence would be more to the point than a case of in-
fanticide among ourselves. Further, suppose I were to test French
administration by the statistics of mortality in the Crimea, as given
at the late meeting of the French Association for the Advancement of
Science, by M. Le Fort, who pointed out that —

" During those six months of winter, 1855-56, when hostilities were almost
suspended, the English having only 165 wounded in six months, and the French
323, the English army, thanks to the precautions taken, had but few men in the
hospitals and lost only 606, while the French army witnessed the outbreak of the
typhus in its midst, though it might have been avoided, and lost, from disease
alone, 21,190 men."

and who further, respecting the relative mortalities from operations,
said that —

" In the Crimea the English and French armies were exposed to the same
wants, to the same atmospherio changes, and yet what a difference of mortality
in surgical cases ! The English lost 24 per cent, of their cases of arm-amputations,
while we lost double that number, or 55 per cent. The same is to be said of
amputations of the leg : 35 per cent, against 71."

— suppose, I say, that I were thus to deal with the notion that " they
manage these things better in France." Mr. Arnold would, very likely.

not abandon his belief. And yet this contrast would certainly be as
damaging as the fact about the girl Wragg, to which he more than once
refers so emphatically. Surely it is manifest enough that, by selecting
the evidence, any society may be relatively blackened, and any other
society relatively whitened.

From Mr. Arnold's method let us turn to some of his specific state-
ments: taking first the statement that the English are deficient in ideas.

1 Lancet, December 28, 1872.

72o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

He says: "There is the world of ideas, and there is the world of
practice ; the French are often for suppressing the one, and the English
the other." ' Admitting the success of the English in action, Mr.
Arnold thinks that it goes along with want of faith in speculative con-
clusions. But by putting ideas and practice in this antithesis, he im-
plies his acceptance of the notion that effectual practice does not de-
pend on superiority of ideas. This is an erroneous notion. Methods
that answer are preceded by thoughts that are true. A successful en-
terprise presupposes an imagination of all the factors, and conditions,
and results ; which differs from the imagination leading to an unsuc-
cessful enterprise in this, that what will happen is clearly and completely
foreseen, instead of being foreseen vaguely and incompletely : there is
greater ideality. Every scheme is an idea ; every scheme, more or less
new, implies an idea more or less original ; every scheme proceeded
with, implies an idea vivid enough to prompt action ; and every scheme
which succeeds, implies an idea so accurate and exhaustive that the
results correspond with it. When an English company accommodates
Amsterdam with water — an element the Dutch are very familiar with,
and in the management of which they, centuries ago, gave us lessons —
must we not say that, by leaving us to supply their chief city, they
show a want of confidence in results ideally seen ? Is it replied that
the Dutch are not an ideal people ? Then take the Italians. How
happens it that such a pressing need as the draining of Naples has
never suggested to Italian rulers or Italian people the taking of meas-
ures to achieve it; and how happens it that the idea of draining Naples,
instead of emanating from French or Germans, supposed by Mr. Arnold
to have more faith in ideas, emanates from a company of Englishmen,
who are now proposing to do the work without cost to the municipali-
ty ? 2 Or what shall we infer as to relative faith in ideas, on learning
that even within their respective territories the French and Germans
wait for us to undertake new things for them ? When we find that
Toulouse and Bordeaux were lighted with gas by an English company,
must we not infer lack of ideas in the people of those places ? When
we find that a body of Englishmen, the Rhone Hydraulic Company,
seeing that at Bellegarde there are rapids having a fall of forty feet,
made a tunnel carrying a fourth of the river, and so got 10,000 horse-
power, which they are selling to manufacturers ; and when we ask
why this source of wealth was not utilized by the French them-
selves ; must we not say that it was because the idea did not occur to
them, or because it was not vivid and complete enough to prompt the
enterprise ? And when, on going north, we discover that not only in
Belgium and Holland are the chief towns, Brussels, Antwerp, Lille,
Ghent, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Haarlem, etc., lighted by our Conti-
nental Gas Association, but that this combination of Englishmen lights
many towns in Germany also — Hanover, Aix-la-Chapelle, Stolberg,

1 "Essays in Criticism," p. 12. * Times, January 22, 1873.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 721

Cologne, Frankfort, Vienna, nay, that even the headquarters of geist,
Berlin itself, had to wait for light until this Company supplied it, must
we not say that more faith in ideas was shown by English than by
Germans ? Germans have plenty of energy, are not without desire to
make money, and knew that gas was used in England ; and, if neither
they nor their Governments undertook the work, we must infer that
the benefits and means were inadequately conceived. English enter-
prises have often been led by ideas that looked wholly unpractical ; as
when the first English steamer astonished the people of Bonn by mak-
ing its appearance there, so initiating the Rhine steam-navigation ; or
as when the first English steamer started across the Atlantic. Instead
of our practice being unideal, the ideas which guide it sometimes verge
on the romantic. Fishing-up a cable from the bottom of an ocean
three miles deep, was an idea seemingly more fitted for the " The Ara-
bian Nights " than for actual life ; yet success proved how truly those
who conducted the operation had put together their ideas in correspond-
ence with the facts — the true test of vivid imagination.

To show the groundlessness of the notion that new ideas are not
evolved and appreciated as much in England as elsewhere, I am
tempted here to enumerate our modern inventions of all orders ; from
those directly aiming at material results, such as Trevethick's first
locomotive, up to the calculating-machines of Babbage and the logic-
machine of Jevons, quite remote from practice in their objects. But,
merely asserting that those who go through the list will find that
neither in number nor in importance do they yield to those of any na-
tion during the same period, I refrain from details. Partly I do this
because the space required for specifying them would be too great ;
and partly because inventions, mostly having immediate bearings on
practice, would perhaps not be thought by Mr. Arnold to prove fer-
tility of idea : though, considering that each machine is a theory be-
fore it becomes a concrete fact, this would be a position difficult to
defend. To avoid all possible objection, I will limit myself to scien-
tific discovery, from which the element of practice is excluded ; and,
to meet the impression that scientific discovery in recent days has not
maintained its former pace, I will name only our achievements since
1800.

Taking first the Abstract Sciences, let us ask what has been done
in Logic. We have the brief but pregnant statement of inductive
methods by Sir John Herschel, leading to the definite systematization
of them by Mr. Mill ; and we have, in the work of Prof. Bain, elab-
orately-illustrated applications of logical methods to science and to
the business of life. Deductive Logic, too, has been developed by a
further conception. The doctrine of the quantification of the predicate,
set forth in 1827 by Mr. George Bentham, and again set forth under a
numerical form by Prof. De Morgan, is a doctrine supplementary
to that of Aristotle ; and the recognition of it has made it easier than
vol. 11. — 46

722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

before to see that Deductive Logic is a science of the relations implied
by the inclusions, exclusions, and overlappings of classes.1 Even were
this all, the instalment of progress would be large for a single genera-
tion. But it is by no means all. In the work by Prof. Boole, " In-
vestigation of the Laws of Thought," the application to Logic of
methods like those of Mathematics, constitutes another step far greater
in originality and in importance than any taken since Aristotle. So
that, strangely enough, the assertion quoted above, that ': we are back-
ward in appreciating and pursuing abstract knowledge," and this com-
plaint of Mr. Arnold that our life is wanting in ideas, come at a time
when we have lately done more to advance the most abstract and
purely-ideal science than has been done anywhere else, or during any
past period !

In the other division of Abstract Science — Mathematics — a recent
revival of activity has brought results sufficiently striking. Though,
during a long period, the bias of patriotism and an undue reverence
for that form of the higher calculus which Newton initiated, greatly
retarded us ; yet since the recommencement of progress, some five-
and-twenty years ago, Englishmen have again come to the front. Sir
W. R. Hamilton's method of Quaternions is a new instrument of re-
search ; and, whether or not as valuable as some think, undoubtedly
adds a laroje region to the world of known mathematical truth. And
then, more important still, there are the achievements of Cayley and
Sylvester in the development of the higher algebra. From competent
and unbiassed judges I learn that the Theory of Invariants, and the
methods of investigation which have grown out of it, constitute a step
in mathematical progress larger than any made since the Differential
Calculus. Thus, without enumerating the minor achievements of oth-
ers, there is ample proof that abstract science, of this order also, is
flourishing among us in great vigor.

Nor, on passing to the Abstract-Concrete sciences, do we find any
better ground for this belief entertained by Mr. Arnold and others.
Though Huyghens conceived of light as constituted of undulations, yet
he was wrong in conceiving the undulations as allied in form to those
of sound ; and it remained for Dr. Young to establish the true theory.
Respecting the principle of interference of the rays of light pro-
pounded by Young, Sir John Herschel says : " Regarded as a physical
law [it] has hardly its equal for beauty, simplicity, and extent of ap-
plication, in the whole circle of science ; " and of Young's all-impor-

1 Most readers of logic will, I suppose, be surprised on missing from the above sen-
tence the name of Sir W. Hamilton. They will not be more surprised than I was myself
on recently learning that Mr. George Bentham's work, " Outline of a New System of
Logic," was published six years before the earliest of Sir W. Hamilton's logical writings,
and that Sir W. Hamilton reviewed it. The case adds another to the multitudinous ones
in which the world credits the wrong man ; and persists in crediting him in defiance of
evidence.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 723

tant discovery that the luminiferous undulations are lateral not longi-
tudinal, he says that it showed " a sagacity which would have done
honor to Newton himself." Just naming the discovery of latent heat
by Black, the discrimination by Wollaston of quantity and intensity
in electricity, and the disclosure of electrolysis by Nicholson and Car-
lisle (all of them cardinal discoveries) and passing over minor contri-
butions to physical science, we come to the great contributions of
Fai-aday — magneto-electricity, the quantitative law of electrolysis, the
magnetization of light, and dia-magnetism : not mentioning others of
much significance. Next there is the great truth which men still liv-
ing have finally established — the correlation and equivalence of the
physical forces. In the establishment of this truth Englishmen have
had a large share — some think the larger share. Remembering that
in England the conception of heat as a mode of motion dates from
Bacon, by whom it is expressed with an insight that is marvellous
considering the knowledge of his time — remembering, too, that
" Locke stated a similar view with singular felicity ; " we come, among
Englishmen of the present century, first to Davy, whose experiments
and arguments so conclusively supported those of Kumford ; then to
the view of Roget and the postulate on which Faraday habitually
reasoned, that all force arises only as other force is expended ; then
to the essay of Grove, in which the origin of the various forms of force
out of one another was abundantly exemplified ; and finally to the in
vestigations by which Joule established the quantitative relations be-
tween heat and motion. Without dwelling on the important deduc-
tions from this great truth made by Sir W. Thomson, Rankine, Tyn
dall, and others, I will merely draw attention to its highly-abstract
nature as again showing the baselessness of the above-quoted notion.

Equally conclusive is the evidence when we pass to Chemistry.
The cardinal value of the step made by Dalton, in 1808, when the
aperpu of Higgins was reduced by him to a scientific form,' will be
seen on glancing into Wurtz's " Introduction to Chemical Philosophy,"
and observing how the atomic theory underlies all subsequent chemi-
cal discovery. Nor, in more recent days, has the development of this
theory fallen unduly into foreign hands. Prof. Williamson, by recon-
ciling the theory of radicals with the theory of types, and by intro-
ducing the hypothesis of condensed molecular types, has taken a lead-
ing part in founding the modern views of chemical combinations. We
come next to the cardinal conception of atomicity. In 1851, Prof.
Frankland initiated the classification of the elements by their atomici-
ties: his important generalization being now avowedly accepted in
Germany by those who originally disputed it; as by Kolbe in his
"Moden der Modernen Chemie." On turning from the more general
chemical truths to the more special chemical truths, a like history
meets us. Davy's discovery of the metallic bases of the alkalies and
earths was an all-important step. Passing over many other achieve-

724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nieuts in special chemistry, I may single out, for their significance,
the discoveries of Andrews, Tait, and especially of Brodie, respecting
the constitution of ozone as an allotropic form of oxygen ; and may
join with these B'rodie's discoveries respecting the allotropic forms of
carbon, as throwing so much light on allotropy at large. And then
we come to the all-important discoveries, general and special, of the
late Prof. Graham. The truths he established respecting the hydra-
tion of compounds, the transpiration and the diffusion of liquids, the
transpiration and the diffusion of gases, the dialysis of liquids and the
dialysis of gases, and the occlusion of gases by metals, are all of them
cardinal truths. And even of still greater value is his luminous gen-
eralization respecting the crystalloid colloid states of matter — a gen-
eralization which, besides throwing light on many other phenomena,
has given us an insight into organic processes previously incompre-
hensible. These results, reached by his beautifully-coherent series of
researches extendiug over forty years, constitute a new revelation of
the properties of matter.

Neither is it true that in advancing the Concrete Sciences we have
failed to do our share. Take the first in order — Astronomy. Though,
for the long period during which our mathematicians were behind,
Planetary Astronomy progressed but little in England, and the de-
velopment of the Newtonian theory was left chiefly to other nations ;
yet of late there has been no want of activity. When I have named
the inverse problem of perturbations and the discovery of Neptune,
the honor of which we share with the French, I have called to mind an
achievement sufficiently remarkable. To Sidereal Astronomy we have
made great contributions. Though the conception of Wright, of Dur
ham, respecting stellar distribution was here so little attended to that,
when afterward enunciated by Kant (who knew Wright's views), and
by Sir W. Herschel, it was credited to them ; yet since Sir W. Her-
schel's time the researches in Sidereal Astronomy, by Sir John Herschel
and others, have done much to further this division of the science.
Quite recently the discoveries made by Mr. Huggins respecting the
velocities with which certain stars and nebulae are approaching us and
others receding, have opened a new field of inquiry ; and the infer-
ences reached by Mr. Proctor respecting the " drifting " of star-groups,
now found to harmonize with the results otherwise reached by Mr.
Huggins, go far to help us in conceiving the constitution of our gal-
axy. Nor must we forget how much has been done toward elucidat-
ing the physical constitutions of the heavenly bodies as well as their
motions : the natures of nebulae, and the processes going on in sun and
stars, have been greatly elucidated by Huggins, Lockyer, and others.

In Geology, the progress made here, and especially the progress in
geological theory, is certainly not less — good judges say much greater
— than has been made elsewhere. Just noting that English geology
goes back to Ray, whose notions were far more philosophical thun

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 725

those set forth long .afterward by Werner, we come to Hutton, with
whom in fact rational geology commences. For the untenable Nep-
tunist hypothesis, asserting a once-universal aqueous action unlike the
present, Hutton substituted an aqueous action, marine and fluviatile,
continuously operating as we now see it, antagonized by a periodic
igneous action : he recognized denudation as producing mountains
and valleys ; he denied so-called primitive rocks ; he asserted meta-
morphism ; he taught the meaning of unconformity. Since his day
rapid advances in the same direction had been made. "William Smith,
by establishing the order of superposition of strata throughout England,
prepared the way for positive generalizations ; and, by showing that
contained fossils are better tests of correspondence among strata than
mineral characters, laid the basis for subsequent classifications. The
better data thus obtained, theory quickly turned to account. In his
" Principles of Geology," Lyell elaborately worked out the uniformi-
tarian doctrine — the doctrine that the earth's crust has been brought
to its present complex structure by the continuous operation of forces
like those we see still at work. More recently, Prof. Ramsay's theory
of lake-formation by glaciers has helped in the interpretation ; and by
him, as well as by Prof. Huxley, much has been done toward elucidat-
ing past distributions of continents and oceans. Nor must we forget
Mallet's " Theory of Earthquakes " — the only scientific explanation of
them yet given. And there must be added another fact of moment.
Criticism has done far more here than abroad, toward overthrowing
the crude hypothesis of universal "systems" of strata, which suc-
ceeded the still cruder hypothesis of universal strata, enunciated by
Werner.

That our contributions to Biological Science have in these later
times not been unimportant, may, I think, be also maintained. Just
noting that the " natural system " of plant-classification, though French
by development, is English by. origin, since Ray made its first great
division, and sketched out some of its subdivisions, we come, among
English botanists, to Brown. He made a series of investigations in
the morphology, classification, and distribution of plants, which in
number and importance have never been equalled: the "Prodromus
Flora? Nova>Hollandia " is the greatest achievement in classification
since Jussieu's " Natural Orders." Brown, too, it was who solved the
mystery of plant-fertilization. Again, there is the conception that
existing plant-distribution has been determined by past geological
and physical changes — a conception we owe to Dr. Hooker, who has
given lis sundry wide interpretations in pursuance of it. In Animal-
physiology there is Sir Charles Bell's discovery respecting the sensory
and motor functions of the nerve-roots in the spinal cord ; and this
tmderlies multitudinous interpretations of organic phenomena. More
recently we have had Mr. Darwin's great addition to biological
science. Following in the steps of his grandfather, who had a'nti-

726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cipated Lamarck in enunciating the general conception of the genesis
of organic forms by adaptive modifications, but had not worked out
the conception as Lamarck did, Mr. Darwin, perceiving that both of
them were mistaken in attributing the modifications to causes which,
though some of them true, were inadequate to account for all the
effects, succeeded, by recognizing the further cause he called Natural
Selection, in raising the hypothesis from a form but partially tenable
to a quite tenable form. This view of his, so admirably worked out,
has been adopted by the great majority of naturalists ; and, by making
the process of organic evolution more comprehensible, it is revolution-
izing biological conceptions throughout the world. In the words of
Prof. Cohn, " no book of recent times has influenced the conceptions
of modern science like the first edition of Charles Darwin's ' Origin
of Species.' " ' Nor should we overlook the various kindred minor
discoveries, partly dependent, partly independent : Mr. Darwin's own
respecting the dimorphism of flowers ; Mr. Bates's beautiful interpre-
tation of mimicry in insects, which led the way to many allied inter-
pretations ; Mr. Wallace's explanations of dimorphism and polymor-
phism in Lepidoptera. Finally, Prof. Huxley, besides dissipating
some serious biological errors of Continental origin, has made impor-
tant contributions to morphology and classification.

Nor does the balance turn against us on passing to the next-
highest concrete science. After those earlier inquiries by which
Englishmen so largely advanced the Science of Mind, and set up much
of the speculation subsequently active in France and Germany, there
came a lull in English thinking ; and during this arose the absurd
notion that the English are not a philosophical people. But the lull,
ending some forty years ago, gave place to an activity which has
quickly made up for lost time. On this point I need not rest in asser-
tion, but will quote foreign testimony. The first chapter of Prof.
Ribot's work, " La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine? begins
thus :

" 'The sceptre of Psychology,1 says Mr. Stuart Mill, 'has heen decidedly re-
stored to England.' It might be held that it had never passed out of her hand.
Certainly, psychological studies are now pursued in that country by men of the
first mark, who, by the solidity of their method, and, -what is rarer still, by the
precision of their results, have brought about a new era for science ; but we
might call this a reduplication rather than a renewal of former glory.' "

Similarly, on turning to Ethics considered under its psychological
aspect, we find foreign testimony that English thinkers have done
most toward the elaboration of a scientific system. In the preface to
his late work, "Xa Morale nella Fllosofia JPositiva" (meaning, by
" Positiva" simply scientific), Prof. Barzellotti, of Florence, states

i " Die EntwicMwig der Nalurwissenschaft in den leizten f'tinfundzicanzig JaJiren.'"
By Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Cohn. Breslau, 1872.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 727

that for this reason he limits himself to an account of English specula-
tion in this department.1

And then, if, instead of Psychology and Ethics, Philosophy at
large comes in question, there is independent testimony of kindred
nature to be cited. Thus, in the first number of La Critique Philo-
sophique, published under the direction of M. Renouvier, the acting
editor, M. Pillon writes :

" In England a great amount of work is done in the field of thought. . . .
Not alone does England surpass France in ardor and in work (for that is not
saying much), and in the interest attaching to the researches and discussions of
her thinkers: she even surpasses Germany itself in this last point."

And still more recently M. Martis, in the leading French periodi-
cal, has been referring to —

" The new ideas whioh have sprung up in free England, and which are des-
tined one day to metamorphose the natural sciences." "

So that, while Mr. Arnold is lamenting the want of ideas in Eng-
land, it is discovered abroad that the genesis of ideas here is extremely
active. While he thinks our ideas are commonplace, our neighbors
find them new, to the extent of being revolutionary. Oddly enough,
at the very time when he is reproaching his countrymen with lack
of geist, Frenchmen are asserting that there is more geist here than
elsewhere ! Nor is there wanting other testimony of kindred nature.
In the lecture above cited, Dr. Cohn, while claiming for Germany a
superiority in the number of her earnest workers, says that "England
especially has always been, and is particularly now, rich in men whose
scientific works are remarkable for thesr astonishing laboriousness,
clearness, profundity, and independence of thought " — a further recog-
nition of the truth that the English, instead of drudging along the old
ruts of thought, are distinguished by their ability in striking out new
tracks of thought.

In his essay on the "Functions of Criticism at the Present Time,"
Mr. Arnold insists that the thing most needful for us now, in all
branches of knowledge, is "to see the object as in itself it really is ; "
and in "Friendship's Garland," his alter ego, Arminius exhorts our
Philistinism " to search and not rest till it sees things more as they
really are." Above, I have done that which Mr. Arnold urges ; not
by picking up stray facts, but by a systematic examination. Feebug
sure that Mr. Arnold has himself taken the course he advises, and is,
therefore, familiar with all this evidence, as well as with the large
quantity which might be added, I am somewhat puzzled on finding
him draw from it a conclusion so different from that which presents it-
self to me. Were any one, proceeding on the foregoing data, to assert
that, since the beginning of this century, more has been done in Eng-

1 His reasons for this valuation are more fully given at p. 143.

2 Revue des Deux Mondts, 1 Fevrier, 1873, p. 731.

728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

land to advance scientific knowledge than has ever been done in a like
interval, at any time, in any country, I should think his inference less
wide of the truth than that which, strange to say, Mr. Arnold draws
from the same data.

And now to consider that which more immediately concerns us —
the effect produced by the bias of anti-patriotism on sociological spec-
ulation. Whether in Mr. Arnold, whom I have ventured to take as a
type, the leaning toward national self-depreciation was primary and
the overvaluing of foreign institutions secondary, or whether his ad-
miration of foreign institutions was the cause and his tendency to de-
preciatory estimates of our social state the effect, is a question which
may be left open. For present purposes it suffices to observe that the
two go together. Mr. Arnold is impatient with the unregulated, and,
as he thinks, anarchic state of our society ; and everywhere displays a
longing for more administrative and controlling agencies. "Force
till right is ready," is one of the sayings he emphatically repeats ; ap-
parently in the belief that there can be a sudden transition from a
coercive system to a non-coercive one — ignoring the truth that there
has to be a continually-changing compromise between force and right,
during which force decreases step by step, as right increases step
by step, and during which every step brings some temporary evil
along with its ultimate good. Thinking more force needful for us, and
lauding institutions which exercise it, Mr. Arnold holds that even in
our literature we should benefit by being under authoritative direc-
tion. Though he is not of opinion that an academy would succeed here,
he casts longing glances at the French Academy, and wishes we could
have had over us an influence like that to which he ascribes certain
excellences in French literature.

The French Academy was established, as he points out, " to work,
with all the care and all the diligence possible, at giving sure rules to
our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating
the arts and sciences." Let us consider whether it has fulfilled this in-
tention, by removing the most conspicuous defects of the lano-uao-e.
Down to the present time, there is in daily use the expression qu'est ce
que c'est, and even qu'est ce que c'est que cela f If in some remote
corner of England is heard the analogous expression — " What is that
there here ? " it is held to imply entire absence of culture : the use of
two superfluous words proves a want of that close adjustment of lan-
guage to thought which even partially-educated persons among us have
reached. How is it, then, that though in this French there are five
superfluous words (or six, if we take cela as two), the purifying criti-
cism of the French Academy has not removed it from French speech—
not even from the speech of the educated ? Or why, again, has the
Academy not condemned, forbidden, and so expelled from the language,
the double negative ? If among ourselves any one lets drop the sen-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 729

teuce, "I didn't say nothing," the inevitable inference is that he has
lived with the ill-taught ; and further, that in his mind words and ideas
answer to one another very loosely. How is it, then, that in French,
notwithstanding Academic control, this use of superfluous symbols of
thought, which, logically considered, actually inverts the intended
meaning, has continued — has become a rule instead of a solecism?
Once more, why has not the French Academy systematized the genders ?
No one who considers language as an instrument of thought, which is
good in proportion as its special parts are definitely adjusted to special
functions, can doubt that a meaningless use of genders is a defect. It
is undeniable that to employ marks of gender in ways always suggest-
ing attributes that are possessed, instead of usually suggesting attri-
butes that are not possessed, is an improvement. Having an example
of this improvement before them, why did not the Academy introduce
it into French? And then — more significant question still — how,
without the aid of any Academy, came the genders to be systematized
in Fnglish ? Mr. Arnold, and those who, in common with him, seem
to believe only in agencies that have visible organizations, might, per-
haps, in seeking the answer to this question, lose faith in artificial ap-
pliances and gain faith in natural processes. For, as, on asking the
origin of language in general, we are reminded that its complex, mar-
vellously-adjusted structure has been evolved without the aid or over-
sight of any embodied power, Academic or other, so, on asking the
origin of this particular improvement in language, we find that it, too,
arose naturally, not artificially. Nay, more, it resulted from one of those
unregulated, anarchic states which Mr. Arnold so much dislikes. Out
of the conflict of Old-English dialects, sufficiently allied to cooperate,
but sufficiently different to have contradictory marks of gender, there
came a disuse of meaningless genders and a survival of the genders
having meaning — a change which an Acadenry, had one existed here in
those days, would doubtless have done its best to prevent ; seeing
that during the transition there must have been a disregard of rules,
and apparent corruption of speech, out of which no benefit could have
been anticipated.

Another fact respecting the French Academy is by no means con-
gruous with Mr. Arnold's conception of its value. The compiling of
an authoritative dictionary was a fit undertaking for it. Just recalling
the well-known contrast between its dilatory execution of this under-
taking, and the active execution of a kindred one by Dr. Johnson, we
have more especially to note the recent like contrast between the per-
formances of the Academy and the performances of M. Littr6. The
Academy has long had in hand two dictionaries — the one a second edi-
tion of its original dictionary, the other an historical dictionary. The
first is at letter D ; and the initial number of the other, containing A — B,
issued fifteen years ago, has not yet had a successor. Meanwhile, M. Lit-
lr6, single-handed, has completed a dictionary which, besides doing all

73°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

that the two Academy dictionaries propose to do, does ranch, more.
With which marvellous contrast we have to join the startling fact, that
M. Littre was refused admission to the Academy in 1863, and at length
admitted in 1871 only after violent opposition.

Even if we pass over these duties which, in pursuance of its original
purpose, the French Academy might have been expected to perform,
and limit ourselves to the duty Mr. Arnold especially dwells upon —
the duty of keeping " the fine quality of the French spirit unimpaired,"
and exercising " the authority of a recognized master in matters of
tone and taste" (to quote his approving paraphrase of M. Renan's
definition) — it may still, I think, be doubted whether there have been
achieved by it the benefits Mr. Arnold alleges, and whether there have
not been caused great evils. That its selection of members has tended
to encourage bad literature instead of good, seems not improbable
when we are reminded of its past acts, as we are in the letter of Paul
Louis Courier, in which there occurs this, among other passages simi-
larly damaging :

" A duke and peer confers honor upon the French Academy which will have
nothing to do with Boileau, rejects la Bruyere .... hut readily admits Chape-
lain and Conrart. In like manner we see a viscount invited to the Acedemie
grecque, but Corai repulsed, while Jornard comes in as though it were to work
in a mill."

Nor have its verdicts upon great works been such as to encourage
confidence : instance the fact that it condemned the " Cid " of Corneille,
now one of the glories of French literature. Nor has its theory of
art been beyond question. Upholding those canons ©j dramatic art
which so long excluded the romantic drama, and maintained the feel-
ing shown by calling Shakespeare an "inspired barbarian," may pos-
sibly have been more detrimental than beneficial. And when we look,
not at such select samples of French literary taste as Mr. Arnold
quotes, but at samples from the other extreme, we may question
whether the total effect has been great. If, as Mr. Arnold thinks,
France " is the country in Europe where the people is most alive," it
clearly is not alive to the teachings of the Academy: witness the re-
cent revival of the " Pere Duchene," the contents of which ax-e no less
remarkable for their astounding obscenity than for their utter stupidity.
Nay, when we look only where we are told to look — only where the
Academy exercises its critical function, we find reason for skepticism.
Instance the late award of the Halpin Prize to the author of a series
of poems called "LTnvasion," of which M. Patin, a most favorable
critic, says :

"Their chief characteristic is a warmth of sentiment and a 'verve,' which
one would wish to see under more restraint, but against which one hesitates to
set up, however just might be their application under other circumstances, tbo
cold requirements of taste.'

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 731

Thus we have the Academy pandering to the popular feeling. The
ebullitions of a patriotic sentiment which it is the misfortune of France
to possess, in too great a degree, are not checked by the Academy, but
encouraged by it, even at the expense of good taste.

And then, lastly, observe that some of the most cultivated French-
men, not so well satisfied with institutions of the Academy-type as
Mr. Arnold seems to be, have recently established, on an English
model, a French Association for the Advancement of the Sciences.
Here are passages from their prospectus, published in La Revue Sci-
entifique, 20 Janvier, 1872 ; commencing with an account of the
founding of the Royal Institution :

"There were at this meeting fifty-eight members. Each one of these put
down his name without more ado for fifty guineas, or nearly 1,300 francs of our
money — equal to 2,000 francs at the present day. On the morrow the Royal
Institution of London was established. "We know what it came to be after-
ward.

"What Englishmen did, in 1799, some eminent savants of our own country
would repeat to-day in France. Like Rumford, in the last century, they thought
that the ancient supremacy of the French name in all branches of science was
beginning to decay, and threatened one day to fall.

" God forbid that they should charge this decay upon the French Academy,
of which they are themselves nearly all members ! But the Academy, though
it maintains the prestige of its name in Europe, is growing weak in the majesty
of its greatness. It neither possesses sufficient means of action, nor is its energy
sufficiently active to use those it has. The sinews of war — money — are lacking,
but, what the Academy lacks still more, is bold and intelligent enterprise. It
has fallen asleep upon the honors secured to it in the traditions of centuries."

Thus, curiously enough, we find another contrast parallel to that
noted above. While Mr. Arnold is lauding French institutions, French-
men, recognizing their shortcomings, are adopting English institutions.
From which we may fairly infer that, great as is Mr. Arnold's desire
" to see the object as in itself it really is," he has not in this case suc-
ceeded ; and that, endeavoring to escape the bias of patriotism, he
has been carried too far the other way by the bias of anti-patriotism.

*

One more illustration of the effect of this bias on Mr. Arnold calls
for brief comment. Along with his over-valuation of foreign regula-
tive institutions, there goes an under-valuation of institutions at home
which do not exhibit the kind of regulation he thinks desirable, and
stand in the way of authoritative control. I refer to those numerous
Dissenting organizations characterizing this " anarchy " of ours, which
Mr. Arnold curiously makes the antithesis to " culture."

Mr. Arnold thinks that, as a nation, we show undue faith in ma-
chinery •

"Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger. . . . "What is free-
dom but machinery? what is population hut machinery? what is coal but ma-

732

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chinery? what are railroads but machinery ? what is wealth hut machinery?
what are religious organizations hut machinery? " '

And in pursuance of this conception he instances the desire to get
Church-rates abolished and certain restrictions on marriage removed,
as proving undue belief in machinery among Dissenters; while his
own disbelief in machinery he considers proved by wishing for stronger
governmental restraints,2 by lauding the supervision of an Academy,
and by upholding a Church Establishment. I must leave unconsidered
the question whether an Academy, if we had one, would authorize this
iise of language, which makes it seem that voluntary religious agency
is machinery and that compulsory religious agency is not machinery.
I must pass over, too, Mr. Arnold's comparision of Ecclesiasticism and
Nonconformity in respect of the men they have produced. Nor have
I space to examine what he says about the mental attitudes of the
two. It must suffice to say that, were the occasion fit, it might be
6hown that his endeavor " to see the object as in itself it really is " has
not succeeded much better in this case than in the cases above dealt
with. Here I must limit myself to a single criticism.

The trait which in Mr. Arnold's view of Nonconformity seems to me
most remarkable is, that in breadth it so little transcends the view of
the Nonconformists themselves. The two views greatly differ in one
respect — antipathy replaces sympathy; but the two views are not
widely unlike in extension. Avoiding that provincialism of thought
which he says characterizes Dissenters, I should have expected Mr.
Arnold to estimate Dissent, not under its local and temporary aspect,
but under its general aspect as a factor in all societies at all times.
Though the Nonconformists themselves think of Nonconformity as a
phase of Protestantism in England, Mr. Arnold's studies of other na-
tions, other times, and other creeds, would, I should have thought,
have led him to regard Nonconformity as a universal power in socie-
ties, which has in our time and country its particular embodiment, but
which is to be understood only when contemplated in all its other em-
bodiments. The thing is one in spirit and tendency, whether shown
among the Jews, or the Greeks — whether in Catholic Europe, or in
Protestant England. Wherever there is disagreement with a current
belief, no matter what its nature, there is Nonconformity. The open
expression of difference, and avowed opposition to that which is au-
thoritatively established, constitutes Dissent, whether the religion be
Pagan or Christian, Monotheistic or Polytheistic. The relative atti-
tudes of the dissenter and of those in power are essentially the same
in all cases ; and in all cases lead to persecution and vituperation.
The Greeks who poisoned Socrates were moved by just the same
sentiment as the Catholics who burnt Cranmer, and the Protestant
Churchmen who imprisoned Bunyan and pelted Wesley. And, while
the manifestations of feeling are essentially the same, while the accom-

1 " Culture and Anarchy," p. 16. * Ibid., pp. 130-140.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 733

panying evils are essentially the same, the resulting benefits are essen-
tially the same. Is it not a truism that ■without divergence from that
which exists, whether it be in politics, religion, manners, or any thing
else, there can be no progress ? And is it not an obvious corollary
that the temporary evils accompanying the divergence, are outbal-
anced by the eventual good ? It is certain, as Mr. Arnold holds, that
subordination is essential ; but it is also certain that insubordination
is essential — essential, if there is to be any improvement. There are
two extremes in the state of a social aggregate, as of every other ag-
gregate, which are fatal to evolution — rigidity and incoherence. A
medium plasticity is the healthful condition. On the one hand, a force
of established structures and habits and beliefs, such as offers con-
siderable resistance to change ; on the other hand, an originality, an
independence, and an opposition to authority, energetic enough to
overcome the resistance little by little. And, while the political non-
conformity we call Radicalism has the function of thus gradually
modifying one set of institutions, the religious nonconformity we call
Dissent has the function of thus gradually modifying another set.

That Mr. Arnold does not take this entirely-unprovincial view,
which would lead him to look on Dissenters with less aversion, may
in part, I think, be ascribed to that over-valuation of foreign restraints
and under-valuation of home freedom, which his bias of anti-patriotism
fosters ; and serves further to illustrate the disturbing effects of this
bias on sociological speculation.

And now to sum up this somewhat too elaborate argument. The
general truth that, by incorporation in his society, the citizen is in a
measure incapacitated for estimating rightly its characters and actions
in relation to those of other societies, has been made abundantly mani-
fest. And it has been made manifest also that when he strives to
emancipate himself from these influences of race, and country, and
locality, which warp his judgment, he is apt to have his judgment
warped in the opposite way. From the perihelion of patriotism he is
carried to the aphelion of anti-patriotism ; and is almost certain to
form views that are more or less eccentric, instead of circular, all-
sided, balanced views.

Partial escape from this difficulty is promised by basing our socio-
logical conclusions chiefly on comparisons made among other societies
— excluding our own. But even then these perverting sentiments are
sure to intrude more or less ; for we cannot contemplate the institutions
of other nations without our sympathies or antipathies being in some
degree aroused by consciousness of likeness or unlikeness to our own in-
stitutions. Discounting our conclusions as well as we may, to allow for
the errors we are thus led into, we must leave the entire elimination of
such errors to a future in which the decreasing antagonisms of socie-
ties will go along with decreasing intensities of these sentiments.

734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SCIENCE.1

By JOHN "W. DEAPEE, LL. D.

MR. PRESIDENT : When I was in London a year or two ago,
I passed some pleasant hours with my friend Prof. Tyndall.
Among these, I think that, perhaps, the most pleasant were those of
one afternoon that we spent together in the laboratory of the Royal
Institution, where Davy discovered potassium and sodium, and decom-
posed the earths ; where Young first announced the grand and fertile
principle of interference, and placed on firm foundations the wave-
theory of light ; where Faraday made his great discoveries in elec-
tricity and magnetism. On that occasion Dr. Tyndall was showing
me some of his own splendid discoveries — the action of ether-waves of
short period upon gaseous matter, clouds formed by actinic decomposi-
tion. I saw the superb sky-blue light, and verified its polarized condi-
tion. It was like the light of heaven.

Well, as I laid down the Nicol prism we had been using, I could
not help thinking that there was an unseen " presence " in the place —
a genius loci — that inspired men to make such discoveries. Who was
it that brought that genius there ?

At the time of the American Revolution, there resided in the town
of Rumford, N. H., one Benjamin Thompson, who occupied himself in
teaching a school. He embraced, as we Americans would say, the
wrong side of the question on that occasion — he sided with the king's
government. He went to England, became a man of mark, and was
knighted. Then he went on the Continent, again distinguished him-
self by his scientific attainments, again was titled, and this time, in
memory of his American home, was called Count Rumford.

On his return to London, Count Rumford founded the Royal Insti-
tution, and thus to a native American the world owes that establish-
ment which has been glorified by Davy, and Young, and Faraday, and
the lustre of which is now so conspicuously maintained by Tyndall.
Had it not been for Rumford, Davy might have spent his life in filling
gas-bags for Dr. Beddoes's patients ; Faraday might have been a book-
binder, and certainly Tyndall would not have been honoring us with
his presence here to-night.

But if Benjamin Thompson, an American, founded the Royal Insti-
tution, James Smithson, an Englishman, shortly afterward founded that
noble institution in Washington which bears his name, and which,
under the enlightened care of Prof. Henry, has so greatly ministered
to the advancement and diffusion of science. You, sir, have called on
me to respond to your toast, " English and American Science," and I
think these facts show you how closely they have been associated.

1 Address at the Tyndall Banquet.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SCIENCE. 735

Now, Prof. Tyndall is on the point of leaving us. When he gets
back to Albemarle Street, he will remember Broadway. 1 am sure
that you will all join me in wishing him a pleasant voyage over the
Atlantic. But I wish him something better than that, I will add — a
safe return to America. There is a great deal for him to do here yet.
He may tell his friends that he has been to America, but he must not
tell them that he has seen the Americans. We who are living: on the
Atlantic verge of the continent arc only modified Europeans — very
slightly modified, indeed. One must go beyond the Alleghanies — yes,
and over to the Pacific coast, before he can say he has seen what the
American really is. I suppose that Dr. Tyndall has finished his
glacier expeditions to Switzerland. Is there nothing here that can
tempt him ? He and other members of the Alpine Club need not go
about the streets of London weeping, like so many broken-hearted
Alexanders, that there are no more worlds to conquer. Let them take
a look at the Rocky Mountains, and tell us what they think of them.
Dr. Tyndall is a lover of Nature. Well ! we can show him all kinds
of scenery, from where the half-frozen Mackenzie is lazily flowing
through a waste of snows on its way toward the Arctic Ocean, to
where oranges are growing on the Gulf. Or, if he is tired of inanimate
Nature, and is in the mood of Dr. Johnson — you know the story. Bos-
well said to Johnson one day : " See ! What a beautiful afternoon ; let
us take a walk in the green fields." " No, I won't," replied the grim
and gruff lexicographer. " I've seen green fields ; one green field is
like another green field. They are all alike. No, sir ! I'll walk down
Cheapside. I like to look at men " — if Dr. Tyndall is in that mood,
can we not satisfy his curiosity ? Another friend of mine, Mr. Froude,
has set us all talking about Ireland. We can show Dr. Tyndall how
we take the Irish immigrant, in his corduroy knee-breeches, his
smashed-down hat, and his shillalah in his fist, and, in a generation or
so, turn him into an ornament of professional life, make him a success-
ful merchant, or familiarize him with all the amenities of elegant soci-
ety. If that's not enough, we will show him how we take the German,
and, wonderful to be said, make him half forget his fatherland and
half his mother-tongue, and become an English-speaking American citi-
zen. If that's not enough, we will show him how we have purged the
African, the woolly-headed black man, of the paganism of his fore-
fathers, and are now trying our hand at Darwinizing him into a re-
spectable voter. If that's not enough, we will show him how, in the
trans-Mississippi plains, we are improving the red Indian — alas ! I fear
my friend will say, improving him off the face of the earth ! If that's
not enough, we will show him where we have got tens of thousands of
Chinese, with picks and shovels, digging Pacific railways. We are
mixing European and Asiatic, red Indians and black Africans, to-
gether, and I suppose certain English naturalists will tell us that the
upshot of the thing will be a survival of the fittest. In San Francisco,

73 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

we cau shovv Dr. Tyndall the church, the chapel, the joss-house, all in
a row, and, perhaps, considering his forlorn, celibate condition, he may
be conscience-stricken when we display before his astonished eyes the
much-married men of Mormondom.

Nowhere in the world are to be found more imposing political prob-
lems than those to be settled here ; nowhere a greater need of scien-
tific knowledge. I am not speaking of ourselves alone, but also of our
Canadian friends, on the other side of the St. Lawrence. We must
join together iu generous emulation of the best that is done in Europe.
In her Majesty's representative, Lord Dnfferin, they will find an eager
appreciation of all that they may do. Together we must try to refute
what De Tocqueville has said about us : that communities such as ours
can never have a love of pure science. But, whatever may be the glory
of our future intellectual life, let us both never forget what we owe to
England. Hers is the language that we speak ; hers are all our ideas of
liberty and law. To her literature, as to a fountain of light, we repair.
The torch of science that is shining here was kindled at her midnight
lamp.

SCIENCE AND PUBLIC. AFFAIES.1

By President ANDREW D. WHITE,

OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

MR. CHAIRMAN : There is a legend well known to most of us —
and which has an advantage over most legends in that it is
substantially true — that a very distinguished man of science in this
country was once approached by an eminent practical man, and urged
to turn his great powers in scientific investigation and exposition to
effect in making a fortune.

And, to the great surprise of that man of business, the man of sci-
ence responded, " But, my dear sir, I have no time to waste in making
money.''''

Of all the recent great results of science, I think, sir, that those
words have struck deepest and sped farthest in the average carnal
mind on our side the Atlantic.

" No time to waste in making money ! " I have stood sir, in the
presence of a very eminent man of affairs — one whose word is a power
in the great marts of the world, and watched him as he heard for the
first time this astonishing dictum. He stood silent — apparently in
awe. The words seemed to reverberate among; the convolutions of his
brain, and to be reechoed far away, back, from depth to depth, among
the deepest recesses of his consciousness — " No time to waste in mak-
ing money ! "

1 Address at the Farewell Banquet to Professor Tyndall.

SCIENCE AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

737

The honored guest of this evening comes among us as another of
those men who, in following a very high vocation, have given no
thought to money-getting.

Of course, indirectly, his brilliant discoveries have, in many cases,
aided to heap up gold in the world's coffers, but that has not been the
direct object of his life-work. As to the money value of most of his
discoveries, you might as well try to fix the worth of a fixed star, or a
baby. His career has been that of a seeker for new truth — and an elo-
quent proclaimer of it ; and it is in this apostolate that he has been
so warmly welcomed in this great metropolis of money-making.

The toast, sir, to which you ask me to speak is, " The Relation of
Science to Political Progress."

Now, sir, I maintain that the true spirit of scientific research — in-
carnate before us in our honored guest — embracing as it does zeal in
search for truth, devotion to duty which such a search imposes, faith
in good as the normal and necessary result of such a search — that such
a spirit is, at this moment, one of the moet needed elements in the po-
litical progress of our country.

I might go on to show how usefully certain scientific methods
might be brought to bear on the formation of political judgments, and
in determining courses of political action. I might show how even a
very moderate application of scientific principles would save us from
what is constantly going on in municipal, State, or national legislation
— the basing of important statutes to-day, on the supposition that two
and two make four, and to-morrow on the theory that two and two
make forty ; but the hour is late, and I spare you ; I will confine my-
self simply to the value, in our political progress, of the spirit and ex-
ample of our honored friend, and of those like him.

What is the example which reveals that spirit ? It is an example
of zeal — zeal in search for the truth, sought for truth' 's sake — and not
for the sake of material advantage ; it is an example of thoroughness
— of the truth sought in its wholeness, not in dilutions or adaptations,
or suppressions, supposed to be healthy for this man's mind, or that
man's soul ; it is an example of bravery — the fearlessness that leads a
ti-uth-seeker to brave all outcry and menace ; it is an example of devo-
tion to duty; without which, for a steady force, as Prof. Tyndall just
now observed, no worthy scientific work can be accomplished ; and,
finally, an example of faith — of a high and holy faith that the results
of earnest truth-seeking cannot be other than good — faith that truth
and goodness are inseparable — faith that there is a Power in the uni-
verse which forbids any honest truth-seeking to lead to lasting evil.
A faith, this is, which has had its " noble army of martyrs " from long
before Roger Bacon down to this present — martyrs not less real than
that devoted saint, from whom, as I understand, our guest takes his
name, who perished in the flames as a martyr to religious duty.

What I maintain then, is, that this zeal for truth as truth, this faith.,
vol. ii. — 47

738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the good as forever allied to the true, this devotion to duty as the
result of such faith and zeal, constitute probably the most needed ele-
ment at this moment in the political regeneration of this country, and
that, therefore, the example of our little army of true devotees of sci-
ence has an exceeding preciousness.

Said a justly-distinguished senator to me yesterday, in Washington :
" The true American idea of education is to give all children a good
and even start ; then to hold up the prizes of life before them ; then to
say to them : ' Go in and win ; let the smartest have the prizes.' "

Who of the common herd shall dispute the conclusions of a senator
beneath the great cast-iron dome at Washington ? — But here, in this
presence, I may venture to say that such a theory of education is one
of the main causes of our greatest national clanger and disgrace. No
theory can be more false, or, in the long-run, more fatal. Look at it
for a moment :

We are greatly stirred, at times, as this fraud or that scoundrel is
dragged to light, and there rise cries and moans over the corruption of
the times ; but, my friends, these frauds and these scoundrels are not
the " corruption of the times." They are the mere pustules which the
body politic throws to the service. Thank God, that there is vitality
enough left to throw them to the surface ! The disease is below all
this ; infinitely more wide-spread.

What is that disease ? I believe that it is, first of all, indifference —
indifference to truth as truth; next, skepticism, by which I do not
mean inability to believe this or that dogma, but the skepticism which
refuses to believe that there is any power in the universe strong enough,
large enough, good enough, to make the thorough search for truth
safe in every line of investigation ; next, infidelity, by which I do not
mean want of fidelity to this or that dominant creed, but want of fidelity
to that which underlies all creeds, the idea that the true and the good
are one ; and, finally, materialism, by which I do not mean this or that
scientific theory of the universe, but that devotion to the mere husks
and rinds of good, that struggle for place and pelf, that faith in mere
material comfort and wealth, which eats out of human hearts all patri-
otism, and which is the very opposite of the spirit that gives energy to
scientific achievement.

The education which our senatorial friend approved leads naturally
to just this array of curses.

On the other hand, I believe that the little army of scientific men
furnish a very precious germ from which better ideas may spring.

And we should strengthen them. We have already multitudes of
foundations and appliances for the dilution of truth — for the stunting of
truth — for the promotion of half-truths— for the development of this or
that side of truth.

We have no end of intellectual hot-house arrangements for the cul-
tivation of the plausible rather than the true ; and therefore it is that

DISCOVERY OF MOUNT TYNDALL. 739

we ought to attach vast value to the men who with calmness and de-
termination seek toe truth, in its wholeness, on whatever line of.
investigation, not diluting it or masking it.

Their zeal, their devotion, their faith, furnish one of those very pro-
tests which are most needed against that low tone of political ideas
which in its lower strata is political corruption. Their life gives that very-
example of a high spirit, aim, and work, which the time so greatly needs.

In this view, then, sir, do I most heartily welcome our friend as a
strong leader — not only in scientific, but in political and general prog-
ress. His influence has spread far beyond his lecture-room ; nay, it
shall spread far beyond those who have read or shall read his lectures.

I might speak of his quickening influence on one body of men — five
hundred strong — assembled in one of our newer institutions of learning.
But that influence extends far beyond those who stand in institutions
of learning. The reverence for scientific achievement, the revelation
of the hisjh honors which are in store for those who seek for truth in
science — the inevitable comparison between a life devoted to that great
pure search, on one hand, and a life devoted to place-hunting or pelf-
grasping on the other — all these shall come to the mincls of thoughtful
men in lonely garrets of our cities, in remote cabins on our prairies,
and thereby shall come strength and hope for higher endeavor.

And, Mr. Chairman, as this influence for good spreads and strength-
ens, I have faith that gratitude will bring in results for political good
of yet another kind.

Many predecessors of our friend have, as literary men, strengthened
the ties that bind together the old land and the new; and I trust that
love, admiration, and gratitude, between men of science on both sides
the Atlantic, which our guest has done so much to arouse, may add
new cords and give strength to old cords which unite the hearts of the
two great English-speaking nations.

DISCOVERY OF MOUNT TYNDALL.1

By Prof. WILLIAM H. BKEWER,

OF THE TALE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL.

MY DEAR SIR : In answer to yours of the 6tb, I may say that,
beinp- familiar with all the circumstances relating to the discov-
ery and naming of Mount Tyndall, I was asked to respond to a toast
alluding to this, at the dinner given in honor of Prof. Tyndall on the
4th, but which want of time prevented being called for. You now
ask me for an abstract of what I intended to say. I will give it
(as nearly as I can), and this the more willingly, as his success, as a
1 Letter to Prof. Mayer, Secretary to Committee of the Tyndall Banquet.

740 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mountaineer was not even alluded to by any of the speakers, nor was
the fact that, in recognition of his discoveries in the Alps, one of the
highest peaks in our country has been named for him.

In 1864 I had charge of a party exploring the group of highest
peaks of the Sierra Nevada, in California — the highest, in fact, in
the United States. For several years I had been familiar with its
distant aspects, as seen from nearly every side. The group was en-
tirely unknown, however, so far as any accurate knowledge of its
height, topography, or interior scenery, was concerned. Previous at-
tempts to reach it had failed. Once we had been prevented by floods,
and once turned from its flanks by hostile Indians. But this time we
were more successful. Our camp was at 10,000 feet elevation, the
deep, -blue-black canopy of sky our only shelter. From this point our
first attempt failed. Two of us reached an altitude of nearly 14,000
feet, only to find the crest nearly five miles beyond, and separated
from us by a' canon 3,000 or more feet deep, with vertical precijfices of
perhaps 1,000 feet below us, and, still farther below, frozen lakes of
vivid blue. We turned back, weary and dispirited.

That night, the intrepid Clarence King earnestly begged that he
be permitted to try, with Cotter, to reach the summit. I hesitated.
"We were short of provisions, and far from supplies. Moreover, I had
seen the difficulties, and he had not, but he had read Tyndall's " Gla-
ciers of the Alps," and thought no place inaccessible. Permission
was at length given, but this meant partial starvation to those of us
remaining, that they might have the necessary food, and to those who
went it meant fatigue, sleeping among the rocks at 11,000 or 12,000
feet, hard climbing, and doubtful success.

Early dawn of July 4th found us on the way, with instruments and
six days' provisions. We carried their packs up to 13,000 feet, to
lighten their labors, then pointed out the way they must take, and,
after a hearty shake of the hand, saw them descend into the canon and
disappear. The evening of the fifth da'y saw their return ; they had
reached the summit, and were back in safety. By the light of the
camp-fire that night I calculated the height as well as I could from
their observations. It was the highest unnamed peak that had yet
been measured in the country, so we called it Mount Tyndall.

This peak now finds a place on our maps. Its position is about lati-
tude 36° 39' north, longitude 118° 19' west, and its height 14,386 feet.
It is one of a group of peaks, several of which are above 14,000 feet,
amid the most sublime surroundings. The peaks are buttressed with
ridges of granite, streaked with the snows of ages, and furrowed with
canons, the desolation of the scene increased rather than relieved by
the many little blue lakes that repose in the ancient glacier-beds. This
group is a part of that chain which stretches from Cape Horn to Beh-
ring's Straits, the grandest mountain-system on our planet. Here is the
monument bearing the name of our honored o;uest.

,\

PROFESSOR JOSEPH HENRY.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HENRT. 741

Prof. Tyndall's books are now so widely read that the name is
almost a household word where our common language is spoken.
We cannot hope that it will be so a hundred years hence ; with the ad-
vance of scientific knowledge, the new generations will read new books,
and ours be buried or partially hidden in the great ocean of scientific
literature. But I look forward in imagination, and see that the man
will not be forgotten ; he will be remembered as one who loved and
advanced science. This peak will perhaps still more keep his memory
green, and the coming generations of school-children conning their
lessons in geography, and philosophers studying the grander features
of our globe, will learn to pronounce the name of one who loved moun-
tains even as he loved science.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HENKY.

PROF. JOSEPH HENRY, who is widely known throughout the
scientific world for his various original investigations, and as
the organizer and Permanent Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
is of Scotch descent, and Avas born in Albany, in the State of New
York. Having lost his father in early childhood, he was sent at the
age of seven years to live with his grandmother, and to attend school
at Galway, in Saratoga County, where he remained until he was four-
teen. Having accidentally and secretly obtained access to the village
library, he became fascinated with books of fiction, and devoted much
of his time to reading. Returning to Albany, he was apprenticed to
the trade of a jeweller, with which he was occupied two years. He
afterward developed a passion for serious study, and became teacher
of a country district school. He studied for a time in the Albany
Academy, and, through the recommendation of its principal, Dr. T.
Romeyn Beck, was appointed private tutor in the family of General
Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patroon of Rensselaerwyck. There his .
duties occupied him three hours a day, and the rest of his time was
spent as an assistant to Dr. Beck, in his chemical investigations ; but
he also studied anatomy and physiology, with a view to graduating in
medicine. He, however, obtained a position as an engineer to survey
a route for a State road from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, through
the southern tier of counties. Having finished this arduous and re-
sponsible labor, he was elected to fill the vacant chair of Mathematics
in the Albany Academy. As the duties did not begin immediately,
he spent several months exploring the geology of New York State
with Prof. Eaton, of the Rensselaer Institute of Troy. He entered upon
his work at the academy in 1826, and then commenced a course of

742 . THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

original investigations on electricity and magnetism, the first regular
series on Natural Philosophy which had been prosecuted in this coun-
try since the days of Franklin. These researches made him favorably
known not only in this country, but in Europe, and led to his call in
1832 to the chair of Natural Philosophy in the College of New Jersey
at Princeton.

In the first year of his course in this institution, during the absence
of the Professor of Chemistry, Dr. Torrey, in Europe, he gave lectures
in Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Geology, Astronomy,
and Architecture. This work interrupted his original investigations,
but he soon commenced anew where he had left off at Albany, and
devoted himself to a work of research, until he was called to his pres-
ent position in Washington. In 1835 he was granted by the trustees
of the college a year's absence in Europe, nine months of which he
spent principally in Paris, London, and Edinburgh, in intercourse with
the savants of these cities, and procuring more efficient apparatus to
prosecute his investigations.

Meantime Mr. John Smithson, of England had left a large sum of
money to the Government of the United States, to be devoted " to the
increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." An institution was
projected to carry out this purpose, and in 1846 Prof. Henry was
requested by some of the members of the Board of Regents to give his
views as to the best methods of realizing the intentions of its founder.
In compliance with this request he gave an exposition of the will, and
of the method by which it might most efficiently be realized. On ac-
count of this exposition and his scientific reputation, he was called to
the office of Secretary or Director of the establishment. Unfortunate-
ly, Congress had attempted to organize the institution without a due
appreciation of the terms of the will. This gave rise to difficulties
and expenditures on local objects, particularly to the commencement
of a very expensive building, which have much retarded the full reali-
zation of what might have been produced by the plan originally
proposed by Prof. Henry.

At the time of the organization of the Light-House Board of the
United States, Prof. Henry was appointed by President Fillmore one
of its members, and he still continues in the position. During the
war he was appointed one of a commission, together with Prof. Bache
and Admiral Davis, to examine and report upon various inventions,
intended to facilitate the operations against the enemy, and to im-
prove the art of navigation. On the death of Prof. Bache, he was
elected President of the National Academy of Sciences, established by
an 'act of Congress in 1863, to advance science, and to report upon
such questions of a scientific character as might be connected with the
operations of the Government. He is a member of various societies
in this country and abroad, and has several times received the degree
of LL. D., the last time from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR HENRY. 743

Prof. Henry was married in May, 1830, to Miss Alexander*, of
Schenectady, the sister of Prof. Alexander, of Princeton, and from the
ardent devotion of his wife, and the fraternal sympathy of her brother
in his pursuits, he has received assistance and support beyond that
which usually fall to the lot of men. The most peaceful, and to him-
self the most profitable, part of his life was that spent in Princeton,
for which place, and the college connected with it, he retains the
warmest attachment.

The following is a brief enumeration of his scientific investigations
and discoveries :

1. A sketch of the topography of the State of New York, embody-
ing the results of the survey before mentioned.

2. In connection with Dr. Beck and the Hon. Simeon De Witt, the
organization of the meteorological system of the State of New York.

3. The development, for the first time, of magnetic power, suffi-.
cient to sustain tons in weight, in soft iron, by a comparatively feeble
galvanic current.

4. The first application of electro-magnetism as a power, to pro-
duce continued motion in a machine.

5. An exposition of the method by which electro-magnetism might
be employed in transmitting power to a distance, and the demonstra-
tion of the practicability of an electro-magnetic telegraph, which,
without these discoveries, was impossible.

6. The discovery of the induction of an electrical current in a long
wire upon itself, or the means of increasing the intensity of a current
by the use of a spiral conductor.

V. The method of inducing a current of quantity from one of in-
tensity, and vice versa.

8. The discovery of currents of induction of different orders, and
of the neutralization of the induction by the interposition of plates
of metal.

The discovery that the discharge of a Leyden jar consists of a
series of oscillations backward and forward until equilibrium is re-
stored.

10. The induction of a current of electricity from lightning at a
great distance, and proof that the discharge from a thunder-cloud also
consists of a series of oscillations.

11. The oscillating condition of a lightning-rod while transmitting
a discharge of electricity from the clouds causing it, though in perfect
connection with the earth, to emit sparks of sufficient intensity to ig-
nite combustible substances.

1 2. Investigations on molecular attraction, as exhibited in liquids,
and in yielding and rigid solids, and an exposition of the theory of
soap-bubbles. (These originated from his being called upon to inves-
tigate the causes of the bursting of the great gun on the United States
steamer Princeton.)

744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

13. Original experiments on, and exposition of, the principles of
acoustics, as applied to churches and other public buildings.

14. Experiments on various instruments to be used as fog-signals.

15. A series of experiments on various illuminating materials for
light-house use, and the introduction of lard-oil for lighting the coasts
of the United States. This and the preceding in his office of chair-
man of the Committee on Experiments of the Light-House Board.

16. Experiments on heat, in which the radiation from clouds and
animals in distant fields was indicated by the thermo-electrical appa-
ratus applied to a reflecting telescope.

17. Observations on the comparative temperature of the sun-spots,
and also of different portions of the sun's disk. In these experiments
he was assisted by Prof. Alexander.

18. Proof that the radiant heat from a feebly luminous flame is
also feeble, and that the increase of radiant light, by the introduction
of a solid substance into the flame of the compound blow-pipe, is ac-
companied with an equivalent radiation of heat, and also that the in-
crease of light, and radiant heat in a flame of hydrogen, by the intro-
duction of a solid substance, is attended with a diminution in the
heating power of the flame itself.

19. The reflection of heat from concave mirrors of ice, and its ap-
plication to the source of the heat derived from the moon.

20. Observations, in connection with Prof. Alexander, on the red
flames on the border of the sun, as observed in the annular eclipse of
1838.

21. Experiments on the phosphorogenic ray of the sun, from which
it is shown that this emanation is polarizable and refrangible, accord-
ing to the same laws which govern light.

22. On the penetration of the more fusible metals into those less
readily melted, while in a solid state.

Besides these experimental additions to physical science, Prof.
Henry is the author of twenty-five (1846-'71) reports, giving an expo-
sition of the annual operations of the Smithsonian Institution. He
has also published a series of essays on meteorology in the Patent-
Office Reports, which, besides an exposition of established principles,
contain many new suggestions ; and, among others, the origin of the
development of electricity, as exhibited in the thunder-storm ; and an
essay on the principal source of the power which does the work of de-
veloping the plant in the bud, and the animal in the egg.

He has also published a theory of elementary education, in his ad-
dress as President of the American Association for the Advancement
of Education, the principle of which is, that in instruction the order
of Nature should be followed ; that we should begin with the concrete
and end with the abstract, the one gradually shading into the other ;
also the importance of early impressions, and the tendency in old age
to relapse into the vices of early youth.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

745

EDITOR'S TABLE.

OUR FIRST YEAR'S WORK.

"TTTIIEN The Popular Science
VV Montely started, the public
were informed that it would be pub-
lished a year at any rate, and go on if
fairly sustained ; our second volume is
now completed, and we are happy to
announce that the enterprise will be
continued, and gives promise of perma-
nence. It was entered upon as an ex-
periment, and generally thought to be
a hopeless one. The quality of those
periodicals which reach great circu-
lation was pointed out as evidence
of what the people demand, and we
had the most discouraging assurances
that they will not sustain a solid and
really instructive magazine, which re-
quires them to think. Believing, how-
ever, that there are large numbers who
would gladly support such a monthly if
they could get it, we determined to give
them the chance, and have been jus-
tified in the result. Our Monthly is not
only a success, but it has succeeded on
its own merits alone. All the clap-trap
artifices fdr rushing into a big circula-
tion have been avoided : the public have
neither been bribed by premiums, nor
tempted by cheapness, nor lured by
large promises, nor stunned by pictori-
al display, nor deafened by the truin-
petings of self-praise, such as usually ac-
company the advent of new periodicals.
"We entered quietly upon the undertak-
ing, and with its announcement the
first number was ready, so that people
might judge of it themselves. In our
prospectus we said : " The Popular
Science Monthly will contain instruc-
tive and attractive articles and abstracts
of articles, original, selected, and illus-
trated, from the leading scientific men
of different countries, giving the latest
interpretations of natural phenomena,
explaining the applications of science to

the practical arts, and to the operations
of domestic life.

"It is designed to give especial
prominence to those branches of science
which help to a better understanding
of the nature of man ; to present the
claims of scientific education, and the
bearings of science upon questions of
society and government ; how the va-
rious subjects of current opinion are
affected by the advance of scientific in-
quiry will also be considered." We ap-
peal to the two volumes of the Month-
ly now completed in proof that these
pledges have been fairly redeemed.

In stating that our enterprise is an
undoubted success, it will, of course,
not be understood that we have a cir-
culation at all comparable with that of
the leading periodicals devoted to light
literature, but it is greater than was
anticipated, and is steadily increasing.
The undertaking has, moreover, met
with wide sympathy and warm encour-
agement from the most intelligent class
of readers throughout the country.
There has been an almost unanimous
expression of opinion on the part of in-
dividuals and the press that The Popu-
lar Science Monthly has met an ur-
gent public need, that it is the most
valuable magazine now before the
American public, and deserves an ex-
tensive patronage. For all these kind
expressions, and for the substantial sup-
port which has accompanied them, we
return to our friends the most cordial
thanks.

But, while our work has been thus
far approved, we are far from claiming
that it has been perfect. It has the im-
perfections which are incident to anew
project in a new field, and which it
will require time and experience to re-
move. "We intend to improve it in sev-
eral important features. "While pursu-

746

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing the general plan now entered upon,
we expect to enlarge its resources, to
make more prominent the applications
of science to common life, to give a
more popular form to its discussions,
and, in short, to make it a magazine
that no family with brains in it can af-
ford to do without.

Our object will continue to be to
furnish a higher grade of reading for
purposes of public instruction. In this
matter the press of the country has
been false to its trust. "We have an
educational system that brings the
whole mass of the people up to the
reading-point, and hardly carries them
beyond it. The school-master, when he
has done with them, hands his pupils
over to the editors, and the Dailies,
"Weeklies, and Monthlies, go on with the
work of education. In the school they
are taught to worship books, and to
consider print and wisdom as synony-
mous, so that there arises a supersti-
tion that mere reading is an intellectu-
al virtue. "Were the supreme object of
education to make customers for news-
papers, our system could hardly be im-
proved. But how does the press meet
its responsibilities and use its power?
"With rare exceptions, it must be said,
by ministering to popular weaknesses.
Editors fill their pages with worth-
less gossip, with interminable comment
on passing frivolities, with trashy and
demoralizing fictions, with the lies,
libels, and multitudinous inanities of
politics, and with endless, ambitious
writing on every empty topic that will
serve to make a sensation and beguile
the reader without the exertion of
thought. It is not in this way that the
serious work of public education is to
be carried forward. Excess of reading
without regard to its quality is a per-
nicious dissipation, and, besides wast-
ing precious time, it disqualifies those
who indulge in it from that serious
effort of thought which is the first con-
dition of mental improvement. The
main purpose in starting our magazine

was to do something to counteract this
baneful influence, to contribute some-
thing toward elevating the standard of
popular reading, and to promote the
higher ends of education by diffusing
valuable knowledge, and making acces-
sible the productions of the world's
ablest thinkers.

A few have criticised the Monthly
as containing too much foreign matter;
but our aim is to get the best, be it for-
eign or domestic. In the interests of
truth we have to guard against the "bias
of patriotism," and all who do this will
recognize that the leading intellectual
work of the world is now done in
Europe. A spurious patriotism fos-
ters national jealousies and teaches U3
that foreigners are our enemies; but,
in the sphere of science, the selfish
and paltry antagonisms of men can be
forgotten, and to talk about " foreign-
ners " is impertinent. Our allegiance
is to the age and to the growing spirit
of liberality, which is its greatest honor.
But we shall guard against undervalu-
ing American scientific thought, and
would refer to the present contents of
the Monthly in attestation of this pur-
pose.

Again thanking our friends for their
generous encouragement, we ask for
its continuance, and an increase of their
efforts to promote the diffusion of our
magazine. As it was for the people
to decide whether it should be sus-
tained, so it will be for them to enlarge
the sphere of its usefulness by extend-
ing its circulation, and thus enabling
us to carry out our plans for its im-
provement.

MR. GODWIN OST THE LIMITS OF
SCIEXCE.

Me. Parke Godwin, of the Evening
Post, wras chosen to speak for the press
at the Tyndall banquet ; but he saw fit
to throw his toast behind him, and take
up a more ambitious role. He used the
occasion to give a lesson to the scientific
gentlemen present as to the proper

EDITOR'S TABLE.

1M

limit of their inquiries. He staked out
the ground within which all is legiti-
mate, and beyond which all is mere
fantastic pseudo-science and subversive
of religious faith. It has ever been a
favorite occupation with outsiders to
instruct the investigators of Nature
where they must stop, so that scientific
progress has largely consisted in level-
ling barriers and establishing the rights
of inquiry in forbidden places. More-
over, at each step of advance the pio-
neers of research have been bidden to
stand, in the name of religion ; so that
in breaking down these restrictions ad-
vancing science has been simply widen-
ing the scope and liberty of religion
itself.

Mr. Godwin may now speak with
safety of the " roaring furnaces of the
sun," but, for suggesting that the sun
is a mass of incandescent matter An-
axagoras was accused of impiety and
banished. Hipparchus, for making a
catalogue of the stars, was denounced
as impious. Galileo, for inquiring into
the celestial motions, was anathema-
tized as a heretic. Newton's theory
of gravitation was branded as an athe-
istic attempt to explain the universe
without the intervention of God. The
early anatomists were charged with
impiety for dissecting the human body.
The first geologists incurred theological
denunciation, and the abhorrence of
the pious, as seeking to undermine the
Bible and overthrow Christianity. But
in each of these cases it turned out that
the alarm of the religious was ground-
less, and every one of the departments
of knowledge that science has created,
the theologians, as soon as they got
through denouncing it, have turned to
account for their own purposes. But
it seems that there is a class that can-
not even learn in the school of experi-
ence. The next great step of progressive
thought, the synthesis of the sciences,
the unification of their facts and princi-
ples by the most comprehensive laws,
so as to arrive at the philosophy of Na-

ture on the basis of actual knowledge,
is sternly contested, and we are to have
the fight over again with the descend-
ants of the old enemies of investiga-
tion, and on exactly the same grounds.
Again, men of science are bidden to
stand lest God be driven from the uni-
verse. Mr. Godwin appears as the
champion of imperilled faith, and his
speech is reechoed and applauded by
the press as a well-timed defence of re-
ligion against the inroads of " irreligious
science." Let us briefly examine his
argument.

After mentioning some examples of
spurious science, Mr. Godwin says:
"These are conjectures that impose
upon us their own fantastic offspring
for the legitimate heirs of science.
Science is exact and certain and au-
thoritative, because dealing with fact
and the systematic coordination of facts
only. She does not wander away into
the void inane. She has nothing to do
with questions of primal origin nor of
ultimate destinies ; not because they
are unimportant questions, or insoluble,
but because they transcend her instru-
ments and her methods. She leaves
them to philosophy, which proceeds not
by demonstration and proof but by in-
sight, by intuition and by moral reason-
ing ; or she leaves them to revelation, in
whose supernal light alone they can be
properly illuminated and fully seen."

To avoid being misled, a correction
or two is here necessary, before con-
sidering Mr. Godwin's main position.
He says that science is exact, which is
quite true of the " exact sciences," but
is not true of all science. It is not true
of those in which the phenomena do
not admit of precise measurement, such
as biology, psychology, and sociology,
which are nevertheless clear and cer-
tain in their truths and as strictly sci-
ences as any other. He says that sci-
ence deals with "facts and the coordi-
nation of facts only." But facts can
neither be determined nor coordinated
except by the constant use of theories

74s

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

and hypotheses. Science consists in
the interpretation of facts, and this al-
ways begins with hypothetical conjec-
ture ; while the progress of science is
nothing else than the growth of hy-
pothesis and of theory by which facts
are put in their proper relations.

Mr. Godwin avers that science has
nothing to do with questions of " pri-
mal origin," by which he means, as we
gather from a passage to be directly
quoted, questions of the origin of the
universe* the origin of our earth, the
origin of plants and animals, the ori-
gin of man and his institutions. This is
certainly an extraordinary statement to
put forth to the scientific men of the
present day. And that a great problem
of Nature which is soluble, is yet not a
problem of science, but belongs to a
method which " proceeds not by dem-
onstration and proof," is a statement
that will be equally surprising. As for
the method of "insight," "intuition,"
"moral reasoning," and "revelation,"
it had been tried on the phenomena
of Nature for thousands of years, and
it was exactly because it had bro-
ken down that the method of sci-
ence arose. The order of the uni-
verse has been discovered by demand-
ing "demonstration and proof;" but
on what ground is it assumed that
the problem of the present operations
of the universe is of a different nature
from the problem of its past opera-
tions ? The order of Nature is one and
continuous, and the same method which
has given us a knowledge of its pres-
ent workings can alone be competent
to give us the knowledge of its past
workings. Science is the coordination
» of facts, that is, putting them in order,
but they must be coordinated in their
sequences as well as in their coexist-
ences— in time as well as in space. Nor
is it any more possible to study the
present in Nature, without going back to
the past which has created it, than it is
to do the same thing in political affairs.
It is now well recognized that our I

knowledge of existing things is pro-
foundly dependent upon our knowledge
of the way they have been produced.
The present phase of astronomical sci-
ence embraces the problem of the for-
mation of the solar and stellar systems.
What is geology but a history of the
formation of the earth ? Zoology has
been revolutionized by modern embryo-
logical studies. The psychological point
of view is now that of the develop-
ment of mind. Thilology has become
a science through the study of lingual
origins ; and sociological science has at
its foundation the problem of the origin
and growth of social activities and or-
ganizations. Questions of origin, of
derivation, and of transformations in
time, are, in fact, the supreme charac-
teristics of the science of the nineteenth
century.

Mr. Godwin forbids it. Tie might as
well forbid the flow of the Gulf Stream ;
it cannot be arrested till the study of
cause and effect is ruled out of the
scientific court as an illegitimate pro-
cedure. The study of origins is the
highest issue of ages of scientific prepa-
ration, and the ripening of science into
an authentic philosophy.

Of Mr. Godwin's three or four ex-
amples of illegitimate science, here is
one. He says: " Then there is another
of these outside teachers of science, but
this one is entitled to the highest respect
— though I think he rides a hobby be-
yond the capacity of the creature to car-
ry— who contrives a vast process of cos-
mic evolutions, who tells us that a great
while ago — ten thousand years — no, a
hundred million of millions of millions
of years ago — a nebulous gas was dif-
fused through the immensity of space,
which first twisted itself into a solar sys-
tem, then into a world, then into layers
of mineral strata, then into vegetable
spirales, into animal motions, into hu-
man vortices called societies, into iliads,
parthenons, and Shakespeares, and at
last into a grand philosophy of evolution
— the crown and consummation of the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

749

■whole ; which may all he true, though
the hirth strikes me as hardly worthy
of so long and so tremendous a parturi-
tion."

Mr. Godwin declares that the doc-
trine of Evolution, of which he seems to
have a very tortuous conception, is an
instance of illegitimate science. The
nebular hypothesis is its first and re-
motest " twist," and so Kant, Laplace,
Herschel, Huggins, and a multitude of
other astronomers who have contribu-
ted to its establishment are to be
pitched over the enclosure as pseudo-
scientists ! If the reader will glance at
the excellent paper of Prof. Leconte in
the preceding pages, on the Nebular
Hypothesis, he will quickly see what
Mr. Godwin's opinion in this matter is
worth.

But the foregoing passage has a fur-
ther significance ; it gives an interest-
ing clew to Mr. Godwin's estimate of
the value of the universe. It is not
worth production by so tedious a pro-
cess as that of Evolution; but, if got up
in six days — indefinite periods being
excluded — Mr. Godwin would probably
allow that it is worth cost. Es-
timates of the natural world will of
course vary with the knowledge of it.
The first valuation was made in times
of blank ignorance of Nature, and still
harmonizes with that state of mind.
Yet Mr. Godwin's position evinces
progress, because in the pre-scientific
ages Nature was not only despised
as worthless, but hated as worse than
worthless. The whole scheme was
regarded as under a divine curse, and
its students were put into prison and
punished in various ways. We are past
all that now, and Nature is considered
as of some interest and fit enough to
be studied by those who like it — if
they will consent to have bits in their
mouths and be kept within suitable
bounds. There has been progress, be-
cause the dispensation of hate has been
succeeded by that of indifference ; but
still the devotion of men of science to

the study of Nature is a popular puz-
zle. It is not yet looked upon as the
highest occupation of the human mind
to extend our knowledge of the order
of things around us. On the part
of classes still called educated, thera
survives an ill- concealed contempt for
the mental pursuits of mere collectors,
observers, and experimenters. It is not
now so bad as when in England Lady
Glanville's will was attempted to be set
aside on the ground of lunacy, evinced
by no other evidence than a fondness
for collecting insects; yet enthusiastic
naturalists who ransack field and forest,
mountain and sea, are still regarded as
a class apart — as eccentric objects of
curiosity, not to be compared in dignity
with the students of art, literature, and
metaphysics. So much of the old spirit
continues that, as objects of thought
and in the education of to-day, the
works of man are ranked as superior
to the works of God. Nor is it by any
means considered so very desirable to
know all about Nature. Large numbers
of the cultivators of sentimental litera-
ture still protest that, if the world wrere
once understood, it would no longer be
worth living in. The heads of college-
bred people are still filled with old
childish fictions which are fondly
cherished, and science, because it would
clear away the mountains of this rub-
bish, in which the seekers after a lib-
eral education are still made to delve,
is dreaded as a desolating agency that
would bereave us of all that is most
refining and ennobling in culture. In
his speech, Mr. Godwin goes off
with double objurgation, as follows:
" ' Great God ! " as Wordsworth says —

. . . . " 'Great God ! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled* on a creed outworn ;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less for-
lorn.
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.' "

Now, this may be all very well for
callow sophomores ; but when old fel-

75°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

lows, who ought to have been weaned
from tins pagan nonsense long ago,
take to whining about their forlorn-
noss, with nothing remaining but God's
universe, the case becomes pitiable.
This is the second time that Prof. Tyn-
dall has been gravely told across the
table in New York by after-dinner ora-
tors that they would go back to hea-
thenism rather than accept the science
that his presence suggested — a strik-
ing comment on the value which these
defenders of the faith attach to the re-
ligion of civilization. But let people
be suckled where they please; as for
our own spiritual lactation we prefer to
get it from the revelations of modern
science rather than from the Jack-and-
a-Beanstalk tomfooleries of pagan my-
thology.

No ! the alarm-bell is rung at the
progress of science in the present age
to but little purpose. The worth of
the universe must rise as its grandeurs
are comprehended, and our joy in its
harmony and beauty will be height-
ened the more deeply it is understood.

" I grieve not that ripe knowledge takes
away
The charm that Nature to my child-
hood wore,
For with the insight cometh day by day
A greater bliss than wonder was be-
fore."

Nor are religious considerations to
be invoked to deter men of science
from their exalted work, for the single-
minded pursuit of truth is an intrinsi-
cally religious act. No limits are to be
tolerated but those imposed by Nature
herself, and up to those limits the work
must be pressed as a sacred duty. For,
if, as we believe, science is but a record
of the Divine operations in matter,
there is devoutness in scientific investi-
gation, and to push it to the farthest
possible boundaries becomes a matter
of clear religious obligation.

The article of Dr. Barnard, charac-
terizing our educational system, and
the brief statement of Prof. Agassiz's

opinion in regard to New-England edu-
cation, both of which will be found else-
where in our pages, are commended to
the very special attention of the burn-
ing advocates of compulsory education.
According to these, all that our educa-
tional system lacks of perfection is a
suitable appendage of policemen and
constables to drive everybody into the
school-houses, that they may be com-
pelled to participate in its blessings.
In their view, the only difficulty re-
maining is a defective will, and a per-
verse and contumacious spirit, which
can only be dealt with by law- warrants
and bludgeons. In so far as compul-
sory education is merely a kind of
street-cleaning, a scraping together of
refuse and vagabond children in places
where something can be done to hu-
manize them, it may be admissible;
but there are very serious grounds of
protest against coercion being carried
farther. If our so-called educational
system be defective to its very roots,
a total inversion of the method of
Nature, and a violation of the consti-
tution of the mind, as Dr. Barnard
declares, or if it be a crude vestige of
old mediasval ignorance and stupidity,
as Prof. Agassiz maintains, there is evi-
dently a good deal to do before police-
officers can be properly invoked to
force it down people's throats. The
logic, of course, is short from the estab-
lishment of State education, and its
maintenance by compulsory taxation,
to its enforcement upon everybody by
legal coercion. But State education
has its evils, and not the least of them
is that it gets the benefit of our idol-
atry of government and the blind admi-
ration of the " institutions of our coun-
try," which are believed to be the most
perfect under the sun. But "first be
sure you are right, and then go ahead "
is a golden motto, and, if applied in
this case, will postpone for some time
the crusade of the coercionists. As
long as our school-system is open to
such indictments as those of Messrs.

LITERARY NOTICES.

75»

Barnard and Agassiz, which will be
sustained by every intelligent critic
who looks into it, wo submit that the
question of compulsion is premature ;
if any system is to be enforced, let it
bo a rational one.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Key to North American Birds, contain-
ing a Concise Account of every Species
of Living and Fossil Bird at present
known upon the Continent north of the
Mexican and United States Boundary.
Illustrated by Six Steel Plates and up-
ward of 250 Woodcuts. By Elliott
Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States
Army. Boston : Estes k Lauriat. New
York: Dodd & Mead, 1872.

This exhaustive and beautifully - exe-
cuted folio comes to us as an exponent of
the present state of American ornithologi-
cal science. The position of Dr. Coues as
a naturalist is a guarantee of the character
of his work. He lays under contribution
the latest results, having been assisted by
various eminent gentlemen, while a large
part of the volume consists of his own ori-
ginal observations. While the work is at-
tractive to all who care for this fascinating
subject, the author has nevertheless aimed
at strict scientific accuracy in his state-
ments. At the outset he puts the question,
" What is a bird ? " and most people would
think the answer very simple, but in such
matters most people are apt, unhappily, to
be mistaken. How loose and insufficient
the common notion would be as compared
with the conception of science, may be
shown by quoting the answer that Dr.
Coues gives to his own question : " A bird
is an air-breathing, egg-laying, warm-blood-
ed, feathered vertebrate, with two limbs
(legs) for walking or swimming, two limbs
(wings) for flying or swimming, fixed lungs in
a cavity communicating with other air-cavi-
ties, and one outlet of genito-urinary and di-
gestive organs ; with {negative characters) no
teats, no teeth, no fleshy lips, no external
fleshy ears, no (perfect) epiglottis nor dia-
phragm; no bladder, no scrotum, no cor-
pus callosum ; and with the following col-
lateral characters, mostly shared by more
or fewer other animals : under jaw hinged
with the rest of the skull by means of an

interposed movable bone, that is also mov-
ably jointed with two bones of the upper
jaw; head jointed with neck by only
one hinge; shoulder-joints connected with
each other by a curved bone, the clavicle
(with rare exceptions), and with the breast-
bone by a straight, stout bone, the cora-
coid ; ribs all bony, most of them jointed
in the middle as well as with back-bone
and breast-bone, and having offsets; less
than three separate wrist and hand bones ;
two fingers, of one or two bones ; head of 1
thigh-bone hinged in a ring, not in a cup ;
one of the two leg-bones not forming the
ankle-joint ; no separate ankle-bones ; less
than three separate foot-bones ; two to four
toes, of two to five bones, always ending in
claws ; both jaws horny-sheathed and nos-
trils in the upper one ; feet and toes (when
not feathered) horny-sheathed; three eye-
lids ; eyeball with hard plates in it, eight
muscles on it, and a peculiar vascular organ
inside ; two larynges, or ' Adam's apples ; '
two bronchi ; two lungs, perforated to send
air into various air-sacs and even the inside
of bones ; four-chambered heart, with per-
fect double-blood circulation ; tongue with
several bones ; two or three stomachs ; one
liver, forked to receive the heart in its
cleft; gall-bladder or none; more or less
diffuse pancreas or • sweet - bread ; ' a
spleen ; intestines of much the same size
throughout ; caeca or none ; two lobulated,
fixed kidneys; two testicles fixed in the
small of the back, and subject to periodi-
cal enlargement and decrease; one func-
tional ovary and oviduct ; outlets of these
last three organs in an enlargement at end
of intestine, and their products, with refuse
of digestion, all discharged through a com
mon orifice. But of all these, and other
characters that come under the head of de-
scription rather than of definition, one is
peculiarly characteristic of birds ; for every
bird has feathers, and no other animal has
feathers "

Mysteries of the Voice and Ear. By
Prof. 0. N. Rood, of Columbia College.
Chatfield & Co., New Haven. Univer-
sity Series.

This pamphlet is one of the most ad-
mirable expositions of its subject that we
have ever read. Prof. Rood is one of our
first physicists, the author of many valuable

752

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

researches, and his essay is thoroughly up in
the latest results of acoustics and the physi-
ology of sound, while his lecture is not
only crowded with interesting scientific
facts, but it is written in a remarkably
clear and familiar style ; the only difficulty
being, that there is not half enough of it.
He closes with the following suggestive
passage : "If you were to tell a thoughtful
man, who happened to be quite ignorant
of the mechanism and action of the voice,
that there were living beings who endeav-
ored to express their wishes, thoughts, and
feelings, merely by the aid of mechanical
vibrations, thus causing the particles of
air to swing like invisible pendulums back-
ward and forward in certain ways, your lis-
tener would be impressed by the poverty
of the device, and would too hastily con-
clude that only a few of the simplest and
rudest ideas could possibly find expression
by the aid of a contrivance so clumsy. He
would tell you it was conceivable, perhaps,
that, by appropriate use of vibrations, the
idea of joy, or rage, or fear, or possibly of
hunger, might be imperfectly expressed,
with a few others of like character, but
that to expect more would be visionary. He
would urge that all vibrations were neces-
sarily so similar in 'general character, that
it would be impossible to communicate to
them the stamp of thought or feeling. And
yet how wonderfully each one of us employs
just such vibrations, and, with a skill which
seems truly superhuman, impresses upon
and commits to them an infinite variety
of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, which at
times we pour forth in torrents that seem
inexhaustible; the vastness of the result
attained, the poverty of the means, are ut-
terly overwhelming !

" Think, also, for a moment, of that gift
by which we read the stories written on the
invisible waves of the air ; how we instant-
ly interpret and disentangle their complexi-
ties, as they roll in toward us, thousands
in a second, with the velocity of rifle-bul-
lets. The powers to hear and speak are
gifts which, from purely physical and math-
ematical stand-points, are absolutely mag-
nificent ! And we the possessors of such
powers ! Is it conceivable that they have
been bestowed on us only to be used as at
present ? Do they not point to a future for

our race when they will be employed in a
manner which better accords with their in-
expressible richness and grandeur ? "

Myths and Myth-Makers. Old Tales and
'Superstitions interpreted by Compara-
tive Mythology. By John Fiske, M. A.,
of Harvard University. Boston: J. R.
Osgood & Co.

Mr. Fiske- has given us a book, which
is at once sensible and attractive, on a sub-
ject about which much is written that is
crotchety or1 tedious. He has devoted
himself to the study of myths without al-
lowing them to impair his judgment on
matters of fact, and he has become familiar
with myth-makers without adopting their
hazy views and ambiguous expressions ;
and so, although we may not entirely agree
with him on every point, yet we can heart-
ily recommend his unpretending but in-
structive volume to the large class of read-
ers who are interested in the subjects with
which he deals. It does not claim to be a
work of scientific arrangement and close
reasoning. Its author, indeed, speaks of it,
in his modest preface, as. a "somewhat
rambling and unsystematic series of pa-
pers ; " but to the general public it will not,
on that account, prove less agreeable.

Mr. Fiske disclaims any attempt " to re-
view, otherwise than incidentally, the works
of Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent,
and Tylor," nor does he claim "to have
added any thing of consequence, save now
and then some bit of explanatory comment,
to the results obtained by the labor of these
scholars ; " but it has been his aim, he says,
" to present these results in such a way as
to awaken general interest in them." This
aim he seems to us to have fully attained ;
and we shall be surprised if his book does
not do good service in enlisting the sympa-
thies of a large number of readers in be
half of a science which some critics find it
more easy to deride than to comprehend.
Mr. Fiske's volume comprises seven chap-
ters, which seem to have been originally as
many reviews of various works on mythol-
ogy and animism. Beginning with " The
Origins of Folk-lore," he traces home some
of the most widely-spread of the pseudo-
historic stories, such as those of William
Tell, and of Llewellyn and Gellert, as well
as a few of the Popular Tales which have

LITERARY NOTICES.

753

caught the fancy of most nations, such as
that of " The Master Thief," or " The Giant
who had no Heart in his Body." His con-
clusions, which we are not altogether in-
clined to accept, are, " that the Tell myth
was known, in its general features, to our
Aryan ancestors before ever they left their
primitive dwelling-place in Central Asia ; "
and that the Popular Tales

" have been handed down from parent to
child for more than a hundred generations ;
that the primitive Aryan cottager, as he took
his evening meal oiyava and sipped his fer-
mented mead, listened with his children to
the stories of Boots, and Cinderella, and the
Master Thief, in the days when the squat
Laplander was master of Europe, and the
dark-skinned Sudra was as yet unmolested
in the Punjab."

This is Dr. Dasent's view, and, to a cer-
tain extent, that of a still greater authority,
Prof. Max Miiller. For our part, we are
rather of the opinion of Prof. Benfy and his
school, and are inclined to recognize, in
at least most of the longer and more dra-
matic of our fireside and nursery romances,
mere echoes of tales told long ago by In-
dian story-tellers. But Mr. Fiske's creed is
likely to be the more popular of the two,
and he has defined and justified it in a
manner which all must praise. His remarks
on the vexed question of the Homeric
poems can scarcely offend even those crit-
ics who are least inclined to identify Athe-
ne and Helen with the dawn or any other
atmospheric phenomenon ; for he is fully
conscious of a truth which has been over-
looked by the more enthusiastic writers
on the subject — that tales and traditions
in their present forms are seldom capable
of being straightway resolved into perfect
Nature-myths, and that in many cases they
have been moulded into their present forms
by composers or adapters who were perfect-
ly innocent of mythical meaning — that, as
he justly remarks :

" The primitive meaning of a myth fades
away as inevitably as the primitive meaning
of a word or phrase ; and the rabbins who
told of a worm which shatters rocks no
more thought of the writhing thunder-bolts,
than the modern reader thinks of oyster-
shells when he sees the word ostracism, or
consciously breathes a prayer as he writes
the phrase good-by.''''

vol. n. — 48

The second chapter of Mr. Fiske's
book is devoted to " The Descent of Fire,"
and seems to have been originally intended
as a review of Prof. Kuhn's .admirable es-
say on that subject, or of Mr. Kelly's " In-
do-European Folk-lore," a book based upon
the works of Kuhn, Grimm, and Mannhardt.
The third chapter is to a great extent bor-
rowed from Mr. Baring-Gould's writings on
" Werewolves and Swan-Maidens," and is
rather inferior to the rest of the book in
the matter of critical rejection. It is .fol-
lowed by a chapter on " Light and Dark-
ness," whjch contains several interesting
studies of the numerous evil spirits to which
the fancy of different peoples has given
rise, and especially of " the mediaeval con-
ception of the devil." The fifth chapter,
on " The Myths of the Barbaric World,"
will probably prove the most novel and
amusing of all to the general reader, but it
makes no pretence of offering any thing
that is new to students who are acquainted
with Mr. Tylor's works, and with those less
known, but valuable books, Brinton's
"Myths of the New World," Callaway's
" Zulu Nursery Tales," and Bleek's " Hot-
tentot Fables." — Athenccum.

Coffee : Its History, Cultivation, and Uses.
By Robert Hewitt, Jr. New York :
D. Appleton & Co., 1872.

This claims to be the first book in the
language exclusively on the subject of coffee,
of the history, cultivation, and uses, of which
it gives much information. The introduction
of coffee into the great capitals of Europe,
and the history of their cafes, as well as the
old coffee-houses in New York, are described
in several entertaining pages. Java and
South America are the two principal coffee-
producing countries, the former furnishing
the most highly-prized bean, which is un-
equalled for delicacy of aroma and the mild
oily richness of the beverage. The latter,
however, furnishes the most important sta-
ple, and its influence as a branch of in-
dustry and an element of commerce is shown
by the fact that no less than 244,000,000
pounds of Rio coffee were consumed in the
United States in a single year, which makes .
us the largest coffee-consuming nation in
the world. Numerous methods of pre-
paring coffee are mentioned in the volume,

754

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the best contrivance being stated as the
following: It consists of a double coffee-
pot, the inner one, containing the coffee and
water, being completely surrounded by steam
which is generated in a pan or receiver,
over which is placed the coffee-pot. In
this way all the rich, oily aromas are thor-
oughly extracted by the action of steam-
heat surrounding all parts of the inner ves-
sel. The coffee can never boil, and the
result is a beverage more perfect than any
percolating, boiling, or straining process
has ever produced.

A chapter is devoted to the analysis and
adulterations of coffee, and the volume con-
tains a beautiful colored frontispiece repre-
senting the coffee-plant, and a map showing
its geographical distribution. The work is
very neatly gotten up.

The Ten Laws of Health ; or, LTow Dis-
ease IS PRODUCED AND CAN BE PRE-
VENTED. By J. R. Black, M. D. Phila-
delphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1872.

In another part of this number of the
Monthly, the reader will find an interesting
paper from Dr. Black, on "Applied Sanitary
Science," in which, after pointing out some
of the more formidable difficulties obstruct-
ing a general application of sanitary rules, he
urges, as the only effective means of making
these rules universally available, that every
intelligent member of the community master
the leading facts and principles of the sub-
ject. In this way his eyes will be opened
to the dangers which surround him, and
the knowledge necessary to their avoidance
or removal will also be at hand for practical
use. To this important educational work
the book before us is a valuable contribu-
tion. The author begins by enforcing the
proposition, with which most intelligent
physicians will doubtless agree, that dis-
eases are, as a rule, preventible ; that man
brings them upon himself through ignorance
and carelessness, and that most of them
may be avoided by conforming to certain
well-ascertained laws of health. These laws
he ranges under ten heads, in the order of
their importance, and then considers each
in a threefold manner : the various ways in
which it is commonly violated are first
pointed out ; the results which follow are
next indicated ; and, lastly, comes a descrip-

tion of the ways and means necessary to its
proper observance. "With some slight ex-
ceptions, the matter of the book is emi-
nently sound, and its precepts safe to follow,
while the style is clear and vigorous, quali-
ties which, united with the excellence of its
mechanical get-up, admirably fit it for popu-
lar reading.

Administration of Justice under Military
and Martial Law. By Charles M.
Clode. London : Murrav. New York :
Scribner, 1872.

A royal commission in England, some
time since, expressed a desire for some such
work as the present, and the British War
Department have made an acquaintance
with military law an essential condition of
promotion in tne army. It is therefore
plain that this work meets a want in Eng-
land ; and, as the United States Army is
governed by a code remodelled on the basis
of the British Mutiny Act, military men on
this side of the Atlantic will probably find
these pages valuable for reference.

Lectures on Light. Delivered in the
United States, in the Winter of 1872-73.
By Prof. John Tyndall, LL. D., F. R. S.
196 pages. D. Appleton & Co.

In his address at the farewell banquet,
Prof. Tyndall said : " On quitting England,
I had no intention of publishing the lectures
I have given here, and, except a fragment
or two, they were wholly unwritten when I
arrived in this city. Since that time, be-
sides lecturing in New York, Brooklyn, and
New Haven, the lectures have been written
out. No doubt many evidences of the ra-
pidity of their production will appear ; but
I thought it due to those who listened to
them with such unwavering attention, as
also to those who wished to hear them, but
were unable to do so, to leave them behind
me in an authentic form." Many thousands
who listened to these lectures, and many
more thousands who did not, will be grate-
ful to Prof. Tyndall for having written them
out so fully for general perusal. Accom-
panied as they are with numerous illustra-
tions of apparatus and experiments, and
written in the author's vivid and graphic
way, they will interest the reader almost as
much as they did those who heard them.

These lectures were undoubtedly pre-

LITERARY NOTICES.

755

pared with rapidity, but the reader, we
think, will find few traces of it. They were
written out with extreme care, and, in viv-
idness of description, felicity of illustration,
and transparent clearness, they fall below
nothing that this author has given us be-
fore. The text is accompanied with numer-
ous neatly-executed cuts of apparatus and
experiments, which will aid the thousands
who heard the lectures to recall the scenes
and circumstances of their delivery, while
other thousands, who saved their time and
money by absence, will get the result of the
professor's teachings in a form by no means
unsatisfactory.

Prof. Tyndall came to this country, not
to have a " good time," but to do hard
work ; and he worked hard, not to profit
himself, but to promote the interests of sci-
ence, which he has most at heart. And he
not only gave his talent, his exertion, and
six months of his precious time, to this ob-
ject, but he left all the profits of the enter-
prise to be used for promoting scientific
education.

Prof. Tyndall's receipts from his lectures
in the several cities were as follows :

Boston, six lectures $1,500

Philadelphia, six lectures 3,000

Baltimore, three lectures 1,000

Washington, six lectu res 2,000

New York, six lectures 8,500

Brooklyn, six lectures 6,100

New Haven, two lectures 1,000

Total $23,100

Of this amount, the surplus above ex-
penses, amounting to upward of $13,000,
was conveyed, by an article of trust, to the
charge of a committee, of which Prof.
Joseph Henry is chairman, and which is
authorized to expend the interest in aid of
students who devote themselves to original
researches. This is certainly a noble exam-
ple, and deserves to be emulated.

The " Proceedings of the Farewell Ban-
quet to Prof. Tyndall " are now in press,
and are soon to be published in a pamphlet.
It will contain letters from the scientific
men throughout the country, and all the
speeches delivered on the occasion, revised
by their authors.

Arrangements have been made by the
firm of Holt & Williams to furnish the
Fortnightly Review to American subscribers

at the reduced price of $6.00 a year, or
50 cents a number. This able periodi-
cal was projected and established by
Mr. George H. Lewes, some ten years ago,
and was at first, as its name implies, pub-
lished once a fortnight. It was modelled
on the* plan of the Revue des Deux Mondcs,
the leading French periodical, which is is-
sued every two weeks. After three or four
years, however, Mr. Lewes withdrew from
his management, and it was changed to a
monthly, under the editorship of Mr. Mor-
ley, author of the excellent papers on Vol-
taire and Rousseau. The Fortnightly is
the chief organ of the Positivist writers in
England, such as Mill, Harrison, Brydges,
and contains much able discussion of radical
politics and advanced philosophy.

Annals of Bee Culture, for 1872, D. L.
Adair, Editor (published by John P. Mor-
ton, Louisville, Ky.), contains twenty-two
papers by well-known authorities on matters
relating to the apiary. The opening article,
"The Genesis of the Honey-Bee," by the
editor, will well repay an attentive perusal.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
Manual of Paleontology. By Henry
Alleyne Nicholson. Edinburgh, 1S72. Black-
wood.

Caliban : the Missing Link. By Daniel
Wilson, LL. D. London and New York :
Macmillan.

Modern Diabolism ; Commonly called
Modern Spiritualism. With New Theories
of Light, Heat, etc. By M. J. Williamson.
New York, 1873. James Miller. (Not
worth reading.)

Arrangement of the Families of Fishes
(Smithsonian . Miscellaneous Collections,
24*7). By Theodore Gill, M. D., Ph. D.
Washington, 1872. .

Arrangement of the Families of Mam-
mals. Same author.

Traction Engines and Steam Road-roll-
ers. By Prof. R. H. Thurston, of Stevens
Institute of Technology.

Lecture before the Burlington Library
Association, by Philip Harvey, M. D.

Birds of North America.

What Physiological Value has Phos-

756

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

phorus as an Original Element ? By Samuel
R. Percy, M. D. Philadelphia : Collins, 705
Jayne Street, 18*72.

Report of the Committee on Climatol-
ogy, etc., of Arkansas. By Geo. W. Law-
rence, M. D. (Same publisher.)

Twenty-first Annual Report of the Re-
gents of the University of the State of New
York, on State Cabinet of Natural History,
etc. Albany, 1871.

Researches in Actino-Chemistry. Me-
moir Second. By John W. Draper, M. D.,
LL.D.

Australian Kinship. By Lewis H. Mor-
gan. •

Second Annual Report of the Board of
Commissioners of the Department of Pub-
lic Parks (New York City). 1872.

Mysteries of the Voice and Ear. By
Prof. 0. N. Rood. New Haven : Chatfield,
1873.

MISCELLANY.

The Selective Power of Plants.

Sheffield ScrENTtnc School, )
New Haven, Conn., Feb. 25, 1673. j
Editor Popular Science Monthly.

Dear Sir : In his interesting article on
" Spontaneous Movements in Plants," print-
ed in your January number, Dr. A. "VV. Ben-
nett remarks, page 284, that " the selective
power of plants, in absorbing from the soil
a larger portion of those ingredients which
are required for the formation or healthy
life of their tissues, is an absolutely unex-
plained phenomenon." Dr. Bennett says
further, " A striking instance of the liability
to consider a mere statement of an obscure
law in other terms as an explanation of
that law, occurs in an admirable treatise on
the growth of plants — Johnson's ' How
Crops Grow.' " Then follows the subjoined
quotation from my book (the italics are Dr.
Bennett's) : " The cereals are able to dispose
of silica by giving it a place in the cuticular
cells: the leguminous crops, on the other
hand, cannot remove it from their juices ;
the latter remain saturated, and thus fur-
ther diffusion of silica from without becomes
impossible, except as room is made by new
growth. It is in this way that we have

a rational and adequate explanation of the
selective power of the plant." Dr. Bennett
adds : " The ' rational and adequate expla-
nation ' seems to me, on the contrary, to be
merely a restatement of the selective power
of the tissues in other terms. Because the
tissues want the silica, is no explanation of
how they get it."

Very possibly, Dr. Bennett holds me at
a disadvantage as the matter thus stands,
but I am, in fact, very seriously misrepre-
sented in the last sentence of his quotation
from "How Crops Grow." On page 363 of
the American edition, the reader may see
that the period which concludes Dr. Ben-
nett's quotation should be a comma, and
that the sentence, as I wrote it, first comes
to a conclusion after an important qualify-
ing clause, and reads, entire, as follows :
" It is in this way that we have a rational
and adequate explanation of the selective
power of the plant as manifested in its de-
portment toward the medium that invests its

7'00ts."

It appears that Dr. Bennett has inadver-
tently confused two quite distinct things.
He asserts, at first, that " the absolutely un-
explained phenomenon" is "the selective
power of plants in absorbing from the soil
those ingredients which are required for
their tissues." But, afterward, he declares
my " explanation " to be " merely a restate-
ment of the selective power of the tissues."
Obviously, the selective power of the plant,
as manifested toward the medium that in-
vests its roots, is one thing, and the selec-
tive power of the tissues toward the sub-
stances dissolved in the cell-juices is, or
in many cases may be, another. The for-
mer is what I offered a rational and ade-
quate explanation of. The latter I have
not ventured to attempt to explain. The
former is explained by being coordinated
with the well-ascertained facts of "diffu-
sion " and " osmose," and referred to estab-
lished, if not fully-developed, physical laws.
The latter belongs to the yet very obscure
phenomena of chemism, which are only
known to us imperfectly in some of their
results, and whose inner nature the recent
amazing progress of organic chemistry has
hardly begun to enable us to speculate upon
with any satisfactory degree of probability.

Dr. Bennett writes of silica as one " of

MISCELLANY.

7S7

those ingredients which are required for the
formation or healthy life" of the plant-
tissues. In " IIow Crops Grow," the evi-
dence is given which forces us to the conclu-
sion that silica is unessential to the growth
and perfect development not only of legumi-
nous plants, but of all the various cereals,
although the latter, when they grow in the
soil, do contain 2.5 per cent., more or less,
of this substance in their foliage. If silica
be taken up by legumes and by corn-crops
which are able to grow to perfection of
parts and fulness of dimensions in its ab-
sence, then, certainly, " because the tissues
want silica is no explanation of how they get
it ; " but saturation of the cell-juices does
explain how a limit is put to the influx of
this body into the plant from the soil.

S. W. Johnson.

Probable Cause of Boiler-Explosions. —

Some six years ago, Mr. W. F. Barrett,
F. C. S., observed that a red-hot ball of cop-
per, on being immersed in a light solution
of soap in water, entered the liquid without
hissing or visible generation of steam. In
a paper read before the British Association,
he tells of sundry experiments, made with a
view to investigate this phenomenon, and
thinks that it probably accounts for many
•otherwise unaccountable explosions of
steam-boilers. After experimenting with
sundry red-hot metals in soap-water, he
tried water without soap ; but then the hiss-
ing was loud, and the evolution of steam
copious. He next dissolved in water sev-
eral soluble substances, and found that al-
bumen, glycerine, and organic liquids in
general, facilitate the acquisition by water
of the spheroidal shape, probably by in-
creasing its cohesion, while bodies such as
ammonia, which yield vapor readily, have
the same effect, though in not so marked a
degree. Oil, whether shaken up or floating
on the water, has the same effect as soap.
When the red-hot ball is lowered into the
liquid, to a depth of a foot or more, it is
seen to be surrounded by a shell, of vapor,
bounded by an envelop resembling bur-
nished silver. As the ball cools, the shell
grows thinner, and finally collapses. This
is followed by a report, and volumes of
steam are emitted. The author adds : " I
have heard that traces of oil get into the

boilers of steam-engines, and there can be
no doubt that dissolved organic matter of-
ten finds its way in. If in any way we in-
crease the intensity of the water, we render
it possible for a corroded boiler to give way
under the pressure of the steam suddenly
generated in the way I have indicated."

Practical Application of Ringing Flames.

— The " singing flame," which at first view
might seem to be merely a curious phe-
nomenon, is found to be, in fact, a discovery
of very high importance for science and the
useful arts. One of the latest applications
of this principle is that made by Dr. A. K.
Irvine, of the British Iron and Steel Insti-
tute, who makes use of the singing flame in
the construction of a safety-lamp for mines.
If an explosive mixture of inflammable gas
and air be passed through and ignited on
the surface of a disk of wire gauze too fine
to suffer the flame to traverse it, and then
surrounded by a chimney, to prevent air
from entering, save through the gauze, the
flame vibrates, and, the vibration being
communicated to the ascending gases, pro-
duces a sound varying in pitch and intensi-
ty according to the height and calibre of
the chimney. A lamp constructed on this
principle will give timely warning to the
miner whenever the atmosphere and the
fire-damp are coming together in the pro-
portions requisite for an explosion.

Science in the Household. — The applica-
tion of science to the affairs of the house-
hold, both in the shape of improved pro-
cesses and the introduction of labor-saving
appliances, has already gone sufficiently far
to warrant the expectation that from this
quarter there will eventually come a solu-
tion of the problem of rational house-keep-
ing, when the family will be largely rid of
the annoyances incident to a state of de-
pendence on incompetent and wasteful hire-
lings, and master of its own internal econ-
omy. Already the sewing-machine has
wrought a revolution in the clothing depart-
ment, which leaves scarcely a trace of its
former wearisome tasks. The washing-ma-
chine and wringer, aided by various deter-
gent preparations, have in like manner
greatly lightened the woifc of the laundry,
making the destructive and exhausting labor

758

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of rubbing a useless waste of power. And
now, as the latest and most important ad-
dition to the resources of the house-keeper,
we have a device which, going under the
name of the " Warren Cooker," accom-
plishes an even greater reduction in the la-
bor, expense, and care of the culinary de-
partment of the household.

This implement was but recently intro-
duced into this country, and, though widely
commended, is comparatively unknown ; we
cannot, therefore, do our readers a better
service than to give them a brief account of
its advantages. The article is an applica-
tion of the principle that cooking is best
done at a low, uniform heat, or a heat that,
in the case of meats, will neither coagulate
their juices nor harden their fibre. By
Warren's plan both meat and vegetables are
cooked at the same time, though in separate
compartments and in different ways. When
the " Cooker " is in operation, the meat is
enclosed in a tight chamber, the bottom of
which rests in boiling water, while a large
portion of the sides is surrounded by steam,
the remaining or upper portion of the sides
being exposed to the outer air. No water
or steam is permitted to enter the chamber,
which, by the above-described arrangement,
is kept at a uniform temperature of about
210° Fahr. The juices of the meat, and
consequently its flavor, are thus wholly re-
tained without dilution or impairment, and
at the end of the process both fibre and
juices are left in a condition most favorable
to the work of digestion, none of the hard-
ness or stringiness of baked or roasted meats
being in the least degree perceptible.

Vegetables are cooked by steam, which
in its exit is made to traverse a chamber
divided into compartments for the reception
of different sorts. Dumplings, or any thing
else permitting the direct contact of steam,
may also be cooked in this part of the ap-
paratus.

We have had the implement in almost
daily use for upward of six months, cooking
with it the meat, fish, and poultry, ordina-
rily employed for the table, and its general
performance has been in the highest degree
satisfactory. It saves all round, and might
very appropriately have been named the
"Economical Cooker." Compact and simple
in arrangement, it is easily and quickly got

into operation. Unable to go wrong when
once properly started, it does away with the
worry and care incident to ordinary cooking.
Run by any contrivance that will boil water,
it makes possible a great saving of fuel.
Cooking the meat in a closed pot, without
access of either water or steam, it saves
over the old way a large percentage of
material ; and, always turning out an evenly-
cooked, juicy, and never overdone joint, it
above all saves the feelings of the entire
family.

To this strong indorsement of the imple-
ment, it is our duty to add a word of cau-
tion, for the benefit of those who are just
commencing its use. The circulars of the
manufacturer state the time per pound re-
quired for cooking various meats. Rigidly
adhering to these directions when we first
began to use the " Cooker," underdone din-
ners were the frequent result ; and it was
soon learned that from three to five minutes
additional per pound were required to make
the process complete.

Not the least of the advantages that will
follow the general adoption of this mode
of cooking will be, the encouragement of
simplicity in the preparation of food ; for,
inasmuch as the contrivance preseves the
natural flavor of the articles cooked in it,
there will be no need of adding all sorts of
rich and indigestible sauces to replace the
losses which occur in cooking by the meth-
ods now commonly employed.

Venomous Spiders in New Zealand. —

Until recently it was supposed that New
Zealand contained no venomous reptiles or
noxious animals of any kind, and it was
only so late as the year 1856 that the first
scientific notice appeared of a poisonous
spider, a native of that country. This no-
tice was communicated to the British Lin-
najan society by Dr. Ralph, and contained a
brief description of the katipo {night-sting-
er), giving an account of its nesting habits
and of the potency of its sting. A writer
in the Field, who has closely studied this
animal in its native habitat, cites numer-
ous instances showing that the katipo's
bite is occasionally fatal, and invariably
very painful. Like many other venomous
creatures, the katipo is not aggressive, and
stings only when he is molested and greatly

MISCELLANY

759

irritated ; but, if merely touched with the
finder, he will fold up his legs, and feign
death. If again molested, the animal will
try to escape, and will employ his sting only
when driven to the wall. The katipo's nest is
a perfect sphere, and the eggs about the size
of mustard-seed. The changes undergone
by this animal in its progress toward matur-
ity are as follows : In the very young state
its body is white, with two linear series of
connected black spots, and an intermediate
line of pale red ; under parts brown ; legs
light brown, with black joints. In the next
stage, the fore-part of the body is yellow,
with two black "eye-spots," sides black,
with transverse marks of yellowish white;
dorsal stripe bright red, commencing higher
up than in the adult, and with the edges
serrated. At a more advanced age the
stripe on the back is brighter, with a narrow
border of yellow, and the thorax and legs
are nearly black. In the fully adult condi-
tion, the female is very handsome in form
and color. The body varies in size from
that of a pigeon-shot to that of a small green
pea ; and the outspread legs even of the
largest of these animals cover only a space
of three-quarters of an inch. The thorax
and body are black and shining, with a
stripe of bright orange-red down the centre
of the body. The male is considerably
smaller, having the body blackish brown,
with a faint-yellow line down the back.

Prof. Agassiz's Estimate of Rew-Ehg-
land Education. — The following significant
paragraph is from the Tribune :

" Prof. Agassiz's speech before the Com-
mittee on Education at Boston, last week,
was practical, impetuous, and a little impa-
tient. His demand for a State appropriation
for the benefit of the Cambridge Museum
served as a text from which he drew a ser-
mon, unpleasant, but not untrue nor unne-
cessary. He warmly expressed his disap-
proval of the existing system of popular
education in America. Instead of using the
rich and growing intellectual material of
later years, he declared that our colleges
teach chiefly the traditional learning of the
middle ages. ' Harvard,' said the fiery pro-
fessor, ' is not a university ; it is only a
tolerably well-organized high-school.' Nor
is even this learning, in his eyes, the best of

its kind ; it is merely the dregs of scholar-
ship. He brought up our grammar as an
example, referring to it as no longer a living
matter, but a reduction to formulas from
which all the living spirit has fled. As for
his darling, Natural Science, he contemplates
mournfully the want of thoroughness with
which its phenomena are taught in the com-
mon schools. The fault, he asserts, is that
of the teachers, who have no sort of thor-
ough knowledge in this direction, and who
cannot get it from the normal schools, where
instruction is given from text-books alone,
and in the poorest possible manner. The
schools of Massachusetts had round censure
from the good professor, and very much it
must have astonished the authorities of that
great State, who are incessantly ready to
fold their hands and go to heaven when
they think of their 'superior' school sys-
tem. Owing to the misplaced confidence
which they have in it, the professor thinks
that it might be easier to push a new course
of education in a new State earlier than in
New England."

Ancient Bavarian Agriculture. — The His-
torical Society of Munich has recently set
on foot an investigation of the remains of
ancient agriculture to be found in the neigh-
borhood of that city, and in other parts of
Bavaria. Garden-plots of an unknown anti-
quity have been discovered, many of them
assuming the form of a parallelogram, with
beds of equal length, breadth, and height ;
while others are in the form of a trapeze,
with beds of very unequal length. Often-
times wide and narrow beds alternate ; and
again beds are found side by side, the one
being ten times the length of the other.

In height they vary from 1J to 3 feet or
over, and the soil is scooped up out of the
furrow and thrown up on the bed, uncover-
ing the gravel. There is no trace of drains
or water-courses dating from the period of
these gardens, though water-courses of a
later time are to be seen. In the middle of
one of these agricultural districts is always
found a free space where in all probability
the people had their dwellings, although we
find no trace of their abodes. If there ever
were houses there, they must have been
built of light material. Horseshoes are
found at various depths in the soil. These

760

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are of small dimensions, and so eaten away
by rust that they evidently belong to a very
remote period. A writer in the Presse is
of opinion that these little farms date back
some 2,000 years, and that then the climate
of Bavaria was very moist ; for such treat-
ment of the soil in the present comparative-
ly dry climate of that country would lead to
the destruction of the crops by drought. It
is a little ourious that the writer makes no
mention of any agricultural or other imple-
ments being found ; but perhaps closer in-
vestigation will bring such objects to light.

Recent Meteorites in France and Italy. —

Several members of the French Academy of
Sciences have written for that body accounts
of two or three meteoric masses lately seen
to fall in France and Italy. On July 23d, at
about half-past five, on a still afternoon,
with clear sky, and the sun shining brightly,
there was heard at Lance (Loir-et-Cher) a
violent report, succeeded by a rumbling. A
"fiery lance" was observed by a land-owner
of Lile-Bouchard to shoot across the sky
with great swiftness. En route it divided
into two meteors, which continued for some
time to move parallel. At Tours they were
also observed, and described as bottle-
shaped, and of an orange color. One of
these meteorites was found near Lance by
M. de Tastes. It weighed about 103 lbs.,
and had penetrated into the earth to a depth
of 5 feet 9 inches. It broke to pieces on
removal. The other meteorite was soon
after found, some 7| miles south of the
first. It was of the same character as
the first, but weighed only a few ounces
and had penetrated about 20 inches. The
large piece is of an unequal spheroidal
shape, with rounded surface, and covered
with a crust as if by fusion. The fracture
is black, showing globular structure, and
numerous small spheroidal grains. Here and
there are small metallic grains, yellow in
color. Specific gravity 3 80. In water it
yielded a very small quantity of chloride of
sodium. There is not a trace of salts of
potash, nor any sulphates or hyposulphates.
Dissolved in nitric acid, a silicate was found,
consisting chiefly of magnesium and pro-
toxide of iron. Spectrum analysis seemed
to indicate the presence of copper; but
there was no calcium, barium, or strontium.

Carbon was absent, but, as usual, cobalt
and nickel accompanied the iron. On the
evening of August 8th, at 8 minutes past
11, a meteorite was seen at Rome, Velletri,
and other places. But a more interesting
one was observed by Padre Secchi at Rome,
August 31st, at 5.15 a. m., mean time. A
globe of fire was observed, well marked and
a little red in color. Its progress was at
first slow, but it gained speed, and left be-
hind it a luminous train like a cloud lit up
by the sun. On reaching its highest point, it
suddenly expanded, and finally disappeared.
Three or four minutes afterward a tremen-
dous detonation was heard. It was like a
mine-explosion, and was followed by a roll-
ing sound, as of file-firing. A fragment of
this meteor was picked up and found to be
very ferruginous, hard, and covered with a
crust. The extreme distances at which the
meteorite was seen are 93 miles apart.

An Efficacious Disinfectant. — A writer
in the Chemical News offers some useful
hints on disinfectants, which may be of in-
terest. After a long-continued series of ex-
periments, he pronounces sulphate of alu-
minium and hydrochlorate of alumina very
powerful disinfectants and antiseptics. Their
solubility and harmlessness render their use
admissible under all ordinary circumstances.
The chloride and sulphate of iron have the
same action as the above, and, further, they
absorb the sulphuretted products of decom-
position. For this reason these salts are
the most efficacious of disinfectants. But
there is one objection to their use, viz.,
that the iron would injure any vegetation
with which the disinfected matter might
come in contact. The writer recommends,
as the best of all disinfectants, for general
use, a solution containing hydrochlorate of
alumina, with a small quantity of chloride
of iron. The hydrochlorate will do all the
work of a disinfectant and antiseptic, while
the chloride will absorb the sulphuretted
compounds.

Atmospheric Pressure and Vegetable
Growth. — M. Bert, whose observations up-
on atmospheric pressure and animal life we
have already noted, has been making ex-
periments upon the influence of pressure
on vegetation. From these it would appear

MISCELLANY.

j6\

that temperature is not the only condition
modifying vegetal growth at varying alti-
tudes, but that varying degrees of atmos-
pheric pressure have also a controlling in-
fluence in this respect. Some grains of
wheat were sown in bell-glasses with all the
conditions identical, save that the contents
of one glass were subjected to the normal
pressure of the atmosphere, those of an-
other to two-thirds the ordinary atmos-
pheric pressure, and those of a third to
one third the ordinary atmospheric pressure.
The first grains sent forth shoots 20 centi-
metres (7 inches) long, the second 5 inches,
and the third did not come up at all. Again,
with a pressure of 5 atmospheres, the plants
did not come up, the radicles only having
been sent out, and on opening the vase a
strong alcoholic odcr was perceived, in
place of the ordinary acetic odor of putre-
fying wheat. After a few days a mould
made its appearance.

Electric Detonators for exploding Mines.

— Two new electric detonators, for explod-
ing mines, one for land and the other for
marine service, have been introduced in
England. The former consists of a tin
tube filled with fulminating mercury, and
having a head of beech-wood. The electric
wires run through this head, being insulated
by gutta-percha, and their extremities held
apart. In the space between the ends of
the wires, and in contact with the fulminat-
ing mercury, is loosely packed a little gun-
cotton, which is ignited by an electric cur-
rent. The marine detonator has also a
tube of tin filled with fulminating mercury,
as also a beech-wood head. From tip to
tip of the wires extends a platinum wire -ft-
inch long, and 0.003 inch thick, in a bed
of loose gun-cotton. The electric current
heats the platinum, thus igniting the gun-
cotton and exploding the fulminant, which
in turn explodes the powder.

Development of Yibrio-Lifc. — In the

course of his very interesting experiments
on protoplasmic life, Dr. Grace Calvert shows
that a solution of albumen from a new-laid
egg, in pure distilled water, does not develop
protoplasmic life, when the atmosphere is
shut out. If, however, it be exposed to
the atmosphere for from 15 to 45 minutes,

minute globular bodies will appear, which
have an independent motion. The time re-
quired for these bodies to develop is pro-
portioned to the surface exposed, as was
shown by Dr. Calvert, who experimented
with two portions of albumen, 400 grains
each, one in a test-tube of three-fourths
inch diameter, and the other in a test-glass
showing a surface of liquid two inches in
diameter to the atmosphere. In the tube,
vibrios appeared after twelve days, but in
the glass after five. With undistilled wa-
ter, they appeared in the test-tube within
24 hours. Further, M. Pasteur having
shown oxygen to be necessary to the life
of the mucedines, Dr. Calvert shows that
it is no less necessary to the existence of
vibrios. To confirm this, he put into each
of five glass bulbs a solution of albumen in
water, the first being left in contact with
the atmosphere 24 hours, and the ends of
the tube then hermetically sealed about two
inches on each side of the bulb. The other
tubes were similarly closed, after passing
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbonic
acid, over the solutions. The tubes re-
mained closed for 27 days, during which
period the albumen in contact with oxygen
was seen speedily to become turbid, and
then that in contact with air, while the oth-
er three remained clear. The tubes were
then broken, and it was found that those
containing oxygen and common air held a
large amount of vibrio-life, while those
containing nitrogen, carbonic acid, and hy-
drogen, held but very small quantities ; hy-
drogen least of all. Thus it was proved
that oxygen is an essential element to the
production of putrefactive vibrios. The
transition from globular protoplasms, or
monads, as he calls them, into vibrios, and
their ultimate transformation into micro-
zyma, is then described by Dr. Calvert. " A
few hours after impregnation," says he,
" the monads appear in the albumen, hav-
ing a diameter of about ttzsWu of an inch,
and appear to form masses. Next, some
of the monads are lengthened into vibrios,
which have an independent motion, though
still attached to the mass. As this motion
prevails in this or in that direction, the
mass is moved over the microscope-field.
At last it is broken up, and soon each indi-
vidual vibrio is seen rolling or swimmin'*

762

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

about. Their size is now Tubvz °f ** inch,
aud they finally attain a length of g "A 0 °f
an inch." These long vibrios are gradually
changed into cells, which Dr. Calvert calls
mierozyms, the first step in transformation
being their division into two independent
bodies. An extremely faint line appears
across the animalcule's centre, increasing in
distinctness until the vibrio looks like two
individuals joined together. Then they
separate, acquiring each an independent
existence. The parts again divide and sub-
divide, until they appear to be no more
than cells endowed with great natatory
power. In twelve months or so the vibrios
disappear, being succeeded by mierozyms,
either in motion or at rest. If these latter
be placed in a solution of fresh albumen,
vibrios are abundantly developed, appar-
ently because they have now all the circum-
stances favorable to
production.

their growth and re-

Exp crimen ts on tlis Circulation of the

Frog. — Certain drugs, such as digitalis,
veratrum, and ergot, when taken into the
system, are known to exert a powerful influ-
ence on the apparatus of circulation, and,
on this account, are largely employed by
physicians as medicinal agents. In order to
learn something further of the manner in
which they act, Dr. Boldt has been studying
the effects produced by their active princi-
ples when thrown into the circulation of the
frog. Curarized frogs had the intestines and
mesentery exposed, so that the movement
of the blood in these parts could be readily
watched through the microscope. Twelve
experiments with digitalin, injected hypo-
dermically, showed that it produces a strong
contraction of the peripheral vessels, which
is followed by a marked slowing of the
pulse, and this, if the dose be large enough,
by laming of the heart, as shown by small-
ness, irregularity, and rapidity of the pulse,
with a vibrating or undulating blood-
stream; finally, after a short increase in
rapidity, the pulse falls with great sud-
denness, and then, with general vaso-mo-
tor paralysis, the animal dies. Eleven ex-
periments with veratrin showed that it
directly paralyzes heart and arterial mus-
cles, there being an immediate lowering of
the pulse-frequency, the size and force of

its wave, and an increase in the lumen of
the vessels. Twelve experiments with er-
gotin resulted in a constant lowering of the
pulse-rapidity, by both large and small
doses, accompanied by peristaltic or wave-
like contractions and expansions of the ar-
tery.

Paper Car-Wheels.— Car-wheels of pa-
per, though universally admitted to be su-
perior to those of iron or steel, have not
been much used hitherto, owing to their
high price. If, however, as is claimed, pa-
per wheels are more durable than those of
other materials, and if they do less injury
to the tracks, besides being safer and more
noiseless, it may in the end be found eco-
nomical to employ them. The Connecticut
River Railroad, as we learn from the Iron
Age, is about to give these wheels a practi-
cal trial, having ordered a set of them for
the forward truck of a locomotive. The
process of manufacturing wheels of paper
is as follows : A number of sheets of com-
mon straw-paper are compacted together
under a pressure of 350 tons. The mass is
then turned perfectly round, and the hub
forced into a hole in the centre. The tire,
which is of steel, has a bevel of one-quarter
of an inch on the inside edge, and the pa-
per filling is forced in under a pressure of
250 tons. Two iron disks, one on either
side, and bolted together, keep the filling
from coming out ; but, as the tire bears on
the paper and not on the disks, the wheel
partakes of the elasticity of the former.

Bicla's Comet. — Arago, to quiet all ap-
prehensions of a collision of the earth with
Biela's comet, made an accurate calculation
of its orbit and periods, and so showed that
such a catastrophe could not occur for
thousands or even millions of years. But,
as Prof. Daniel Kirk wood shows, in the
Journal of the Franklin Institute, the break-
up of that comet, which was observed in
January, 1846, very materially alters the
conditions of the problem, and now Prof.
Kirkwood announces the latter end of No-
vember, 1892, as the time when, in all prob-
ability the earth and the comet will come in
collision. The comet's period is about six
years and eight months. After the break-
up of January, 1846, it reappearance in

MISCELLANY.

763

1852 was looked for with great interest, and
it was then seen that its two fragments had
not only remained apart, during the inter-
val, but that the distance between them had
increased. In 1859 no observation could
be taken, and in 1866, though the circum-
stances were eminently favorable, no comet
was seen. The same thing occurred again
in September, 1872. But, when the earth's
orbit, on November 29th, intersected that
of the comet a few weeks later, after the
passage of the latter, it was expected that
we should have a view of the meteors form-
ing its dispersed train. And such was the
fact, as the records of astronomical obser-
vation all over the world show. " As the
meteors of this cluster," concludes Prof.
Kirkwood, "are doubtless the debris of
Biela's comet, if we find the epoch at which
the original body would have crossed the
earth's orbit near the 29th of November,
we may regard the collision of our planet
with some of the large fragments — and
hence a grand meteoric display — as highly
probable at the same period. An easy cal-
culation, which need not here be repeated,
gives the last of November, 1892, as such
an epoch."

Temperature in Discasee — In health the
temperature of the human body is but
slightly variable, rarely oscillating beyond
one or two degrees on either side of 99°
Fahr. In disease, however, the variations
are greater, and in the disorders of young
children wider even than in those of the
adult. The temperature in grown persons
has been observed to fall to 95° Fahr., and
to rise as high as 107° Fahr., giving a range
of 12° ; and these are regarded as the ex-
treme limits of variation in the ailments of
adult age. In the sickness of children, ac-
cording to M. Roger, the temperature some-
times falls to 74.3° Fahr., and may rise to
108.5° Fahr., which is equivalent to a range
of 33.2°. In the typhoid fever of infants,
the temperature in the majority of cases at-
tains or passes 104° Fahr. Of the eruptive
fevers, it rises highest in scarlatina, some-
times reaching 105.8° Fahr., next highest
in small-pox, and in measles the least of all.

Among the diseases characterized by a
fall of temperature below the normal stand-
ard, Roger observed in six cases that the

mercury sank to 78.8° ; in other cases the
depression reached respectively 77°, 73.4°,
72.5°, and in one instance to 71.6°, or 27.4°
below the temperature of health.

Hansen's Writing-Ball.— Under the title
of "A New Writing-Machine," we alluded
in a former number to the character of this
invention, which during the past season has
elicited a great deal of admiration both in
the Copenhagen Exhibition and in London.
Since first introduced to the public, it has
been very materially improved, and now not
only furnishes superior facilities for writing,
but is admirably adapted to the purposes
of copying as well. In the improved ma-
chine, the paper rests on a level surface, so
that the operator is at all times able to see
what he writes, and less time is lost in ad-
justing and removing the sheet. By inter-
posing carbonized paper between the sheets,
and making all move together, several cop-
ies may be written or printed off at a single
operation. It will thus perform the duty
of several copying-clerks, and has also been
found admirably suited to the work of writ-
ing out telegraphic dispatches.

Mental Labor and Health. — The Lancet
reverts to the question of mental labor and
longevity, in order to correct some misap-
prehensions of its recent articles on that
topic. "Intellectual activity," persists the
Lancet, "is a preserver rather than a de-
stroyer of nervous health : but this holds
true only when the conditions of ordinary
hygiene are not outrageously violated." If,
coupled with the intellectual strain, we have
harassing anxiety, sleeplessness will result,
and this is fatal. But suppose there is na
such anxiety, but merely ardor for work,
then a man might easily transgress the
plainest laws of health. . The minimum of
sleep required by the adult male in twenty-
four hours, according to the Lancet, is six
hours, and by the adult female, seven. As
for night-work, the Lancet does not think it
injurious per se. The light should be very
white, powerful, and steady, otherwise there
will be brain-irritation. The intellectual
worker must obey implicitly the reversed
scriptural law : " If a man will not eat, nei-
ther shall he work." He must take abun-
dant nutriment, at proper times, together

764

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with a " moderate amount of stimulants,"
says the Lancet. But any excess of alcohol
or tobacco will produce insomnia : indeed,
hundreds of cases where insomnia is charged
to the account of " overwork" are best ex-
plained by excess in stimulation.

Dredging on the New-England Coast. —

Prof. Verrill lias a very interesting article
in the January number of the American
Journal of Science on the " Results of recent
dredging expeditions on the coast of New
England." In the summer of 1872 the head-
quarters of Prof. Baird, United States Fish
Commissioner, were at Eastport, on the coast
of Maine, and he invited the cooperation of
Prof. Verrill and others in the work of mak-
ing a thorough zoological survey of the
waters of that region. Prof. Verrill had
already devoted portions of six summers to
the same work. The survey of 1872 not
only carefully explored all the bays and
estuaries, but also the deeper waters in
their vicinity, more especially places known
to be the haunts of valuable fishes; and the
alcoholic collection of specimens obtained
filled 2,000 bottles and jars, and several
large cases.

Whenever animals were found to change
in form or appearance on being preserved in
alcohol, drawings were carefully made from
life by Mr. J. H. Emerton, of Salem. The
surveying party also studied and ascertained
as far as possible the haunts and habits of
such animals as form the natural food of
fishes. The abundance and variety of living
forms in the localities explored will be ob-
vious from the statement that, besides Fora-
minifera, Enlomostraca, and other minute
creatures, the results of this and of pre-
vious dredgings, which have not been re-
ported, add 350 species to the already known
fauna of the region. Of these species some
are undeseribed, but the majority occur in
the fauna of Northern Europe.

Marine plants were found growing at
depths varying from shore-line to 80 fath-
oms : thus Ptihta serrata occurred at a depth
of 73 fathoms. On St. George's Bank, in
430 fathoms water, 44 species of animals
were obtained, not reckoning foraminifera.
This is the deepest dredging yet done on
our coasts north of Florida. The following
were the temperatures here observed :

Air 66° Fahr.

Surface water 65° "

Bottomwater 51° "

Prof. Verrill, however, thinks there may

have been an error in the statement of the

deep-sea temperature here, owing to defects

in the instruments employed. He notes, at

no great distance from St. George's Bank,

the following temperatures for 50 fathoms

water :

Surface water 62° Fahr.

Bottomwater 45° "

And off Cape Sable a still greater coldness
of the bottom was observed in 45 fathoms
water, viz. :

Air 5S° Fahr.

Surface water 56° "

Bottomwater 35° "

In these cold waters the animal life found
was more arctic in its character

Between St. George's Bank and Nova
Scotia the bottom was found to consist of
fine soft, sandy mud. This, according to
Prof. Verrill, may be owing to a depression
of the area between the bank and the coast.
This depression would withdraw the bottom
out of the reach of the powerful currents
which sweep over and outside the banks.
Where these currents have full play, noth-
ing but coarse sand and gravel is found even
at a depth of 430 fathoms — nearly half a
mile.

So strong are the currents, and so enor-
mous their volume, in this part of the ocean,
that to the east of St. George's Bank, where
no bottom was found at 1,800 fathoms
(rather more than two miles) depth, their
mutual collision sufficed to produce a roar
like breakers on a beach. The report is to
be continued, and a complete list published
of all the species of animals obtained.

Ostracism of a French Savant. — The new

edition of Robin and Littre's great "Dic-
tionary of Medicine " was lately presented
to the French Academy of Sciences. Pa-
thology is there regarded as a branch of
biology, levying contributions on mathe-
matics, chemistry, physics, and even social
science and history. The Bishop of Or-
leans says that this dictionary lowers man
to the level of the brutes ; and the conserv-
ative justices of the peace of the sixth ar
rondisscment of Paris take up the strain.

MISCELLANY.

765

These wise judges declare M. Robin to be
incapacitated, by his religious belief, from
serving on a jury. They used to order such
things better than this in France, but just
at present there is an effervescence of emo-
tional religionism in that country, and, as M.
Robin is not in sympathy with it, he must
be put down. The disqualified doctor is
one of the foremost medico-legal authorities
in Europe, and can well smile at the pettish-
ness of the justices and their backers.

Causes of Horse-Influenza. — Prof. James
Law contributes to the Lens a highly-impor-
tant paper on " The Causes of Influenza in
Horses." This is by far the ablest study
on the subject which has yet been published,
and we earnestly advise those of our readers
who take an interest in the matter to pro-
cure the January number of the Lens, and
peruse the discussion in full. We have
space only for a brief summary. The author
considers, one by one, the various causes
assigned both by men of science and by em-
pirics, for the outbreak and propagation of
the disease. As regards the influence of
soil and elevation, he finds that these cannot
be proved factors in the problem, since the
mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire
were visited by the epizootic no less than
the flat and malarious sea-coast of New Jer-
sey, Maryland, and Yirginia. Again, it has
been supposed that a low temperature is an
active agent in aggravating the disorder;
but Fulton County, Gaj, showed a mortality
threefold greater than that of Dodge Coun-
ty, Wis. And yet, after the outbreak of
the disorder, in the last-named locality,
there occurred a great and sudden fall of
the thermometer. The author shows very
clearly indeed that sudden changes of
weather are not the cause of the outbreak,
from the meteorological tables of Toronto,
where the equine influenza first appeared.
These tables show that during September,
1872 (the month of the outbreak), there was
the average barometer and thermometer,
and that the relative humidity of the atmos-
phere and the direction and velocity of the
wind were normal.

Another cause often assigned is acrid or
fetid fogs. But, in this respect, the month
of September, 18*72, showed nothing pecul-
iar. With regard to the amount of ozone

in the air, the author had no estimates ; but
he shows that, even were that gas proved to
be in excess in September, it cannot be re-
garded as the cause of the rise or spread of
the disease. His facts on this point are en-
tirely conclusive.

He next considers what influence is
to be attributed to the action of electrical
disturbance. It is certain that September,
1872, was, at Toronto, marked by a high
degree of electrical disturbance. But then
was that the cause of the outbreak ? That
is by no means proved. If it were the cause,
then we should have influenza at all periods
of great electrical disturbance, which is not
the case. The author is, however, disposed
to allow that this disturbance may have
" predisposed the system to the attack of a
poison which existed previously."

There remains the theory of contagion,
and this the author adopts. The contagion
in this case is specific, confined to one spe-
cies. Breaking out first in Toronto, it ra-
diated in all directions, following the great
routes of travel, and its progress is in nearly
every instance traceable to the importation
of animab from infected districts. But
what is the nature of the contagiicm here —
of the diseased or morbific matter trans-
mitted from one animal to another? On
this point there are two theories. One of
these holds that the specific poison consists
of fungi or the like. The other, which is
that of our author, sees in the granules,
existing abundantly in the diseased organs,
the morbific agent. These multiply very
rapidly, and are conveyed to a considerable
distance through the atmosphere, in the
clothing of human beings, etc.

The first-named theory, that which at-
tributes the origin and propagation of influ-
enza to vegetal organisms, is adopted by
Mr. G. W. Morehouse, in the American
Naturalist. He found in the matter from
a diseased horse's nostrils, and also in the
air, the spores of three different cryptoga-
mous plants, of which he gives engravings.
But he fails to tell us whether or no these
same spores were in the air long before or
after the disorder, as well as during its prev-
alence. Also whether these vegetal organ-
isms are not equally to be found in the mu-
cous discharges of sound horses. On this
point, however, we are not left to conjecture,

766

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for we have the authority of Prof. Law, cor-
roborated by the observations of Dr. Wood-
ward, for the statement that no "specific
vegetal germs have been found in the air,
blood, 05 nasal discharges, during the prev-
alence of the influenza."

Elevation and Subsidence of the Earth's
Surface. — The Philosophical Magazine for
December, 1872, contains an interesting pa-
per by Captain F. W. Hutton, F. G. S., " On
the Phenomena of Elevation and Subsi-
dence of the Surface of the Earth," from
which we condense the following : Assum-
ing the increase of heat of the earth's in-
terior to be 1° Fahr. to every 50 feet of
descent, there occurs at a depth of about
23 miles an. isogeothermal line or surface
where cohesion of the rocks is overcome
by heat, or rather would be so overcome at
the ordinary atmospheric pressure. But
the expansive force of the heat is balanced
by the pressure of 23 miles of superincum-
bent rock, and thus a general equilibrium
is maintained. The position of the earth's
surface is due to three causes : 1. Its own
weight ; 2. Support of the interior mass ;
and, 3. Lateral thrust of the various por-
tions against one another.

Whatever disturbs this adjustment must
produce change of surface. If any eleva-
tion takes place in one section, there must
follow subsidence in another. A great de-
crease of pressure is, doubtless, brought
about by the radiation of heat into space,
but this the author insists does not account
for all the phenomena. There are two and
only two agencies constantly at work, ade-
quate to the production of this rise and fall
of surface, and these are denudation and
deposition, the latter being of greatest im-
portance. The isogeothermal line will con-
form itself to undulations of the surface ;
so that, if a deposition of 100 feet of sand
or rock occur, the line of heat will rise 100
feet, and the heat of the former line will
correspondingly increase. Citing experi-
ments of Colonel Totten and Mr. Adie illus-
trating the expansion of rocks by heat, the
author says : " If the overlying mass be of
loose particles, or sand, there could only be
such elevation as would arise from increase
of volume ; but in case of solid rock, as
limestone, there would be not only the in-

crease of volume, but an arch-like elevation
arising from lateral thrust. From this
cause would arise ridges of elevation."

In illustration of this, he refers to "the
well-known elevation of the Wealden and
Chalk of England. Here, with a thickness
of the Cretaceous of 2,100 feet and of the
Wealden of 1,300 feet, making in all 3,400
feet, we have a total rise of the arch of
about 4,100 feet, the total breadth being
about 100 miles. The elevation of the
nummulitic limestone of the Eocene is
also cited. This formation, 8,000 feet thick,
is an ocean-deposit extending from Spain
and Morocco to China and India, and has
been elevated into enormous ridges, as the
Atlas, Pyrenees, Apennines, and Himalayas.
The author suggests that the cooling of
mountain elevations as they rise above the
snow-line may reduce the temperature of
the surface, so that the rise of the isogeo-
thermal is arrested, and further elevation
ceases. On this point tables are given,
showing the rise due to certain depths and
areas of deposit.

Denudation, like cooling of surface, is
supposed to induce subsidence in a given
area by causing the line of heat to recede.
But what could have disturbed the original
equilibrium ? " There can, I think, be but
one answer to this question, viz., the origin
of life on the globe. This life, by abstract-
ing the carbonate of lime from solution in
the sea, and depositing it on the bottom,
first disturbed the equilibrium." The writer
quotes freely from the statements of Bab-
bage, Herschel, Croll, Hopkins, and others,
to fortify points of this ingenious but per-
haps in some respects fanciful hypothesis.

A Poison-Proof Bird. — A correspondent
of Science Gossip tells of an attempt to
capture a specimen of the scavenger-bird,
or "adjutant," of India, in which he failed
in a most unexpected way. On account of
its valuable services in clearing the streets
of decaying and putrid matter, the bird is
held in high esteem by the natives, who
take every precaution to protect it from
harm. This prevented an open attack, and
poison was the only alternative. The car-
cass of a partially-dissected bat was stuffed
with enough arsenical paste and corrosive
sublimate to kill twenty men, and the titbit

OBITUARY.

767

thrown to a flock of the birds near by.
One of them swallowed the whole of it at
a gulp, and our student in comparative
anatomy thought his game secure. But,
though closely watched for three hours, not
the slightest sign of uneasiness was mani-
fested, and at the end of this time the creat-
ure flew away with its fellows, apparently
as well as the best of them. The accus-
tomed haunts of the flock were afterward
carefully searched, but no trace could be
found of the dead body wanted ; and it was
concluded that, unlike other gormands, this
one was not to be easily got at through his
stomach.

Purpose of the Rattlcsaake's Rattle. —

In the American Naturalist, for February,
Prof. Samuel Aughey gives the results
of his observations upon the use made
of their rattles by the rattlesnake. It is
the vulgar opinion that the reptile sounds
his rattle for the purpose of enticing birds,
and some naturalists even are disposed to
find here a mimicry of the sound made by
the so-called locust, or cicada. Prof. Aughey
does not undertake to explain all the pur-
poses served by the rattle, but he fully agrees
with Mr. F. W. Putnam in rejecting this mi-
metic theory. Does the rattle, then, serve
any useful purpose ? In reply to this ques-
tion, the author tells us what he has him-
self observed. In July, 1869, he was in
"Wayne County, Nebraska, and, as he was
one day investigating the natural history
of that district, he heard the familiar rattle
of the snake. The sound was repeated at
intervals, and proceeded from a rattlesnake
that was calling its mate, which soon came
in answer to the summons. Prof. Aughey
had a similar experience the following year,
and from these facts he is disposed to think
that the purpose served by the rattle is to
call the sexes together.

Another purpose may be to paralyze its
victims with fright, and to inspire its natural
enemies with terror. As an illustration of
the use of the rattle for the former purpose,
the author says that, as he followed through
the woods of Dakota County, Nebraska, a
Baltimore oriole, he heard a rattle, and at
once saw the bird as it were paralyzed with
fear, and ready to fall a prey to the serpent.
The writer shot the rattlesnake. He adds

that he once witnessed an attack of seven
hogs on a rattlesnake. Soon after the bat-
tle opened, the snake rattled, and three
others came to his aid. But the hogs were
victorious in a few minutes.

OBITUARY.

Professor Matthew Fontaine Maury,
whose scientific labors in the Hydrographi-
cal Office, Washington, earned for him emi-
nent rank among savants, and were of in-
estimable benefit to the commerce of the
world, died at Lexington, Va., February 1st,
aged 6*7 years. At the time of his death
he was Professor of Physics in the Virginia
Military Institute. He was author of a
" Treatise on Navigation," of a " Physical
Geography of the Seas," of " Letters on
the Amazon and Atlantic Slopes of South
America," and other works.

Tiie eminent French naturalist Felix
Archimede Pouchet died December 6, 1872,
at Rouen, in the 73d year of his age. He is
best known to fame by his researches into
the question of spontaneous generation, on
which he held the affirmative side. He was
a very voluminous writer, his principal
works being on "Spontaneous Ovulation,"
and " The Organs of Digestion, Circulation,
and Respiration." He was educated for a
physician, and was for a long time profess-
or in the Rouen School of Medicine.

The Rev. Adam Sedgwick, LL. D., F. R. S.,

F. G. S., Professor of Geology in the Univer-
sity of Cambridge, England, died January
27th, aged about 90 years. He long stood
in the foremost rank of men of science in
England, and was, both alone and with the
assistance of Sir R. Murchison, the author
of several works on geology. His first ac-
knowledged publication appeared in 1822,
and treated of the physical structure of the
Devonshire and Cornish formations. In
1851 he was awarded the Wollaston Palla-
dium Medal for researches into the geologi-
cal structure of the British Isles, the Alps,
and the Rhenish provinces. Two years
before his death he resigned his professor-
ship at Cambridge, but to the last took a
warm interest in the progress of science.

763

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

NOTES.

The Mont Cenis Tunnel labors under a
Tery serious defect — that of insufficient ven-
tilation. Under ordinary circumstances the
difference of temperature at the opposite
sides of the Alps is such as to keep up a
steady current of air through the tunnel.
But it may happen that the temperature at
both ends shall be the same, and then the
air within will be stationary. A freight-
train recently came to a stand-still, all
hands on board having become half as-
phyxiated by foul air. Another train came
to the rescue in time to save their lives.
The tunnel, therefore, cannot be relied upon
at all times to ventilate itself, and some ar-
tificial mode of ventilation must be applied
without delay.

A comparison made between smokers
and non-smokers belonging to the Polytech-
nic School of Paris shows that the non-
smokers take the highest rank in every
grade. Further, it is found that the smok-
ers lost grade constantly. In 1861 the Min-
ister of Public Instruction accordingly is-
sued a circular forbidding the use of tobacco
by pupils in public schools.

The Food-Journal quotes from the Swiss
Times the statement that the sale of horse-
meat has been authorized by the authori-
ties in Geneva, the price per pound for the
choice morsel being regulated by law.

A searcher of ancient records has ex-
humed the following weather statistics for
Germany: In 1241 the trees bloomed in
March, and in May cherries were ripe. In
1289 there was no winter, and young girls
wore wreaths of violets at Christmas. In
December, 1538, the gardens were green,
and in full bloom the following month. The
years 1572, 1588, 1607, 1609, and 1617,
were similarly abnormal. There was nei-
ther snow nor frost in 1659. The trees
bloomed in February, 1722. The year 1807
was extremely mild, as also 1834 and 1846.

One of the newest uses of paper is to
employ it as skins for sausages. This is of
course a German notion, and Wiirtemburg
is its birthplace. Unlike the skins com-
monly used, the paper envelop is not sub-
ject to fermentation, and is cleanliness it-
self.

In spite of the heavy fines imposed upon
milk adulterations in the cities of Ireland
and England, the fraudulent practice still
goes on ; the fines being paid by societies
organized in the interest of the fraud. To
meet this difficulty, milk-consumers are urg-
ing the authorities to add, to the imposition
of fines, the punishment of imprisonment,
as the only effective deterrent that can be
brought against this class of swindlers.

A report on the average life of acade-
micians, addressed to the French Academy
of Science, by M. Potiquet, shows that the
mean age of members of the French Insti-
tute, from its foundation in 1795 down to
November, 1869, is 51 years and 10 months
at the time of their election, and 71 years
and 5 months at the time of their decease.
The latter figure shows an uncommonly
high average of life, and will doubtless
cause some surprise ; and yet, as the author
has bestowed great pains on his tables, and
taken every precaution to avoid error, his
results may be confidently accepted as en-
tirely trustworthy.

A writer in the Medical Record com-
mends the use of borax, as a remedy for
the hoarseness or loss of voice common
among public speakers and singers. A few
minutes before any continuous exercise of
the vocal organs, a small lump, three or
four grains, of borax is to be slowly dis-
solved in the mouth and gradually swal-
lowed. The solution acts upon the orifice
of the glottis and the vocal cords precisely
as " wetting " acts upon the notes of the
flute. It is also stated that five grains of
nitre taken in a glass of water, the body
being wrapped in extra clothing, will excite
a gentle perspiration for an entire night ;
and this treatment will break up a cold if
employed at its first onset. — Detroit Review
of Medicine.

A •careful estimate gives the popula-
tion of the globe as follows : Europe, 301,-
600,000; Asia, 794,000,000; Australia
and Polynesia, 4,365,000 ; Africa, 192,520,-
000; America, 84,524,000; total, 1,377,-
000,000. London has 3,251,000, ranking
first among cities in point of population.
Next comes Su-choo, China, with 2,000,-
000. Five cities in China have an aggre-
gate population of 6,884,000 inhabitants.

A man in Brussels, while under the in-
fluence of intoxicating liquor, fell into the
Canal Charleroi. After some trouble and
considerable loss of time his body was re-
covered and taken in charge by Dr. Joux,
police-surgeon. After trying all the usual
remedies for three hours, Dr. Joux applied
iron, at a white heat, to the upper part of
the body, near the vital organs. In half an
hour the man awoke to life.

To obviate the slipperiness of asphalt
pavements, it is proposed to mould the as-
phalt into blocks about the size of the ordi-
nary granite blocks, and in the centre of
each to fix a piece of stone or of wood.

Owing to the prevailing floods, salmon
were to be found throughout the whole
winter in all the rivers of Ireland. In the
streets of Bandon, seven salmon were killed
in one day, some of them in the very houses.

INDEX.

PAGK

"Administration of Justice under Military and Martial Law" (by 0. M.

Clode), Notice of 754

Agriculture, Ancient, in Bavaria 759

Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought 93,174

Ammonia in Snow-water 506

" Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain "

(by John Evans), Notice of 247

" Annals of Bee-Culture " 755

Antipodes and Periceci 489

Applied Sanitary Science 665

Art in the Stone Age. (Illustrated.) 343

Atmospheric Pressure, Effect of 382

Atmospheric Pressure and Vegetable Growth 760

Asbestos, Uses of 509

Asphalt Pavements 609

Astronomical and Physical Observatories 365

Barbarism in English Education 671

Barnard, F. A. P., Poetical Address to 622

Barnard, President, Communication from 243

" Bee-keepers' Magazine " 249

Bias, Educational 564

Biela's Comet 762

Bird, A Poison-proof 766

Birds, Our Native, acquiring New Habits 633

Birds, Young, Instinct in 561

Birds Improving in Nest-Building 485

Blood, Transfusion of 124, 679

Boiler Explosions, Probable Cause of 757

Borax, Antiseptic Properties of 381

Bowlder-like Masses of Clay in the Long-Island Drift 634

Brain, Functions of the 64

Brain-Work and the Emotions 420

Building-Stone and Fire 639

Bulb-Culture in Holland 381

Butter, Artificial 126

Car-wheels, Paper 763

Carp, An Aged.. 250

Carpenter, Dr., against Materialism 124

Caterpillars, An Army of 255

Cave-Dwellers, or Troglodytes, in France. (Illustrated.) 699

Cinchona in Bengal 381

City of the Future 250

Civilization, Antiquity of 631

VOL. II. — 49

770 INDEX.

PAGB

Coal-Gas, Effects of, on Plants 638

Coati-Mondi, The, and its Cousins. (Illustrated.) 136

Cocoa-nut Palm, The, and its Uses 214

" Coffee : Its History, Cultivation, and Uses " (by Robert Hewitt, Jr.), No-
tice of 753

Combustion under Pressure 634

Comet, Biela's 762

Comets, Tails of 383

" Compendious Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis " (by Eliot and

Storer), Notice of 248

Cotton Fibres and Fabrics 161

Crime, Causes of 589

Cromlechs in Algeria 638

Cultivating Wild Flowers 356

Darwin (Notice of), with Portrait 497

" Deductive and Inductive Training " (by Prof. Silliman), Notice of 504

Delusions, Epidemic 15

Detonators, Electric, for exploding Mines 761

Development in Dress 40

Discipline of Mankind, The Early 129

Diseases, Local, Relations of, to the Nature of the Soil 382

Disinfectant, An Efficacious 761

Disinfection, Careless '. 122

Do Birds Improve in Nest-Building ? 485

Disease, Temperature in 763

Dredging on the New-England Coast 764

Drifting of the Stars 224

Earth's Surface, Elevation and Subsidence of 766

Earthquake-Phenomena. (Illustrated.) 513

Education in New England, estimated by Agassiz 759

Education, Coercion in 623

Education, English, Barbarism in 671

Education, Observation in 371

Educational System, Science and Our 695

Electricity and Life 526

Elevation and Subsidence of the Earth's Surface 766

Emotions, Brain-Work and the 420

Emotions, Expression of the. (Illustrated.) 434

Engineering, Ancient, among the Chinese 127

English and American Science 734

" Epidemic Cerebro-Spinal Meninjptis " (by Dr. Clymer), Notice of 628

Epidemic Delusions 15

Equality of the Sexes 552

Eucalyptus, Chemical Products of 253

Evolution, Doctrine of 110

Evolution and the Spectroscope 320

Experiments on the Circulation of the Frog 762

Expression of the Emotions. (Illustrated.). 434

" Family Thermometry " (by Dr. Seguin), Notice of 627

" Faraday " (by J. H. Gladstone), Notice of 377

" (by De la Rive) " " '. 377

" Faraday as a Discoverer " (by Tyndall), Notice of. 377

Ferns, Ancient 633

Fire-Escape, A New 511

Fires, Great, and Rain-Storms 206

" Forces of Nature " (by Guillemin), Notice of. 628

IXDEX.

771

PAGE

Forests and Fruit-Growing 194

" Fortnightly Review " 755

Fool Air 121

Foul Air and Disease of the Heart 183

Frog, The Horned 676

Fruit-Growing, Forests and 194

Fuel, Economy of 506

Functions of the Brain 64

Fuzi-Yama and Hakusan 634

" Gardener's Monthly " 248

Generation, Spontaneous. (Illustrated.) 83

Geology of the Great Plain of Morocco 635

German Thought, New Phase of 152, 311

Glass, Facts about 252

Godwin, Mr., on the Limits of Science 746

Gold in Sea-Water , 255

" Great Problem " (by John R. Leifchild), Notice of. 245

" Great Problem," Introduction to the 182

Greeley, Mr., Death of. 372

Gunpowder, Smokeless 61

Hair, How the Feelings affect the 158

" Hand-Book of Chemical Technology " (by Wagner), Notice of 244

Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious 152, 311

Health, Nervous and Moral 416

Heart, Disease of the, and Foul Air 183

Heat and Life '. 400

Henry, Prof. Joseph, Sketch of, with Portrait 741

Herculaneum, how was it destroyed ? 232

Horned Frog, The 676

Horse-Influenza, Causes of 765

Houses, Warming of. 472

Human Races, Physical Characters of. 541

Humanity and Insanity 218

Humming-Bird, Instinct at Fault in 254

Hydrogen-Gas, Cheap 639

Hypothesis, The Nebular 650

Importance of the Cultivation of Science 641

India, Matters in 614

Influenza in Horses, Causes of 765

Insect-Life in a Coal-Mine 255

Instinct in Young Birds 561

Is Electricity Life? 477

Islamism, Epileptic Origin of 605

"Key to North American Birds" (by E. Coues), Notice of 751

Labor, Mental, and Health 763

" Lectures on Light " (by Tyndall), Notice of. (Illustrated.) 754

Law of Storms developed 385

Light and Life 294

Lightning-Rods, Ground Connection of 120

Life, Electricity and 526

Life, Heat and 400

" Life in Nature — Man and his Dwelling-Place " (by James Hinton),

Notice of. 118

Livingstone, Doctor. (Portrait.) 327

772 INDEX.

PAGE

Man in America, Antiquity of. 638

" Manual of Microscopic Mounting " (by John H. Martin), Notice of 247

Maury, Matthew Fontaine 767

Meteoric Stones 75

Meteorites, Recent, in France and Italy 760

Monas Prodigiosa 249

" Mysteries of Voice and Ear " (by O. N. Rood), Notice of 751

" Myths and Myth-Makers " (by John Fiske), Notice of 752

Nebular Hypothesis, The 650

Nervous Health and Moral Health 416

Niagara, Facts relating to 249

Notes 128,255, 384, 511, 639, 768

Nothing new under the Sun 380

'a

Observation in Education 371

Observatories, Astronomical and Physical 365

Old Age, Necessity of Carefulness in 511

Opium Poppy in France 384

Opossum, Habits of the 124

Osage Orange 383

Ostracism of a French Savant 764

"Our First Year's Work" 745

Ozone by a New Process 507

Paper as a Building-Material 633

Paper-Hangings, Poisonous 123

Partridge-Berries, White 254

Patriotism, Bias of . . 708

Pavements, Asphalt 609

Pavement, An Unpatentable 255

Pericardium, puncturing the 637

Petroleum, Solidifying 635

Pholades, The Boring-Organ of 253

Phosphoric Acid 383

Photograph Proofs, White Spots on 632

Photometer, Deep-Sea 639

Physiological Position of Tobacco 167

Physical Characters of the Human Races 541

" Physics and Politics " (by Walter Bagehot), Notice of 503

Plant-Battery 631

Plants, Spontaneous Movements in. (Illustrated.) , 280

Plaster, Action of, on Soils 251

Polaris, The, Expedition 253

" Popular Treatise on Gems " (by Dr. L. Feuchtwanger) 378

Potato-Disease, The 250

Pouchet, Felix Archimede 767

Practical Man, The, as an Obstructive 37

Prophecies, Weather 149

Public Affairs, Science and 736

" Quarterly German Magazine " 377

Rain-Storms, Great Fires and 206

Rattlesnake's Rattle, Purpose of 767

" Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals " (by Spencer),

Notice of 505

Recent Progress of Natural Science 597

Religion, Science and 79

INDEX. 773

TAGH

Rhinoceros, A New Species of 380

Kiver and Lake Terraces. (Illustrated.) 661

Romance of Medicine 422

Sabine, General Sir Edward, Sketch of. (Portrait.) 238

Sanitary Science, Applied 665

Sardines 126

Scientific Expedition of the Challenger 509

Science and Public Affairs 736

Science and our Educational System 695

Science, English and American 734

Science and Religion 79

Science, Importance of cultivating 641

Science, Natural, Recent Progress of 597

Science, Sanitary, Applied 665

Science in the Household 757

Scientific Thought, Aims and Instruments of 93, 174

Sedgwick, Rev. Adam 767

Selective Power of Plants 756

Sensitive Streams 383

Sexes, Equality of the 552

Silica as a Basis of Paint 632

Silk Goods, Test for 383

Singing Flames, Practical Application of 757

Slag as a Building-Material 637

Smokeless Gunpowder 61

Snakes, Venomous, of India. ... ' 510

Sociological Science in its Later Statements 240

Sociology, Study of. 1, 257, 450, 564, 708

Somerville, Mrs 501

Sound, Experiments on 378

Sparrow, The English 508

Spectroscope, Evolution and the 320

" Spectrum Analysis " (by Dr. H. Schellen), Notice of 116

Spider Engineering 635

Spiders, Venomous, in New Zealand 758

Spontaneous Generation. (Illustrated.) 83

Spontaneous Movements in Plants. (Illustrated.) 280

Squirrel-Pest 382

Stars, Drifting of the 224

Steam, Cultivation by 507

Stone Age, Art in the. (Illustrated.) 343

Stones, Meteoric 75

Strength of Timber. (Illustrated.) 582

Sun, The, as a Borer of Mountains 380

Sunlight, Sea, and Sky 50

Telegraphy, Government 631

" Ten Laws of Health " (by Dr. J. R. Black), Notice of 754

Terraces, River and Lake. (Illustrated.) 661

" The Earth a Great Magnet " (by A. M. Mayer), Notice of. 626

" Thoughts for the Times " (by Rev. H. R. Haweis), Notice of 248

Tin, Disintegration of 382

Tobacco, Physiological Position of 167

" Transactions of the "Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters,"

Notice of 503

Transfusion of Blood 124, 679

Trees and Rain 123

Troglodytes, or Cave-Dwellers in France. (Illustrated.) 699

Tyndall and Froude 375

774 INDEX.

w PAGB

Tyndall, Farewell Banquet to 625

Tyndall's Lectures in New York 499

Tyndall, Sketch of Prof. (Portrait.) 103

Tyndall, Mount, Discovery of 739

Unconscious, Philosophy of the 152, 311

Useful Things 491

Vegetable Caprice 383

Vegetable Physiology, Curious Phenomenon in 636

Velocity of the Will ; 360

Ventilation, Parliamentary 252

Ventilation and Warming 126

Venus, Transit of 252

Vibrations produced by Various Explosives 506

Volcanic Dust 123

Vibrio-Life, Development of. 761

Volcanic Energy .. 505

Volcanic Eruption, Disastrous 253

Volcanoes, A New Theory of. 203

War and Insanity , 252

Warming of Houses 472

Weather Prophecies 149

Welding Copper , 382

Wheat, New Method for disintegrating 254

Wild Flowers, cultivating 356

Will, Velocity of the 360

Writing-Ball, Honsen's 763

Zebu and European Cattle, Cross between 635

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